Questions about Class: the Cavalier

Image taken from www.deviantart.com and by biotechbob

Welcome back readers! Here is another entry in our Questions about Class series, this time focusing on the Cavalier. As you may (or may not) know, Flying Pincushion Games is about to released its next book, Into the Breach: The Cavalier.  So we thought it was a good time that I, Kiel Howell, sit down with fellow Pincushioneer Jeffery Harris to talk about the class.

KH: First of all, thank you for taking the time to sit down and answer these questions!

JH: My pleasure Kiel, thank you for taking the time to lay down some excellent questions about the cavalier class!

KH: Can you give the readers a little about yourself and your role at The Flying Pincushion?

JH: Well sure, I am of course Jeff Harris, co-owner, CFO, sometimes editor and lead designer here at The Flying Pincushion.  I have been gaming for more than 24 years, but have only been in the industry officially for about two and a half years.  I am married to a lovely wife and live in a house with as many cats as there are core classes.

KH: So what exactly is a cavalier? Isn’t it just a Paladin on a horse? Minus the curatives?

JH: For those who are not aware, the word cavalier in our real world actually means: Cavalier (/ˌkævəˈlɪər/) was the name used by Parliamentarians for a supporter of King Charles I and his son Charles II during the English Civil War, the Interregnum, and the Restoration (1642 – c. 1679). Cavaliers were also known as Royalists.

But for our discussion purposes here, the cavalier is much more than just a magicless paladin with looser ethics.  To me a cavalier in Pathfinder is something of the quintessential hero, or villain.  Charging, challenging, holding the front line, or bolstering allies with tactics, are all things that great heroes and villains do in fantasy literature, and the cavalier does on the battle matt.  While paladins gain power from divine sources, a cavalier draws inspiration and power from dedicating themselves to an ideal, except that ideal need not be honorable or goodly.  In short cavaliers gain their power by belief in the tenants of their Order.

KH: Why does this stand as a whole class to you? Would it have been better as an archetype of the Fighter?

JH: The cavalier is to me a very different animal from the fighter.  Fighters are martial characters, just like cavaliers, but the main difference to me comes back to motivation.  Fighters can certainly have a number of motivations for fighting, but there is no inherent code or motivating factor built into the class, players usually decide why their fighter fights.  A cavalier however comes with a built in ethical and moral compass, which a fighter does not.  Because of the edicts of conduct attached to each order, cavaliers automatically come with some type of ethical motivation, be it personal glory for the Order of the Cockatrice, all the way to defending the common people as with the Order of the Land.  Basically cavaliers take the great role play and ethical/moral aspect of paladins, add all the shades of gray that lie between black and white, and put the end result on a war mount and say “once more unto the breach!”

KH: What is a class that is so dependant on a mount supposed to do when they can’t have their mount?

JH: That is a great question Kiel, as just such an issue often arises for those playing a cavalier in dungeon or narrow terrain heavy games.  The Flying Pincushion deals with this issue in the forthcoming Into the Breach: the Cavalier by providing cavalier archetypes that trade out or alter the mount class feature.  For instance one of our new archetypes trades your mount for an animal companion that you cannot ride, but who makes an excellent combat partner, while another trades your normal horse for a ghostly one, which narrow walls bother not a bit.

However, that answer does not address all of the cavaliers who have a large sized horse or mount, but really want to get into that narrow dungeon.  I suspect this is where clever thinking or a little help from your parties wizard comes in handy here.  A quick casting of carry companion or similar magic can help keep your mount with the party.  Also small sized cavaliers on medium sized mounts are not only interesting to play, but work just fine in most dungeons, I highly recommend trying one out, I happen to know from personal game experience that they can be very fun.

KH: Can you explain Cavalier Orders a bit?

JH: The best way to think of a cavalier Order is as an ethical or moral stance from which all cavaliers of that order work.  They may do things a little differently from person to person, but their strong belief in the tenants of their order make cavaliers what they are and influence how the character interacts with the game world.  

KH: This class seems to suffer from what I’ll call GM arbitration issues. As in, judging when a cavalier character is keeping to his Order’s edicts. Yet there are no rules for “fallen” cavaliers. What do you think?

