Oh my games all come with a "Dice fall where they fall. No Fudging" Warning.
And nothing beats getting a Natural 20 on your fighter from a +X Vorpal Scythe wielded by the Cleric of X Evil Deity Boss.
While I admit that my opinion of fudging is exceedingly low (I do not tolerate cheating by my players so I'm not going to be a hypocritical bastard and cheat as well - and I don't buy that GMs can't cheat nonsense because either everyone follows the rules or nobody does), I was primarily talking about foiling the PCs merely due to plot.
One of the absolute worst things about video games is the railroad aspect in a lot of them. Situations where often you're cajoled into doing something merely because it's what was programmed or expected to happen. To an extent, we accept these problems (at least until you get some great modders in a PC community) because at the end of the day you're dealing with a computer, not a person. The biggest selling feature of the tabletop RPG is the fact that you can throw all that nonsense out the window.
Is there a wall in your way? Climb over it. Is a direct assault suicide? Sneak in the back way. Is the monster going to be really dangerous? Poison it's water supply. Does the enemy have tactical advantage? Pull back and try to get better terrain. Have two options on front of you? Choose a third option.
The idea that a GM will change or fiat the efforts of a party away to cling to his or her one true way is not a good GM because of it. They may be talented in spite of this. But this is not, nor ever will be, a defining characteristic of a good GM. A good GM will continue to go with the flow and learn what to do next time.
Cheating the dice is a big no-no. Arbitrary adjustments are equally if not more-so.
Oh my games all come with a "Dice fall where they fall. No Fudging" Warning.
And nothing beats getting a Natural 20 on your fighter from a +X Vorpal Scythe wielded by the Cleric of X Evil Deity Boss.
Indeed. I will not fudge for you, nor against you. Your fate is in your own hands. And I have a very simple rule against cheating at my table. If you are caught cheating (such as fudging your dice rolls) then I will will grant my NPCs a "cheat" as well. And you best expect that it will be in the absolute worst possible time/way for you.
Naturally, nobody at my table cheats, which means I haven't had to exercise that cheat penalty yet. But the day I do, it will be biblical and will result in the offender's nigh certain doom ("The giant critically hits with his greataxe", "You failed your save vs plane shift and get tossed into the folds of the abyss"). :P
*Has no sympathy for cheating of any kind.*
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GM Fiat to negate the party's use of clever tactics is not restricted to cheating at dice. That's probably the most obvious way to do it, but there are other ways.
A very common issue I run into with encounters is when the GM runs a bunch of dumb beasts as if they are led by Napoleon.
Of course I've seen plenty of cases of GMs running encounters where highly intelligent trained soldiers act as if they were dumb beasts, so I probably shouldn't complain...
Other times the GM simply uses metagame knowledge to guide his/her own tactics. "Oh, you've got fire resistance up, so my dragon will bite instead of breathe fire." Or "No point in going after your shielded wizard with my magic missiles, so eat force beams Mr. Ranger!!!"
And finally I've encountered so many Schroedinger's monsters that it's become expected. "Oh, you threw up a wall and buffed up your fighter last time so hello to the group of invisible ninjas behind you! Muahahahahaa!!!!" (Now, sometimes this is plausible due to command and control among enemy forces, but then I don't complain. It's when the harpies react immediately to the tactics the party used three days ago against the skeletons that I shake my head...)
I know so many GMs who think that's actually the "right" way to play, because, after all, you have to provide a "challenge".
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I think it is entirely reasonable. Just like my love of strawberry ice cream is.
That's my favorite kind! I love strawberry icecream! ^-^
The GM controls everything in the world.
Actually, the GM doesn't. The GM governs most of the world and yet the PCs are part of the world and are not controlled by the GM. There are many instances where the world or things in it are not controlled by the GM.
She creates the encounter, determines whether it's easy or epic. Determines the tactics the NPCs use, what resources they have available, what the terrain is and how they use it. She also has a lot of control over what encounters they will have faced before this one and how easy or reasonable it would be to rest or withdraw.
Yet assuming that the GM hasn't been fiating away things, the PCs may or may not have been thrifty with their resources, skipped an encounter (accidentally or intentionally), got the infinity+1 sword or decided to go up against the big bad without using the McGuffin to weaken him. Whatever really. There's a big aspect to it being a role-playing game and that is that your actions, choices, and so forth have a big influence on how things pan out.
