Pathfinder Thread

I bought Hackmaster the other day (man, those books are gorgeous), and it seems to be designed to mitigate this sort of crap. The power curve is very low, the game is supposed to be tough, and you can tell the devs are out to get people who willingly dump scores to boost another. I have a lot left to read, but I'm really liking what I see.

It isn't crazy at all. With just the Core Rulebook and the Advanced Race Guide, I can make a 6th level sorcerer with a DC 25 hold person. If I just limit it to the Core Rulebook I still get to 23.

Hold person is level 3 for a sorcerer, so it starts at DC 13. Add 5 for Charisma 20 + 2 for eagle's splendor. We're at DC 20. Add 2 more for Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus, DC 22. Give sorcerer the fey bloodline for +1 to compulsion DCs, now we're at 23. We can get to 25 by using the kitsune race from the ARG (+1 to enchantment save DCs as a racial ability) and using our favored class bonus to get +1/4 to enchantment DCs per level, so that's 2 more for DC 25.

And wallapuctus, that wasn't a starting 20 in Sjofn's case. It was a starting 17 + 2 racial bonus (humans add +2 to whatever they want in Pathfinder), +1 for the 4th level stat increase. Our character creation rules in that game are you get a 17, a 15, 4d6, 4d6, 3d6, 3d6, and you have to assign them all before you roll. So obviously everyone is going to have a 17 or a 19 in their 'main' stat to start with, but even in point buy or the usual 4d6 and assign systems that's not unusual at all, nor is there anything particularly min-maxy about it.

There's nothing wrong with min-maxing if that's what you enjoy. Just don't be bashful about what you're doing.

I've been DMing for a long time, and the game is balanced around characters built with 15 point buy. If you exceed that, the game will get easier. Reduce it, it gets harder.

The DCs and just general challenge level of Pathfinder's actual APs are absurd at 15 point buy, IMO.

Great, is this the part where you tell everyone smugly how long you've been playing D&D again? Except that it's probably not as long as half the people in this thread?

The sum total difference of what you're complaining about amounts to +/-1 spell casting DC, maybe +/- 2. Oooh. Big difference. Spare us the snide my-rpg-is-bettter-than-your-rpg BS, eh?

Especially as, despite the 20 CHA, an 18 save DC on a level 3 spell is actually quite low, and Hold Person is rarely even close to as potent as Haste even when it works.

That wasn't my intent at all, I'm sorry you read it that way.

Anyway, our DM calls the wizard in our new game Stephen Hawking, which I find funny.

I chose to make a halfelf fighter. I decided he was raised by the church of Calistra, so I took Whip proficiency as my racial feat (race guide), and Combat Expertise with Improved Trip as my starting feats. I'm going to try to focus on battlefield control and defending Prof. Hawking, since our character backgrounds have us as childhood buds. I've been debating the whip expertise tree in Ultimate Combat but it feels... risky. That's a lot of feats to invest just so I can threaten with a whip.

I think Quick Draw for emergency tripping/disarming at range will be a better choice, and spent my other feats rounding out my defensive capabilities.

If we want to talk about my character's stats, here is how they wound up shaking out:

STR: 10 (3d6)
DEX: 9 (4d6 ><)
CON: 13 (4d6)
INT: 15 (my "free" 15)
WIS: 12 (3d6)
CHA: 20 (my "free" 17, +2 racial, +1 level 4 bonus)

Nothing about that is crazy, or particularly minmax-y, given every single other person gets to make a character using the same method (ask Ingmar to post his rogue/samurai's stats. His are really good.). I can make characters much more broken than this, easily. If I had wanted to be CRAZY, I would've made a sorcerer, so I could have a 17 in my cha and a 15 in my dex, and precisely no other stat even fucking matters (I could put one of my 4d6's in con and just "buy" a 12 in this DM's char generation rules), unlike a bard, where if you have a shit dex and lame str like I do, you are rather limited on stuff to do in combat, because you don't get nearly as many spells as a sorc or wizard does and you can't hit the broadside of a barn with ranged weapons (OR melee weapons, AND you don't want to be in melee anyway because your AC is 100% ass).

As an aside, hold person is second level for me, and hideous laughter is level 1. So my save DCs for those spells are already lower than they would be if I were a sorc (although I get them earlier, which is a trade-off I don't mind a bit).

Don't get me wrong. I really like my bard. She's really fun in non-combat situations, and I like that I can drop a well-timed spell that might turn the tide. But I am by no means "overpowered," and I find the fact he's already hinting that I AM really weird and a bit unfortunate. Because frankly, it makes me feel like no matter what class I pick or how I build it, he's going to think it's "too powerful."


