Asdrovac's errant wondering and mind-boggling about ULTIMATE CAMPAIGN.


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


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RPG is a simulation game and all that jazz. But as Bartle titled me Explorer, the coherence of rules and worlds are of importance to me.

I intend to write here some questions that cross my mind when i read PF books, and more precisely UC.

I Don't really expect answers. Not that content me, that is. But your contributions may bring Wind in my sail.


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The Community

The concept of isolated city in a 10 miles sized hexagone is quite alien to me.

I live in a country where wilderness is a place from where you cannot see a streetlamp. Even in the wood, it is hard to find.

In the middle-age, hamlets wasn't 20 miles away from each other. No town could have survive without the support of other nearby villages.

So why should my PC explore and conquer 40 by 40 miles area to found only 4 villages ? It doesn't make sense.

Silver Crusade

asdrovac wrote:
In the middle-age,

The real life middle ages on Earth have less than zero to do with the current timeline of the fantasy setting of Golarion.


In America a hundred years is a long time, in Europe a hundred miles is a long distance. D&D and PF were written by Americans.


Yes, UC doesn't make a lot of sense from a realistic standpoint when it comes to what to find in a hex... specifically Settlements. Heck, Settlements in general don't make a lot of sense to me. Economies in this game don't make a lot of sense to me. Monsters don't make a lot of sense to me.

Take mites for example.

Mites:
They've supposedly been in the Prime for so long now that they're more Prime than First World, compared to other gremlin-type fey. They're typically Lawful Evil and they routinely commune with vermin on an empathic level.

Fey types in general get Craft as a skill right? So you have a race that has scratched out a living for century around industrious vermin, watching mortals that whole time, and have a natural disposition towards lawful society and a racial inclination towards crafting things.

Mites as CR 1/4 creatures, by virtue of their extremely low CR, are depicted as craven fey foes with darts and scant clothes that run around in caves, play pranks, and generally disassociate with everyone. They have low Int (8; a -2 Penalty to all Int stuff) and thus only speak one language, Undercommon, but in all the Golarion setting stuff there's only one really big settlement of mites that actually interacts with any greater community.

These things don't make any sense in my brain.

1. Mites have Scent, 120' Darkvision, and a Wisdom bonus: they should be really adept at basic survival skills and pack hunting, using their numbers as an advantage against larger foes, however the "Organization" section of their stat block suggests that groups of these creatures only get as large as 20 members alongside a chieftain and some vermin

2. Mites have a racial bonus to Sleight of Hand and Stealth: they should be preeminent sneak thieves but their gear suggests they are impoverished and squat in caves and with their low Int and Cha, lack of other skills and the general "fluff" around them Mites are highly anti-social so who are they using Sleight of Hand on?

3. Mites have Vermin Empathy and Handle Animal: so, this seems to suggest that mites spend a lot of time around bugs. Many of these creatures are highly social and develop elaborate societies of mutual benefit to one another. Again, mites in their fluff and other skill choices appear to be shunned by most and incapable or unwilling to socialize with larger groups.

All of these points can be argued and of course it's my game, I can do what I want with Mites, but the setting books seem to reinforce that these creatures are little more than whipping boys who defer to others or avoid contact with other cultures altogether. Heck, in the setting stuff I found at the Golarion wiki I can't even find where Mites interact that much with their OWN kin outside their 20-person clans.

So, where do they get goods from? How do they survive? Why do they have Sleight of Hand and Stealth skills if they voluntarily isolate themselves? Why do they not take more advantage of their Fey class skills or ability to use ALL simple weapons, not just darts? Why would creatures with Prestidigitation at will, Craft as a class skill, a racial bonus to Stealth and a 1/day ability to cause a Fear effect on a foe they can see 110' away not use all of these skills to create hunting ambushes and traps?

The answer, of course is simple: they're CR 1/4 creatures.

They can't be industrious, Craft-using hunters employing their natural abilities to the highest efficiency, arming themselves with crossbows, milking poison from some of their vermin, stealing massive amounts of small tools and weapons from mortal settlements, and so on, because they need to remain a nice, easy target for level 1 PCs to mow down.

I guess the point of all of this is, don't take the books and the rules too seriously, and for that matter don't try to make real-world sense of the books and rules you DO use. A lot of the bigger picture of this game falls apart under close scrutiny.

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