As a GM I may decide that there is x% chance of random hallway patrols, or I may plan beforehand that there is a guard patrol or whatever that patrols based on a certain route (or I may combine the two if the PCs get wise to an upcoming patrol, hide, and then attempt to map their route so as to avoid them). But the PCs could decide on a different route or take precautions against roaming enemies. The slightest choice, like stringing up some bells as an early warning system or not could change everything.
In theory she does all this to provide an interesting, but beatable challenge for the party. (Or in more sandboxy games, to convey ahead of time to the party whether this will be an interesting but beatable challenge or not.)
Depends. I build most of my encounters based on the setting or situation. Most encounters are beatable. Many are actually pretty routine or easy if you're even trying. A few aren't. Some require a little more tact and failure is often a possibility. It's rare that escape is impossible.
Sometimes, however, it's entirely reasonable to have encounters or challenges that are overwhelming. The better part of valor is discretion and sometimes running in guns blazing is a bad idea. Just as an example, I had a party that was traveling through a forest on the way to another location. In the distance the party saw an Ettin (those big two headed giants) who was apparently out hunting and was too far away from the PCs to notice them (yay distance modifiers) and the PCs weren't seeing the group. Most of the party decided to simply avoid the Ettin as possible. The monk in the party, however, decided to charge at the Ettin and attack it (presumably because there would be no encounter in the game that the party wouldn't be able to fight off). The monk shall be missed.
The only tool that can't be used to stack an encounter for or against the party is fudging dice rolls. Even if the GM realized she's drastically misjudged the strength of the encounter (and thus not conveyed the risk properly to the players).
Seems weird to me.
No weirder than getting the best players on your team but expecting to have a fair referee.
GM Fiat to negate the party's use of clever tactics is not restricted to cheating at dice. That's probably the most obvious way to do it, but there are other ways.
A very common issue I run into with encounters is when the GM runs a bunch of dumb beasts as if they are led by Napoleon.
Of course I've seen plenty of cases of GMs running encounters where highly intelligent trained soldiers act as if they were dumb beasts, so I probably shouldn't complain...
Other times the GM simply uses metagame knowledge to guide his/her own tactics. "Oh, you've got fire resistance up, so my dragon will bite instead of breathe fire." Or "No point in going after your shielded wizard with my magic missiles, so eat force beams Mr. Ranger!!!"
And finally I've encountered so many Schroedinger's monsters that it's become expected. "Oh, you threw up a wall and buffed up your fighter last time so hello to the group of invisible ninjas behind you! Muahahahahaa!!!!" (Now, sometimes this is plausible due to command and control among enemy forces, but then I don't complain. It's when the harpies react immediately to the tactics the party used three days ago against the skeletons that I shake my head...)
I know so many GMs who think that's actually the "right" way to play, because, after all, you have to provide a "challenge".
Wonderful examples of bad GMs. Pretty much all of this stuff was touched upon in the 3.x DMGs (I'd highly recommend those who are new to the game to pickup the 3.x DMGs just for reading material). They discuss not doing stuff like tailoring enemies against your PCs. One example I recall was not choosing to use fire-resistant enemies just because the sorcerer in your party learned fireball.
I really hate what you mention about the beasts and Napoleon though. Nothing burns me up like NPCs who are acting bizarre or highly intelligent NPCs acting like dumber than ogre brutes (saw a pit fiend in a high level game suffer severe amnesia or something and forget that he had anything that even rhymed with spell-like-ability). Animals in my games are generally dangerous ('cause freaking tigers and stuff are scary and animals are smart) but they act like animals. Wound or frighten an animal and it's not going to act like a religious crusader, it's going to get the heck out of dodge! :P
If NPCs can run away, PCs can learn to do the same occasionally.
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And finally I've encountered so many Schroedinger's monsters that it's become expected. "Oh, you threw up a wall and buffed up your fighter last time so hello to the group of invisible ninjas behind you! Muahahahahaa!!!!"
What a horrible DM. What's the point of having stats for Treerazor if you don't use them in situations like this.
NPC's have tried to run any from my party a few times not one as gotten away yet so I don't imagine that my party would have better luck.
Actually, even as hardass as I am during gameplay, I will admit to fudging dice rolls for either myself or my players if a spectacularly bad streak of luck hits. I claim sudden blindness and have them reroll (after all, I am ancient and my sight is SOOOOOOO terrible after reading all those books).
