What a New PFS Player Should Know


Pathfinder Society

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Verdant Wheel 4/5

In the games in my city, there are a lot of "profissional healers" players that make healing a non-issue. Most of time we care more who will have to play with the diplomacy-guy/gal.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

My Life Oracle never lost a party member. Came close two times, but teamwork saved the day.

The Exchange 5/5 RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

OldSmith wrote:

As a long time rpg player who is new to PFS I appreciate this list but have to admit to not being entirely sold on it yet.

Time may prove me wrong but it seems to me that if every player builds to be able to fight melee and ranged, Carries their own heals and builds to fight swarms. That this is defeating the whole party aspect and watering down classes.
I am new here and may be proven horribly wrong on this and am just overly influenced by past gaming in other systems but every player being able to do everything seems anti team to me

OldSmith, it depends a lot on the environment in which you play Pathfinder Society.

A lot of players like to get a team together and play scenarios with a cohort of friends. So, you can specialize the way player characters normally do. Or, they like to play in large parties, where you can more-or-less count on a wide range of abilities. (There's seven characters in the party. It's likely that somebody can identify magic items.)

Other players are sort of lone wolves in the organized play environment. Their PC goes in with a random group of other characters, and it's sort of a crapshoot to see if anybody has any particular knowledge skill or not.

I've been in parties where nobody had any healing capabilities. Those are fun parties, but, man, combat feels different. Hit points are a non-renewable resource, and there's a priority to hitting hard and fast, before the opponent gets a chance to attack back.

And, incidentally, welcome to the campaign. It's great to have someone with your background and eloquence.

Sovereign Court 5/5

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
My Life Oracle never lost a party member. Came close two times, but teamwork saved the day.

Teamwork and cowardice!

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Exguardi wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
One often looked tactic for dealing with swarms is simply to outrun them.

Confirmed. We've run away from the last 9/10 swarms I've encountered in PFS. Sometimes this was just a cost evaluation (i.e. why would we bother wasting all these alchemist fires on a hard-to-hit swarm that deals ability score damage every turn we fail to kill it).

Yeah... swarms are scary. Even the most minor ones can kill a low level character and/or deal out disease effects that cost resources to remove. No shame in running!

It's the only reason my magus jumped on getting a 4 charge fireball wand when it came up on a Chronicle


Thanks for all the information in here and for those who responded to my post it is appreciated. I am now glad I have not yet taken part in the game at the local store as I obviously need to do some more research to be prepared

Silver Crusade 3/5

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OldSmith wrote:
Thanks for all the information in here and for those who responded to my post it is appreciated. I am now glad I have not yet taken part in the game at the local store as I obviously need to do some more research to be prepared

Not really. Show up, talk to people, have fun!

Silver Crusade

Consider this: You are hiking with a group, and someone gets injured. You don't want to use your supplies that you purchased and might need for yourself on them. You decide it is better to leave them on the trail with a broken leg to "teach them a lesson" to bring their own medical supplies next time. I pretty sure most people would label that "evil".

The issue may be the perception of "evil". As far as I'm concerned, evil is simply selfishness to the detriment of others. Under that definition your character most certainly was acting in an evil manner. Some other people only define evil as mass-murdering, demon-summoning, undead-raising BBEG types, along with their followers who certainly don't questions those acts and possibly enjoy them. Under that definition the character is solidly neutral.

This is a team game, and not helping the team to the point of a death is certainly out of line with the intent. You don't have to keep playing with this guy if it's a problem; that's a core feature of PFS. The only excuse I would accept for "leaving him to die" is if it was an agreement before the game that if he didn't bring a CLW wand you wouldn't heal him. If everything is on the table from the start there's no fault but his own.

As a side note, a character can't really learn a lesson from getting killed, at least not when they will stay dead. A player can learn a lesson from it, but they would learn just as well by sitting out the rest of the scenario with an unconscious character. Choosing to leave him to die to teach a lesson is a decidedly out-of-character move. That's not cool in my games, but how much people meta-game varies alot by table.

Silver Crusade 5/5

I think it is generally better to have all party members conscious and contributing to a scenario, and don't mind burning off a few wand charges to get them up and moving. I'm not going to burn through half a wand to get them back to full unless they're new or there are extenuating circumstances.

I've been in the situation where my frontliner was the only one that was a threat to the BBEG from Dawn of the Scarlet Sun, and a pair of early entry Mystic Theruges had run out of good options other than to pump charges from the CLW wand into me while I kept wailing on the BBEG in what was a long and bloody fight. I don't mind burning some cures on people once and a while if they're doing a good job at their role, and as long as they aren't keeping me from doing mine.

