robert4818's page

We've coined a term at my work place. We call those tasks that keep you from your primary focus "Squirrel tasks". When you are mid-stream on your primary task someone comes up and gives you another one....just like Doug the Dog from Up, you quickly turn your head to the new project...SQUIRREL!

PC's in MMO's aren't generally like people in real life. They don't go home on a regular nightly/weekly basis. They'll wander hundreds of miles away for "weeks" on end, barely ever stopping by their home town.

With that in mind, how do we make an assassin/bounty hunter able to track down a PC in order to kill them?

Obviously we don't want to put homing beacons on pc's that track their movements down to exact spot on your minimap. But at the same time, leaving their location completely unknown renders assassins both neutered and largely un-fun to play.

So, some thoughts.

A bounty contract will allow you to see "last town visited" (LTV) by the target, at the time the contract was written. From there we rely on the streetwise skill.

A person hunting a target goes into the LTV by the target and starts talking to various npcs. For each success, you build up a little bit of information, for each failure you build up a little bit of "notice". (i.e. Hey man, some guy's been asking around for you). When you reach enough success, one of two things happens:

If the person has been active in a different town since the contract, it becomes the new "LTV" and the cycle restarts.

If the town really is the LTV, you are given a 7 hex "super hex" that has his general location in it. With a bit of searching through those hexes, you can narrow that tracker down to that one single hex that contains your target. Beyond that, your on your own.

My main question:

What happens if the potential assassin targets (master smith, expert farmer, etc.) are alts who only come on long enough to do their chore as needed?

Its hard to assassinate a master smith who only comes on long enough to craft armor for a friend, then goes off and comes back as a main.

I don't think there should be a "forgiveness" for FF. When using AoE, it's part of the calculations you need to make. Will I hit team-mates? If I do, how much damage will I do? Will the damage I do to enemies outweigh the damage I do to my team? (this is all under the Good alignment I guess. (Chaotic)Evil will just do it. and say it's the teams fault for being in his way :D)

Missed this first time through.

Forgiveness is for the alignment/reputation side of things (upto and including the flags that may come with it).

Basically, it allows for players to take agreed upon actions even with the understanding that they may be hurt in the process.

I.E. If your fighter is in melee with a group of enemies, and he asks you to AOE them, why should you get an align/rep hit for doing what he wanted done? After the fight, the fighter can turn around, forgive you, and alls well. He still took that fireball to the face, suffered the damage from it, and maybe even had to be resurrected because of it. However, he wanted that fireball to come flying his way. On the other hand, if your wizard gets uppity, starts throwing fireballs without thinking and fries his fighter, the fighter can just let nature take its course. He can either take the time to explicitly not forgive the wizzy, or just let the wizzy's "offense" sit in the queue for 24 hours, either way because the wizard was an idiot, he'll suffer the penalties for it.

I can see the scenario of the guy that runs out in front of a moving car. Hey you hit me, give me some coin and I shall forgive you.

I don't necessarily have a problem with this, I can see the earning potential in it. But, I'm sure one will see it as..... A word I don't wish to use, since it is too frequently thrown about in almost every circumstance.

The solution to unintended casualties in the use of AOE, is to b careful when using AOE and accept the consequences when accidents happen.

That could happen, but at the same timeif the person wanted to grief, he could run out in front of you to simply get you to lose alignment/rep anyhow.

The game generally keeps track of who's "attacked" you, so that if you truly want to you can issue bounties, death curses, etc.

It shouldn't be too hard then, to give players a box listing people who have "wronged you" (i.e. attacked you, hit you with spells, etc.) that allows people to choose whether or not to forgive that person or not. The system is unforgiven biased, and you have 24 hours to choose to forgive or not. If you do not forgive them within 24 hours, then the game assumes you do not forgive them. If you do forgive them, the the game simply refunds the reputation/alignment hit they took for the attack. (Alternatively, the reputation hit does not take effect until the choice is made to forgive them or not).

I don't see this option being open for system abuse, though you always have the chance that the person who should forgive you simply chooses not to.

I'd much rather those who wish to be villains in a game (where the players are the content) could enjoy their avocation without being made to feel like victims of their own success.

If nobody is willing to be a villain, nobody will enjoy being a hero either.

Its a balanceing issue. You want a certain number of good guys and a certain number of bad guys. If you get your risk/reward balance off, then you end up with either more wolves than you want. You quickly run out of sheep.