JH:  On one side, this open area is role play opportunity and wiggle room for the player, but for GM’s it boils down to a judgement call.  If I were GMing a player whose cavalier has very clearly and often violated their Orders edicts, I would have that player lose their Order abilities until he or she undertook making reparations or returns to following more closely the edicts of their Order.  Falling further out of line with ones edicts could well also cause an alignment change or invoke the wrath of that Order, again, it falls to the GM to deal with such an issue as they deem appropriate.  However it does pay to remember that cavaliers are not paladins, and as such likely do not need a “fallen” template.  Also, if a player cannot or does not follow the edicts of their current Order, the GM and player may well just want to sit down and perhaps find an Order whose edicts are more in line with the players style.  This is a spot where communication is likely key to keeping the game fun for all while keeping with the spirit of the cavalier’s Orders.

KH: The way the class itself reads, there isn’t much flexibility for what type of character you can play...

JH: At first glance, that looks very true, as on the surface the cavalier seems very much a “challenge BBEG, charge BBEG.  However, not only have we attempted to broaden the horizons of the cavalier class with our offerings in Into the Breach: the Cavalier by reimagining what the scope of a cavalier is, but just like any other class, how you build and play it define it.  Sure you can just go with the change on a mount basic build and optimize that all day, but taking time to really imagine a unique and personal take on the cavalier is likely more satisfying.  Being size Small opens up quite a few interesting options, as does experimenting with styles that may not be perfect, but that are interesting and flavorful.  As with any class, a cavalier is only what you make of it.

KH: Should the Cavalier get some sort of Weapon Training ala the Fighter?

JH: From a strict balance perspective, I would say no, simply because there is a plethora of feats, traits, and other options that are just as good as Weapon Training that the cavalier can already obtain.  From the theme perspective the cavalier is more than just a fighter on a horse, he can be a general, an outrider, a robber knight, and much more, all just by using the features that class already has.  The answer is not always giving a class something more, it is making what they already have go further.

KH: Challenges are interesting enough, but they seem limited in both number of uses and number of creatures affected. Your thoughts on the mechanic?

JH: I cannot speak for the Paizo design staff, but the limits to challenge make sense to me.  In keeping with the flavor of the cavalier, challenge is likely very much limited in target scope to further play up the heroic and brave/egotistical and brash aspects of a cavalier.  Challenging the BBEG or BLGG (big lawful good guy) and going at him one on one, is cavalier in the extreme (as in, having a cavalier attitude).  Limiting the number of challenges a cavalier gets per day, just like limited spells, or limited channel bursts, is just that, a balance factor, as in the end, Pathfinder is still a game that needs balance to its rules in order to function, and here we see just that.

KH: Should the cavalier be a full BAB class?  Most cavalier type stories I can think of don’t revolve around being able to attack a whole bunch of times...

JH: Here again the choice of making the cavalier a full BAB class is a balance choice in my opinion.  Fiction tells tales of one great charge, hundreds of horses hooves churning the ground and their riders in gleaming plate lowering lances in unison to devastate a massed foe on foot.  However fiction does not have a complex system of rules, which must balance out against each other.  As a martial class the cavalier falls in line with all other martial classes, which means a full BAB.  Sometimes reality needs to be ignored in order to retain balance.

KH: What would you change about the base class if you were given free reign?

JH: I would expand the available mount options for cavaliers, especially for Small sized characters.  However as it sits, cavalier is near the top of my list for favorite martial class to play.

KH: Have you ever had to ban or have you seen the class banned at a table?

JH: At least from personal experience I have never had an issue with a cavalier character at my table, and have not seen any sort of article alluding to there being a ban.  That is not to say it has not happened, but as a martial character, the cavalier lacks many of the “game breaker” factors of certain other classes that will remain nameless.  The GM may feel differently when a cavalier impales his four hours worth of work BBEG with a lance using Spirited Charge, but generally that just means you doing something right.

KH: What is your advice for building a successful Cavalier?

