Not what else CAN your character do. I see on these boards lots of people saying that damage is only one measure of their character but they optimize for all of their adventuring career. Then when I'm live at tables with my own groups or at PFS games or events, I always see players that focus solely on rolling initiative, attacking, and using all of their combined characters to do as much damage as possible.
It may be that I'm not at the right tables.
Please tell me about instances where your character honestly was more than weapon damage. I honestly don't see these instances materializing in real life or on the forums. If combat is not the sole arbiter of Pathfinder illustrate what else your character ACTUALLY does.
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I suppose I could post examples. I had a character (7th level wizard) tasked with smuggling a bear out of the city. I could have easily subdued the bear, then some guards, and then fled. Instead I helped pull together an Oceans 11 scenario with multiple PCs and NPCs doing their part. We rode out of town with the bear under wraps right under the guards' noses in broad daylight thanks to roleplaying my character, Diplomacy, a couple non-combat spells and spending gold.
When running the game I often have villains monologue during fights. Once I had a ghost do nothing else BUT talk every other round. Several times I've had monsters take very little damage but then run away in fear for their lives. I've also had villains try to bribe PCs, talk their way out of fights, or beg for mercy rather than have them just do combat until dying like a video game.
Adventuerers are famous for their pet projects. They burn their money and invest in skills and cast spells to satisfy their massive egos, or help people, or rebuild their religion/race. If you've ever slighted a non-Good party of adventurers, you're in for a fate worse than death. They don't have to fight to make your life Hell.
Now, if you don't roleplay, I guess you don't do anything except fight. Murderhobos is a term that exists for a reason.
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Brother Fen actively collects alms for the poor and to rebuild the Irori Temple of the Mana Wastes. Not everyone gets the concept of roleplaying - especially long time min/maxers and newbie MMO raised kids.
I think the biggest part of this is that your GM determines a lot of what roleplaying is available. While combat is pretty consistent for pathfinder. So it easier to focus on combat and be good than to do skills and be good. And also realize that for a fair amount of characters fighting is always the answer.
One character is using his influence as a hero of a recent dragon attack to build a paramilitary police force to better protect the people of the city. He is also learning alchemy as he recently encountered a clan of kobolds with some seriously cool, enhanced alchemical items that my gm made up.
Another character drafted his fledgling kingdom's constitution, and goes about vigorously protecting it, effectively becoming the boogeyman of the ruling council.
Another character spends his non-combat time being intensly creepy, as he is literally the monster under the bed, that will steal away your children if you threaten his people or his companions.
If you mean in terms of rules, well the most obvious thing is skills, but lots of spells and class abilities also lend themselves to non combat situations.
I think part of the problem is you are looking at pfs, which while interesting, doesnt really offer the same opportunities for character development as a home game with consistent characters and wiggle room in how a session will progress. There are x things that MUST happen in Y amount of playing time. That leaves a lot less time for diversions and personal side projects. So really all character do is help overcome the plot in pfs. Which is often mostly killing things.
My shaper psion is obsessed with crafting both mundane and magical. Sure she summons contructs in combat to great effect, but all of her skill points are in craft skills. I have points in every craft skill.
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I will comment on my PFS characters since PFS is a pretty widely known setting with a fairly standard setup for adventures/encounters.
I have a 17th level cleric. He obviously casts spells, but he also convinces enemies to do his bidding (grovel at his feet, give them their most valuable item), twists fate a bit (forces re-rolls on bad guys), and can bluff/charm with the best of them (diplomacy and bluff are both at +37). He once convinced a frost giant witch to give him the valuable item that our party was trying to kill her for anyway (lust domain ability) and ended the encounter with no bloodshed.
Recently playing an adventure path my gnomish bard was able to sneak up on two jailers torturing some prisoners and then sneak away and formulate a plan; using the disguise and bluff skills (and riding on top of the party half-orc) he was able to intimidate the jailers into fleeing rather than killing them.
You're at the wrong tables.
PFS is massively combat focused. It's not really good for developing a well-rounded character.
A lot gets down to the type of GM you have. Some run RPGs as wargames with a little roleplaying thrown in. That's particularly prevalent in Pathfinder, but I have heard of people who run Old World of Darkness games that way, too.
What you want to find is a GM who focuses primarily on the roleplaying or works hard to balance the roleplaying and combat/crunchy elements. There are plenty of them out there, but I have encountered fewer of them running Pathfinder games than other RPGs. FATE tends to pull in a lot of GMs like that.
