gvr2cs's page

Wow, a lot of good advice here, I appreciate it all, I certainly feel very new to this all of the sudden. There's diffidently a case for multiclassing, I'm glad to hear that a lot of GMs have their players explain how they multiclass before they allow it.

So a quick explanation as to why I looked favorably on Pathfinder, I liked the addition of a lot of the new rules and I felt as though it does open itself for a lot of customization, there seemed to be a lot of good ideas without needing to lock into hard and fast rules of they don't fit your campaign. In the real world, I'm a computer nerd who works in Information Technology and the idea of Pathfinder being the "Linux of RPGing" makes me warm up to it as well, if anyone understands my meaning.

I'm not completely opposed to multiclassing, the reason why I don't much care for it is because I feel it trivializes how much work would go into developing a skill to the point where even attaining 1st level would take quite a bit of devotion and practice. I've played piano and guitar before, and for anyone who's played an instrument, they can tell you that playing a song without making a single mistake is very difficult to do. I would imagine if a Bard misses a few notes, the whole effect from the song may not work. The idea of, say, a cleric, picking up an instrument one day and creating one of these effects doesn't seem reasonable to me, not without a lot of practice and neglecting their deity at times to do it.

Along the same lines, being able to cast even the simplest of spells would require long and difficult training on how arcane magic works before even attempting to do something useful with it. You couple this in with a world with no public education, no internet, people that have knowledge tend to keep it hidden and don't simply teach it for no reason, this becomes more difficult. That fighter can't just watch a Youtube video on how to cast Magic Missile.

Ultimately though, I'd like the players to play characters they want to play, and I want to tailor my world so that the player's idea for their character and their backstory makes sense in the campaign. If the players want some kind of super character, I'd rather have them work at it than be given this outright, and I certainly don't want to create a scenario where I need to throw five hundred red dragons at a party just to make it a challenge and have to explain why those dragons haven't burnt down any remnants of civilization in the area yet.

I'd also like to explain why, for realism sense, I'd like to ban the Paladin class and replace it with the Cavalier (which I'd call a Knight...why isn't it called a Knight?), but that's an explanation for another day.

We dropped the whole "You need to train to gain a level" thing, so I guess that's the cause of some of it. It doesn't really bother me, except for being able to pick up a language every level.

In my experience multiclassing doesn't happen that much. I do have one multiclass build geared to Intimidate, but I don't really use it except for oneshot adventures. If it bothers you, you could try looking for a classless system.
Multiclassing was somewhat penalized in the 3rd edition of D&D but that rule was mostly ignored and got dropped in Pathfinder. (And replaced with an incentive to stick to your class.)

Most games nowadays use a point buy method and the so called standard point buy (15 points) is seen as hard mode by many. (To be honest, roll 4d6 drop the lowest 6 times would average out to 18 points so it is at least a little bit low.)
I think I've played 2 games in which we did the roll 4d6 in order thing. I've heard players object against a core rulebooks only game. I suppose it's a power creep that's spread out over editions. I haven't played much AD&D or BECMI but I know enough about those editions to know that the bonuses (Bonii?) have gotten bigger and bigger over time. Pathfinder has a wealth by level rule which means you need an x amount of magic items to keep up with the opposition, with the big six being a nessecity

So why am I playing Pathfinder then? 3 reasons: The challenge rating system is really useful. The monsters are awesome and my friends won't play anything else.

A rules light system might really help with the whole powergaming thing. D&D 5e doesn't assume a wealth by level standard and focuses a little bit less on bonuses.

I think you really hit on one of what really is just a few things that bother me with the rules for a lot of the games. I actually think the Pathfinder rules would make an excellent campaign with just a couple of tweaks to the rules. Unfortunately, I think those tweaks might strike a lot of people as too major to want to play in the campaign. I feel like if a walked into a group of players and said, "I'm banning multiclassing" I'd probably get thrown out of the window onto the sidewalk without a chance to explain what I feel are very good reasons for doing so.

Luckily for you, there's the TableTop OSR movement out there that might catch your fancy. It has a plethora of rulesets that might be of more interest for you- stuff like OSRIC, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Swords and Wizardry, Castles and Crusades, Labyrinth Lord, Beyond the Wall, Adventurer Conqueror King, Darkest Dungeons, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Hackmaster, 13th Age, (even Fourth or Fifth edition!), and many other things that may catch your fancy. ;)

Yeah, I've looked at a couple of these systems. Most of them advertise as being "rules-light" like the good old days, but that's not really my problem. I'm not really looking for the bare-bones rule set as much as trying to make a world with more believable characters and settings.

So...I'm going to try to keep this short and hopefully there are people out there that understand where I'm coming from and I'm not alone here.

I'm guessing my story is similar to a lot of middle-aged gamers out there. I'm a guy in my 40s who cut his teeth on RPG with the "BECMI" rules and ran campaigns using the AD&D 1e version shortly thereafter. I stopped playing for a while when other necessities grabbed my attention (building a career, girls, etc, not necessarily in that order), but recently have decided that I need a hobby and have come back around to wanting to get into gaming again.

I've picked up some of the Pathfinder material and in general, I like a lot of the changes and additions to the rules since the old school days, with skills and feats, and domain spells for clerics and such, along with the idea to create an "Open Gaming" idea and not be locked into a particular product line. With this in mind, I spent some time thinking about a campaign I'd like to run, creating a "homebrew" world, which to anyone who's spent time in the 1e era, homebrew was highly encouraged back in those days.

I've also been spending time lurking on message boards and listening to real play podcasts to get an idea of how a gaming session is run nowadays. It is here where I'm starting to have some problems. The game, from a player and even a GM standpoint, has really changed, and I have to say, not for the better.

The idea when I was younger when playing was that we could close our eyes and imagine this world we were in. The first time I played, I was eight years old and my cousin was running us through the old classic "X1 Isle of Dread" module. To this day, I can still remember being in that humid jungle, battling against a group of panthers that eventually ended up killing our guide that was preventing us from getting lost. Dice rolls and player stats were absolutely necessary in order to make the game playable, but in our characters' mind, they didn't know what level they were or if they had a 14 in Dexterity. They just were who they were.

This is where the problem has been starting with me. When I read or listen to some real gaming sessions, I honestly can't envision most of the characters that are being described on here. As an example, if I'm a GM and I'm hearing someone with their half-orc "build" where they start off as a bloodrager and then "dip" into a wizard class before moving into taking some levels as a bard, my first question is, "Hold on just one second, how did your half-orc survive the first ten minutes of his life?" Much less what caused this feral barbaric meathead from deciding to take up scholarly work and composing poetry, to say nothing about who would teach him these skills or how long it would take to train his brain to make such a bizarre career change.

What's worse, is that the game rules seem to encourage this type of behavior, and GMs and the rules alike, will actually tend to penalize players who try to develop characters that feel more realistic or at least reasonable.

Is there anyone out there who feels like this or am I alone in thinking this way?