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References For Additional Learning > CHART OF FEATS
When I started v.3.5 (3.0), I looked at feats and for some reason it took several months before they "clicked" with me.
Think of each feat as having the possibility of having some kind of requirement (prerequisite), and possibly being part of a path-like progressive sequence. That said, most CORE rulebook feats, whether Pathfinder RPG or v.3.5, will be central to play, describing major things PCs can do, mostly with regard to combat.
Where certain feats do not fit your campaign, feel free to alter them. Several possess a flavor text heading, but amount to no more than +2 in something such as a skill.
Over the past 9 years, I have never seen a chart so well organized as this one. So tonight, even as I review it, I share it with you.
This one illustrates feat progressions, and offers brief summaries. For those of us who appreciate things that are easy on the eyes, the color codes will help you as the GM to mentally group the essential feat progressions.
Feats are here to stay. Pathfinder RPG generally increases the number of feats that may be used in play. As you GM your first series of game sessions you will experience how to both 1) adjudicate feat effects without a combat grid and 2) adjudicate feat effects with a combat grid (minis, vinyl mat, Gamemastery maps, etc. The v.3.5 system and Pathfinder RPG are designed to enable a new GM to use battlemaps if desired, but they are not required. As the GM, the important task is to use your mind's eye during combat to always visualize the PCs and their respective distances to enemy targets. Good communication goes a long way, and understanding which feat requires knowldge of proximity in melee is very useful.
As your GM experience level increases, you may want to check out James Jacob's 1/2 feats or Talents system, and Monte Cook's double feat ideas. There are also many d20 compatible books containing additional feats. And in the final analysis, though it is not often said, you are the GM and you should feel free to create new feats or disallow feats, keeping consistency and communication with players in mind.
If you are a new GM and found this helpful, please let me know.
Saern,
Did you scan the page and use text recognition software? Do you mind sharing how you constructed this form?
:)
You give me far too much credit. Technology and I are somewhat like oil and water. My level of computer skills basically amounts to caveman-like worship and appeasement of the strange electronic god sitting on the altar of my computer desk. That, and threatening the thing with magnets/a hammer when it doesn't work like I want it to.
No, I just went into Microsoft Word and typed up the format as it appeared in the book. I copy and paste the blank template into whatever new document I'm working on, and proceed to fill it out. Sorry to disappoint with my technical illiteracy!
Heh. I too try to appease, threaten, and cajole the techno-devil. I was just hoping for the labor-saving techniques that I know are possible. (I once had a scanner with good text recognition software, but sent it with my kid when she moved.)
As fairly new GM I have found that the PHBII has a fairly valuable chart in the back that makes generating NPC's with their equipment a lot easier. Until I got the internet and a strange piece of equipment that I barely know how to turn on that was my most useful source of generating NPC's.
There is a lot of good information here. I wish to thank you all for sharing your expertise and opinions.
Just my 2 cp.
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Thanks, Silverhair. (Pgs.207-221 for those scoring at home.)
Game Execution > Examples > 7 Different Ways to Start Your Game Session...
There are several ways to get your game session started, as a new game master, you may not have considered different ways to begin, nor the benefits of each:
- "As You Last Remember..." - For decades, I started the game with, "As you last remember... you were... and you... then the party...", basically this is a recap of the previous session. The twist to a recap is having one of the players recap the last session or sessions. Say, "As you last remember..." and then pause, looking to the players to fill in the story. This helpful reminder is an important way to start a game session, helping players (especially newer ones) remember the who, what, when, where, why, about your adventure, the setting, the situation, or each other.
- "All Of A Sudden..." - This usually follows the reacap. However, I've had some success starting the evening with, "After some time resting at the monestery, you all find yourselves in the mess hall during a silent meal with the cloistered priests. When... all of a sudden, a great tremor begins to shake the oaken table where you eat, and a shadow passes beyond the stained glass windows that causes temporary darkness in the chamber.... Ohh.. players seem to LOVE this on occasion.
- "Wonder Years Voiceover" - Its a lot of fun sometimes to pop in the Vox Arcana, gregorian chant, or other favorite fantasy music bit (such as Radiorenaissance.com), and begin a prepared voiceover, or a spontaneous voice-over if you're good at it. Imagine hearing an exerpt from the Legends of the Fall soundtrack when the GM says, "You have all come... searching for something... in this new land. Your travels take you past fields of wheat, and rolling hills of tall grasses.... On this gentle clear skyed morning, you step slowly down a grassy hill and see the still slumbering town of Brenford before you. Tiny whisps of dark chimney smoke billow steadily from a few houses, from where the smell of breakfast comes... " Okay you get the idea. You're basically setting the stage of peace and serenity (especially good if you're about to destroy the village with a dragon, or the White Faced Orcs are coming to murder every last human.) Music is great for either establishing the tone of the session or establishing a purposeful contrast - one that you plan to quickly break. Drama and humor are all based in contrasts - but that's another discussion.
