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Though Pathfinder is my RPG system of choice (with SWSE for Sci-Fi games), I still have great love for several more "simpler" games like AD&D, Dragon Age, and others.
I actually consider it one of the major flaws of the d20 system, that it tries to cover pretty much any imaginable situation with a specific rule. Other games tend to assume that lots of things are just successfully completed automatically without any rules to see if it works or not.
This is very much a matter of personal preference and playing style. If you play Pathfinder for the tactical combat and building character, simply handwaving things and ignoring specific rules won't enhance the game, but only chaos and arbitrary situations.
But you can also play the game by focusing on interaction and story progress, while letting the rules fade into the background. (Though you can of course also do both.) And I think in such situations, the d20 system tends to get a bit clunky and occasionally getting in the way. But in the old tradition of AD&D, you don't actually have to use every single rule there is, but keep it to the bare bones or anything in between.
What I am looking for are ideas which can help to free the players from being tied to the dice all the time and enable both players and GM to simply go with the flow and come up with resolutions to things as you go. I already got a couple, but would really like to get some additional ideas from other people as well.
1. Only roll dice when the outcome is uncertain. There are many rather mundane actions that can be resolved by using the regular rules, but quite often it just isn't neccessary. When you ask someone for the way to the temple, you don't need to make a Diplomacy check to Gather Information. When a rogue in light armor drops his backpack to climb a tree to look around, you don't really have to make a Climb check. The Swim skill and the Ride skill, say that you don't need to have Ranks in the skills to swim or ride, and don't have to make checks for most "ordinary" situations in which you swim or ride. The skills are for situations in which you perform extraordinary attempts at riding and swimming.
I think that's a good advice to actually a great range of situations. If a failed roll has no real effect on how the adventure progresses and it seems like a task that almost everyone would be able to complete without any problem, skip the rolling of dice. I would even extend that to "don't make checks against a DC of 10 or lower", unless there are circumstances that would complicate things. Like climbing a tree in plate armor with a heavy load. Intution tells you it's not guaranteed to work, so roll the dice and add the modifiers.
2. Use +2/+4 bonuses and -2/-4 penalties on the fly. I think there are lots of rules for fog, and smoke, and thick vegetation, wet floors, loud noises, and so on. But those come up very rarely and I wouldn't be suprised if most GMs would have to look them up. While you of course can look them up, for a game that puts less emphasis on tactical combat, I instead favor very strongly to simply apply a small modifer to any relevant rolls like attack rolls, Perception checks, Reflex saves, and so on.
3. For small encounters, don't use a grid. Not exactly about dice, but works similarly. If you have an encounter in which you have only 4 PCs and three or four enemies, you can keep track of everyones general position pretty well in your mind. Saying "I step into position to flank the ogre together with character B" and "I back up so the ogre can't reach me with a 5-foot step" can often be precise enough. The really critical things to know is "who is flanking" and "who is in what characters threatend space". All that the grid really does is giving precise information about that. If a group has a more laid back approach to combat, it's not really neccessary. For highly tactical combat, that obviously is not an option, as movement speed and line of sight become completely arbitrary.
4.Simplefy spell durations. Keeping track of how long a spell lasts is one of the more complicated parts of the game. However, this can be quite significantly simplefied:
If you play in the low- to mid-level range of 1st to 10th level, a spell that lasts 1 round/level will last 1 to 10 rounds. Since most fights last in the range of 3 to 5 rounds, a very significant portion of such spells being cast will last until the end of the encounter, and will be long over by the time the next encounter starts. So to simplefy, you could also say that "1 round/level" means the same as "for the rest of the encounter.
Similar, a spell with a duration of 1 hour/level will last between 1 and 10 hours. That almost always means "the whole adventuring day". 1st level characters will rarely crawl through a dungeon more than 1 hour at a time, and even 10th level characters are very unlikely to go full 13 hours in one go.
Spells with 1 minute/level are less clear, but a good estimate is "one series of rapid encounters", like storming a small bandit hideout which includes clearing 4 rooms of bandits in rapid succession. It will probably last long enough to clear the entire gatehouse of a castle, but will have ended by the time you continue to the next strongpoint where the defenders have holed up.
I started off playing Pathfinder lite as I come from a much more old school type DMing. Swords and Wizardry and Classic D&D mostly.
I started off with the following House rules for my Pathfinder game and made sure that all involved knew it and were ok with it.