And I have no problems telling my players they can run if they wish, but that I will play devil's advocate and call them girly-men, taunt them a second time, etc. I don't normally throw things at them that are beyond their capacity to handle, but they DO screw up sometimes, or just have bad luck.
This is why I tell spellcasters to always have a potion of invisibility on them at all times, so they can run away with no problem.
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The only tool that can't be used to stack an encounter for or against the party is fudging dice rolls. [...] Seems weird to me.
I won't fudge die rolls, because (1) I believe it damages player-GM trust and a good deal of the fun of combat (for most players), and (2) I roll in the open ...
... but if I have judged an encounter so badly -- or not vetted it well enough, if it's a published adventure -- I will work as hard as I can to find a way to fix things other than altering the numbers (including die rolls) involved.
I've screwed up a non-trivial number of times like this in my decades of GMing, and I've never not been able to finagle a believable story way out of my screw-up. In all but one or two cases, my players haven't even been aware I blew the encounter. That's the ideal for me.
It's a creature so big, tigers don't attack them.
Lions, not tigers. And it's a juvenile. But still. Lions attacking an elephant
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NPC's have tried to run any from my party a few times not one as gotten away yet so I don't imagine that my party would have better luck.
I've had NPCs get away from PCs while in chains and disarmed. NPCs get skills and spells too, and some of them can even use them reasonably cleverly.
NPC's have tried to run any from my party a few times not one as gotten away yet so I don't imagine that my party would have better luck.I've had NPCs get away from PCs while in chains and disarmed. NPCs get skills and spells too, and some of them can even use them reasonably cleverly.
Admittedly I have made a big point in never letting a recurring villain get away. Sometimes I will go though the anti-escape motions before I even try and beat them. It tends to be very intimidating.
The creature 'wasn't targeting them specifically'. Was it attacking innocent people? If so, any heroic character should be expected to try to intervene.
I've read a number of threads here where GMs are frustrated by their players refusing to flee. There are several reasons:
Pathfinder trains you to expect CR-appropriate enemies - even when the enemy is too powerful this isn't usually obvious.
Most Pathfinder monsters are hard to escape from. (You provoke AoOs and they're faster than you.)
Unless everyone runs at once, you're splitting the group and dooming the allies you leave behind. And if you're going in initiative order, no-one wants to be the first one to run.
And many players are idiots who think that courage and persistence are enough to overcome all obstacles.
This, pretty much all around... but the bolded parts most of all.
I see RPGs as a very cinematic, heroic game. Some people prefer grim and gritty, and that's fine. But if your a grim and gritty DM, then the players need to have full knowledge of HOW you play, and WHAT their goals are.
Things you do no often see in a heroic cinematic movie/game/book.
*Heroes sneaking into secret base... Running away only to come back later to do the same they were there the first time for.
*Random bandits showing up and schooling the heroes
*Running away from monster, and leaving your friends to trip and die.
*Being close to the brink of death... running for thier lives, only to be shot in the back with arrows and still die.
*knowing that there are hostages/sacrifices/princess' and just leaving them to rot/die while you come back in a few more levels.
Yet there are a lot of DM's who seem to be shocked that the players don't do this??
What you DO see, is heroes overcoming great evil despite the insurmountable odds.
Han, Luke and Leia ran away when it got tough... but the goal there was to rescue the princess and deliver the death star plans. They didn't leave without her.
When the rebels attacked the death star in ROTJ and the death star was operational.... a realistic DM would have been shocked that they did NOT turn and flee... they really SHOULD have they were so outmatched... But heroically and the LEGENDARY STORY demanded they stay anyway.
There is an expectation, that every story has a hook, and a conclusion. If a stranger gives you a quest in a tavern... it is ASSUMED that this is a quest that CAN be completed.
If your playing a written AP, then even more so. It may take violence, it may take wiles... but SOMEHOW, you will get the princess out of the tower and get your reward.
There is an unspoken agreement that players will not OUTRIGHT derail the game by being stubborn. If the hook isn't 100% tailor made to THIER desires... they'll swallow the hook anyway. THAT is the adventure prepared tonight, and we came to play.
LOGICALLY speaking... there are VERY few adventures that 4 PCs should EVER accept. They will ALWAYS be outnumbered, outclassed and outleveled... Who in their right mind would EVER face a dragon?? or a horde of bandits? or even a pack of Goblins??
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LOGICALLY speaking... there are VERY few adventures that 4 PCs should EVER accept. They will ALWAYS be outnumbered, outclassed and outleveled... Who in their right mind would EVER face a dragon?? or a horde of bandits? or even a pack of Goblins??
