04-01-2011 Pathfinder Game Recap

Posted a recap of the April 1, 2011 session of the Northridge Pathfinder Game. This is a long one – eighteen pages.

03-11-2011 Pathfinder Game Recap

Posted a recap of the March 11, 2011 session of the Northridge Pathfinder Game.

02-25-2011 Pathfinder Game Recap

Posted a recap of the February 25, 2011 session of the Northridge Pathfinder Game.

01-28-2011 Pathfinder Game Recap

Posted a recap of the January 28, 2011 session of the Northridge Pathfinder Game

In The Service Of The Empire

A friend of my from the Valley Area Gamers, who ran the 1530s Europe Campaign, is now running a Pathfinder Campaign.

The campaign is called “In The Service Of The Empire” and I am playing a half-orc barbarian air elmentalist called Speaks With Wind. As with the previous campaign, I am doing in character recaps of the game session and posting them here.

Speaks With Wind Background

01-07-11 Session Recap

01-14-11 Session Recap

An Analysis Of The Persistent Spell Feat

In one of the Pathfinder Society Games I played recently, one of the other players commented that he thought the new Persistent Spell feat found in the Advanced Players Guide was overpowered. As I feel that most metamagic feats are worthless, I decided to do a little analysis of the feat to see if it was really worth a +2 to the spell level.

A summary of the feat: by increased the level of a spell by two levels, any targets that need to make saving throws need to roll two separate d20s, taking the lower of the two results. To see how this played out, I set up a spreadsheet to roll 5000 sets of 2d20, taking the lower and seeing what the percentage of each final result was. I also calculated the percentage if each was taken singly and compared that to the statistical 5% chance for each value. I ran it multiple times and got fairly similar results each time. I have shown one set of the results below, as well as a graph comparing the values.

Normally, using 1d20 you would expect a 25% chance of a roll of 5 over lower, 50% of 10 or lower and 75% chance of 15 or lower. The average roll would be 10.5.

For 2d20, take the lowest, the average was a little over 7 (7.07 in the numbers above). The odds of getting a roll of 5 or lower were about 44%, 10 or lower was about 76%, and 15 or lower was about 94%.

What this actually means is dependent upon the Difficulty Class of the effect and any bonuses to the saving throw. Still, I think this fairly equivalent to raising the DC by 3 to 4. As I think that +2 to a DC is worth a +1 increase in spell level, I actually think that Persistent Spell might actually be one of the few worthwhile metamagic feats.

The OpenOffice.org spreadsheet I used for the analysis can be found here

Two More Pathfinder Society Modules Completed

I played PFS #3  – Murder On The Silken Caravan last Saturday and PFS #12 – Stay of Execution yesterday.  Both were with the same DM and used OpenRPG, so I think I have a decent basis for comparison.  About 1/2 the players were the same as well.

PFS #3  – Murder On The Silken Caravan took much, much longer. We started at 9 AM last and finished up a little after 5 PM (without any breaks).  One of the players had to drop out a little after noon, because it was taking too long.  The last combat was just a number crunching exercise.   The big bad would knock a character into negatives, we would heal that person while doing a little bit of damage to him, and then repeat.  We also had a new character (a first level druid) who didn’t take any weapons so after his big snake got put down, he wasn’t a whole lot of use, other than for some healing.  Despite the length, and the fact that my character can’t seem to make any Will saves, I did have fun with the adventure. I think it was the better of the two overall.

PFS #12 – Stay of Execution went a whole lot faster. We started at 3 PM and were done by about 7 PM. However, it seemed little more than a series of semi-related encounters. While I was playing, the following picture and the words "railroad plot" kept popping into my head:

That isn’t really fair to the DM, though.  As I normally do, I bought the module afterwards and any railroading is kind of baked-in.  We actually managed to role-play through some of the encounters, despite the module seeming to assume that we would just fight our way through.  After reading the module, I was impressed at how flexible the DM had been. My character’s faction missions were laughable. If you had all of the encounters, they would be completed.  It was a fun adventure, but that was due more to the role-playing skills of the other players and DM than due to the module design.