For fighter feats, you can do worse than Quick Draw. I almost always take it. I always take Iron Will too, though, which amusingly enough my DM thinks is a "waste" of a feat. As he whines my DCs are too high. :D

So I'm about to jump into my first pathfinder game. Husband got the Rise of the Runelords hardback compilation (so we're starting at level 1 and taking these characters through the set of modules), and is planning on running it for our group, but we lack a 4th player, so my husband is stepping in with a bard. We have one Asamir, one Teifling and two Sulis (fucked if I know why my husband picked a Suli). Fuck yeah Advanced Race Guide.

I'm going to be playing a Suli Paladin of Shizuru who is basically a power ranger, because why the hell not. I don't usually play Lawful Good characters, so I kinda wanna challenge myself with this. Unfortunately, Suli get a hit to int in their racial mods, so while she's strong and gorgeous, she's dumb as a sack of potatoes.

Still deciding my feats and shit though. I'm super excited to by trying PF out though.

My friend is running a Pathfinder game on sundays. He's got a mega-quest/whatever all planned out to the tune of 20 weeks.

I'm playing a half elf Samurai. Our party includes; A Human Fighter (Named Sweden), a human dragonborn (Or whatever it's called in the Pathfinder universe), a dwarf cleric (named Burgess), an Elf Ranger (Named Sherby) and my Half Elf Samurai (named Tadakatsu (Apparently i'm the only one who was trying)).

Knowing my friend, we'll all be dead by the third week, but I'm excited.

I forget what a suli even is. I am in a human rut, my fighter is a human, my bard is a human, and if Ingmar ever gets his campaign going, I will probably be a human rogue.

I LIKE HUMANZ

It's partly because our gaming group is alarmingly elfy, and I always feel like there should be SOME humans in a group, y'know? Like out of six in the Jade Regent group (my bard's group), there is human me, human Ingmar, two half elves, a full elf, and a halfling. But the other reason is I fucking hate not having 30 ft. base speed. So that knocks out dwarves and the runty races. I HAVE played a dwarf before (Sjofn the fighter, and she was awesome. And had a gloriously heroic death.), and I loved my 3.0 halfing rogue, but nnnngh. 20 ft speed makes me cry.

The bastard child of a genie and a human. They get a boost to charisma and strength, get to use elements to attack, and have creepy glowing eyes.

I like humans too though. Humans are great, especially when you don't wanna go and leaf through the books to pick a class based on stat mods.

Also, Paizo must REALLY not want people to play Orcs or Kobolds. Dem stat detriments on kobolds, holy crap. And they only get a +2 to dex D:

Well, they have to explain why kobolds are so shitty somehow, I suppose!

You should take a look at the list of official races here:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/other-races
Be sure to check out the more races subsection for even more stuff that ranges from normal to game-breakingly overpowered. (And helpfully color-coded for that purpose!) Why not ask your DM if you can play as a Drider next time? You can even promise not to be a bard!

Things I generally don't allow: races not in the 1e Player's Handbook. Not because of power concerns but because it bothers me when the party looks more like a carnival freakshow than the Fellowship of the Ring.

Now, where did I leave my walker?

I'm going to be a CATFOLK rogue and you will LOVE IT.

I played as a vanara once. Having a climb speed was sweeeeeet.

The very first edition? You mean only humans, dwarves, elves, and hobbits? Man, that's pretty hardcore.

The only thing my husband doesn't allow in his games are merfolk and gillmen D:

1e is typically shorthand for first edition AD&D - so add half elves, half orcs, & gnomes. Almost none of the other player races either company has added really fit my preferences very well. I do sort of like tieflings and goliaths I guess. And dromites.

I only allow elves and cat folk when I DM. Female.

One of the trolls we fought today failed his save versus my hideous laughter, my reign of terror cannot be stopped!

Hah, Samurai - no matter what the system - can be really fun to play. I'll put this story in spoilers for length...

Not too much to do with Pathfinder, I know... but I need to actually play it first. My gaming group meetups have been spotty at best, and while I'll play a d20 game, I'm not that much a fan of running them, so myself DMing Pathfinder's out.

