I'm preparing to run my first Pathfinder game. I've been out of RPG since 3.0. We are still about 3 weeks off from character creation sessions, but already players are asking about availalbe traits. I'm sure feats will come next.
I'm concerned about balance as 3.0 has some greatly game breaking abilities pretty early on.
I find that as players ask, "What about this trait?" When I look up whether the Pathfinder Society allows it, it does not. We are NOT playing Pathfinder Society. We are just playing an Adventure Path campaign.
I was under the impression most Pathfinder products were heavily playtested for balance issues. But it seems all the things my players want are from the banned list of Pathfinder Society, from traits to feats and even one piece of equipment. When I say no, they move on to another banned trait or feat or equipmetn.
So my ultimate question is: "Would using the Pathfinder Society's guidelines for allowable traits, feats and equipment be good for maintaining balance in my campaign or is that too harsh?"
Thanks in advance.
I'm preparing to run my first Pathfinder game. I've been out of RPG since 3.0. We are still about 3 weeks off from character creation sessions, but already players are asking about availalbe traits. I'm sure feats will come next.
I'm concerned about balance as 3.0 has some greatly game breaking abilities pretty early on.
I find that as players ask, "What about this trait?" When I look up whether the Pathfinder Society allows it, it does not. We are NOT playing Pathfinder Society. We are just playing an Adventure Path campaign.
I was under the impression most Pathfinder products were heavily playtested for balance issues. But it seems all the things my players want are from the banned list of Pathfinder Society, from traits to feats and even one piece of equipment. When I say no, they move on to another banned trait or feat or equipmetn.
So my ultimate question is: "Would using the Pathfinder Society's guidelines for allowable traits, feats and equipment be good for maintaining balance in my campaign or is that too harsh?"
Thanks in advance.
Society is very strict because it has to be in order to allow for everyone to play in it. I would not play in such as home based campaign. I will say that if you are new to the game some things will seem broken until you find a way to deal with them. If your players are kicking your butt come here for ways to counter them. I would not allow any 3.5 splat until you got Pathfinder down pretty well.
So my ultimate question is: "Would using the Pathfinder Society's guidelines for allowable traits, feats and equipment be good for maintaining balance in my campaign or is that too harsh?"
Thanks in advance.
Organised public play is a vastly different beast from table top gaming with a group of good friends.
My suggestions is play PFRPG as is. There are many reasons why those things are not allowed in the PFS play but I doubt they should be problematic in a home game with a consistant referee.
In case they may become problematic tell your players outright that you reserve the right to remove problematic items/feats/rules as you all learn the game, as is the right of any referee.
But I doubt you should have any issues unless you allow players to twist the intent and wording of things to avenues outside your own interpretation.
Organized play (OP)is a bit different than a home campaign. Item creation feats are not allowed in OP due to the inablility to effectively police what is created. Since a home campaign has the advantage of a single GM it is much easier to control what and how often magic items are created. The same thing is true for traits, my favorite trait Magical Knack, is illegal in PFS but a GM may not have a problem with a paladin or ranger casting at level -1 instead of level -3. In the group I play in we use the PFS rules for character creation but allow all feats and traits. Since all but 1 player (me) is active in PFS it does help us with rule compatibility.
Doug
Well if it is anything like LFR from 4e dnd..
Pathfinder Society is like an MMO without computers. Anything that is DM dependent is going to be removed from play.
Like Brew poition, this depends on the DM. Some DMs would allow crafting more than others.
They also remove the evil alignments because there are those players out there who would use them to gank others and pretend it is justified.
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As others have mentioned, Organized Play has a different set of concerns that home play doesn't have to deal with. In regards to the traits you've noted, it would be handy to know which traits in particular you're wondering about.
Most of those excluded provide some kind of monetary bonus for new characters. Those were excluded specifically as to maintain a set of expected gold totals for all characters. Others were excluded because some elements (such as crafting) were removed, and make no sense for characters.
Depending on which you're wondering about, maybe we could provide some insight.
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Your mileage may vary. Most bans in PFS involve the ability to break gold caps; and the point-based rewards ensure magic items are kept at "reasonable" levels. Most of the overpowered builds in these forums rely on magic items that simply don't exist in PFS; the high level stat items, metamagic wands, etc. I like these rules, they make magic items more precious when they are found. Give basic but expanding access on magic items, ban crafting, ban things that give reduced costs at the very least. Then more generously prejudice treasure to help the fighting types; it will keep the game feeling more balanced for a long time to come :).
My opinions on the Pathfinder Society house rules range from "somewhat agree" (e.g. I think the Rich Parents and Heirloom Weapon traits are a little too good) to "strongly disagree" (e.g. I don't believe in mucking around with the price of potions and scrolls in order to fix something that isn't broken) to "irrelevant" (e.g. Reincarnation makes sense to ban in PFS, but not in my home campaign).
So I certainly wouldn't use them all as written, but they're food for thought.
A while back, I played in a Living Greyhawk campaign that was "off the grid". Basically, org-play had finished and the group wanted to play out the scenarios they hadn't been able to do. There were three DMs who shared reffing responsibility and played when they didn't ref. The LG rules helped with the transition and kept everything fair.
How would one go about adapting PFS to that sort of situation? Since there would be no reporting of the games, modifications could be made to the society rules to help character continuity and build plot cohesion, etc. The GM Rewards rules help with groups with multiple GMs, but a lot of the other rules cease to be necessary.
If you were in a situation like this, what would you keep and what would you drop?
