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My local PFS lodge is getting into Season 4 scenarios (at the 1-5 level), and here I sit, biting my nails. We're running 4-11 this Saturday. I haven't even gone through First Steps, or anything in seasons 0-2.
There's a tiny part of me afraid to voice this to leaders in my area because I'm a girl, and I don't want to be seen as wimpy or fearful because of my ovaries, but that's an only slightly related concern.
First, and I cannot stress this enough, I believe strongly that any VC or VL would never take a legitimate concern like this and chalk it up to a second X chromosome. Mike Brock is very careful when selecting official campaign volunteers, and I know that anyone with an underlying sexism like that would not end up representing Paizo in any kind of official capacity. If your local organizer is not a Venture-Officer, I still would not worry about it. There are plenty of males who don't optimize characters and who look for roleplaying and story over combat prowess, and I suspect your local leaders have met some, so they won't necessarily ascribe that to "female behaviour." (Whatever that means! :)
Second, while Season 4 has a deserved reputation for being tougher, I would still hesitate to call it deadly. It is more challenging, but in my experience, that just means that people can't muddle through and win regardless of their party behaviour. I've still seen tables of non-optimized people roll through a season 4 scenario with little to no difficulty.
Finally, if you're new to PFS and nervous about your character's survivability, may I suggest you approach members of your local community and ask them to audit your character? If you're clear about your expectations ("I don't want an optimal character, I just want a survivable one. Here are my deal-breakers:...") you will often get people offering you small pieces of advice on equipment to purchase, slight changes to stats, and so on, which you can then take or leave. A lot of communities have a web presence, so you can do it locally, or you can post it here as well. (It may end up in the Advice forum if you post it, but you will still get useful advice if you clarify in your post that it's for PFS.)
Welcome to the community, and have fun!
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I sincerely hope you missed a word in there somewhere.First, and I cannot stress this enough, I believe strongly that any VC or VL would take a legitimate concern like this and chalk it up to a second X chromosome.My local PFS lodge is getting into Season 4 scenarios (at the 1-5 level), and here I sit, biting my nails. We're running 4-11 this Saturday. I haven't even gone through First Steps, or anything in seasons 0-2.
There's a tiny part of me afraid to voice this to leaders in my area because I'm a girl, and I don't want to be seen as wimpy or fearful because of my ovaries, but that's an only slightly related concern.
Mike Brock is very careful when selecting official campaign volunteers, and I know that anyone with an underlying sexism like that would not end up representing Paizo in any kind of official capacity. If your local organizer is not a Venture-Officer, I still would not worry about it. There are plenty of males who don't optimize characters and who look for roleplaying and story over combat prowess, and I suspect your local leaders have met some, so they won't necessarily ascribe that to "female behaviour." (Whatever that means! :)
Second, while Season 4 has a deserved reputation for being tougher, I would still hesitate to call it deadly. It is more challenging, but in my experience, that just means that people can't muddle through and win regardless of their party behaviour. I've still seen tables of non-optimized people roll through a season 4 scenario with little to no difficulty.
Finally, if you're new to PFS and nervous about your character's survivability, may I suggest you approach members of your local community and ask them to audit your character? If you're clear about your expectations ("I don't want an optimal character, I just want a survivable one. Here are my deal-breakers:...") you will often get people offering you small pieces of advice on equipment to purchase, slight changes to stats, and so on, which you can then take or leave. A lot of communities have a web presence, so you...
I may post up my character for an audit or ask for equipment advice. I made a human fighter (out of the desire to play something 'simple' for my first character) and so far, she's had good luck surviving anything she can hit with an axe. I'm just wondering what to do when I meet things that don't respond to that.
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I may post up my character for an audit or ask for equipment advice. I made a human fighter (out of the desire to play something 'simple' for my first character) and so far, she's had good luck surviving anything she can hit with an axe. I'm just wondering what to do when I meet things that don't respond to that.
Get a bigger axe.