My experience has been that if there is a good team chemistry going on, then people tend not to be so stingy with the healing. FWIW all of my characters have some sort of healing, whether it is a wand or something else, not because I feel I have to, but because I don't want to be a burden on others. And I try to encourage others I play with to think similarly, to try to avoid being a burden.

4/5

Riuken wrote:
Consider this: You are hiking with a group, and someone gets injured. You don't want to use your supplies that you purchased and might need for yourself on them. You decide it is better to leave them on the trail with a broken leg to "teach them a lesson" to bring their own medical supplies next time. I pretty sure most people would label that "evil".

More like this:

You are hiking with a group, and someone gets injured. You use your supplies that you purchased and might need for yourself on them. You tell them to be better prepared next time by bringing their own supplies. And they do nothing.

Later you are hiking with a group, and the same person gets injured. You use your supplies that you purchased and might need for yourself on them. You tell them again to be better prepared next time by bringing their own supplies. You warn them that next time you will not do this again. And they do nothing.

A third time you are hiking with a group, and the same person gets injured. You tell them to take care of themselves as you have helped them twice and warned them to be better prepared.

This is not evil. It might not be good, but it's not evil.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Riuken wrote:

Consider this: You are hiking with a group, and someone gets injured. You don't want to use your supplies that you purchased and might need for yourself on them. You decide it is better to leave them on the trail with a broken leg to "teach them a lesson" to bring their own medical supplies next time. I pretty sure most people would label that "evil".

The issue may be the perception of "evil". As far as I'm concerned, evil is simply selfishness to the detriment of others. Under that definition your character most certainly was acting in an evil manner. Some other people only define evil as mass-murdering, demon-summoning, undead-raising BBEG types, along with their followers who certainly don't questions those acts and possibly enjoy them. Under that definition the character is solidly neutral.

But changing that to "and someone gets injured for the upteeth time, again because they didn't care about their own safety or bother to bring their own supplies when they have every opportunity to do so, and knew other would be there to fix them up, again" really changes it's perspective, too.

Not only are they slowing everyone down on the hick, they are using up resources that everyone else might need, and yah, they failed to learn a lesson the easy way already.

Doing anything but teaching them the lesson the hard way is simply encouraging them to continue and reinforcing the idea that everyone else but them has to co-operate and play the team game. It also teaches them the lie that there will always be others around to fix their screw ups, and that it's other player's responsibilities to make sure that they make purchases to use on him or her.

It's loose/loose for everyone.

Silver Crusade

Once again, the solution is simple: don't play with that person. You've played with him two times previous. Both times you were unhappy with the way he played, yet you decided to play with him a third time, despite having no evidence that anything had changed. Given that, I can evaluate that you have simply not learned your lesson to not play with this person. Maybe you have to lean this lesson "the hard way" by getting an evil infraction. He isn't playing the way you want him to, and you're clearly not playing the way he wants you to. Why is that you're in the right and he's in the wrong?

Silver Crusade

I'm sorry that you only have one PFS table option each week; that does truly suck.

At the same time, if there is only one table and this guy would have had a character death, then he certainly couldn't keep playing with your current characters. Would you roll new level ones with him and start over? Would your table not make now because you effectively forced someone out?

It sucks that you have to, as the experienced and responsible player, pull a share of this guy's weight at the table. Yes, best case he would learn and you would all go on your merry way. However, can you truly not have fun playing PFS without this guy buying a wand of CLW? I can promise he can't have fun playing PFS without a character...

4/5

Riuken wrote:

I'm sorry that you only have one PFS table option each week; that does truly suck.

At the same time, if there is only one table and this guy would have had a character death, then he certainly couldn't keep playing with your current characters. Would you roll new level ones with him and start over? Would your table not make now because you effectively forced someone out?

It sucks that you have to, as the experienced and responsible player, pull a share of this guy's weight at the table. Yes, best case he would learn and you would all go on your merry way. However, can you truly not have fun playing PFS without this guy buying a wand of CLW? I can promise he can't have fun playing PFS without a character...

Sometimes I have 2 PFS options a week, woo woo......

And if I'm 1-5, he can certainly make a new character and jump right in......


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Depends. Is that action to light up a stogie and comment on the pretty patterns his blood makes? That's evil.

