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There's pfs in some weird places. (problem is FINDING it *grumble grumble*
First off, can PFS be run online and am I screwed if I can't go to conventions? My town is way out of the way, up in north west Canada and about a 16-20 hour drive north of Vancouver.
Yes it can be run online.
Alternately Can you give some of the local polar bears PFS numbers?
Online collective, good place to look for games
Roll d20 the most common online tabletop i've seen.
the guide is comprehensive, but a little dense, legalistic and a better tract for people already playing than an introduction.
Will I have problems like I did in RPGA? I tried playing 4th edition RPGA online a few years back and I ended up quitting after three sessions. We encountered an enemy that was using an enchanted helmet that gave him a frightful image, like a death knight or something.
Every cool item i've seen has shown up on the chronicle sheet, so you can get it.. when you can buy it. Because remember the other 4 people you adventured with? They want to hock that thing and collect the loot for it. So what happens is...
You knock their head off.
You put the helmet on until the end of the adventure.
At the end of the adventure You bring the helmet back
The pathfinder society studies it until
You drop apile of gold on the counter. And they hand it back to you.
If someone else in the party likes it, they drop a pile of gold on the counter and they get one too.
crime lords in on my action and helping them launder money and whatnot. Will that sort of thing be stopped due to the book not taking it into account? Same goes for killing/negotiating with NPC that we are not supposed to interact with in that way.
Most scenarios are too short for you to become a crime lord.
It can vary by DM, but if you talk your past an NPC you were "supposed" to fight, you not only defeat them but you also find all their loot, somehow. Most of my groups are rather good at "talking things to death", and I have a character that considers oozes a social encounter.
How far the dm lets you go off the rails is going to be constrained by the scenario, the dm, and the DM's caffine levels.
Also, if funds are limited due to the no crafting rule, is spell casting somewhat a pain from the expensive material components?Pathfinders tend to wind up a bit above [url=http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/character-advancement]wealth by level.
I'm guessing thats going to be a bit less than what you're used to.
The way your character earns extra money between scenarios is a da job: which is a trained perform, profession, or craft check. (there are other vanities you can get to add other skills, like bluff to run a caravan making shady deals or pick pocketing) By and large they're pocket change compared to what you make adventuring
Welcome to the institution
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What to expect, lets say the game starts at 7
Game starts at 7
6:55 people start to trickle in
Folks eat, gossip, get settled in.
7:15 Geek soduku! People finalize how many people they have for which table. The veterans will then decide who's playing what character, trying to balance out levels, tiers, and party composition. The DM desperately tries to sneak in one more reading of he scenario
7:30: people get going. There's a mission briefing that one person will be paying attention to while most players find dice and minis check character sheets, phones,and chronicle sheets to make last minute purchases. You will get a flurry of 5 or six mispronounced names without much clear idea whether drendle drang is a person you're talking to, a place you want to go, or a particularly nasty curse you want to avoid.
You'll have a chance to ask questions, gather information and make knowledge checks to get some idea of what you're in for.
There will be ~ 4 encounters, usually some mooks for one fight, a trap or three, some sort of a skill or social challange, some sort of strong monster thats usually more likely to kill you than the boss, and then a solo or near solo boss fight. These will inevitably involve some "i'm over here he's over there what are you doing how are you searching how does that rule work" while trying to keep the game moving.
The encounters will test adventuring basics. Can you attack at both melee and ranged. Can you deal with swarms and other unusual creature types. Can you deal with damage reduction and incoporeal critters.
10:30 the boss fight starts! Hurrry!
11:05 The dm hurridly signs chronicle sheets and hands them out with a "go ahead fill them out"
Grab stuff get out the door hang out in the parking lot for a bit to come back to reality then head home.
What you should know
Your character is a member of the pathfinder society: the out of game and in game group of murderho..erm.. gentlemen explorer archaeologists. This is the excuse to have you all together and adventuring without descending into cannibalism a bit of backstory you should think about when it comes to your character. WHY are they with these people? "They're paying me" is an acceptable answer, but not neccesarily the most fulfilling.
Go on a pre made adventure. Finish it. Get a chronicle sheet. Usually you get 1 xp. Get 3 xp, level up. Wash rinse repeat.
A level 1 fighter adventuring with a level 11 fighter would be dead before seeing the first boss. Adventures have ranges that you need to be in to play them. Typically they range from 1-5, 3-7, 7-11. Within that, the DM averages the level of the party and decides on high or low tier, so for example if you're all new and playing the 1-5 , You get a couple of kobolds. If there are enough level 4s and 5s in your group, you'll be fighting kobold fighters and a shaman.
You'll pick it up fast enough, don't worr if you're confused.
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Eh, I dunno. It could be fun but I can't help but try to figure out how to think of the long game and twisting things to what benefits me best on the path to power. Blame my interest Machiovelli and Sun Tzu.
