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Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
Oh god, now there are two active Pathfinder threads. I'll just repost what I was talking about in the other one...

I HATE 3.5 D&D, will I like Pathfinder?
Short answer: Nope, probably not. Pathfinder is a continuation of 3.5 rule-set and while it makes many small changes and fixes, it does not re-balance the massive difference between spell-casters and fighters. The "hybrid" classes, like Rangers and Paladins, are seriously pretty awesome in Pathfinder, but the Fighter class has not been powered up enough to catch up with the mighty casters. Right now actually, I would say that the Ranger or Paladin are better "tanks" than a pure fighter.

I still like playing 3.5, why should I buy Pathfinder?
This answer is more complex. If you like playing 3.5 and you don't mind the fact that WotC will never release another book for it, then you might not be too interested in Pathfinder. However, if you really like buying a new book every few months and prefer to play in a 3.5 rule-set then Pathfinder might be for you. Beyond that though, the Pathfinder RPG is not the only "Pathfinder" product there is out there. The Pathfinder Chronicles, and Pathfinder Companion product lines are very rules-lite and are mostly just fluff for the campaign world.

This poo poo isn't backwards compatible, how the gently caress am I supposed to run old PCs with it?
It's true that the most recent products are using the new PF RPG rules and are no longer OGL. However, all the stuff Paizo released up until fairly recently was still OGL and compatible with 3.5 D&D. This includes 4 adventure paths, 22 adventure modules, 17 chronicles books, all of the companion books (mostly pure fluff).


happyelf posted:

i'd like to thank AZ for making some good posts in the last thread
those were some good posts about print runs and such

No problem. Most of what I was describing was coming right from the Paizo forums, where somebody asks the exact same thing everyday and the assorted Paizo staff explain it all...again.

Now as I was saying in the last thread...
In other topics, the "King-maker" Adventure Path is due to start up soon. This is the first AP I've subscribed to since it sounds very interesting. According to the blurbs, this AP will be different from previous paths in that it will involve the PCs gaining their own little tract of land, which they can develop and mold over the course of the campaign. Supposedly new rules and suggestions for running a sandbox campaign will be included in each of the issues.

I really like campaigns that are centered around one place for the entire run. It lets you really flesh out local NPCs and customs and it breaks the mold of the "constantly camping" adventurers who never really settle into one place. This is why I really love Shackled City. I can also picture the King-maker Sub-forum being a huge boon for DMs, much like how the Shackled City sub-forum was. In the latter's case, other DMs basically posted NPCs, shops, and other events that I could transplant right into my campaign (since it was all happening in the same place), and it made the city of Cauldron more vibrant than I could have pulled off on my own.

The first book comes in March, so I can say more then.

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Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
I'd be really happy to play in a maptools game if someone wants to DM one. I decided to take a break from DMing in my group and so now everyone has broken into a game of GURPS. This is what I get for wanting to be a player....



I have not actually gotten to play in any of the Pathfinder APs, how do they rank against each other?

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
I'm eastern coast as well. Usually not home till 7p though.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
God, I don't think I can articulate how much I hate some of the people on the Paizo forums. Everyone plays really nice over there, so some loving terrible posters never get called out on being terrible. The latest round of the RPG Superstar is the best example. There are 8 contestants and a couple of them have put together really cool maps and encounters for the contest, but most of them are seriously flawed in some way. The judges are calling them out on their mistakes pretty well, but every single other poster is all "Excellent job! My number one choice!" for some of the worst entries.

This round's winner is determined by public voting and I swear to god some of these turds are going to make it into the Final Four.

It's like the bizzarro version of every other RPG forum where everyone just argues and nerd-rages at each other nonstop and it's driving me nuts.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
Cpt_Obvious I enjoy playing 3.5 and Pathfinder and even I will admit that casters are far more powerful than non-casters the higher you get in levels.

It is very easy with planar binding or planar ally for clerics and wizards to call outsiders that are better fighters than the party fighter who also can cast spells as well.

