Pathfinder RPG

Sheff

Sheff

Sheff

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Joined
16 Jun 2008
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1,310
Hi all,

Does anyone have any experience with playing this or Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, especially GMing?

I've played for a few hours with a group where we spent most of the night wandering lost in some woods, I enjoyed the combat but the story was a little lacklustre.

A few friends have asked to give this a go, with me being the gamesmaster and I'm a bit worried that the scenario will get a bit bogged down with travel and other mundane tasks (I'm used to Call of Cthulhu where we usually skip most of that stuff) - is it ok to ignore some of this or will doing so lead to problems further down the line?
 
As the Gm, it's entirely up to you how you handle things like travel, making camp, preparing food, etc.

One way to deal with this is to have standard protocols - an example of this is when my groups (when I'm GM) approach a door in an unknown or dangerous place they have a process - the rogue listens at the door (perception check), depending on the results the dwarf warrior will open the door, cleric goes second and rogue goes in last - this way everyone knows what's happening and there's no arguments. You could do this for setting up camp when travelling - who does what in what order - settle it once and that's it.

This leaves some element of responsbility with the players - particularly in situations where something might happen - and knowing what people are doing in advance will help streamline your encounters and even help you to plan special surprises :D

If you are playing Pathfinder, I stronly recommend getting your hands on one of the Adventure Paths - each one is part of a series of six 96-page modules - if you go for something like Rise of the Runelords, you will find loads of support online.

My one piece of advice for any GM is to just create the world and let the players tell the story - most of the fun for me as a GM is trying to continue telling a story when my players are determined to make a mess of it! A good example of this was last night's game when our redemption-fixated cleric gutted a key witness for not answering him - luckily it was at the end of the session - cos I'm not entirely sure how to proceed from here!
 
As the GM its up to you to run the story, if they are constantly travelling you need to throw in some encounters...or build the tension by rolling die for no reason. We skip travel usually unless there are encounters in the way or some side quest or temptation.

Let them think its quite open but guide them towards the story objective.
I write out lots of story and pretty much read from the script with optional paths that I think they will take and manage to route them back to where I want them.
 
To be honest, my general advice in regards to effective GMing is to remember that the rules and such are way way wayyyyy lower priority than the players having fun.

If need be, break the rules horribly to speed things up. Reduce pointless dice rolling, introduce house rules to keep everyone engaged. Just remember that you're not there to "beat" the players but to entertain them (and yourself).

Personally I don't bother using any rulesets any more. Having character sheets are important so the players can identify with their characters and some means of comparison of skills/etc but aside from that use your own judgement.
 
Thanks everyone, I'm using Hollow's Last Hope as a starter just to see what everyone thinks before using an adventure path.

A bit of travel is needed to add to the tension as it's time limited but I think I'll base the timing from decisions of the group as much as possible rather than random rolls on the encounter list.

With regards to formations and procedures for doors etc, I think I may through a few things at the group first so they can try to establish that themselves, then ask if that's what they'd like to do as standard unless they say otherwise.

The party seems quite good, we have a human druid, half-elf cleric (undead lord), an elf witch and possibly two rangers or one ranger and one rogue.
 
Just thought I should post an update, my wife has invited another person to the night so I'm now looking at:

Human cleric (undead lord)
Human druid
Half-orc druid
Elf witch
Human ranger
Half-elf ranger

Due to the size of the group I'm going to try to create as many opportunites to avoid combat as possible.

When GMing CoC I've been able to handle groups of this size quite well before but it does seem quite a daunting prospect, especially as there are going to be four additional bodies in the forms of companions etc. when the rangers get to level 4 there'll be at least 12 in the party!
 
Crikey - that's a big group compared to what I normally have (max 4, normally 3)! I would suggest, if you haven't already, thinking about some combat management aids - there are some online (I use HeroLabs, but it's not free), or you can get the official pathfinder combat aid, which is actually pretty cool.
 
You can give them a lot of fighting to do in forests, the rangers and druids should be pretty good at that.
Do you understand magic? It has so many uses that some people don't think about.

I play in a group of 7, the only rule the GM has is no gnomes. We have a gnome. And a demon who was CE but messed up on some dice rolls and became LG. Hilarity ensued but not as much as the accidental camel fisting incident....
 
Bickaxe said:
You can give them a lot of fighting to do in forests, the rangers and druids should be pretty good at that.
Do you understand magic? It has so many uses that some people don't think about.

