I had a hard time wrapping my head around the halting haze terrain features in episode B. I couldn't really get the gist of where they were located on the Z axis, or what the tactical point of them even was. Luckily when I ran this, the party ended up bluffing their way past Bothizar and no fight broke out on that map anyway.

The group I ran for had also successfully made a social solution to the Williwaw, so they had time for the cloud golem optional encounter. I hadn't remembered that the Nue was supposed to come at the party from the ceiling, so that's what I had the golems do. IMO it made much more sense to have them emerge "down" through the ceiling anyway.

I loved the final encounter, btw. A chore to be sure to administer, but boy was it memorable. I had two PCs get caught in the tornado, and a melee-focused group had a hell of a time chasing the BBEG around. Once Grasping Storm was getting danger close on HPs, I had it order the druid that still had Call Lightning going to begin targeting it with lightning blasts... heh. Party was able to generate a burst of offense to finish him off before lightning began to heal him up.

Speaking of the final encounter: question for the author/PFS leadership: The scenario gave a DC for using Fly to escape from the winds. Should the -12 penalty to Fly checks for 100mph winds be assessed for these checks? I felt that your intent was that it shouldn't be, but I can see rules purists insisting that it be done. What's your intention there?

1. I'd say no*. The bracers have an explicit statement about how exactly the lay on hands is modified, and that explicit statement omits modifying the damage done to undead.

2. I'm pretty sure that alternate classes are also considered the base class when it comes to archetypes. The alternate class must also possess the class feature the base class does in order to take an archetype. If that's not true, I'm sure someone will soon post a quote correcting this statement.

3. Probably, but then again the bracers explicitly only affect uses per day and the healing provided.

*= I'll expand on my answer to point 1 somewhat. I do feel that strictly by RAW it should only affect # per day and healing given, but I'm not a big fan of always doing things strictly by RAW. By RAW, lay on hands used to be able to damage OR heal undead before they FAQ'd it as being positive energy. So by all means rub some personal common sense onto your ruling. RAI > RAW in my book, quite a lot of the time :)

RAW mindset doesn't interface very well at all with the Pathfinder mounted combat rules.

Perhaps the best way to handle an intelligent mount is through Leadership or Cohorts, but neither of which are PFS appropriate. Then again perhaps Ride will work just fine, as Paladin mounts (which are arguably indirectly classified as Magical Beasts based on their 6 int) are routinely governened by the Ride skill by PFS GMs.

One problem the RAW mindset will never over reconcile with regards to Mounted Combat is how the mount and rider are simultaneously one entity but yet still two distinct entities. There are a handful of explicit times where the mount+rider case is now one entity and a few where the rules still treat them as two.. but for everything other than those explicit cases it's all RAI/interpretation. If RAW and only RAW is a concern for you, then mounted combat isn't for you.

I've played PFS plenty of times with Cavaliers as one of my favorite clases. In my experience there's been less issues with different GMs having different interpretations of how mounted combat is "supposed" to work than I have with the lighting/darkness rules, for example.

Ya'll are reading way to much into it. :P

In Pathfinder Dragons (and their hoards) are simply tools for the GM to control Wealth to Experience ratio of the Player Characters. In order words, adventurers encounter Dragons with hoards of treasure to make up for all the other monsters they've already encountered that didn't have any treasure at all.

Inspired possibly by the Hobbit. Smaug sleeping on his coins would definitely be something to inspire the devs of the original version of D&D.

Yep, and Yep.

Dragon hoard stories predate Tolkien, but to say D&D dragons are based on pre-Tolkien mythos rather than Smaug is to say D&D elves are based on classical mythic "Aelfs" rather than Legolas.

The Trample feat also provides the ability to literally charge THROUGH your target, which is another great utility for sidestepping the interpretations about charge rules wording.

For something completely different from what was mentioned upthread:

I have a PFS cavalier that's been pretty fun. TWF & shield fighting feats. Lance for reach, shield for non-reach. Added fun: shield slam first, and get the free bull rush into lance's reach :) It's perhaps not the most mechanically efficient TWF build out there, but the challenge bonus damage applying twice goes a long way towards making it brutally good (when you have a challenge to burn).

