New Versions and the life of an adventurer


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

Lantern Lodge

Sorry, I'm and old fogey and I am having an "everything was better in the good old days" moment. Has anyone noticed that the life of adventurers seem to get grimmer and grimmer as more versions come out? As in, everything that makes life living for a person seems to be getting stripped out and actively discouraged.

When was the last time one of your characters attended a birthday party for their niece? Or their sister? Or HAD a birthday party? Do your character actually have a family written in, much less visit and say hello? Did your non-bard learn to play the guitar because it was fun? OH noo, don't play a non-optimized character or everyone will die! No family, no home, no life other than the daily grind of kill things, get healed, kill things.

Now, a new version is coming out. To prevent combat abuses, lets have resonance on magic items so you can only use/have so many. Ok.. so no magic items just for fun? The magic cat who I can play with 3 times a day now costs a resonance point each time I play with it? My character has 50,000 gold pieces, and is homeless. My character has gems and jewelry, but no wife/husband/children to support. Look, I'm rich, but I have no parents to send money to so that they do not loose the farm because they had a bad year.

"Wait!" People answer. "But that's just roleplaying! You don't need rules for that.. You can just mail off the money! You can just pretend you have a husband who needs support!"

Exactly my point. The games seem to be getting designed to discourage roleplay in favor of being, almost, a first person shooter. You will be given rules on crafting that no one can make a living at... lest some adventurer get a combat advantage from crafting. You will have a maximum cost of gear you can own... so that no one can buy their way to power... but now you can't dress in silks and satins because that all counts towards your maximum cost.. and heaven forbid if they add the cost of the home you purchased in town.

I understand the desire to power balance characters, but I am starting to feel burned out on the new gaming systems stripped down characters who all start feeling the same. Different characters come from different lives for the character. Without the roleplaying aspects every character becomes highly optimized for whatever roles they will have, and then adventures will be designed so that if you are not highly optimized, you die.

Sorry, that was my rant moment. I know not everyone agrees with my view of rpgs. I would just really like to see more R built into the new rpgs coming out, including PathFinder 2nd edition.

Boojum


I completely see your point. I'm very happy that my long lived group has kept the R part in the game, no matter the desire for DPR in many games. I see so many posts about a how could a character get more and more damage per round than his comrades. It's almost like a competition between the players, and they absolutely neglect the roleplaying aspect of the game.

I'm NOT saying this applies to all players, just many of the posts I see on the forums indicate and even validate this. It does take away from the R quite a bit for some of us (all of us on the boards who play PF or another complicated rule system game). I won't be switching to PF2 nor will my group. We're happy with the rules as they are and the way we manage to have room for both the Role and Roll playing.


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Ah Nostalgia, it just isn't the same as it was in my day...

This is far less edition/game dependant and very much down to your group/ how you learnt. The things you mention have become more a part of the game for me with each edition rather than less (albeit still not to the same extent as you). In the 'good old days' it was very much 'kick in the door kill the monster take the loot' rinse repeat.


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Boojumbunn wrote:
When was the last time one of your characters attended a birthday party for their niece? Or their sister? Or HAD a birthday party? Do your character actually have a family written in, much less visit and say hello?

Never, and I've been playing since before the game was 'Advanced'. I'm questioning what you are asking for here though? Are you expecting birthday party mechanics? Demanding that the game have rules to create family ties and their associated birthdates? What are you expecting rules to do to correct this loss of birthday parties?

Boojumbunn wrote:
Did your non-bard learn to play the guitar because it was fun?

Some. The rules current rules support this very well.

Boojumbunn wrote:
The magic cat who I can play with 3 times a day now costs a resonance point each time I play with it?

