As a GM when I get told my 1000 year old 36 intelligence Villan is being too "Machiavellian".
As a player when rules change during play repeatedly, or being taken to task for using completely clear unambiguous rules that have been discussed before hand. Such as spell-casting services, town purchase limits, or just using spells like fly as written.
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As a GM: Characters that actively seem to want nothing to do with the party they were supposedly built to play in. Bonus points if the player then gets upset or frustrated when their character gets left behind after deciding to stay behind themselves.
As a player... actually pretty much the same thing. But it's even more frustrating as a GM.
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Human centric anything in a fantasy world where there is supposed to contain considerable populations of other races.
As a GM: Characters that actively seem to want nothing to do with the party they were supposedly built to play in. Bonus points if the player then gets upset or frustrated when their character gets left behind after deciding to stay behind themselves.
As a player... actually pretty much the same thing. But it's even more frustrating as a GM.
Ditto
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What you describe is what I'm hoping the group I play with can become. As it is we have 3.5 hours to play a week by schedule. By the time everything is said and done we game for about an hour, on the low side. Professional gamers? Sorry, not even close.
Probably closer than you realize. My group is lucky to get together every two months. 3.5 hours every week? In our dreams.
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My personal pet peeve is GMs who feel that it's their job to compete with the players rather than work with them to tell a compelling story. Seriously, if a GM wants to kill the PCs, it's not difficult. Whew, I almost said kill the players. That might be a little harder.
Also, I dislike when people talk over the GM. Especially when it's completely non game related.
My biggest pet peeve is when I run out of munchies though.
Also, I like Nickelback. :)
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AC and To Hit and CMB and CMD. I don't believe there is a need for two systems that do essentially the same thing.
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Alignment. The whole thing falls apart under a minute's thought, let alone the inevitable arguments over what constitutes Good, Lawful, etc. People have wrestled with those questions since the beginning, and they won't be resolved by pigeonholing characters or their actions into squares in a 3x3 grid. Bad enough that it exists, worse that there are mechanics attached to it.
Kitchen Sink settings. I understand why Golarion, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and other "default" settings have to be kitchen sinks for commercial reasons, but they all strike me as bland, generic, contrived, and (yes, I'm going to say it), unrealistic. As the link points out, instead of having to suspend disbelief on occasion, here and there, it turns into a long series of many suspensions of disbelief.
Highly specific fluff and/or prerequisites tied to generic mechanics. Good examples are Fey Foundling, Cautious Fighter, and Reactionary:
Generic mechanic: Magical healing is more effective on you.
Specific fluff: "You were found in the wilds as a child, bearing a mark of the First World."
Generic mechanic: You react quickly to danger.
Specific fluff: "You were bullied often as a child, but never quite developed an offensive response. Instead, you became adept at anticipating sudden attacks and reacting to danger quickly."
Generic mechanic: You are better at avoiding hits while fighting defensively.
Generic fluff: "You care more about survival than victory."
Specific requirement: Halfling DNA
All that leads me into the next one, people who refuse to separate the fluff from the mechanics, such as through rewriting fluff. The example mentioned above was the idea that a Bard has to be a musician. IIRC "Thief" was changed to "Rogue" for that very reason, and there are still people out there who insist that a Lawful Good Rogue is impossible.
Rules bloat. Yep, I'm going there. It's an inevitable consequence of the business model: Keep publishing rulebooks (all of whose contents have to be shoehorned into Golarion). As more and more classes are printed, with archetypes and feats that let them use class features from other classes, a classless system starts to make more sense.
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Kitchen Sink settings. I understand why Golarion, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and other "default" settings have to be kitchen sinks for commercial reasons, but they all strike me as bland, generic, contrived, and (yes, I'm going to say it), unrealistic. As the link points out, instead of having to suspend disbelief on occasion, here and there, it turns into a long series of many suspensions of disbelief.