A cleric, using only the core PHB, can actually buff himself up to be a better fighter than the party fighter. If he uses books besides the PHB, he can do it all day.

A wizard can, with one spell, turn the strongest minion of the bad guys into a permanently charm/dominated member of the party. Since it was likely a monster, it will be a better fighter than the party fighter.

People are going to flood this thread now, giving even more examples than I did, but I just want to nip this in the bud. This is not really the thread to start this argument up...again.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
I'm pretty sure the character sheet works even if none one else at the table has an iphone. It's probably similar to the auto character sheets I have on my laptop.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
Yeah, I'm kind of confused by his reaction. Three of the five people in my gaming group own iphones. One guy is an undergrad, one is a graduate student, and the third is a guy working in University admin. All of my undergrad assistants in my lab over the last year have had iphones. I see people carrying them all the time. It's not like they are programming an app for some random gadget that nobody on the planet already uses.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang

Gerund posted:

:words:

Jesus Christ man, you talk like there aren't any other gaming companies out there besides WotC that are perfectly successful selling their product to a smaller market share than 4e.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang

Kvantum posted:

It's also that some of the Paizo staff are those grognards. The whole "no Vancian spellcasting" thing was (at least they claimed) a real part of their decision to not go along with the GSL and publish 4e-compatible stuff.

I've never actually gotten that sentiment from any of the Paizo people. Back when they made their decision there was a fair amount of discussion about it on the forums and people who were planning on moving to 4e were cancelling their subscriptions and asking for answers.

The Paizo guys made it abundantly clear that the 4e rule-set didn't bother them, and that staying with 3.5/OGL was purely a business decision. A lot of this had to do with the GSL, but I'm not a lawyer or business person so I can't tell you exactly what it was that rubbed them wrong. I may be talking out of my rear end here, but I believe they were a little bit skittish about being under the whim of another company when it came to their main product (since their two main magazines were discontinued when WotC took back the license).

They were hoping to become the number one publisher in the minds of people who stayed with 3.5 instead of another 3rd party publisher amongst the many that were moving on to 4e. James Jacobs said that if they had decided to go on with 4e then their adventures and products would reflect the way that game works, but they didn't so it's not something they've really thought about past that. I've never seen any of them indicate that making adventures for 4e presented any challenges that were insurmountable to their writers.

Most of the people at Paizo worked at WotC at one point, and are friends with the guys over there. Even though the Dragon and Dungeon magazine license did not get renewed, the companies are still fairly close and there isn't any kind of hostility between them. There is a fairly active 4e forum at Paizo.com and people convert PF adventures and setting info into 4e all the time, so I think it's unfair to claim that Paizo is staffed by grognards.

Now I don't sit and read the forums endlessly, so maybe I missed one of them saying something grognardy, but all the explanations for Paizo's current business plan has been based entirely on how to make the most money.

Anonymous Zebra fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Feb 28, 2010

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
I'd be in for that, but I've never played online. Is there anything I should be downloading to play?

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
I'd prefer to NOT do Kingmaker since I'll be running that for my players and will also be receiving it in the mail at the same time as you, so there's no chance I'm not going to be reading it. I don't know a thing about the other APs though, so I'm open for either.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
mixitwithblop, you are a terrible poster and managed to shitpost your own Pathfinder thread into the ground before throwing a tantrum and closing it. You are worse than The General.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
Is he playing a human? Because humans get an automatic weapons proficiency. That's a very odd reason for him to drop clerics, can you just let him pick whatever exotic weapon he seems to have his heart set on?

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
Whoops. That's apparently something that was removed since the beta. Oh well.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
The Kingmaker Adventure Paths just started shipping and everyone with a subscription should be able to download their free pdf copy as of right now. The player's guide pdf is also free and can be downloaded by anybody from here: http://paizo.com/pathfinder/adventurePath/kingmaker

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang

happyelf posted:

Generally however, while i'm really interested in this, i'm leery of trusting the designers who brought us the pathfinder Fighter class. Not to mention the pathfinder wizards class. 4e is a very innovative, well built system, pathfinder is not. I honestly don't know if they can pull off an interesting design here- I certainly hope they can.

