Some common thing seems to be the impression that:
* all magic must be dumped or really suppressed
* no one wants to play a realistic one,if they did they would just play gurps or a similar systemI don't totally agree with either of those.
After all, fantasy magic in a medieval setting was found often in tales of King Athur that were actually written in the 14th-16th centuries. So if they fantasized about it, so can we. Just treat it like Merlin is=very, very rare, and influential. In a more recent example, you look at the LOTR movies, Gandalf doesn't go crazy with fireballs but can drive away fel beasts, create a protective sphere against the Balrog and then shatter a dwarf built bridge.As for nobody wanting to play it in D20...you would need a good, solid gaming group with open minds. If you only play "kill & take their stuff" and never actually interact with NPC's or the setting, then yea, stick with over the top fantasy.
Good for you. Ignore the nay-sayers. Given that you've said you want to use Pathfinder, telling you to use another system is about as useful and on-topic as someone coming to these boards to tell us that we should be playing baseball instead of RPGs. Do people really not get that?
One suggestion I have is to use the NPC classes as backgrounds.
Have everyone start with 3 levels in an NPC class to link them to the medieval era. Of course you would have to tinker with the commoner who is wayyyy to weak (although accurate for a half-starved peasant) and for PC's I would suggest the simple expedient of PC commoner's getting d12's for HD and proficiency with the longbow. I justify this by the fact that if he is adventuring with nobles then he is probably a soldier since many commoners often served as footsoldiers in medieval times. Footsoldiers never got the credit they are due in contemporary accounts.
If someone really wants to start as a commoner, how about letting them take a few extra levels to balance things out? Proficiency with the longbow can be had with a feat, which isn't so bad with the extra levels.
I've heard of a campaign where PC started with NPC classes, but the classes where then "upgraded" to PC classes as they got trained.
In other words, they where still level 1, but went from warrior to fighter and expert to rogue etc. If I remember, the adept decided to keep progressing as such and the aristocrat kept his first level as an aristocrat and then multiclassed as paladin (or was it ranger?). They seemed to be having good times with the game.
Good for you. Ignore the nay-sayers. Given that you've said you want to use Pathfinder, telling you to use another system is about as useful and on-topic as someone coming to these boards to tell us that we should be playing baseball instead of RPGs. Do people really not get that?As for nobody wanting to play it in D20...you would need a good, solid gaming group with open minds. If you only play "kill & take their stuff" and never actually interact with NPC's or the setting, then yea, stick with over the top fantasy.
No, actually.
We're not saying 'play baseball instead of RPGs'. We're saying 'play a different RPG', not saying 'don't play an RPG at all'.
Think about your kitchen knife drawer. You have different knives for different tasks. Pathfinder is a great knife for the task it's suited to: Escalating High Fantasy with Gobs of Magic Items.
But Pathfinder (with the assumption of The Big Six items, daily spell casting, and spells like Purify Food & Drink being at will castings) breaks so much of the underlying economics that make a medieval setting feel medieval that it's crazy.
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What would you do to make a more "realistic" medieval setting?
Step 1: Look inside yourself and realize that people's perceptions of the medieval period are wrong and biased.
Step 2: Realize that in order for the game to have magic, it has to have some sort of unknown science behind it.
Step 3: Build interesting and dramatic characters, and populate a near-featureless world with them, and then let them develop into an interesting setting.
Profit.
LARP?
Given that you've said you want to use Pathfinder, telling you to use another system is about as useful and on-topic as someone coming to these boards to tell us that we should be playing baseball instead of RPGs. Do people really not get that?No, actually.
We're not saying 'play baseball instead of RPGs'. We're saying 'play a different RPG', not saying 'don't play an RPG at all'.
Think about your kitchen knife drawer. You have different knives for different tasks.
I like to see Pathfinder as an ensemble of knife, to continue with you metaphor. The game can be played without magic at all. Not against many of the creatures included in the Bestiary, not in a published adventure path, but it could. The game can also be played by ignoring most of the element of the system past level 6th, or 10th, or 2 for that matter. Whether it suits your taste is another question, but it could played just like that. So while it can be nice to have the butcher knife, you don't have to use it.
To continue with the knife metaphor, it also depends on what you're about to cut. An other knife might be better suited if you are ready to spend time and money to go to the store and buy another kitchen accessory, but perhaps the job can be done well enough with the knife you own, even if it needs some more sharpening.
In this case the OP stated that he still wanted to play fantasy, but in a setting closer to medieval Europe:
Some key points--
* Note I used "realistic feeling" not "realistic". So big huge changes are out. For now let us all assume we use Pathfinder as a starting point, and add or subtract from that.