I dislike kitchen sink settings on the whole, but I also feel that Pathfinder manages their particular one well in that the specific adventure paths tend to focus on one aspect or area of the setting or another. Unless you like crossover with the characters you played in previous campaigns you could well just be playing in different worlds. I don't think I'd like a homebrew game that took in a grand tour of Golarion... unless, perhaps, it was played for humour. Of course some sites in the setting, such as the city of Katapesh, benefit from the whole 'cosmopolitan' aspect, but as background to the specific Arabian nights-esque setting, rather than by overshadowing it.
Generic mechanic: You are better at avoiding hits while fighting defensively.
Generic fluff: "You care more about survival than victory."
Specific requirement: Halfling DNA
The post-quest party got a little wild last night... just how much halfling DNA do I need to qualify for that Feat..? ;)
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Flanking bothers me.
Imagine a situation where King Arthur is dueling the evil Mordred. Sir Lancelot comes up behind Mordred and starts hitting him. Mordred now has to split his focus between the two righteous warriors thus lowering his AC. So far so good.
Now Guinevere decides that she doesn't want to just be a damsel in distress and takes the fight to Mordred as well. She took some levels in rogue as she had to hide her martial prowess in a male-dominated world. So since Mordred has his attention split, it is logical that Guinevere should have a bonus to hit him and be able to pinpoint his weak points thus allowing a sneak attack, right? Wrong.
Not only is Mordred so perfectly focused on her that he has no loss to AC against her, he can also perfectly covers all of his vital areas so as to deny her the ability to sneak attack. He also receives no penalty against his other two attackers for dividing his attention further despite the fact that he lost AC for having two attacks. Two is a problem, four is a bigger problem, but three is perfectly manageable.
To take it even further, Sir Percival has taken up a bow within 30 ft of Mordred and across from Guinevere. He took some levels as a Vanguard Slayer and wants to sneak attack since Mordred is distracted. With three opponents, Mordred should be wide open, right? Wrong again.
Mordred can not only perfectly cover all his weak points from Guinevere; he can, at the same time, cover all his weak points from Percival as well. Neither of them gets an attack boost or the ability to sneak attack. And this again does not cost him anything in his fight against Arthur or Lancelot.
TL;DR Flanking has too many arbitrary conditions that especially screw over rogues.
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Flanking bothers me.
Imagine a situation where King Arthur is dueling the evil Mordred. Sir Lancelot comes up behind Mordred and starts hitting him. Mordred now has to split his focus between the two righteous warriors thus lowering his AC. So far so good.
Now Guinevere decides that she doesn't want to just be a damsel in distress and takes the fight to Mordred as well. She took some levels in rogue as she had to hide her martial prowess in a male-dominated world. So since Mordred has his attention split, it is logical that Guinevere should have a bonus to hit him and be able to pinpoint his weak points thus allowing a sneak attack, right? Wrong.
Not only is Mordred so perfectly focused on her that he has no loss to AC against her, he can also perfectly covers all of his vital areas so as to deny her the ability to sneak attack. He also receives no penalty against his other two attackers for dividing his attention further despite the fact that he lost AC for having two attacks. Two is a problem, four is a bigger problem, but three is perfectly manageable.
To take it even further, Sir Percival has taken up a bow within 30 ft of Mordred and across from Guinevere. He took some levels as a Vanguard Slayer and wants to sneak attack since Mordred is distracted. With three opponents, Mordred should be wide open, right? Wrong again.
Mordred can not only perfectly cover all his weak points from Guinevere; he can, at the same time, cover all his weak points from Percival as well. Neither of them gets an attack boost or the ability to sneak attack. And this again does not cost him anything in his fight against Arthur or Lancelot.
TL;DR Flanking has too many arbitrary conditions that especially screw over rogues.
Savage Worlds' Gang Up system works better for that, yeah. Just +1 to-hit per additional ally adjacent to the enemy.
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AC and To Hit and CMB and CMD. I don't believe there is a need for two systems that do essentially the same thing.
It is better than the whole 'grapple is its own game system' thing that preceded it.
It personally bothers me that out of Shortbow, Longbow, Composite Shortbow, and Composite Longbow, the one and only one you can't use on a mount is Longbow.