So, What would be the proper response when in the course of playing this scenario the GM tells you he intentionally customized all the selection with the intent of killing of the characters he thought two players where going to bring. As in two characters built around say, combat maneuvers or unarmed fighting, and picking the challenges that they would be useless or worse. Am I alone in thinking this is not only poor GMing, but against the whole spirit of PFS?

I won't quibble with the opinions expressed upthread, other than to point out there's a world of difference between a GM seeking to invalidate character design choices solely for his own reasons and a GM doing so after those players asked him to build the deadliest grind he could in order to give them the rare opportunity in PFS to challenge their PC with abilities far beyond the "common lowest denominator" assumption to which PFS is normally written. Besides, playing alongside a uber-pc that can solo a conventional scenario is, imo, very unfun. I'd personally have a good deal of fun if such a spotlight hog was struggling to be relevant for once while my pc got to be the one getting important things done rather than just spending 4 hours of being a sidekick.

What I'm saying is it's the job of a PFS gm to ensure everyone has fun... simply not letting the spotlight hog declare a new action until everyone else has had a chance to do so is one method of ensuring noone ends up sidelined. This configurable scenario offers an entirely new tool in being able to exploit the inherent weaknesses of one/two dimensional PCs, which of course should be used responsibly.

The "why" behind a GM creating a bonekeep/hardmode dungeon is very relevant to how you should consider your participation.

+1 to the not-evil cleric of a evil deity detecting as evil, as he has an evil aura. +1 to the not-evil cleric not suffering effects of smite, as smite triggers on actual alignment, unlike Detect Evil. +1 to the possibility of a Paladin "detecting" evil, only to find out smite doesn't do anything. The converse is also true.. an evil character under effect of misdirection won't detect as evil, but smite will still work.

By extension, someone that is not-evil but under effect of Infernal Healing is also immune to smite for all the same reasons.

Not at all. In fact, given the complexity of what's legal for PfS, having a legal outlet like retraining is necessary, or else people will just cheat and illegally retrain choices that aren't working out.... if they have no legal way to do so.

I think we're having a big disconnect on what counts as an exorbitant price. 1PP/day is imo not exorbitant. Only time you can't afford that (once) is level 1, when you have infinite retrains anyway. By the time you're mid-to-high level, you're usually swimming in prestige with nothing to otherwise spend it on but vanities. You can easily afford a handful of retrains even w/o dipping into savings for raise dead.

Well, I don't think retraining should be a common assumption in builds. You can do things via retraining that you simply cannot do without retraining.. feats are just the tip of the iceberg. I'm pleased with the balance struck... retraining is still available to legally correct/undo regretted investments, but it's expensive enough that retraining shouldn't cause a power divide in PFS characters.

deusvult wrote:

MadScientistWorking wrote:

Fromper wrote:

Really, I think the main point of making it semi-expensive to retrain is to discourage over-use of it. You're supposed to plan your PC right the first time and not change them. Retraining should be rare.

In a game where its a complicated morass of mechanics to get through and is completely impossible to tell whether or not something is even effective on paper its kind of a pain to plan correctly.

While I emphasize...and even approve of the retraining rules' inclusion in PFS play....

There's a world of difference between realizing you would rather have had Power Attack and retraining to grab it, and retraining to get it on your level 2 that didn't qualify for it at lvl 1. Not only do you now have to not wait until level 3 for PA, at level 3 you already have PA plus whatever else. Retraining lets you retroactively qualify for/ignore prerequisites, and unless retraining is kept rare it literally breaks game balance.

Wouldn't it just be easier to eliminate that loophole than to make it prohibitively expensive to actually use the mechanic?

I'm saying I feel the prestige cost DOES fix the abuse/loophole. If you really want to do the change, you'll pay the cost. If you just want to fit some build together that only works via retraining... probably not so much.

The loophole/potential for abuse only exists due to the disempowered nature of GMs in PFS. In regular play the GM can always just not allow the retrain to happen... but to allow that veto in PFS is to make major changes to PFS with implications far beyond retraining.

Fromper wrote:

Really, I think the main point of making it semi-expensive to retrain is to discourage over-use of it. You're supposed to plan your PC right the first time and not change them. Retraining should be rare.

