The Gaming Den

My group's playing in a Pathfinder game after a brief Jesus-Christ-too-damn-long stint playing 4rry edition. For the record, I find powerful characters fun, but after an argument with a friend of mine, decided to try building from a character concept rather than simply playing the most powerful class. I decided to play a character based on the assassins in the book Alamut, which was a fine piece of historical fiction. My character was to be a brainwashed religious fanatic addicted to drugs who would be so faithful to his master that he would fling himself off of the top of a building with a smile if ordered to. Something new for a guy who likes playing Wizards and Druids.

My DM chose a different kind of character creation method for this game, which made me a little wary. The details are below.

DM wrote:Characters will start at level 3. I'm going to try something different than rolling stats. We'll be using the "elite array": 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. Assign each number to an ability of your choice. Then, factor in racial modifiers.

Extra “homework” that enriches your character and provides me with more to work with can net your character extra ability points. Each of the following nets you one point to apply to any ability you wish:

-A sketch or portrait of your character.

-Your character’s backstory in written form, at least one page long.

-Having your written backstory intertwine with another player’s.

-Providing in your backstory a list of three allied and three enemy NPC’s of your devising.

-A concrete mechanical disadvantage: A phobia, a crippling injury or disability, a geas, or the like.

You may earn up to 4 points in this manner. If you plan on doing any of these things, go ahead and figure in those points during character creation.

I was initially confused, as I thought the Elite Array was a useful tool for DMs to quickly crap out NPCs as opposed to a character generation method. This lead me to believe that this would be a low-powered game. However, this "bonus point" system, as written, allows one to generate some over-the-curve characters.

Me wrote:What are your reasons behind using the Elite Array, a tool that was intended for helping DMs quickly generate NPCs, for character generation? Do you want this to be a low-powered game? If that's the case, you might want to look at this.

Let's say I'm rolling up a Wizard. I'll give him this array:

STR: 10
DEX: 13
CON: 14
INT: 15
WIS: 12
CHA: 8

Let's have him be an Elf:


STR: 10
DEX: 15 (+2 Racial)
CON: 12 (-2 Racial)
INT: 17 (+2 Racial)
WIS: 12
CHA: 8

Now, we give him his four "bonus" points (let's face it, these are pretty much mandatory for anyone who wants to pull their weight in the party)


STR: 10
DEX: 16 (+1 Bonus)
CON: 12
INT: 20 (+3 Bonus)
WIS: 12
CHA: 8

Is this the type of character this system is intended to generate, or is there a maximum number that our ability scores can start off at? It seems like we're supposed to be a bit more low-powered, because of the Elite Array. I am a little apprehensive toward a low-powered game, but I'm willing to try out. However, if I could play a character like this, I'm going to, as the Pathfinder rules seem to be stifling my original character concept.

His reply completely missed my point, but I guess I didn't elaborate on it enough:

DM wrote:Cry some more. This is not a "low powered" campaign, the scores are not intended to make weaker characters. That array, WITHOUT the bonus points you can get, equals to a point-buy of 15, which is a standard-power point buy. With your wizard example, I do not know what warped your perception so much that you think that a wizard with a 16 dex and 20 intelligence at first level is "weak", because honestly, that's quite strong. Maybe it is our group's constant pining to powergame your char to be the strongest possible, resulting in stronger than average chars.

Indeed, the bonus points are pretty strongly encouraged, this is a concrete way for me to have people flesh out their characters more. When I saw somebody using this, I immediately thought it was a fantastic idea, as it forces people to put more thought into creating their character, making them more than a bunch of numbers on a piece of paper.

FURTHERMORE, the classes in Pathfinder are inherently more powerful to start off with than their 3.5 counterparts.

That last part gave me a chuckle. More to come later.

What's wrong with the elite array? It makes thing equal across the board for all players

Shit. The DM gave you that + allowed for easy points.Although this system of "flaws" is kind of silly as all it does is add numbers to the mix.

