So, all my at-home PACG campaigns (w/ friends and family) have wrapped up. I've never tried organized play before, so I thought it would be fun to branch out, meet new people, and give it a try.
I've poked around, and the only local OP group is about to start Adventure 4 in Season of Factions' Favor. I checked with the organizer, and it seems that the party is short on brute strength. So I decided that I would choose a fighter-type with damage prevention or healing capabilities, given Mummy's Mask love of random damage.
My conclusion: Ostog the barbarian would be a good fit, with his ability (at higher levels) to automatically prevent a significant amount of damage.
Digging more deeply, I've learned that I have two basic options:
Option 1: Build Ostog as a new character, but without any feats. So, not a great idea - no damage prevention! He wouldn't last long, and would drag down the overall effectiveness of the party.
Option 2: If I'm keen on playing a barbarian, play Amiri from the same class deck, since a Tier 3 pregen exists for her.
So, it's a bit frustrating. My options are to either play a character that I don't really want to play, or play a crippled version of the character that I do want to play.
For me, this raises a basic question: Since PACG is a purely cooperative game, why not let players build higher-tier characters however they like - feats and all? Wouldn't this make the game more enjoyable for players joining a campaign-in-progress?
I'm sure there's a good reason for disallowing feats for higher-tier characters. My guess is that it prevents abuse of one-use characters. But really, does it matter?
Anyway, more than anything, I'm curious about the official reasoning behind the no-feats rule for higher-tier character creation.
P.S. Given that Ostog is out and I also own the Hell's Vengeance 1 class deck, I'm currently leaning towards Linxia the Hellknight for OP, as she has healing capabilities. (Though the Tier 3 pregen build is definitely not one I would have chosen, but OK.) Which raises a separate issue as to whether the OP group wants an evil character in their party. I've already decided that the best way to handle Linxia's "card stealing" ability (grabbing cards from other players' discard piles) is to (a) ask permission first and (b) use proxies of the stolen cards in my deck, rather than the original cards. Sound fair enough?
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These are a lot of great points, but there's a lot of angles here.
I feel that, first and foremost, the inability to gain feats by starting your character at a higher tier is so as not to cheapen the reward/experience of actually building and leveling a character from the start. If I come to a table with my Tier 4 Monk, of whom I'd played 16 scenarios of over a period of 20 hours, I might be a little disappointed to find that I could've set up the exact same character by simply walking in the door in the first minute and saying "I'd like to make a Tier 4 Monk". By giving away rewards automatically, it demeans the experience attaining them legitimately, especially in the sort of "competitive" (that's entirely the wrong word, as it's a co-operative game... perhaps "structured" or "enforced") environment like Organized Play.
The only thing you'd have to gain from starting an adventure early (besides specific rewards) would be Card Upgrades, which are usually not a deal-breaker. You can forcibly grind them through replaying scenarios if you so desired, after all. Besides, just because I've leveled a character up to Adventure 4, it's still plausible that I've had awful luck finding/acquiring boons and I don't have any AD3+ boons in my deck anyway, so I could potentially lose nothing at all by just starting a new character.
You also hit on the point about minimizing one-off character exploits. As a matter of fact, you can play a pregenerated character once per Tier, then hand off the rewards to your own character down the line ("Take One for the Team"), in order to act as a short bridging point if you get the opportunity to play in a higher-Tier group but you don't have your cards or you don't have a leveled character yet.
Also; if you can start a higher tier character without losing anything but Card Upgrades, then that also allows people to 'respec' their characters. I may have played RotR's Harsk character, then specialize him to fight Giants... then decide in Tier 6 that I'm no longer fighting Giants, so I dump the character, write up a new Tier 6 Harsk, and rebuild his feats and give him a different role card. In doing so, you lessen the impact of earlier decision making, by taking away their permanence. Potentially, it impacts the decision-making process of "Do I want this Card Feat that is good now, or this card feat which will be better when I get my Role card?" and the like.