In a game where its a complicated morass of mechanics to get through and is completely impossible to tell whether or not something is even effective on paper its kind of a pain to plan correctly.

While I emphasize...and even approve of the retraining rules' inclusion in PFS play....

There's a world of difference between realizing you would rather have had Power Attack and retraining to grab it, and retraining to get it on your level 2 that didn't qualify for it at lvl 1. Not only do you now have to not wait until level 3 for PA, at level 3 you already have PA plus whatever else. Retraining lets you retroactively qualify for/ignore prerequisites, and unless retraining is kept rare it literally breaks game balance.

Appropriate or Excessive?

If I have to pick between the two, I'd pick Appropriate. If anything, the 1PP/day price is too low.

The "true" cost for retraining, as given in Ultimate Campaign, is the downtime that keeps your PC off adventures. In PFS, you get infinite downtime between chronicles at no cost. If it were just a couple hundred gold for the cost of retraining, given that there's no GM enforced "sanity check" for rebuilds... well it'd be ugly to combine a retroactive qualifiction dimension to "character builds". For example, if there weren't a Prestige cost, the only level 10-11 level Witches with any non-Major hexes would be owned by those players who lack the "system mastery" to retrain all their hexes gained from levels 1 to 9.

I didn't read the thread so I don't know if this happened to anyone else... but I read the thread title originally as "players who IMMOLATE themselves in combat, die, then quit".

That seems like it'd be a fun thread to hang out in.

I'm going to offer some advice that is provisionally counter to what's been said above about "not changing things".

First of all, "not changing things" is a fuzzy concept in PFS scenarios. You can't change stats/numbers/equipment/feat selections, but you can change basically everything else. It's a well known "exception" to not changing things that you certainly can (and may) alter specified tactics should the players' actions render them ineffective/moot. From the mouth of Mike Brock, you can invent entire encounters such as town guards to deal with players' actions that sensibly require their presence (the party rogue insisted on stealing from a shop keeper, and then got caught..). So, the "don't change things" rule should more accurately be summarized as "don't change things*" with a big ole asterisk.

Continuing on that topic, sanctioned modules are not written for PFS's assumptions about GMs "not changing things*". For example, when I run Master of the Fallen Fortress I include an entirely self-made-up VC briefing stage where the players are told that Balenar has gone missing while exploring the Fallen Fortress and their mission is to rescue him or recover his body, and finish his chronicling of the site. If I don't make such a "change" to the module, the PCs are simple non-pathfinder explorers who by the end of the module are invited to consider joining the society. Nonsense for PFS play where you are mandated to play Pathfinder Field Agents. I'll tell anyone, up to and including PFS brass, that this kind of change fits fairly within the asterisk and is therefore not only fair game, but expected of us to do as a GM meeting our obligation to strive to provide the best play experience for the players.

With regards to The Harrowing, I was also troubled by Biyo's timeline when I prepped the module. I also had to wrap my mind around what would happen if the players simply made him accompany them everywhere... the module seemed to be written with the assumption that the players would just go "thanks info spigot NPC, go along your merry way now!"

I will go ahead and concur with the advice given upthread that making him actively but secretly work against the players isn't a good idea.. but perhaps I'd say so for a different reason. In my view, the module already has a written-in mechanic for the tyrant becoming aware of the PCs' presence via their cumulative successes over several scenes so for THAT reason it's difficult to fit such a change within the asterisk.

As for the ultimate goal of making the dragon more of a challenge... you probably won't need to do anything to "plus him up". Unless the PCs can somehow enter the keep and make it all the way to his observatory without raising any kind of ruckus (about impossible, in my view) his called-out tactics, iirc, are already to be invisible and just roflstomp the party after they enter. With his mage armor buff, SR, immunities, and good saves, the party will be sufficiently challenged to defeat him as-is. The written-in card mechanic is meant to give them the fighting chance.. if they blew it early, then they blew it.

Rysky wrote:

Well you roll against SR so the PCs would do it and know of it when the spell failed.

Figuring out if the creature had SR beforehand would be a Knowledge check, or Spellcraft if they are getting it from an item.

