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I think people are arguably jerks for showing up with animal companions.Lol Jared and Rod really scarred you for life with those things didn't they? ;)
*Please note, said with a level of humor.*
No, no. It wasn't them. In fact, I'd feel better if it HAD been them. They can break ANYTHING. What scars me is that animal companions are redonkulous in the hands of pretty much anyone. "Class feature" my ass; more like 2nd character.
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In this venue, You are far more likely to see someone criticizing a player for healing in battle, than complaining of a mistimed fireball.Sorry, was that sarcastic or not? It's unclear to me.PCs in PFS frequently pay for other PCs' mistakes. Constantly, as a matter of fact. I've seen two TPKs that could have been easily prevented if a cleric had quite swinging and channeled.The cleric's player however, should be commended for taking the message board mantra on how one should never heal in battle if they can do damage to heart.
Good battle healing is brutal against most PFS NPCs. It exacerbates the PCs action economy advantage. This in turn is exacerbated that the PCs can cram enough dpr to handle most scenarios into 2 PCs. Healing for NPCs is almost always a waste of time, however.
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The no PVP rule doesn't force player's to ask before using Area of Effect. That is nowhere in the rules.
But that doesn't mean that players can AoE with reckless abandon. What it means is that sometimes a GM has to step up and say no to a player when they are dropping an AoE that could kill another player's character.
The 'Don't Be a Jerk' rule is one that need to be enforced in those situations. Also GM's need to make calls about whether or not a player dropping an AoE on other player's is intentional. One good sign is if people ask someone to not AoE them and they do it anyway. That's a clear sign.
Of course I've seen characters nearly get killed because one player refused to give permission to be hit with the splash from an alchemist fire. Without that alchemist fire a player character trapped in a swarm would have died. If the rules forced players to require permission that other character would have died.
The whole AoE and allies/ PvP is one that is filled with corner cases. All we can hope is that a GM uses his best judgment and does what he can so that no one at the table feels like the other player's are trying to cause their characters death.
Not being at the table in the OP I can't really say whether or not the GM's call was right.
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I am very much NOT a bloodthirsty GM, nor do I seek the death of anything other than animal companions. But I object to AE damage casters getting a free pass as described above.
I don't agree with it, but it was necessary to prevent people from griefing by "accidentally" catching other players in the AoE.
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In short, you can never voluntarily use your character to kill another character—ever.
This line, from the rules, tells me that the situation the OP is talking about simply shouldn't be allowed to happen.
There is an exception after that about mind-control, but that's not the case here.
The goal of Pathfinder Society Organized Play is to provide an enjoyable experience for as many players as possible. Player-versus-player conflict only sours a session.
And this explains exactly what happened by allowing/enforcing it to occur.
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The PC did not know it was a harmful spell to the Ranger, therefore it doesn't fall under PvP. It falls under accidental death. Otherwise you are meta-gaming.
Plus the Ranger was only GM Credit, he couldn't have been that attached to the character. This was BONEKEEP at GENCON! If you play with the Bull sometimes you get the Horns!
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The ranger himself didn't even know, thanks to his undisclosed alignment.
Surely it's better to take back the holy smite, say you're true neutral for the purposes of this game, and continue to enjoy the game rather than sour the session with an accidental death.
It's not unreasonable to "metagame" that the characters know each other's abilities - and alignments - from before the game starts, even if all of that discussion doesn't actually happen and they find out in the midst of the game. It's essential to keep things happening and focus on the fun parts.
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No, no. It wasn't them. In fact, I'd feel better if it HAD been them. They can break ANYTHING. What scars me is that animal companions are redonkulous in the hands of pretty much anyone. "Class feature" my ass; more like 2nd character.
I've only seen one of Jared's animal companions in play so far since he started playing with our core group, and the thing just couldn't keep up with us. Animal companions are certainly strong, but I still have yet to see one that I could not murder with a well-built vanilla fighter.
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No, no. It wasn't them. In fact, I'd feel better if it HAD been them. They can break ANYTHING. What scars me is that animal companions are redonkulous in the hands of pretty much anyone. "Class feature" my ass; more like 2nd character.I've only seen one of Jared's animal companions in play so far since he started playing with our core group, and the thing just couldn't keep up with us. Animal companions are certainly strong, but I still have yet to see one that I could not murder with a well-built vanilla fighter.
I've seen several that my fighter would not even be able to hit; ie 32+ AC. Consequently, NPCs couldn't hit them either, making the rest of the party superfluous.
