smckenna77's page

How do we volunteer for GMing at Gen Con, is there a post or a process I need to go through?

Both my wife and I had a blast playing PFS last year, and this year we think we want to contribute by running at least a couple scenarios if there is still a need for GMs. Sorry if this is the wrong thread or place to ask.

My guess is that it has to do with the number 576. That's how many pages are in the core rulebook. Now notice that the 3.5 version of the Empower Spell feat is 4-5 times as long as the PFRPG version, and apply that result throughout the book.

Yes, well, I'm also noticing how the binding on my mammoth 576 page manual(both copies that I own) are looking a little troublesome at about 2 weeks into ownership, as well as the fact that apparently they can't be bothered to explain feats clearly. Despite the high quality binding, this book is simply not going to last for years, physically. It's just not.

Maybe, two separate books would have been in order?

Not all opponents are evil, and not all opponents are demons or undead. That sounds like a pretty bland way to play.

The new smite evil is great, it gives paladins a truly awesome ability that can ONLY BE USED versus certain creatures. Making them worse than a fighter at ALL other times(especially with the new no movement penalty on heavy armor YIKES that's nuts, and the fact that in point buy at least they must blow tons of points on cha), and better at dealing massive damage to their sworn enemies.

Sounds like a perfect world to me, they're the best at smiting evil, literally, and worse than other core classes at other times. As levels go up, these gaps both increase. Paladins lag behind further and further in feats and mobility and raw damage, and the Smite Evil gets better and better.

If there is an issue, the REAL solution is not to nerf smite evil or other classes, but to MAKE MONSTERS HARDER and fight more intelligently. If smite evil is too good, then the monsters of PFRPG shouldn't be the wimpy pos giants and ogres from 3.5. They should also be upgraded as well. Same goes for other classes, give rogues and rangers some great abilities too rather than saying this one is too good.

It doesn't make sense if you're going to upgrade all the core classes, and then make sure we're fighting the same caliber of monsters that were supposed to be a challenge for 3.5 based classes. It's completely different, the power levels have increased, drastically, so should the opponents. I didn't think the point of Pathfinder RPG was to re-name 3.5 and balance it to tedium like 4.0, but to improve and innovate, on all aspects of the game.

SRD Feat reads:

"All variable, numeric effects of an empowered spell are increased by one-half. Saving throws and opposed rolls are not affected, nor are spells without random variables."

Pathfinder RPG Core Rules reads:

"All variable, numeric effects of an empowered
spell are increased by half.
Saving throws and opposed rolls are not affected, nor
are spells without random variables."

The 3.5 latest edition of the Player's Handbook reads:

"All variable, numeric effects of an empowered spell are
increased by one-half. An empowered spell deals half again as much
damage as normal, cures half again as many hit points, affects half
again as many targets, and so forth, as appropriate. For example, an
empowered magic missile deals 1-1/2 times its normal damage (roll
1d4+1 and multiply the result by 1-1/2 for each missile). Saving
throws and opposed rolls (such as the one you make when you cast
dispel magic) are not affected, nor are spells without random
variables."

That's copy pasted from their respective sources, they do the EXACT same thing.

YOU WILL NOTICE that all three feats are worded in the EXACT SAME FASHION, with no differences. Kindly though, the 3.5 Player's handbook uses plain, simple english to further CLARIFY what the feat does by giving an EASY TO FOLLOW example which makes it crystal clear how the feat is applied: You roll up your damage or healing AS NORMAL, with all modifiers the spell calls for, and multiply the entire result by 1.5 to get your new damage or healing or whatever.

I don't know why Paizo figured examples and clarifications are useless things to put into their core rulebook, since I guess we're all just supposed to know how things work from 3.5?(See also spells like Suggestion, which could really, REALLY use more clarification in PRPG).

But to argue that you only multiply the dice rolled is completely wrong. That's not how the feat ever worked, and since the feat was not changed at all, that's still not how it works. It would be fairly awful in that respect. I will say, that if Paizo intends to drastically change a feat or spell, they make that fairly clear. That wasn't done in this case, because the feat is exactly the same. Use some common sense please. They just forgot when they wrote the Healing Domain section that there wasn't enough room in the book to actually fully explain the feat, so they just wrote it the way they knew it worked.

Good suggestions.

Allow me to add: Get a different room. If that is impossible, as I suspect it may be, bring a huge bag of Halls for GMs... :)

Yes, I agree with this.

That was probably my one and only gripe with the PFS games. It was way too small a room for that much gaming, in terms of the NOISE, not the space. I am not at all hard of hearing, and it was UNBEARABLY loud in some instances, just a cacophany of yelling basically.

The rooms were big enough to fit all the players just fine, but the ceiling way too low, all that sound just reverberates in a room like that. A similair sized room with a high ceiling would have made the play exeperience much better.

That's the only real complaint I had with the PFS @ gen con. The staff were very friendly and knowledgable and I really enjoyed the scenarios, but it was so loud I could barely hear at times, for some of the games.

Unfortunately I think the reason for getting so many different responses is that for different people, the same scenario may be easy or difficult. I'm willing to acknowledge there might be some difficult season 0 scenarios I didn't play, but I did play in 5 at gen-con and thought they were all pushovers, combat wise, across the board.