I guess that's my conundrum. If I say make a SR after they cast a spell, then they would automatically know the creature has SR, so no Knowledge check would be needed.

The way I see it, that worry is not a big deal. Players will know a monster has DR upon striking it w/o the "correct" damage without benefit of a successful knowledge check... so what's the harm in learning about SR in an analagous way?

However, with respect to the OP, there's nothing wrong with rolling SR checks for the players. Honestly, there's nothing saying the players are entitled to make their own d20 rolls to hit, to save, etc. If you want to take the burden on yourself to roll something on the player's behalf, bully for you. Just keep in mind that having to ask "do you have spell penetration?" renders moot any obfuscation you're trying to achieve. If you want to roll in secret on behalf of the players, you need exceptional familiarity with the PCs.

Question for the OP:

You talking arena style fighting against each other, or
"Head of Vecna" level party vs party shenanigans?

The answer depends on how exactly your spider-man web slinging works. Do your webs count as entangling, or pinning?

As if entangled? Then "no", no CDG b/c the entangled victim does not meet the criteria for "helpless".

As if pinned? Then "yes". However, putting the pinned condition on someone via ranged attack is immensely powerful... if your GM is allowing it I'd expect him to revisit that decision once you start winning fights just by succeeding on a single ranged atrack.

Edit: It may be illustrative to point out that basically every "web" ability in the game (certainly all the ones that are coming to my mind at any rate) apply the entangled condition, and not the pinned condition. Of course, what happens in your game may vary.

Lyrics for songs from bands like ManOWar and GWAR make for good "Praise Gorum" material.

I once played a mercenary fighter type with low CHA. I represented that by his thinking everyone loved hearing about his war stories, especially the same ones over and over again.

Might work too for a warforged smashbot.

He can buy the attention of all the nearest-by thieves who wouldn't have too much problem knocking over a level 2 PC.

But if you don't mind if he blows WBL assumptions out of the water for your campaign, maybe consider some kind of (minor) staff being available. Those things are uber expensive, and arguably overly-so.

deusvult wrote:

Implicit vs explicit. And by implication via other rules. Also, remember context. These "rules" (with hindsight I wish I used the word "expectations" instead) were listed in support of why a player may not play a pregen in a self-destructive way.

3) if an Agent is incompetent, then that Agent wouldn't have been kept on duty. Ergo, you are expected to not be useless to the team. Rules-speak, because that'd be a systematic violation of "Don't Be A Jerk".

I fail to see how being incompetent necessarily means the player is being a jerk. A lot of the discussion in this thread has been about griefing, but what about simply not being a skilled player? The OP mentioned that the problem players were newbies, if not entirely to PF at least to PFS. I can certainly understand newbs not being particularly confident in their PCs' abilities or how to successfully exploit the rules to achieve their goals. A rogue hiding during the bar fight? That hardly seems out of character, particularly if they're not really expecting the fight to end up with everyone dead (it being a bar fight, after all).

And even if a player isn't a newbie, they may misjudge situations and make mistakes. Incompetence doesn't imply being a jerk and we shouldn't think that way.

I suspect you (and Wei Ji the Learner) are bending over backwards to find reasons to disagree with me. I can't otherwise comprehend how you can fail to see how playing in ways so as to deliberately undermine the party's ability to successfully complete the scenario is NOT being a jerk.

Implicit vs explicit. And by implication via other rules. Also, remember context. These "rules" (with hindsight I wish I used the word "expectations" instead) were listed in support of why a player may not play a pregen in a self-destructive way.

3) if an Agent is incompetent, then that Agent wouldn't have been kept on duty. Ergo, you are expected to not be useless to the team. Rules-speak, because that'd be a systematic violation of "Don't Be A Jerk".

4) violation of versimilitude, and rules regarding mandatory removal of afflictions (see below). Field Agents have a ton of agency. You are expected to not be playing someone being forced to be a Field Agent against his will because if your PC doesn't want to be one, why doesn't he take advantage of the infinite possibilities to bail on the Society that arise in the field? You may not say he's being magically compelled to serve either, because of the rules regarding mandatory removal of afflictions, even if you were to somehow insist your character has been Geased or whatever. Heck, an entire third of your mandate to "Explore, Report, and Cooperate" precludes even the possibility of playing someone who wants to undermine or otherwise not be fully in support of furthering your assigned mission for the scenario.

