I hear that.  I like a little randomness...  It gets fate involved with what happens.  Everything shouldn't be scripted out ya know.  It doesn't feel very realistic that way.

My random encounters are always random to the environment not the appropriate level.  Because it is my thought that the party does not walk around with a sign that reads the party level.

Some encounters are not meant to be combat encounters, or survivable...i.e. the best option is to run.

I like those kinds of encounters too. This is a bit of a tangent but Yahtzee (the guy who does Zero Punctuation video game reviews) wrote a blog about conflict and how video games feel kind of 'same-y' because all the encounters are along similar lines:


In this article he talked about how everything is always either a fight or perhaps the occasional sneaking but there isn't a lot of games out where the player is trying to purely avoid conflict. This has since changed with games like Slenderman where you're just trying to avoid the enemies and they're chasing you...

Anyway when designing encounters it's good to revisit this grid on occasion and turn encounters on their head.

Do any of you GMs have any tricks for keeping up with time?  Like Headers or Footers that you add to your posts as time updates?  I wouldn't want to be tacky like putting the time, but some sort of graphical tag would be kinda cool.

I have created a stickied thread with the time in the title before. I have also created adventure logs that just summarizes what happened when and that can be used to display the current time.

Just joined. Hi everyone. I want to make a complaint about Pathfinder. There are way too many awesome sounding adventure paths. I can't play face to face anymore and the pace for pbp is so slow I'll never get to play all of them.

Can we get a GM wanted page? I have a character I REALLY want to play, but every possible game never gets going.

You know what I don't get?  The abyssal statistics PF wants you to start with.  Even at the uber heroic level you cannot max a stat without neglecting all of your other stats.

I think that has to do with the whole everyone (very few aren't) is a commoner/npc class thing that the game assumes. They also tend to assume you build most of the world on the 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 (Or 3 point buy) with people that are supposed to match your characters in ability being built on 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 (Or 15 point buy).

With that kept in mind, the stats they give you are appropriately described by them. If instead you go with everyone is a PC class, with the same point buy as the characters, then you'll find that it seems off.

And why would you need to max out a stat anyways? Any stat over +0 would be higher than average

Some people like seeing those big numbers.

Then yeah, the problem would be with the DM running the game and their choice of character creation process, not with the system
This message was last edited by the player at 21:14, Tue 03 Nov 2015.

Because average people don't go adventuring, they stay at home and farm.  lol.  My table top gm just gives out an array of stats so everyone starts on the same page (generally 18,18,17,17,16,16 or 18,17,16,15,14,13).  I guess it is just every game I see on rpol uses the point buy system, which is really bad for casters.

In reply to PCO.Spvnky (msg # 71):

I'm very much of the opposite belief, it's great for casters but horrible for anyone else.

I tend to use the following to help represent that they are heroes and growing as people as well.. It tends to work out well for my games in person.

Ability points: We will be creating characters with 15 point buy, all stats are to be 10-16 before racial mods. Instead of receiving 1 stat point every 4 levels, you will get 1 stat point every level, but it can't be placed in the same stat on back to back levels.


Edit: And keep in mind that average is 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, and they don't tend to go adventuring.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:24, Tue 03 Nov 2015.

Point Buy works great for classes who can get away with only 1 stat really high, or 2 reasonably high. Anything beyond that and it becomes really hard to make a nice stat array.

Yeah... I have never had a fighter who has had a Con score...
After Str, Dex and the Int I need for combat expertise... just no room in point buy.

In reply to Nyoze (msg # 74):

I wouldn't go with a particularly high dex unless I needed it for feats as a fighter. Or if I would go for a light armour wearing one. Given that fullplate mostly ignore the bonus to AC of it anyway, except for that 1 point which is not worth that much at that point really.

In reply to Affectedsafe (msg # 75):

Should be +2, why wouldn't you get masterwork at the least?

Heck go with Mithril....:)

In reply to PCO.Spvnky (msg # 77):

Now that is expensive, what 11k gold for a suit of regular armor? Ouch.

In reply to Goldor (msg # 76):

MW doesn't increase Max Dex last I checked. It lessen check penalty by 1 and its a pre-req to make it magical.

---

And if I ever get my dex high enough to make the investment of 10.5k gold worth it with just 15 point buy on a fighter, I might consider it. That or I have such an silly amount of gold that I could afford the stat increase items to make it worth getting a Mithral Fullplate
This message was last edited by the player at 00:33, Wed 04 Nov 2015.

Oh hell your right, I think I was thinking of armor training for the fighter, my bad.

Nah.  I typically use reach weapons with a tripping combat reflexes build.  People don't want to hit me if the mages are squishier.  But if they can't get to the mages...

I agree, the holy grail for a caster (at least an arcane caster) is to start with a 18 in his casting stat, which point buy can pretty much guarantee even at low point buys. Meanwhile, with that same low points allocation, a fighter will have to make do with barely above average stats all around and won't feel heroic at all.

Of course, at high points buy, things are better for everyone. I do like stats arrays however, they keep character creation simple and avoid the 'dump anything that doesn't immediately matter' syndrome.

Anyone know of any games? I can't find any and in the past any I found never even started.
I'm really wanting to try a Catfolk "Monk" concept I thought of a while back. The concept is building around using my Claws and charging.