I presume this is a custom magic item. While I don't know everything about how the new system will work, it is certainly reasonable that a magic item that didn't have any mechanical effect (such as a cat that can only act cute and be petted) wouldn't cost any resonance at all or if a limited effect (not a real combatant, but might be useful on occasion) a single resonance could provide for multiple periods of activation in a day. While there might not be 'rules' for this sort of thing, I don't see it a being something that wouldn't work out just fine in a home game. Leaving that aside, it is really so terrible that on days that you don't exhaust all your resonance your character has the energy to summon his fluffy playmate, but on the hard days, when every scrap of resonance has been used up he is just too tired?

Boojumbunn wrote:
My character has 50,000 gold pieces, and is homeless.

This seems like the most bizarre complaint to me. Pathfinder has the downtime rules that let you build a house, run a business and all that while you aren't adventuring. Personally, I hate these rules as I think the accountant-like mechanics get in the way of fun roleplaying, but if you can't roleplay owning a home without mechanics, they are right there for you.

I personally don't want 'rules' for everything I want to roleplay. I don't want to go roll on a table to see how many relatives I have with birthdays this month. I don't want to go through a ton of magical items that don't actually do anything but someone might consider fun. People can make up that sort of stuff on their own, and shouldn't need rules for it.


I haven’t read anything about 2nd edition, because it is factually asinine that the company who made the game that only came to be because people wanted a continuation of D&D 3.5 more than a new edition, are themselves ditching said continuation those same people are devoted to for a new edition, but if the op is describing things in the new Pathfinder, then I now feel completely justified that even if what I previously typed wasn’t true, PF 2nd edition is still asinine.


Boojumbunn wrote:

Sorry, I'm and old fogey and I am having an "everything was better in the good old days" moment. Has anyone noticed that the life of adventurers seem to get grimmer and grimmer as more versions come out? As in, everything that makes life living for a person seems to be getting stripped out and actively discouraged.

When was the last time one of your characters attended a birthday party for their niece? Or their sister? Or HAD a birthday party? Do your character actually have a family written in, much less visit and say hello? Did your non-bard learn to play the guitar because it was fun? OH noo, don't play a non-optimized character or everyone will die! No family, no home, no life other than the daily grind of kill things, get healed, kill things.

This is an adaptation to defend against a particular problem behavior epidemic among GMs. What's point in investing time and effort into giving my character a family if their first actual appearance just has them be murdered for cheap drama? They never understand that it's not engaging or interesting. It's just disheartening. Like, why did I waste all that time in the first place? Sure, you can tell your GM that your character's family is off-limits, but how often does that work?

Boojumbunn wrote:
Now, a new version is coming out. To prevent combat abuses, lets have resonance on magic items so you can only use/have so many. Ok.. so no magic items just for fun? The magic cat who I can play with 3 times a day now costs a resonance point each time I play with it? My character has 50,000 gold pieces, and is homeless. My character has gems and jewelry, but no wife/husband/children to support. Look, I'm rich, but I have no parents to send money to so that they do not loose the farm because they had a bad year.

As a GM, I would probably rule that a magic item that does literally nothing wouldn't cost resonance. If you want a house, a family, then fine by me. If you want to invest in them, then good. You'll be rewarded commiserate to your investment, because that's how I like to do things.

Boojumbunn wrote:

"Wait!" People answer. "But that's just roleplaying! You don't need rules for that.. You can just mail off the money! You can just pretend you have a husband who needs support!"

Exactly my point. The games seem to be getting designed to discourage roleplay in favor of being, almost, a first person shooter. You will be given rules on crafting that no one can make a living at... lest some adventurer get a combat advantage from crafting. You will have a maximum cost of gear you can own... so that no one can buy their way to power... but now you can't dress in silks and satins because that all counts towards your maximum cost.. and heaven forbid if they add the cost of the home you purchased in town.