[comic book store guy] LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY CHARACTER. [/comic book store guy]

I'm also playing a samurai right now - but my character isn't a 'real' samurai, at least not yet. Basically, he started as a rogue (CG alignment, Varisian which is essentially the Pathfinder version of Roma) who found a magic wakizashi, read a book about samurai to learn how to use it (and since he has never seen anyone use one correctly, we're playing it as proficient but totally doing it wrong, which should be entertaining once we get where we're going, which is where there are REAL samurai, etc.), and is sort of half-assedly taking levels in it while not really thinking of himself as a samurai (cavaliers/samurai in Pathfinder have 'orders' - his is currently the ronin one, so basically he makes up his own strictures, doesn't have to follow anyone's orders, and his order benefits are all about self-reliance.) The idea is that over time he'll sort of slowly adopt more of the act-honorably stuff without realizing it, partly because we've also now found an intelligent katana that is constantly nagging him to 'do the right thing,' partly because his main motivations (other than skirt-chasing) are all about family obligations, and there's a lot of opportunity for protecting family members, etc., to come up just due to how the campaign is structured. He's also been thrust into a 'leadership' role in the group which is totally inappropriate for him and probably more down to me being the only decisive person at the table in an out-of-character, but that is going to push him that way as well.

Basically right now he *thinks* he's a fighter/rogue, he just isn't one mechanically.

I can be decisive, it's just people either don't listen to me or say I'm being "crabby." </3


Plus it's more fun for your dude to be the leader, because it's totally wrong. PLUS he was the diplomacy bitch for so long (although my bard has finally caught up), the diplomacy person always winds up being the "leader."

Very cool stories guys, especially the sand giant, EruditeDragon.

Our first meeting was last night, and my Samurai proved himself quite the glass cannon. Had something like 20 kills by the end of the night, but I got knocked below 0 health twice (Only falling unconscious once due to Resolute). I did do a pretty awesome double 20-crit on a skeletal owlkin that obliterated it.

And it wasn't til afterwards that the GM let me use my katana's sheath as a battle scabbard which would've made the fight with the skeletons way easier.

By the way, Ingmar's dude is my bard's ex-boyfriend and it is silly.

I've encountered that before. It's amazing how even when I'm saying it less intelligibly than, say, my girlfriend, people pay more attention to me. *stabbymotions*

Well, I am pretty sure Ingmar IS better at actually articulating a plan (I am not objective about this though, obvs), at least, so it's not 100% irritating. It's only annoying when I suggest a plan, only Ingmar seems to hear me, he re-suggests the plan, and we go with that plan. That's pretty rare, though!

They definitely listen to me when I remind them what buffs they have on, though. I swear I'm the only person who remembers that shit (although they finally all remember the bard song now. Now I have to remind them if it's off.).

You should make them wear little party hats to represent which buffs are currently active.

Oh God, that would be awesome.

And it would help speed up the game. Everybody wins!

You could have separate hats for debuffs too.

Let's see... Haste? Bunny Ears... Bull's Strength? Something with a monster truck on it...

It would probably be a no-go in the Jade Regent game, but I demand Ingmar add that to his house rules when he finally starts running Rise of the Runelords.

Maybe just a headband with note cards stock into it detailing how the effect works. Allows some potential for Blind Man's Bluff style effects the target can't see...

Headbands and tiny color-coded flags!

With stuff like "I AM +2 TO HIT" sewn into them!

Heh. You could even add MMO style icons for quick recognition. :-)

And for bonus points make it a drinking game -- if you're not wearing your appropriate buffs, drink! If you falsely accuse someone of being misbuffed, drink!

How do you all track effects? I usually make players track their own buffs and trust them.

When it becomes tricky is buffs out of combat. I've been handwaving non-combat exploration as taking 1 minute per "room". Whatever a room is is arbitrary to the area. The 1 minute per room assumes things like taking 10 on perceptions and not trying to be particularly stealthy. It creates an interesting situations when players want to do things like screw around with a magic statue but still keep their 1 min/lvl buffs up in case there's a boss in the next area.

I tend to trust my players so I can keep my attention elsewhere, but encourage them to keep a notecard listing their effects and what they do, with little checkboxes next to them to mark what the effects are. I still end up frequently reminding players about effects they've forgotten though!

I've occasionally tried using various tokens, but there are so many effects in D&D that quickly gets confusing, though it does help with the record keeping.

Anymore in games I run I tend to tweak the rules such that there simply aren't any short term buffs (no healing magic either, but I digress) both because it speeds up play and because it avoids the repetitive "buff up for an ambush -> recharge batteries" metagame.

Three people in the party died today in a pretty rough encounter and gosh somehow the ettin in the fight managed to make the vast majority of his saves versus me (he did fail one hold person save but then managed to shake it off on his next turn). Ingmar died, but I didn't! Clearly my bard continues to be overpowered. And immortal.

In Pathfinder related news, the Pathfinder Online Kickstarter looks like it's going to fall short. I placed a $90 Amazon order for new Pathfinder books yesterday in lieu of pledging, so I'm doing my part.