Even I can make a character picture with my horrible skills.

The stats are good for a wizard so I don't see the beef there at all in your example. Did you want a 24 int to start with? If you wanted to complain about characters being weak then you shouldn't make the strongest possible use of stats as your example of it and expect to be taken seriously.

I would have just noted the rules laid out and said to myself "Hrm, MAD characters are gonna get boned... but I wasn't gonna play one anyway since they still suck. Oh well, carry on wizard-san."

The bonus point requirements initially seemed kinda overbearing, but upon further consideration I think they'd be fun and useful and well worth doing anyway.

Wow, he really missed the point of your question.

'Hey is this how your want your characters to end up, cause it seemed like you wanted low power.'

'Suck on your bottle baby, elite array isn't low powered!'

Well, at least you got your answer and can max the hell out of your character, right?

You expected intelligence from a Paizil?

TOZ wrote:Wow, he really missed the point of your question.

I cannot blame the DM. What exactly is the point? Is it that elite +4 is weak or that elite +4 is strong? He apparently makes both complaints/observations in spite of their contradiction.

16/16/14 or 18/14/14 are pretty decent bases for most classes. Elite+4 should work for most class concepts except monks, paladins and bards I reckon. Not like monks and paladins were gonna be good choices anyway.

clikml wrote:I cannot blame the DM. What exactly is the point? Is it that elite +4 is weak or that elite +4 is strong? He apparently makes both complaints/observations in spite of their contradiction.

'Elite +4 is strong yet it appears you wanted weaker characters' is the original question. The DM latched onto weak and had a rant instead of reading.

But why does it appear weak if you obviously can get strong?

clikml wrote:But why does it appear weak if you obviously can get strong?

If someone announces "We're using the elite array!" My assumption is that they want weak characters. Elite Array characters are substantially weaker than the characters you make off of rolling 4d6 drop the lowest in most cases. The Elite Array is after all the average results on 4d6 drop the lowest if you include the bad rolls that 3rd edition allows you to reroll. One you include the fact that you get to drop all the results where you don't get a 14, the average results are quite a bit better than 15 high.

So Elite Array plus bonus points is a weird statement. On the one hand they made a statement that implies weak characters, on the other they are making a character that won't actually be weak.

I would ask the DM what they were going for too. The fact that the DM's response was a sarcastic nonsensical tirade would make me highly inclined to not play.

-Username17

this is weird post.

it's starts off with pathfailure so I go in thinking ok, someone has played the pfrpg and found another or had experience with the system being broken.

but instead it's a couple of myspace messages or something with two people who are supposed to be purposely choosing to play a game together where one chooses to call the other one a baby.

Maybe I'm old school but I just play games with people I like and if there is a question about how we will play we just talk about it. "Hey you know if we put everything in free parking the value of money is going to go way down" "yes I wanted to try something different this time and see how it goes" "ok cool it's not usually how I play but I'll give it shot"

why would you choose to play a game with this person? why is there more to come later?

I imagine the context determines a lot of how this stuff reads.

Between friends we can say things a lot harsher than "Cry some more" and it will be brushed aside without mention because it is harmless banter. It isn't the slap in the face that it would be if it came from someone who you don't know so well. If the DM isn't your buddy who you can happily trade barbs with then yeah, that's a bad foot to start off on and I wouldn't want to continue that campaign since things are likely to go worse from that already rocky start.

There's clearly already something of a history since the DM refers to previous discussions or play sessions. So... meh. Only Morzas knows I reckon.

My whole thing is that if he wanted to make the point that Elite + 4 is much stronger than Elite (duh), he could just say, "Hey, just making sure we are on the same page, elite stat arrays usually make pretty weak characters; however, adding +4 can generate some fairly strong characters. Was your intent to have characters who can have either 18/14/14 or 16/16/14 as their pre-racial mod top stats?" No miscommunication needed.

It's no wonder you would get some hostility from saying, "Hey, elite stat arrays make pretty weak characters- check out this wizard I made using your methods (who incidentally is very strong, but we won't mention that). I'm not usually into weak games, but I could give this build a try."