In prepping for the adventure, I did learn a bit more about OpenRPG. Some of the plug-ins often some nice features (global variables, et. al.) but I definitely think TTopRPG is a better program.

Perils Of The Pirate Pact

Last night was my third Pathfinder Society Game. Ithuriel, ran PFS #17 – Perils of The Pirate Pact.

It was another fun session.  A little longer than the first one, but not nearly as long as the second.  The length was important, as this was another “red-eye” adventure, starting as Midnight Eastern Time. 

We had six PCs again. There were supposed to be seven, but two were no shows and we had a last minute addition.  From my limited experience, six seems to be the perfect table size.

The plot behind the story was pretty blatant, even though the DM toned down some of the hints.  The combat was the easiest of the three adventures so far. Only one PC went into negative hit points.  The plot was a little more complicated than PFS #7 – Among The Living, but not nearly as much as #10 – Blood At Dralkard Manor. This was more linear – go to one area, have a combat, go to the next area area, have another.

My character’s faction quest actually seemed a little meaningful, in that it really did promote the goals of my faction, albeit in a very minor way.  It was interesting that there were two other Osirion faction members present, so we were all doing the same quest.  That made it really easy, because if any one of us succeeded, we all did.  This morning I bought the module, as usual, and four of the five faction quests seemed like they would be useful to the faction.  Only one (Taldor) seemed like it was really a stretch.

We also used Skype again. I think I prefer the games with a voice chat to those without.

The most important thing is that this was my character’s third adventure, so he leveled ;-). Korvan Winterlight is now Level 2.

Blood At Dralkar Manor

I played my second Pathfinder Society Game last night. As a special Halloween adventure, Ithuriel (the same DM from the first session), ran PFS #10 – Blood At Dralkard Manor.

It was a long adventure. We spent six hours playing and even then only finished as the DM narrated away some of the slog and grind. The length was a bit of the problem as it was a bit of a “red-eye” adventure. It started at 6AM Athens time (where the DM was located) which is midnight Eastern Standard Time. Most of the players were on Eastern Time I believe. I actually probably had the best time zone (Pacific) – for me the game went from 9 PM to 3 AM. I can’t possibly see how this adventure could be run in four hours, which is the time limit for scenarios at conventions.

Despite the late hour, I think everyone had a good time, although some players had a hard time staying awake. I think the adventure was better written than the last one, PFS #7 – Among the Living. While there was lots of combat, it seemed less linear and more flexible. I bought the adventure afterwards and it did have much more of a plot to it. The adventure didn’t seem to force a specific mix of characters on us either. We had the following:

• Level 1 Human Cleric
• Level 1 Human Wizard
• Level 1 Elven Ranger
• Level 1 Elven Wizard
• Level 2 Human Cleric
• Level 3 Gnome Bard

While combat was very challenging and about half the party ended up going into negative hit points everyone survived.

My character’s faction quest in this adventure (and the last) seemed pretty silly. After reviewing the other faction quests when perusing the module, I think most of them are rather meaningless. Technically, the are supposed to forward some goal of your character’s faction (there are five factions) but most (not all) seem really useless to said faction. I understand the constraints Paizo is under in creating these – the adventures are time limited and the quest needs to be doable in the time allotted without screwing up the game. They still seem trivial, though.

Overall, though, I had a blast. I actually remembered my familiar this time ;-). There is supposed to be another “red-eye” session next Saturday, and I can hardly wait.

A Day Of Firsts

I have been playing role-playing games since I received the Basic Dungeons and Dragons blue boxed set for my birthday in the late 1970s. With over 30 years of RPGing behind me, I don’t get to do a lot of things for the first time anymore. Despite that, yesterday I managed to do three RPG firsts (for me). It was my:

1. First time playing a tabletop role-playing game online. I have played online computer games and MUDs, but never a game designed for face-to-face tabletop roleplaying.
2. First time playing Pathfinder. I bought the core rulebook in September, but hadn’t played a game.
3. First time playing an “Organized Play” game. I have played some convention games using pre-generated characters, but was never part of the RPGA or other such organization, until I joined the Pathfinder Society.