Is that action to stay in the fight and help keep yourself and others alive? Nah. That's pretty much expected, even good.
Is that action to run for your life because the group is getting slaughtered? Not heroic, but certainly not evil.

"leaving a PC to die if there was an easy opportunity to prevent that death" and "chose to withhold basic, free, first aid to teach a different agent a lesson about being prepared." Doesn't that pretty much say it all?

Sovereign Court 2/5

They teach people in school that "slippy slope" is a fallacy that does nothing to combat a point of view other than distract from the point. This is a fantastic example of that.

If you honestly cannot see the difference between the examples you provided and taking a passive aggressive, spiteful action against another player or character, then it is not worth the time explaining what is wrong with your counter argument. The differences are self evident.

Edit: I stopped reading your post after the first sentence. thejeff's answer was pretty spot on.

3/5

Show of hands, who actually doesn't carry a wand of cure light or infernal healing?

Fun as it is to debate the moral failings of imaginary people, are there actual experienced players who do this? I can see why a new player might not have a wand, I'm asking about people who have played half a dozen scenarios.

Does anyone actually in this conversation have a PFS character over level 1 who doesn't carry a wand? If so, why not? What are you spending the prestige on which you think is better? If not, why are we having this conversation?

4/5

Ring_of_Gyges wrote:

Show of hands, who actually doesn't carry a wand of cure light or infernal healing?

Fun as it is to debate the moral failings of imaginary people, are there actual experienced players who do this? I can see why a new player might not have a wand, I'm asking about people who have played half a dozen scenarios.

Does anyone actually in this conversation have a PFS character over level 1 who doesn't carry a wand? If so, why not? What are you spending the prestige on which you think is better? If not, why are we having this conversation?

Obviously all my characters spend their first 2 prestige on a CLW or Infernal wand.


Riuken wrote:

Consider this: You are hiking with a group, and someone gets injured. You don't want to use your supplies that you purchased and might need for yourself on them. You decide it is better to leave them on the trail with a broken leg to "teach them a lesson" to bring their own medical supplies next time. I pretty sure most people would label that "evil".

The issue may be the perception of "evil". As far as I'm concerned, evil is simply selfishness to the detriment of others. Under that definition your character most certainly was acting in an evil manner. Some other people only define evil as mass-murdering, demon-summoning, undead-raising BBEG types, along with their followers who certainly don't questions those acts and possibly enjoy them. Under that definition the character is solidly neutral.

This is a team game, and not helping the team to the point of a death is certainly out of line with the intent. You don't have to keep playing with this guy if it's a problem; that's a core feature of PFS. The only excuse I would accept for "leaving him to die" is if it was an agreement before the game that if he didn't bring a CLW wand you wouldn't heal him. If everything is on the table from the start there's no fault but his own.

As a side note, a character can't really learn a lesson from getting killed, at least not when they will stay dead. A player can learn a lesson from it, but they would learn just as well by sitting out the rest of the scenario with an unconscious character. Choosing to leave him to die to teach a lesson is a decidedly out-of-character move. That's not cool in my games, but how much people meta-game varies alot by table.

Closer analogy:

You are diving with a buddy. You find an underwater cave. You explore and have a wonderful time. You are getting ready to leave and notice that your tank is just a bit under half full, so you decide to swap to your reserve. Doing this will blow at least 20% out of your first tank. Your buddy notices that his tank is empty because he stupidly didn't check his equipment. He also stupidly didn't bring a reserve tank of his own. He b%&~~es at you because it isn't his job to look after and provide his own equipment. He tells you that if you want him to find the awesome caves, then you need to pull your weight by packing extra gear for him and maintainencing his stuff.

Your choices:

Give him your reserve tank before you unhook your primary. Maybe you have enough to get back, maybe you don't. You could die, but your buddy will make it out for sure on your reserve tank.

Give him your primary after you swap. There is basically no way he will make it to the surface on that amount if air.

Tell him to suck it up and wait it out, you'll be back for him with help in a few days because you cant make that deep a dive again for a while after surfacing.

Exactly which one of these is evil?

What is the minimum someone could reasonably expect?

My personal answer involves leaving a dude in an underwater cave, by himself, and without my gear.


BigDTBone wrote:
Riuken wrote:

Consider this: You are hiking with a group, and someone gets injured. You don't want to use your supplies that you purchased and might need for yourself on them. You decide it is better to leave them on the trail with a broken leg to "teach them a lesson" to bring their own medical supplies next time. I pretty sure most people would label that "evil".

