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I've actually run 56 games (at least that I've reported; I've probably run more). Never have I played against the players. Gunslingers, however, are worth changing styles for.
For the guy who asked for more information: I really can't narrow it down for you more. I DM at conventions, at gamedays, at my home, and everywhere else. Some are private games, and some are public. Typically in my area people don't play gunslingers because they're rational, intelligent human beings. Recently the online games have become more popular, though, so I'm preparing to branch out to a wider audience.
For the person (or people, more accurately) that tried throwing the setting in my face: why don't you bother reading the setting yourselves? I really enjoyed reading the part in Alkenstar that said how they don't allow guns outside of the mountain range because they're afraid of what will happen if guns fall into the wrong hands. That makes it quite odd that about one out of ever 15 or 20 Pathfinders these days seem to be carrying guns outside of the mountain range.
For Mike Brock: Sure, I'll happily GM for you. I'm sure that you're just as excited as I am to kill off all the gunslingers in your campaign!
I think you'll find he doesn't want you killing out of hand. Deciding your priority is to kill a class you personally dislike means you are violating the rule post on the pages as you type up the post I'm quoting.
Don't be a jerk.
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How can you see fear for what I don't understand when I don't care even slightly about their power level?
Disliking an available, legal, class whether for mechanical or flavor reasons in the game we all love is NO excuse to try to make life miserable for the flesh and blood person sitting at the table with you for the express purpose of trying to have a good time together. That is another thinking, breathing human being sitting accross the table from you who took the time to schedule and play a game. What possible rationale is there for attempting to ruin his evening, or the evening of SIX other thinking human beings that by passively aggressively walking away from the table at the last minute so they can't reschedule either their plans for the weekend or DMing duties?
You're being a jerk to PEOPLE over a fantasy game. Even for someone pretending to be a fireball tossing elf princess, that's a whole new level of ridiculous.
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How can you see fear for what I don't understand when I don't care even slightly about their power level?
And once again, this is NOT your home campaign. If you can't accept that the class is legal and valid within the rules of organized play, perhaps you should not GM anymore.
It's not you campaign , it's not mine, it's a shared campaign and if you can't accept it and play fairly with your players you shouldn't GM.
You do harm to what Paizo is trying to do here. Build a community where everyone can have an enjoyable sit down and play.
I would love to play the game the way it was meant to be played, Finlanderboy. Sadly, Paizo took that option away by allowing gunslingers.
I'm not so much concerned with broken characters. They are allowed freely at any table I run. I'm more concerned with cowboys in my fantasy game.
Everyone's "fantasy" is different, and trying to kill someone off because of "bad-wrong-fun" is a decision you made, not a corner you are forced into, which is what your opening post alludes to.
Please consider tearing up your PFS Card and give up being a Society GM. Or learn to recognize your prejudice for what it is, and learn to grow beyond it. We say that the game has no room for players who allow their characters to antagonsie each other. It has less room for GM's who color their perceptions of players at the table because of the class they play.
You gave up the right to express your class prejudice when you decided to take on this responsibility of being a Judge at a Network Campaign. This isn't your world, nor is it your campaign. I'm fairly sure you'd not be very happy about a PFS GM having a similar attitude towards a class you want to play. Your fellow players are entitled to the same courtesy on your part.
Whoa, Whoa!!!
I don't think it's time to pull out the "tear up your PFS cards" just yet people!
So perhaps we need to not jump to the "GET OUT" conclusion and let's find out why in better details as to why someone feels like they have no other choice besides these choices.
What really is concerning to me, is that instead of us being understanding and finding solutions we are being quick to kicking someone out of the group and telling him they should leave! This is not necessary and quite frankly making me ashamed of our community.
Come on guys, we are better than this. Let's find a classier solution than just hating on the guys' opinions shall we?
It is not his opinion that is the issue. It is is how he intends to act on it. If that is how he will act then he should not be GM'ing.
Thats my standard reply to when people ask bout firearms. If they are fine with enemies having guns as well and using them, i'll allow it. That tends to scare players more, specially with monsters who could do very well with it. If they agree, then I simply decide what age firearms match with my campaign and go with it and see how well a fire fight goes for them (the more advanced the age, the smarter the enemies are with their firearms)
Players have tried to convince me to allow the use of gunpowder in my AD&D game campaign. From one standpoint, the thought is tempting. Just imagine kobolds, the most inconsequential of humanoid monsters, armed with Uzi submachine guns-now there’s a monster that would strike terror in the heart of even...
Majeh, that is fine in your home campaign, but not in PFS. GMs are not allowed to modify adventures. Gunslingers and firearms are legal in PFS.
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A PFS GM has to accept every player and character that shows up to his table?
Can he not ask him to find another GM that would be ok with a Gunslinger?