I play in a group of 7, the only rule the GM has is no gnomes. We have a gnome. And a demon who was CE but messed up on some dice rolls and became LG. Hilarity ensued but not as much as the accidental camel fisting incident....
Click to expand...
:D

I do love those crazy sessions when everything goes absolutely haywire and you make very little progress, but you do end up laughing your backside off :D

This week my group turned up with piles of Christmas food - we ended up getting very little done and just stuffed our faces for an hour before we even got started!
 
Bickaxe said:
You can give them a lot of fighting to do in forests, the rangers and druids should be pretty good at that.
Do you understand magic? It has so many uses that some people don't think about.

I play in a group of 7, the only rule the GM has is no gnomes. We have a gnome. And a demon who was CE but messed up on some dice rolls and became LG. Hilarity ensued but not as much as the accidental camel fisting incident....
Click to expand...

The module that I'm using involves searching throught a forest, there'll be plenty of opportunites for them to use charm animal and wild empathy... they'll probably end up killing everything in sight. :rolleyes:

I'm still learning about all of the insane stuff you can do with magic, I'm a PC in a rise of the runelords campaign (Elf cleric of Desna with the travel and luck domains wielding a longsword and eventually a composite longbow) and have been looking at all the ways you can abuse fly etc.

I'm adding puzzles where the group will need to use their cantrips and orisons so that if they fail a roll or do something wrong they can try again without difficulty, hopefully it'll be a nice learning curve for them.
 
Well the first session went well last Sunday, with a mix of people really getting into the roleplay and a couple enjoying the combat and remaining silent during information gathering etc. I'm pleased that they solved my riddle without any prompting, and avoided starting a fight with absolutely everything.

It took a little longer than I anticipated as the group struggled to figure out where they needed to go, they have two of the three items from Hollow's Last Hope. If I were to re-do it, I'd probably ask the group to either elect someone to speak or at least take turns in decision making as they were quite... enthusiastic.
 
I'm fortunate in that the group I play with tend to think the same way, we delegate speech to our most diplomatic player (Gnome Bard with a hat fetish).
This of course does not stop us from chipping in with useless and silly comments which the GM takes on board in an attempt to stitch the Gnome up.

You need to get them to play to their strengths and target those that you think will be best at dealing with the situation.
 
Bickaxe said:
I'm fortunate in that the group I play with tend to think the same way, we delegate speech to our most diplomatic player (Gnome Bard with a hat fetish).
This of course does not stop us from chipping in with useless and silly comments which the GM takes on board in an attempt to stitch the Gnome up.

You need to get them to play to their strengths and target those that you think will be best at dealing with the situation.
Click to expand...

Sadly the character with the highest diplomacy score is a crazed cleric necromancer, although he does roleplay it quite well. :D

I think it may take a while for everyone to establish how they want to play and for me to work out what their strengths are, I do have to compensate for someone who has exceptionally poor dice rolls (he is very good at Warhammer leadership tests though!) - perhaps giving bonuses for adding details in combat etc.
 
Sometimes and purely for crazy idea reasons, our GM lets you have a modifier. Usually this just encourages people (especially newbies) to get silly and holds the game up while they monologue their amazing rescue attempt of a cat stuck in a tree that involves all sorts of acrobatics, a Chinese wire team and some apples.

You should let the necromancer be the diplomat, it makes things very interesting as he can be selfish and screw the rest of the group over as its his nature.
 
Letting the Necromancer become the leader would certainly be interesting. He is currently planning a kingdom he wants to build when he's a higher level, involving public transport facilitated by undead and a decent sewearge system.

..and of course yearly cullings to help maintain the undead population.

I have said I'm not running a kingmaker style campaign so most of this will be out of game, I think the rest of the group are going to decide he's the main villain!
 
Getting into this very soon just ordered the beginner box to get started with (never played a proper rpg before) with a guise to move on to the full game once we get our heads round everything. We have been playing a bit of Heroquest recently and that has given us the taste for more in depth gaming and the whole character creation thing and stats appeals to me. There seems to be a lot to take in but there are quite a few videos up on youtube which I'm spending a great deal of my time watching.
 
Anything you need to know or require a layman's explanation, just ask.
The Core Rulebook can look daunting at first but when you realise you only need to know the bits that apply to your character it makes life easier.
Unless you're the GM......
 
Thanks I will more than likely take you up on that. Got my beginner box today the way everything is laid out and explained is brilliant has eased a lot of fears I had, character creation was a breeze. I still need to read through a couple more times before I run a game and yes I will be GM so have to learn the majority I think once I have got into the swing I will invest in the core rulebook too.
 
It being Opensource helps, if you have an Android tablet, I recommend the Masterwork Tools app, it contains most of the info from about 8 books and over 3000 monsters (not counted, just a guess)
 
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