1-No attacks of opportunity.
2-Initiative was group only with a D6 and no Mods.
3-No skills.
4-No sized weapons.
5-No Fighter,Wizard,Rogue and Cleric only.
6-You could move up to half your movement and still attack.
7-4D6 in order,drop the lowest for stat generation.
8-Any feat requirement effected by house rules is hand waved away.
It played just fine and like any other old school game.Granted it wasn't really PF but I got to use all those adventures!
After a bit we decided to slowly add complexity back into the game, mostly due to getting tons and tons of miniatures and some rather cool battlemaps.
Now we play a mostly strait up by the rules PF game and like it just fine.I wouldn't say its any better this way but it does have a whole new tactical mini-game that is fun and different than we ever used before.
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The hand wave rules have the same problem they had back in the 1E/2E days.
1. Lack of consistency. Going to a new DM could require practically learning a new system. I had DMs with binders full of house rules, many of which were for things 3E eventually covered.
2. DM abusiveness. If you have a fair and impartial DM then this usually works fine. But if you don't it gives the DM a lot of power to abuse the players. 2E especially seemed to produce a lot off petty tyrant DMs, so when 3E came out I was ecstatic that the detailed rules empowered the players. Of course, now I see players abusing that power instead of DMs so I am not sure which is better, but at least the power is more balanced than it was prior to that.
4.Simplefy spell durations. Keeping track of how long a spell lasts is one of the more complicated parts of the game. However, this can be quite significantly simplefied:
If you play in the low- to mid-level range of 1st to 10th level, a spell that lasts 1 round/level will last 1 to 10 rounds. Since most fights last in the range of 3 to 5 rounds, a very significant portion of such spells being cast will last until the end of the encounter, and will be long over by the time the next encounter starts. So to simplefy, you could also say that "1 round/level" means the same as "for the rest of the encounter.
Similar, a spell with a duration of 1 hour/level will last between 1 and 10 hours. That almost always means "the whole adventuring day". 1st level characters will rarely crawl through a dungeon more than 1 hour at a time, and even 10th level characters are very unlikely to go full 13 hours in one go.
Spells with 1 minute/level are less clear, but a good estimate is "one series of rapid encounters", like storming a small bandit hideout which includes clearing 4 rooms of bandits in rapid succession. It will probably last long enough to clear the entire gatehouse of a castle, but will have ended by the time you continue to the next strongpoint where the defenders have holed up.
I have a crunchier version of this as a house rule. I think it's on the forums somewhere. I've been meaning to update.
If you have a fair and impartial DM then this usually works fine.
If you don't you are $%$%^$$ anyway.
Really I love both old school games and the new. Pathfinder feeds my new tactical and crunchy addiction while Swords and Wizardry is perfect for those games where I don't want to have to bother with a ton of rules and restrictions.
The Power at a RPG is NEVER even remotely balanced. The DM is THE GOD and the players live in his world.
Now balance isn't a fair analogy because DM's are really on the players side.Like those old Greek and Roman Gods we just want the pc's to work and strive (earn) for greatness while entertaining us at the same time.
A Bored DM with sluggish lump type pc's is a recipe for a whole lot of world hurt while goal oriented get out and DO PC's are a constant source of entertainment.
I agree. Common sense for certain things such as events that rarely happen will save alot of time rather than have the whole group look it up and discuss for 10 minutes.
As for the inititive roll I use a d10 as it sucks when the character with 18 dex, Improved Inititive, and Paragon of Speed goes AFTER the Earth Elemental who rolled a 20. Why even bother with the Improved Inititve Feat when the dice roll will often make it irrelevant?
However, we are still pretty big on mapping out fights. I think it is mostly because everyone brings the figs they painted and like to use them. Also, there can be that odd arguement you can't hand-wave aside about positioning; I try to be a fair and even-handed god.
I have a crunchier version of this as a house rule. I think it's on the forums somewhere. I've been meaning to update.
You do. It can be found here.
I have a crunchier version of this as a house rule. I think it's on the forums somewhere. I've been meaning to update.You do. It can be found here.
Sincere thanks. I've just updated that, since you went to the trouble to look it up.
Sincere thanks. I've just updated that, since you went to the trouble to look it up.
No problem and thanks for the update. As for the trouble, it was surprisingly easy to find. Use of the word "sortie" is not very common on the homebrew forums.=)