A better solution would probably be to not GM for PFS if you can't handle all of the allowed things, but the other questions are still valid.
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Its piss poor form to volunteer and then bail just because you don't like a class.
And bailing is your only real option at a public venue such as a gameday. You don't get to turn your players away in that venue (at least not legally - I'm sure some of you do it). Be a bad enough GM and they'll refuse to sit at your table (there are two such that I won't sit at in my local area).
Ahh, that's true. I'm not involved with PFS, so I was curious how that worked.
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Its an imperfect system (we lack a perfect world), but in Home games which are not publicly listed or announced you are completely with your rights to turn players away. Personally I quite enjoy the risk of playing with new people and making new friends. It is a net gain to join in public venues in my experience.
Some of my best friends in life have been meet via organized play.
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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heck, there were firearms back in 2nd ed d&d. There were also 2nd ed d&d modules set in crashlanded space ships with robots. D&D has always been cross genre friendly.
On the other hand, there were no mythos creatures in old school D&D*. So I hope you also ban mythos NPCs, abbarant sourcerers, etc.
(*except for a single printing of deities and demigods)
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This past weekend, I watched a gunslinger at my table restore balance to the class by rolling nothing above a '2' on the die, all session. And yes, he was using paper cartridges.
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If I had to take a guess about the visceral reaction against gunslingers , I'd say that ...** spoiler omitted **
I'll admit, I don't like the Gunslinger class. At all. Chris pretty much summed up my feelings, under the omitted spoiler, and actually made it more clear to me on *why* I have such an aversion to guns in sword & sorcery, D&D-esque RPGs.
Do I want them at my table? No.
Will I accept them? Yes.
Will I do my best to be sure they have as much fun as any other player? Yes.
Will I uphold the rules limiting the cheese, like enforcing reloads, ammo tracking, etc? You bet.
For ease of tracking, I have a set of 'life counters' that I give to players with Gunslingers to track ammo usage without slowing play.
We don't have the right to exclude any PFS-legal PC from our tables- that's been well-covered already.
Just as a thought, I'll offer something I'm about to try:
I don't like Gunslingers. So, I'm going to play one.
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I do it because there aren't many others who will and I'd rather be a part of the solution (there's not much else to do in this town). I was trying to figure out if that's for "me" or "them", but I haven't come up with the answer.
I had a long post typed up on my take on your outlook.
I deleted it. Clearly you're fishing for a flame war or to stir up the forums. Or you simply want to feel vindicated for your decision to 'combat' the 'wrongness' of the Society.
1 game.. or 58+. You are not in the right for a PFS setting. You have put your decision ahead of the rules. You have set yourself on a course that will hurt players for simply disagreeing with your view of the game. You're going to show a new player that your opinion matters more than the rules that the rest of us have to abide by.
I have seen you denigrate folks for choosing to play a class you dislike. You've insulted them by inferring they weren't human or 'smart enough'. You seem to think we should simply and blindly agree that you are right.
For PFS play.. you're not. Period. End of story. You put your likes/dislikes ahead of the rules of play. You put your attitude ahead of the enjoyment of the players. You say you're the final arbiter of what is 'right and wrong' at your table. You're not. You, like the players who sit down with you, agreed to play by the rules of Pathfinder and Pathfinder Society Organized Play Guide.
You, by your statements, have decided not to play by the rules.
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I do it because there aren't many others who will and I'd rather be a part of the solution (there's not much else to do in this town). I was trying to figure out if that's for "me" or "them", but I haven't come up with the answer.
Then I wonder why you are only doing it for players who don't play gunslingers rather than all players.
If you are only doing it for yourself, I would ask that you stop GMing organized play games. By all means run your own campaigns, and ban guns and gunslingers and whatever else you don't enjoy.
But I myself, and I feel safe in saying that the campaign leadership as well, would rather you not represent PFS.
It seems the rules are in place in order to discourage power-trip GMs, or to limit their fiat.
Some slip through though, apparently.
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For ease of tracking, I have a set of 'life counters' that I give to players with Gunslingers to track ammo usage without slowing play.
Do you only do this for Gunslingers, or do you do it for archers, slingers, crossbow users, et al?
If you only do it for Gunslingers, please reconsider allowing the player to do what you allow anyone else with a limited resource to do: Track it the way they normally do.
Me? I use a scratch sheet for my PC at a game. I track hit point status, spell slot use, arrows/bullets/daggers/what-have-you used, scrolls, potions, wand charges, and other limited use things that need to be tracked on it.
I also use it to notate status effects, both positive and negative, usages of prepared spells, consumables of any sort, ability usages when that is a limited supply (e.g. rounds of bard performance, uses of Force Missile, once/day stuff like the See Invisibility and Daylight casts from one of my PC's Hand of Glory, rounds of use from my Boots of Speed, etc.)