Wait, where does it say you can't use a longbow on a mount?
It is better than the whole 'grapple is its own game system' thing that preceded it.
Those are unrelated though.
Wait, where does it say you can't use a longbow on a mount?
In the longbow's description "A longbow is too unwieldy to use while you are mounted"
Weirdly enough, the composite longbow isn't even an oversight.
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You can use a composite longbow while mounted.
...
It's a non-composite longbow only thing, apparently.
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The time bubble effect... And its consequences to martial classes.
Two identical characters are 30 ft from each other... Character 1 moves and only has time to make a single attack. However, character 2, despite being adjacent to char 1 for just as long as char 1 has been adjacent to him, somehow has enough time to make a full attack.
It'd be be nice if martial characters with high initiative bonus could actually benefit from it...
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Oh.. And the Schrondigger hands "errata"!
Which makes no sense, isn't written or even implied anywhere in the rules and does nothing for the game other than arbitrarily ban flavorful, albeit underpowered character concepts.
It's arguably Paizo's dumbest "FAQ" decision so far.
Schrondigger hands "errata"?
I don't get it. Never heard of it.
Any examples for these "unwritten hands"?
Speaking of hands, this is really really minor but.. Glove of Storing.
The rules of Pathfinder have gone out of the way to make your hands not matter. There's no concept of left hand or right hand and every character is ambidextrous by default as a rules assumption.
And then there's this one single item that can only fit on one hand and from my experience it creates a lot of rules headaches about what action it is to switch items from one hand to the other and if you can do that with both your hands full and so on.
I don't think Paizo has ever explicitly said something of the sort and it's not like it's a new practice either.It is a really messy way to go about things though, because new players aren't likely to expect significant rules changes to be buried in an FAQ document rather than printed in a book.
Which is exactly why they specifically said they didn't want to introduce "incremental change [to the rules] via FAQ and errata" several years back.
That attitude, clearly, has changed in recent days.
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On the flip side of kitchen sink settings I've run into the how could this planet have these environments together?
I was like dude, earth has environments of all the planets in this setting (it was Aliens vs predator homebrew), and Hawaii alone has like 9 of the 11 on earth.
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On the flip side of kitchen sink settings I've run into the how could this planet have these environments together?
I was like dude, earth has environments of all the planets in this setting (it was Aliens vs predator homebrew), and Hawaii alone has like 9 of the 11 on earth.
I blame the Star Wars series for the trope of mono-climate planets plaguing scifi/fantasy settings.
One evil (or Neutral going on evil) character in a party of heroes. Once is fun, but we don't need a Dr Zachery Smith in every party. Particularly annoying when players want minion raising or demon binding necromancers and diabolists and other obviously disturbing characters. Save it for an evil campaign or be a DM.
Edit: Equally bothered by Good players in evil campaigns and law abiding pirate hunters in A pirate game.
^ I feel like evil in a good campaign can work well enough. The larger problem there is that most of the time from my experience someone wants to play an evil character in a good campaign is to be an ass, rather than to create good roleplaying or anything.
Another thing that bothers me: The Alarm spell and Haunts.
Now, conceptually haunts can be cool, but often times I see both of them boil down to magical traps a rogue can't deal with.
Now I don't mind the rogue not being the end all be all of traps, but it still really sucks being the 'trap guy' and just... not being able to do anything about these. You can't even detect an Alarm spell, so you're just liable to trip it and get screwed if you're out.
Things that bother me? People who insist that something is a rule and always has been (when it isn't and has NEVER been).
Example 1: I had a player claim that rolling 20 on initiative would make you go first no matter what AND doubled your result. "At least, it was like that in 3.5". yeah, no, I don't think so.Example 2: Tie on attack rolls vs AC go to defender. except that it doesn't. oh and he even did this line again: "At least, it was like that in 3.5".
That is actually just the tip of the iceberg with that guy...
Most of the time when I see this it is because some previous GM had it as a houserule, and never told the players it was a houserule.
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Lack of consistency in the rules due to the GM.
