RPG Superstar 2013 Top 8
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Accordingly bardic knowledge, Breadth of Experience, the knowledge domain ability, etc are real life savers in PFS, and the recent Technologist debacle only highlights this. Assuming you can circumvent Technologist with these abilities, that is.
Check out this spell from the Technology Guide.
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Accordingly bardic knowledge, Breadth of Experience, the knowledge domain ability, etc are real life savers in PFS, and the recent Technologist debacle only highlights this. Assuming you can circumvent Technologist with these abilities, that is.Check out this spell from the Technology Guide.
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Accordingly bardic knowledge, Breadth of Experience, the knowledge domain ability, etc are real life savers in PFS, and the recent Technologist debacle only highlights this. Assuming you can circumvent Technologist with these abilities, that is.Check out this spell from the Technology Guide.
drat! I may have to take a level of Wizard to use this...
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For those folks who don't care what PC they play, and have every kind at every tier, you also have the option of balancing by party rather than by character. If one treats all of their characters as just stats with no motivations or real-world issues, players can interchange them at will to min-max your party for a particular mission.
But really, is Bill the bard just going to go home and let Sam the paladin do their job for them instead? That would never happen if those PCs were controlled by different players. Why should it just because they're both a single player's PCs?
I submit that this level of party min-maxing is not realistic. V-C's send mismatched parties out all the time due to in-game reasons that aren't modelled in the campaign. If you work around that using the meta-facts of having lots of PCs under your control, you're making the game easier for yourself. If that's what you want, fine - I'd rather be a Patfhinder and take the missions I'm given, and be ready to complete them successfully without "needing" a specially-built support team to prop me up.
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But really, is Bill the bard just going to go home and let Sam the paladin do their job for them instead? That would never happen if those PCs were controlled by different players. Why should it just because they're both a single player's PCs?
Because I choose to. And because Bill the bard never got the call. Even when I intended to call him, when I got to the table, the VC called Sam the paladin instead.
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For those folks who don't care what PC they play, and have every kind at every tier, you also have the option of balancing by party rather than by character. If one treats all of their characters as just stats with no motivations or real-world issues, players can interchange them at will to min-max your party for a particular mission
Pathfinders should be competent and capable in a variety of areas within their jobs, right? Let's pretend for a moment that this includes the VCs and putting together a successful team is part of their job.
I really don't see how this is particularly metagamey. I mean at my job people get moved between teams all the time depending on their skills and the needs of each project.
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For those folks who don't care what PC they play, and have every kind at every tier, you also have the option of balancing by party rather than by character. If one treats all of their characters as just stats with no motivations or real-world issues, players can interchange them at will to min-max your party for a particular mission.
But really, is Bill the bard just going to go home and let Sam the paladin do their job for them instead? That would never happen if those PCs were controlled by different players. Why should it just because they're both a single player's PCs?
Uh, this is wrong on several levels.
1) having multiple characters does NOT mean that I treat my characters as just stats without motivations. In fact, quite the opposite. And I resent the insult.
2) of course VCs are going to TRY and match up characters with the mission and select a team that covers the bases. The before game dickering represents the VC deciding what the best team is, NOT the various characters jockeying for the assignment.
3) my enjoyment and the enjoyment of the group is affected by the party mix. If the group has a couple of good fighters everybody is probably going to have a better time if I bring my skill monkey rather than another fighter.
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EDIT: Nosig, I read back over your post, and I'll back off the below a little bit. I think we're saying something close to the same. It's really only a couple of statements in your post that I think lose sight of the reality for most players. Things like "Please - just be sure you do your "schtick" the very best you can." That gives the impression that you think everyone should try to optimize for at least one thing. That's one way to play the game, but it's not the only way, which is all I'm trying to say below. One character does not have to deal all the damage, or take all the damage, or know all the things, or heal everyone. Pathfinder is a long way from only having four iconic classes. Lots of classes do several things well. Making sure that all the roles are covered is great, but it doesn't have to be a single character covering each role. Redundancy is not always a bad thing in PFS. /end edit.
Nosig, I've always respected your posts on the boards, and I think you'd be a fun person to be at a table with, but in this instance, you're projecting your personal preferences onto other players. You're expecting everyone to have a Schtick or two, and that's just not how everyone plays the game.
It's great that you have a variety of characters, and that you're willing to switch to fill a role the table needs. I know you play a lot, because I think I've seen you post that you only have a handful of scenarios left that you can play. But not every table, not even every region has someone like you who has that many character choices. So there will be times when four players sit down at a table and no one has a character optimized to tank, or heal, or whatever. Sure, someone could play a pregen, but they aren't exactly optimized either, and some players just prefer to play their own characters.