It's generalizing a bit to say that it's the same designer, as the Pathfinder RPG (which you take issue with) was led by Jason Bulmahn and a few others, while Kingmaker is the baby of James Jacobs. James is a pretty awesome dude and has been behind a lot of the adventure paths as far back as Shackled City and is also the guy that basically led the creation of all the Pathfinder fluff material. I've been reading his blogs on what he was hoping to do with Kingmaker, but I guess we all have to wait and see how it turns out.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
I voted for Matt every round, but unfortunately I can't really say that his adventure proposal is anywhere close to something I'd want to play. The judges did a pretty good job of showing the major flaws of the premise, so I'm not really going to repeat them all over again.

A lot of his early stuff was cool, but it seemed like he was shooting for the super-weird award with the giant floating fetus and giant deep one with lots of males hanging off her.


EDIT: Richard A. Hunt is one of the most bitter motherfuckers on that forum. I think he was so sure that he was a shoe-in for the final round that he cannot fathom that 4 other people beat him out. I love reading his massive essays trying to take apart all the contestants.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
I like playing 3.5, and I'll admit that the fighter and rogue are two classes that are not built for higher level play. Eventually a caster will be able to do (or can summon something that does) everything either of those classes can do. I've hosed with the "calling" spells (summon planar ally, bind outsider, etc.) a bit so that they are no longer standard spells on a spell list but are rituals that take a lot of time and sacrifice to cast...but that's neither here nor there.

Fighters and rogues shine in the low levels when the other classes can't do the same things they can. But eventually casters will gain the power to replace most of those abilities. I think the same argument can be made for barbarians, but I've had players use barbarians for 20 levels and still do crazy poo poo like supplexing dragons and poo poo, so I can't speak from experience about that class doing poorly at higher levels.

I have to say, without a hint of doubt, that the warblade from Book of Nine Swords basically represents what a D&D fighter should be. It can full attack and hit like a fighter, and has saves like a fighter, but it also has tumble as a class skill (Jesus Christ, this might seem small but it's really cool), and also gains martial powers that can: hit for fuckloads of damage, cause status effects or insta-death on enemies, allow them to ignore will saves, lets them dispel negative status effects, and the list goes on....The martial powers also scale like a caster's spells, so they are gaining new abilities at the same rate as their magic slinging buddies.

Seriously, if you want to play a longterm game past level 10 then replace fighters with warblades.

Anonymous Zebra fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Mar 22, 2010

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang

PeterWeller posted:

That sounds like a decent yet pretty uninspired adventure.

If you read the proposal you can see that it's really deeply steeped in the cool Indian-styled flavor of the area it takes place in. I honestly gave it second place since I liked "Doom of the Dream Theives" more, but Matt made a pretty cool proposal so he deserves the win.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang

MartianAgitator posted:

They all have the shark eyes. Is this a Pathfinder change?

Paizo Blog posted:

For a final sneak peek at From Shore to Sea, take a look here at Valeros trying to save some hapless (and disturbingly fishy) villagers from more of those pesky giant tentacles. And be careful when you go swimming. You never know what might be lurking beneath the waves!

It's a picture from a module that has to do with aboleths and other ocean horrors. I don't think Valeros himself actually has fishy eyes. Can't tell from the angle his head is at.

http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lax0


EDIT: Apparently the art for this module caused all kinds of issues since the guy they originally hired to draw for it waited until the final due date and turned in like 3 quick pencil drawings when they originally had ordered 20 full-color illustrations. The guy is never working for Paizo again, but that still left them scrambling to get the module out on time.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang

happyelf posted:

which guy was the crappy pencil guy, out of interest?

They never gave his name. All they said was that it was the first time they used him and also the last time. Basically it was a blog entry about the tribulations of getting poo poo out on deadline and they mentioned that their art department basically was scrambling to find an artist who could draw an entire module in a few days. They never gave the name of the original artist, but the new artist will be fully credited in the module itself.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
I love clicking this link every so often. http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG

Everytime you load the page a random illustration from the different books comes up and some of them are awesome as gently caress.

