mmurphy1968's page

Nice to see some still appreciate what Paizo has done.

I started with D&D in the early 80's with the Basic and Expert boxed sets and moved onto 1E pretty quickly, followed by 2E, 3.0 and 3.5. I didn't like what I was seeing about thee upcoming D&D 4th ed so wasn't planning on converting to it. I think I may have first heard about Pathfinder online. I liked what I was reading about it so I downloaded the Beta rules and started running Rise of the Runelords.

Aside from one gaming session with D&D 5E as a player I haven't once gone back to D&D. That said, my group isn't moving on to Pathfinder 2E either.

Nope. While my group still plays PF1 I stopped buying rule books a long time ago. I think the last (other than Unchained) was Advanced Race Guide and we don't use it. I saw the rules bloat coming and chose to avoid it. I have more adventure paths than I can ever run. Maybe I would purchase adventure modules but unlikely.

To be honest, for years I was the sole GM for my group and after playing D&D 3.0, 3.5 and Pathfinder I was getting burnt out any way. The change to PF2 gave me the excuse I needed to try other games and one of my players decided to pick up the reins of PF1 for the group.

I still play 1e with two groups. One online with my old gaming group where I grew up and one around a table locally where I live. I had been the GM for the group that is now online since beta was out, I finally got tired of running Pathfinder and moved onto Savage Worlds but one of my players has stepped into the GM role for Pathfinder so we trade off.

Not vital at all. My job as a Game Master is to make the adventure fun for everyone playing. Sometimes that means that I may have to modify, sometimes a lot, the adventures I am running to make it work for the group of characters my players decided on. For example; if there is no healer then maybe I have to toss out more healing items or change the nature of the combat players engage in.

After spending tons of money with TSR/WoC on every edition of AD&D/D&D from 1st to 3.5 (including the Basic and Expert boxed sets) I was done switching systems. I had so much content still unused that I didn't need to change and didn't like what I was seeing about the upcoming 4th edition. Once I heard about Pathfinder and that it was based on the game I was already playing I thought I would give it a try. I converted my player's (then) current characters using the beta rules and never looked back. Eventually all we used was Pathfinder stuff as 3.5 fell by the wayside.

Honestly, other than PDF's I got from Humble Bundles, I haven't bought new Pathfinder content in years. I made a preemptive decision to stop rules bloat in my campaign one I bought and read the Advanced Race Guide. Since I play many other RPGs as well I don't need tons of content for each to play.

Well, it is a role-playing game....

Kidding aside, it depends on what the goal of the game is. Is your DM/GM running a pre-made adventure with little-to-no modifications? Then it's likely a heavy back story won't matter. Has the DM/GM created his own campaign world and adventures that are very player driven? Then a detailed back-story could be important. I have run both kinds of games and played in both kinds of games.

I personally prefer the more character-driven kind but can enjoy both. I enjoy writing a few paragraphs about my character but I enjoy my character more when my DM asks me questions that make me think about my character a bit more.

Also, as mentioned earlier, the DM may be fishing for plot hooks. This is only my personal opinion, but if the players are helping to drive the plot the game is more interesting. That doesn't mean, however, that everything about your character should be expected to become a plot hook. I have experienced campaigns where some players were more willing to go deep on the back story and the adventure hooks rewarded them more than those who didn't.

Some game lend themselves more towards being tactical/combat heavy games and some more character driven, but any RPG can do both. Generally, D&D and Pathfinder tend to lean more tactical/combat heavy because of the complexity of the combat rules. World of Darkness or horror games tend to be less combat and more character driven. At least, that is my experience.

If the DM is asking for more character detail you could try giving him the benefit of the doubt that there is a reason or just ask why, if you must know. I don't know your history with your GM but maybe you each have wildly different expectations from the game. Maybe a compromise can be reached if that's the case and maybe it can't and you should go your separate ways.

In the end the game should be fun for both the GM and the players. All are responsible for working together to make that happen or moving on.

Deep breaths...
In with the good air...
Out with the bad...
In with the good air...
Out with the bad...

3rd edition is sorely needed. Since they removed my beloved Alignment system in 2.755487 ed. the game hasn't been the same. In addition to the traditional alignments coming back Paizo needs to add a situational ethics variation.