It's a meta rule that there's no evil allowed. In universe there is no such rule. In fact, I'm pretty sure certain high ranking NPCs are evil. And that's even before touching on the shady behavior of the Decemvirate..

As for the field agents... the in-universe mechanic that weeds out evil agents is simply the normal bureaucratic processes.

*Asmodean Cleric who's turned evil goes to his performance review*
Venture Captain: Uh, yeah, I'll get to the point. After this business with you burning down the orphanage, I'm not sure you're the right fit with our organization anymore...."

You're unlikely to get a Paizo Person to comment in any thread where you ask them to, but you can point your friend to the rules for Natural Attacks on pages 301-302 of the Bestiary. Neither slams nor any other type of natural attack make use of the 2 hand rules damage rules, so there's literally no such thing as a 2 handed natural attack.

In fact, in place of the usual bonuses to-hit and damage, you use the special rules for natural attacks. That should pre-emptively silence any possible "but the rules don't say they DON'T use two handed weapon rules..." rebuttal.

I didn't realize that PFS brass was the source of the conflating griefing with the rules change.

All I can assume is that they see something I (and apparently several others) haven't. Since they have access to reporting numbers, I suppose they've seen enough 1st chronicle perma-deaths reported more frequently than other perma-deaths that they felt retroactive pregen assignment was the best explanation and addressed it accordingly.

I still like the change. It just rubs me as abusive to be able to sign in to get credit for an invested PC, then retroactively change your decision later on if you don't like the outcome of the adventure. IMO doing so to avoid paying off a death is as "wrong" as to re-assign a boon/magic item availability to another pc after seeing the chronicle.

I heartily agree with the calculus voiced upthread that when playing a pregen your choice of "risk" or "no risk" being something you have to make ahead of time is a fine and appropriate mechanic. If people refuse to play because of it.. well people will always refuse to play over rules to which they sufficiently object. I refused to play PFS for over a year (partially) because I didn't want to play with the glut of Kineticists going though the level pipeline at the time. People do what people do.

So, I asked before I'll ask again.

What's wrong with just using the tools that are already there to deal with other kinds of griefing, culminating with the "nuclear option" of kicking them from the game, before they get someone's invested PC killed?

From my POV, the worst case scenario is the non-griefers have to continue through the rest of the adventure short handed. (and even that can be mitigated by several GM tactics, including but not limited to strategic fudging of NPC die rolls to tone down the opposition to address the party's undermanned state, or having a non-griefer or even the GM continue to run the pregen as a productive member of the team in the griefer's absence).

If I decide I want to play Mirisiel as Suzzie Suicide to the detriment of the party, how does the rule change stop me?

Well, from my point of view is the question is a non sequitur. Rules about sign-in/credit assigning don't HAVE to cover this topic, since other rules already do.

PFS provides limitations on what GMs are allowed to do, and everyone is aware of this. I suspect that matching limitations on what players are allowed to do is being overlooked in this thread. If you're playing Merisiel as Suzie Suicide you are NOT playing her in accordance with the motivations/background provided to you on her NPC pregen handout. You don't "get" to play her as Suzie Suicide, and if you try you're likely violating the "Don't Be a Jerk" rule and imo subject to being booted if your behavior is sufficiently detrimental to the other players' play experience. Like getting their invested PCs killed from afar by pregen death.

Seriously... look at what players are required to do with their roleplaying in PFS:

1) Not allowed to be evil
2) Required to play a Pathfinder field agent (or a prospective one, in scenarios like Confirmation and MotFF)
3) Required to play a COMPETENT Pathfinder field agent (or a field agent with the potential to become competent, in scenarios like Confirmation and MotFF)
4) Required to play a character that wants to be 1-3.

Some scenarios toss these assumptions aside and let you play things like Goblins or Aspis agents, but in my experience those have cautionary sidebars for the GM to explain to the Players that the game is still a PFS game, and still subject to all the other rules... especially those regarding player behavior.