EDIT: Such as this wonderful take on George Washington's crossing of the Delaware. (From the Andoran, Spirit of Liberty book)

Anonymous Zebra fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Apr 3, 2010

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang

Mikan posted:



You have yet to delve into the all the fan service pics that some people draw of the Pathfinder iconics.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
Hah, holy poo poo. Which book is that second one from? I'm assuming it's supposed to be a scene where an assassin is about to attack a relaxed party, but I've never seen it anywhere on the site before.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
The old Campaign Setting came out a while back before they had fleshed out the human races beyond the two main continents. The thing you have to realize about the races is that they are NOT nationalities. The individual kingdoms have different mixes of human races and the humans that live there will have cultures specific to that nation or region. The main thing to pull from the race descriptions is the physical descriptions of how they look and maybe some the discussion of their origins and languages. For example, both the Taldane and Chelaxians are descendants of the Ancient Azlants who bred with different barbarian tribes long ago.

The main thing to pull from the book is the description of the human nations on Avistan and Garund, and to realize that there are other continents out there and people do visit from them.

I'll happily admit that the not-Japan race is handled poorly, but Asia seems to be something nerds get very wrong all the time. In it's defense though, there is a sourcebook that will come out which will describe not-Asia and James Jacobs has claimed that they are really carefully researching not only China and Japan, but also Thailand, Cambodia, and other smaller Asian nations that they will be incorporating into the book to show that the continent is as varied and complex as the continents already detailed.

Also, the adventure path that involves trekking across the crown of the world sounds epic as hell and I'm looking forward to it.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
There is a short blurb about them in the "Rise of the Runelords" Players Guide. I'll just copy it here.

quote:

Passionate and fiercely independent, Varisians lend their name to their homeland, Varisia. While these clannish wanderers can be found throughout the world, nowhere are larger populations found than in the land of their ancestors.

Insular and adhering to an ancient, nomadic way of life, extended families of Varisians form wandering communities, traveling wherever fate directs them. Varisians don’t believe in claiming land and thus see no hardship in their nomadism. While nature provides for most of their needs, these wanderers often visit the cities and towns of settled people to trade art and curios from their travels, earn coin by entertaining and performing small jobs, and sometimes to con and steal from the unwary. Varisians are also known for their unique mysticism. Some believe their traditional dances provide insights into the future and their family elders can hear the voices of the long dead.

The typical Varisian possesses deep olive skin and hair that ranges from black to auburn, often worn long by both men and women. Customary tattooing leads most to exhibit complex patterns and symbols significantly different from those worn by the Shoanti who share their homeland. As wanderers and—often—entertainers, Varisian dress tends toward extremes, from functional garb fit for traveling to wildly impractical dress meant to accentuate their dancing, exotic tattoos, and naturally fit forms.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
Mikan, if you don't like elements that are drawn from the real world then I'm going to be honest and say that the setting probably not going to be good for you.

First and foremost, the two continents detailed in the setting are essentially Europe and Africa with hints towards a large middle-eastern empire being located to the east. There is even a nation that is essentially Egypt (I blame Eric Mona for that one) right down to the pyramids and naming schemes. Across the oceans there is an India-like nation that is only vaguely described as well as the aforementioned Asian nation. There is also an unsettled continents known as Arcadia which is said to be temperate, heavily forested and populated by an aggressive native population that has fought off all attempts at colonization.

Even looking at the individual nations, you are going to see that they drew themes from real-world examples. Andoran is based on post-revolution America, and Galt is post-revolution France. The ancient Azlant civilization has parallels to Atlantis, and I'm sure there are a bunch of others that I'm not remembering.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
Holy poo poo, happyelf to the rescue. I was about to write something very similar to what you said by pointing out how most settings get around the "racism" issue by just attaching the stereotypes to other non-human races and then patting themselves on the back.