That isn't to say that Pathfinder can't be run in a more balanced way, or even with the primary focus being on roleplaying. I generally run Pathfinder games in one of those two styles, and have encountered others who do, too. I have run entire campaigns with virtually no fighting at all.
When it comes to what you do when not fighting (or doing other "crunchy" things), just think about what life would be like in that world. Beyond the basics of eating and shelter, you would likely have some sort of social life, family, hobbies, etc. You might get involved in politics, start a farm, open a store, start to build a home of some sort, etc. If you are a magic user of some kind, you would probably spend time crafting magic items, selling your services to people, etc.
Those are relatively mundane things, but some (such as building a castle) can make for multi-session games that require planning, creativity, problem solving, etc.
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You're at the wrong tables.
PFS is massively combat focused. It's not really good for developing a well-rounded character.
A lot gets down to the type of GM you have. Some run RPGs as wargames with a little roleplaying thrown in. That's particularly prevalent in Pathfinder, but I have heard of people who run Old World of Darkness games that way, too.
What you want to find is a GM who focuses primarily on the roleplaying or works hard to balance the roleplaying and combat/crunchy elements. There are plenty of them out there, but I have encountered fewer of them running Pathfinder games than other RPGs. FATE tends to pull in a lot of GMs like that.
That isn't to say that Pathfinder can't be run in a more balanced way, or even with the primary focus being on roleplaying. I generally run Pathfinder games in one of those two styles, and have encountered others who do, too. I have run entire campaigns with virtually no fighting at all.
When it comes to what you do when not fighting (or doing other "crunchy" things), just think about what life would be like in that world. Beyond the basics of eating and shelter, you would likely have some sort of social life, family, hobbies, etc. You might get involved in politics, start a farm, open a store, start to build a home of some sort, etc. If you are a magic user of some kind, you would probably spend time crafting magic items, selling your services to people, etc.
Those are relatively mundane things, but some (such as building a castle) can make for multi-session games that require planning, creativity, problem solving, etc.
My experience does not equal yours, then. I have had plenty of PFS GMs who focus on the RP aspects of adventures.
In the last home campaign I was in my character knew everything and could steal, forge documents, bluff, diplomacize, sense motive, appraise, craft, and sneak. But the GM made it so the entire city had lv20 ninja's with see invisibility and whatnot on watch all the time. And all the merchants were lv20 with detect forgeries and sense motive. Also all peasants had will saves in the 20s, so no charm spells.
Then the said that every fight could be successful without combat. But when we got to those situations all the enemies just came to attack, mostly trying for surprise rounds. And they didn't' want to reason during a fight either.
Basically the GM didn't let us do anything besides fight even when he said it was part of the campaign to be able to do so, when I had a character that was going to solve problems without resorting to combat every time.
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My empiricist investigator is currently heavy into hallucinogens. Thanks to handwaving the "spell and spell-like" specificity of empiricist illusion resistance, she can get VERY high and still function perfectly. She also writes music and recently convinced the half-orc of the party that some music she wrote was actually traditional orcish music. This was purely to get him to (badly) sing something that at least had sensible lyrics instead of the tripe he would come up with on his own. Which, by the way, was some combination of orcish-style victory songs and christmas music.
I once had a halfling rogue that used pub darts as weapons. He was, on paper, about as effective as throwing a wet noodle the wrong direction, but he was a blast anyway. Why? Because any time anything interesting happened, he always picked the stupidest idea and did that. Fighting goblins in an old mine? Light the (now dangerously unstable) dynamite on fire. Door has a lock on it? Disassemble it entirely. (Woops, it wasn't even locked!) In a bar full of Dwarves? Try to outdrink them! (And through dumb luck and a few nat-20s, actually succeed!)
The best part, though, was that he also had a spellbook (not a regular book, a spellbook) that contained all of "his" exploits written in a way to exaggerate his own role, always making sure that he was the hero of the story. Sometimes they were actually true stories, but you couldn't separate the truth from the lies.
Later we encountered an NPC wizard who saved our butts (which the rogue took credit for in his book). He took special interest in the rogue's spellbook and asked if he could see it (thinking it contained spells). Turns out, it actually did contain spells! This entire time the halfling had been accidentally creating spells in some of his stories with the weird way he was writing the text and filling in margins. This senile old wizard now actually began to believe the halfling really was a being of great power, though he didn't let on.
But, alas, eventually that level of stupidity caught up with him. After tricking the right-hand man of the devil into thinking he still had the artifact he was after, he rolled a nat-1 wisdom check (not a good stat for him) to realize that following him through a portal to hell was a bad idea. Turns out that Azmodeus doesn't like being flipped off. A few decades of torture later, he was allowed to die. But hey, the party lived and escaped with the artifact.