If not I, then who?
LOGICALLY speaking... there are VERY few adventures that 4 PCs should EVER accept. They will ALWAYS be outnumbered, outclassed and outleveled... Who in their right mind would EVER face a dragon?? or a horde of bandits? or even a pack of Goblins??If not I, then who?
Logically?
EVERYONE!!!! Get the army!!! Get the militia!!! get the whole village with pitchforks and torches!!! Why am "I" and my 3 friends going out and saving YOUR town when YOUR all cowering in the houses??
This is for better more numerous people than WE are...
But that makes for a boring, unheroic game... ;)
I had to have a conversation with our group about this a few sessions ago. There is one specific player who always refused to run, laboring under the assumption that "the GM would not kill us intentionally or give us a fight we could not win."
What happened was that, over time, the whole group got into the mindset that this guy was not going to run, so it did not occur to them to run when they maybe should. I do not believe it is my job to "punish" them (the dice and the rules will do that well enough), so I wasn't going to force a TPK, but at the same time, it is difficult to adjudicate those sorts of situations with minimal death and without appearance of getting too much involved.
Ironically, and infuriatingly, the same player who taunted me with this attitude then turned around and accused me of going easy on everybody. (This particular player has a long history of causing people problems and then giving them grief for reacting to them - don't ask; he has problems.)
Anyway, it's true enough that I believe there is a solution to every problem, and even every battle, but this does not translate to handing out victories or a guarantee of success. But some campaigns are more deadly than others. So when we began our Mythos-laden campaign, I sat everybody down and essentially "pressed the reset button."
I told them, "get that idea out of your head that you should always stay and fight until the end just because one of you thinks every battle is meant to be won. This is a Mythos campaign. People are going to die. Run when you can, if you think it will save you."
A run-away-reflex is a hard concept for some Players to grasp. Role-playing games have been around for decades before Pathfinder. There are times when a player needs to decide whether he/she is ready to accept the consequences of fighting said creature(s) irregardless of CR. Players that are conditioned to expect one course of action are slightly better than mindless drones. Players need to think about the actions they take. Run away is always an option. Do you wish to be noble and fight with your companions or leave them to deal with it while you save your own hide? Or even still, do you Stay and fight to allow your companions to escape. It boils down to an alignment play. A chaotic nuetral character would sneak away while the lawful good character would hold the line for as long as possible.
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In kingmaker we've had a couple of very decisive 'run away' moments. We were told two very important things... 1) this is a sandbox games... and 2) there are random encounters.
At level 2 we got 1D4 Trolls to deal with during 2nd watch. DM went easy and only threw one at us... but that was STILL more then enough to Kick the everloving crap out of us. My paladin was all for retreating from that fight!!!
When his sister begged him to run, his response was "I'll hold the line only till you grab the horses!!"
He AND another player both hit negatives in the two rounds that fight lasted before a good illusions bought the others time to throw our bodies on a horse and ride fast for healing!!!
I see a WORLD of difference between 'Here's an encounter that means nothing but to show you it's A) a dangerous world... and B) some more XP for ya...
THOSE encounters are easy to 'live to fight another day...'
The OTHER kind... are the PLOT driven ones. Someone is kidnapped, someone is in danger... Something NEEDS to be DONE. These are how DM's tend to present these kinds of challenges... and they SHOULD be able to be completed.
We played a 2E sandbox game that REALLY frustrated me. The whole campaign was about rescuing some kidnapped people... but there were story hooks all over the place... and you had to be XXX level in order to survive stuff... and after a few months of game time, I remember looking at the group and saying "C'MON people... theres no WAY these kidnapped kids and such were still ALIVE.."
It was a game where we had rigid 'training requirements' and lots of forced down time... our heroic characters were NOT pleased with 'sitting around while people were in danger'... Or 'plot hooks that we had ignore for a few months because we weren't tough enough'....
As a DM be careful what kind of game you want to run. If you want heroes, then present obstacles that heroes can meet. Bait the hook appropriately. There are some things that aren't worth the fight.... and some that worth ANY cost.
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LOGICALLY speaking... there are VERY few adventures that 4 PCs should EVER accept. They will ALWAYS be outnumbered, outclassed and outleveled... Who in their right mind would EVER face a dragon?? or a horde of bandits? or even a pack of Goblins??If not I, then who?Logically?