You can't retroactively change who you're playing/giving credit to under any other circumstances, so why allow it in the example of playing a pregen.... it's bad/inconsistent policy to allow a retroactive reassignment.

I also agree with the thinking about players being incentivized to play responsively if they're assigning credit to an invested PC.

Also, based on my anectotal-yet-fairly-substantial experience with PFS, I don't think griefers are a serious threat. I'm convinced (but prepared to hear why I might be mistaken on this) that GMs simply enforcing the "Don't Be A Jerk" rule takes care of any threat from griefing.

Not having ever seen the described griefing tactics described in this thread actually occuring as opposed to theoretically being possible, I have a sincere question for those who have had to deal with it:

Doesn't just kicking them from the table, handing them their short chronicle, and moving on without their influence fix the problem?

Regardless, I'm heartily in support of a rule where you sign in with a PFS character number and may not retroactively change it in the event of a pregen death.

I'm a fan for just giving npcs a "take 10" on stealth checks. I don't do it all of the time, but I do use this approach often.

For me, the weirdest part from a writing aspect was why just the one (undead crusader) theme had the macguffins. I presume it's a patch to allow/encourage social resolitions with the minions of that theme (and maybe even with the BBEG) but it seems like a bad patch if this is the case... because you're likely to come to a final resolution upon making the encounter... either you try and succeed, or try and fail and then kill the minions, or don't even try and just kill them on sight. It seems to me that the GM has to contrive things so that the minions are not decisively dealt with prior to doing the macguffins, or else there's no point to doing the macguffins.

That's my negative criticism I guess.... but please don't take that as harsh criticism. I love the bold new direction PFS is experimenting with and despite having a minor quibble with one aspect of the design, I think you did a laudible job of designing both a skeleton and a corpus of options for fleshing out that skeleton.

I thought they did, if you ran the Free RPG Day special on that year's Free RPG Day.

This feels like a dumb question -- Is it possible to leave the lamp out in the Undead Crusader storyline? It mentions only picking 3 out of the 4 possible ways for the party to gain bonuses for the Diplomacy/Knowledge Religion checks, and the lamp is the 4th option. It is also exclusively discussed under each different location with a function.

Would it be weird to not use that option at all?

The entire concept of using macguffins for the undead crusader storyline is something I'm still not entirely sold on. Seems to me that 99 times out of 100 the players will just kill the minions upon encountering them. Ditto for the BBEGs, for that matter. I worry that the extra work to fit the plot macguffins in is just a waste of time 99% of the time.

See my post upthread about how I handled it... I gave the minions tactics to minimize the odds the PCs could kill them upon first encountering them and therefore render the entire miniplot moot... I had the shadows take advantage of incorporeality perform a hit and run campaign against the PCs that the players not only found unfun, would have left me painted into a corner if they didn't/couldn't complete the macguffin quests. Plus it ate lots of clock, which is a significant drawback on a timed game slot. Not sure I'd go with that angle again.

Honestly, doesn't seem like a big loss to just drop the whole miniplot from a presentation using the undead crusader theme.

There's the channeling armor enchantment. +1 die to channels, but it can only be applied to shields.

Ink and magnifying glasses are exorbitantly expensive for the same reasons.

The spells are deceptively light on details like "does delivering a touch spell provoke an AoO?" because such rules are given once so thay each spell doesn't have to restate them in their own descriptions. Certainly review the beginning of the chapter... it answers lots of questions, probably even a few you didn't know you had!

So yeah, as mentioned above, usually it's just one roll deliver a Bad Touch spell: the melee touch attack itself.

In the event you can't cast and then step up, it's still only two rolls. Either:
1) you cast defensively and then make touch attack
Or
2) you take your chances with the spellcasting provoking an AoO, get hit, and then make a concentration check.. then make the melee touch attack.

A specific Sunder attempt from someone who (somehow) knows it's more than just a normal bag.

Also, don't. Gear is a good 30% of any PCs power. Removing a huge chunk of it for no reason is a dick move.

I partially agree, but I want to voice the disagreement aspect.

If destroying 30% of an enemy's power is as simple as succeeding on a CMB check versus the opponent's CMD (which is very often lower than AC anyway), why wouldn't you?