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The Alarm spell, it's first level that can completely shut down sneaky characters, non-magic users have no way of spotting it at any level, regardless of their Perception ranks or abilities like Trapfinding. Even magic users have no defense against it until they can cast or afford items that let them use Dispel Magic.
There are other spells that function like traps, but this one lacks that language for some reason.
The Alarm spell, it's first level that can completely shut down sneaky characters, non-magic users have no way of spotting it at any level, regardless of their Perception ranks or abilities like Trapfinding. Even magic users have no defense against it until they can cast or afford items that let them use Dispel Magic.
There are other spells that function like traps, but this one lacks that language for some reason.
It does not have trap language because it is not a trap, and it does not function like a trap. It just a spell that lets the bad guys know you are there. Traps actually do bad things to you. This spell does not attack you in any way at all. It is not much different than a magic mouth spell with how it can give you away.
It is however another reason why stealth is difficult to use in Pathfinder.
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The Alarm spell, it's first level that can completely shut down sneaky characters, non-magic users have no way of spotting it at any level, regardless of their Perception ranks or abilities like Trapfinding. Even magic users have no defense against it until they can cast or afford items that let them use Dispel Magic.
There are other spells that function like traps, but this one lacks that language for some reason.
It does not have trap language because it is not a trap, and it does not function like a trap. It just a spell that lets the bad guys know you are there. Traps actually do bad things to you. This spell does not attack you in any way at all. It is not much different than a magic mouth spell with how it can give you away.
It is however another reason why stealth is difficult to use in Pathfinder.
I'd say that alerting the bad guys to your presence is a "bad thing" that the alarm spell does to you.
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Oh I'll Pick the 1 class that doesn't need the cloak to prove the cloak isn't needed and then pick the 3 classes most known for damage and show that they can one-shot a fairly easy enemy in one hit by using some of their daily resources.
OH WAIT, that's what cr4 is supposed to do, Use up ~25%, so the paladin spending a smite is a win. The barbs spending a round of a rage is less of a win.
AND it's also as you're getting higher. Take that barb to lv11 with a +1 weapon into a cr11 fighter and I bet you wish you had some more AC, saves, and combat power.
Now fast-forward again to lv18-20 and you'll really be feeling the hurt for not having items.
So in a low magic setting aka lvs 1 to 5-6 not having magic items isn't a big loss. In moderate magic or high magic, lvs 6-13 and 13-20, you'll start to feel the hurt more and more of not having items. And that's for the king of combat classes. Think about the poor rogue and monk that now really can't hit instead of almost never hit.
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You know, in my time playing this game every mechanical problem is generally solvable without much effort. I'm more in the game for the general framework, tools for modifications and the APs than PFS or going straight by the book as it is written. For me the bane of my joy for playing are social things. Two specifically;
1) People not showing up. I know that people have lives, and life is more important than game but seriously it seems like nobody has any kind of stability in their lives because its not like some emergency happened or their schedules changed so we quit amacibly its like they just stop doing things or even communicating so the party starts dwindling to two people. I wonder how some people are keeping jobs with how erratically they show up for things. And this goes past games. Some friends will plan something, and then show up when and where we planned but most will flake at the drop of a hat because they were a little extra sleepy that morning or something like that. You aren't even safe when they show up. If you vanish for a smoke break for almost half the session then you smoke too much. Except this doesn't apply to Magic: the Gathering players apparently. They will show up like clockwork on a weekly basis for years. I wish I saw that kind of consistency. I've seen the end of exactly one campaign in my entire life and I was one of the whole two people that saw the first and last session. Like 12 people went in and out of that campaign before the end.
2) People that refuse to know the rules. Not new players that don't know the rules. I've run games for players who's ages were in the single digits and they pick it up and learn. I'm talking about the people who have been playing 3.X longer than I have and still can't figure out how many skill ranks their class has. There are concepts that I have to re-explain every single game, and not just at character creation, its like every session I have to clarify huge major things about the game constantly. And it wouldn't be so bad if fracking 9 year olds have a better grasp on how to make an attack roll than a 30 year old that has multiple campaigns under their belt.