Further Thoughts on Digital vs Paper

I’ve written about this topic before, but with every new hardcover the Paizo produces, it’s something I have to think about: do I buy the considerably cheaper PDF, or wait and buy the expensive physical version? Now that I have bought a couple of hardcovers in PDF format, I have a much better idea of what works for me.

Ultimate Equipment. Although it is nice to simply type in the piece of equipment you want into the search bar, this means that you need to know what the item is called. I’ve found for use at the table, the physical version of this book works better. It allows both the game master and the players to browse through a specific section and find a suitable item, rather than having to guess its name.

Bestiaries. Although these are nice to page through while preparing a session, I almost never use these during play. They are simply too big to have open in the space I have. Usually I’ll find the monster on the PRD and print out its stats so I can make notes on the page. Sometimes I’ll use the book to show players what the monster looks like, but more often than not, I’ll try and find the image online anyway and show it on my tablet. I would love to have PDFs of these books so I could just print off pages as I needed them, rather than trying to squeeze stat blocks from the PRD onto one page for printing. Having the PDFs would also allow me to extract the images to show to my players without fear of them seeing the statblocks.

Monster Codex & NPC Codex. Like the Bestiaries, these are too big to use at the table, and printing individual pages makes it easy to make notes. I’ve made more use of my PDF of the Monster Codex in the short time it’s been out than I have of my physical copy of the NPC Codex.

Advanced Class Guide. This is not a book that I would actually need to use at the table, so a physical copy would be preferable for reading and preparing. The huge size of the PDFs (even the ones split up by chapter) means that it is quite cumbersome to navigate and so I usually end up looking up the rules online instead. The same goes for the other rulebooks.

Player Companions and Campaign Setting softcover books. The PDFs of these are pretty small and open easily on a computer and a tablet. I don’t see myself going back to physical versions of these.

Modules and Adventure Paths. I’m definitely leaning towards PDFs for these, for similar reasons as the Bestiaries and Codices, as I can print out relevant bits and make use of the images to show my players without exposing them to spoilers on the page. I do love my Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition hardcover, but it’s seen a little bit of wear and tear over the last couple of years of play, which conflicts with my neat freak tendencies.

Pawns. I’m happy to pay for the physical version of these, as they are good quality and come in a sturdy box. I’ve tried making my own pawns in the past, but that was really more trouble than it was worth.

These are all just my personal preferences of course. Do you lean towards paper or digital for certain types of books, or do you stick with one or the other? Share your thoughts below.

Keeping up with the Joneses #47

Declan was already interested in cooking as a teen, so he baked his own birthday cake.

No one else was around to celebrate with him, so he continued with the task of growing up on his own.

Declan wasn’t the only one growing up. Callie too found the years catching up with her at last.

Her twin sister followed shortly thereafter. Both were quite happy with what they had achieved so far in their lifetimes.

Nevertheless, Clara continued to work around the house and hone her skills.

Declan, in his newfound adulthood, immediately started looking for someone to help him continue the Jones family legacy.

Minifig Monday #31: Ghostbusters

Today I have a special post featuring not one, but four minifigures, the Ghostbusters! They come from the LEGO Ideas set that I built recently. I’ll post some closeups of the minifigs and the set itself in a future post, but I thought I’d share these in the meantime.

Minifig Monday is a weekly post in which I feature a random LEGO minifigure from my personal collection. Unless otherwise stated, all minifigs have been photographed by me.

Keeping up with the Joneses #46

On one of her walks around the neighbourhood, Callie discovered a huge tree, much bigger than any other she had seen. Something told her to care for the tree.

After several visits where Callie talked to and cared for the great tree, she noticed something she hadn’t seen before.

There was an opening in the great tree’s trunk. An opening large enough for a Sim to squeeze into. There seemed to be a sound coming from inside the tree. Was the tree at last talking back to her? Further inside, Callie came across a stream, and she decided to follow it, and eventually she entered a strange mist.