I have some characters who are designed to mostly do one thing, but I'm also not a master of the system, and I get bored playing the ultimate build for a class (intensified shocking grasp dervish dancing Magus, for example). So there are times that I sit down at a table with my damage dealing PC, only to find that someone else has brought a more optimized, more effective damage dealing PC. My role is overshadowed by another character. Should I play a pregen? Should the other player? My solution is to try to have more than one thing I can do well, even if it means I'm not the best at anything. You can usually succeed at a scenario by being good at something, without having to be the best at it. I don't necessarily try to do everything, but I try to be able to do more than one thing, and I try to make sure I have something to contribute in combat. If I can do a few things well, then I can fill more than one role, and I can be effective in a larger variety of groups. If I can only do one thing, I may not even be the best at that one thing in the group, and then I'm just watching for most of the scenario.
I have an Investigator heavily built around skills and making use of Inspiration. He has free uses of Inspiration on 3/4s of the skills. I'm also going to great pains to make sure that, when he needs to, he can be effective at least for a few rounds in combat. He'll never claim he can tank a scenario or be the main damage dealer, but if he sticks only to his Schtick of being the skills guy, then he's putting the group in danger. What happens when the tank unexpectedly drops and I can't do any damage to the creature attacking? You said you'd feel guilty if failing at your role gets someone killed. Sometimes the circumstances demand that you change roles in the middle of a scenario or in the middle of a combat. I'd feel guilty if I couldn't step up to take on a new role when needed and someone loses a character as a result.
All of this is a long way of saying that it's fine for you to build lots of optimized characters, if that's what you enjoy. And it's fine for others to build a single generalist, if that's what they enjoy. It's when we start putting our expectations onto other players that problems happen.
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It does mean that I have 19 PCs...At this point, your experience doesn't help the 99% of PFS players who have one or two (at most!) PCs in tier for a particular scenario.
Hell, I've got 4 PCs between levels 7-11 (no more than one in any other tier), and I'd wager I'm in the 1%. To expect others to have a stable full of varied PC options just isn't reasonable.
There is two factors at play in this situation. The first, a number of varied PCs to choose from. The second, a number of those characters all being in the appropriate tier.
I have several characters, but the problem with them is that they are all pretty much in two tiers at levels 19.1, 19, 16, 15, 12, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1. Very little tier range available for me at the moment.
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When people ask me for advice on building their characters I often say. Make sure you have a niche and you are very good at it. The reason is, if you are not you could very easily be sitting in someones shadow for 4 hours. If you specialize you should almost always have your time to shine. Also you should build your character for something to do in combat and out of combat. Atleast one of each. Even if in combat all you do is buff someone, sitting there and passing your turn is not as fun. Sitting in a low combat scenario where everyone else in contributing and you are hoping to roll a 12 to assist is usually not as fun either. So build something other will be assisting you at. Then I tell them that is my advice from my decades of D&D, and they do not have to do it, just a asuggestion.
In PFS this problem I find is much worse than a home game. These are strangers and understand less what the others player have fun doing. They are also more prone to taking the table spotlight.
Now I uber optimize because I never know what is sitting at the table next to me. I want to make sure I can step up and support the group if needed. I have no problem sitting back and letting other players do things I am skilled at. I try my best to fill the role of comic relief at the tables. Also I try to cause tons of antics and try to find ways to involve less involved PCs in either joining or stopping them.
I also FIRMY tell people to play what they want and dimiss others wwhen they say we need X. Now if the table is missing X. I make sure everyone at the table understands where we are weak and try to brainsorm ways to make up for this. If that means preparing/buying spells to bump cha/int. Or even the table says we will have fun failing. It is still the table working and talkign together to work together to have a fun time.
Our merchant wakes table had all max dumped cha characters. Our halfling had a 9. Although we all had fun running around being unsociable slobs and curs at this social event. Anyone one of us could have made a new character, but the novelty of going in to a fail a social adventure was what the table was happiuly excited to do, and we won Pathfinder at the table.
As a side note our DM had to call breaks a couple times during the game because she could not stop laughing.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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(IMHO) This game we play is at it's base a story about a group of specialists who each have a part to play.
What happens if you replace the word "specialists" with "characters" or "people" in that sentence? I submit it would make the statement more true, rather than less true. I think restricting the types of people the story can be about to only "specialists" vastly reduces the number of stories you can tell.
(Again, IMHO) If we are trying to "cover all the bases" with our PCs and so fail to do anything well?