* Make it multiple medieval cultures that can be encountered in Europe and the Mediteranean sea...so Byzantium and the Ottoman empire are also fair game, as are the Hordes out of Asia, but no Chinese or Japanese elements.
* Lets make it more realistic, but remember it is still fantasy
emphasis mine
So yeah, I see a big difference between "this game will have good pointers for you" and "don't play Pathfinder". I also see and understand that some people don't like to modify the rules and haphazardly adjust as they go. I also see and understand that some people and 3rd party companies have spent a lot of energy creating a game that might suit you, if you care to give it a chance. But as with anything else, it always annoying to be told "you're doing it wrong".
[edit] which I realized after re-reading my post that that's pretty much what I'm telling you AdAstra. In reality though, I never meant this message to be a personal attack, and I hope you won't see it as such.
'findel
Regarding the Big 6, and keeping in mind the analysis is of 3.5 rather than PF, Trailblazer's opening sections do a fabulous job of breaking down the "spine" of the game system and showing that the Big 6 are not as necessary as so widely assumed. PF is, IMO, close to 3.5 that the analysis carries over with caveats.
The Big 6's alleged necessity can be done away with via something as simple as a robust system for action points.
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Do you want a medieval Europe setting for Pathfinder? Or do you want to inject a little medieval-esque feeling into a current setting. I'll try to make suggestions that will benefit both, but there really is a big difference! Also, is there a specific time period you'd like to draw from? Do you intend to set this in a town/city? Or in the country? It makes a big difference.
1) You need to increase the level of any spell that makes life really easy. Prestidigitation, Create Water, and Purify Food & Drink need to be level 1's, at least.
2) You may wish to limit magic or magic-using classes. Perhaps limit each cantrip to 3/day instead of at will. Perhaps eliminate all full casters entirely, so that a party has to rely on paladins for divine healing. You may wish to allow alchemists instead; they are perfectly medieval, in spite of their seemingly steampunk origins.
3) Limit the acquisition of magic items.
4) Give the party a reputation, which depends on their actions in the town.
2) You may wish to limit magic or magic-using classes. Perhaps limit each cantrip to 3/day instead of at will. Perhaps eliminate all full casters entirely, so that a party has to rely on paladins for divine healing. You may wish to allow alchemists instead; they are perfectly medieval, in spite of their seemingly steampunk origins.
One thing I've done in the past with shorter campaigns is requiring that all full casters be multiclassed with their full caster level never to exceed the total of their other levels by more than 1. Thus, you could have a wizard 3/rogue 2, but not a wizard 4/rogue 2. Multiclassing with more than one full caster class was prohibited. So, no wizard/cleric, for example.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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High lethality helps. The abovementioned CON hp at level 1 plus 1 hp per BAB works. Setting a low massive damage threshold also works (say, CON). Having crits do CON damage with no multiplier also works. You shouldn't use all 3 methods, but the basic idea of making combat seriously scary helps realism enormously.
I did a no-magic (for PCs anyways, the monotheistic dominant religion outlawed magic), moderate-psionic, semi-medieval campaign like you descibe a few years ago. Most countries had real-world analogues, although some were conflated: Arante was Charlemagne France + Morte d'Arthur Britain, Cadria was Byzantium/post-Imperial Rome, Inverradas was Ferdinand & Isabella Spain + Medici Italy, etc. PCs were all humans, but each nationality had its own human "subrace" with different stat modifiers. Each subrace also had an additional favored class reflecting a genetic predisposition to psionic ability of a particular discipline: Arantois tended to produce psychokinetics, Inverradan psions were usually psychoportives, etc. Human subraces are good for player choice, but you have to be careful not to go all racist stereotype with it.
1) You need to increase the level of any spell that makes life really easy. Prestidigitation, Create Water, and Purify Food & Drink need to be level 1's, at least.
These sorts of things are often exposed as illusions in medieval folklore and literature. They "wear off." Unless they are cleric spells... i.e., G-d's will.
Nonhumans do appear in Medieval folklore and legend in "PC" slots, but they are rare. There are Dwarf knights in Arthurian stories, as well as (many) characters from the Aos Sidhe/Plant Don (including Guenevere-- her father is a giant/fey in Welsh sources). Talking animals and giants also serve as heroes.
Some medieval literature/theology rationalized everyone as a demon/devil or human, but that's not what most folk probably believed.
So, if your grit is historical, this would be a perception most people have of strange looking PCs who are human; or if your grit is "authentic color from legend" they should be severely rationed, but allowed.