There has never been, and likely will never be, a maximum cost of gear you can own. Maybe the culture of the boards is distorting your view of how people play, but the people on the internet generally want to discuss mechanics because mechanics are objective. They're an easy place to establish common ground between people who may otherwise have wildly different experiences. Personally, I always run well ahead of wealth-by-level, but a lot of that extra is in intangibles: property, convenience, clothes and art, expensive rare books and chess sets, houses and castles, things that are not easily liquidated, sometimes not easily transported, but exist to add richness to the world and help the party be of prominence. I can't speak to anyone else's GMing style, but I can't imagine it's all that uncommon to give PCs a little something extra once their level-appropriate adventuring needs have been taken care of. And crafting has never provided a livable wage in d20, because the game's money system wasn't built on the assumption that normal people use it. If it were, then some prices would be way higher than they are in PF, and some would be way lower. It was build with the idea that player characters, the kinds of people who go through magic swords, potions and spell scrolls like toothpicks, cheap beer and toilet paper, would be the people making use of it. I don't think it discourages roleplaying. It just leaves it up the party.

Boojumbunn wrote:

I understand the desire to power balance characters, but I am starting to feel burned out on the new gaming systems stripped down characters who all start feeling the same. Different characters come from different lives for the character. Without the roleplaying aspects every character becomes highly optimized for whatever roles they will have, and then adventures will be designed so that if you are not highly optimized, you die.

Sorry, that was my rant moment. I know not everyone agrees with my view of rpgs. I would just really like to see more R built into the new rpgs coming out, including PathFinder 2nd edition.

Boojum

So, maybe this is just me, but the burden of the RP side of RPG has always been on the players, at least with respect to d20. The system has never done all that much to encourage it. Maybe it's done what it could to not get in the way (personally, I disagree with this. There's been some level of obstruction in nearly every edition I've had the chance to read), but almost all encouragement thereof has been at the level of the individual table, not at the level of the system.


So let me get this straight, your high level adventurer wants to wear silk and satin, has 50k in gold, but won't spend 150gp on a noble outfit? Or wear 2k worth of jewelry? Heck, you could convert the entire 50k into jewelry because it doesn't lose any value. No idea why merchants buy and sell jewelry since it always trades at full value.

It has a lot to do with the group and the GM. Mainly the GM because that sort of stuff takes a lot of extra effort. Let me describe 2 of my characters played in the last few years.

AP: Kingmaker. Played a Wizard that was jilted by his lover and vowed to get revenge by becoming far greater than her current husband. Guy ended up being the biggest entrepreneur in the newly founded kingdom. He owned a Mages Collage, an Arena, a Warriors Training Hall, a Mercenary Company, a Shipping Industry, a Ship Building Industry, an Alchemist Guild, a Forge, a Tavern, his own private dock and warehouses, and 'The Red Palace' which is something like the bath house from Spirited Away. Oh, and a Mansion/farm. Did I mention that he was the head architect of the city?

Out of the 3 women he convinced to travel with him to found the city he managed to convince 2 of them to marry him. Polygamy is easy when you're one of the founders of the country. Unfortunately the one that refused was the one he made his apprentice and got appointed as a counselor to the kingdom...

AP: Iron Gods. Second son, and Third wheel in a metal scrapping business. His older brother just inherited the family business and got married. Kaz decided he needed to leave home, and find himself a wife. Ended up adventuring through a bunch of weird places. Never did meet a nice girl to settle down with. Gang members, anti-tech cultists, anti-tech fanatics, literal aliens, and then a city filled with people trying to take advantage of him or kill him, none of those seemed like a good opportunity to form a relationship. By the time he got a real breather...the campaign was over.

Different GMs for the two games. To be fair, the second character was written to be more of a laid back, go with the flow type of guy. Also the Kingmaker AP is totally written for you to have a personal life. I was a little disappointed that the AP didn't include forming alliances through marriage. The Kobold Chief did volunteer though...

Lantern Lodge

Dave Justus wrote:


Boojumbunn wrote:
Did your non-bard learn to play the guitar because it was fun?

Some. The rules current rules support this very well.

