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I'd like to talk about how to handle discrepancies between one's own GM style and that of others? I'd like to lay out general parameters and then a specific PFS1 situation.
In general, I find that Org Play GMs take a fairly loose approach to rules interpretation, except for rules specific to organized play. The reason (as I see it) is because a player may have an entire build made around a certain loose interpretation of the rules, and if a GM refuses to allow it, or allows it with serious restrictions, then the players preferred build may be non-viable.
Specific case: A player in my local Org Play community has a PC with a rod of wonder. An important part of his build is taking the rod somewhere secluded in the local town and simply using the wand until he gets a roll of 66—69 [Reduce wielder two size categories (no save) for 1 day]. He relies on this to buff his stealth, ranged attacks and so on.
The player pretends that the many side effects of the rod (fireballs, stinking clouds, summoned rhinos and elephants, etc) shouldn't matter, because he claims that no one is around to be affected by them and he can one-shot the summoned creatures. So he treats as just a matter of rolling dice until he gets what he wants, or even just doing it without the rolls.
He calls this part of his "shenanigans" -- the many ridiculous loopholes that he tries to bring into play. For example he runs a kineticist and insists that he doesn't need line of sight/line of effect to a target because of clause in the ability description that says he can strike a target "anywhere within range." To him this means "whether he can see it or not."
Personally, I despise this sort of metagaming, and if he ever runs that character at my table, the local authorities are going to complain to the local lodge about elephants crushing the town's trees, airburst fireballs scaring the townsfolk, and so on. And the local lodge will tell the PC to desist, with action by the authorities if he persists.
Other local GMs just hand-wave this nonsense, because of the "let players do anything that's technically legal, however outlandish" approach.
How do you all handle situations like this?
Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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As a GM, you have the ultimate authority on your table. "Expect table variation" is a common phrase in PFS. However with something as extreme as this, I would discuss things with your VA/VL/VC to see if you can come to an agreement. Maybe they can strike a deal with your player. Or, simplest solution first, talk to the player and say you don't appreciate their actions, and if they would not do them while at your table. If they're reasonable, maybe you can hash something out.
While I understand your feelings on this kind of cheese, I feel like actual in-game consequences would be pretty harsh. Complaints from NPCs are fine, that tells the player that their actions aren't wanted, but locking them up is too much. If the area the PC chooses is really secluded, a Fireball or an errant rhino shouldn't be that much of a problem. Most missions begin at or nearby a lodge, so there's probably a training room where the player can use their wand safely anyway.
The Kineticist without needing line of sight/effect is just plain wrong. I can't find any Kineticist ability that specifically says "anywhere within range," but "within range" gives Mobile Blast and Tree Step. Tree Step functions as Tree Stride, so that's no problem. Mobile Blast is basically a Flaming Sphere. You obviously need line of effect for that, and line of sight is debatable. A very strict ruling is "you need to be able to point at the destination of your sphere," but it's also reasonable to say "my sphere moves straight <direction> until it hits something. That's up to the GM, I'd say. If you could tell us which ability you're referring to, I could give a better judgment.
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Even in cases where the GM is wrong, in a practical sense, they are still right because its their table to run. You cannot "make" them rule differently in the moment. The standard response to situations you don't agree with is:
(1) discuss it with the party in question and try to convince them of your opinion. This doesn't always work, especially if you are not charismatic enough to make the discussion amicable. Too often when someone objects to a situation, it becomes a battle that rarely resolves anything.
(2) as indicated above, take your complaint to the event organizer and/or local venture-officer corps. If they agree with you and believe there is a rules violation, they should address the issue with the GM in question. If the GM does not correct their behavior, they risk being banned from running games. OTOH, the leader may decide that the GM's actions are within the scope of "table variation" and you just have to accept it.
(3) at the end of the day, if you object to the behavior and local leadership will not take action to your satisfaction, avoid playing with said person. Life is too short to be upset/unhappy. There is nothing stopping you from organizing your own events, excluding said person, or participating in online events to avoid any local troublemakers.
Good luck!
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Somewhere on these forums is a wonderful post by John Compton talking about spirit/letter, and how the *spirit* of the rules is far more important than the *letter*. In fact, if memory serves, the benchmark was "If YOU as a player think it's broken and/or problematic, then perhaps not using it for Organized play would be recommended" or something along those lines. As far as I know, that hasn't been contraindicated by anyone in Organized Play.
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Even the letter of the rules requires some human(oid) interpretation, or at least a willingness to try to read them in some paradigm other than the one that gives me the most mechanical advantage is right.
Despite what raw adherents might believe, the raw (rules as written) can in fact mean two different things, just because english isn't perfectly clear. Absolute raw is the WORST method for consistently, as disagreements are very common, and can drift further apart, and deny that compromise is a possibility.
The Ned flanders rule: If you insist on believing in the raw, you have to believe in all the raw, including the stuff that disagrees with the other stuff. In this case the rules about line of sight. You can't just insist the rules are inviolate and Start at the position A which automatically means B C and D are wrong, rather than starting at B which would just as logically mean A is wrong.
A subjective mix of raw rai , sense, reason, evidence, and balance IS the rules. It's how they're written and meant to be understood. Sola raw could theoretically get everyone on the same page, but in practice it produces the most wildly variable results. Trying to read the rules like something written for humanoids by humanoids can lead to a little less consistency, but the consistency is more clumped in a zone of playable than scattered all over the place between overpowered and non functional.
People don't always agree on the rules, but should agree on how to read them.