What happened to the book? Well, it was added to the infernal library due to the strange power it possessed then later recovered by the wizard mentioned above and used to create his phylactery. Except the poor guy was senile and accidentally trapped his soul in the book without a body to control, effectively making the book a sentient item.
And that's the story of Joffrey Wingler and his Book of Great Deeds.
PS: Joffrey was quite racist, thinking of Halfling as the superior race. Naturally this meant that his book was written entirely in Halfling.
DISCLAIMER: The few times there wasn't something obviously stupid to do the character was a complete drag to play, and it only worked because the DM ran with it.
My empiricist investigator is currently heavy into hallucinogens. Thanks to handwaving the "spell and spell-like" specificity of empiricist illusion resistance, she can get VERY high and still function perfectly. She also writes music and recently convinced the half-orc of the party that some music she wrote was actually traditional orcish music. This was purely to get him to (badly) sing something that at least had sensible lyrics instead of the tripe he would come up with on his own. Which, by the way, was some combination of orcish-style victory songs and christmas music.
Very nice!
I played a Joffrey Wingler type character once. He didn't make dumb decisions, though - just very strange ones that nevertheless fit in with his unusual philosophy of the world. The GM ran with it, and he ended up becoming a pretty valuable member of the party, albeit in a unusual non-combat way.
I think the biggest part of this is that your GM determines a lot of what roleplaying is available. While combat is pretty consistent for pathfinder. So it easier to focus on combat and be good than to do skills and be good. And also realize that for a fair amount of characters fighting is always the answer.
I think this is where I diverge from a lot of players. The few times I get to be a player I don't wait for the GM to determine the RP. I remember one of the first pieces on DMing I read as a kid suggested that the GM is merely the set designer; they describe the setting and let the players interact with it.
I suppose its just anecdotal but most of my players are passive. They wait for me to ask them "what's your character doing" before they even consider the question. Downtime between adventures crawls along. When we're on an adventure (in a dungeon, an evil forest etc) their characters don't do anything in the inbetween time; no banter between characters, no one inspects decor with an eye toward mapping or documentation or engineering or whatever.
I have a character in my current game with Craft: Cartography. The last adventure was specifically to locate and explore a previously hidden section of a megadungeon known only in myth and rumor until a goblin showed up with some swag that only could've come from there. When the adventure was done their NPC handler asked the cartographer if he had any maps of the place and the player looked confused. "Was I SUPPOSED to do that as one of the goals of the quest?" he asked.
No, he wasn't instructed to but I guess I just figured the guy with cartography would take the initiative. If an NPC asked and he didn't during the game, why not roleplay that conversation with said NPC? Instead the player was frustrated I hadn't given him the instruction in the first place.
That's why I phrased the question as what else does your character DO? Not what can they do, or what do they do after your GM gives you the option to. What specifically do you take the initiative to do with your character that doesn't involve waiting for the GM to deliver the next victim to your sword/spell/fist?
Yes, it sounds like you just have players who are playing a different game from the kind you really enjoy. Not much you can do about that probably. I try to be active and talk to the characters in character and try fun things. That's how I found out that there were super ninjas and super merchants and super everything in this GM's world. Because it was a quick way for the GM to shut down all my attempts to do something on the side.
Had a 5th level dwarf PC that was part of an expedition from Korvosa to subdue and pacify the Bloodswarn Vale and get a trade route going through it to Nirmathas.
The expedition topped out at 300+ workers, mercenary guards, support staff and assorted specialists (even had some Order of the Nail and Abadar Paladins in the mix), all acquired through multiple sessions roleplaying the recruitment and city support.
Well into the campaign, the expedition leadership decided to wipe out via biological warfare the 2,000+ Shoanti tribe we encountered in our way (via Cackling Sickness.)
After it was over, I was actually able to roleplay the persuasion of the Adabar Paladins and my own dwarven contingent from Janderhoff to stay with the expedition despite those actions.
Our DM was one that does not just say, "OK, roll it," you actually have to MAKE THE CASE to him in dialog and roleplay, and THEN you have you roll for it, with him giving bonuses or minuses depending on how well-thought out your case was and how adverse the situation is to the NPC's.
It was tense!
Enjoying all of your roleplaying stories. This is what the game is about.