"I keep checking into this thread expecting someone to complain that shotting into melee should give a chance of hitting your friends... or when you shot at an enemy and miss, you should have a chance of hitting friends PAST the enemy. Or that we should have chances of hitting friends in melee with everyone jumping about and all. You know, what "friendly fire" is all about."
That is clearly beyond permitted mechanics even in base Pathfinder. Of course, GMs can always house rule it, and I can always not play in those games, as well.
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I don't know if I would've made the same call as the GM in question. I can't know, because I wasn't there. However, I think the call was reasonable enough, given the circumstances as explained. Two mistakes came together to form a perfect storm in a deadly scenario. These things happen.
Lest you think I am speaking without experience, I was killed by another player in Bonekeep I. The player happened to be 8 or 9 years old, and caught my unconscious fighter in an AOE effect after being warned that the act would probably kill me, as unconscious reflex saves are difficult to make. He completed the action anyway. The GM ruled me dead. I hold no grudges, and in that case, I would've made the same call. The GM is actually one of my best friends in PFS and I have driven 4 hours for a chance to play at one of his tables. It happens.
There are a couple of important things to remember: this is a game. If you find yourself getting too angry over a game, then it's not fun anymore. Also, if we continuously second-guess our GMs, constantly looking over their shoulders and criticizing calls they make in the heat of battle, so to speak, we will very shortly run out of GMs. I've been involved with a lot of volunteering, and the main thing I've learned is that volunteers are a precious resource that should be handled with care. If you criticize one too much, you lose the volunteer, and most of the time, that's bad for the community at large.
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I've seen several that my fighter would not even be able to hit; ie 32+ AC. Consequently, NPCs couldn't hit them either, making the rest of the party superfluous.
Well, this situation of vs. will have varying results depending upon how the parties in question build. From what I understand from your posts, it appears that you are not a min-max sort of player.
That said, if you have a min-maxed animal companion vs. min-maxed fighter, the animal is done. Late game with extremely liberal amounts of druid buffs on the animal companion aside, that is.
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A druid makes a much better critter buffer than a party member buffer (Though if the other PC is a monk or brawler they get some cool options) Not only is their spell list full of "target animal gets..." but they can throw on self only buffs like Aspect of the Wolf. There also aren't a lot of humanoid only buffs other than large person, so critters benefit from most of the party buffs.
Flutter Mostly uses her spell list to buff party members and they get a noticeable improvement from bulls strength and bears endurance, and counter /immunity to a lot of effects (gases, poisons, fire damage, grappling). The difference is pretty good but not overwhelming.
Doyle uses his spell list to buff his velociraptor owner and Conan turns into a rampaging incarnation of death with 6d8 talons. The difference between buffed and unbuffed critter is enormous.
Monks come somewhere in the middle. You can strongjaw them but you can't animal growth them.
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I don't know if I would've made the same call as the GM in question. I can't know, because I wasn't there. However, I think the call was reasonable enough, given the circumstances as explained. Two mistakes came together to form a perfect storm in a deadly scenario. These things happen.
Lest you think I am speaking without experience, I was killed by another player in Bonekeep I. The player happened to be 8 or 9 years old, and caught my unconscious fighter in an AOE effect after being warned that the act would probably kill me, as unconscious reflex saves are difficult to make. He completed the action anyway. The GM ruled me dead. I hold no grudges, and in that case, I would've made the same call. The GM is actually one of my best friends in PFS and I have driven 4 hours for a chance to play at one of his tables. It happens.
There are a couple of important things to remember: this is a game. If you find yourself getting too angry over a game, then it's not fun anymore. Also, if we continuously second-guess our GMs, constantly looking over their shoulders and criticizing calls they make in the heat of battle, so to speak, we will very shortly run out of GMs. I've been involved with a lot of volunteering, and the main thing I've learned is that volunteers are a precious resource that should be handled with care. If you criticize one too much, you lose the volunteer, and most of the time, that's bad for the community at large.
I hope you can understand how horrible experience sounds to me. It is vastly different for you because you are best friends with the GM and he knew you very well, but if it was myself (running under the same situation withe little information given) with a GM I was playing with the first time I would come away feeling that the GM was being just as fair as if he said my character died from a random condition at the outset of the scenario just because it would be funny.
