The Gaming Den

Oh you're just now figuring out that Paizo APs are poorly written? Wait until one drops this guy on you in a broom closet with just enough room to charge you when your party is level four.

yeah, met that guy once. it wasn't "fun", exactly. would be if our caster had control undead, though. but he was mostly busy setting up a tailoring shop on a second identity, so he wasn't someone to rely on for anything, really. the group had no heavy hitters, I was their healer. we kinda sorta RPd our way out of that one, because that GM was actually god damn awesome and knows how fucking RETARDED most of Paizos crap is and otherwise is from the "yes, and?" school of player empowerment. pretty sure she only uses the APs because otherwise GMing at least one group a day would take too much preparation. probably the only person I ever met that might be physically addicted to GMing.

When I had the inconvenience of running through the module killed the group's paladin in a single round and me, being good at playing wizard, was prepared for such a moment. Drop a command undead on it and EZPZ pokemo-Psych banned for metagaming thanks for stopping by.

But Paizo APs are made with the idea that players will never buck the tracks of the railroad. It's assumed you're just gonna run through them. Some D&D modules (A lot of them) are also designed like this.

I usually don't mind that, but when the entire group is not on board for it, it can get really fucking annoying. though I do prefer the rails to be more of a direction, not an enclosed tunnel.

also what wizard does not have one command undead or hold undead prepared just because sometimes you get a stupid zombie or skeleton thrown at you and stopping one or all of them without save is pretty neat.

you dirty, dirty metagamer

I had an illusionist who always had command undead prepped. I kept getting skeletons and our paladin et al would wreck em each time I owned em. It was frustrating but I had to laugh at my poor beleaguered necromancer wannabe.

so... I did not know how wrong you can play D&D. or maybe it's just me expecting something wrong...

anyway, back to the amazing WotR campaign. I now know for sure all the Story NPCs got killed by a random bad roll, which also took the entire army we were supposed to use to conquer this queer town. so that's already great, when the story get's buttfucked like that, but what is the GM supposed to do? he doesn't have any choice in that matter...
we tried to assault that castle, not like the army would be of any use in there (I was also told with the army it's much harder, because you only have one day to clear the whole thing. right now we were able to clear two rooms before our resources ran out. another hint something is going wrong, other than being 3 PCs). we assassinated the Chimera, managed to get to the dwarven anti paladin, more or less survived with me being last man standing. session ends, we decide to rest

I miss the next session due to real life really fucking me over.

current session, everyone is capture, being tortured, the wizard has his tongue cut out and eventually also his hands amputated. what is happening? well... turns out the group decided to rest RIGHT WHERE WE FUCKING KILLED EVERYTHING and not at least move to the personal quarters that would be a) harder to have wandering monsters move in b) more easy to defend, even if babaus kept teleporting in.
so... during the night the anti paladins brother comes along, party knocks him out and now they lose their shit. all resources are still GONE, and they decide now is the time to run... mind you we didnt clear a path in, we snuck in. apparantly they triggered half the castle and got cornered and captured.
all gear is gone, nowhere to be found. this session I learn that the actual goal was to find some banner, that we don't know where it is, but without we can't really leave. all we know a Shadow Demon guards it.

sigh... at least my elf dude got to fuck some crusader dudes that were thralls to some succubus that thinks she is pulling off posing as Iomedae.

I don't understand the GM. he literally says shit like "how am I supposed to just say your sneaky character somehow got away" and then 5 minutes before the session is like "hey, does anyone of you have a cohort ready to go who could free you?". and then stupid shit like the paladin using his chains as two handed improvised weapons and power attacking vampires to death while the wizard isn't even allowed to speak or open doors anymore...

fuck understanding the GM, I don't understand this world. I honestly don't know if I have some kind of disorder that makes me not understand people, because the Paladin and Wizard are having a blast.

Did I mention the anti-Paladin we killed is a graveknight now? and he ressurrected (via true ressurection) the chimera. so this is really awesome. Urgh... why should players make progress at all?

Wait, was the blast part supposed to be sarcasm? Because the paladin maybe, but why is the Wizard happy about having his whole character gutted via torture?

That was not sarcasm. he was the one who brought up having fun. different strokes?

Sometimes RPGs are fun because they present you with interesting challenges to overcome with the powers of a character and the freedom of a world. But other times they're fun because they give you an opportunity to roleplay in a silly or melodramatic way. I can imagine the wizard player either having fun roleplaying someone useless as a silly jester, or having fun roleplaying someone harrowed as a tragic horror character.

Since rawbeard didn't really describe how the wizard player was acting during the session it's a bit hard to be sure which exactly.

more the "unaffected" and "oh, right, I don't have hands" type. not really jester, but no horror at all.

Okay, then I'm not sure what he's getting out of it

maybe this is just the only thing they can get their "friends" to reliably do together so they put up with boring shit to maintain existing bonds due to geek social fallacies.

This is most likely a thread necro, but in writing my Spheres of Power & Might review I wanted to touch upon the history of "fixing Fighters" for 3.X.

As Spheres of Might's original version was published for Pathfinder it was an attempt to address the system's shortcomings. While I'm reviewing the 5th Edition version, I still think that it's valuable to touch upon the origins.

