"One PF campaign ends (far too early...) and another..." Topic

starts.

Well, I am so disappoint.

My thug Rogue got up to 4th level, saw the light and evolved into a cleric of Serenrae, raised to 2nd level. Last session, one of the party died. His character/condition had been roleplayed for many sessions as such that having him raised would have been anathema to him and his deity.

Add to that the complication of the Zen archer who utter destroys everything with his bonuses, and the tower-shield specialist dwarf with outrageous AC… well, to challenge THEM, the GM has to find enemies that are powerful enough to literally tear the remaining PC's apart, unless the enemies were illogically meta-played against only *their* PC's.

So, we kinda had a broken enough party that the group (w/o me there) decided that campaign went as far as the GM can take it without DMing oddly – so they called it.

I was not ready to quit the ever-evolving story of my redeemed thug!

ANYWAYS – a new campaign will start, with another player being the GM, centered around Korvosa.

THIS time, playing a dwarf Rogue (Entrepreneur/Speculative Miner) who has dreams of rare, rich ore in the mountains between Korvosa and the Chelish border.

These things happen. Pathfinder (and it's 3.5e precursor) seems prone to killer builds that kinda break things. You almost have to willfully under-build to keep from getting ridiculous.

Or you just let the DM go wild on the killingness. :)

That's why I stick to 2nd edition AD&D.

That sucks though I liked the story of your Rogue you shared earlier. Any way the DM will allow you to port it over into the new campaign?

I won't even ask at this point – everyone is starting at 2nd level. It is a different DM, so if the "power-creep" is not entertained by his style of running the game, it is still a possibility at later levels.

That other character is "potentially" wanted for murder in Varisia. She's guilty, no doubt, but Varisia is still back-woodsy enough that one murder in one city does not equate to a manhunt across the entire countryside.

But – it is still possible… Her victim was a wizard (guild payback/bounty-hunters, maybe?)

Perhaps you could ask him to give her a cameo role in the new campaign? One thing I do for my players when they retire a character is to make them show up in the next one, controlled by me obviously. Even something as simple as being a quest giver or information assistant or something puts a smile on their faces. That was actually my player's idea as well.

And that's why slavishly following rules sucks… and blows. I flatly refuse to play in any game where bonuses and tactics are an important part, or where players deliberately max / min their characters to 'win'.

Amen, Zardoz.

Classic AD&D could get munchkiny, no doubt, but it mostly came from the DM handing out too much magical loot. There wasn't much way other way for a party to become unbalanced, and certainly none of the "feats and elites" stuff that turns me off of 3.x and its related ilk.

It's a darn shame that caught up with you so quickly, Mardaddy. It strikes me as absurd that a party could become unbalanced at 4th level. Either Pathfinder is horribly broken at its core, or your group/DM is allowing munchkinism to overcome the game, though probably inadvertently. Seems to me y'all need to put in place some house rule "brakes" on the build stuff, or you're gonna have the same problem rise up all over again.

6th level, actually. And new DM now, who had the PC in the previous adventure that died. He caught me up to things this weekend, and I've got my detailed backstory and hooks for future play; he seems to be more story/immersion and character driven. I expect a number of session will have zero combat at all.

He said he does not award XP, that he'll just tell us when to punch up a level, and to be prepared for some to advance slower than others (I'm hoping he'll gauge that on the player munchkinism as it is experienced in gameplay.)