EVERYONE!!!! Get the army!!! Get the militia!!! get the whole village with pitchforks and torches!!! Why am "I" and my 3 friends going out and saving YOUR town when YOUR all cowering in the houses??
What army? What militia? If the townspeople could handle it, they already would be.
But they can't.
"I thought to myself, why won't someone top them? Then I realized, I am someone."
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The creature 'wasn't targeting them specifically'. Was it attacking innocent people? If so, any heroic character should be expected to try to intervene.
I've read a number of threads here where GMs are frustrated by their players refusing to flee. There are several reasons:
Pathfinder trains you to expect CR-appropriate enemies - even when the enemy is too powerful this isn't usually obvious.
Most Pathfinder monsters are hard to escape from. (You provoke AoOs and they're faster than you.)
Unless everyone runs at once, you're splitting the group and dooming the allies you leave behind. And if you're going in initiative order, no-one wants to be the first one to run.
And many players are idiots who think that courage and persistence are enough to overcome all obstacles.
This, pretty much all around... but the bolded parts most of all.
I see RPGs as a very cinematic, heroic game. Some people prefer grim and gritty, and that's fine. But if your a grim and gritty DM, then the players need to have full knowledge of HOW you play, and WHAT their goals are.
Things you do no often see in a heroic cinematic movie/game/book.
*Heroes sneaking into secret base... Running away only to come back later to do the same they were there the first time for.
*Random bandits showing up and schooling the heroes
*Running away from monster, and leaving your friends to trip and die.
*Being close to the brink of death... running for thier lives, only to be shot in the back with arrows and still die.
*knowing that there are hostages/sacrifices/princess' and just leaving them to rot/die while you come back in a few more levels.
Yet there are a lot of DM's who seem to be shocked that the players don't do this??
What you DO see, is heroes overcoming great evil despite the insurmountable odds.
Han, Luke and Leia ran away when it got tough... but the goal there was to rescue the princess and deliver the death star plans. They didn't...
On the other hand, you also have the Empire Strikes Back, where a major character's status is in serious doubt, the story opens with them getting their head handed to them and them barely escaping, a pcs beloved mentor has died ... And generally its clear that while they are still fighting the war they have most definitely lost the battle.
LOGICALLY speaking... there are VERY few adventures that 4 PCs should EVER accept. They will ALWAYS be outnumbered, outclassed and outleveled... Who in their right mind would EVER face a dragon?? or a horde of bandits? or even a pack of Goblins??Nobody would. This is why I say overly intelligent PCs are a curse, or perhaps overly sane PCs. PCs don't have ordinary fear reactions. They can't. No sane or intelligent character would willingly go up against a necromancer. Fight someone who can kill you or your buddy with a word? No, that's not a smart move. But fighting liches is something adventurers do.
If not I, then who?
Logically?
EVERYONE!!!! Get the army!!! Get the militia!!! get the whole village with pitchforks and torches!!! Why am "I" and my 3 friends going out and saving YOUR town when YOUR all cowering in the houses??
This is for better more numerous people than WE are...
Mechanically, it probably doesn't work. PCs are usually higher-level than the commons they regularly interact with. The militia would be killed with a couple of dragon breath attacks, and it only took two because they scatter.
But that makes for a boring, unheroic game... ;)Exactly. Picture a cop show.
If the heroes are the police force of Podunk, and a serial killer went through town, prompting the FBI to show up... well, the FBI is portrayed as a bunch of attention-seeking ivory tower geeks who know nothing of the real world.
On the other hand, if the heroes are FBI agents, then the local cops are lazy hicks who can't investigate anything more complicated than moonshine smuggling.
Fiction always has a way to ensure the heroes are given the task.
No sane person would jump out of a perfectly good airplane. People do. No sane person would be a explosives disposal technician. We have them. The world is full of people who routinely do what no sane person would do.
No sane person would jump out of a perfectly good airplane. People do. No sane person would be a explosives disposal technician. We have them. The world is full of people who routinely do what no sane person would do.Given the technology of parachutes, I'm not sure the first person would match anyone's definition of insane.
As for the latter, if running away from a single demonic is considered sane (and fighting it insane), even though you have the advantage of varied abilities and numbers, then practically any dangerous occupation (bomb technician, soldier, a cop responding to a domestic, a gunslingin' cowboy) would be considered insane.