Specifically, I recall that one of the Pathfinder designers described Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards as a canard, refusing to believe in it. I know it was posted on their forums a while back but I cannot find the quote offhand. I'll happily thank anyone anyone here who is familiar with the origin and link.

Closest I can find is this, and a few attempts to dodge the question.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2j45d?FEAT-Weapon-Focus#11

James Jacobs wrote:Frankly, feats and abilities that fade into the background as you grow more powerful are, I think, good for the game. One of the largest problems facing high-level play is the complexity. if EVERYTHING you ever gained as you level up remains equally useful at higher level then all of a sudden at 15th or 20th level or whatever, your character is suddenly way too complex. That might be okay for some players, but it's not for others, and it's CERTAINLY not okay for GMs who don't have the advantage of growing used to a specific stat block's evolution and powers over the course of years of play.

Abilities, spells, and feats that fall into the background as you grow more powerful and are replaced by more powerful options help keep the game from growing unmanageably complex at high level. And if at 15th level, you're bemoaning the fact that you "wasted" a feat at 1st level for a benefit that, at the time was pretty good, but is now a drop in the bucket, I don't know what to say.

If the problem is the conception that fighters loose their oomph... keep in mind that ALL classes have things that start to suck at higher levels, be they self-obsoleting spells like cause fear, sleep, or circle of death, or be they racial abilities (at 20th level, does a gnome's ability to speak with burrowing mammels even count anymore? How about a dwarf's stonecunning?)

It's a refusal to see the woods for the trees. He understands how having a fuck-tonne of feats is a problem, and resolves that by saying your early picks should be garbage feats for high level play, they shouldn't matter, just act as prereqs for the ones that do. In the same way a Wizard doesn't care about his low level spells as much at high level.

What he misses is that people complaining about fighters having shit options is that all the fighter's options are shit. Melee and ranged normal attacks on a slow moving ground dude just so often do nothing at all, but even when they do something, if the Dragon chooses melee, well, it has 750hp and AC 45 and your fighter ain't shit without a source of all good feats that multiply each other way up (and even then, you'll fail a save and die).

--

Note, if you play like Neverwinter Nights, as your main D&D experience at the time, Fighters in that are awesome because, it's all super short range and super compact without even 5' spaces so you're being melee attacked by five giants now if you're a Wizard, don't really allow concentration to work right, they fucked up stacking on melee stuff and let you do way more damage, gave you huge stacks of cash to buy way more items than core D&D allows, handed out items better than D&D provided, and used very large numbers of low level monsters where you had to kill like a hundred or more guys to level up, so single-target save-or-die stuff just never mattered. Also, they did AC slightly wrong and gave out multiple ways of easy free healing in a way that just made your fighter pretty much immune to attrition death by the low level monsters they threw at you.

And only, past very low level, that way if you carry all the immunity items so you can't fail will saves, can't fail death saves, can't suffer strength drain, and so on, things that just don't exist in tabletop D&D for non-casters.

Wow, you two acted really fast! Close, but the next best thing to a cigar.

I did find the shifting of blame to players/GMs for a feature of the system to be rather useful. Specifically in discussing the history of "fixing Fighters" sourcebooks and homebrew during the 3.X era when reviewing 5e Spheres of Might (which you can see as a High 5e thread).

Also thank you both for finding the quotes. I used one of them for my Spheres review.

When did paizo forums implement the parent email thing for new signups? It doesn't even ask you for your DOB.

https://i.imgur.com/5Ob4FPg.png

I NEED AN ADULT

JonSetanta wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 07, 2021 4:46 am

I NEED AN ADULT

I am an adult.

recover password : there is no account with that email.
make new account : there is already an account with that email.
damn this is some next level cowardly weasel bullshit. what happened to just banning people?

srcs wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 16, 2021 4:54 pm

recover password : there is no account with that email.
make new account : there is already an account with that email.
damn this is some next level cowardly weasel bullshit. what happened to just banning people?

Yeah I had that same catch-22 with AppleID for my kids several years ago. Super infuriating.

I think I wound up scorched earth just wiping and starting anew since customer service was useless and there wasn’t much worth saving/recovering thankfully.

[quote=Omegonthesane post_id=550079 time=1631827039 user_id=791]
[url=https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/ ... eDqeCNgCcA]On the original topic of Pathfinder being bad...[/url]
[/quote]

I would like to point out that the member of staff that was fired briefly released a statement on her twitter to quote "Former Paizo Customer Service & Community Manager, Sara Marie, was fired for unknown reasons. Sara's Twitter account is private, but she made an announcement on Twitter. No allegations of wrongdoing by Paizo were made on the thread or subsequent ones so far. She has expressed love for former coworkers and the community. Sara has since stated she is upset "decade long allies for improving industry workplace standards are getting ripped into because a clout-chaser seized on another opportunity to drag themselves into someone else’s story," but is not providing additional details about her situation or any of the allegations." I assume price being the clout chaser

In regards to this whole thing, some other ex-employees have come out to support several of Price's allegations.

Such as Crystal Frasier.

And Lissa Guillet.

Here are their industry credentials:

https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Lissa_Guillet
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Crystal_Frasier

Jason Buhlman also wrote up a response to several of Price's allegations where it seems like he admits to several of of the allegations in a roundabout way.