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This question is for for those who cracked open the four pound tome that is the Pathfinder Core book and started (re)started their Pathfinder campaign. What did your players think of their PCs? Have the similarities/differences found in the Gamemastery section affected your running the game? I won't be running my first game with the new ruleset until a local convention, and a Pathfinder scenario at that.
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Well, we are starting our new campaign with the final rules on Sunday, so this session the players started mulling over options.
There was a great hue and cry over clerics losing heavy armor, and they think it's far worse than just (effectively) losing 2 points of AC. I told them wait and see.
The players seem pretty excited over the diviner specialty wizard of all things.
Someone mentioned they might play a bard, and they received a lot of leftover 3.5 incredulity. He might still go ahead with it, though.
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My first session using the Pathfinder RPG core rulebook was yesterday afternoon running my players through a Pathfinder Society Season 0 scenario converted on the fly from OGL to PFRPG using the Conversion Guide.
My players had nothing but praise for the new rules.
I know I'm still digesting all the changes, and it's easy to overlook things and assume they work the same as they did in 3.5. For example, none of my players seemed to be aware of 1 hit point or 1 skill point for taking a favoured class level. When the half-orc went down, we forgot he could have used orc ferocity to continue fighting for one more round.
The Chelaxian sorcerer player enjoyed choosing a bloodline - was almost going to go play against-type with Celestial, but settled on Draconic instead. He made use of Bloodline Arcana (+1 to each dice of draconic energy type damage) and claws.
Although it didn't come out during play, the Paladin player talked up her mercies on a few occasions.
The characters seemed capable of achieving more with the consolidated skill list, and the sorcerer seemed to last a little longer before having to pull out the crossbow.
There were two grapple encounters, one with a bear, the other with a constrictor snake. As a long-time Monk player, I was surprised how easily CMB/CMD handled both these encounters.
The poor Paladin got grappled on both occasions. She managed to beat the bears CMD and break free of his grapple, but wasn't so lucky with the constrictor, her CMB wasn't high enough to ever beat the snake's CMD, so it was kill the snake to break free before it squeezes the life out of you! which made the the two grapple encounters play out quite differently, with the contrictor encounter having quite the sense of urgency!
The contrictor had already taken out one character before grappling the Paladin. After a round or two of constriction damage, the scene was looking pretty bleak, until the Paladin let loose a channel burst, healing herself, bringing her fallen comrade back to health, while also returning some health to the damaged snake, but bringing a fallen combatant back into the fight helped turn the tide.
These examples really only scratched the surface, and I'm sure each session will bring up new surprises.
I could easily have used the original 3.5 stats for each encounter, but decided converting would help familiarise myself with the new rules, and I'd have to run them as PFRPG at GenConOz next month anyway. I wanted to make conversion notes prior to running the session, but procrastinated, and ended up converting on-the-fly during the game. It wasn't too difficult, but did slow the game up in a few places. I'd recommend going through an adventure and making any conversion notes prior to running the session, unless you were very familiar with the conversion process (eg, had done it for a few previous adventures already).
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I have the odd situation of being a 30-year-old DM with a group of 6 people in their 50s and 60s who were recruited by my father, who's a D&D fan himself. As such, they enjoy the stories and even have fun rolling, but they aren't big on rules analysis. They tend to play whatever system I put in front of them, and only one of them even has a copy of the rules (the closest thing to an "optimizer" in the group) .... the rest rely on their character sheets and what I tell them.
So, they pretty much greeted the new rules with a shrug and asked when the next session would be. But my group is EXTREMELY atypical, methinks.
Let's exchange: Your casual players for my min-maxing, power-gaming, tactically-oriented group D&D RPGA who'll argue for several minutes on which rogue build sucks if taken with which powers from each new book/update from DDI. ^_^
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There were two grapple encounters, one with a bear, the other with a constrictor snake. As a long-time monk player, I was surprised how easily CMB/CMD handled both these encounters.The poor cleric got grappled on both occasions. She managed to beat the bears CMD and break free of his grapple, but wasn't so lucky with the constrictor, her CMB wasn't high enough to ever beat the snakes CMD, so it was kill the snake to break free before it squeezes the life out of you! which made the the two grapple encounters play out quite differently, with the contrictor encounter having quite the sense of urgency!
