teverin's page

Thanks everyone, this is really good info.

Hello,

I am running a campaign with a Paladin in the party and it doesn't seem to be going very well for him. He is getting pressured from the rest of the group to act a certain way when he is faced with people who have an alignment of evil.

For example, the PC's are in the Pathfinder society and they came across a group of people from Geb, (an evil aligned nation). I basically tried to set them up as future adversaries by making them say some not-so-nice comments about the group of PC, in fact, they were downright rude.

The Paladin detected evil and attempted to persuade them into leaving town, which did not happen. So he turns to the other PCs and says he wants to attack them. The PCs expressed concerns as to the overall toughness of the people from Geb (they did look tough). They also then revealed themselves to be Pathfinders (and aggression towards other pathfinders is a no-no from what I have read).

It was at that time the Paladin threw up his hands and left the table, this is because in an earlier encounter, he tried to talk it out with a faceless stalker when the rest of the group wanted him to attack the beast and be done with it. So sometimes they want him to be this warrior for good, and other times they prefer he is cautious. I am hesitant to get in the way, because they are not meta gaming this, they are talking in character about the pros and cons.

How do you deal with Paladins in a world where evil can be all around, do they stop to fight and confront every evil person they meet?

I find that I don't have the time to run a sandbox game where I come up with many different things I want the PCs to do. I have a general story in mind, and I know how I want it to "play out". But I will still be giving them options, but there will need to be an overall goal for them in the long run.

If the PCs dont want to be proactive bring the fight to them. Things would have been so much better if they would have gone after the undead. Now look what happened half of Sandpoint is dead............

I sorta meta gamed after they reluctantly went to investigate. They asked me what would happen if they didn't go after this box, whatever it is, and I simply asked them..."Undead, evil creatures, who are normally mindless, make their appearance in the area around your home and steal a box from goblins who stole it from a shipwreck...and you don't care why?"

So here I am, running a campaign and I have a couple PCs who are kinda giving me a hard time story wise. I realize that the game is open ended, the PCs are supposed to make their own story but I have a few general goals I want them to accomplish.

For example, I started out similar to one of the adventure paths, where the PCs are in Sandpoint and an attractive bounty is put out on goblin ears. I made a point to say the town that they have lived in for a long time is in danger and that the sheriff himself put up the bounty notice.

But a couple of the PCs can see this is the direction I would like them to go so they say "I don't think that appeals to my character, what else is going on in town?"

Now I know I should have some backups, but how many? What if they don't want to do those things either. And it really seems that they are doing this to spite me.

They finally all agreed to go get the goblins and while investigating their hideout, they find that the goblins were attacked by undead. A surviving goblin, who was imprisoned by the other goblins for being "good", tells them they were attacked by a group of undead and a golden box (which they stole from a shipwreck) was taken. I made sure to let them know that the box seemed very important to this group of undead and they left as soon as they found it.

But when given the direction to where the undead went, the one PC looked right at me and said "I don't think this box is very important. Lets just leave."

Is it me? Am I not doing a good enough job? Please give me some tips so I can make this a better experience for my players.

Thanks everyone for the quick answers =)

I have one more question, which might be better suited for the advice section but I figured I'd toss it out here.

The Alchemist I am going to be making is a DM PC, so I need to figure out a way to keep separate my knowledge from my characters (if that makes sense). Have any of you had to deal with this before?

When I choose a discovery like smoke bomb, do my bombs still do damage in addition to the fog cloud or is it replaced by the fog cloud?

Like Mirrel mentioned, Precise Bombs is really more important (to me, at least) than Precise Shot but keep in mind that if you miss, Precise Bombs does nothing so your buddies get hit regardless.

My PFS Alchemist has Precise Bombs and is taking Precise Shot next (third) level; I want to bomb into melee. Often. And I do hit consistently, I just don't throw 'em consistently, yet, since I'll burn down my fellow Pathfinders (not allowed).

Do you use a bow when you run out of bombs?

How's your DEX? If you can consistently hit your opponents (touch attack!) than it may not be worth the feat investment. However, if you plan on bombing a lot, a +4 to hit is not a bad thing.

I have not made the character yet, but that answers my question. A lot of builds did not mention the feat so I thought maybe it didn't apply to splash weapons, but since its a touch attack I can see why it may not matter that much.

Hello,

When using an alchemist bomb and following the rules of "Throw Splash Weapon", does it still give me the -4 to attack when the target is in melee? Would I want to select precise shot then?

This is the truth. I would say use the map. The one who doesn't want to sounds like he doesn't wanna take the time to find a marker for his character.

I think the reason behind it when we started playing DnD when 3.5 came out, our DM did not use a battle map, but he was very, very good at keeping track of such things.

I just recently started playing a new campaign and the question of tiles/grids came into question.

I know that one of the players dislikes them, saying that too much time is spent on who is moving where and if someone can hit something will a spell or not. He just wants me, the DM to tell them that rather than them looking at a grid and figuring it out.

I'm fine with that. I would love to only use grids during major dungeons and maybe "boss" fights where I have a lot of different levels to the place or interesting mechanics like, pits, cover, or other things. But the problem I run into is that the other players want to know exacts of distance.

Is this something that I should be keep track of on some grid paper I have that they don't see? I'm getting things like "Well four turns ago I was X feet away, then I moved X, X, X so now I should be able to blast all three and not hit my buddy, right? So when I am keeping track I have to tell him, no, and then show them a grid anyways.

It might be my fault that I am not describing position and surroundings as well as I could be, so what do you guys do to keep track of such things? Do you only do grids for big fights or dungeons?
Thanks in advance

Hello,

There is something I am just not understanding about ranged cover. I have put up a link to a picture of a scenario that recently happened.

Might have to zoom out, not sure why its so big.

http://i.imgur.com/ET8Mq.jpg

The yellow lines mark a room, the blue circle is a player and the brown ones are goblins.

I know in the rules it says to pick a corner, and if I can draw a line to any of the enemy corners and it passes through a wall or something that blocks line of effect, they have cover. So If I picked corner B, none of them do, but if I pick A, one does.

So is it cover since one of them (corner A) does, or NO because I can find a corner that doesn't?

Also, if there was another player in the spot right to the left of enemy 3, would he provide cover to the enemies since he blocks pretty much every line except to enemy number 4?

Thanks in advance.