Through the mist, Callie at last spotted an exit, and found herself in Sylvan Glades, a beautiful and apparently untouched spot.

Callie spent the rest of the day in the special place she had discovered, and wondered if she would share the secret with her family. Was she truly the first Jones to discover this magical place? She thought perhaps she was.

Thoughts on High Level Pathfinder: Part II

I’ve read before that the maths behind the Pathfinder (and similar) system starts to get a bit crazy around 15th level. Now that the party has reached level 15, some of those things I read way back when are coming to mind, particularly what I read about the way the maths starts to get out of control.

This is not true for every situation, but for characters like the monk and ninja, some skill checks and saves become totally pointless. Since critical hits and fumbles are only supposed to apply to attack rolls, this means that in many cases, several characters in the party are actually incapable of failing skill check and saving throw rolls.

It’s not a case of a particular player attempting to break the system, it’s just that the numbers accumulated over 15 levels have combined into rather insane totals. Our ninja is basically incapable of being hit by anything requiring a reflex save, and let’s face it, the ranger could probably track an invisible flying creature without so much as picking up a die. I rarely bother asking for Perception checks anymore, as there’s no way all 4 PCs would miss spotting or hearing the important thing in the room.

Acrobatics is another example of maths gone crazy. Except for vertical jumps, which do have significant DCs, most other Acrobatics checks are trivial to 15th level characters with high Dexterity. To give a specific example, our monk had just been blinded by an enemy. He wanted to get to the other side of the room to attack said enemy. The fight happened to be on a high walkway, so the most direct route would be a jump across the gap. The floor was slippery, increasing the Acrobatics DC a little bit. Being blinded added a few penalties, but even with all of those, rolling was really just a formality.

Although the description of the blinded condition suggests that the character should only be able to move at half speed without an Acrobatics check, the DC of that check is 10, which is laughable to a 15th-level character who has put a lot of skill points and other bonuses into that skill. While this sort of thing would make sense if the character was Daredevil, it certainly tested my suspension of disbelief in this particular instance. Yes, I could (or should) have ruled that he simply couldn’t make the jump while blinded, but when a character has been built to be really good at something, taking that away is not always the wisest course of action.

I’d love to hear about your experience, either as player or game master, of high level Pathfinder play.

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Featured image by caiomm on DeviantArt.

The Festering Maze of Sloth

Rise of the Runelords Campaign Journal. Session Date: 17 April 2015. Continued from previous session. 

After spending several weeks in Magnimar resting and creating new magical gear, all that was left was to resurrect Nanali. The only cleric capable of performing a true resurrection was the high priest of Abadar, who agreed to lower his fee in exchange for a position for one of his clerics in Jorgenfist – bringing banking, religion and civilisation to the Storval Plateau.

Nanali’s resurrection went well, though a faint smell of smoke seemed to follow the shaman even after the spell was complete. She claimed to have spoken to ‘the spirits’ in the time she was dead, and insisted the party return to Runeforge to destroy all its inhabitants. The heroes didn’t need much convincing, and so they returned to Runeforge and entered the wing of sloth.

This wing of Runeforge turned out to be a festering maze of sewer-like tunnels, with an almost-overwhelming stench filling the entire area. The heroes encountered several disgusting demons and other creatures inhabiting these filthy tunnels. During these encounters they discovered that Nanali had learned some fiery new spells as she destroyed enemies with righteous fury.

In the depths of the maze, the heroes found a morbidly obese wizard with a heart of slime and tentacles, apparently being kept alive by noxious vapours from several pipes. He was not alone either, and was aided by four vrocks. Jordimandus used powerful spells against the heroes, and even managed to blind Nu, but once they worked out that his life force was tied to the coloured liquid in the pipes, they were able to cripple him, forcing him to flee elsewhere in the wing. Unfortunately his demonic heart could no longer sustain him without sustenance from his lair, and he was dead before the heroes tracked him down.

Thoughts on High Level Pathfinder: Part I

In my ongoing Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder campaign, the party has just reached level 15. I’ve written about the challenges of designing good encounters before, but high level play seems to have compounded the existing issues. Today, I’ll discuss a couple of combat-specific issues that have come up.