Since they're not actually crazy, I think adventurers can be sane. But apparently not according to some of this thread's respondents. :(
Another example: BASE jumping meets many people's definition of insane. It still has a decent sized following.
And your "as for the latter" bit is my point, mo or less. You have two definitions that will take on dangerous situations that might seem insane; those driven by thrill-seeking and adrenaline, and those driven by a sense of duty.
Firefighters are a great example of heroic adventuring spirit even in the face of modern society. Running into a burning building that may or may not collapse or explode or something, often while being underpaid for your efforts, merely to do what needs to be done is actually D&D heroism in action.
On another note, it's worth noting that most adventurers are likely to notice that they are not normal people after a while. In a fantasy world, skill and experienced can literally make you stronger, tougher, etc. Most people would run from a troll (most people have 3 hp and a +0 to hit with a 10 AC), but your fighter has managed to take out an ogre before without too much trouble. He's also got some of the finest ogre-killers in the area with him (his party). A troll is much scarier than an ogre, but man you've got a much better chance at taking it down than Bobby the Barrister.
Later on still, a high level barbarian may see that an erinyes is going to unleash an unholy blight on him and the townsfolk who are overlooking the town from a ceremonial cairn atop a nearby mountain. Realizing what must be done, the barbarian charges, leaps 20-30 ft., and tackles the erinyes out of the air and the both of them plummet to the ground below.
"Sanity" is relative. In D&D, a 20th level barbarian doesn't have to be insane to sky dive from the edge of space without a parachute. Why? Because it is not a risk to his life and he knows it.
Fudging to keep it interesting or keep a TPK from happening are one thing. But Fudging it so your Sorcerer 20 Human Lich Boss can survive to hopefully kill a PC? Not Kosher.A real man's death comes in the form of an x4 attack of opportunity critical hit. Accept no substitutes! :P
Loving the pf rules on the naginata, d8, x4, reach. So good.
Again, how knowledge works in our world is not how it works in PF. Are you going to say that all maps in PF should be 100% accurate and up to date because we have satelite mapping and GPS systems in our world? No, of course not.
PF tells us exactly how knowledge works in that world. It is reasonable to assume that a character in that world who has studied anything also understands how knowledge works.
Way to troll pal.
No I'm trying to tell you that the way Knowledge works as a rule system exists to approximate the knowledge that people ought to have, it's an abstract construct to approximate how real knowledge works. But if you want to play it that way then I hope you enjoy players throwing it back in your face when they knowledge local your treacherous low level npc to get his life story every time you try to roleplay with them.
That is exactly how it should work. If a player grew up in that town, and had 10 ranks in knowledge(local) for that town, are you saying that you would tell him he doesn't know about Lenny the local loan shark, or that Samantha is a local fence or all the other fun details of that cities underworld? If the players have Knowledge(local) for that area, why wouldn't they know about all the local con-artists in the area?
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LOGICALLY speaking... there are VERY few adventures that 4 PCs should EVER accept. They will ALWAYS be outnumbered, outclassed and outleveled... Who in their right mind would EVER face a dragon?? or a horde of bandits? or even a pack of Goblins??If not I, then who?Logically?
EVERYONE!!!! Get the army!!! Get the militia!!! get the whole village with pitchforks and torches!!! Why am "I" and my 3 friends going out and saving YOUR town when YOUR all cowering in the houses??
This is for better more numerous people than WE are...
But that makes for a boring, unheroic game... ;)
Heh, I was in a first level game once and the GM was really building up the drama, giving the party a real sense of danger and fear for the challenge we were supposed to face. I don't remember what it was, I think it was just goblins or something, but he was really playing it up.
So my character started trying to rally the townsfolk into an army. He went from door to door using his social skills to convince the locals to come to a town meeting. The GM didn't at first realize what I was up to so several of the townsfolk agreed to come and to bring their weapons, even if they were makeshift weapons.
Once they showed up I went all "High Plains Drifter" on them and started setting up training for them to teach them combat and working on tactics and stuff. I had traded notes with the other players so we were all working on this together. Finally the GM said "Stop! What are you doing? You can't train an army!"
I said "Sure we can. We're doing it right now. The entire town is threatened and the townsfolk aren't about to let a bunch of thugs run them from their family farms."
Finally the GM pulled rank on us and just said "This isn't the campaign I want to run." So we ended up retconning it and doing a more or less standard dungeon crawl. But for a while there it was a real blast watching that town come together to defend themselves.