Some general comments about all three “firsts” follow:

Online Gaming
I was a little leery about online play, as I didn’t think it could match up to the camaraderie and bonding of face-to-face gaming. I was very pleasantly surprised; I had an excellent time. The game was played using TTopRPG for the chat room and gametable, and Skype for audio chat. While I couldn’t see the other players, the combination of audio chat/visual gametable gave seemed to make up for the lack.

The Dungeon Master and other players were skilled gamers and the game went very smoothly. One of the things I found amazing is that this game would have been nearly impossible to do in the real world, due to the geographic dispersion of the attendees. I was in southern California while the DM was in Athens, Greece. The other three players were in Canada, Michigan and New York, respectively. The pre-game setup (getting & confirming players & times, etc.) was also done online, via the Pathfinder Society Online Collective, a new Google group set up for that purpose.

A quick note on the technical aspects. TTopRPG is a wonderful gametable, at least from a players perspective. It was very easy to use and made things very smooth. A nice laniape was that Pygon, the programmer of TTopRPG was one of the players. The only technical difficulty I noticed is that the Dungeon Masters audio occasionally broke up (like a bad cell call). I could hear everyone from North American very clearly, however.

Pathfinder RPG
As I mentioned earlier, this was my first time playing the Pathfinder RPG, a new role-playing game from Paizo. When Wizards of the Coast decided to abandon the 3.5 version of D&D in favor of the vastly reworked 4.0 edition ruleset, Paizo, which had been the publisher of Dungeon and Dragon magazine, decided to create a compatible game by forking the 3.5 rules (which had been released under the Open Game License).

The result was the Pathfinder RPG. I think they did a wonderful job on it as well. Pathfinder (rules free online in the Pathfinder Resource Document) is essentially compatible with 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons, but has had some of the rough edges smoothed away. One of the things I noticed when playing yesterday is that everybody always seemed to be able to be involved in the action; there were only a couple of times when anybody took a Delay action. In the past 3.0/3.5 games I had been in, there were a lot of Delay actions, when players couldn’t find anything for their characters to do. In the Pathfinder game I played yesterday, the action was continuous.

Pathfinder Society Organized Play
I had considered joining the Living Greyhawk campaign by Wizards of the Coast, but since I don’t attend conventions, it seemed kind of pointless – I would never get a chance to play. When I was that the Pathfinder Society would allow home games and online play, I decided to give it a chance.

Yesterday’s module was PFS #7 – Among the Living. It took about 5½ hours. Since the set run-time is supposed to be four hours, I am guessing it could be quite rushed in a convention setting. I found it very enjoyable although it was very combat heavy. There wasn’t any real need for role-playing, although the group did so anyway :-). The faction quest my character had was quite easy.

After the game was over, I bought the module to see what “behind the curtain”. We basically covered everything in the 21 page module. I did note that most of it seemed to be monster stats. As the module was designed to be scalable for parties between levels 1-7, each encounter had 3 different sets of monster stats. The net result is that there was one page of maps, a couple pages of background text, another page of player handouts, the cover and credits pages, and the open game license. The rest was statblocks.

After reviewing the module, the Pathfinder Society rules and my experience yesterday, I have come to a few conclusions. One, organized play ala Pathfinder is fun. Two, it won’t replace regular home gameplay. Character growth and development is a lot more rigid and constrained. The ability to affect the developement of the gameworld via character actions seems totally lacking. On the plus side, it allows a lot of different people/characters to share and interact in a continuously changing groups of PCs while still maintaining some sort of character continuity.

While I think I prefer “standard” gaming to “organized” play, I did have a blast yesterday and hope to play again in the near future.