Now, granted, there are two important caveats and they're responsible for the degree to which I agree with Sundakan.

1) The NPC can't just be tapping the GM's omniscience and has to have a good in-character reason to know what to try to sunder.

2) It shouldn't just be a spite tactic to do before one dies. If it's early in the fight and the NPC thinks it might help ensure that the NPC wins the fight, so long as #1 is met it's a fair game tactic to destroy part of your opponent's power to engage in combat against you. Doing it as a NPC's dying attack at single digit HPs is normally just spiteful GM-ery. Unless of course the NPC isn't really facing imminent death (is a graveknight, has magical contingencies, etc)...

deusvult wrote:

You can't blame people for doing what the rules incentivize doing.

I've even used another word for it that's caught on with my players.. "Greyhawking" is shorthand for searching the dead for valuables. "Let's Greyhawk up these prisoners." To the DM: "We Greyhawk the room." When I get to play, I even get some occasional enjoyment out of stating that my character is searching the "pockets" of slain monsters like snakes and swarms.

Looting the dead after battles has been going on since Og killed Ugg with his club, and looted his fur loincloth.

And "murderhobo" has to do with killing everything and everybody that isnt obviously more useful alive. Not looting.

You can say what you think Murderhobo means. I can say Murderhobo means killing people to take their stuff. Since it's a made up word, we can agree to disagree or try in vain to prove the other wrong. I'll go with the former.

I don't mind grognard, either. I too embrace it as a badge of honor to reclaim the word (and it WAS a badge of honor in original use anyway).

Murderhobo doesn't particularly bother me either... to me using the term is more of a criticism of the way d20 rules predicate character capability on the loot they've accumulated than it is criticising player behavior in greedily grabbing every loose bit of magic not nailed down secured with Sovereign Glue. You can't blame people for doing what the rules incentivize doing.

I've even used another word for it that's caught on with my players.. "Greyhawking" is shorthand for searching the dead for valuables. "Let's Greyhawk up these prisoners." To the DM: "We Greyhawk the room." When I get to play, I even get some occasional enjoyment out of stating that my character is searching the "pockets" of slain monsters like snakes and swarms.

I'm another one who started as a wee tadpole not yet out of his first decade in life. My first D&D stuff was the 1981 basic set with the iconic Erol Otus artwork on the cover, quickly followed by the soon-to-be released red boxed set and eventually the AD&D hardback books you used to be able to buy in Toys R Us for $9.99 each...

The above is a decent example of what I was talking about.

Actually, you're not giving yourself enough credit. I did indeed see your referenced post. I didn't quote you but I was indeed responding directly to it. (Apologies for any confusion on failing to quote-wasn't trying to imply your view was without value by contradicting it). I felt a countering/divergent opinion had its place, coupled with an explanation.

I'd have thought someone espousing the virtues of playstyle relativism wouldn't be absolutist in one's own view ;)

people talking about "builds" does truly rankle me because it makes it sound like the mechanical choices made about what abilities to select are the most important aspects of a roleplaying game persona.

I may be old fashioned but I still think background stories and motivations are instead the most important aspects of a character.

Might want to take spoilery questions to the spoiler-tagged thread in the PFS GM discussion forum.

Well, what's tHe point of bothering to go thru finding three macguffins, figuiring out that they ARE plot items, and then figuirng out how to use them (imo about impossible w/o some guidance) in the other two undead arc BBEG themes?

I ran this last night with Michiko. I had the shadows creeping out and taunting the party for a while from (incorporeal) safety from within the walls. Noone thought to even try to diplomacize or intimidate, which I don't blame them. I'd have been surprised if they even thiught it an option.

I assigned tHe (combat) encounter to the linked set of 3 rooms with the same description.. the violated halls of names in the Lastwall setting I was using. I used the tactics of shadows ambushing the tail end charlie each time the party left each room, only to escape back into the walls when the party converged back to pritect their tail. AFter the second time the shadows did this, they started voicing OOC frustration that the shadows aren't standing and fighting to the death. I dropped my first hint by telling them "maybe there's another way to deal with them."

