So I've played my very first session of Pathfinder this week. As some of you may or may not know, Pathfinder's supposedly at it's core Dungeons & Dragons's 3.5 Edition but rebranded and tweaked. This comes from a company named Pazio who'd been making D&D-related stuff until 2008 when they decided they liked the 3.5 Edition too much to let it die to the 4th and created their own RPG world around 3.5's mechanics. I've never tried D&D myself so I can't very well judge how much better or worse Pathfinder is compared to it but I liked how my first session went so I plan to keep playing. Not seeing a thread for it or PnP (Pen & Paper) RPGs in general on SE++, (mainly because of the current super-basic state of the forum's search engine) I decided to pitch up my own and see if there's any other dice-geeks around here. You count if you've played one of the following:
Dungeons & Dragons: The top dog (?) and OG of the tabletop-RPG world. Currently heading towards it's fifth edition called D&D Next.
Shadowrun: Cyberpunk and magic colliding violently in a megacorp-run future, mainly in Seattle. Currently in it's fourth edition.
World Of Darkness: Redefining the term 'monster' in a present-day world where being a vampire or werewolf is just the bottom rung on the horror ladder. Currently running in a rebooted version of the original WoD that's shed it's 'end of the world is nigh' plot-hook.
Warhammer/Warhammer 40K: Originally and still going as a miniatures-based game, both the fantasy-based self and it's IN SPACE 40K version have PnP RPGs for those that want a little story in-between the miniatures' massive battles.
If I haven't mentioned a PnP you play, feel free to speak up about it. I do ask however that any talk about pre-made campaigns (called an Adventure Path in Pathfinder) are put in a spoiler box as there may be people like me who're playing through one of those.
Posts
Gamma World
A guy that always plays razor-sharp optimized fighter. He will burn hours adjusting single scores to absolute precision. And he is always Neutral. Never lawful, never Chaotic. Just neutral. You never know which side he's going to lean to.
Myself, I am always a little more chaotic, almost always a rogue or monk, and always setup to strike fast and get the fuck out of Dodge. I also regularly steal from my companions. It is just accepted that my characters will end the campaign richer than everyone else who survives. I've been known to let companions die after fighting alongside them for months just so I can claim extra treasure.
A guy that always always plays a ranger. Always good at heart, always pulling amazing convoluted attacks and acrobatics off, and always always always ends up dying. Usually to save everyone else.
A guy who always plays a lawful good character who is religious in some form or another. Always at odds with my character, and always the one I steal from the most.
and the DM. He's the lawful good guys husband. He almost always keeps me in check by not letting me go to far off the deep end, but doesn't necessarily stop me from making his husbands life a living hell in-game. In one instance he and I worked behind the scenes over the course of 3 months, to poison his husbands character so that he became progressively weaker. He would take his rolls, and then do a subtract on the total and apply THAT new number to the encounter. We never told him why he seemed to get more and more ineffective.
Why? Because he wouldn't let me burn down a village of thieves to gain a new dagger from my God. So I spent the next three months and almost all of my money to make everything a pain in the ass for him. This was only revealed at my death at the end of the campaign.
So, Haunting of Harrowstone:
DO NOT DISTURB THEM. BACK OUT OF THE FUCKING ROOM AND FORGET THEY EVEN EXIST. I CAN NOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH.
OGL ftw
D20 Future has been sorta wedged in mind for years
and I'd like to see a Pathfinder take on it
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I think that's the beginning of the AP my group's doing, Carrion Crown. I had to squint my eyes so I can edit your quote here and not see the exposed spoilers. Did HoH start with...
If so, could you give a spoiler-free opinion on the rest of HoH? Is it a good intro to Pathfinder in general seeing as it's (according to the Player's Guide for that AP) basically set in the game's version of Castlevania?
I saw the Player's Guide for that and yeah, it looks neat though a little more complicated then other APs seeing your group has to run it's own pirate boat. Am I right to assume S&S' not quite for Good-type characters in general?
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Perhaps I'll finally pick up the book for my birthday.
How the hell does D&D Encounters work?
There's apparently a comic book shop not far from where I'm moving that does weekly games
And part of me is considering doing it just as a way to meet new people
But I have no idea what it is even
Essentials only. You start with a level 1 character. It's like one combat per session, and by the end of the "season" you're level 3, and can carry the character over to Living Forgotten Realms if you want.
I especially prefer LFR because you're far less limited by source, so it's far easier to tell who's just there to powergame, and who's there to explore character ideas (most are still highly optimized, but that's mostly because of public play).
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/
contains pretty much everything ever published but adventure paths
Yup. and that is precisely where my group ran it off the rails.
See, that event did not play out quite like Paizo planned. My character doesn't take kindly to uppity peasants. So a few dice rolls later, half of them were dead.
so further interaction with those that survived, was a little terse. It made the campaign a little rough. And getting the information needed was difficult to say the least.
But past that? It was alright, nothing mind blowing, but there are certainly some pitfalls and they definitely punish those are too aggressive or too passive.
I'll have to work out something. If I can't get Pathfinder to do it, I'll have to bring out Mutans & Masterminds
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bringing this back for the first page of the thread
gamma world is the source of the first and only official 4e online character builder that doesnt suck
That sounds like it blows
Oh well
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Oh I know of the srd, I just want the actual book.
It will help in my transition to it.
Hm yes that's a good idea anti.
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i will set you ablaze
Anyone else have something like this happen to them?
Could you give a shout-out to kobolds in your future-OP?
For me?
i'll mark it under "i'll think about it"
Would you be happy if I put this in this thread's OP?
Probably the closest pic I can find of a Kolbold Bushwacker from Pathfinder.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Except in this case its stuff based off Apocalypse World.
But anyone have any idea how good it is?
the best ones are air genasi because they can just blow away and you ain't never got to see them ever
even tieflings/aasimar are pushin' it
just gonna go be a halfling or a gnome or something like someone who isn't L A M E, see you later
it was pretty good, I guess
the Life Spiral is a great health system and letting you take two starting careers means you can get a nice combo of abilities
Shun
but
the crafting rules fucking blow. My character is an alchemist, and I wanted to make some tanglefoot bags. This is how that goes down.
1) look up the price of the item (50g) and pay 1/3rd of that for raw materials
2) work out the cost of the item, in silver, so 500sp
3) Look up the Difficulty Class (under the Crafting skill entry) of the item you wish to make (in this case 25)
4) Roll a Craft (Alchemy) skill check. I actually got a natural 20 on this, and with my various bonuses due to masterwork equipment and being an Alchemist I got a 32
5) Multiply your craft check result by the DC. This is how many silver worth of work you accomplished in a week (so 25 * 32 = 800) Which means I finished it in a week.
6) Luckily, I'm an Alchemist and at 3rd level I can make alchemical items in half the normal time. The rules aren't clear on how to do this but my DM was nice enough to rule that it means I double the value result of step 5), making my check result 1600. As this is 3x the value of the item, I complete it in 1/3 of a week.
As if that wasn't unneccessarily complicated enough, if my skill was higher and I was confident enough to try and rush the job I could voluntarily add 10 to the DC, meaning I was multiplying my presumably higher roll by 35 instead of 25.
crazy
In fact involved isn't even the right word for it, as I like to see rolls in various non-combat challenges, it's just... odd