Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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If people are playing 3-4 or 4-5 you might consider playing a pregen PC and applying credit to your level 1. I recommend this to everyone who would otherwise risk their level 1 character in a higher level adventure.A lot of players aren't interested in playing a pregen, and even if they are you can only apply the sheet to a level 1 character. That doesn't help if your friends are already level 4+. Sure you could play 3 different games and get your level 1 to level 2 but then you still need 9 games to be appropriate level to play with your friends.
How does that help? Do you just keep playing a different pregen for each game? Nope, it goes back to the GM once the game is over, you don't get to keep Bob the Necromancer's pregen sheet as your own, Because the character isn't yours, it doesn't level, there's no consistency for you...
I'll admit that the thought of playing a pregen doesn't fill be with glee, but it's an available stopgap measure. But what you're saying here just doesn't seem to be right;
Legal Pathfinder Society Characters
For modules and Adventure Path content below 9th level, you may use a Pathfinder Society pregenerated character, available on paizo.com or the 1st- and 7th-level iconic characters on pages 275–297 of the Pathfinder RPG NPC Codex. If you play a non-1st-level pregenerated character, you may apply credit from the pregenerated character to one of your 1st-level characters, with the gp gained reduced to 1,398 gp (or 699 gp for slow advancement track characters). If you play a non-1st-level pregenerated character, you may apply the credit to your character as soon as she reaches the level of the pregenerated character played. Equipment listed on the pregenerated character sheet may only be sold to clear conditions, such as death, during the play of the module and any remaining gold does not carry over at the end of the module.
Yeah sure, one time you play Merisiel, next time you play Ezren. But all the XP goes towards your own character.
You'll still be behind your friends, provided they all play only one character and those are the only people you play with. In my experience though, that's not the case.
Our group in the Netherlands isn't huge, but it's still about 30 people who play at least twice a month. There's about 3-5 tables a week. Most people have about 3 characters, some a lot more, others fewer. Because at some point, your first PC is level 6, and can't play level 1-5 adventures anymore. So you make a new character for it.
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The big thing to realize about WBL is this:
It's a snapshot. At level X, you're supposed to be holding Y wealth. Not Y wealth collected in total after all adventures; Y wealth right now. Maybe your lifetime loot is Y*2, but you've drunk up Y amount of potions too. Doesn't matter.
In a home game, the GM could just audit every level to see if people are falling behind or going to fast and adjust treasure accordingly. PFS is more chaotic, and treasure is given hoping to get it approximately right for people who spend consumables normally. But people are playing up or down, using few or many consumables, so there's a lot of variation in practice. It seems though that most people are a bit ahead of the curve. As I look at it now, I think my -1 is a little bit behind it, probably from playing down more than up.
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A murder.Years 0-3 are scaled for 4 players, which is what a home game/mod assumes. PFS took a look at the numbers, and turned out that cramming 6 players at a table was more usual, so they beefed up season 4 and later to compensate, with a sidebar about how to gear down if you DON"T have a swarm of pathfinders.Is a large group of Pathfinders really a swarm? I thought words like flock, herd, or gaggle might be more appropriate. After all, it's not like they take extra damage from splash weapons.
I don't know...in practice I don't see that many tengus. :)
I always referred to the group as a calamity of Pathfinders.
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So with PFS characters you're always going to be overly wealthy and then on top of that you can just use your fame to get extra stuff?
So there's no equal level challenge based on character level and equipment once you've gotten a couple of games played?
You won't always be overly wealthy, but it isn't uncommon either.
PFS scenarios are usually a bit easier than what I have normally seen for home games with published material or home brew stuff.
They do that because you can't really know the experience level, optimization skill, or particular skill sets that will show up to any particular game. (If you have a small group that always plays together, that is different. But most PFS games don't.)
I have seen tables where everyone happens to be a primary caster and the life oracle ended up trying to be the tank since he had the most hit points and a 17 AC. Or everyone was a melee machine and had a horrible time with the flying guy flinging spells at them. Etc... I’ve also seen times where all the PC’s were super optimized in a very balanced group and they just waltzed through what are normally considered difficult scenarios.
So they tend to make them a little easier. This allows unbalanced groups or newbies a reasonable chance to succeed. (There definitely are exceptions. I just played one yesterday where the second combat had one PC run away, 2 dead, and 2 captured. It was brutal.)
Also it is usually recommended that PC invest much more heavily in consumables than they might in a home game. You might have no one to provide certain skill/ability/power sets to the table. So you need consumables and magic items to fill that need.
For example: In a home game, I think it is usually sufficient for 1 character in the party to have an Oil of Daylight. But in PFS I recommend it for every character just because some/most won't buy it and if you need it, you really need it.
Since there is a higher than normal need for consumables and PFS doesn’t allow crafting, they also tend to give out a bit more than WBL cash rewards. (If you are constantly playing out of tier down, I don’t think that is true. But I haven’t actually done the math to be sure.)