And, to make my life harder, now a GM wants me to double-track my ammo used? In a format that I can't keep with my chronicle as a reference for later? All because I run a single musket using PC?
My apologies, but when I run across something like this, that reeks of prejudice or a double standard, I want to make sure that we are talking about the same thing.
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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Its piss poor form to volunteer and then bail just because you don't like a class.Agreed - it's poor form to ask anyone to leave a table and doesn't reflect on your skills as a GM.
A competent GM makes an enjoyable game out of whoever sits down at his/table.
Unfortunately, that's not always possible.
There are valid reasons for asking players to leave a table (and even to refuse to seat them) - disruptive behaviour, spotlight stealing, outright cheating, and several others. But the fact that you don't happen to like the class in general, or even that particular character build, isn't one of them.
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This reminded me of a game I played way back when.. when I got into first edition.. back in 1980.
I was out working at camp and trying to keep from going stir crazy on my off time. I saw a bunch of campers with books and dice.. DnD. SO I walk over and ask to play. The group says sure.. I spend a few minutes rolling and get a piece of paper.
The dice came up with a good spread of stats.. my lowest was a 13 or so. The GM says .. 'You could make a paladin' with that ' Since most of the players were already playing LG characters I figured..why not.
I spend 2 hours making up the character (GM gave me the money/xp he wanted me to play at) and I bought and counted out everything. I got my gear, and sat down to play.
The next round AFTER I introduced myself as 'Sir Corwin', the one player who DIDN"T tell me what he was playing stepped up and KILLED me. An assassin. Lawful Evil. DIdn't say a single word to me during the making of the character but waited till I was done.. evven let me walk into the bar and introduce myself. Then killed me with a vorpal sword.
Why?
He didn't like paladins. Always killed them he said. So I wasted two hours because one person thought it would be fun to crush another players hopes (remember I was maybe 13 at this point) and wasted 2 1/2 hours of my life to get killed literally after saying 2 sentences.
Because he thought it was fun to watch me waste my time building a pc and then killing him on a whim.
Now, I recall that whenever I have a problem player or annoying character in the group. I COULD do that.. but do I have the right? No. Because that person spent some time and effort to make something to play.
I don't have to like the characters that sit down at the table. And sometimes I don't. I do have to respect that they are products of someones time and imagination and a desire to build a story.
I do NOT have the right to be a jerk because I disagree with a character or player choice and neither does anyone else who wants to GM for the society.
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For the person (or people, more accurately) that tried throwing the setting in my face: why don't you bother reading the setting yourselves? I really enjoyed reading the part in Alkenstar that said how they don't allow guns outside of the mountain range because they're afraid of what will happen if guns fall into the wrong hands. That makes it quite odd that about one out of ever 15 or 20 Pathfinders these days seem to be carrying guns outside of the mountain range.
It doesn't make it odd, because you are wrong.
In fact, a full ninety percent of all firearms, both personal weapons and artillery manufactured in the Gunworks are kept within Alkenstar itself, both for protection and to maintain product scarcity throughout the rest of the world.
10% of the guns manufactured are allowed to leave Alkenstar. The reason they control export so heavily is to keep the price high and also probably because they don't have fully industrial production yet, not because they have any qualms about the wrong hands. Guns have existed for centuries already on Golarion so even 10% of the guns which can be exported couted over all that time is probably enough to arm 5% of the parthfinders.
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We should just kick jerks out of the game, then. You define a jerk as anyone who ruins your fun. Well... gunslingers are ruining my fun, so start whipping out that banhammer!
If your curious, the reason I beg you to just stop GMing is because you make the rest of us look bad.
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We should just kick jerks out of the game, then. You define a jerk as anyone who ruins your fun. Well... gunslingers are ruining my fun, so start whipping out that banhammer!If your curious, the reason I beg you to just stop GMing is because you make the rest of us look bad.
Funny. The hundreds of players that have enjoyed my games would disagree with you. Interesting that the only people who say things like that are completely random, inconsequential people over the internet.
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Funny. The hundreds of players that have enjoyed my games would disagree with you. Interesting that the only people who say things like that are completely random, inconsequential people over the internet.We should just kick jerks out of the game, then. You define a jerk as anyone who ruins your fun. Well... gunslingers are ruining my fun, so start whipping out that banhammer!If your curious, the reason I beg you to just stop GMing is because you make the rest of us look bad.
How many of those hundreds were playing gunslingers that you targeted for death?
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The same can be said of the barbarianNot exactly. That barbarian can attack for non-lethal damage, while the gunslinger cannot.The eample I used had a Barbarian hit for nearly 100 hp of 'non lethal' on a 20 hp victim.