Of course, if the rumored purchase by Facebook is true I won't play the new stuff anyway.

Depends on the player/group. I personally don't own everything that Paizo puts out and don't use everything I bought. I own and use Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Combat, and Advanced Player's Guide. I own and use parts of Unchained and I own and don't use Advanced Race Guide, Ultimate Campaign or Game Mastery Guide. From a rules stand point, unless something really catches my eye I am done buying rules for the game.

I own more adventure paths than I could ever hope to run, mostly older ones, so I doubt I will buy any more of those.

I own the Inner Sea World Guide and a couple dozen of the smaller soft cover supplements. All of those get use.

Since I play other games as well I doubt I will buy more Pathfinder products but even if that were not the case I doubt I would buy any more. For me there is too much rule bloat but I am not everyone and let the player base and sales determine when enough is too much.

Thanks.

I have a friend who is going to relieve me as game master for a while so I can, finally, play again. He is going to convert the D series of adventurers to Pathfinder from 3.5. After looking at them they don't seem like a chronological series, the level requirements jump around at the end. D0 is for level 1 characters, D1 for level 2, D1.5 for level 5, D2 for level 7, D3 for level 11 and the D4 falls down in level to 6. Is D4 for not part of the story started in the earlier ones? I don't want to read them and don't want my friend to get to confused since he has only run a game one other time (D&D 3.5) and that was many years ago.

The USS Enterprise - refit
Serenity
Millennium Falcon

There seems to be an awful lot of love for Enterprise-D but I always thought it was the second ugliest Enterprise, only surpassed by the Excelsior class.

6. Another system/style

I moved from my home town about six years ago becoming separated from my long time gaming group (about two plus decades of gaming together with the longest running members). None of us wanted to stop playing together so I bought Fantasy Grounds and we still play together almost every Sunday online. Except for the last two years we played almost exclusively Pathfinder but I needed a change (I am always the DM) so we have been playing other systems. In those two years we have played New World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, we are currently playing Castles and Crusades using the 1st ed AD&D adventure Queen of the Spiders and next I will run either a Savage Worlds/Home Brew Sci-Fi campaign or The Strange.

5. Not in an active game (less than 1x a month)

I also play with a group locally but is is very erratic, we are trying to get through Carrion Crown but at the rate we get together I think we will all be dead and buried before it is finished.

Cool, thanks for the answers.

I recently started playing Pathfinder Adventure Card game and really enjoy it but there are a few things I ran across I find confusing

My first question is on the rules on damage. I took enough damage to reduce my hand to zero and on the next players turn a monster was summoned for each player to fight. I lost that fight as well so I took some damage. I had no cards in my hand, all are in either my deck or discard pile. Do I ignore the damage as I would if I took more damage than I had cards in my hand during my turn? That seems like I am getting off rather lightly but that is how the rules on damage seem to read to me.

The second question is on the dying rules. Page 13 of the rules reads: "If, for any reason, you are ever required to remove one or more cards from your deck and you don’t have enough cards, your character dies. Place any cards in your deck, hand, and discard pile under your character card." Does "deck" refer to just the pile of cards you are drawing from or the pile of cards you are drawing from plus your hand and discard pile?

Lastly, the item card, Amulet of Mighty Fists, from the Rise of the Runelords character add-on deck says "Reveal this card to add 1d4 with the Magic trait to your combat check; you may not play a spell with the Attack trait or a weapon on this check.". If I can't add the 1d4 to an attack spell or weapon then what am I adding it to?

If you have no way to break up the group or to split the DM duties then I would recommend another game rather than Pathfinder. Pathfinder is rules intensive and can be slow, especially with inexperienced players. If you want to stick with a fantasy game maybe look at Castles and Crusades, it is simpler and combat is quicker so your players will be less bored (hopefully). There are other games where combat is less important and (in my view) role-playing comes to the fore, such as Call of Cthulhu. Because combat is less frequent everyone can participate more easily without just sitting around. However, even with a simpler or less combat oriented game 12 players is still a lot to manage.