On another day you might play Blood of the Dragon, or some haunting music and describe, "As you make your way down the dungeon hall beneath the Palace of Skulls, you hear the dripping of water, and hear the crumble of stone fragments beneath your boots. The walls glow eerily with a greenish moss, and bloodred lines seem to thread through the stone like veins..." Again, you get the idea.
Remember to reduce the volume of the music after your intro, and try to keep your intro long enough to set the mood, but brief enough to engage the PCs quickly. - "The Seinfeld 4-Way" - I love this one. Quickly provide different scenarios (maybe 3 or 4 different ones) to the players. Start each character in a different place, but keep this moving fast, whatever it is. Then, ahead of time, identify what the key session trigger event is. Allow each player to have about 2-3 minutes of 1:1 time with you at the table, but quickly, and moving and jumping scenes back and forth between one player and another, again very fast. This will create an energy level and anticipation for the evening's session. Then - like a good Seinfeld episode, quickly pull all the threads together, and bring the PCs together with focus on the adventure that ties the individual stories together!
- "The False Start" - Here is a technique that's pretty old school. Say your players are chatting, laughing, not yet ready to start the game. Rather than abruptly stop everyone with an awkward whine about getting started, try asking one player, "Oh... okay, so what do you do once you get back from the caves?" This draws one player, and likely 1-2 near them into whatever you're talking about. Soon, the table realizes that you have started... but about 1/2 will talk a little bit longer. What's cool about this "false start" is that it shows you are ready to go. Then, let the players continue to talk, and I almost guarantee that someone will say, "Hey, we started. C'mon guys. Let's play." The value of this "false start" is you're not beginning with anything important, but you're gently starting, then stopping, then developing, over time, a group that will become self-monitoring when game time comes!
- "COMBAT! - Literally, say, "Top of round 5," and begin. (Critics will say its bad to stop a game mid-combat and they're generally right, but as players grow older.. mid-thirties+... this no longer becomes an issue since everyone knows schedules are tight and folks may not be able to play late or stay after sometimes to finish combats if the game runs over designated end times.
Additionally, if you have not started combat, but described the next eerie place, or vaulted romanesque arch beneath the Palace of Skulls - then now is the time to start your session with "WHAM! You hear a clatter of armored feet moving toward you, roll for initiative!" This gets your evening started FAST! And, if you try this, you will be surprised that the players tend to feel very fulfilled by the end of the session. A session that begins with combat, tends to feel very full. - "24" - Litterally pick up the game mid-swing, mid-sentence, or otherwise the very next minute from where the game stopped. This technique causes an immediate start, and the feeling that players are in an episode of Sutherland's 24. Taken to an extreme, your players might advance 8 levels over the course of 1.5 years, but the game calendar only moved 14 weeks (a little over 3 months). This style is best used for game masters who choose to deliver a rich, lavishly dressed game setting where players value high role-play, description, and nuance of character development.
- "Silence" - When the game master is very still, with eyes focused out ward toward the players, looking around the room to each one, the players will generally get silent for you to begin. This is especially good when the beginning of your adventure is a somber one. A death, a murder, an injustice of some kind... these are the ones for which I'll use the silence technique to bring the mood very still and grim as I explain that, "The Margrave's daugher was murdered in her sleep last night. And this morning when you awake you instantly hear townsfolk openly weeping at the news, for she was beloved by all."
There are many, many ways to get started. Do what feels right for you. None of the above are needed, nor essential. They are just... different.
There are countless ways to begin that overlap with adventure writing, such as, "You're all in a tavern," or "A letter arrives..." or simply asking what does the party want to do next?
If you are a new gamemaster and found this helpful, please let me know.
Good stuff, Pax. Even if you're not a new GM, there's likely some reminders and some untried tactics here.
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Good stuff, good stuff here indeed.
Pax, have you ever heard of RoleplayingTips.Com?
It's chock full of gooey gamy goodness, especially on things like "keeping combat moving" "designing NPCs/Adventures" and "managing troublesome players"
Check it out, I'm sure you'll be able to pull some stuff into your work here.
-t
I wish to thank you all for sharing your expertise and opinions.
For what it's worth, you seem to have picked up most of this on your own within a few sessions... at least, if the few sessions I got to play with you as DM were any indication.
Kirth, Thanks for the vote of confidence. I have been trying to improve my skills as a GM by reading, listening to other GM's, and playing with some great ones (Kirth and Houstonderek come to mind), some good ones, and some questionable ones. I look forward to the time we can get back at the table again.