Combat takes forever. Combat in Pathfinder isn’t the fastest to begin with, and it has only gotten slower as the party has leveled up. With everyone having a multitude of abilities to choose from, the decision-making process takes that little bit longer (particularly on my side if I’m running a high-level spellcaster or monster with lots of abilities I’ve not used before). This either leads to players (and the GM as well) resorting to tried and true (but sometimes boring) options like attacking the enemy head-on, or slowing down the game by needing to look up and discuss unfamiliar rules.

Sometimes we’ll come across a weird situation we’ve not encountered before, with no easy-to-find answer in the rules – this, of course, slows things down even more. As the GM, I know I have to make some kind of decision in these cases, but I often feel like I don’t have enough experience or knowledge of similar situations to be able to make a call that I’m happy with. This has improved over time, but occasionally we’ll still get bogged down in discussion.

Slow combat leads to distracted players. The longer a combat round takes, the longer everyone has to wait between turns. This naturally leads to players fiddling on their phones or tablets, or zoning out, and as such not paying attention to what’s happening in the encounter. This means they’ll take longer to react when their character is hit in combat, or their turn comes around again.

Annoying Encounters. In our most recent session, which took place in the sloth wing of Runeforge, there was a maze containing two rather strange enemies, omox demons and chernobue qlippoths. Both had a good set of defenses, having quite a few resistances, immunities, damage reduction and spell resistance, so I reckoned they would prove to be a nice challenge for the party. While I didn’t actually use them as minions, they did serve to delay the heroes and allow the boss time to set up his defences.

Unfortunately, while these monsters had good defences, their attacks were another story. After a series of bad rolls on my side, and good rolls from the players, both sets of monsters ended up doing little or no damage to the PCs at all. Instead of challenging encounters with unusual monsters, we ended up with two drawn out battles that were just irritating: preventing the ninja from using her sneak attack, and reducing the effectiveness of the sorcerer’s fireballs led to a lot of frustration.

I’m not entirely sure how to solve the combat speed issues, but I’ll definitely be considering enemies more closely for future encounters. There’s a fine line between easy, boring encounters, and deadly ones. Finding that perfect balance is an ongoing quest for a game master.

I’d love to hear about your experience, either as player or game master, of high level Pathfinder play.

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Featured image by helgecbalzer on DeviantArt.

Keeping up with the Joneses #46

Darlene found high school quite challenging. She often felt close to burning out.

Clara always looked stylish when she went to work. Declan spent much of his youth wondering just what it was his aunt did for a living.

For an up-and-coming secret agent, Clara didn’t seem to have the best social skills.

In fact, other Sims in the neighbourhood found her rather dull. Perhaps because she couldn’t talk about all her exciting secret missions?

Callie fared somewhat better than Clara in the social department, even though her job required her to be unpleasant to people on a regular basis!

Minifig Monday #30: Fortune Teller

She never thought that anyone would really believe her that she was a psychic. She tried to keep her predictions as vague as possible and let her clients fill in the blanks. She never expected any of them to come true…

 

This week’s minifig is the fortune teller from series 9, which was released in January 2013.

Minifig Monday is a weekly post in which I feature a random LEGO minifigure from my personal collection. Unless otherwise stated, all minifigs have been photographed by me.

Keeping up with the Joneses #45

After the traumatic destruction of the family dollhouse, Callie decided to add some new toys to Darlene’s playroom. Over the years, the family had amassed a large collection of dolls. They made the playroom feel extra playful.

Meanwhile, Clara was working on becoming the best secret agent she could be. Keeping fit was just one aspect of that.

Darlene still looked up to her brother, but she couldn’t help wonder if he had been the one to trash her beloved dollhouse. She wasn’t brave enough to ask him about it, though, so she would probably never know.

The dollhouse eventually slipped her mind as her birthday arrived.

Darlene grew up into a geeky teenager with romantic aspirations.