It is hard being a GM and it can really be disheartening to receive criticism even if it is warranted, but as a player it can be horrible to go from bad gaming experience to bad gaming experience because of the GMs more than any other thing. Not being critical hasn't helped and I'm only sort of getting back into convention games again because of it. What should I do (barring just walking out) if not tell them why I am not enjoying myself?
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Doesn't that lean towards the "No bullying" rule?
There's nothing to stop a cleric from selecting out PCs they don't like from channels in the middle of a fight. At least, not mechanically.
No. The cleric doesn't have to say a thing. There is no possible way to force a cleric to include someone in their channel. I have only considered this once in my entire seeker cleric's career, and even then I didn't do it. So yeah. Pretty corner case.
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I've seen several that my fighter would not even be able to hit; ie 32+ AC. Consequently, NPCs couldn't hit them either, making the rest of the party superfluous.Well, this situation of vs. will have varying results depending upon how the parties in question build. From what I understand from your posts, it appears that you are not a min-max sort of player.
That said, if you have a min-maxed animal companion vs. min-maxed fighter, the animal is done. Late game with extremely liberal amounts of druid buffs on the animal companion aside, that is.
I just think that the animal companion advancement table just starts the animal off too close to the capabilities of a fighter or other melee with no min-maxing factored in on either side. Yeah, the fighter is better, but the animal is close enough that once you add in the druid on top of the animal, the fighter is a joke. It's even worse with sorcerers and clerics. I hate them more for this than any humiliation heaped on my PCs, although that is a factor as well.
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I don't know if I would've made the same call as the GM in question. I can't know, because I wasn't there. However, I think the call was reasonable enough, given the circumstances as explained. Two mistakes came together to form a perfect storm in a deadly scenario. These things happen.
Lest you think I am speaking without experience, I was killed by another player in Bonekeep I. The player happened to be 8 or 9 years old, and caught my unconscious fighter in an AOE effect after being warned that the act would probably kill me, as unconscious reflex saves are difficult to make. He completed the action anyway. The GM ruled me dead. I hold no grudges, and in that case, I would've made the same call. The GM is actually one of my best friends in PFS and I have driven 4 hours for a chance to play at one of his tables. It happens.
There are a couple of important things to remember: this is a game. If you find yourself getting too angry over a game, then it's not fun anymore. Also, if we continuously second-guess our GMs, constantly looking over their shoulders and criticizing calls they make in the heat of battle, so to speak, we will very shortly run out of GMs. I've been involved with a lot of volunteering, and the main thing I've learned is that volunteers are a precious resource that should be handled with care. If you criticize one too much, you lose the volunteer, and most of the time, that's bad for the community at large.
I hope you can understand how horrible experience sounds to me. It is vastly different for you because you are best friends with the GM and he knew you very well, but if it was myself (running under the same situation withe little information given) with a GM I was playing with the first time I would come away feeling that the GM was being just as fair as if he said my character died from a random condition at the outset of the scenario just because it would be funny.
It is hard being a GM and it can really be disheartening to receive criticism...
I expect to receive due criticism and I take ownership of my mistakes. Likewise, I rarely spare criticism, because it's better to get problems out in the open.
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To be clear, the two mistakes I was referring to were initially not writing an alignment on the character sheet, and then including an ally in an area of effect spell without first ascertaining that the ally would have been unaffected. Bonekeep scenarios are challenging, and the players as well as the GM should be on top of the game. When I play any scenario with the reputation of something like Bonekeep, or when I specifically request hard mode (on scenarios with that option), I am aware that I have to think carefully about the consequences of my actions, and expect ambiguous rulings to go against me. That's just the nature of the beast. I guess that's my point.
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Late game with extremely liberal amounts of PC buffs on the fighter would fix that I think...I've seen several that my fighter would not even be able to hit; ie 32+ AC. Consequently, NPCs couldn't hit them either, making the rest of the party superfluous.Well, this situation of vs. will have varying results depending upon how the parties in question build. From what I understand from your posts, it appears that you are not a min-max sort of player.
That said, if you have a min-maxed animal companion vs. min-maxed fighter, the animal is done. Late game with extremely liberal amounts of druid buffs on the animal companion aside, that is.
It would more than fix it. The issue is that a buffed animal companion is kind of part of the "package" druid + companion unit, where as the fighter does not come with any such advantage.
The fighter is considerably better than an animal companion by default. It's not until you are running around with a companion rocking animal growth, atavism, barkskin, bear's endurance, bull's strength, cat's grace, greater magic fang, and strong jaw that you are really going to see it have a chance to pull away vs. some fighter builds.