Making humans front and center in Golarian is an intentional move by the designers, as they wanted the current age to be a time where humans had uncontested dominance of the world. Yes, I am aware that most settings claim this is the case, but most of those all become bogged down describing how awesome and wonderful all the non-human races are. In Golarian:

- the elves left long ago and only a few of them are still kicking about. Not every forest is full of them. Most of those that are there are sitting guarding the gate that the other elves used to leave.
- the gnomes are weird fey creatures that are only recent arrivals to the world and don't have any kind of formal society.
- the dwarves only have one nation situated at the spot where they broke through from underground, but for the most part they are spread all over the globe and don't have any kind of formal society.
- half-orcs/half-elves are the same as always...basically interspersed among humanity.
- halflings....I loving hate halflings and I don't think I ever read what their role in the world is.

Then you have the humans. Instead of just saying, "there are humans, they come in lots of shapes and sizes", they decided to split them into a variety of races depending on where they come from in the world. I agree that attributing behaviors to them is kind of retarded, but I do like the idea of how the designers have mapped out how these different human groups migrated through the world, met and bred and became new races. As touchy as the subject is, different human groups (especially in a setting without a modern global culture) DO have cultural things that are common amongst them that do remain for a couple generations even when they leave their homeland.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, I just think a part of this is that they've taken away the common masks of dwarf and orc and the all too human face makes some of the stuff a bit more touchy.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
So moving past the stereotypes discussion for a minute, I actually have another conundrum that I'm trying to work through right now having to do with the Kingmaker Adventure Path.


Warning, wall of words ahead.
It basically has to do with the somewhat unorthodox way that I track party wealth. Basically, a long time ago I realized that there were certain unwritten assumptions of character progression in the 3.5 system that basically caused most players to deck their PCs out in very predictable sets of magic items. Any of us that have played enough 3.5 games into the higher levels can basically name these magic items. The wizard is always going to have a headband of intellect, the cleric some kind of wisdom boosting item, everyone will be wearing cloaks of resistance and rings of protection, etc. In the process of decking themselves out in these items, a lot of PCs will end up ignoring or selling other magical items that they deem "useless" or which they can't use because the slot is already being held by something else. (All of this is based on the assumption that magical items are available for PCs to either purchase or craft using an NPC or cohort).

I set out to find a way to make magical items rarer and more "magical" as well as giving PCs the chance to play with some of the less used magical items, all while not in any way weakening them relative to a party which has free access to all the stat and other enhancement items.

How I did this was, using the "suggested party wealth" as a guide, created a system where the PCs are awarded "heroic points" as they level which they can then spend to enhance themselves. Basically they can spend the points to give themselves +1 enhancements to their attacks (all of them!) or to up one of their stats by +2, or so on. The costs of these enhancements are in line with what items that do the same thing would cost in gold. There is a Paizo thread which I will put the link up for when I get home which talks about something similar to this. A system like that can also be found in the Trailblazer book (http://www.amazon.com/Trailblazer-New-Horizons-3-5-Roleplaying/dp/1449503608).

This system itself is not my problem, because it actually works beautifully for everything I wanted it to do. Wizards and clerics will still blow all their points on boosting that one stat of theirs, while the martial classes will usually buy up resistance enhancements or things that boost their AC/Attack bonus. The PCs will still be just as strong as normal (actually stronger since these effects can't be sundered or dispelled) and they won't be wearing a single magic item to do it. There are still magic items out in the world, but they are significantly rarer and I can craft entire histories and stories behind each one making it much more precious and real to the PCs. Plus I no longer need to throw mountains of gold at them (since they don't need to purchase expensive magic items) so they end up spending their gold on mundane things like art, jewelry, houses, land, bribing a king, etc.

In any case, I'd be happy to talk about all that in more detail later, but I want to actually get to my problem...

Kingmaker basically assumes the PCs will be of a certain wealth level in order to finance their kingdom. Basically all the purchase costs and such seem to be at magnitudes acceptable for a party that is gathering up and selling bundles of +1 swords every adventure and I'm basically completely unsure about how to convert this to a wealth level appropriate to a game like mine.