Why do those have to go together? Why does versatility have to mean you "fail to do anything well"? My now-retired cleric could do damn near anything, and everything he did he was good at. Granted he was hard to build, but he's kind of an extreme case. It's not that hard to build a character with multiple things he can do well.
And that's to say nothing of the value of redundancy: if we've got one guy doing 50 damage per round, it's not going to hurt anything if we also have a couple of people each doing 30 damage per round. I'd rather be at a table where everyone can roll the DC 20 Knowledge check at a +5 than where one person has a +12 but is the only person who can roll it. Having +9 Diplomacy is valuable if no other face shows up, but also doesn't stop being valuable if there's a face with a +17; I can assist so that we can still make a DC 20 even if he rolls a 1.
And you know what? It's not hard to build someone who does 30 DPR and has a +5 in several Knowledges and has +9 Diplomacy, etc. I'd rather have a table full of those people than a table where we die if the only DPR guy gets dominated/held/whatever, where we fail if the only guy who can hit a 20 Diplo rolls a 1, where we might die if the only guy who can even try to ID the monster doesn't roll high enough to get that crucial detail.
The important thing is the goal: a fun (usually successful) table. If you have the gameplay resources to be able to whip out just the right specialist to fill whatever hole the party has, do it that way. If you have the encyclopedic knowledge of spells/items to cover the gaps with shopping, do it that way. Or if you have the system mastery to build a character who can diversify while still being effective in each role*, do it that way. The method does not matter.
The method does not matter.
Just as long as you're doing your part, one way or another.
*Note that I don't mean some kind of super-broken summoner build that solos the whole scenario. I mean building a character with like 80-90% effectiveness in each of several roles, so that anyone specializing at 100% gets to be the star while you back them up, and you get to be the star in whatever role nobody else has covered.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I find that it's usually doable to be "good" at several things, while still having a strong specialty. For example, an alchemist can easily cover several knowledges without sacrificing much of his combat potential. So can a wizard or bard.
I think it's only when you go above and beyond in specialization that you have to truly become a one-trick pony. For the price of going to "11" in one thing, you could be 7/8/8 in three things and still be 10 in your main focus.
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Jiggy said almost everything I was going to say. Not specializing is not the same as being useless.
The OP had a group where literally no one had the skills to make the team succeed. He was concerned he was doing something wrong, and felt he had to break the PFS rules to help them along.
If you have lots of PCs for the VC to select from, and so does everyone else you ever play with, then good for you, you can probably just make specialists. For the other 99%, though, being able to fill every role to some degree is superior in the long run to a narrow speciality.
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I find that characters that are very good at 3-4 things are far more useful than characters that are the absolute best at one and mediocre at everything else.
It's like economics. Absolute advantage, who can do the best at X, is not as important as comparative advantage, who can do the most X with least use of resources, which can then be spent on Y and Z.
I would also argue it takes a better player to design a more versatile character, as they have to juggle multiple goals instead of single-mindedly focusing on one.
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I find that it's usually doable to be "good" at several things, while still having a strong specialty. For example, an alchemist can easily cover several knowledges without sacrificing much of his combat potential. So can a wizard or bard.
I think it's only when you go above and beyond in specialization that you have to truly become a one-trick pony. For the price of going to "11" in one thing, you could be 7/8/8 in three things and still be 10 in your main focus.
I'll agree with this, and is typically how I would rather build my characters. Although I'd say that I'm rarely a 10 in anything.
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If this were a home game, creating a team of specialists can be really entertaining. And actually can be a better idea than having a team of versatile characters.
Assuming that every time you play your home game, all those players are present.
In an organized play environment, when you have no idea who's going to show up often enough, and you don't have the wherewithal to have 5 different specialists available for every tier, you are better off making versatile characters.
So its two ways to get to the same result. I look at the Pathfinder Society kinda like a fantasy version of running a Shadowrun mission. In a Shadowrun home game you typically have each of the archetypes so that every field is covered by someone who is very specialized. I a home game of Pathfinder Society where you play with the same characters every time, you can do the same thing.
But when you don't have that luxury, the best way to make sure all the bases are covered, is to low your specialty just a little bit so that you can cover some of the other bases yourself.
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My experience with PFS so far hasn't been that challenging where I needed to hyper optimize to get through.
Consequently, I usually make well-rounded characters. I think it's a bad idea to not be able to contribute outside of combat. I mean, I guess there are some players that are ok with just waiting for the initiative roll, but I like to at least be a factor in the plot development.
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I find that it is saving throw bonuses if anything which should be turbocharged. All of my character deaths have been because of failed saves one way or another. Knocked down by a wave of gravel and mauled when prone, failed several distraction saves and got eaten, stood still and blabbered in confusion instead of running, didn't evade a fireblast, etc.