I also have to agree that PF or D&D 3.5 can be suitable for a more realistic medieval setting. I like to think of PF as a generic medieval fantasy game, adaptable to a wide range of settings.
Lots of posters are pointing to a low-magic setting, and I agree. In addition to making magic items rare, what about also limiting the available spells? In other words, a beginning wizard couldn't pick any 0 or 1st level spells from the Core Rulebook; instead, only a few such spells are known.
And, if you like this idea, I'd lean towards using stuff mostly from the Divination group or perhaps Enchantment. In fact, the potent combat oriented Evocation spells could be a great basis for adventure ... in that you're trying to unearth forgotten knowledge.
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A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age by William Manchester. Available in paperback.
Terry Jones' Medieval Lives by Terry Jones. Available in paperback and a DVD series.
Conquest with Peter Woodward. Documentary series on the History Channel. Especially the episodes about medieval and renaissance weapons.
Too bad they are so hard to model without running into logical problems and paradoxes.
Really? Just paging through the low level divination spells, I don't see anything particularly hard to model myself. Maybe Clairaudience/Clairvoyance would be tricky ... I dunno.
Good for you. Ignore the nay-sayers. Given that you've said you want to use Pathfinder, telling you to use another system is about as useful and on-topic as someone coming to these boards to tell us that we should be playing baseball instead of RPGs. Do people really not get that?As for nobody wanting to play it in D20...you would need a good, solid gaming group with open minds. If you only play "kill & take their stuff" and never actually interact with NPC's or the setting, then yea, stick with over the top fantasy.
No, actually.
We're not saying 'play baseball instead of RPGs'. We're saying 'play a different RPG', not saying 'don't play an RPG at all'.
If you actually read what I wrote, I was making a comparison in how useful and on-topic such comments are. I did not claim that anyone made a comment about baseball in this thread.
Think about your kitchen knife drawer. You have different knives for different tasks. Pathfinder is a great knife for the task it's suited to: Escalating High Fantasy with Gobs of Magic Items.
But Pathfinder (with the assumption of The Big Six items, daily spell casting, and spells like Purify Food & Drink being at will castings) breaks so much of the underlying economics that make a medieval setting feel medieval that it's crazy.
As Laurefindel said, Pathfinder is more like a set of knives. It does all the things that 3.5 did (and more), and I have often used 3.5 with low magic and even no magic games. It was perfectly playable, and the modifications were pretty easy.
A much better pop-history alternative (with better scholarship) is Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century.
Hear, hear.
Stay away from any book that pimps the premise that the Middle Ages (itself a derogatory term coined by agenda-driven writers) were a time of barbarity and darkness when compared to the so-called Enlightenment.
For a challenging insight into the medieval mind, check out Thomas Howard's Chance of the Dance. Don't let it's subtitle throw you. It's not a religious polemic, but rather more like a long comparison-contrast essay.
Mark L. Chance | Spes Magna Games
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A much better pop-history alternative (with better scholarship) is Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century. I have two degrees in medieval history and Manchester's book is one of the few that I wanted to physically abuse.
Agreed, having read both. I have even used some of the details of the behavior for one of the historical knights in a Distant Mirroe for one of the villains in my game.
I also recomend the 'The Pillars of the Earth' miniseries running on Starz right now and available on netflix.
All the best,
Kerney
So yeah, I see a big difference between "this game will have good pointers for you" and "don't play Pathfinder". I also see and understand that some people don't like to modify the rules and haphazardly adjust as they go. I also see and understand that some people and 3rd party companies have spent a lot of energy creating a game that might suit you, if you care to give it a chance. But as with anything else, it always annoying to be told "you're doing it wrong".
[edit] which I realized after re-reading my post that that's pretty much what I'm telling you AdAstra. In reality though, I never meant this message to be a personal attack, and I hope you won't see it as such.
Laurafindel, I appreciate the last comment.
You apparently missed my other posts in this thread where I gave some specific guidance, including mechanical recommendations, and asked some pretty specific questions about what the original poster actually wanted out of his game.
You can run ANY setting in ANY system, if you're willing to put enough work into it. Sometimes the extra work to customize Pathfinder to what you want is more than it would take to use a different game engine.
There are lots of game engines out there that are A) freely downloadable and B) handle 'gritty, low magic' fantasy better than Pathfinder.
Here are links to two:
I'll note that the amount of reading you'll have to do for EITHER of these games is less than what you'd have to do to decide what to trim out of the Pathfinder RPG to make this work.