JH: The best advice I can give is be flexible, build smart, and pick a few things you want your cavalier to do well, and build towards those.  The cavalier has plenty of class features that work fine when not mounted, and there are plenty of ways to work with or around the limiting factor of mount size and dungeon/tight space areas.  While mounted charging does lots of damage, I urge people to explore and play with the other features of the class, like Tactician and challenge.  And of course, if you want new and interesting options for the cavalier, pick up a copy of Into the Breach: the Cavalier, as it has lots of new twists and takes on the vanella jump on a horse with a big sharp stick cavalier.  Cavalier is an attitude along with a class, and the The Flying Pincushion writers have really put some ‘tude into their work on the Cavalier.

KH: Thank you for taking the time to have this chat, Jeff!

JH: Not a problem, as it has been an honor to respond to your insightful and interesting set of Questions about Class this time around.  And I hope this discussion helps folk better understand a great class and that its just not for horse fans anymore.  If you like playing a martial character with a reason for being that has nothing to do with gods and lots of attitude, the cavalier is most definitely for you.

Suggestions from a GM that allows the Leadership Feat

GM_Solspiral’s approach on utilizing the Leadership Feat at your table without breaking your game.

Introduction: I see it all the time on just about every Pathfinder board and blog, no sane GM allows the Leadership Feat. It left me with two choices, I could accept that as a comment on my sanity or explain why and how the Leadership Feat can be a GM’s best friend.

To do that we’re going to have to deal with that fellow hanging out below this line of text.

Leadership can be quite OP, I do in fact see the pink elephant in the room. On paper the player gets to trade in one feat for a minimum of 1 additional character sheet and likely more of feats and actions. A high Charisma character with the leadership feat could well turn into a quasi summoner and to borrow a term from online gaming LAG the SERVER!

Basically this guy:

The first step in taking care of any problem is recognizing the problem and the facts are that if we allow it as GMs players will abuse the rules and with the Leadership Feat that is not a difficult matter. I see it and I get why folk don’t bother but there is one very good reason to not throw the baby out with the bathwater and that is this…

Players with the Leadership Feat are typically much more invested in the game. They care about the story, they care about their cohorts, and they care about their followers (or basically lose them by the mechanics of the feat.) As a GM you have at least one NPC that your player cares enough about to actually listen to and that character can have any number of motives and plot hooks attached to it to draw the PCs ever deeper into your plot.

Here’s a few reasons beyond player engagement to consider:

-Cohorts are a great way to let a player that gets bored with their PCs a way to change out characters as needed in the story (simply flip cohort and character.)

-If a player dies the Cohort can serve as a backup if the intention is to resurrect the fallen PC.

-Cohorts can handle roles no one else at the table wants to play that might be necessary (like being the party healer.)

-Cohorts and followers can divert a wealthy PCs resources into something other than making themselves an optimized Frankenstein.

-Cohorts can absorb some damage if you are prone to “throwing hard” or can be a way to work out some logistics in a dungeon crawl (like guarding the door out for example.

-Cohorts are a great way to incorporate inconsistent players who weave in and out of the game because of scheduling difficulties.
-If you're table is short of having enough players.

I’ll get more into cohorts in a bit. I want to talk about followers next.

A simple houserule with followers can be this: the player has to provide some sort fo reason and structure for the followers to attract them. This can be a ship, caravan, business, or castle, the bottom line is people aren’t going to drop everything and follow your hero without some sort of livelihood.

I’d also encourage the following restrictions:

-No magic item sweatshops

-No body doubles among the followers, a follower isn’t there to take an assassin’s arrow for you.

-Followers take at least 50% of the income they generate.
-No daisy-chaining leadership (a cohort cannot also be a leader unless the PC is swapping prime characters.)

Back to cohorts, again some simple restrictions make this work a little better.

-Only 1 cohort can act in a round if the party has multiple instances of the Leadership feat, unless the GM has specified otherwise.

-Cohorts do not gain their own wealth by level.

-Cohorts level with the PC they are attached to and act on the same initiative.

-Cohorts can only share a primary class with the PC they are attached to, basically your PC doesn’t attract followers that are too similar to the other party members your character already travels with.

We can have nice things…

There’s a social contract when you game with someone. As a GM your role is to facilitate the telling of a good story and keeping your players entertained. When there’s conflict you are the arbiter, you get to run the show and essentially play god and in exchange you do the bulk of the work of making the game function. This means talking to players that are ruining other people’s good times or accepting that sometimes your own fun needs to take a back seat. At the end of the day your players are the stars of the show, you’re the director this needs to be a give and take.