For example, if your risk is too low, and you have too many thieves/bandits then your traders with the "traveling flag" will fall away. Sure, the amount that each bandit gets is just a "tax", but just because you were robbed once on a trip doesn't mean you won't get robbed again, and again on the same trip. If the risk is too low, then the likely hood of multiple robberies increases, and with that the number of people willing to risk being a trader.

Interesting responses. The OP was asking about risk vs. reward, though. I have to be honest with you, from the sounds of things it seems to me that there isn't much risk while there's a LOT of rewards to being on the lawless side of things.

That being said, I'm actually fine with that. At some point, I'll likely have an alt - depending on what some of my friends decide, maybe even my main character will be part of the 'criminal underworld'.

I focus on the long term risk/reward balance because it is very important for the game.

If the risk is too low, then you end up with a situation where you have too many wolves and not enough sheep, or you simply end up in situations where you can't accomplish anything because so much of the game turns into a back and forth battle of "forced" PVP. (i.e. someone starts ganking, the other side retaliates, and you end up in rolling PVP battles when all you really wanted to do was chase a quest in a specific area).

If the risk is too high then an aspect of the game that you actually WANT (and don't get me wrong, I WANT people to be "Bad guys" becomes a gameplay style that isn't viable. Nobody wants to do it, because the cost for doing so becomes unacceptably high for too many people, and the game ends up rather boring.

The key is to find that right balance. Banditry is generally, in the long term, a high reward occupation. This makes it attractive. What you want is enough of a risk associated with it that it acts as a damper on the number of people who would actively pursue the path.

The real loss will be in reduced access to settlement facilites and/or higher upkeep costs on those settlements. Plus more people trying to burn your stuff down.

Don't count on that being nearly as effective as you may hope.

You don't have to 'spend time', you just have to pop in and get your buffs. You knew you would be there for 4-5 minutes, good time to look at something in the distance to prevent eye strain, relieve your bladder, or grab a snack, for the next hour or two of gaming.

Forced 'down time' and 'travel time' are key elements of games, you don't want people to be constantly in the heavy action or they get bored quicker. The Arkam Batman games were great to me, they had little action in comparison to most 'action' games, the key is making the game nice to look at, same goes for Skyrim.

You just have to make sure every time you force someone to go somewhere, it is worth their while, either visually or mechanically.

Then in a way you've missed the entire point of the thread. A tavern that people go AFK in fails just as bad as a tavern that nobody uses at all. The point is to have the tavern become a social hub.

The way to make alternative buildings like taverns more used, is to give them a mechanical usage. For instance, in SWG the Cantinas were the only public place to receive full buffs from entertainers.

I don't think the answer is to make things to do, but a reason for everyone to use them. You end up with a lot of people passing through, and increase the 'regulars'

I would enjoy social games(and gambling), or even something like slot machines to burn some time and potentially make some coin.

The HAM buffs in SWG were are great economic benefit, and social benefit. I would like to see something similar in this game. You can go do a good chunk of low-moderate skill activities without them, but you need to visit a few common social areas frequently(1-2 hours depending on skill of 'buffer') to 'max out' your potential.

My problem with SWG Cantinas were that they were "forced" downtime. Sure you didn't "HAVE" to go to the cantina (except for wounds), but if you (or your guild) wanted you to have max potential, you pretty much needed to.

It becomes a balancing act. How do you entice people to enter a bar without them feeling like they HAVE to go(and spend time) to the bar when they don't want to?

One thing that would pop out at me would be a convenience factor. Perhaps some things are just easier to do while in there. (Pick up groups would be one thing I would make very bar convenient).

Taverns are the center of the "Kaverns and Kobolds" gaming world.

Its where adventurers meet up, spend their gains, relax, and start/end adventures. Oh, and they also get Drunk.

Now in an MMO, especially DDO and Neverwinter, I've seen this concept fall flat. Taverns are simply not fun to hang out in. In fact, they are quite boring.

First, you can't really get drunk in video games, so that reason for going to the taverns is done.

Second, there's nothing to DO in the taverns. People in bars beyond getting drunk also tend to want something to do.

I say we get some tavern games. If this was DnD I'd suggest Three Dragon Ante, butits not...so you might try finding some non-poker style gambling card games you can make analogues of for Pathfinder.

Then there's Liars Dice, commonly seen in Pirates of the Caribbean and some other games.

You might also add in darts, ringing the bull, or other olde taverns.

The key here is when you have "down time" in the game, either enforced, or when the player just doesn't want to craft, explore, kill (etc.) they can go to the tavern, pick up a game and play.