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of 66—69 [Reduce wielder two size categories (no save) for 1 day].
Says 'wielder' not their equipment, the Rod, or any other item. If they are now Tiny, they can have Tiny armour to change into, but pretty sure it only confers half the armour value at that size.
*See, we can all run the letter of the law too.
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1e was riddled with weird ways you could exploit the system to create bizarre effects. For as much fun as it may be for that one player at the table, it was often less fun to be a player alongside those 'shenanigans'
Shenanigans in 1e was also a reason that Paizo developed 2e. It became too difficult to write balanced scenarios when there were so many shenanigans.
These weren't harmless shenanigans, it affected other players, the GMs, the VOs, and the developers and authors.
It poisoned the whole ecosystem.
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That being said, I think Society should have better rules about normalizing play between Lodges because (especially with online conventions over the past 2 years) it's been clear that there's wiiiide variation. But that's probably a thread for the PFS forum.
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Conventions are always interesting to see which interpretations have gotten enshrined as "the rules" or "the society rules"
Neither "the rules" or "the society rules" are valid at all society locations. If symptoms persist for more than 4 hours or break a character consult your local shaman or mystic.
Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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Specific case: A player in my local Org Play community has a PC with a rod of wonder. An important part of his build is taking the rod somewhere secluded in the local town and simply using the wand until he gets a roll of 66—69 [Reduce wielder two size categories (no save) for 1 day]. He relies on this to buff his stealth, ranged attacks and so on.The player pretends that the many side effects of the rod (fireballs, stinking clouds, summoned rhinos and elephants, etc) shouldn't matter, because he claims that no one is around to be affected by them and he can one-shot the summoned creatures. So he treats as just a matter of rolling dice until he gets what he wants, or even just doing it without the rolls.
This "Rod Of Wonder until I get what I want" is problematic, but not unheard of. Shifty makes a good point that one could rule that only the wielder - not their equipment - should be affected. Using the rod to get a (semi) permanent buff clearly isn't the intended purpose of the item.
Another thing is that you can't just handwave all the other effects of the rod. A lot of the rods effects affect "the target", so they should have a target (creature) when they are using the rod, and it's easy enough to state that tormenting random woodland creatures with harmful (or deadly) effects isn't going to cut it with the society, possibly being an evil act. Targeting themself is an option, but runs into other problems (mostly damaging yourself and having to take care of the wounds). There's also a chance to turn an object ethereal, but nothing states how this object is chosen, so it could affect the players equipments. Even if they can one-shot any summons, there would still be initiative which they could lose, possibly taking damage.Dealing with all of these will take In Game Time, but also OOC time that could be spent running the adventure, and sometimes adventures don't have that extra time to prep, or the players don't have that extra time to just wait for someone to roll a bunch of dices and see if they get what they want.
You could shift it onto the rest of the players to provide pressure for him to cut it off - state that they need to decide a target, roll the dice, and go through the effects until they get the one they want (with the GM describing what happens and controlling the action, so no "speedrunning" or just skipping random effects), OR, until half of the other players decide they've had enough "alone time" with the wand and want to move on with the adventure - They can't hold the rest of the party up if everybody else wants to move on.
In any case, they shouldn't be able to just decide that they automatically get what they want out of the rod and disregard everything else the rod does. You should definitely talk about with your local VO and with the other GMs, though, to find a common approach (or not, table variation is part of the PFS life).
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Severe bending of the rules and ignoring the rules specifically treating your stuff as part of you aside....
Anything worth wearing is a magic item that will resize to the wearer anyway.
At worst you've just made the gnome spend 15 minutes shopping in the halflings children section for regular clothes that will fit their new forms.
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I would probably approach the rod of wonder situation with:
"I cannot simply ignore all of the results from the rod that pop up before you get your desired result. However, the time it would take to resolve all of that is more than I am willing to allow. So, no. I will not be allowing that at this table. If you do not like this ruling you are more than welcome to take it up with the event organizer or higher."
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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That's problematic from the standpoint that it's a legal magic item and you can't just ban it completely. On the other hand, just turning it into an "automatically gives me 2 size reduction, kinda permanently" isn't what it does, either.
There should be a middle ground where the player can use it but not abuse it, while also keeping in mind not to rob the rest of the table of their game time.
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For clarity, I am not outlawing the rod of wonder. I am saying that we will not be devoting table time to resolving more than (let's say) 3 uses before continuing with the scenario. If they wish to smatter more during sensible points during the scenario or during combats they are welcome to.
Edit: I have no interest in allowing a player to waste the time of the rest of the table. This is a group game.
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That's problematic from the standpoint that it's a legal magic item and you can't just ban it completely. On the other hand, just turning it into an "automatically gives me 2 size reduction, kinda permanently" isn't what it does, either.
There should be a middle ground where the player can use it but not abuse it, while also keeping in mind not to rob the rest of the table of their game time.
And things like this are why I love the PF2 Rarity system (Rod of Wonder is now rare *and* has a 1-4 hour cool down to boot) and have very little desire to GM PF1 ever again.
Given that there is a 4/100 chance of shrinking, a 3/100 of a nearby object (possibly one of their pieces of equipment) turning permanently ethereal, I am not sure how they can simply ignore any other effects, as eventually they are going to lose gear, possibly very expensive gear. (Actually, given that it doesn't say "target nonliving item" it says "any nonliving item" I am not sure that doesn't mean all their gear turns ethereal. Including potentially the wand.)