The thing is, different players have different expectations about what's hard or not, and I really think there should be something built into the system that lets you tailor your difficulty to what the group wants and what the group can handle. Group 1: fighter, fighter, cleric, cleric, wizard, sorceror is going to have a hell of a lot more success than Group 2: rogue, rogue, ranger, ranger, druid, monk. Especially at low levels. Then you factor in the experience with the system, etc and the gap grows even wider.

Also, some players would really prefer to play a game where they can't die, where for others the risk of losing a character to a bad decision or a bad die roll is part of what makes the game so exciting.

I don't think one size fits all really works tbh, because no matter what some players are going to feel like the missions were too hard or easy, one way or the other. Just giving players the OPTION to do a 'hard-mode' version of a mod or whatever would be a huge plus for our group.

I believe that, at a con, the GMs hand in a session sheet to the event organizer and that person enters them. After Paizocon I believe it took quite some time for these to get entered. I would imagine it would take even longer for Gencon (I'm assuming there were more sessions, but that's just a guess).

I held a local PFS event nearly three weeks ago and it took me two weeks to get the two sessions there reported due to a number of issues - folks with pre-registered numbers not yet entered, missing PFS numbers from session sheet turned in to me, etc. Took some time to get it all sorted out.
M

Ah alright, that expains a lot! Thanks mearrin. I found that place in my profile, for sessions, and I assumed that was correct, I understand with such a huge event it takes time.

I just wanted to make sure I hadn't screwed something up or done something wrong in regards to registering. Looks like all is well though.

I am curious about bonus languages. Does a human with an ethnicity different than Taldane or Chelaxian gain the language of their ethnicity, or must it be taken as a bonus language with either a rank in Linguistics or a high INT at character creation?

Was this ever answered? I'd really like to know about this as well.

My Qadiran Paladin has an int of 7, which means he would only get 1 language as a human. But in Golarion, that makes no sense if he speaks Taldane, but not Qadiran? does he get both, or just Qadiran or just Taldane, despite the fact he was born in Qadira?

This is really a campaign specific thing, because unless you're in Golarion, it's irrelevant. Human=common tongue, but not so for Pathfinder games.

I was very excited to play in PFS for the first time at Gen Con a few days ago, and thrilled to get my hands on the new PF rules.

I made a new character at the Con, got my card, registed with my card online, and updated my character, but I don't see any way to view the sessions he participated in on the website.

Is there a way to go about this that I'm not aware of, or does it just take a while longer for GMs and organizers to put all the sessions into the computer? I'm sorry for sounding rude in asking, I just don't know what to expect, so if anyone has any info on how that kind of thing is handled, I'm very curious!

Had a great time, and looking forward to hosting some Pathfinder Society home games in Eastern Tennessee soon as well.

I played 5 scenarios, Shipyard Rats, Cassomir's Locker, Decline of Glory, Drow of the Darklands Pyramid, and Tide of Morning at Gen Con 09 this year. All were played as 1st level characters, except of course the Drow one, which we used pregens for. This is my first time ever playing any PFS scenarios, and my first time playing any Pathfinder modules of any kind.

I am a tactical and knowledgable player, as were about...half of the other gamers I shared a table with during my time at Gen Con. And I have to say, ALL of these scenarios were far, far too easy. They were complete cakewalks, and extremely hard for anyone with a solid grasp of 3.5 tactics to screw up. There was absolutely no sense of danger in any of these, even WHEN half the group were completely ignorant of the right thing to do and were basically just wasting their turns doing things that had a 5-10% chance of accomplishing anything worthwhile. The 2-3 players who were managing the fight adequately was more than enough to crush all opposition we faced.

I thought the stories and the roleplaying opportunities were great, and I overall had fun, but I need to say this again:

THEY WERE ALL FAR, FAR TOO EASY. People getting TPK'ed, which I've read about, simply blows my mind. It would take truly poorly built characters, with bad tactics, combined with historically bad dice luck for this to happen in the scenarios I played.

It kinda took the fun out of some of the fights when you realize how easy it all was. The most fun parts for me was getting to roleplay with the other characters, and accomplishing my faction goals. The fights were SET UP to be interesting, but were far too easy.

I know a lot of people are going to disagree, and say how lucky we were, or whatever. Or that I'm exaggerating, but I am not. There are a lot of tactically minded people out there for whom these things were not a challenge. I know more casual players might enjoy the difficulty of these, but there is a subset of players out there as well who wants something more. I strongly believe there should be like an option to play a "nightmare" difficulty, or play up in tiers whenever you want to, or some scenarios released that are specifically designed to be dangerous and rewarding. Even if the rewards weren't greater than the regular modules, many people would really like the chance to test ourselves against some challenging content. Maybe just make the tier 1-2 stuff easy as to not drive off new players with TPKs and really ramp things up for levels 3+?

That's just my two cents, I really hope someone reads this and actually looks at what a COMPETENT group of WELL PLANNED characters working together can accomplish with PRPG rules, and make scenarios that can challenge them in the future.