Boojumbunn wrote:
My character has 50,000 gold pieces, and is homeless.
This seems like the most bizarre complaint to me. Pathfinder has the downtime rules that let you build a house, run a business and all that while you aren't adventuring. Personally, I hate these rules as I think the accountant-like mechanics get in the way of fun...

Ok, I am going to cruelly snip the source short.. though I really appreciate the response. This is less about do the rule support it than do the rules punish characters who take advantage of it. Also, there is what the worldbooks provide. A hundred different weapons (most of which do the same damage as each other) but only three types of clothing with set values.

Mind you, I DID appreciate the change in rules that let people craft items at 1/2 the cost of buying them. That, at least, let some crafting commerce in.. except you can only sell them at 1/10th the cost of buying them. Still, you can sell to your fellow adventurers.

A actually purchased the Ultimate Campaign with downtime rules in hopes to get the roleplaying fun back into the game... and they turned out to be hugely complex and unwieldy for our group. You had to calculate magic points, money points, resource points.. everything had different point value.. and it turned out to be an excel spreadsheet worth of work just to own a small shop in town. When complexity of the rules get in the way of playing the game then they are poorly written rules.

As for the cat.. :D That example was from a wonderful AD&D 2nd edition book someone made that included fun magic items that had nothing to do with adventuring, but that a character would probably want. I understand that the gm can overrule the rules and say "Gee, it's useless so it doesn't cost resonance" but that sort of seems like saying "The rules of magic items in the game want to prevent you from having nice things in favor of useful things." That goes back to if the rules punish people for having fun with roleplay in addition to having fun with combat.

Boojum

Lantern Lodge

Meirril wrote:


It has a lot to do with the group and the GM. Mainly the GM because that sort of stuff takes a lot of extra effort. Let me describe 2 of my characters played in the last few years.

AP: Kingmaker. Played a Wizard that was jilted by his lover and vowed to get revenge by becoming far greater than her current husband. Guy ended up being the biggest entrepreneur in the newly founded kingdom. He owned a Mages Collage, an Arena, a Warriors Training Hall, a Mercenary Company, a Shipping Industry, a Ship Building Industry, an Alchemist Guild, a Forge, a Tavern, his own private dock and warehouses, and 'The Red Palace' which is something like the bath house from Spirited Away. Oh, and a Mansion/farm. Did I mention that he was the head architect of the city?

Out of the 3 women he convinced to travel with him to found the city he managed to convince 2 of them to marry him. Polygamy is easy when you're one of the founders of the country. Unfortunately the one that refused was the one he made his apprentice and got appointed as a counselor to the kingdom...

AP: Iron Gods. Second son, and Third wheel in a metal scrapping business. His older brother just inherited the family business and got married. Kaz decided he needed to leave home, and find himself a wife. Ended up adventuring through a bunch of weird places. Never did meet a nice girl to settle down with. Gang members, anti-tech cultists, anti-tech fanatics, literal aliens, and then a city filled with people trying to take advantage of him or kill him, none of those seemed like a good opportunity to form a relationship. By the time he got a real breather...the campaign was over.

Different GMs for the two games. To be...

This is a wonderful set of characters, and I hope you had a lot of fun playing them! But the question I have for you, were the Pathfinder rules helpful, harmful in all that wonderful detail, or neutral in all that wonderful detail? As a side questions, were the combat rules helpful for your characters play, hurtful for your characters play, or neutral for your characters play?

I suspect the rules were neutral for your roleplaying and helpful for your combat. It would be nice, for me, if the rules were helpful for the roleplaying as well as for the combat.

Yes, it all comes down to the GM.. but things that make the GM's job easier is where pathfinder should live.

Boojum

Lantern Lodge

Neurophage wrote:
There has never been, and likely will never be, a maximum cost of gear you can own.

It was explained to me that the Character Wealth per Level table listed the total value of your gear plus your money, and your character wasn't supposed to have more. Also, that I had to discard the extra gold/items if it did.

