The Quasi-perpetual Pathfinder Thread

[Atreys]

people are morons

No one can argue with that 

Others (20-30% based on my personal experiences) instead stay at the extreme, toning back their behavior only a little, because letting go is fun (I'm looking at you Josh)

    your example doesn't make sense. I make attempts to make my characters actively engaged with other characters if possible.  (Except for Broca, that guy was crazy)

[kenada]

I mention all of this because your definitions, while quite reasonable on paper, run into a snag. A good portion of players are going to go Chaotic "Neutral", as described above, and the more "extreme / niche / out there" the base definition for Chaotic becomes, the worse those players will behave, because the book says that's what they are supposed / allowed to do.

I think Mike’s point is that the alignment system is badly defined and should be replaced or discarded. I’m sympathetic to this view, but alignment is ingrained deeply enough in Pathfinder’s mechanics that I’m not comfortable enough replacing it with a detect enemy paradigm.

Like everything else in a game, it's not enough to just sit and think about how alignment should work; you need to look at the extremes and see how players will react while at them, because that's where a significant sub-set of the player-base will immediately go.

And the DM tells them to knock it the fuck off.

Others (20-30% based on my personal experiences) instead stay at the extreme, toning back their behavior only a little, because letting go is fun (I'm looking at you Josh)

    your example doesn't make sense.  Shortly after here, though, was when I stopped paying attention to whatever you wrote, though.

Rob is conflating eccentric characters with … something. I don’t see what that has to do with alignment though.

[Measure Zero]

My positions:
1) Words should mean what they mean.  In the alignment system used in 3.5 and 3.501, they changed the meanings of the words when they could have just as easily changed the words.  The words they use don't mean what they mean in English, and this is confusing.  It's confusing like saying "he is a verb" and then saying that "He he the game." is not a grammatically correct sentence because "he" is not a verb.  This terminology sucks.
2) Alignment does not encourage good role-playing.  If you are going to role-play someone and make sure your character's alignment is apparent, then you automatically exaggerate the alignment.  Alignment divides character personalities into a meager six packages, most of which are automatically boring.  It is perfectly reasonable to exaggerate here because that is what the system encourages; it will happen even if the definition of chaotic is less extreme.  The system itself sucks.
3) One could replace absolute alignment with relative alignment fairly easily, based on personality traits.  This would encourage better roleplaying and be less confusing, but it would require a little bit more adjudication on the part of the DM.  It might be difficult to write it up to be universally usable, but I don't think it would be as time-consuming as writing a weather generation program.

I did not say that the old alignment definitions were good from a game-play standpoint.  I said that the new alignment definitions are bad from a reading comprehension standpoint, while the entire alignment system is bad from a game-play standpoint.

4) New point: don't pick on Josh.  It never felt like his characters were acting at random.  They all had personalities and were entertaining.  In terms of actions Broca was no more crazy than a certain character whose defining characteristics were that he liked to be hit, he had a name, and (null).

[BobChuck]

Right, apparently it's "misunderstand what was meant and attack rob" day, so I'll just walk away.

[BobChuck]

I've more or less finished leveling up my character; I've updated Obsidian Portal with everything but the new spells, which I'm not sure how you want to do. I've attached the entire character file to this post, and below is the new spellbook.

Spellbook: 0– all; 1– Alarm, Break (T), Color Spray, Comp Lang, Crafter's Fortune (T), Enlarge Person (T), Floating Disk, Gravity Bow (T), Grease, Identify, Mage Armor, Reduce Person (T), Silent Image, Unseen Servant;

EDIT: the (T) means its a transmutation spell; it's mostly for myself, so I don't screw up and prepare non-transmutation spells in my transmutation spell slots. I added Alarm and Crafter's Fortune as my 2 free spells for reaching level 2. Crafter's Fortune is for, well, crafting and stuff, while Alarm will be handy in another few levels (only lasts 4 hours right now).

[kenada]

Rob, you’ll need to make Spellcraft checks to add those spells and the ones from the scrolls you requisitioned to your spellbook.