Zo
Your mileage may vary. Most bans in PFS involve the ability to break gold caps; and the point-based rewards ensure magic items are kept at "reasonable" levels. Most of the overpowered builds in these forums rely on magic items that simply don't exist in PFS; the high level stat items, metamagic wands, etc. I like these rules, they make magic items more precious when they are found. Give basic but expanding access on magic items, ban crafting, ban things that give reduced costs at the very least. Then more generously prejudice treasure to help the fighting types; it will keep the game feeling more balanced for a long time to come :).
Craft magic items were never a concern for me as a GM in 3.0, b/c despite its (IMO) low XP cost players generally were unwilling to even make the simplist items. With no XP cost my conern is significantly raised b/c I like the wonder that comes with discovering a magic item like in 2.0 and previous editions. I'm going to allow crafting, but I will require items have "special ingredients." We'll see how it goes.
@MisterSlanky: So far the things mentioned by players have been: "Rich Parents" and "Magical Knack". So I banned those and two other traits like "Hedge Wizard" and "Natural Born Leader" at the same time. So two other players were like "Awww...my second choice was Natural Born Leader." And now someone wants "Armor Master." I conceded on the last one. Other mentions are of a want for "Armored Kilt." (Also banned by PFS). It SEEMS like I've got about 3 min-maxers on my hands here and they have the banned PFS list and are going down it. Although I don't know that they are intentially. They may just be picking what they feel are the greatest advantage of traits.
I'm sure more PFS banned options will be asked about as the weeks go on. Seems like the "banned" traits should be more along the feat power rather than trait power, to me anyway.
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"Would using the Pathfinder Society's guidelines for allowable traits, feats and equipment be good for maintaining balance in my campaign or is that too harsh?"
Assuming your primary goal as DM is to maximize your players' fun, which option does a better job at that? If your group gets off having less powerful PCs, then strict it up. If everyone loves wazoo traits and feats then be more lenient.
Your mileage may vary. Most bans in PFS involve the ability to break gold caps; and the point-based rewards ensure magic items are kept at "reasonable" levels. Most of the overpowered builds in these forums rely on magic items that simply don't exist in PFS; the high level stat items, metamagic wands, etc. I like these rules, they make magic items more precious when they are found. Give basic but expanding access on magic items, ban crafting, ban things that give reduced costs at the very least. Then more generously prejudice treasure to help the fighting types; it will keep the game feeling more balanced for a long time to come :).Craft magic items were never a concern for me as a GM in 3.0, b/c despite its (IMO) low XP cost players generally were unwilling to even make the simplist items. With no XP cost my conern is significantly raised b/c I like the wonder that comes with discovering a magic item like in 2.0 and previous editions. I'm going to allow crafting, but I will require items have "special ingredients." We'll see how it goes.
@MisterSlanky: So far the things mentioned by players have been: "Rich Parents" and "Magical Knack". So I banned those and two other traits like "Hedge Wizard" and "Natural Born Leader" at the same time. So two other players were like "Awww...my second choice was Natural Born Leader." And now someone wants "Armor Master." I conceded on the last one. Other mentions are of a want for "Armored Kilt." (Also banned by PFS). It SEEMS like I've got about 3 min-maxers on my hands here and they have the banned PFS list and are going down it. Although I don't know that they are intentially. They may just be picking what they feel are the greatest advantage of traits.
I'm sure more PFS banned options will be asked about as the weeks go on. Seems like the "banned" traits should be more along the feat power rather than trait power, to me anyway.
Rich Parents is a trap. It starts you off ahead, but by the time you get to around 5th or 6th level it won't really matter. A +1 to a save is much more valuable.
Magical Knack is only good for multiclassers, and it does not give them any extra spells in either case.
Hedge Magician is only good for 5%.
Natural-Born Leader is situational so it is not really good either.
They seem to be choosing the crappy ones to be honest.
Using PFS as the standard is not a good idea. As a new DM you will probably get your butt kicked if your players really know the rules, or are optimizers, but right now they are failing Optimization 101.
Edit:Time and Money are the biggest roadblocks to magic item builders. The feats still don't allow them to go above the WBL. The best case scenario is they get customized gear.
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Stop stressing.
If it's core pathfinder then it's all good.
Are you running an AP?
If not I would suggest you look at the traits for them and create 6/7 campaign traits then let everyone pick their other trait as they wish.
Pathfinder does not (so far) have any OMGBROKKEN! feats/traits/spells.
You may have to make a few common-sense calls but that's how all RPGs are.
I would suggest, however, that if you're players are being 'hardcore' on combat stuff then you start them off with a bunch of super-fun RP stuff so that they get some perspective. Also be prepared that they will be looking to 'beat' difficult combats.
Also, start @ 1st level. I find that PFRPG characters are much tougher than 3.x characters, so it will help you get a better feel for how to challenge them if they grow organically level by level, rather than as a higher level "build".
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You know your players better then we do.
The PFS organized play has its restrictions to allow for “universal” play. For example, the item creation feats are out, because as an earlier poster said, they would be very hared if not imposible to police.
PFS is much more “standardized”. Some of the randomness has been removed. Ie point buy for ability scores, and a set progression of hit dice ( average +1)
I do however like the faction system, and how it restricts acess to magic items. It means you have to realy work for something.
But if you are running a home game, I think you can afford to be a bit more permissive then the Pathfinder society.
Try with something simple like letting people use stuff in the core book, and you have to ok everything else.
Just my two cetns I hope it helps.