Da Rules wrote:
Table: Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value. It is assumed that some of this treasure is consumed in the course of an adventure (such as potions and scrolls), and that some of the less useful items are sold for half value so more useful gear can be purchased.

Boojum


Boojumbunn wrote:
It would be nice, for me, if the rules were helpful for the roleplaying as well as for the combat.

The purpose of rules for combat is to create predictability and balance (how well they achieve these things is a separate discussion).

Combat (and all the related rules which is most of them) is designed as a simulation to create 'fair' outcomes. So rather than the GM just choosing to say 'You win' or 'You lose' instead there are defined rules of what happens, whether you hit or not and when you die.

For other aspects of the game, some elements are coded into rules, such as diplomancy checks but a lot of it isn't. There are good reasons for this.

One is that there is even more variation between how groups want to approach the role-playing aspects of the game than the combat aspects of the game.

Another is that making it simulationist requires pretty much breaking everything down into pretty manageable steps. Most of us don't want to roll dice for every aspect of our characters lives, having it instead be free flowing.

BTW: Character wealth-by-level is a guide to keep characters in line with expected challenge ratings. If, for example, you give 1st level PCs 100,000 gp to spend on equipment then they are going to walk all over an adventure disigned for 1st level pcs. DMs should enforce this by controlling when and how much treasure they give out, not taking away things (if you had an existing character that your transferred into another game, I would expect you to have to discard things beyond expected wealth to bring you in line with the other characters though.)

If you and your fellow party have equal wealth, and he spends all of his money on stuff for his primary duty at the time (adventuring) and you spend it all on masterwork clothes and items that are not useful to you then yes, you will be less effective. I think you should be able to accomplish the role playing without spending a significant portion on your wealth, a 10th level character can easily afford a couple thousand in clothes and jewelry without it majorly impacting them for example.


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Is this not just a clumsy repackaging of the Stormwind Fallacy?

Roleplay and rollplay are not mutually exclusive ideas. Both are possible, one does not prevent the other.

Lantern Lodge

Dave Justus wrote:
Boojumbunn wrote:
It would be nice, for me, if the rules were helpful for the roleplaying as well as for the combat.

The purpose of rules for combat is to create predictability and balance (how well they achieve these things is a separate discussion).

ONE purpose of rules, perhaps.. but I don't agree that it is THE purpose of rules. Another is to promote unpredictability and fun. Otherwise you would just compare your character level + sword damage to the monsters level + weapon damage winner being the highest number and a tie means you both die, resulting in a very predictable result. Instead, you roll a die, introducing unpredictability, because that is more fun than a predictable result. Heck, as I recall in the Rifts games the characters were of wildly disproportionate power, but people still pay the game because they have fun doing it.

Believe me, I'm not asking for them to do away with combat rules, but for them to include fun rules for other aspects of characters lives. To me, the best place for a lot of these is in the world books.

As to your response to the wealth by level guide... that is the reason they included it, not that it doesn't place a cap on wealth/gear. That the GM can override the rule doesn't mean the rule does not exist. I posted that in response to the comment that there had never been and wasn't a max character wealth by level.

Boojum

Lantern Lodge

born_of_fire wrote:

Is this not just a clumsy repackaging of the Stormwind Fallacy?

Roleplay and rollplay are not mutually exclusive ideas. Both are possible, one does not prevent the other.

I agree a hundred percent..

Boojum


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Seeing as the rules have grown more relevant and detailed for non-combat encounters/backgrounds I'm still not seeing the OP's point.

If anything the support for background details has got better with each edition - I mean the ultimate campaign rules, which while dense, are still a vast improvement on the chaotic mess that was the 1eAD&D DMG. I don't recall anything like traits or the system in quests and campaigns to help you develop backgrounds (for those who aren't budding novelists). The rules for 'quirky' character skills like being a chef or playing guitar were not in the core rules, where they existed at all. and the implementation of non-weapon proficiencies was...less than stellar.