I love it when DMs go "Oh, this is a great idea!" Seriously, it isn't.

If you just want everyone to do that stuff, tell them to do it. Giving them "bonus points" for it is likely to make them think it is optional, and then they'll be screwed when they don't do it.

Spaghetti Western wrote:this is weird post.

it's starts off with pathfailure so I go in thinking ok, someone has played the pfrpg and found another or had experience with the system being broken.

We've played a few sessions since my initial post, and I'm trying to think a little bit about them before I post my reactions. I don't like posting just whatever's on my mind on a forum like this one, that's what /tg/ is for. My initial post is a good example of this, as I wasn't clear as to what was going on. Frank understood and explained what I was trying to say.

Spaghetti Western wrote:but instead it's a couple of myspace messages or something with two people who are supposed to be purposely choosing to play a game together where one chooses to call the other one a baby.

Maybe I'm old school but I just play games with people I like and if there is a question about how we will play we just talk about it. "Hey you know if we put everything in free parking the value of money is going to go way down" "yes I wanted to try something different this time and see how it goes" "ok cool it's not usually how I play but I'll give it shot"

why would you choose to play a game with this person? why is there more to come later?

We're good friends, we just like to rib on each other a bit. With the loss of tone of voice on the Internet, it's hard to fully convey what you're trying to say, and in retrospect my post could be interpreted as whiny. I meant for it to be inquisitive.

In light of the shitstorm of fail being whipped up on the Paizo boards right now I'm necroing this.

Roy wrote:In light of the shitstorm of fail being whipped up on the Paizo boards right now I'm necroing this.

Oh? What the hell is going on over there now?

I used to love writing out long backstories. These days I cbf doing it. I prefer to make a bunch of dot points, and then the DM can ask me questions and I'll elaborate and they get the whole story that way.

I also imagine a DM wouldn't want to read through a huge story all about how the baker's kid one day summoned their first fire elemental, and how that was a help in baking until the fire elemental summoned was Medium and the store burned down, then they were on the run, and blah blah blah parents killed by house cats blah blah blah pact with CS Goto to replace arms with multilasers blah blah blah swore revenge against the max-HD Corolax, on the tomb of his/her ancestors blah blah and now the character, at first level, has reached port whereverthefuckweare.

Especially 3-6 such stories. Unless they're gaming with Dickens, Tolkien and Lovecraft.

Come to think of it, one recent conversation:
"Dot points are fine, we can hammer all the character backstories out in the first session, you needn't write a book."
"That's good, I think it's a waste to write a full story if it isn't porn."
"That's okay too, I'd read that."

But drawing the character I tend to do anyway. Usually a close-up of the face, a neutral-stance full body shot in their regular gear, and an action picture relevant to their career (so for casters, busting a cap colour spray into someone's ass, or for the Grapplemancer, putting a dragon into the sharpshooter).

I tend to start with a few ideas and then improvise my way along. Even as a DM.

A session I ran the other week had a wizard talking to an NPC monk I threw in off the top of my head.

Then I had to figure out this monk's personality, why she was in a town, and then I had to frantically lay down tracks about how the Tome Monk fighting styles operate as opposed to how wizard magic works and ended up with the following:

1) Energy is in everything, whether you call it chi or magic. Energy IS everything.

2) Alter the chi, alter the thing.

3) Monks work on physical and personal control to alter their own chi to give themselves the Fighting style effects and other supernatural things (spell resistance is fighting an alteration of your own chi.) It comes with inner harmony and all.

4) Wizard magic directly alters the chi of something else, often.

5) No, being a monk and becoming enlightened and getting inner harmony and all does not mean you're a good person. It can very well mean you're a bad person, know it, and you're okay with it.

So, now, based on a few ideas I had knocking around about the region, and some generic fantasy hokum, I have a halfway coherent place to visit and some already-done hokum to use for future games for verisimilitude and so I don't have to do it again.