Finally the GM pulled rank on us and just said "This isn't the campaign I want to run." So we ended up retconning it and doing a more or less standard dungeon crawl. But for a while there it was a real blast watching that town come together to defend themselves.
During a 3.5 game I was running, my brother was playing a homebrew kobold sorcerer (pre-PF bloodlines, this was a sorcerer who got some draconic features as he was leveling; the details are in the spoiler below). During the campaign he liberated his kinfolk from their oppressors and built a town of kobolds, lizardfolk, and core races (the kobolds were under the main city and they worked together with the topside inhabitants under his guidance). Later the party built an airship and had his kobold followers crew it, which is how they engaged the big bads of the game (an Aerial assault on an tower owned by a cabal of evil magicians).
1st Level: +1 natural armor with another +1 at 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level.
5th Level: Gained a breath weapon based on his dragon type. Breath weapon dealt 1d6/2 sorcerer levels and was usable once every 5 rounds. Save DC was 10 + 1/2 HD + Con modifier.
10th Level: He got energy resistance and wings.
15th Level: Resistances improved.
20th Level: Immunity to energy type and a few dragon features.
It was amusing because his favorite thing to do was turn into a dragon via polymorph which gave him the physical characteristics of a dragon but none of the magical ones like the breath weapon. Then he used the breath weapon from being a sorcerer to be like a real dragon!
"I thought to myself, why won't someone top them? Then I realized, I am someone."
Hmm, uhm, well, that's certainly one way to overco... er bea... er.. defeat.. yeah defeat... the bad guy, but uhm... I don't think it passes the uhm... PG+13 requirements for posting on the forum's ToZ...
PCs don't have ordinary fear reactions. They can't. No sane or intelligent character would willingly go up against a necromancer. Fight someone who can kill you or your buddy with a word? No, that's not a smart move. But fighting liches is something adventurers do.
That's cuz.... THEY'RE STUPERHEROES!!!!!!!!
I've said it before, Pathfinder, D&D etc are superheroes right out of the gate. Their overall Stuperpower level is determined by level. So is the tone of the game.
Want more realism? Enforce massive damage induced Fort saves triggered whenever you take 10 or more damage in one round. Enjoy.
In d20 modern your massive damage threshold = Constitution score. So if you had a 12 Con and suffered 12 damage, it's Fortitude time baby!
In d20 modern your massive damage threshold = Constitution score. So if you had a 12 Con and suffered 12 damage, it's Fortitude time baby!
Sorry about the double post. Deleting the first one.
In d20 modern your massive damage threshold = Constitution score. So if you had a 12 Con and suffered 12 damage, it's Fortitude time baby!
one alternate "in between set" would be that if you fail that fort save it immediately turns the hit into a crit.
Or, you know, you could just instead play the basic rules as they are, and stop assuming everyone else in the world is 1 hit die except the PCs and the BBEG.
Then the rules all work, and it makes more sense that they find the one other non bad guy with more than one hit die every time someone else on the team dies.
That's always been a big verisimilitude killer for me. Other than pulling the equivalent of a reverse 'rocks fall'.
I don't get the 1 HD thing. I mean, yes, the vast majority of people in the world are assumed to have 1HD in d20 based games. Then you have decreasingly (populace wise) numbers of higher level individuals (similar to a pyramid with the weenies at the bottom and the high levels at the top). That doesn't mean everything has 1HD, but if the world is going to be believable to most it will mean most do. You don't need a lot of multi-HD citizens in a city. Honestly 5th level is pretty high too as far as the realm of normalcy goes. The alternative is severely twisting the relative strength between say, a town guard and a manticore.
Finding equivalent HD PC-characters after death is a bit iffy. It assumes certain things about the campaign (common though it might be, some of the more successful campaigns I've seen either stuck you back at 1st level {though in 3.x you gained XP much more rapidly by being a lower level}, begin you at a level penalty (usually a bit lower than raising/reincarnating you would have produced, such as APL-3). The alternative is usually assumed that the characters you re-recruit are up to the same sorts of things you are or have accomplished similar acts of heroism and have thus earned their levels off screen (while you were fighting goblins and manticore, this guy was off driving off bandits and trolls).
The world functions a lot better if everything doesn't scale with you. If it did there would be no reason to gain levels. In fact, in games where enemies and challenges scale with your level, it is often much better to remain a low level in those games and avoid leveling if possible (or only level under certain conditions or just enough to acquire certain abilities).