For some few of us in RL the risk/reward ratio is irrelevant. We don't do some things simply because they are wrong to do. Provincial of me, I know.

This was why I said "Why don't MORE people" instead of "Why doesn't everyone".

I've just been reading up on the PVP and flagging system over on Goblin works (I know, I'm behind the curve here). I wanted to talk a bit about the concepts of Risk vs Reward and long term consequences for criminal actions.

I'll step into the real world for just a second, and ask, if being a criminal is profitable, why don't more people do it? The answer is that the risk for doing so is, for many people, unacceptably high. Sure, you can rob a bank and get away with 30-40 thousand dollars, but in the process you risk spending a very large amount of time in jail, or even a very permanent vacation in a 6 foot hole. Being a criminal means you have a very high reward potential vs a very high risk potential. You can earn lots and lots of loot, with the risk (generally one that grows higher with every crime) of losing pretty much everything.

When you leave the real world and go back to MMO Land, you end up losing keeping the high reward, but you lose the high risk. There's a very good reason for not killing characters (permanently) or locking them up for long periods of time. Both tend to drive away players. However, I've found that without some level of risk that counters that level of reward, you end up with a very lopsided equation that has more people than "normal" deciding to take up the mantle of criminal. Its simply too lucrative a job in the long term.

I talk about long term risk here, because when you look at short term risk, things look fairly equal. Both players have a chance to live or die, and both stand a chance to lose items upon death. Even if you lopside the short term risk, (say wolf loses 2 items, sheep loses 1 on death) the short term risk is outweighed by long term gain. On top of this the wolf generally takes precautions when hunting to lower his short term risk.

For example, A sheep might be wearing their "Best" gear because they are going to/have been hunting monsters/dungeons for the better part of their gameday. These better items are generally "essential" for this style of play. On the other hand the wolf, knowing the risk he is about to embark on, generally puts on gear that is "good enough", and looks for the best time to strike. Remove any illusions of the Robin Hood walk up. What generally happens is a wait for an opportune time such as after a grueling combat before the strike happens. This greatly lowers the wolfs hunting risk, and helps him build that reward. Will the wolf lose? Yes, but statistically speaking, over the long run, his gain ends up being much more than his loss.

The question then, is how do we fix the long-term risk/reward system so that the high reward of choosing the outlaw life is balanced by some sort of long term risk?

The path they are on is a decent start, but I don't think it works to level out the equation, though unfortunately, I don't have the answers for that problem just yet. The key though is that once flagged criminal/evil, getting killed for those actions (such as through a bounty or a death curse) should really really hurt.

I believe teamwork feats were originally a cavalier only ability that was split off as feats to accommodate Inquisitors. I have nothing to back that up, but it makes some sense. They are generally better than most feats, due to the high cost of them.

The idea of them isn't new. Star Wars Saga had them, and they worked in much the same way. Though, thankfully, the feat wasn't completely useless by itself. They were generally along the lines of "+2 to this skill, and an additional +3 for every person who has this skill within X distance from you" While not as good solo as the skill focus feat in Saga (+5) if the entire team took it, it became an awsome ability.

robert4818 wrote:

Charender wrote:

jreyst wrote:

I like the idea of rewarding PCs that stick together over an extended duration. Some players like to swap PCs every other session and having a built-in reward system for longer-term PCs who gain benefits by knowing each others strengths and abilities seems like a nice way to handle that.

Actually, I was thinking about this over the weekend, and I came up with this.

Every 5 levels, a character can take a teamwork.
Every 3 levels that a character has been with their current group of companions, they get a teamwork feat.

So at level 9, the guy who has been with the group from level 1 has 3 teamwork feats. The guy who swaps characters ever other level has 1.

See though, I don't like teamwork feats because while they are a good thought, its like trying to use a butter knife on a screw. There's some workability there, but in the end its simply the wrong tool to use.

Teamwork feats are an attempt to put the ability to work as a team as something an individual picks up.

So, lets say a mage and a thief are working together. After 3 levels, your thief picks up Feint Partner, your mage picks up Shielded Caster.

This 3 levels of working together gives them a new individual feat, and they ended up afterwords not able to work together any better than they were after they first met.

This is why I keep going back to saying that there needs to be some way of treating the GROUP as an entity, not just the players. Yes its a bit more abstract, but I think its a better tool for the job than teamwork feats as we have them.

The problem with forcing the feats as a group option is that what if the rogue and fighter want coordinated charge while the cleric and wizard want allied spellcaster?