The 'fun useless' magic was never found in the core material in earlier editions either - you had to look further afield.

And I really don't want a random table telling me I have 2 sisters and a distant cousin I never speak to - that sort of thing should be up to the player and not to the rules.

So from one old fogey to another, I think you need to take off the rose coloured bifocals...


Boojumbunn wrote:
Neurophage wrote:
There has never been, and likely will never be, a maximum cost of gear you can own.

It was explained to me that the Character Wealth per Level table listed the total value of your gear plus your money, and your character wasn't supposed to have more. Also, that I had to discard the extra gold/items if it did.

Da Rules wrote:
Table: Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value. It is assumed that some of this treasure is consumed in the course of an adventure (such as potions and scrolls), and that some of the less useful items are sold for half value so more useful gear can be purchased.
Boojum

How new are you to D&D/Pathfinder? That table is useful to a GM as a guideline, mostly to see if anyone doesn't have enough treasure. Once you start actually playing the game the typical AP hands out treasure faster than the table accounts for. Most homebrew games also hand out treasure faster than the table accounts for. A good GM watches what he hands out, he doesn't thump a table and demand players discard treasure above a certain amount.

Typical adventuring groups that have run for 5 or more levels usually have a lot more treasure than the table would allow for and its fine because its organic growth through game play. I find what you've said above to be ridiculous.

Lantern Lodge

Meirril wrote:


How new are you to D&D/Pathfinder? That table is useful to a GM as a guideline, mostly to see if anyone doesn't have enough treasure. Once you start actually playing the game the typical AP hands out treasure faster than the table accounts for. Most homebrew games also hand out treasure faster than the table accounts for. A good GM watches what he hands out, he doesn't thump a table and demand players discard treasure above a certain amount.

Typical adventuring groups that have run for 5 or more levels usually have a lot more treasure than the table would allow for and its fine because its organic growth through game play. I find what you've said above to be ridiculous.

Most in your experience, perhaps, but not most in mine. Indeed, when a character of mine have to strip a place bare and sell the goods, I was told about the level restrictions and that I wouldn't be able to get/keep the money because it would put me over said capacity. Other players told me they had been told the same thing when they tried to get more money. :) I suppose that is just an example of how experience differ from person to person.

Boojum


Boojumbunn wrote:

This is a wonderful set of characters, and I hope you had a lot of fun playing them! But the question I have for you, were the Pathfinder rules helpful, harmful in all that wonderful detail, or neutral in all that wonderful detail? As a side questions, were the combat rules helpful for your...

Rules are rules. Rules are a framework for lots of people with differing opinions and outlooks to craft a shared story and entertain each other for a night. The GM is the main controlling factor as they represent the world and each player represents one leading character in a group of main characters.

And its the complete opposite of what you'd expect. Rules constrict what you can do. A lack of rules let you try and do what you want, and its up to the GM if it works out or not. Like trying to grab someone and slam them against a wall. In real life that sort of thing happens. In Pathfinder its ridiculously difficult to manhandle someone. Grabbing takes a standard action. Now you can pin them, or you can try to move them but that isn't the same as slamming them into the wall. Maybe its a combination of movement and using grapple to do damage, but that would take 2 more standard actions? Oh, and you certainly can't throw someone. Unless you have some additional feats that allow you to...ad nauseum.

On the other hand if you want to lure someone into a dark alley...no rules to do this. The GM and you are completely free to talk about it. Maybe its a bluff roll, or diplomacy could work. A raw Charisma check? Or maybe the GM just gives it to you because they never stop to think if this NPC would do it nor not? Rules are limiters, not enablers.

But rules are also a framework that facilitate you taking the specific actions they cover. Combat is detailed out so much because players and the GM can argue about the results and have a vested interest in the outcome, in the most minute and trivial of ways. That is why combat has so much rules involved. I'm rather thankful that the rest is just guidelines that help you rather than hinder roleplaying. You'd think someone that complains about the Ultimate Campaign would just get the idea that rules get in the way rather than help you.

