bardbear's page

Beaten to the punch by DM_aka_Dudemeister. I was going to suggest Blue Rose's wealth system, which is a derivative of the True20 system.

What is your build?

I never played 3.x and Pathfinder is new to me (i mainly played other d20 systems that didn't use the [to me] complex combat mechanics of 3.x/Pathfinder). So i am certain this is not an optimal build. Also, remember that we are only using core rules (+the basic traits from the APG in the online SRD)

Getting spells will probably;y not be that much of a problem if you have to fight wizards or get around to shops often. I've always found familiars to be over rated. I just pick one for the bonus and rarely ever see them come into play, (maybe the occasional scouting).

If you want to be a lore asater be one, all this "you lose xxx" stuff seems big in theory but in actual practice will most likely NOT result in vast power loss.

Not sure about how many wizards we will be fighting. It is a home brew campaign with a few house rules:

Core rules only: exception the traits that are found in the APG *only* are allowed

No magic shops: magic items are made by commission only and uncommon to ultra-rare.

No meta-magic items: all the rods of meta-magic don’t exist in this world.

No familiars: Bonded items only

You keep your bonus spells per day. All you lose is your new spells known for going up in level (meaning you need to buy new spells for your spellbook as Wizards usually do when not leveling).

Just to clarify.

Oops, too many terms: the bonus spell i was referring to losing was the bonus spell from the conjuration school he would get as a conjuror.

Sorry, forgot the important caveat that we are only using core rules, so no discoveries, abilities or spells from the advanced books. And no familiars either, so bonded object is the default.

Didn’t realize that I wouldn’t get my bonus spell, I thought that was wrapped up in the “+1 level of existing class”. Looks like there is lots more to lose by going Loremaster than I had originally thought about.

I have not been a fan of Prestige classes in general, but Loremaster really fits the concept for the wizard I am creating for a new campaign. He is a conjuration specialist (evocation and enchantment as opposition schools). It looks to me that if I take 10 levels in wizard and then 10 levels in Loremaster, I lose nothing but one “free” wizard feat ( if I take the Loremaster secret ability that gives on free feat). Hit dice, saves, BAB are all the same, plus I get slightly better skill points for the Loremaster levels. And spells per day matches the wizard progression.

The only thing I see that might possibly be a loss would be the final part of Summoner’s Charm “At 20th level, you can change the duration of all summon monster spells to permanent. You can have no more than one summon monster spell made permanent in this way at one time. If you designate another summon monster spell as permanent, the previous spell immediately ends.” The part about 20th level is unclear: does that mean 20 full levels as wizard, or just attaining 20th level in any way (like 10 wizard/10 Loremaster)?

Thanks!
BB

Yes, the bard launched into his inspire courage the round after he cast of hideous laughter.

We, the [layers, had felt a sense of great urgency that we must rush to the bandit camp as soon as we found out about it. Whether our impression was correct is up for debate, but talking to the other players, the majority felt that we had to rush there ASAP.

I don't think any of our characters could intimidate, or at least none of us knew what that was.

Didn't say there weren't challenges and set backs in our games: bad guys get away, allied NPCs get hurt or killed. The last game we played before Pathfinder ended with a cliffhanger were the rightful queens was possed by a dark entity and killed despite everything we did to save her.

First thing you did wrong was assume you were invincible and fought against superior odds. When the camp was alerted you should have withdrawn, fled the scene, and came back later, or spied on the camp and snipered easy victims until you had a better chance at victory.

The BIGGEST flaw of the game when 3.0 came out was create this idea of balance, that the players are always expected to win no matter what. I remember in 1st edition walking in a manor at first level and being hit with vampires and demons in the very first room because we looked at the wrong paintings! We had around 5 or so TPKs in that module before we got through the first level!

It never ceases to amaze me. Several times I have thrown a party up against an impossible to beat challenge, and every single time the players never even think once to run away. I have had them ask several times how they were supposed to have beaten it and lived. I always replied with you should have run away and come back later when you were better prepared for it.

Just remember this... if a TPK happens and the players never even once attempt to run away then really it is their fault.

I can't reference 3.x, the last time i played AD&D was 2nd edition. But what you call balance above is what i call trust - when i GM i want to players to feel that they can trust me not to set-up a scenario where they just can't win: is that realistic? HECK NO. But i do not game to be real - i play and GM to have fun, and certain death scenarios are not fun to me or the gang i play with.

bardbear wrote:

We almost had a total party wipe last night and i am trying to figure out where we, the players, goofed.

Background: 5 players, only one has played 3.x.pathfidner before, the other 4 of us are from more cinematic style games (no maps, very freeform fights), most of us really enjoy RP more than combat, but we acknowledge combat is necessary to advance the plots (and the characters).