If the players choose to waste their teamwork feat, that is their issue. If they want to intentionally gimp themselves, you can't stop them. As a player I really want the option to choose for myself and not be forced...

However, under the group system, regardless of the choice it will be usable for the team. Yes, you can't get everything all at once, but in the end, whatever feat they do choose is usable. Under the other system, people all get what they want, and then nobody can use it.

I would argue that if we were to keep the current teamwork feat system the feats themselves need to change from gaining a bonus if someone else is with you that has the feat, to "This is a feat that grants bonuses to team-mates."

I would toss in the cost of casting these spells is prohibitively expensive for a city to do.

The cost to cast a spell as a service is 10 x Caster lvl x Spell lvl in gold pieces. I would reduce this by half because the caster is most likely on retainer or payroll.

Untrained labor gets 1 sp per day, and the top level professionals can at most, expect somewhere in the neighborhood of 25gp per week. (max die roll, +23 skill, +8 stat) Your basic professional can probably earn, on average, 8 gp/week (3 ranks, avg die roll, no stat bonus).

What are the min costs to cast spells?
To put into perspective, I calculated this cost in US dollars. I put 1 sp (days labor for untrained) equal to an 8 hour day at roughly minimum wage ($7/hr). This means 1 sp = $56 dollars, and 1 gp = 10 sp or $560.

lvl Price(gp) Price($USD)
0th 2.5 $1,400
1st 5 $2,800
2nd 30 $16,800
3rd 75 $42,000
4th 140 $78,400
5th 225 $126,000
6th 330 $184,800
7th 455 $254,800
8th 600 $336,000
9th 765 $428,400

jreyst wrote:

I like the idea of rewarding PCs that stick together over an extended duration. Some players like to swap PCs every other session and having a built-in reward system for longer-term PCs who gain benefits by knowing each others strengths and abilities seems like a nice way to handle that.

Actually, I was thinking about this over the weekend, and I came up with this.

Every 5 levels, a character can take a teamwork.
Every 3 levels that a character has been with their current group of companions, they get a teamwork feat.

So at level 9, the guy who has been with the group from level 1 has 3 teamwork feats. The guy who swaps characters ever other level has 1.

See though, I don't like teamwork feats because while they are a good thought, its like trying to use a butter knife on a screw. There's some workability there, but in the end its simply the wrong tool to use.

Teamwork feats are an attempt to put the ability to work as a team as something an individual picks up.

So, lets say a mage and a thief are working together. After 3 levels, your thief picks up Feint Partner, your mage picks up Shielded Caster.

This 3 levels of working together gives them a new individual feat, and they ended up afterwords not able to work together any better than they were after they first met.

This is why I keep going back to saying that there needs to be some way of treating the GROUP as an entity, not just the players. Yes its a bit more abstract, but I think its a better tool for the job than teamwork feats as we have them.

This may sound vaguely familiar to some of you...

For every 3 sessions a character has been played he adds +1 to the groups "Teamwork Pool." Any character that has contributed at least 1 point to the pool is considered a member of the team and may draw points from the pool but may not draw more than he has contributed.

For every 10 points in the pool a team member may perform any one teamwork feat once per session. This does not reduce the number of points in the pool.

A team member may add a bonus to any d20 roll he makes, or that affects his character, equal to the number of points he "withdraws" from the pool. Reducing a teamwork pool in this way reduces the number of points in the pool available to other team members and may reduce the number of teamwork feats a team may perform.

Teamwork pools refill at the beginning of every session.

** spoiler omitted **

I think using a hardset number is a problem (i.e. 10) Go instead with some multiple of your game group size (or average group size).

Otherwise your system means its harder for 2 people to learn to work together than it is for 5 people.

Plus this sort of system would fall apart in something like Organized Play, where you don't always have the same group of people in every session. Would you have to pick a new Group feat per session? But then again, that would be the same problem with Teamwork Feats as they are now, with maybe the exception of people who can give their Teamwork Feats to allies like the Cavalier can.

As a group system would be an optional (and modular) type of system, all you would need to do would be to "remove" the system.

My thoughts:

Treat this as a form of prestige class, in a sense. The requirement is that they have to be turned into an undead. The first thing that happens is that they aquire the "Undead template."

You'll have to probably write it up yourself, but thoughts include:
-The threat of being affected by channel energy.
-The ability to heal by consuming living (depending on type of undead)
-etc.

The template should be fairly minimal. Then, the character has the option of advancing in the "prestige class" (i.e. take it at level 1 on their next advancement and go from there) or to continue on in their own class.