Lantern Lodge

dragonhunterq wrote:

Seeing as the rules have grown more relevant and detailed for non-combat encounters/backgrounds I'm still not seeing the OP's point.

If anything the support for background details has got better with each edition - I mean the ultimate campaign rules, which while dense, are still a vast improvement on the chaotic mess that was the 1eAD&D DMG. I don't recall anything like traits or the system in quests and campaigns to help you develop backgrounds (for those who aren't budding novelists). The rules for 'quirky' character skills like being a chef or playing guitar were not in the core rules, where they existed at all. and the implementation of non-weapon proficiencies was...less than stellar.

The 'fun useless' magic was never found in the core material in earlier editions either - you had to look further afield.

And I really don't want a random table telling me I have 2 sisters and a distant cousin I never speak to - that sort of thing should be up to the player and not to the rules.

So from one old fogey to another, I think you need to take off the rose coloured bifocals...

Perhaps... and I admit that I am likely glorifying past games and gaming systems. I DO recall 1st and 2nd AD&D having gaining followers, keeps, castles, etc built into the main books. I can see how the use of Professions can count as a bundling of skills that used to exist... though the rules seem to be limited to "Work for a week, roll a die, that's how much gold you get" sort of mechanics. But the mechanism seems to break down and be very flat.

For example.. You are a cook. Let us say you are +6 on your roll. Roll a d20 (average is 10) plus 6.. let us say you get a 16. That would be 8 gold earned in the week. Roll max and get 13gp (whoot!)

Lets say you are a lawyer. Same amounts. Librarian, with 1 book.. same amount. Inkeeper with no inn, same amount (because it doesn't say you need an inn to make a living as in innkeeper.. and you make the same money both with and without an inn.. though I firmly expect the GM would step in at that point.)

Ok, so now you have your 8 - 13gp. Lets see now.. Common meal (nice and filling food) would cost 3sp per day, so 2gp 1sp per week for you to eat. My wife and my child eat the same as me.. So that would be 6gp, 3sp... so if I am rolling average I have 1gp, 7sp per week after paying for food... regardless of my profession.. and not counting any other expenses.

Ok, so it is doable. Here are some simple things that could be added to the rules that bring my profession INTO the game, instead of what I roleplay when everyone else is busy for a week.

1. Allow me to use my profession skill to appraise the value of things related to my profession. (My brewer knows how much that still should cost, or that bottle of beer is worth)

2. Allow me to use my profession skill to craft items related to my profession (So my Profession Brewer can make beer, for example. And yes, Brewer is a profession, not a craft)using the existing crafting rules.

3. Require me to have a building/place to use my profession that doesn't cost more than my profession brings in. It would certainly give me something to spend money on in town.

Ok, so there are three idea's.. None of which do I think would completely unbalance combat in the game and they all encourage characters to use their profession in the game.

That is what I mean by rules that encourage roleplay aspects instead of being neutral. No one HAS to take a profession, but if they want their character to have one, then it is nice to have it be something the rules give some guidance on so they don't keep having to beg the gm to make up a new set of rules just for them.

Hugely complex rules, like the ones in Ultimate Campaign, are going WAY to overboard and ruin the fun of the games I've used them in. But having some rules would be nice.

Boojum

Lantern Lodge

Meirril wrote:
That is why combat has so much rules involved. I'm rather thankful that the rest is just guidelines that help you rather than hinder roleplaying. You'd think someone that complains about the Ultimate Campaign would just get the idea that rules get in the way rather than help you.

You would think that if you see the choice as rules so complex they bring the game to a stop vs no rules at all. That is certainly not what I am talking about, however.

Rules come in all types, sizes, and usefulness. There are roleplaying games where combat is determined by consensus (or a storyteller) based on how well you describe your part of the fight. There are roleplaying games where hugely complex sets of combat rules result in vast amount of dice being rolled, and sometimes rerolled, and then applied to tables, which refer to other tables.

