Pathfinder 1E Converting my current campaign to Pathfinder Alpha

OK -- I am considering converting my current Age of Worms campaign to pathfinder alpha. I already have a load of house rules that I have introduced that fix some 3.x things and some stuff that makes it "more like" 4e.

We have a 5th level party that has just started Encounter at Blackwall Keep. My party structure is in my sig.

But if I wanted to TRY it out I would beseech all of you that are better rule-monkeys than I am to help me out. My current house rules are attached to this thread.

My biggest concerns:

• Change in experience point progression -- I man need to go with FAST to let the PCs stay where they are supposed to be for the AP, or add in some more side-treks
• Universal Mage school -- looks broken already with Metamagic Mastery, and who would take much else with a free fireball, shield, teleport and many of the wizard "staples".
• How does it stack with other classes? I wonder how these classes will compare to other WOTC base classes like Dragon Shaman, Beguiler, Warlock, etc..
• Will my fighter who took a barbarian class and is not progressing as Warblade be upset that he didn't just run Fighter all the way so far?
• Any thoughts on how this will affect the AoW AP in general?

Also, can you think of what might already be "broken" that I should avoid at first? I am using a second wind variant, but with the turning ability healing PCs, will this even be necessary? On that note, is the cleric turning/healing ability only fired when there are undead about, i.e. can he/she use a turn attempt to mass heal?

Just a start to the thread. I will add more later.

Experience points & leveling -- it might sound sacreligious, but nothing freed me up to DM as I pleased like ditching XP. Especially if you are running a series of adventures where you know what level they have to be at each point along the way. Just tell them when it is time to level up.

I wouldn't judge the universal mage too harshly yet. His freebies simply free him up to prepare and cast some of the lesser used spells. That would seem to reflect his versatile nature. The metamagic mastery isn't so bad either when you consider there are magic items and splatbook feats that grant similar power. Again, it helps give him versatility.

EricNoah said:

Experience points & leveling -- it might sound sacreligious, but nothing freed me up to DM as I pleased like ditching XP. Especially if you are running a series of adventures where you know what level they have to be at each point along the way. Just tell them when it is time to level up.

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I have already considered this as well, but my players really like to know "how much they have" to feel that sense of build-up for the next level. I really could just wing the numbers and give them what they want to hear and still make it work out when I want to.

EricNoah said:

I wouldn't judge the universal mage too harshly yet. His freebies simply free him up to prepare and cast some of the lesser used spells. That would seem to reflect his versatile nature. The metamagic mastery isn't so bad either when you consider there are magic items and splatbook feats that grant similar power. Again, it helps give him versatility.

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Agreed about the universal mage, but I have already ruled out some things like no Divine Metamagic for Persistant Spell. (I think I once saw this build called the Divine Metacheese Cleric somewhere. ) It just makes the Cleric already too powerful, especially when you add in nightsticks (which I have not).

EricNoah said:

Experience points & leveling -- it might sound sacreligious, but nothing freed me up to DM as I pleased like ditching XP. Especially if you are running a series of adventures where you know what level they have to be at each point along the way. Just tell them when it is time to level up.

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To quote a certain annoying American Idol judge (there's a non-annoying one?) "100 thousand million percent yes!!" I love having done this, especially with using published adventures. Going with milestones, I'm able to pace things better, and fit in the adventures I want, when I want without worrying about "trying to squeeze this in before they level so I don't have to adjust everything" and that sort of nonsense.

The next best thing that I tried for a while was session-based XP. I forget the exact factor, but it was something like multiply average party level times some number (750* comes to mind, but I forget), and that's the XP for the session. If there was some particularly hard encounters and/or a lot accomplished, up the factor. If it was a bit more slow and not challenging, lower it.

When I first tried it out, I did double bookkeeping with session-based and standard out of the book. Turns out they were almost exactly the same. I figured it was coincidence at first, but over the entire campaign, they didn't deviate any significant amount and the party leveled at the same points either way.

Maybe it's not an issue for you, but I was surprised how happy I was after I left it behind. Plus, given the fact that you are running an adventure path, it'd be much less of a headache than trying to keep them on track. You could always just sit down ahead of time and figure out how much XP they need by each section, then just go from that to give them a number.

As for the other issues, I still have to digest the rules, but thanks for the good concrete questions. It helps to analyze rules with real situations to consider. (Though for one thing, if you are adopting a new ruleset, I would allow complete rebuilding of characters if people want as long as they fit the same concept. So, I wouldn't have a problem with the fighter/barbarian just rebuilding his PC if he wants. A lot of times they might just want to go from there or swap out fighter levels or something. *shrug* But I'm pretty open to rebuilding when a new class or such comes out that fits the concept better. But I'm an overly nice DM.)


* Basically, it's factored on leveling every 4 sessions, but factor it for whatever size your party is. With the factoring for more and less challenging, it's not exactly leveling every 4, so it's not entirely predictable, but I also managed to do it for a year before anyone noticed they were leveling that regularly.