I would also consider a "Humanity" stat or something similar to represent the character fighting his new nature, and not trying to "eat" or kill his party.

New book: Ultimate Parties!

Keg stands not included. :)

I can't help it. I'm a HUGE fan of 4th edition's Warlord. A class who's primary job on the battle field isn't necessarily to fight, but instead to coordinate the battle to the benefit of his allies is just such a great concept.

As it is, I would like to create a "Warlord" for Pathfinder, and I figured you guys can help.

My thoughts:
Hit Die: d10
Armor: All Armor and Shields
Weapons: Simple and Martial

Schtick:
Team Player - Any teamwork feat can be used by a warlord in conjunction with another player, as if the player had the teamwork feat.

Team Leader - Any of the warlords allies may utilize any teamwork feats that the warlord has, as if both they and the warlord had the feat.

Bonus Feat - At level 3, and every 3 levels thereafter, the warlord may take a teamwork feat as a bonus feat. He must still meet all other requirements.

Tactical Points - A warlord gets a number of tactical points equal to 1/2 his level (min 1) every day. These refresh after 8 hours of sleep. Tactical points may be spent as follows:
-1 point Swap initiative position with an ally
-1 points allow an ally to take a free move or standard action on your turn.
-3 points allow an ally to take a free turn immediately following your turn.
-2 points designate a single enemy, targets have +2 to attack and damage that enemy.

These are my thoughts so far. What can you guys think of?

I'd point out though that Armor is, indirectly already factored into initiative.

Since armor has a max dex bonus, and this dex bonus affects initiative, there is already a way to take armor into account.

I agree with the sentiment, although perhaps my suggested execution is handled a little easier. In particular , the problem with forcing the same feat on every party member is that it does not resolve the choice of that feat, nor does it deal with more mutable parties as occur in PFS play.

I would propose that at the same time as a character's advance in level earns an increase in an ability adjustment, the character gets ONE free feat that can ONLY be spent on a "teamwork" feat. Interns of frequency and sheer number of teamwork feats, this seems to hit the right balance to my eyes.

The feat taken is a matter of player/NPC choice. While this may or may not prove to be a benefit, in practice, most players will co-ordinate to a high degree. If they don't -- then they don't.

Consider this bonus feat to be akin to.a fighter "combat bonus feat" only slot. Whatever the case, I think this approach should work reasonably well.

Simple, easy to adjudicate and solves the perceived problem.

While that is true, a group system could open up more opportunities than simple teamwork feat accrual.

(as for exactly what, that would be for full designers to come up with)

There's a number of ways to deal with how to advance a "group".

Average party level
Highest party member
"Group" xp
Sacrificed XP
etc.

I do think the party system should be fully modular to the rest of PF. Meaning that If i have a character from My game, where we use the system, and take him to a friends where they don't, then beyond noting that I don't have the "team feats" there are no changes or adjustments needed.

While I think that there is already a good number of 20-level base classes, I think that Pathfinder could benefit a great deal from adding a few more. Yes, the archetype system allows for a great deal of diversity and customization in addition to the choices that can already be made with a class. And yes, I know that WotC overdid it, but I think the issue with 3.5 class bloat was more with prestige classes than base classes. I don't want ten or probably even five more. But I firmly believe that Paizo could easily create 2 or 3 more truly distinct classes. With the possible exception of the witch and wizard, I don't think any current classes have too much overlap.

So, should there be more classes, even just a few? I would like to see an 8+int skills class without a sneak attack derivative that took a different approach than the rogue. Also, a spontaneous caster that uses the druid spell list. Thoughts, suggestions, criticism?

100+ posts...haven't read everything, so if I missed it, my apologies.

I would like to see a PF equivalent of the 4e "Warlord" class. His primary focus is on directing his allies in ways that make them perform better or more often. This type of 3e character class could be alot of fun to play.

I love the concept of the teamwork feats. I hate their execution. I didn't like them in Star Wars Saga when I saw them, and I can't say I'm a fan of them in Pathfinder either.

My problem with them is that generally the feats require other people to also purchase the same feat to be of any use. With the feat economy generally as tight as it is, it makes this sort of proposition fairly unusable.

Instead, I would rather see the game opt for treating the "group" as an entity. Just like a player, or even a familiar, the "group" can increase in strength. One of the advantages for this increase in strength would be the gaining of the "Group Feats" which, basically, are the team work feats we have already. The only difference is that once the group grabs the feat, everyone counts as having it.