Just my 2 cp.
I have been trying to improve my skills as a GM by reading, listening to other GM's, and playing with some great ones, some good ones, and some questionable ones.
:) Sometimes you learn more from the lousy ones, kind of a "what not to do" example.
One recommendation -- have you ever tried writing original adventures? It's a good way to learn to gauge difficulties and how things will run. Write an adventure, playtest it with some "throwaway" characters (preferrably with other players, but you can run the sample guys and make reasonable decisions on their behalf if need be), and see how things go -- what encounters were unbalanced? Which parts lagged, or didn't advance the action at all? What things sounded cool but turned out to be a pain in the neck to run?
A really good DM, even if he uses mostly prewritten modules, will still modify them to fit the specific group playing -- as I undertand you did with LB2? Knowing much to tweak them, and in what directions, is often difficult.
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Get one of the players to be the initiatives caller, to keep the combat flowing. Free yourself up as the DM as much as you can.
Put in situations that use the odd quirky skills that some players have. That craft (needlework) may come in handy when the party are trying to enter a castle where all the ladies-in-waiting do needlepoint. This sort of thing gives everyone a breather from combat and allows the PC's to grow to know each other better. It often makes the most memorable moments. We have a dwarf with stonecunning who cannot even build a wall, much less try to make weapons or armour. The elves love it.
Think about how much time you have to play in an evening and try to work what is likely to happen. The more you prepare, the more you can handle the unexpected. This helps as well when you want to finish a session in a good place, preferably not an anticlimax. This one comes together with practice.
See if you can get your hands on the Dungeon Masters Design Kit. Its very old but very good when you are stuck in a rut creating the next adventure. It uses dice to randomly determine everything and you just let your imagination fly.
There are many other older but still good books, relevant for 3.5E.
Cheers
I haven't posted in a while.... I've been eating, sleeping and breathing the Gygaxian and FR threads.... but here is something very cute to have a look at...
enjoy.
Fixed.
Don't be afraid to alter your plans.
A scenario from my game:
Currently: The players had stopped just outside a small abandoned local mine where they had tracked the safe robbers too.
What was to be: They would go in have a mini dungeon crawl and find hooligans belonging to the judge with the safe.
I then reread my planned material and thought "can I make this more interesting?". I realized that my planned scenario was not open to as many story branching possibilities as i would like and that it was too generic in flavour.
What is to be now: Now they are going to go in and find a bloody crime scene where the thugs died in seeming terror of something nasty (Paizo bugbear).
I'm adding to the creepiness of the dark caves and the terror hunting the area by having some gremlins be in the cave to add weird tracks, chew marks on the bodies, add noises, etc.
Just like any writer, reread your work (if you have time) and don't be afraid to redo some of it if you can make it better.
Fixed.I haven't posted in a while.... I've been eating, sleeping and breathing the Gygaxian and FR threads.... but here is something very cute to have a look at...
enjoy.
Fixed for outside the US.
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When I play I'm a pretty immersed player. I get most my joy out of creating or moving through a world and exploring it as if it were real. Personally I hate campaigns that are linear or railroaded. Its not hard for me to sense when my choices aren't really mine and it makes the world a lot less "real" to me. The sense that I have control over my character's fate disappears. "What's the point?" is my feeling.
In some cases its a necessary art .. the DM is dying to use his new material, too tired to want to create new paths, etc. The best solution imo though is to have enough detail and plot lines in the PCs immediate environment that no railroading is necessary. Develop enough material to make the plots solid and interesting ... but not fully fleshed unless the PCs commit to them.
Certainly this requires a bit more work. Excess work can be averted to a large degree though by determining the PCs intentions at the end of each session and developing the world based on that direction before the next session.
I suppose I'm of the opinion that the PCs should choose the direction of the story and the DM should provide enough playground for them to do so...
We say the same thing. As a player I am immersive as well. My characters often make choices before I as a player have thought them through, and I follow the impetus of the character.
As a GM I continually develop lots of fungible objects of story to plug and play wherever it becomes necessary. The conceit, however, is that I never let my players know the difference between what I had planned or what I improvised, or what I only had a light framework for.
That's the secret... and this extends to even after the game, and supercedes friendships. A great GM, like a great magician, never tells those secrets.
But absolutely. In my games there is both no perception of railroading, nor any need for me to railroad, because of the extensive ready-to-go worldbuilding I do.
And, if I could just find a great GM who does the same, I could be a player more often.
On those rare occasions, I'm prepared, however, to pull out the smoke and mirrors as necessary. But they'll never know the difference.
After putting in the time of preparing, sometimes I can coast for weeks and weeks off the same bowl of semi-planned ideas. Again, the players don't know the difference.