Most of the above reasoning is from the perspective "It's not fair to give out for free what other people had to work for", and covers exploitability aspects. Yes, PACG is a purely co-operative game, but Organized Play is a structured environment that gives out rewards under specific circumstances, and allowing people to manipulate those circumstances too easily cheapens the value of the rewards for people who got them legitimately.
But there's one more angle, I would suggest. The designers don't want you skipping Adventures, and so aim to limit your options if you choose to do so regardless. Organized Play, perhaps far more than the typical Adventure Paths, are rather story-driven. They include full intro and outro texts for each adventure and scenario far in excess of the paragraph-per-card flavor text on the physical game. Allowing characters to suddenly appear in Tier 4 of Season of Plundered Tombs will leave them wondering about the wealth of events that have occurred up to this point; the discovery of the flying tombs, the pursuit, the duplicities and referenced characters.
[...]I've already decided that the best way to handle Linxia's "card stealing" ability (grabbing cards from other players' discard piles) is to (a) ask permission first and (b) use proxies of the stolen cards in my deck, rather than the original cards. Sound fair enough?
The "Card Stealing" ability isn't a fundamental nature of her character; but unless you're in a group you already know then it's best to always ask permission. I wouldn't personally think proxies were necessary unless requested by a player, but that's your table's call to make.
You can build her without that ability, of course. I've already been in a discussion with one forumite who played through an AP with her and pointed out that they never used that power; especially because of the constraints of Linxia having to be ready to heal herself AND have someone at her location AND that person has a discard pile AND Linxia will make better use healing those cards into her own deck than that player would of keeping them. Nobody's happy, Linxia included, when Linxia heals a powerful Arcane spell or Bow into her own deck, after all.
It's not really any different than handing off cards to players. Technically a different player is making the choice, but I've never seen cards handed off without some kind of discussion or explanation or request given anyway. Handing off cards is a pretty powerful mechanic in the game in general, and there are even some characters (Summoner Deck - Alase) which are built around passing their cards to other team members.
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+1 to Yewstance.
About Linxia taking cards from another character's discard pile, this comes to mind:
Don’t take actions that may harm another player’s character without that player’s consent.
Vic has confirmed on this forum that this is not a suggestion, it's a rule. Taking cards a character intends to use, as well as limiting a character's ability to heal him- or herself, definitely falls into "actions that may harm another player's character", so: you are required to ask the player playing a character before taking a card from their character's discard pile.
It never occurred to me to use proxies in this situation. That's an aspect of the social contract, so it's up to the players, but I would think it's only necessary if the player giving away the card insists on it (which would be a rare thing). If that player is the only one playing a character from a particular class/character deck, there is no doubt about whose card is whose: look at the class/character deck indicator at the top of the card. If there is more than one person playing from a given class/character deck, then it's a little hairier, it's true.
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Thanks for the excellent comments everyone. As usual, Paizo forums are the best.
The respec and "jump ahead" issues with catch-up character feats did occur to me. Skipping scenarios would never personally enter my mind because, well, I'm here to play a campaign - not skip. The playing is the fun part, not working the system. But I fully understand your points about fairness to others.
More than anything, I hate to see OP guidelines put up barriers for people who happen to be late to a particular campaign (like me), but are still anxious and excited about playing because they don't want to wait months for another campaign to "maybe" start up.
About Linxia: What's interesting is that Linxia's Tier 3 pregen has the "card stealing" ability selected - so not choosing it isn't an option.
My proxy idea for stolen/borrowed cards stems from the issue that some players don't like other players to physically handle their cards. If no one has that issue, then proxies aren't necessary. I know that some players do have this issue, though, and requiring proxies up front would circumvent any social anxiety and weirdness.
Note: The hundreds of games of PACG that I've played until now have always been with friends/family, and have always been with my own sets. So this issue of "other people's cards" has never come up before. I have personally never sleeved my PACG cards, but I don't know if this is typical or not in OP. This could also affect mixing your cards with my cards.
@Elcoderdude - Thanks for the "no harm" rules reminder. That's key.