As a player it is your job to fulfil your role in the story (typically the hero) and have a good time. You are responsible for one thing, not letting your good time harsh on everyone else’s. This occasionally means letting the other players have the spotlight. This means making a character that others will enjoy, not just you. Optimization is an excellent way to entertain yourself outside the game, it is a rather boring way to play it unless you really like playing games in easy mode.

When players and GMs can be reasonable and responsible you can play a drow, or have the leadership feat, or even play with mythic characters. We can have nice things if we all agree beforehand not to break them.

***Thanks to Wheldrake for the suggestions.

The Fine Line: Point of Interest

By Scott Bingham

     Happy Wednesday and welcome back readers! This is the Fine Line where topics relating to the role of the Dungeon Master are reviewed and discussed, primarily the duties of a DM lying outside of the rules. Last week was a unique opportunity to go over the ideal player with our theme of The Hunger Games, the gamer that DM’s alike dream of.  In our last discussion on the Fine Line we went over the actions taken by the player behind Katniss Everdeen that were above all admirable and displayed her own depth of character.

               

     With this in mind and considering what we have talked about I know move to this week’s theme, Doctor Who. Now my taste in the various fictions and stories is eclectic and as a self-proclaimed member of the geek community I am a huge fan of the Doctor and his exploits. My favorites in particular are the Ninth and Tenth portrayed by Chris Eccleston and David Tennant respectively. For this piece we will focus on one of my most beloved of Tennant’s performances, Silence in the Library.

     The Doctor and his companion Donna respond to a plea for help found written on the slightly psychic paper. The Tardis carries them to the Library, an entire planet devoted to every book to ever be in existence. When I die and move on from this world I really hope my journey carries me to such a place. In any case, the Doctor very quickly realizes a major issue with the expanse of the Library and the planet itself. It’s empty.

     A quick scan performed by the Doctor reveals that the only humanoids upon the planet are himself and Donna. A broader search shows that there are a million million lifeforms on the planet and yet there is silence in the Library. As the Doctor and Donna begin their investigation a pair of messages are passed on to them from whoever it was that last occupied the Library.

Run. For god's sake run. Nowhere is safe. The library has sealed itself. We can't— Oh, they're here.

Count the shadows. For god's sake, remember. If you want to live, count the shadows.

     In the words of the Doctor, “So that’s why we’re here.”

     Before we progress further let us discuss the phenomenal character that is the Doctor. Though possessing average stats in Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution the Doctor more than makes up for it with his ungodly score in Intelligence and his more than above average stats in Wisdom and Charisma. He is a master of utilizing his strengths, avoiding combat almost entirely by using a quick tongue, a sharp wit, and uncanny cleverness to work his way around and through problems. The Doctor is in essence the sort of player I can only fantasize about.

     Now as the DM of such a being you face a daunting task. Yours is the role of the challenger, the means by which the incredible intellect is put to work and exercised. Your story must possess enough curiosity, enough mystery, and enough difficulty to maintain the interest of a vastly intelligent character such as the Doctor. Best of luck.

     What makes the Doctor such an incredible player and such an interesting character? It’s his ability to break the meta and to think outside of the box. Once again he has average stats in half of his ability scores and so he relies upon what he does have often solving problems in a manner most of us wouldn’t even think of. He is constantly making checks and asking questions to gather as much information as he can and the DM does a wonderful job of providing every bit of information sought after. Knowledge is power as they say and the Doctor is the master of it.

     Now back to the Silence in the Library. Right from the get-go the Doctor is told exactly what he needs to know in the two messages; there is something dangerous in the Library, count the shadows, and to run. All of that from two short messages. Throughout the entirety of the adventure the Doctor refers to this information and it saves his life and also aids him in discovering what really happened within the Library.

     A quick Knowledge check reveals the ‘villain’ in this particular investigation the Vashta Nerada. The knowledge that the Doctor possesses about such creatures is chilling.

The Doctor: Almost every species in the Universe has an irrational fear of the dark. But they're wrong. 'Cause it's not irrational. It's Vashta Nerada.