I would get rubber bullets if I could. Salt shot doesn't work.
I don't normally kill everything in site on impulse. Whereas the Barb did.
"I coated that adamantine polearm in rubber. Honest. How was I supposed to know that construct was that allergic to foam rubber?"
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PFS has a standing obligation:
A GM has to run the scenario for the table that shows up. If that's the All Halfling Bard/Barbarian party in Bonekeep, the GM runs for them.
If that's the "three gunslingers and two life oracle/shadowdancers" play Empyreal Enlightenment, the GM runs for that table.
If that kind if obligation gets your knickers in a knot, step away - play some games rather than GM them. Play some other RPGs.
I have fewer problems with gunslingers-as-flavor than I do with gunslingers-as-game-balance issues. If guns were effectively "reload them between fights" - where it takes 3 full round move actions to reload a musket with paper cartridges, I'd be much more sanguine about them.
Pathfinder already has "Oh, and ranged combat owns everything after 7th level" as a fundamental design constraint, because once you get iteratives that can hit things, the opportunity cost of moving is too high.
With Paizo's release schedule for the last four years, the list of "definitively not Pathfinder/Golarion approved" is a much shorter list than "Allowed in Golarion."
I mean, this is the game that allows you to make a tiefling witch/alchemist multiclass with tail, hair hex, tentacle, and four arms. Or a summoner with an eidolon that looks entirely like a Transformer, and party them with a shield-throwing freedom-loving fighter named Captain Andoran!
It's Golarion! You can't say it doesn't belong there!
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It's funny, because when everyone was up in arms about the synthesist, and people stopped allowing them at their tables, I didn't hear cries of "don't be a jerk". I heard cries of "sure, we'll ban them from the campaign".
That may have something to do with the fact that synthesists are one man armies for which there is no definite remedy other than disallowing them. A synthesist summoner is more than capable of soloing CR 9s at level 4, and I mean STRONG CR9s. As in they're really only CR9 in name. I made the mistake of asking to use one in Rise of the Runelords, having never seen one in action, and holy crap people were right. It was so broken that I asked for either a reroll or for the GM to kill my character during its only vulnerable time, when the eidolon was not present (barely ever, considering the character stopped needing to sleep around level 4). I will openly admit that I am a min-maxer and a powergamer. I like seeing huge numbers from my characters, and I like knowing they will be extremely difficult for the person behind the GM screen to stop. Even bearing that in mind, synthesist was too broken for my taste.
Gunslingers are quite overpowered if optimized, but likewise only slightly overpowered if you intentionally pass up the one or two items required to do twelve attacks per round against touch AC. Now, I'm aware that you've said you only dislike them for flavor reasons, but they are still PFS legal. The fact that you would openly target a class purely because it exists doesn't just reflect poorly on you, you know. There has long been a sort of trust that needs to exist between GM and player, you see. As a player, I expect a GM will perform their task impartially and fairly to the best of their abilities. This expectation is not unique to me. Violating this unspoken trust damages the hobby as a whole. They want to have fun just like you do. Just say ahead of time that you'd prefer not to GM for gunslingers. Anyone who gets the memo will probably just decide to go with another character, or barring that line of action, find another table to seat themselves at. No harm, no foul.
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"Golarion is weird!
Gunslingers are weird!
Therefore your criticism is void!
STFU and stomach my gunslinger, or leave PFS forever!"
NO.
NO NO NO.
As a game organiser I have a hard enough time recruiting committed GMs for games. If a committed GM wants to 'give notice' beforehand that they are not comfortable GMing for whatever destroys their enjoyment of Pathfinder, you know what? I am cool with it. Maybe when a tidal wave of PFS GMs comes my way I can start being picky, but right now I don't think that's a luxury we have. If a GM came up to me and said they weren't comfortable GMing for my jungle-surviving halfling dino-riding beast rider cavalier I'd suck it up and bring my traditional Tolkienesque Dwarf to the table instead.
By all means, embrace a spirit of cooperation and fun and live with it. Your GM has NOT signed some contract that means they have to put up or shut up with whatever concoction a player has dreamed up.
An example. I am running a roleplay heavy game of Stolen Heir. All players are Andoran characters, with back stories related to the country and professions related to the details of military and politics. Everything is set for an awesome mature and complicated session. Then the final player signs up. It's a transvestite sociopath Gnomish illusionist with ADHD and a bright purple crocodile familiar named Bitey McBiterson. Do I just 'suck it up' or as GM, do I assert some control and protect the gaming experience? Does that mean I should leave PFS?
Is Demoyn being repugnant when he says players who choose gunslingers aren't human? (Yes! And it's really hurting his argument!) Does that mean that PFS GMs do not have a say in the games they run? Really?