You can either roll before the session (spending one hour per spell), or you can use Invisible Castle.

[BobChuck]

I was under the assumption that I would take ten? I mean, under what circumstances would I not take ten on a check like this, besides when taking ten results in a failure?

Also, the rules for failing the check are, well, stupid and inconsistent. The Magic section of the book says "you cannot try again until you gain another rank of spellcraft". The spellcraft skill says "you cannot try again for at least a week". Both say that a wizard can add a spell off of a scroll, and that successfully adding it consumes the scroll, but neither says what happens if the wizard fails. Finally, being able to add spells to my spellbook is really important.

I'm fairly certain I'm allowed to take ten, given that I'm not exactly under a lot of pressure.

On a personal note, how is having to roll on that fun? I can either take ten on this and succeed, or roll and risk screwing myself over for a full level with nothing extra gained if I make the roll.

Now that I'm thinking about it, why would anyone ever roll on a check like this, except when taking ten wouldn't be high enough? It's insanely risky and offers no benefit. I don't get it. Why even have the rule? Now I want to check the forums and try to find out.

EDIT: oh, and the two I get for leveling up are completely free, no check required, no money spent, no research time, nothing. It's the "here are two spells every level, so you can use the spell slots you just gained for leveling up" security blanket mechanic.

I continue to wonder why there's a rule for failing to copy a spell; maybe to make sure all wizards have spellcraft ranks? But why is that important? Holdover from earlier edition maybe? It bugs me.

[kenada]

I was under the assumption that I would take ten? I mean, under what circumstances would I not take ten on a check like this, besides when taking ten results in a failure?

Good point. I’m not used to players actually taking 10 even when the rules allow them to.

[BobChuck]

heh; I'm not sure whether I can take ten on that check or not; if I can take ten, then the rule is silly and pointless, but I don't see any mechanical reason that says I can't. I'm checking the forums for an explanation, though I don't think I'll find one.

[kenada]

Now that I'm thinking about it, why would anyone ever roll on a check like this, except when taking ten wouldn't be high enough? It's insanely risky and offers no benefit. I don't get it. Why even have the rule? Now I want to check the forums and try to find out.

I found this thread, which prompted me to check the d20 SRD. The retry in a week rule is new to Pathfinder, so this is probably another instance of old rules not being completely scrubbed from the system. I’m going to add a house rule to that effect because I think that’s the intent.

[BobChuck]

ah, yeah. It doesn't give an official answer (or a general consensus) one way or another. There is also a fair amount of unwarranted bitching, not that I'm in any position to complain about that. I'll post a similar question and see how it goes.

[kenada]

The interesting thing is that the rules for a witch’s familiar’s learning new spells is the same as the wizard’s (retry limitations and all). I’m hoping this is just a copy/paste error and not intended because it’s annoyingly confusing.

[kenada]

I saw your post on the Paizo forum. They make a good point about being able to copy spells higher than the level you can currently cast into your spellbook. Within that context, having rules for failure is probably meaningful.

[BobChuck]

ah, that makes sense.

[kenada]

One thing I think 4e got very right is that some challenges should scale with level. In the new Dark Sun campaign setting, the check to overcome the sun scales with your level. Many checks to resist environmental damage scale with your level. I think this fits in very well with the idea that hit points and armor class are an abstraction that factors in skill and the ability to take a hit. 8 points of damage to a level 1 character is almost always fatal because they suck at taking a hit, but 8 points of damage to a high level character is nothing. The problem that Pathfinder has is that some types of damage are level independent when they shouldn’t be. There’s no good reason why a high level character should be able to survive a 100 ft fall or swim through lava or ignore the effects of extreme temperatures.

I’d like to change these kind of hazards into doing percent (of max HP) damage.

Falling: 1d20% per 10 ft up to 20d20%.
Frostbite: 1d30% non-lethal per failed check. In extreme cold, 1d30% lethal damage every minute and 1d20% non-lethal damage every failed check.

and so on.

Material damage doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it never did. Why should a level 20 fighter be better at hacking through walls than a level 1 fighter?