A campaign I was in fairly recently had a lot of downtime and RP time (DM was newer, so the combat was a bit back and forth). I played a Shadowcaster Summoner, dressed him up as a gentleman in a nice fancy outfit, top hat, everything. In reality, he was a fairly sadistic man with a murder shadow as an Eidolon. Worked great in combat, but where he really shined was in stealth/social situations. There was a point where our group was camping with a caravan of others, and we spotted smoke in the distance. I sent the Eidolon to scout out the area, found it was a troop that was hunting us camping out. Since the Eidolon could fly, I just loaded it up with as much dynamite as it could carry while flying, DM ruled it was getting good bonuses from being a shadow flying at night, and the Eidolon bombed out the enemy camp, completely circumventing the entire combat.
Normally, I do play characters that only really focus on combat, because thats the part that I enjoy. I like seeing my builds come together (Hell, I still want to play the punch magus I finally perfected...), and I know that at least one or two others in my group will have the social stuff covered. However, playing that Shadowcaster, I decided to focus more on stealth and out of combat Charisma (intimidate was a great thing for me...) and it was a lot of fun. Something I would do all the time? Possibly. Just depends if the right class and concept comes to mind.
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Not what else CAN your character do. I see on these boards lots of people saying that damage is only one measure of their character but they optimize for all of their adventuring career. Then when I'm live at tables with my own groups or at PFS games or events, I always see players that focus solely on rolling initiative, attacking, and using all of their combined characters to do as much damage as possible.
It may be that I'm not at the right tables.
Please tell me about instances where your character honestly was more than weapon damage. I honestly don't see these instances materializing in real life or on the forums. If combat is not the sole arbiter of Pathfinder illustrate what else your character ACTUALLY does.
My PFS magus can:
1. Buff and debuff
2. Make a good linguist
3. Act as party face
4. Identify many obscure objects and creatures
5. Provide solutions, both magical and mundane, to many common adventuring problems.
Example: we are currently deep inside an Osirion tomb. He is the only party member that can understand Ancient Osirion, and has successfully resolved several aspects of the scenario via diplomacy with individuals that do not speak common. He has translated multiple texts found within the dungeon, including tome that required a non-trivial linguistics check even with the relevant languages. He has identified both the arcane and divine significance of events unfolding and identified the historical significance of most of the events.
All of this without using his magic.
Being PFS, his actions outside scenarios is limited, but he earns a living as a cartographer (and actually got to use the skill in game once, an objective required a skill check to draw accurate maps).
My characters Alleunti Dilesi, Hama, and Riva Sarjenka each have a great deal of background backing their personalities.
Alleunti is a haunted child and loner obsessed with learning about, and destroying, the demons that possessed and tormented her for decades. She is one of the few living beings to have bared witness to the creation of the World Wound and survived long enough to follow its progression into the world to the modern day.
Hama is a vile witch and master manipulator desirous of only a few small things: beauty, mobility, power and immortality. No one yet has discovered her secret, that she also happens to be an incurable quadriplegic who requires the bodies of others to facilitate the obtainment of her goals.
Riva Sarjenka is an elf arcanist who runs a grandiose library and school in the developing Stolen Lands when she is not out adventuring gathering archaic lore for her shelves. She has a fondness for children, more so since her daughter Allania died. She was instrumental in bringing kobolds peacefully into her kingdom and even adopted one of them as her own daughter--even though the short life spans of the kobolds will surely bring her even more heartbreak.
If that isn't enough, mosey on down to my Crazy Character Emporium thread (and associated file gallery) to find plenty more characters, many of which have a great deal of character depth.
Let's see: I had a cleric of Asmodeus who specialized in lying about his religion in a society of absolute lawful goodness, including its own inquisition. I successfully convinced a squire of a lawful good paladin to give up his good ways and become a worshipper of Asmodeus because I told him that his god had forgotten him, since he was in a place that had no gods but Asmodeus to answer to. That was without torture, compelling magic, or even a real decent diplomacy roll. Some others will come to mind I am sure in a bit.
Back in the 3.5 days I had a warforged favored soul who focused his spell list on buffs; and during downtime focused on crafting magic arms & armor so he technically was "pre-buffing" the party all the time with cheap magic items.
My favorite Pathfinder character was a tiefling alchemist who did very little damage, instead focusing on debuff bombs. He excelled in having the requisite monster knowledge to exploit poor saves. He would lead every fight by stink bombing or force bombing everything, and while all the enemies were falling down and puking, everybody else would walk up calmly with pointy sticks.
-My Sorcerer (a blaster, so he fits) was way into drugs. Giving other people them, I mean. And searching for a way to go from being a Rakshasa Teifing to a full Rakshasa.
-My Barbarian, despite being the biggest min/maxed damage dealer I have ever (or probably will ever...combat has become kinda boring TBH) made, is both a linguist and the party's trap guy (Trap Wrecker! WHOOOOOOOO!).