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Personally, I rarely build over optimized characters, either. Heck, my first character was a rogue, which many claim to be useless, though rarely was that the case! Pause, there have been some issues where a character or party was missing skills, but we always worked around them. Though, nothing as bad as the OP stated. Probably because local players often build more versatile characters , much like I do.
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I think knowledge is completely not required. The problem the op described isn't really a lack of the right numbers on character sheets, it's the lack of curious inquisitive minds. Members of the pathfinder society, even if unlearned, should be interested in learning. Should be interested in solving puzzles. If they find a bunch of stuff and don't have the knowledge to know what it does, then they should be experimenting with it. The problem is only when players shrug and walk away.
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With respect to suboptimal party mix, over which players have only limited control, remember also the special rule on p34 of the Guide to PFS Organized Play: Creative Solutions. Even a table of knowledgeless PCs should be allowed to propose non-standard solutions and the GM is encouraged, by the rules, to consider those presented. While introducing magic items might be beyond the intent of that rule, the campaign developers do recognize that sometimes, you just can't play on the railroads. Therefore, some scenario bending is acceptable to allow mission success. Good on the OP for trying to salvage the situation for his players once compatibility was identified as an issue.
It's ok if PC's don't do well. Actually, it makes PFS better if earning prestige is actually a challenge, because that makes it worth more.
If you can't fail, then prestige is really a measure of how long you sat in the chair. Whippidy-doo.
Adventures should be a challenge. Not necessarily deadly dangerous, but not a guaranteed win. So, if they don't have knowledge skills or anything that will substitute, let 'em fail.
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Sometimes bad party comps happen.
The players should have recognized this during the muster/character intros and tried to address it in some manner (switching to a different character, someone biting the bullet and running a pregen with skills, seeing if another player from a different table can join the party with an appropriate character, etc).
If they can't complete the scenario, it sucks, but sometimes its better to retreat and lick your wounds than bang your head against a wall for four hours or TPK.
Obviously, its not ideal to fail a scenario, but its far less ideal to softball it or give them non-RAW help because it will happen again and they won't be prepared for the same situation.
Unfortunately it's not PFS legal to run a pregen if you already have a character you can use for the tier.
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I do not believe that is correct
Unfortunately it's not PFS legal to run a pregen if you already have a character you can use for the tier.
It is not correct. *nods*
If you don’t have time to create a new character or simply
wish to try out a new character class, you may choose to use
one of several level-appropriate pregenerated characters
available at paizo.com/pathfindersociety or from your
local event coordinator. If you play a 1st-level pregenerated
character, you can apply the credit for her first adventure
to a newly created character of your very own. If you play
a non-1st-level pregenerated character, you apply the
credit to your character as soon as she reaches the level
of the pregenerated character played. You may not apply
a Chronicle sheet earned with a pregenerated character
to a character that was already at the
level of the pregenerated character or
higher, as you should have used this
character for the scenario instead.
You can use a pre-gen when you want to, but you have to apply the resulting chronicle sheet to a lower level character. You can't apply it to a character of the same level as the pre-gen, as you should have used that character.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I think there is a widespread perception that it's only okay to fail a scenario if it happens in combat.
Sometimes the secondary condition is rather surprising. It's annoying if you don't get the second PP because you didn't do a specific favor for some random minor NPC that's barely part of the adventure; or if the adventure says "do it the X or Y way", and it turns out X gets you more prestige than Y.
Various things in this scenario trigger off the amount of Awareness Points the players generate, and the number of AP is based on the number of PCs failing some checks. So the scenario has higher AP thresholds for a larger party.
However, the secondary condition has a static AP threshold, regardless of party size. It's much easier to accomplish with a smaller party.
I blame these on the switch from faction missions to collective PP earnings; someone had to go through all the old scenarios and come up with secondary goals. Some of those aren't very well chosen.
On the other hand, there's been cases where we did something "right" and lost a PP that did make sense;
Still, it can be wiser to pay tribute rather than fight.
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Not every mission is supposed to be easy, and I don't doubt that there is a couple out there that are a little weird thanks to retrofitting, but those two definitely aren't.
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I guess I broke your lucky streak...:)I find that it is saving throw bonuses if anything which should be turbocharged.Champion of Irori for the win. Except for rolling a natural 1 I don't think mine has failed a save for about 5 levels. His AC and touch AC are pretty good too :-)
Thank you, Irori, for the lesson in humility. Boasting like that was prideful and I deserved what I got. :-)