Nice. The few times I've seen grapple and those rules used in games, it was either 1) the PC was min-max to the point it was useless or 2) PC's out of picture.
The contrictor had already taken out one character before grappling the cleric. After a round or two of constriction damage, the scene was looking pretty bleak, until the cleric decided to do a channel burst, healing herself, bringing her fallen comrade back to health, while also returning some health to the damaged snake, but bringing a fallen combatant back into the fight helped turn the tide.
W00t!
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I could easily have used the original 3.5 stats for each encounter, but decided converting would help familiarise myself with the new rules, and I'd have to run them as PFRPG at GenConOz next month anyway. I wanted to make conversion notes prior to running the session, but procrastinated, and ended up converting on-the-fly during the game. It wasn't too difficult, but did slow the game up in a few places. I'd recommend going through an adventure and making any conversion notes prior to running the session, unless you were very familiar with the conversion process (eg, had done it for a few previous adventures already).
Hey, we sound on the same boat. I'll be running two PFS mods at the upcoming Strategicon.
Anything in particular that looked radically different?
Okay, technically my first post on the boards, but...that's beside the point. I've avoided discussions before this one because I hate the Flame Wars that ensue.
That said, my players love the changes so far. I've only been gaming with my current group for about 7 months now, so they're a bit different from most, but last session we converted from the Beta to the final version of Pathfinder. After having looked through the book, one of my players, a fellow GM who had said that he would never buy another system again, has said that he wants to buy the Core Rulebook, which I consider a success. One of my players is excited to build a Tiefling Rogue Shadowdancer, planning to pattern the character off of Nightcrawler. But overall, everyone was happy with it.
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Okay, technically my first post on the boards, but...that's beside the point. I've avoided discussions before this one because I hate the Flame Wars that ensue.
Your first post? Coolio! *Gives fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies to Cydeth. Note they are lactose, gluten-free.*
That said, my players love the changes so far. I've only been gaming with my current group for about 7 months now, so they're a bit different from most, but last session we converted from the Beta to the final version of Pathfinder. After having looked through the book, one of my players, a fellow GM who had said that he would never buy another system again, has said that he wants to buy the Core Rulebook, which I consider a success. One of my players is excited to build a Tiefling Rogue Shadowdancer, planning to pattern the character off of Nightcrawler. But overall, everyone was happy with it.
Sweet. Thanks for sharing. Are you running a published module or adventure path? Or your own stuff?
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Hey, we sound on the same boat. I'll be running two PFS mods at the upcoming Strategicon.
Anything in particular that looked radically different?
I didn't have any NPCs to convert, it was all creatures. Most converted over pretty easily, it was usually just a matter of adding/subtracting hit points per hit dice depending on creature type, and these can easily be done on-the-fly.
The one that caused me the most grief was applying the skeleton template from the free Bestiary preview to an OGL Owlbear - applying templates on-the-fly during game is not fun.
The other shakey moment was trying to convert poison frequency and damage. This probably shouldn't have been as difficult as it turned out to be, only because I was trying to make sense of the Conversion Guide while my players were all talking loudly around me, failed my Concentration check.
You know, if I was running an Adventure Path instead of a Pathfinder Society scenario, I would probably have run it as written with no conversion. But I felt that players coming to GenConOz are going to expect a PFRPG experience even if they're playing a Season 0 scenario, so I had better learn to do the conversions.
Sweet. Thanks for sharing. Are you running a published module or adventure path? Or your own stuff?
I'm running two games, actually. I'm working on my own 'Adventure Path' on the side, but it's nowhere near ready yet, as I'm waiting for the Bestiary to finish it...crap, rambling again.