-My Slayer does what you'd expect most Rogues to do. He unlocks doors, he looks for traps, he's the first into a new door (though often, though not as often as he'd like, not the first to get hit. SWORD AND BOARD, B&*##ES!). Also in his spare time he hangs out at the temple of Norebo and gambles with the regulars.
Just off the top of my head.
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Guess let's go for my cleric with 1 level of rogue:
-disable/detect traps.
-Buff party members to ungodly levels.
-Robbing The rich to give to himself.
-Summon and make bargains with Outsiders, currently a good friend with a Mercane enabling our party to buy/sell stuffs on the go.
-Can bluff his way out of anything.
-In a land full of T-rex controlled the weather to mask our presence, from them and extract an item we needed for a quest.
-Regenerated people who lost their eyes and or limbs in tragic torture/events.
-Just obtained an artifact of my god, for exemplary service and by solving a puzzle (took awhile, started at around level 7, now we are level 16.)
-Used Break Enchantment to save a group of people petrified.
And I think that's all I can recall at the moment or worth mentioning.
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Anyone who says PFS does not involve roleplaying has not played Horn of Aroden. There are no spoilers here, though, I can't get the thingy right.
My main PFS character (a swashbuckler) cracks a lot of weird jokes people rarely understand, and makes a point of rolling Sleight of Hand checks to steal things "because he can." He also managed to fit inside of a holy relic of his deity, Cayden Cailean, with an Escape Artist check just to see if he could during a mission, and is probably the first Pathfinder to win a drinking contest against an animal companion. One time, he tried to pull a Legolas and slide down some stairs on a shield (hey, in 4e, which I no longer play, that is a specific example of using Acrobatics), but despite his high acrobatics modifier, he rolled low and ended up falling down the stairs.
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He also managed to fit inside of a holy relic of his deity, Cayden Cailean, with an Escape Artist check just to see if he could during a mission...I misread this in the worst possible way. The WORST.
Are you closing your spoiler tags correctly with a / ?
I can't imagine how you misread it, but only because I'm trying not to. I'm referring to the last barrel he drank from as a mortal, featured in God's Market Gamble. And no, I'm not closing them like that, thanks for helping me figure it out.
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Maybe I'm too critical. As a GM I vibe off my players. If they only become active and engaged when there's a fight at hand, or the potential for a fight, that's what I react to. Its difficult then when players ask for a plot driven game to create anything more than go here, kill this, win.
I miss moments like you guys all describe above. I do have one guy in my game that I wish would do more RP since when he does it's hilarious. He's a sorcerer with a faerie dragon bloodline that occasionally throws in quips or puns during combat. He got a crystal faerie dragon statue that speaks to him; every once in a while he'll reference it or speak to it in character. This carries extra humor since the creature communicates telepathically and so far only the sorcerer can hear it.
Quirks, RP, non-combat solutions or motivations. It feels like that's what's missing in my home game. You're all right of course. I should just verbalize this to my players. I have to admit though that I'm jealous. So many players online seem to play this way already w/out someone having to ask them to.
One last example from me. I played a gestalt halfling ranger/cavalier who took skills and powers that made him a good helper. The game started at level 1 but was meant to go long term.
Despite the weakness of the DPR I decided to focus on the sling-staff. I rode around on a riding dog that would eventually morph into a wolf animal companion. Based on granting +4 with Aid Another and the background I gave him and all, I wanted him to be a good sidekick. I even named him Bucky.
So when it came time to game we started off in a fort. I made a point to have my guy walking around in the mess hall, asking if there was something he could do. That became a running theme in the game: Bucky asking "you need some help? Anything you need done? How can we get this done together?" I think my GM was actually a little annoyed by it but I really wanted to RP that idea with Bucky.
So when we finally got out on the trail I barely ever left the saddle. I'd talk to my wolf hound, Blitzer, the same way I talked to the men. I tracked from the saddle then had Blitzer delivering attacks while I gave him +4 to attack. I even got the chance to hunt once. I asked if I could use Profession: Trapper to set some Tiny and Small sized snares and then use Blitzer to give me an Aid Another. When the GM looked confused I suggested that I use survival skills and Blitzer's nose to figure out where some game frequented, set the snares, then have the dog use his natural stealth to flush game toward the traps. Finally I'd coup de grace them once caught.
The GM liked it, gave me the bonus and a couple Survival and Profession checks later the whole party was enjoying some fresh goats meat roasted over the fire. Of course Bucky made a point to serve everyone else first.