Donna: What's Vashta Nerada?

The Doctor: It's what's in the dark. It's what's always in the dark.

     With the arrival of an expedition of archeologists the Doctor’s task becomes that more daunting. Now he has more than just himself and Donna to protect from a vicious and unforgiving, unseen enemy. He quickly displays the manner in which the Vashta Nerada feed tossing a chicken wing through a patch of shadows. Instantly the meat is devoured leaving only the bone. The Vashta Nerada hunt by attaching themselves as an additional shadow effectively giving their next meal two shadows. However the Doctor is ever so confused as to how the Vashta Nerada came to be on the planet considering that they live primarily in forests hatching from spores found in the trees. Scary stuff. The warning to run now is even more prevalent than before.

     As the story continues onto part two, The Forest of the Dead, the Doctor is being chased by the Vashta Nerada. Fed up with his lack of information he whips around and confronts the empty suit of a recent meal, one of the archeologists, telling and even coaching the Vashta Nerada swarm within to communicate with him. An interesting attempt but it works and he speaks with the predator about how they came to be here.

             Vashta Nerada: We did not come here.

The Doctor: Well of course you did. 'Course you came here.

Vashta Nerada: We come from here.

The Doctor: From here?

Vashta Nerada: We hatched here.

The Doctor: But you hatch from trees— from spores in trees.

Vashta Nerada: These. Are. Our. Forests.

The Doctor: You're nowhere near a forest. Look around here.

Vashta Nerada: These are our forests.

The Doctor: You're not in a forest. You're in a library. There's are no trees in a— Library. Books. You came in the books.

     This is what makes the Doctor such a phenomenal character and the player behind him so amazing and fun to story tell with. At the beginning of the adventure the Doctor was only given tidbits of information. However as he continued to display his ability to ask questions and to think outside of the box his DM appropriately rewarded him with more information and knowledge concerning the mystery of the Library. This is what we can take from Silence in the Library and from Doctor Who in general.

     When our players get creative and show us that they are capable of breaking the mold and utilizing their own level of creativity we should reward them. This article stands as the polar opposite of Speak No Evil, my recent piece on The Evil Dead (2013) wherein the players didn’t ask hardly any questions or make any checks and simply didn’t play the game or become a part of the story. The Doctor however is an incredible character with such depth and his brings his own organic creative element to the story that one can’t help but shower him with his tool and means of solving the mystery; knowledge.

     We don’t solve the problem for our players. That’s up to them. The Doctor is the one who figures out how the Vashta Nerada came to be in the Library and on an even deeper level what happened to the people who had gone missing whilst on the planet. When our players ask the questions and play the game and break the meta we give them what they need to succeed. The rest is up to them.

Mishelved: Firefly

                                     Picture by Odysseyart and taken from www.deviantART.com

By Frank Gori

     Aside from gaming, I was a chorus nerd growing up. By sophomore year I got into the audition based group in my high school that entered into national competitions, and we brought home national trophies in my junior and senior years. When we were at our best my heart would beat faster, my back would stiffen a little, and I’d get a rush that’s hard to describe unless you’ve felt it. For a moment life was transcendent and better than normal.

     I get it sometimes watching other people perform as well. I’ve seen Tom Petty perform live three times and got that vibe at least five times during each performance. I’ve had the vibe in the most exciting moments of UFC pay-per-views like the first time I saw John Jones fight Stephan Bonner. Hamlet when performed properly has that magic. Reading Moby Dick gave me that feeling, and a few episodes of firefly give me that feeling as well.

     It is difficult to single out the element of Firefly that makes me feel something. I like that most of the characters are flawed. I like that they are always on the run. I like that they are revolutionaries of a sort. I like that the frontier stories of our past somehow collided with the sci-fi genre. Maybe I’m just a sucker for characters that are fighting against being totally doomed. Eureka!

     A really good GM does exactly what Firefly does. Picture a game where you’re characters are always on the edge of disaster but never quite fall off. Some die, and sometimes you gain a measure of victory, but the threat always looms. Ravenloft was like that. Dark Sun was like that. Firefly was like that.

Make of that what you will.