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Through level 4 or 5, you're going to find lots of problems that can be solved with axes. Even in Season 4.
I strongly recommend going to this thread, and reading
There's lots of gnashing of teeth and wailing about BadWrongFunness, but some good advice.
As someone who plays Season 4 and finds them "about right" after some yawn fests in Seasons 0-2, I understand your concern - but they're really not that much tougher until you get to the higher tiers.
Also, you're not the only one who writes side stories in PFS.
It can be done, and I find that playing online via Maptools and a voice chat client, helps immersion once the oddities of the mechanism are taken care of.
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@rebulte: it's not much of a factor at low level, but eventually these kinds of things become an issue: constructs, NPCs with DR, lighting conditions, mind control, ability damage, etc. It really helps your group to make sure your PC can deal with some of these issues.
Also, fighters, for better or for worse, aren't so simple in PFS. Your mid-level success relies on feat synergy, so if you don't plan out your feat chains early, you can end up kind of hosed.
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I sincerely hope you missed a word in there somewhere.First, and I cannot stress this enough, I believe strongly that any VC or VL would take a legitimate concern like this and chalk it up to a second X chromosome.My local PFS lodge is getting into Season 4 scenarios (at the 1-5 level), and here I sit, biting my nails. We're running 4-11 this Saturday. I haven't even gone through First Steps, or anything in seasons 0-2.
There's a tiny part of me afraid to voice this to leaders in my area because I'm a girl, and I don't want to be seen as wimpy or fearful because of my ovaries, but that's an only slightly related concern.
Oh, hell. The most important part of my post and I missed the negation in the sentence. That's extremely embarrassing. I've edited my original post above.
For the record, the sentence should read "First, and I cannot stress this enough, I believe strongly that any VC or VL would never take a legitimate concern like this and chalk it up to a second X chromosome."
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I sincerely hope you missed a word in there somewhere.First, and I cannot stress this enough, I believe strongly that any VC or VL would take a legitimate concern like this and chalk it up to a second X chromosome.My local PFS lodge is getting into Season 4 scenarios (at the 1-5 level), and here I sit, biting my nails. We're running 4-11 this Saturday. I haven't even gone through First Steps, or anything in seasons 0-2.
There's a tiny part of me afraid to voice this to leaders in my area because I'm a girl, and I don't want to be seen as wimpy or fearful because of my ovaries, but that's an only slightly related concern.
Oh, hell. The most important part of my post and I missed the negation in the sentence. That's extremely embarrassing. I've edited my original post above.
For the record, the sentence should read "First, and I cannot stress this enough, I believe strongly that any VC or VL would never take a legitimate concern like this and chalk it up to a second X chromosome."
I suspected as much from the tone of the rest of the post. ;)
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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*raises hand*
Hi, I'm a new player, and I'm assuming that makes me a non-optimizer by default. How can I voice my fear that "more options for dealing with optimizing players" and "raising difficulty of scenarios" means that I won't have safe ground to grow on, that by not being an optimizer I'm somehow holding my group back? I don't want to play the numbers, I want to play my character, and at the end of the day, this conversation makes me wonder if I'm wrong for having that (clearly narritivist/simulationist, if you subscribe to GNS theory) philosophy in the PFS campaign.
I hate to break this to you and possibly scare you away.
If you're a narrativist/internal consistency fan, PFS is going to be a poor fit.
Not because of the Power Gamers or the supreme specialist players, but because of the general constraints of the system and program.
1) PFS tables are run in 4 or 4.5 hour slots. 5 if you're lucky.
2) You have no guarantee that you're going to have meaningful continuity between sessions and characters. You don't even know who's going to be playing with you from session to session.
3) Missions tend to be very linear, though less so as the seasons progress.
4) Combat (the tactical/crunchy part of the game) takes a disproportionate amount of time...and gets top billing over spending a session roleplaying through the first mission briefing.It can be fun, and it is fun, but you're not going to get a good narrativist/simulationist game vibe out of PFS. Trying to make a good narr/sim supporting Organized Play system is one of the things I've been pondering for two years.