And I did it while feeling like I was lying track in front of a train so it wouldn't crash and come to a halt.

Ganbare Gincun wrote:

Roy wrote:In light of the shitstorm of fail being whipped up on the Paizo boards right now I'm necroing this.

Oh? What the hell is going on over there now?

In short...

For a full day or so posting over there would follow this pattern:

Someone would make a thread bitching about a single poster, complaining about how butthurt they are, and frothing at the mouth in rabid rage. There was also much moderator cock sucking.

Said moderator was not amused and locked the thread.

Someone immediately remade it and they continued. This happened about 5-10 times across many different subforums.

Said moderator suspiciously didn't start yelling at them for continuing locked threads.

Most of these threads also involved serious claims that a Pathfailure Monk could defeat a Wizard. At high levels. Naturally, they invoked every single Monk fallacy in the Lago's Monk thread, starting with believing they have abilities that the rules do not actually grant them. Said Lago's Monk thread was copy pasted over there. The fail squad became suspiciously silent, while the handful of reasonable people on the Paizo boards got the point.

At about the same time there were several other threads from idiots seriously claiming that in a world with no magic items that the Wizard is hurt more than the Fighter and needs the Fighter... at level 20. Also, the level 20 Wizard should be scared shitless of 10d6 fire or lightning damage, DC 19 save for half. Even though this is Pathfailure, and therefore the Wizard has well over 200 HP. I did not see anyone mention that the Pathfailure Fighter would be swinging for around oh 10-15 damage to those same enemies, as he has no magic items and cannot break their damage reduction. At level 20. But nope, the Wizard shouldn't be treating it as a solo adventure, he should be buffing the Fighter to do... 15-20 damage instead.

In effect the whole forum got whipped up into a rabid rage because of one poster. That was epic level entertainment.

What the hell? I don't want that thread pasted around Paizo. I poured my heart out to you guys to relate the story of my supposedly-badass monk getting proved the pile of ass he was, I don't want that tale used to justify monk failure; the entire point of that thread was to give an anecdote as to how a basket-weaver can become a munchkin.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What the hell? I don't want that thread pasted around Paizo. I poured my heart out to you guys to relate the story of my supposedly-badass monk getting proved the pile of ass he was, I don't want that tale used to justify monk failure; the entire point of that thread was to give an anecdote as to how a basket-weaver can become a munchkin.

I think it was being used to explain their failure, not to justify it. Even so it was very effective.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What the hell? I don't want that thread pasted around Paizo. I poured my heart out to you guys to relate the story of my supposedly-badass monk getting proved the pile of ass he was, I don't want that tale used to justify monk failure; the entire point of that thread was to give an anecdote as to how a basket-weaver can become a munchkin.

The people on Paizo can't comprehend logical arguments. They can only understand on an emotional level.

They are like children in that sense.

Dominicius wrote:

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What the hell? I don't want that thread pasted around Paizo. I poured my heart out to you guys to relate the story of my supposedly-badass monk getting proved the pile of ass he was, I don't want that tale used to justify monk failure; the entire point of that thread was to give an anecdote as to how a basket-weaver can become a munchkin.

The people on Paizo can't comprehend logical arguments. They can only understand on an emotional level.

They are like children in that sense.

I like him. Can we keep him?

Dominicius wrote:

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What the hell? I don't want that thread pasted around Paizo. I poured my heart out to you guys to relate the story of my supposedly-badass monk getting proved the pile of ass he was, I don't want that tale used to justify monk failure; the entire point of that thread was to give an anecdote as to how a basket-weaver can become a munchkin.

The people on Paizo can't comprehend logical arguments. They can only understand on an emotional level.

They are like children in that sense.

I like that... I like that a lot. Excellent expression.

@ Roy

In short...

Sent me a link. Sound interesting to see them acutally affected by anything at all...

I prefer Elite Array but with +2 to all stats.

what Monk thread? I don't remember it and can't find it