The only other bit of advice I can offer is do your best and wait for attrition to happen. Some of your players will show less interest than others and some will get bored because of the group size, this will (hopefully) get your group to a more manageable level.

I think this has far less to do with the class chosen than the character's alignment and the roleplaying skills of the player.

knightnday wrote:

houstonderek wrote:

the secret fire wrote:

I find that a whole lot of the imbalances that people complain about disappear when the DM simply exercises a bit of executive discretion.

So, basically, ignoring and house ruling.

I wish people didn't forget Pathfinder is 3x with a different grapple system and some consolidated skills. It isn't a "fix" of 3x and still has all of the same problems. 3x was fun from a playing standpoint, builds are interesting to create, but in actual play it is a sluggish mess that breaks down as soon as spell casters realize they can do everything.

Houseruling doesn't excuse poor design, nor does it make up for it. It's a bandaid.

Perhaps it doesn't excuse or make up for it, but house rules --- whether they are small or as complicated as Kirth's documents -- can make the game function quite well. It may be a bandaid, but unless or until something else comes along that answers all the questions and corrects all the problems it certainly allows the game to function. And for quite a number of people, that's all they are asking for.

The point is, without a lot of work or DM fiat, 3x/PF doesn't, not by RAW. You have to do a ton of mental gymnastics to look the other way or ignore (or flat out tell players the book is irrelevant) to make it work for everyone. That is bad game design. Now, given Paizo's stated goal with Pathfinder when the play test was going on (backward compatibility), their hands were tied and they really couldn't fix anything.

The problem is, somewhere in the '90s, people stopped wanting to play games and started wanting to have story hour with pointless dice rolling that meant nothing (seriously, if the dice mean anything, characters would die a lot more than they do in modern gaming). AD&D was a game, and you had to actually think about your limitations to survive. Magic users had to be cautious, and even when they were powerful, they weren't the end all be all. Even Tenser had to recruit a...

Not quite sure what the problem is with "story hour" is (you don't really identify it in your post). Also, if your die rolling is pointless then your DM is probably failing at the whole "story hour" thing but that is a problem with the game as it is being run, not the game itself.

Thanks for the answers (and sorry about the spoiler).

I have been reading over the PFS stuff and I am a bit confused about the rules regarding treasure. I understand that when players defeat an encounter anything not on the always available list shows up on the chronicle sheet for purchase. I also understand the rewards entry after each encounter gives money if the players beat the encounter. What I am a bit confused by are the "treasure" entries in some of the encounters where there is money or gems. What happens to those items if the creature is killed? As an example; in the First Step scenario "To Delve the Dungeon Deep"

I am not the monk's biggest fan. I hated them in 1st Ed D&D because I never could wrap my head around someone karate chopping a dragon. As I have gotten older and have watched the class evolve my opinion has changed a bit. I think they have become more interesting and I no longer hate them but I will probably never play one.

What exactly is the big deal about Cyanogen? Other than being one of various means to get root on your android phone?

I recently put Cyanogen on 2 old devices, my HTC Droid Eris and Samsung Fascinate. The Eris was a grossly underpowered and slow device and performs much better with Cyanogen. My Fascinate also seems to be performing much better.

As a previous poster noted, Cyanogen does not root your phone; you have to be rooted to install Cyanogen. Essentially, you are usually replacing a bloated OS with a more streamlined one, often improving performance.

HTC Thunderbolt for my phone, soon to change to the Galaxy 3. For my tablet I use an Acer Iconia A500.

Given the choice I would rather see apps geared towards tablets rather than phones.

I love Pathfinder and it has long since replaced Dungeons and Dragons as my default RPG. For as much as I love it I occasionally want to play other games and that got me thinking. How many of you would like to see Paizo branch out and make games other than Pathfinder? I would love to see an original sci-fi game, something not based on an existing property (no Star Trek or Star Wars). Also, a well done horror game would be welcome as well.

My favorite stuff came from Malhavoc Press. The Complete Book of Eldritch Might and the Arcana Unearthed/Evolved stuff. I really like they way Arcana Unearthed/Evolved handled psionics (spells with a psionic descriptor) so no new system to learn and magic.

RunebladeX, you hit the nail on the head.

