Pathfinder - archer paladins, holy smokes!

There is some contention regarding Pathfinder rules allowing paladins that take up archery. You'll find it on message boards and F2F debates at game stores and across tables. It's not like edition wars or anything but I've seen some of the debates in forums get a tad heated prospectively. What camp am I in? Well, I play an archer paladin in one of my games so I'm all pro on that.

Some of the comments I've seen pro and con (paraphrased of course and probably some bit out of context and debatable):
Pro-
It is not against the rules as written.
Pathfinder, themselves, have stated it is 100% legal as long as the paladin stays within their code.
In PF rules archery, in and of itself, is slightly superior to other ways of dealing out non-spell damage.

Con-
*pulling from IRL historical doctrine via the Holy Roman Church* It is illegal for knights to use un-honorable weapons like bows or crossbows.
Paladins are supposed to be plate mailed tanks.
In past editions of the game (Dungeons and Dragons) it is against paladin code to use ranged weapons.

Now, first, I am no authority. I'm just a hobbiest. I play PF for the fun and social aspects of it. "Fun" to me is setting out a goal in game and achieving it - and this usually consists of "something is threatening X, we go out and find it and make it stop, get stuff for that". On top of all that you get to be somebody all heroic and shit and explore that personality and maybe even plagiarize something from a movie you saw that was cool. On top of all that you get to improve as far as you succeed. On top of all of that you get to shoot lightning bolts and jump on fantastical monster heads and hit them with magical weapons named "Dire-Smasher" and shit like that. If you are lucky this goes on for longer than a year and you build a story that is fun to be a part of.

I am in no position to say anyone is right or wrong and me doing so would be useless as my typed words here and what comes out of my mouth has no effect on how others chose to play a game.

We played another session of Brandon's (the GM) Rise of the Runelords yesterday and we got to the boss fight of the session. It was against some undead/revenant/corrupted dude that was evil and crazy. He had minions too, more undead ghouls or something like that. We were at full strength as we rested right before,though there is only 3 of us in the party (and if you did not know encounters are hardwired in the assumption there are 4 PCs). The fight was tough, the BBEG focusing his attacks on our druid played by my wife Gretchen. The wizard (Jason) laid down some battlefield control which took some of the bear of the mooks off of us. Balder, my archer paladin, put some arrows down range. We saw what could be done.

Balder clicked all the columns for this one. Smite Evil, Divine Bond (on bow), Deadly Aim feat, Rapid Shot feat, Point Blank feat, and some other stuff. He was rocking a full attack of +12/+12/+12/+7 and doing 1d8+20 damage per arrow. In 4 rounds of combat he shot 12 arrows - hitting with 4 (some crap die rolls) and netting a total of 110 points of damage as per what Brandon the GM tracked. Due to Smite Evil and the BBEG being undead the first arrow that hit did 1d8+24. Hitting with less than half the shots taken he still put down 110 damage. Balder did get bit by one of the mooks taking 6 points of damage, no need for some fortitude save as he is immune to disease.

The BBEG went down and the mooks were handeled with Balder's positive energy burst he can do. He then healed everyone with lay on hands and cured the diseases they picked up with his mercy ability. Because of his ranged ability he could stay out of melee for the most part and still put some damage down.

Some would say "Wow, so broken!!" and to that I say, "That's what Balder was designed to do." Let's take a good look at it all.

1) Balder is a paladin, a champion of good and justice. He is hardwired to defeat evil things in combat. This target was not only evil, it was undead too.
2) The whole group made tactical decisions for the best tactical situation - up to and including leaving Balder with line of sight on his target (aka positioning).
3) We made sure we also had proper illumination so as to get rid of any concealment chances due to not being able to see clearly.
4) Some buffs were up for us.
5) Some debuffs on the baddies were also up.

If the BBEG were not an undead evil guy that murdered people things would've been different. I did some math to prove that point. If the target was a rabid dire bear 75 feet away Balder would be doing considerably less damage. 2 arrows at 1d8+5 at best. That's if they were able to get the rabid dire bear out into the open, in the day, no rain or fog. Balder is not helpless mind you but he's not as bad-assed as he is against a demon.

Change that rabid dire bear into a gang of chaotic neutral humans and elves that have taken to banditry? We're looking at a whole different philosophy of contact for Balder there. Afterall, he's a lawful good paladin, he can't just go kill these bandits. At least, that's how I'd play him.

