Comments on: Pathfinder 7 – Garycon ’08

By: Reza

Reza — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:32:45 +0000

Heh, feel free to keep moving us off course then! Confuse us real good too, Id enjoy the chance to play a char thats been duped!

By: Graham

Graham — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:08:05 +0000

It’s alright, Reza.

You might actually be surprised at how much I’ve already had you “off course”, as per the adventure. I just try to make it not seem that way.

Altogether, though, you guys have an uncanny knack for choosing to do exactly what the adventure expects from you.

The small bit of downtime at the beginning wasn’t meant to take up much game time, anyways, unless you actually did have something you wanted to do. It was primarily there to emphasize that you have time to get done with whatever upkeep you need, and once everyone’s ready we’ll fast-forward to the next scene.

That said, don’t worry about monopolising time for the most part, unless it gets extreme. If there is something that you want to be doing, and it’s a bit of a solo thing, it doesn’t usually take long, so go ahead. If it does end up taking too long, I’ll just suggest that we go through it outside of the game instead, but always feel free to ask.

By: Reza

Reza — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:07:41 +0000

Hey, sorry about the ‘railroading’ word. The hard part for being a player and knowing its a premade event is that you really have no idea how much you can go off-course with the plot. When starting in a new town with nothing to do, us PC’s go shopping, drink and try to snag a few wenches, then get bored and don’t know what to do. Once I’ve been to the church, got my new supplies, and watched male PC’s fail at hitting on NPC’s, I’m at a loss of what to do next. I always consider having Reza go off and look at -something- but at the same time we’re a group of adventurers, not solo ones, and i dont want to haul us off-track or monopolize DM time on useless stuff that will just annoy everyone else. I liked having the Sherriff approach us because it gave us several options to run with when we were getting bored with “hero worship”.

By: Graham

Graham — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:55:33 +0000

Well, 4e has me rallying against things that alter ability scores in general, but it’s an alternative for sure.

I’m intrigued as to how they will be handling petrification, though. The currently revealed mechanics don’t seem to address gradual mechanics, with the exception of the death and dying rules. Possibly petrification will follow the “3 failed saves” model.

By: ChattyDm

ChattyDm — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:40:50 +0000

I started using the save each round tactic and it helps keep the game moving and leaves the player in the fight.

Okay so Dex Damage isn’t a good idea, granted… what I had in mind was a slowly progressing Paralysis like Petrification seems to shape up in 4e.

What I was seeing was a Penalty to Dex for each hit that disappears at encounter’s end.

By: Graham

Graham — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:29:21 +0000

So… temporary paralysis SUCKS…

But Dex Damage is better?

Yeah, I’m going to have to disagree on that…

Temporary Paralysis, for a couple rounds, isn’t all that annoying, since you know from the start that it’s temporary, and you know how long it will last. But I should have modified it, had it ever come into play, in one of the following ways:

1) As Hold Person, with a save each round to break it.

2) As 4e, change it to immobilized (can’t move, can still attack/defend).

But Dex damage? Boo-urns!

By: ChattyDm

ChattyDm — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 11:37:16 +0000

Good lessons all.

I guess that a good hindsight-fueled mod would be to add Fighter levels to the Ghouls.

But Paralysis, even for a few round, SUCKS as it basically puts out a character for a whole fight sometimes…

What would be better would be to adapt Mearl’s Rust Monster mechanics and make ghoul attacks inject a poison that deal Dex Damage and as written in the rules, the character gets paralysed completely if Dex drops to 0.

my 2 cents.