P.S. I'm working on getting my own Venture-Agent status so that I can start hosting games at a local game store. The store has already agreed, and is looking into scoring their free MM box and scenario downloads. I'm leaning towards either running Season of the Goblins (to start with something short) or one of the MM campaigns (Plundered Tombs, Factions' Favor).
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Everyone I've played OP with sleeves their cards.
How this works is: To start off with you only need 15 sleeves for the cards in your deck, plus maybe 10 sleeves for cards you acquire. (In practice we usually have about 40 or so just in case.)
When I pass you a card -- which is not usual, since Give A Card is the first part of your turn, and can be situationally useful -- I remove my sleeve, pass you the card, and you then sleeve it with your own sleeve.
I've also never played with anyone who wouldn't other players touch their cards. I'm sure such people do play OP, but I haven't met them.
We hope that people who want to join a particular advanced group will consider playing the early adventures solo.
Huh. This didn't occur to me, only because I didn't think the scenarios would be winnable with a single character. I also don't know what solo OP looks like. Guess I need to consult the Guide again.
You're saying I could do official "solo" OP on my own, at home? Or would I have to be at a store?
I suppose I could run two characters solo - but the OP rules and regulations seem to indirectly (directly?) discourage players from running more than one character.
Or perhaps some of the group you're looking to join might want to run different characters through previous tiers?
As far as I can tell, once per week is the only time that this group has available for PACG. I think they'd prefer to continue their campaign rather than get the new guy up to speed. :)
Anyway, I'm committed to starting with a Tier 3 Linxia pregen. I'll report back eventually - hopefully not with news of my death.
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You're saying I could do official "solo" OP on my own, at home? Or would I have to be at a store?
Yep, solo play is reportable! You can catch up to the rest of your group like that, then start playing with them. There are rules in the Guild Guide for playing solo, including allowing you to play with more than a single character when doing so.
Ok, thanks. That's helpful. If nothing else, I can run the Tier 3 pregen solo (or with one other character) through Adventures 2 and 3 to catch up a bit. I'll check with the organizer about how to do that.
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We hope that people who want to join a particular advanced group will consider playing the early adventures solo. Or perhaps some of the group you're looking to join might want to run different characters through previous tiers?
My issue was that I moved from an area with no ACG OP and into an area that frequently has 6-10+ players every 2 weeks. I joined in at the end of them finishing AD3. I had played PACG before and knew how to build characters but my decision was basically to play a pre-gen or solo-play 12+ scenarios to catch up. I decided to take the pre-gen even though it meant that the build was slightly sub-optimal for what I was intending to do. In the end though, it has worked out, and I don't particularly see it being an issue for me in the future. If it did happen in the future, I would probably just suck it up and solo play to catch up.
As an aside, perhaps the most frustrating part of joining Season 3 when I did-- I lack many of the trader access that would be beneficial (such as armor). That's probably the bigger influencer for why I would want to solo-play to catch up instead of using a pre-gen. Oh, and end of season reward would also influence that decision. To be frank though, I do LOTS of solo play with PACG and other board games. I can see how the solo play would not be an appealing option for people just starting out with PACG OP, regardless of loot/trader/end of season rewards. I think it would also put a group in a tough spot to ask them to start new characters to replay scenarios when they have already invested a lot of time/sessions into a character.
A quick update:
Thanks to your advice, I ran (raced!) through 7 solo scenarios from Factions' Favor (Adventures 2/3) with a Tier 3 Linxia pregen and two other characters. Linxia is now in much better shape, as she has better access to loot and traders, her deck is much improved, and her new feats are more to my liking. When I start Adventure 4 today with the new OP group, I'll be good to go.
If you're curious, the other two characters were Estra (Occult Adventures 1) and Celeste (Pathfinder Tales). Also, I used the Ultimate Combat add-on with Linxia. There are now a number of UC cards in her deck, as they're pretty fancy and helpful.
P.S. I finally figured out the OP reporting system, so my solo results and upgrades are now recorded for posterity. :)