Pathfinder 1E New DM Needs Help

[timASW]

When I'm setting up a dungeon the first thing I think about is why its formed.

If it was specifically a defense structure thats going to lead to man made (ish) walls and floors everywhere, doors, adequate ventillation, lots of chokepoints and defensive features etc.

If it was specifically a mine to start it probably has some defenses in the near surface area ( D&D world after all, cant have wandering monsters eating your miners) but after thats its probably lots of long, narrow, twisty passages that were carved to follow veins of ore in the rock without much concern for comfort.

Whereas if it was a natural cave decide if it was caused by water, wind, volcanic forces or tectonic shearing. Then google those things and see how they form cavern systems.

Then decide if those factors are still present or if its a dead cave.

Once you've done that stuff you'll have a very solid idea of what your dungeon should look like.

 

[Andrew Ridenour]

Okay, so I have a sorcerer player (Gnome BL: Elemental-Fire... though that doesn't matter...) and I'm curious, how do you handle spell components? For now, Eschew Materials seems to handle the small stuff, but I'm curious what you do once the cost becomes to high, or Eschew Materials no longer applies. I've thinking, just have them buy a spell component bag, and then just subtract the cost of the item from there gold, but some items are quite expensive, like a 25,000g diamond for Wish (I think its wish). What do you do?

 

[Stormonu]

Folks handle spell components along a whole spectrum of ways. At one extreme, some DMs totally ignore spell components. Some only worry about the expensive components (those with a listed GP value). I'm guessing most require the wizard/sorcerer to buy a spell component pouch (or use Eschew Materials) and figure the spellcaster has the most common components, and any expensive component has to bought/acquired (some may track uses of the spell component pouch and require it to be refilled - I think the game denotes its supposed to have 100 uses before exhausted). At the other extreme, some DMs require players to buy and pack the individual components - run out of a specific component (say a live spider for swallowing for Web), and you won't be casting that spell until you restock.

On the note of expensive components, I've seen it handled two ways; "hand-waved" where the spellcaster just deducts the amount during downtime or even at the time of spellcasting (assuming the spellcaster had the foresight to garner the needed component prior to its use) or the required item has to be crafted/found/purchased and available to the caster before casting.

None of these ways are wrong; old BECMI D&D ignored components (with a few rare cases); 1E assumed you used components while in 2E they were optional, but encouraged. All of these are valid choices in Pathfinder and what you use just depends on how willing and comfortable the DM and the players are about tracking this kind of stuff. If you're DMing, I'd definately get the group's input on this. Tracking this stuff is up there on the list with other "annoyances" such as tracking ammo, food, water and encumbrance. A few rare folks enjoy tracking this stuff, most tend to see it as a hassle or slow-down in the game.

However, be very aware; expensive components are often a balancing factor to spells that can be otherwise abusive (such as Scry and old-school Stoneskin).

 

[Sekhmet]

While there have been a great many wonderful tips and hints provided above, and I highly recommend learning the proper methodology behind creating great dungeons, Myth Weavers has a useful tool for quickly pumping out dungeon floors that allow for much easier/less complicated dungeon building.

http://www.myth-weavers.com/generate_dungeon.php?

Try it out. You'll probably like it.

 

[Andrew Ridenour]

I'm not a big fan of random dungeon generators, not to say they don't have there uses, but most of the dungeons created are just to random in design, and have no feel of what they were before they were said dungeons. The only random Generator I've thought about using at all though, would be the ones on donjon which actually has a very good cave generator, as well as a it is also good at making labyrinths (though, you might have to to tweak the map design first.) Also, all the other generators on the site are also quite handy, for when you don't have a lot of time, and need to pop out something quick, like a shop, or an encounter, or some npcs, loot, or something like that.

 

[Libramarian]

I think of the whole concept of dungeoncrawling as pretty artificial to begin with, so I'm not overly concerned with realism in terms of the dungeon layout. I think dungeoncrawling works best when you either have some sort of nostalgic or retro appreciation for the concept of moving extremely slowly though random underground corridors fighting random monsters for random treasure, or you do value a coherent atmosphere and verisimilitude but cultivate it in on a more immediate room-by-room basis, rather than shooting for a moment where the player looks at their map and says "oh cool, this looks like it used to be a fortress".

Here are a couple of random generators that use hand-drawn geomorphs, you may find them more interesting:
http://www.1km1kt.net/geomorph/index.html
http://www.velvet-edge.com/RisusMonkeyMap.html

 

[Andrew Ridenour]

I've got 2 new questions.
1. How far in advance do you plan things? I don't want to plan things to soon, that way if players want to do something else, then they aren't rail-roaded into doing what I want them to do, but also don't want to have to little planned, and be stuck with nothing to do, and be forced to improvise an entire session.
2. How do you experienced GMs/DMs perfect the art of doing what you need to do in a sessions worth of Role-Play? (I just finished a session this afternoon (not the cave above, that's next time) and I had to cut the boss battle short, due to time constraints.)