The first game, and the longer running of the two, is Rise of the Runelords. We're at the beginning of The Hook mountain Massacre, or at least close enough as makes no difference. I have 6 players, including a dwarven fighter who replaced the druid that got eaten by a tendriculos, a confused cleric of Shelyn/Calistra, a halfling rogue patterned after Captain Jack Sparrow, a human ranger who loved hunting goblins in AP #1, a Celestial Bloodline Sorceress, and a female Monk who joined when her brother was killed in AP #1 by a bunyip. It's a blast, overall.
The second game is Cormyr: The Rending of the Weave, which I intend to link into City of the Spider Queen after we've run through. We have a paladin of Sune, a tiefling rogue, a drow ranger, and a human dragon-blooded sorcerer in that game. They nearly got wiped out in the first encounter though.
But in both games I'm altering things to make them more fun, and potentially add more quests after the modules themselves are done.
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My group is currently playing through LoF and CotCT and we converted our characters for LoF as soon as the new book was in our hands. I'm a player in both game and I can say its been pretty well loved by our group. The opinions of the different LoF players:
Our Human Fighter/Rogue/Dervish didn't have too much to change from the Beta so she still doesn't have much of an opinion on the changes yet. (I'm sure that will change this weekend when we do our CotCT game where she's a monk.)
Our Human Fighter/Living Monolith had to change some feats with the loss of Overhand Chop/Backswing but he changed it for Vital Strike since the BAB requirement went down and he's been loving it. Its really increased his damage output.
Our Human Monk also wound up gaining Vital Strike due to gaining Stunning Fist for free now and is happy about the new Flurry.
Our Human Rogue has taken the Trap Spotter and awaits its use in the near future.
Our Dwarven Cleric is the only one who wasn't all that happy with all the changes. He lost his heavy armor and he had the Travel domain and lost some of the usefulness of that ability. Though he does like having bonus spells again.
Finally, I was playing a Human Wizard and my DM let me pick a specialty since Generalist lost their bonus spells. I chose Diviner and couldn't be happier.
So for the most part we have very happy players with the new rules and we can't wait to test out some of the other classes in future games.
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I didn't have any NPCs to convert, it was all creatures. Most converted over pretty easily, it was usually just a matter of adding/subtracting hit points per hit dice depending on creature type, and these can easily be done on-the-fly.Hey, we sound on the same boat. I'll be running two PFS mods at the upcoming Strategicon.
Anything in particular that looked radically different?
That's good to hear.
The one that caused me the most grief was applying the skeleton template from the free Bestiary preview to an OGL Owlbear - applying templates on-the-fly during game is not fun.
*Scribbles notes*
The other shakey moment was trying to convert poison damage and duration. This probably shouldn't have been as difficult as it turned out to be, only because I was trying to make sense of the Conversion Guide while my players were all talking loudly around me, failed my Concentration check.
LOL. Especially since the skill's gone. ^_^
You know, if I was running an Adventure Path instead of a Pathfinder Society scenario, I would probably have run it as written with no conversion. But I felt that players coming to GenConOz are going to expect a PFRPG experience even if they're playing a Season 0 scenario, so I had better learn to do the conversions.
I know the feeling. However, based from my experience with the RPGA, I know there will be players at my tables who'll know the rules better than me and will be more than happy to point the discrepancies outloud.
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Hey Joela,
Upon reading Josh's comments in the Pathfinder Society Rules 2.0 F.A.Q. thread, I won't be converting Season 0 scenarios I'll be running at GenConOz, except where a) required (CMB/CMD); b) easy to do on the fly; or c) I feel it's appropriate to do so.
Nowhere have I indicated that you MUST convert a 3.5 scenario to be able to run it. In fact, I've stated the opposite. Please do NOT feel that you have to convert anything. These scenarios should be run as is since PRPG is backward compatible with 3.5.