Pathfinder games

I'm actively playing in 2 right now - Rise of the Runelords (GM Brandon) and Wrath of the Rigteous (GM Jason). I play 2 different Paladins in both, which I blogged about some recently.

My last game was last Saturday, WotR. We got a good loot drop and leveled. It was very fun. Jason hosted and supplied us with pizza. I had painted minis for every one of our PCs. I also brought some extra minis for Jason to use as I have about 1 billion of the old DDM minis. Well... more like around 800. On top of that I will be painting more minis for the game as we will need fly demons and fire demons and poop demons... all kinds of demons as I am under the assumption the main baddies in this AP are demons.

With Reaper putting out the Bones line a few of my FLGSs are discounting metal minis to the point I can afford them. What was once a $30 metal mini is now a $12 metal mini. Goody for me. On top of that the Bones "large monster" minis are much more affordable at $8 or whatever they are which leads me to...

...Rise of the Runelords. I know we have some giants coming up against us soon. Brandon bought the boxed RotRL tokens set but I will be able to help him by fielding some giants. I'm not sure what kind of giants there are but I have hill giants, stone giants, fire and frost, plus maybe a cloud giant or 2. On top of that I've got a good amount of trolls of the normal/rock/mountain/ice kind. Plus a bucket of ogres. With his tokens and my minis we've got it covered. I did buy a Bones female cloud giant. It's kind of "sexy" but it's the only female cloud giant out there I can find in the normal spots. Will be fun to paint.

Next RotRL session is this Sunday the 22nd - last game session of the year unless we can pull one more WotR session out post Xmas.

Now, stop reading this and go see if any local stores sell mead!! Then buy it. No real reason, just enjoy some mead or wine or a nice cranberry juice and soda... whatever you like. Happy Holidays and may you never get mixed up in a scheme lead by Odin himself.

Saga, Dark Ages Skirmish war gaming I

Finally played our first 2 games of Saga a week and some days ago. It was an icy cold yet dry Friday night, in the 20s, and Spencer and I finally had everything we needed to play Saga.

First things first: Spencer and his Anglo Danes whooped my Viking ass. Twice. I looked silly.

The saga of us playing Saga can be summarized like this:
1) Spencer, interested in historical war gaming, mentions Saga to Gabe. Gabe says "OK" spring of 2013.
2) Gabe buys rule book.
3) Both buy Wargames Factory plastic minis and go through a learning process from various backgrounds in mini painting. A lot if things are learned.
4) Both now have very solid opinions on how to build and paint their armies next time around.
5) We realized.... or more like Gabe realized a lot... how important terrain was for Saga and started a whole new hobby.
6) Life, family, other hobbies, and 7 Years War 1/32 minis and All The King's Men mixed with the above made the process of saying "yes" to "Spencer kicking Gabe's ass" take about 8 months.

The game is relatively easy. Players get some points to build an army with. The units are standard - no special group gets much special troops like more modern games common at your FLGS. There is some standardization and variance but nothing in the "collectible" market. Basic warbands are:
Vikings
Anglo-Danes
Welsh
Normans
You pick one and build off of that. You can use anything to represent the light standards they coded into the rules to represent them; the only hard rule being what your table decides is the level you want to achieve in looks. Spencer and I decided to shoot higher than painting pennies blue and red and scooting them about a coffee table around jars and books... though one could play Saga doing that.

What you need (and not necessarily what I bought):
D6s - a bucket of them
Saga dice - can be bought or made
Minis, or something to represent your army in a fashion like minis would
Saga rulebook and the "battle board" that comes with the rule book
A flat surface that is about 3'x4'
maybe some of them painted pennies I mentioned above for fatigue markers
a measuring tape or measuring thing that can do 2", 4", 6", and 12"

I'm sure I missed something.

Players deploy their armies in some order based off points and scenario. You then go at it. There are phases you must follow:

1. Roll Saga dice (with runes or helmets and stuff on them) and place them on your battle board. Your battle board is the thing that gives your unit activations (move, shoot, rest) or special abilities like roll 2 extra attack dice for every X on the board and stuff like that. You put the Saga Dice on the thing you want and hope it comes in handy.

2. You activate and end up dukeing it out with the other players units.

Our 2 games went like this:

Game #1
I deploy my Vikings like an idiot. Spencer deploys his Anglo-Danes like a smart guy. I run my vikings all over the place and get picked apart by Anglo archers. My own archers are in the woods for some stupid reason and not able to get volleys to bear. The last turn looked like this:

What is left of my hearthguard and the warlord, full of fatigue and archers somewhere behind them out of any kind of range and in the woods. That's Spencer back there with HIS WHOLE ANGLO-DANE WARBAND.