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My favorite is when the blaster asks the Rogue with Evasion if it's okay to Fireball him, the Rogue consents, and then fails his save.
But I've seen missed bombs kill a character before, too.
And it was in Bonekeep, no less.
This is very enlightening. We had an Alchemist over the weekend at GenCon that was dropping bombs faster than the Mad Bomber What Bombs At Midnight and kept hitting the PCs when he missed/scattered.
Good to know.
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In short, you can never voluntarily use your character to kill another character—ever.This line, from the rules, tells me that the situation the OP is talking about simply shouldn't be allowed to happen.
There is an exception after that about mind-control, but that's not the case here.
1st off the pvp rule says you may not voluntarily kill another player. No where does it say you cant harm them, that falls under the dont be a jerk clause and is up to the gm to mitigate. as far as that other scenario if the player did not choose an alignment then you can not be voluntarily killing them. that was an unfortunate side effect of an illegal character playing at the table. as all characters are to be complete otherwise they are illegal.
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i just dont take selective channel, too many other feats i want as a neg channel specialist. i try to be smart bout how i channel, not channel someone in my party who will die or be overly offended but i will channel my party cause i use siphon channel
Man, I would hate it if people at my table were doing crap like this. I do not find such shenanigans fun.
It would turn me off from going to a PFS event if players controlled whether i lived or died. I don't mind dieing to the rolls of the dice, but as a new player I am going to have fun and succeed. Not at the cost of anyone else in the group. When I read the rules and it said 'no pvp allowed' I took it to mean that GM's wouldnt allow it, or if a player was in range of an AOE they just wouldnt be affected.
In the 2 games I've ran I was the aoe beast with color spray and sleep, but I managed to hit them in areas where they wouldnt touch the other players. It wasn't difficult. If players would have been in range? I wouldnt have cast it.
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The guide is not written like a legal document. This is not to say that I want it written that way (I don't) but that means you can't read it like one. Even a cursory attempt to finagle, rules lawyer, or put raw over rai is going to succeed.
Oh! you can't buy things over your fame limit from your faction, just get it from the corner store then.
Well it doesn't say no replays if I died, so i died and can replay it no problem.
It never says i can't gestalt! BOW before my barbarianwizardoraclepaladin!
The intent is that killing other characters at the table makes the game suck for the other players at the table and we don't want to do that. Thats just as true whether you bring them directly to -800 hit points . leave them at -8 and bleeding, bullrush them off a cliff (hey it wasn't me it was gravity!), or turn them into a tribble in the middle of a dire wolf feeding frenzie.
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issue is if you code it like that and say no one can use an ability that will negatively effect other players, you may as well restrict any aoe type spells from the wizards list or the ability for players to use channel negative energy specifically cause most the time their is a high likely-hood of your allies being in your radius. hence why they phrase it no player may intentionally kill another player.
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The guideline I use is that you can't break invisibility or invisibilities loopholes without the other players express and fully informed consent. I will let the party stop time and discuss the ramifications of the tactics because its essentially a player on player thing, and thus automatically metgame.
You can't write a rule for every contingency. There are times when things are so bad you WANT The druid to baleful polymorph you or a burning hands to the face is better than what the spider swarm is doing.
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issue is if you code it like that and say no one can use an ability that will negatively effect other players, you may as well restrict any aoe type spells from the wizards list or the ability for players to use channel negative energy specifically cause most the time their is a high likely-hood of your allies being in your radius. hence why they phrase it no player may intentionally kill another player.
Except there are times when you can throw a fireball and not hit your allies.
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been gaming with you for past year, have yet to see anyone call me a jerk or accuse me of pvping the party in anyway.Many people are shy to state their feelings. That doesn't mean that they don't feel that you are being a jerk or PvPing the party.
Lets not bring double secret probation paranoia into this.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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I've been asking people if they mind being caught in my AoEs long before I started playing PFS. It works remarkably well. Maybe it's because I don't drop AoEs on PCs unless I think it would be worth it and they know it, but I would say people turn me down less than 5% of the time. I will frequently offer them a choice of dropping an AoE on 2 monsters or dropping it on them and 4 monsters and they almost always pick dropping it on them. I have a hard time understanding why everyone doesn't do this considering how easy it is and how well it works. I mean, sure I understand there are a few jerks out there that don't care if they incidentally kill party members or even get a sadistic joy out of it, but are they really that common?