Anonymous Zebra fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Apr 27, 2010

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
Too freaking far on the other side of the country for me. I'll go to GenCon and visit the Paizo booth there when the time comes.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
That's a lot of discussion on the Paizo boards about how to make a gish using Pathfinder rules. I really haven't delved too deep into them, but I see one pop up at least every other week. Might want to look there.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang

mixitwithblop posted:



Oh god, that poor fox.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
So has anyone been loving around with Kingmaker lately? I've been getting the subscription, but haven't been able to figure out how to run this as a campaign. It's so open-ended that I'm having a bit of trouble seeing how to run it.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
I haven't gotten my APG yet, since the local store I ordered it from says it's still on backorder, but it's likely that any major screw-ups have already been brought up on the paizo.com message boards.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
^^^ I often give my players 4 or 5 "free" skill points that they are allowed to put into craft or profession skills if they are constantly role-playing themselves doing such during long bouts of downtime. They basically started "Shackled City" and "Age of Worms" as working-class chumps and I let them fill in a non-combat skill to max for free when they generated characters.

What's really funny is that my experience with Paizo AP's is that they are massively deadly sometimes and have given my party of mostly optimizers a run for their money quite often. I can't count the number of times while playing "Age of Worms" that the party got cocky and then someone died because they walked into another ambush.

I mean these are the guys then ended an Adventure Path with a final boss that had a divine blast that could hit someone two miles away. He never really gets a chance to use it, but the fact that it's an option made me chuckle.

Anonymous Zebra fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Aug 21, 2010

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang

Dr. Tough posted:

Your character is not going to implode because you had to put a couple points into craft instead of ride or whatever. If people have a problem with this then they shouldn't put things like that into their background. Or they should play in less difficult campaigns where their survival doesn't depend on that extra bluff point.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. At early levels every skill point counts and can be a matter of life or death when it comes to not falling off a bridge over a 1,000 foot deep gorge, or successfully turning off a trap that might kill your rogue. Not to mention that several classes only get a few skill points to work with and can have these problems even at the high levels.

Someone being punished for "putting things like that into their background" is a fun way to ruin the charm of a game and make your players less likely to even both coming up with a character history. Just let your player take 5 free points of craft (baskets) and relax with the knowledge that having points in that skill will never make them unbalanced in combat nor come close to making them any meaningful amount of extra cash.

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
So I've been prepping to start running Kingmaker this Friday. I've read the paizo.com forums and been re-reading the module. Anyone who has been through this have any suggestions or potential pitfalls I might hit?

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang

Tolan posted:

The hardest bit is likely to be convincing your players that really, truly, they're driving this thing for the most part, so they need to be proactive about looking around and investigating things. Depending on your group, that might not be an unusual thing or difficult thing for them to grasp.

This is actually what I'm most worried about right now. In previous games my players have all given me really awesome backstories to work with, but this time around they've been giving me much simpler character concepts. Hopefully their characters get a little more...character by the time the first session ends. I plan the early sessions to be purely exploratory with most of the action taking place around the campfire at night as they get to know each other.

I actually have a more pressing problem right now...

LE dwarf monk, a former servant of house Garess
Elf wizard from the south who kind of wandered into Brevoy and who is friends with...
Elf alchemist, a moderate alcoholic and former bandit from the River Kingdoms
Half-elf ranger, a native of the River Kingdoms and also a former bandit

No humans, and only one character with a tenuous connection to Brevoy. Why the hell would Brevoy give these people a charter?

Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
Dwarf Monk - Noble-born (House Garess)
Elf Wizard - None. I explained to him that he doesn't lose anything by taking one, but he declined.
Elf Alchemist - Brigand
Half-elf Ranger - Brigand

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Anonymous Zebra
Oct 21, 2005
Blending in like it ain't no thang
So I have another random question. One of my players wants to roll a summoner, but I've been hearing whisperings of it being an absurdly broken class. However, trying to navigate the 100 paizo threads on this subject is kind of hard. Does anyone have any links to good discussions on this topic? I mean something that breaks it all down and also maybe gives suggestions on fixes?

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