When they found the Pharasmin shrine, I decided to go ahead and include a Noisoi like I was considering upthread. The players ended being told by a little bird, literally, about the existance of the 3 plot macguffins and the shadows' background as former heores. THe party immediately tried talking the shadows down but narrowly failed the DC. THey set out and then did the macguffin quests, managing to find and complete all 3 before stumbling over where I seeded Michiko. (However, despite my efforts to describe how the suitable location to perform the lamp ritual looked to the players, noone put two and two together. I ended up giving everyone a wis check... "hey guys, remember that Tien folktale your characters remember? Here's a statue right next to a paladin painted on the wall... any bells ringing NOW?)

Once they did all 3 mini quests, I retroactively applied their bonus to the earlier talk-down attempt and quit having the shadows torment the party.

New order of busines: I put the rift in Michiko's room, since it said she likes to "be near it". I was afraid the negative energy would make her too tough, but the players did perform tactically well to recognize and compensate. THey focused on her mook armors first, then the 2d6 per round heal she was getting by standing next to the rift wasn't enough to compensate for an entire party's combined damage per round.

.... Any party without a source of Divine magic is seriously hamstrung. Your party will spend more time resting between fights than actual adventuring.

That's not necessarily a bad thing if a party spends 3 or 4 days resting up in camp after each life or death confrontation. You'll burn thru supplies faster, sure... but managing challenges like "do we have enough trail rations to keep staying out here" is part of the charm of low level adventuring that you lose as soon as you get so much as a wand of CLW. Or maybe that's the old school grognard in me speaking....

I'd expect that I'd enjoy playing with anyone through which I've slogged through a spirited "forum discussion". It'd be healthy for most of us, I think, to be able to have some personal experience with our verbal sparring partners beyond a faceless, "this guy who doesn't know how wrong he is AGAIN" internet persona.

swoosh wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

An important thing about Asmodean contracts... The cleric and/or devil who's putting up the contract is only doing their job if the contract ultimately winds up to the detriment of the signer. Fairness is a sign of inept negotiation.

Which is sort of funny given that Asomdeus is an embodiment of lawful evil and trustworthiness, honor and reliability are core tenants of the lawful alignment.

But given his strongly NE tendencies just emphasizes how hard it is to skirt along as an LN follower.

Please explain where trustworthiness and honor come into play for Lawful Evil, as opposed to iron-clad adherence.

Highly evil characters can simultaneously be highly honorable. There's no contradiction there. The caricature of the "Black Knight" is predicated upon this being so. See also basically every samurai villain, ever.

My -1 character is a Cavalier. I didn't particularly build around mounted combat, focusing on being a hybrid fighter/party buffer that happened to have some niche bonuses while mounted. So I was happy to leave my horse (anyone who makes a cavalier with any mount other than a horse or camel is a filthy munchkin ;) ) behind on entire scenarios.

with this "meh" level of enthusiasm for mounted combat I didn't get my first oppprtunity for a mounted charge with a lance in hand until level 7. By then I had enough to-hit bonuses that a hit would be all but assured, to boot. I also had the rare occurance of getting to charge something that wasn't already engaged in combat with buzzkilling partymates, which was a big deal for my Order of the Cockatrice challenge bonus.

Of course, I rolled a nat 1.

Another question, this time directed towards the GMs familiar with this scenario:

What avenue do you plan to use to drop hints that players may attempt social resolution to the undead crusader encounter arc? I mean, absolutely the possibility of a social resolution should be on the minds of players in the raiders arc. ALmost as much so on the dragon arc, and it's unlikely but within the realm of possibility that they'd consider a social resolution with orcs.

But with undead? Only way I can see the notion even crossing players' minds is if they're using meta knowledge of the scenario's other arcs all allowing for a non-combat resolution.

I'm thinking about adding a CR2 Noisoi psychocomp to the Pharasmin shrine room as a potential information spigot npc. An NPC that would just stay invis and if need be fly away from the PCs if they're disrespectful of the shrine. Adding encounters is normally taboo, but that rule exists to minimize table variation. THis scenario bends over backwards to maximize table variation in the name of replayability... so is it still unacceptable to add a spigot encounter in this case?