The issue may be the perception of "evil". As far as I'm concerned, evil is simply selfishness to the detriment of others. Under that definition your character most certainly was acting in an evil manner. Some other people only define evil as mass-murdering, demon-summoning, undead-raising BBEG types, along with their followers who certainly don't questions those acts and possibly enjoy them. Under that definition the character is solidly neutral.

This is a team game, and not helping the team to the point of a death is certainly out of line with the intent. You don't have to keep playing with this guy if it's a problem; that's a core feature of PFS. The only excuse I would accept for "leaving him to die" is if it was an agreement before the game that if he didn't bring a CLW wand you wouldn't heal him. If everything is on the table from the start there's no fault but his own.

As a side note, a character can't really learn a lesson from getting killed, at least not when they will stay dead. A player can learn a lesson from it, but they would learn just as well by sitting out the rest of the scenario with an unconscious character. Choosing to leave him to die to teach a lesson is a decidedly out-of-character move. That's not cool in my games, but how much people meta-game varies alot by table.

Closer analogy:

You are diving with a buddy. You find an underwater cave. You explore and have a wonderful time. You are getting ready to leave and notice that your tank is just a bit under half full, so you decide to swap to your reserve. Doing this will blow at least 20% out of your first tank. Your buddy notices that...

Or buddy breath with him on the way out, like you were trained to do. And don't go cave diving again without proper training and gear.

Thing is, it's not a good analogy, since it's either not helping him or dying yourself. If you want a better analogy, since the discussion is about a fairly minor expenditure of your resources to save his life, it would be more like it happening earlier in the dive and giving him your reserve bottle, knowing you still would have enough to get out, assuming nothing else went horribly wrong.


thejeff wrote:
BigDTBone wrote:
Riuken wrote:

Consider this: You are hiking with a group, and someone gets injured. You don't want to use your supplies that you purchased and might need for yourself on them. You decide it is better to leave them on the trail with a broken leg to "teach them a lesson" to bring their own medical supplies next time. I pretty sure most people would label that "evil".

The issue may be the perception of "evil". As far as I'm concerned, evil is simply selfishness to the detriment of others. Under that definition your character most certainly was acting in an evil manner. Some other people only define evil as mass-murdering, demon-summoning, undead-raising BBEG types, along with their followers who certainly don't questions those acts and possibly enjoy them. Under that definition the character is solidly neutral.

This is a team game, and not helping the team to the point of a death is certainly out of line with the intent. You don't have to keep playing with this guy if it's a problem; that's a core feature of PFS. The only excuse I would accept for "leaving him to die" is if it was an agreement before the game that if he didn't bring a CLW wand you wouldn't heal him. If everything is on the table from the start there's no fault but his own.

As a side note, a character can't really learn a lesson from getting killed, at least not when they will stay dead. A player can learn a lesson from it, but they would learn just as well by sitting out the rest of the scenario with an unconscious character. Choosing to leave him to die to teach a lesson is a decidedly out-of-character move. That's not cool in my games, but how much people meta-game varies alot by table.

Closer analogy:

You are diving with a buddy. You find an underwater cave. You explore and have a wonderful time. You are getting ready to leave and notice that your tank is just a bit under half full, so you decide to swap to your reserve. Doing this will blow at least 20% out of your first

...

All depends on how much healing you have already used, and how much danger is behind you.

If you are in a position where you have 10 charges left and the BBEG fight is still in front of you. Then you may feel disinclined to pop that wand on the dude who indignantly didn't help himself. Particularly if those 4.5 hit points may save your life in the next encounter.

at this exact moment you could save his life, but at what opportunity cost? You are asking me to gamble with my life to save yours.


BigDTBone wrote:

All depends on how much healing you have already used, and how much danger is behind you.

If you are in a position where you have 10 charges left and the BBEG fight is still in front of you. Then you may feel disinclined to pop that wand on the dude who indignantly didn't help himself. Particularly if those 4.5 hit points may save your life in the next encounter.

at this exact moment you could save his life, but at what opportunity cost? You are asking me to gamble with my life to save yours.

Or the dude being up and fighting might save your life. And honestly, you're not likely to be blowing through those 10 charges in the last fight.

But you're right and I've never argued otherwise. When it's in combat or putting you much more at risk in the immediate future, that's a different story. That's a cost-benefit analysis.

It's very different from "I'm going to let this guy bleed out in front of me to save 15 gp." Or just to teach his player a lesson, I'm not even going to try a Heal check to stabilize him.

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