And there are rules, and information, that make the games run faster and more easily. For example, if there is a crafting rule then you pretty much, as a player, know what you need to do to craft something. Lacking that rule slows down the game because the GM has to stop doing what they are doing and pay attention to your crafting. The rule makes the gameplay faster by taking that information load off the GM and giving it to the players.

In my opinion the Ultimate Campaign book was unwieldy, confusing, and make MORE work for the GM. I certainly don't want that brought into the new game systems, but that doesn't mean I want no rules at all.

Boojum


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Boojumbunn wrote:

It was explained to me that the Character Wealth per Level table listed the total value of your gear plus your money, and your character wasn't supposed to have more. Also, that I had to discard the extra gold/items if it did.

You were lied to.

Boojumbunn wrote:
Da Rules wrote:
Table: Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value. It is assumed that some of this treasure is consumed in the course of an adventure (such as potions and scrolls), and that some of the less useful items are sold for half value so more useful gear can be purchased.
Boojum

"Expected" is the operative word. Most adventure paths are also expected to have 5 PCs at 15 point-buy, but I've never done that before, either. A party that exceeds wealth by level is obviously going to be punching above their weight class, but so is a party whose ability score point-buy totals out to 55. And yet that's the array I give my players. Wealth by level, like the ability score generation rules, was always intended to be a loose measuring stick rather than a hard-and-fast rule.


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I don't know a lot of other games on the market right now, but I know PF. This game is a great codex of rules/mechanics for running combat in a D20 type setting.

Period. That's it.

I'm not being flip when I say that this only a combat system. Yes, there ARE other rules for skills, diplomacy, down time, etc... but most everything outside the nice, neat box of a combat round leaves large open patches of gray for GMs to interpret.

Take the skill Diplomacy. For 1, if both sides are surprised when first meeting, but one side is the heroes and the other is a band of kobolds... can you use Diplomacy to resolve the encounter? The one side is naturally hostile to the other but combat hasn't started. Well, then the GM has to weigh the environment, the timbre of the kobolds' exact feelings towards the PCs, the time of day, etc.

Once inside combat its initiative... attack... damage... saving throw... repeat. Simple; smooth.

So I guess what I'm saying is: if you WANT your PCs to have lives and do things outside combat, DO it, but don't expect the rules of the PF system to perfectly support and codify those things. Even in places where they do, such as Crafting mundane items or gaining Contacts, there's going to be interpretations made by GM and players alike.

But so what?

In 1e D&D there were some "secondary skills" in the DMG, but otherwise you were your class and race, period. If you wanted to be, say, a level 1 Magic User who also happened to be a guild-trained scribe with a wife and 3 daughters who began his adventuring career to gather a valuable dowry in order to marry his eldest into nobility... that was up to you to roleplay.

Now in PF there's a couple Traits, Feats and Skills you could choose to support such a PC's build, but those would simply deliver some kind of mechanical benefit. They wouldn't BE your character, your personality and essence, just the plusses you get for being GOOD at some things.

And on a personal level yes, I try to play an ACTUAL character when I play. My last time as a player was as a Halfling hunter/warpriest, but his actual title was as a militia warden. He was a good brother and friend who'd lived a sheltered life in a village until a few chance encounters led him into a wintry land of witches and evil.

Needless to say there were several really HORRORIFIC scenes in the AP we played. Most of the players were like "attack... killed it; loot the area and move on." I on the other hand constantly shrieked in terror about what these monsters were doing to children, to innocent villagers in their lands; how could they be SO cruel and heartless?

By 7th level my Halfling had reached the grim, "I've seen too much" stage of his character arc. If we ever get the AP back on the rails I'd like to have a moment, somewhere in the next couple levels, where my PC actually manages to save someone, do something heroic, at which point he'll shed a single, stoic tear, remembering what it means to be truly good and noble.

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