Game #2
Started off a bit better. I deployed, from left to right behind the little thatched a-frame I built, warriors, warriors, warlord, hearthguard, hearthguard. My grand plan was to march my warriors up the middle and then my warlord and his hearthguard up the right flank from behind the a-frame and SLAM into the Anglo-Danes.

Oh Snap! Them wily Vikings looped around on the right!!

Well, it didn't work out too well. Spencer kept his troops in a nice and tight formation and I didn't move my left flank up enough to even get into the fight so Spencer's Anglo-Danes concentrated a majority of his forces on my Warlord and his bodyguards and they were all killed.

All that getting my lunch taken and then wallered in sound unfun but I had a blast. We were learning the game so spent a lot of time reading the rules - really Spencer did most of that. I followed along and found all the mistakes one could make when playing this game. Now we know. *Dons cape and flies away*

What I learned is that using your battle board is very important. Having your units work off each other is very important. Knowing your strengths and your opponents weaknesses are very important. All basic Art of War stuff - but mechanics of the game you are actually under the umbrella of, and The Art of War is best.

As has been stated in other blogs way before I could state it here - Saga is not a game of grand moves or strategies. Your field is quite small and we played 4 point war bands. Some of your battle board tactics will give your war band it's flavor (Anglo-Danes are slightly defensive while Vikings are all about attacking with as many attack dice as one could dream of) but it's mostly move and shoot and melee. Oh... and protect your warlord.

Players with a grip on the rules can have a game started and finished in 45 minutes. Maybe longer with larger war bands.

One can use any brand of "vikings" or dark ages warriors for your war bands as long as it's Vikings or Anglo-Danes. Normans and Welsh have cavalry so it's a bit more complicated for those war bands if you into saving money. Solid rules are 25mm scale, dark ages-esque look, and you can tell the difference between:
Levies - mostly javelins, slingers, and archers - no armor - farmers and such pressed into service.
Warriors - shields and spears mostly, some variance depending on war band.
Hearthguard - the pros - armor and shields and axes and stuff.
Warlord - the big cheese.

The Holidays are all up on us!

Happy Thanksgiving to those that do such things in any form yu choose to do it. For me it was football (Raiders and Cowboys), early dinner, meeting some quasi inlaws, and dessert at friends' home later that night. I'm a Raiders fan, been one since the late 70s. I spent a lot of Sundays, as a child, at gatherings with my Thai Mother (Wilivan "Juke" Martin, RIP) and our extended Thai family

"Black" Friday was a day in while the wife worked. My kid and I hung out and I tended to some house cleaning while the kid tended her room. I also got a few hours of Skyrim in - my preffered method of passing time in a relaxing and fun way when I can. I also did do a bit of shopping on Amazon, got the kid some of her gifts.

Saturday was a day of going to the DEQ to get new tags for the truck and... a Pathfinder Game!! We're in our second session of Pathfinder's Adventure Path Wrath of the Righteous and so far it has been great. Jason is the GM and there are 4 players - me, Brandon (my Rise of the Runlords GM), Ryan, and Jeremy.

I play a quasi crippled paladin and scion of the Crusades Aaron Marcovina - he is young and strong but not very fit for the "campaign life" of a crusading crusader near the Worldwound. His Father, General Marcovina, has justly placed him in an admin and flag officer position within the city of Kenabres - Aaron's leadership and intelligence making up anything he lacks in raw martial prowess. He's a good kid, knows his strengths and limitations, and harbors no allusions of grandeur. His policiy of making peace before war has marked him by the seniority in the past year.

The game has been fun so far, I really like trying to RP a lawful good paladin. It's not about being a dick, and all about being a hero that people love and respect. People should be happy when a paladin shows up and there's badness about. I play a paladin in the Rise of the Runelords campaign I'm in too but of a different style - more like a down home kind of guy. Really good archer and physically superior to most but barely a cup of brains and sense in his head. Good guy, just dumb. He's a bit maiximized though and can put out a ton of damage with that bow when he's got all the cards in play. Something like "1d8+12 per arrow, 3 arrows per round... this does not include magic bonuses and smite evil dragon/undead/outsider bonuses". He is level 6.

Half-painted mini of my paladin in Rise of the Runelords - "Baldur". Mason Thorward mini from the Reaper line, old school metal.