Edit: It may be why my favourite class so far is the Mesmerist. I haven't read them all but that one really stands out to me. After that, bards.
That really doesn't work in an organized campaign. You can't take major, game altering effects from one table to another. It might be fun for you to say that you became a crime lord in magnimar in "Cape of magnimar part I" so we can totally skip the entire plot of "cape of magnimar part II" but its really not fun for the other players or Dms.
Usually if you do something like that, the scenario will have a small bonus like "you are known in this city, you gain a +1 bonus to diplomacy checks here"
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You can totally build an impressive list of titles and off-screen property, and they may give you some bonuses here and there like what BNW mentioned, but don't expect to be able to shape the entire landscape of the campaign. Remember that there are literally tens of thousands other players (and several times that of characters) out there in the same campaign.
Building the kind of influence you're describing really only works in a home game where the action only revolves around 4-6 characters.
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Hi folks.
Greetings! Welcome to the PFS Forum.
First off, can PFS be run online ... ?
Indeed! Check out the Recruitment Forum and look for threads that have "PFS" in the title. They fill up quick, though!
am I screwed if I can't go to conventions?
You're in luck! The next online Convention starts in March. I believe it's called "Gameday V", but maybe someone more knowledgeable will post about it.
We encountered an enemy that was using an enchanted helmet...
BigNorseWolf covered this occurrence pretty well. Sometimes it requires a suspension of belief that 4 characters could each be in possession of a seemingly unique item, but it's just one of those things that people end up joking about and moving on.
the magic item limit where...
PFS handles this rather well. You have a "Fame limit", whereby NPCs essentially won't sell you items more valuable than they think you can afford. Usually, this never comes up. By the time you've bought your essential items, such as a magic sword, magic armor, and a couple wondrous items, your Fame almost never becomes an issue. It's largely to prevent low-level characters from hoarding all their gold to purchase one really expensive item that offsets the power level that scenarios are designed to cover.
I have a habit of going for shortcuts in games and going somewhat off the rail
Awesome! We'd love to have you. GMs are generally given free reign to reward what we call "creative solutions". And several scenarios can be sandboxy, allowing you to explore an undermarket or piece together clues to get you to the bad guys.
I became a major crime lord in the city due to careful negotiations, drug running, and cutting other crime lords...
You generally won't have time for that sort of in-game character development, but off-screen your background can be whatever you want (so long as you don't expect a mechanical advantage from it). Remember, there may be as many as 6 other players at your table, and most scenarios only last 4-5 hours. It's generally best to stick to the story at hand so that everyone can enjoy the game equally.
Same goes for killing/negotiating with NPC that we are not supposed to interact with in that way.
Often times you'll find that some NPCs "fight to the death", but there's nothing stopping you from subduing them and turning them into the local authorities (or dragging them back to town). Likewise, it's usually bad etiquette to murder someone your party members subdued with the intent of bringing back alive. These tactics don't always result in an advantage, either, but sometimes they really pay off.
I can't sell my services in magic or rob people for funds or whatever to make sure I have the funds and materials needed?
You'll really get all the gold you "need" from completing the scenarios themselves. The scenarios are designed with a certain wealth by level in mind. In the older days, some low level characters could "play up" and receive far greater rewards than others (albeit at a substantially higher risk), but over time it became apparent that the power levels of these characters made many scenario encounters trivial. Currently the wealth by level is much more standardized.
With all that being said, sometimes Society isn't for everyone. But we'd love it if you gave us a try. Or three. Honest story, my first two PFS experiences were terrible, but the third had me hooked. Give us a try, look for intro games, or pick up a pregenerated character ("Pregen"), and see how you like it!
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Hamburg
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As others have mentioned, there's nothing stopping you from describing your character background any way you like. For mechanical benefits, you'd need some of the vanities from "Pathfinder Society Field Guide".
For a crime lord, for example, here are some suggestions that come to mind:
- choose "The Exchange" as your faction. That faction is all about making money, no matter whether you do so legally or illegally.
- At Fame 20, purchase the faction-specific vanity "Master of Trade". For your character, that could represent him gaining better deals through illegal networks.
- Purchase the "Caravan" vanity, which lets you make your Day Job checks with either Diplomacy, Intimidate, or Bluff. Good thing to have for smuggling.
- Think about purchasing some of the follower vanities. One that comes to mind is the "Herald". It does nothing but let you look cool. But a crime lord needs a personal henchman who makes the annoying introductions, right? (Even if it's ridiculous that the NPCs haven't already heard of your character ;P )
but there's nothing stopping you from subduing them and turning them into the local authorities
This is the method of choice for a crime lord, although I believe you meant "turning them in to the local authorities". :P