 

[timASW]

I've got 2 new questions.
1. How far in advance do you plan things? I don't want to plan things to soon, that way if players want to do something else, then they aren't rail-roaded into doing what I want them to do, but also don't want to have to little planned, and be stuck with nothing to do, and be forced to improvise an entire session.
2. How do you experienced GMs/DMs perfect the art of doing what you need to do in a sessions worth of Role-Play? (I just finished a session this afternoon (not the cave above, that's next time) and I had to cut the boss battle short, due to time constraints.)

I plan things out way in advance, but then I also save all my work in different folders on my laptop so i dont need to railroad. If the players want to go into a dungeon I've 30 or 40 of them ready to choose from. If they want to explore and ancient tomb then right now I've got 15 in a folder, exploring a thieves guild i 've got 12, etc etc.

To me the actual mapping is usually the longest part. I'm using the combat manager program for pathfinder so I can drag and drop any monster in the published books, pretty much, into whatever room I want and edit them on the fly in seconds to customize.

So I'd say plan ahead, save your work, use digital tools to speed conversion.

 

[paradox42]

Planning can only go so far- don't plan scenes like a movie, plan possibilities (like, say, "if the PCs don't fix the fire-swamp problem by March, then Count Rogan wins in the court and the war with Gelder will start."). And plan NPC character traits, so that you have an appropriate response ready when the PCs ask questions you didn't plan for. Don't plan it like a script, in other words- but know what the NPC "knows" (even if the NPC has incomplete or inaccurate information- for example, if the NPC has been lied to by others, but believes it to be true, then the lie is what he'll tell the PCs if they press him for info because he doesn't know any better). The more detail you can add to this, the better, but always remember: the details cannot depend on interaction with PCs. All interactions with PCs must be unscripted in advance or you get into that railroading problem.

This is a difficult thing for most people to wrap their heads around until they actually GM for a while, but trust me, it can work (and work very well) once you get used to it.

As for squeezing everything into a session, the best way is... don't. Be prepared to go a little bit over time, or end a little early. Your boss battle is an excellent example- it's a Bad Idea to end a session in the middle of a combat, because when people come back the next time around they have to get back into the mindset- remember where everything was, what they were doing, what the tactics were, how those tactics had changed from their original plans (if any) because enemy actions screwed them up, etc. I, and most of my players who went on to GM their own games, will actually continue a combat beyond the official ending time if it means we can actually finish said combat before the session break. By the same token, if it's close to the end of the session (like, say, within a half-hour) and it looks like a combat is about to start, then end the session early so you don't start the combat until the next time.

And one of the most helpful things you can do is have some sort of recording of the session. If your game is online, then be sure your chat program or whatever you're using is logging everything; complete logs are a godsend to any GM. If you're doing it the old-fashioned way, at an actual tabletop, then bring a little recorder (most smartphones have apps you could use for this purpose in fact). That won't record the actual die rolls or visual data, but all the voices will be caught. And at session's end you can record important visual stuff like PC positions for that combat that's about to start, on spare graph paper or some other handy tool, as part of your cleanup before leaving. The reason you want records is because you can refer to them later. Remind yourself of the things you told them not just last week, but also last month and last year; remember also that seemingly-innocuous comments by PCs will often tell you where the players are expecting the story to go, so you can play off those expectations and thus build a more rich and engaging story. What's even more fun is when you can pull a little detail from months or years ago out of your GM's hat and surprise the players with it later, making that seemingly-insignificant detail suddenly vital to the success of the mission. This builds world detail, verisimilitude (look that up in a dictionary if you haven't seen it before; it's a good word for any GM to know), and makes the whole game come to more life in the players' collective vision.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

I have always understood CR as the following: a monster of CR X is an appropriate encounter for a party of 4 PCs of level X where said party should realistically burn through about 1/4 their resources (prepared spells, healing items, etc.). That's a generally good rule of thumb, but gets wonky the higher level you go. PCs gain powers capable of neutralizing enemies in a single turn and it can get messy if a higher CR enemy gets lucky with something like a breath weapon or AoE spell and takes out half the party. I prefer to use large groups of lower CR critters, as it simultaneously gives players more targets and exposes the PCs to more enemy attacks. Fighters enjoy mowing through lower HP enemies, and spellcasters can blast away and take out or incapacitate large numbers of enemies. One giant monster with a high CR who happens to resist spells or is difficult to hit in melee makes half the party feel pretty useless in a hurry.

I guess my advice on the density of dungeons is to default to lower (than the party) CR monsters in most rooms and have a higher than party level CR boss monster near the end. Never do more than about 4 CR higher than the party level though, or you start to risk TPK situations and no one likes that.