Dwarven arcane casters, as an old school (first edition) AD&D player I have never adjusted to the idea that a dwarf can cast spells.

Grappling. While an improvement over 3.0/3.5 it is still more complicated than the rest of the combat system.

Monks. I have not been a fan of the class since 1st edition AD&D. The idea of someone karate chopping a dragon messes with my suspension of disbelief (irrational, I know).

I was just thinking how much I missed Dragon Magazine. I got some great stuff out of those magazines over the years. I wonder if Paizo has given any thought to publishing a magazine again to replace Dragon.

It makes me sad that my all time favorite monster, the Mind Flayer, was not part of the OGL/SRD so I will never see a Pathfinder version of it (this also holds true for the Beholder and Displacer Beast).

As far as those from Pathinder/Paizo goes: I love the Hound of Tindalos from Rise of the Runelords, the Marilith, Lich, Silver Dragon, and the Kobold.

No one plays Bards anyway.

Really? I do. After Ranger it is my favorite class. Granted I have not played the Pathfinder version yet but I don't see that changing much.

Myself and one of my players got a copy each printed in black and white and bound at Kinkos for about $25 - $30, I think. They won't last forever but they will last until the final rules are released.

I'd like to throw another side question in here...

Say, a Psionics book that presented rules for psionics that ditched the point-based system and did psionics in a method that dovetailed easier and more gracefully into the core rules (The goal here being to ease concerns that adding psionics to an existing campaign tends to break that campaign.)

Basically: would folk still be interested in books like these if we took pains to stay true to the expected flavor of the book but rebuilt the rules drastically? Or would that be a deal-breaker?

This is what I would like in a psionics book.

I am curious which of the four methods for starting hit points everyone is using is their Beta games. Personally, I am using the standard option (max hit points for 1st level plus Con modifier), which is the same way I have done it since 2nd Ed.

Has anyone tried this on the Sony digital reader? It looks like it is designed for non-DRM'd pdf's when I looked at their web site. If so I would buy one since I think this seems like a great idea.

I live in the Akron, OH area and we have two local gaming shops. Kenmore Komics, which has been around for quite some time, and while they have a large variety of different products from many companies as of today I did not see any Pathfinder stuff. Underhill Games is the new store in the area and while they don't have as large a variety (pretty much D&D only) the owner has started carrying Pathfinder and told me it sells very well for him and he plans on supporting the products.

Eventually I plan on going back and reading what others have posted here, it is late and I am too tired to read such a lengthy discussion. However, I did want to toss in my two cents.

What do psionics mean to me? Telepathy, telekinesis, mind control, mental attacks, the ability to affect the environment using the power of the mind. Honestly, if magic can do it then psionics probably can too.

I have tried psionics in 1st andd 2nd edition AD&D and while I thought it was a neat concept I always ended up steering away from them. The reason for that is simple, it was a whole new mechanic thrown into the game that was not needed and made it more complicated. More for me to learn and more for my players to learn.

The first and only time I saw a psionics system I liked was in Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Evolved. The system for psionics was the magic system, spells were just given a psionic template. It worked smoothly, was easy to learn and did not require a whole new system different from the rest of the game. I would not want to see concepts similar to laden spells and templates introduced to make it work because those things do not exist in the magic system Pathfinder currently has (they were great for Monte's game because the whole magic system used them). Psions would have their own "spell" list, and it should include spells that currently exist (much like the overlap that we currently have with arcane and divine casters having some spells in common) and some spells unique to their class.

To sum up... Make psionics work like the magic system and I will buy it and probably use it.

I had a player in my game (who hadn't really played before) who requested that he play a non-magical support character other than a rogue, and I got to thinking, the PRPG currently doesn't have an option for this (The marshal class from 3.5 wasn't very good, and I'm trying to run a PRPG playtest). As much as I hate 4e, this player probably would have liked the warlord character, or something similar to it, so I'm wondering if Paizo has any plans to add any new classes, such as this?

What do you think? what classes would you like to see?

I doubt the core Pathfinder rule book will add more classes, but if you are looking for other options the classes from Monte Cook's Acana Evolved are pretty balanced with Pathfinder and would give you more options.