| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
>I have seen intelligent people bemoan the fact that the create water Cantrip breaks desert games
I have never seen a properly estabilished challenge related to finding resources in an RPG like Pathfinder that actually didn't end up being a chore. Maybe you had different experiences from me, but I just don't see what you would actually want to do that darned create water would bypass.
Do you want people to make skill checks to find water? Well that is boring and not engaging, honestly. "Hi, my name is Dan the Druid, and I just rolled 47 on Survival. Can we get to the fun bits already?"
Do you want people to take water with them? Well it is trivial for a wizard to carry hundreds of pounds of water with minimal resource expenditure. And it gets to, frankly, ridiculous levels if you buy an actual pack mule and then buff it. And, again, is quite boring-all it effectively requires the players to do is say "we take water with us".
Even without buffs, pack mules cost what, 25gp? That is chump change by level 2. Buy like 10 of those, cover them in water packs, never worry about water again.
Do you want people to somehow make pathing decisions, such as deciding where to go on a dessert map, based on how much water they have left? Well I could see that being interesting, but honestly, I have never seen anyone even attempt to implement that. And then Create Water wouldn't really make the challenge irrelevant either, since the caster could, say, be disabled in combat and be unable to cast it.
Do you want people to feel how hot the dessert is? Well just describe it then. Nobody stops you from doing that just because the party has a source of water.
Basically:what is it you actually want to do with your desert?
like i said on my example use magic to disrupt magic (magic desert) boom problem solved best way to counter magic is with magic.
There does seem to be some hating on DM adjudication rule 0 yo.
All this talk of Dessert is making me hungry.
snowblind im going to need you to make a will save or go buy icecream
snowblind im going to need you to make a will save or go buy icecream
Pfft, I have ice cream in the freezer.
And some homemade chocolate sauce in the fridge (its just sugar, cocoa and water).
Hmm.
I might go blend up a litre of milkshake later. Half of that litre will be ice cream.
EDIT:
Does anyone here seriously enjoy the minutiae of resource tracking. When I homebrew, I put a lot of thought into minimizing that aspect of the game. As far as I am concerned, create water's ability to remove niggly little things that nobody likes is a boon.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yep, drinking milkshake is far more enjoyable than tracking water usage. Thumbs up for Create Water.
...
Lot of settings tend to be somewhat self-correcting.
Some nature god is going to say "stop messing with my balance" and slap someone.
Go make a campaign set around Alkenstar. Boom, problem solved. Now nobody knows what's going to happen anytime they do anything.
Or just...they've been done. Why shouldn't a village buy Decanters of Endless Water to irrigate their crops?
And simultaneously WHY WOULD THEY use it to terraform the whole desert? It's not their problem (and makes it hella harder for bandits to get at them).
As one decanter can effectively handle (see above) 1/4 of a square mile of irrigation of crops, a DoEW would suffice for a small village, several for a decent sized one. Where a small village gets 9000gp is another question, but it's entirely possible.
Transforming an entire desert would require 4 DoEW per square mile. I have no idea the minimum number of square miles you'd have to manage before the climate takes a solid foothold, but presumably it's a lot. Ideally you'd start with desert-tolerant plants (just MORE of them) to do things like soil stabilization and the beginnings of building actual soil (as opposed to clay, silt, sand or pebbles), which would require a lot less water, but the problem of distributing that water (infrastructure) remains.
Control Weather and a reasonably high level Druid has far fewer problems attempting this sort of thing.
Mysteries work about as well in pathfinder as they do in most rpg systems.
Mysteries work well in Pathfinder. As GM you just need to think like you are in world with magic. Also think of it like today. Not only can you scry on people via cameras every where with geo locations but you can go back in time watching recorded video. So think of world where you can scry like that and speak with the dead. A mystery will take all at into account.
I'm not even sure about this. Even mystery novels don't work as well in a high-surveillance environment (which is one reason we've seen a resurgence of "period" mystery novels recently, whether set in ancient Rome, feudal China, medieval Europe, the American guilded age, or whatever).
As you correct point out, mysteries are about finding clues at an appropriate pace, which is very hard to do when you can just retroactively watch the crime take place via retrocognition or use divination magic to ask God for the answer.
When protagonist can ask God for the answers the antagonist can ask his god to hide the answers. It's a two way street. Same with high surveillance environments the antagonist can used the technology to their advantage. I've run many Shadow Run mystery and that setting is insanely high surveillance.
One way I figure out mysteries is watching my player in other adventures and the things they pull off. So if they can avoid getting caught I can use what they use. Works great.
Biggest problem is clue. My player always miss clues. I usually set 3-4 clues pointing the same thing. They find one and the others I may remove or use re-enforcement of the clue if the player just aren't getting it.