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So, not everyone is willing to, but often many of us will pitch in to pay at least a significant portion of the dead guy’s rez and restorations. If a guy starts needing lots of rez, we start getting a bit annoyed. That usually means the character is poorly built or poorly run. Some advice/ coaching will often help that out.
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Having said that, about level 3-4 is the hardest with respect to rez. While PC’s usually have some extra cash it is not a huge amount and no one has enough prestige to pay for the rez that way. But you have still invested a significant amount of time in them. If a level 1 or 2 dies, most people don’t feel like it is that big a deal to begin again.
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As a suggestion, as Fromper indicated, it is often a good idea for everyone to have at least a couple of characters of various levels. I have level 9, 6, 4, and 2 PC’s. When my 2nd level PC hits 3rd, I will start another level 1. So when I get to game night, I pretty much have a character that can play at any table. Does mean it takes longer to get to high levels, but I can also always have something available.
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A big factor in pathfinder difficulty planning is party synergy. You can't count on having a meat shield with a dedicated healer with an arcane caster supporting and debilitating both. You get.. whoever sits at the table really.Why is that?
Because not everyone has binders full of women pathfinders to play every role in every subtier while balancing other concerns like playing faction relevant missions, playing the entire series with the same character, playing a story arc with the same character, which character you're in a mood to play etc.
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An aside on death at a relatively low level...
It's a very odd build, trying to make use of the Bone Armor revelation, the Death's Touch revelation for self healing, and Ancient Lorekeeper to pick up a few wizard spells to buff for melee (shield, mirror image, that type of thing).
At the early levels, the character wasn't quite figured out yet. He was a melee character without a great AC who couldn't be healed by most party healers. But he did decent damage power attacking with a d10 two handed weapon.
Playing a certain 3-4 scenario, the party ran into a large earth elemental. It was more than we could handle. There were two melee characters - myself and a paladin - some caster types and a Halfling rogue. It was a near TPK. When half the party got knocked unconscious, I spent a few rounds running from the elemental and casting stabilize. The Rogue couldn't get through its DR, so ran looking for help (there were friendly NPCs fighting in the area).
After stabilizing 2 or 3 party members and healing myself a little, I decided to try to protect what was left of the party and charged in to attack the earth elemental. I didn't drop it. One round later I'm in the deep negatives, I think 3 rounds from death.
The elemental went off elsewhere since nothing was moving. The Rogue returned when I was 1 HP from dead. Since I had Negative Energy Affinity, he couldn't use his wand of Cure Light on me. I had previously pointed out where my Inflict wand was, but there wasn't time for him to get to it. So, he tried a Heal check and failed. My character died.
Now, I had just turned 3rd level. I didn't have the money or the prestige for a raise. I had chosen to make this crazy build which wasn't quite working, so I didn't want the party to pay toward a raise and I was ready to let the character go. They insisted on contributing, since they didn't want to face the rest of the scenario down a man. So I sold what I could (I had a composite longbow and a few other things). I had the prestige to get the Restorations. We finished the scenario with me down a negative level. There was one more difficult fight, but we did ok and lived.
I really thought that character was going to be way behind on wealth, and it was rough for a bit. All in all, even with party contributions, I was out around 3,000 gold at a level where that was the majority of my wealth. I threw a couple of GM credits on him to be able to afford to buy some stuff back. Then, I got lucky and got a convention boon that helped tremendously (Excavation Manager). Suddenly after spending a few more Prestige, I was back on track for wealth. I was Prestige poor, but about where I should be with gold. A second Con boon (don't remember the name) gave him the possibilty of mortgaging his future to get a raise dead (spend 4 prestige now, but you owe 16 more).
The character is 8th level now. I (mostly) solved the issues with the build. The Warpriest came out and is perfect for him, so I took a couple of levels of that. And, best of all, he's been an amazing amount of fun to role play. The death itself gave him a great character hook, as now he has met Pharasma, and she has told him his work is not finished yet (at least as far as he believes).
Even though the raise was costly for a low level character, at 8th level I don't even notice the hit to wealth. I still feel bad that it cost the party money because of my weird build, but I'm glad I still have the character, because he's fun to play!
Long story short, even at a low level, it's possible to recover from a death and your character won't necessarily be forever behind the curve.
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He actually tasks me with throwing the cane.This is exactly how I spend my lawn time.I'm picturing Walter as Ezren throwing his walking stick at people now. "Get off my front lawn!"So in rereading my last post I come across as pretty crass at everyone involved in this thread, so my apologies for that. I only wanted to be sort of crass, it is Friday after all. We've still got to have a good weekend.
I just see a trend where emotions run high in threads like this and, traditionally, it doesn't end well. Hopefully by talking about that particular elephant up front and making it clear we aren't looking to single anyone out for their opinions, we can keep ourselves out of the dregs.
Hey that is funt he part. fetching it is the dull part. Fetching it so he can throw back at you is the humilitating part.