One thing that you should look to do is take advantage of terrain.

Likewise the GM should get used to including whatever terrain is there on maps. It's very natural to just lay the map down, but reasonably there are trees, bushes and the like that can give cover, concealment, difficult terrain, etc.

Next, I might question the spell selection of the casters. Did they have anything to change the tide of battle for you, or were their choices more geared for other settings?

-James

He did a very nice paper map with squares that had all the terrain (trees, logs, bushes, a road and a small stream) on it. The issue was - that meant nothing to 80% of the party. We don't have the player experience with all the rules (see: my previous queries about cover) to understand what all that stuff was, i know I thought it was just "window dressing".

As for the casters: we had one first level cleric, he ended up using his two spells as heals. The sorceress used one mage armor and three magic missles. The bard used hideous laughter on one of the snipers and got lucky and the sniper fell out of the tree - that was how we started combat. The only other spell the bard had was grease (only knows two spells at level 1 and can only cast two spells total [with CHR bonus])

Here are the cover rules.

Cover is critical when you are being attacked at range. A common mistake I see many players make is to neglect their own ranged attack abilities. I've seen PCs that literally have NO ranged attack weapons and who complain in a ranged fight that they can't do anything. There is no excuse for any character to be unable to at least shoot a crossbow at ranged attackers.

You can also use spells like "obscuring mist" to give ranged attackers a hard time. Hopefully you GM understands the rules regarding firing into melee, so once you are engaged in melee with the enemy, that usually makes it much harder for their archers to hit you due to the -4 penalty for shooting into melee.

Terrain is also a tool to use to your advantage.

Thank you very much for the link. Wow, it is like high school geometry all over again. Thinking more and more i may not be a good fit to Pathfinder.

I will have to find out about "cover" it is a new concept that i am not familiar with. Is it covered in the online rescources?

Selgard wrote:

What you did wrong was.. fail to run the heck away.

This is pretty much a primary lesson for Kingmaker.
The encuonters are based on what lives where- not based on your level or when a "good time" would be for you to meet it. The same is true for the random encounters.

If your group refuses to run away when things look too tough you are going to blow through alot of character sheets.

Learn to evaluate the threat and run away if its too big for you. It'll save you alot of grief in the long run.

-S

Wow, that's umm, disappointing to hear. Its a wildly divergent play style for our little RP group (the GM is a relative newcomer to our gang of merry old rascals [most of us are low to mid 40's IRL]).

And the fighter went down in the FIRST round of combat: 1d8+2 damage is ferocious at first level. By the time we realised we were way over our heads, it was round two and half the party was wounded or down.

Also, we did scout, that's how we knew there were two snipers up in platforms in the trees. We did miss the two guys behind the logs, but we are very new to this style of play.

oops: fighter went down on round two not round one. My mistake on that.

We almost had a total party wipe last night and i am trying to figure out where we, the players, goofed.

Background: 5 players, only one has played 3.x.pathfidner before, the other 4 of us are from more cinematic style games (no maps, very freeform fights), most of us really enjoy RP more than combat, but we acknowledge combat is necessary to advance the plots (and the characters).

The five characters are all level 1, with a 20 point buy, and 90 gold for starting equipment. There is a human paladin, an elf fighter, a gnome sorceress, a halfling cleric and a gnome bard.

The GM is running us through a Piazo campaign, i think is is Kingmaker, and we were on our second gamin session. The first section, we had saved an outpost from some bandits and dealt with a small group of kobolds in the wilderness.

This time, we were on the trail of the bandit camp. We got there and they had EIGHT bandits, all with (we later found out) longbows with a +2 STR mod. We tried to take out the first lookout (he was in a tree) but that alerted the camp and they all came after us. We tried using the spells we had. the fighters meleed, we did everything we could think of - but the elf fighter went down twice (cleric got him back up both times, but that took all his spells), and then this chick dual wielding hand axes ambushes us and almost takes down both the fighter and the paladin. By this point, five bandits were down, one had fled and we had the axe crazy chick and two bandits left. The elf and paladin took out one of the bandits, then the axe chick and started to flee (our first experience with the withdrawal maneuver - that was a shock to us, we didn't know that was possible), and the other bandit fled at that point as well. We were out of spells, the elf was down (for the third time) and the paladin and bard were wounded. If they NPCs had not fled, the party would have wiped.

I work with the elf fighter's player (he's the only one with 3.x prior experience) and we were trying to figure out at lunch today what we did wrong, how we could have possibly, at first level, handled this scenario better - and we were drawing blanks.

Any advice would be much appreciated, but please, no spoilers for the campaign plot.