Honestly, I've been realizing that. Though, due to limited choices of gaming venues, PFS is the best option for me to get any gaming in in the area. I've taken to writing sidestories for my character to get my narrative fix.
(Also, if you ever get a good narr/sim solution, do let me know.)
It might be worth looking into a Play-by-Post or Play-by-Email game. Without the 4-5 hour time limit, GMs have a lot more room to expand the story and get involved with roleplaying scenes. Of course, different online groups have different playstyles, and not all groups would be happy about taking an already long form of the game and stretching it out even further. But some groups would love this!
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It might be worth looking into a Play-by-Post...Honestly, I've been realizing that. Though, due to limited choices of gaming venues, PFS is the best option for me to get any gaming in in the area. I've taken to writing sidestories for my character to get my narrative fix.
(Also, if you ever get a good narr/sim solution, do let me know.)
Thanks for the tip. I used to play on the World of Darkness chats--those were right about the right pace for me--but I hadn't considered looking for an online PF chronicle.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I may post up my character for an audit or ask for equipment advice. I made a human fighter (out of the desire to play something 'simple' for my first character) and so far, she's had good luck surviving anything she can hit with an axe. I'm just wondering what to do when I meet things that don't respond to that.
You may want to post your character's stats on a new thread in the Advice forum. Or if it would make you more comfortable, I'm sure I or any of the other helpful people in this thread would be happy to discuss your build over private messaging. (To send a private message, click the username in the top-left of the person's post to go to their user profile. Then on the user profile page, click "send private message" (just to the right of the portrait, above the tabs).)
I'm not telling you to go away, but it might be good to not let this thread get too far off topic. :-)
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.. here I sit, biting my nails .. part of me afraid to voice this to leaders in my area ..
Not sure what your area is, or how much you've played so far. I've visited four venues in my local driving radius in the past month or so, and every store is different and attracts different players.
Depending on your location, if it's a populous one, you should be able to find like-minded players. It might take some time to find 3-4 of them, but once you all connect, you can make an effort to play together in a supportive framework like this. You all might even graduate to an off-the-tracks non-PFS campaign.
Absolutely voice your interests to anyone who will listen, since it just widens that net to find compatible players. The VL/VC may even know exactly who to pair with you with for your best experience - something you'd never know unless you asked!
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I think its safe to conclude that if 2 PCs can consistently run entire scenarios by themselves, there is a some kind of measurable difference between those PCs and a run-of-the-mill PC. The difference doesn't have to be called overpowered, but again, I hate playing at tables where I'm not contributing anything meaningful. (I don't mean an odd skill roll) I suspect I'm not alone here.
"Godzilla versus Bambi does not showcase his awesomeness"
This. Too much Godzilla versus Bambi in PFS. Too many BBEGs that can't over come a PC who trips.
Sometimes you just end up playing a scenario where you don't get to contribute. I've certainly played the cleric many a time where my healing wasn't much needed - and there's been other times the party wouldn't have survived without me. Sometimes a scenario really favors a particular kind of build (and it's not yours) and there's not much you can do about it. And sometimes you find a scenario where yours is the perfect build and you get to shine. As long is you aren't always stuck in the background or always hogging the spotlight, it's all good!
Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Martinsville
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By the way, I'm not talking about labeling scenarios, I'm talking about having literally different modes available for each sub-tier.
Please, no. Just no.
However difficult a particular scenario can get, having "hard mode" in them will be effort put in for a very small group of "guygaxion" play enthusiasts.
The Bonekeep specials and such should be enough without having extra text and stats for different modes within individual scenarios.
I have heard of The Waking Rune. Hard enough without the Hard Mode.
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I think a hard mode for each scenario would be completely appropriate, and could be implemented with only a few extra paragraphs of text.
I think this is appropriate because it only takes one heavens oracle to turn even season 4 into a complete joke. The only solution in that case is to have a hard mode available to challenge those groups packing a heavens oracle.