In case you don’t know why I am in love with this program, let me take a few moments to tell you. First, I love character creation. I love, if only for a few moments, building the back story and personality of a new character. For a long time, I used to have to build these characters by hand and it would take hours per character with two or three books laying about me. Now it just takes my laptop and about twenty minutes. This has been a huge time saver when making opponent forces for our regular gaming group.

That is another of the wonders of this program. I paid the extra $15 to add the entire Pathfinder Bestiary to my Core Rules (which come with the purchase of the software). So I can now customize almost any creature that I want. I can add hit dice, templates and class levels to whatever creature I would like. So, when the players run into a bearded devil (handily identified by the cleric), they might expect it to have a bleeding attack and that weird beard thing, but they probably wouldn’t expect it to also have a couple of barbarian levels complete with rage abilities. I love the diversity that it allows me to throw at the players, which keeps them on their toes.

I can then take these newly modified monsters and output their created data in lots of useful formats. Obviously there is its own format, but it can easily be saved in XML to be edited later. You can also output the character data as plain text, BBCode, html or WikiText. This format ends up being identical to the format used in the Pathfinder Bestiary. This is super useful if I am running custom bad guys alongside stock monsters.

There is some functionality that I have not attempted to utilize yet. According to the fine folks at Lone Wolf, I can edit pretty much anything in the software to reflect our houserules. For example, at our table we give fighters 4+Int skills per level, rather than 2+Int, and we give extra iterative attacks one point of BAB early. I could go in and make these changes to my software so that it can reflect our table’s preferences. It also is supposed to allow me to custom create classes and creatures. I’ve not needed to do any of that yet, but I like that it is available. However, having not done any of this, I cannot say whether this is a simple and clean process or a cludgy and complex one.

Lastly, Lone Wolf is continually expanding the software and doing so without charging an arm and a leg. At least in my opinion, the software and expansions are very reasonably priced and very simple to acquire. Looking at the post over in Paizo’s forum, you can see what their future plans are for Hero Lab.

In short, I really like this program and I know that it has really enhanced my gaming experience. I don’t have any ties to Lone Wolf or Hero Lab other than being a now loyal customer. You can download and purchase Hero Lab here.

It’s a bit over the top, but it does give you a sense of what real medieval combat would have looked like.

If you come across someone swinging one of these, you want to be sure that you have either a high dex bonus, or are wearing some serious armor.

As you might already be aware, full-casters are generally much more powerful than non-casters and druids are pretty solidly powerful, even among full-casters.  Pathfinder has done well (in my opinion) of powering down druids, but one-on-one, a druid is still more powerful than an evenly leveled fighter.  The animal companion plus summoning spells make them a more than formidable adversary.  So why bother with fighters when you can just raise armies of druids (and clerics and wizards)?

Our first problem when answering this question is that, in Pathfinder, your basic NPCs are given the stat array 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 with no mention of how those stats should be best arranged.  With this we concluded that it is more-or-less evenly distributed, with one in six people having any particular stat be that 13.   Since a 13 wisdom will let you cast 3rd level spells as a druid or cleric, wouldn’t 16% of the population be prime candidates for militarized divine spellcasting? And another 16% primed to be wizards?

The second problem we run into is that we have no built in controls on how common the various heroic PC classes are.  The rules make vague statements that most people fall into one of the NPC classes (commoner, warrior, expert, aristocrat and adept) but there is no hard and fast rule saying that they can’t be of heroic PC classes.  Gone are the 1e days of stat requirements to play classes (17 charisma to be a paladin, anyone?) so why not take a level in ranger or barbarian or fighter instead of warrior?  Why not take cleric levels instead of  adept?  What makes the NPCs take NPC classes?

This kind of thinking leads toward an end that we, as our gaming group, do not desire: the Tippyverse.  If you frequent the Giant in the Playground message boards, you may have heard of the DnD universe created by the poster Emperor Tippy.  For those of you who haven’t heard, this thread explains it relatively well.  Basically it is a world were RAW is Law and the logical extensions of a world wherein magic exists and costs nothing but time and coin are explored.  It’s a magocracy to the Nth degree.  Our group does not want this.  So how do we fix it?

My first solution to this conundrum was to decide that the stat arrays were not evenly distributed.  In a pseudo-medieval society, your basic person is going to be best served by a high constitution.  Yes in a magical setting, clerics, bards, druids and adepts exist and can cast curative spells, but they aren’t around all the time and not every midwife has levels in them.  People die from injury and disease.  Those who have that 8 in constitution are much more likely to die than the ones with their 13 there.  Secondly, because every street corner doesn’t have a wizard on it offering to solve your problems with a few arcane spells, manual labor still needs to be done.  Fields need to be plowed; tools need to be made; things need to be lifted and carried; a decent strength score is probably well prized among the common folk.  Essentially, natural selection has made it such that the stat arras are skewed towards the physical stats rather than the mental ones.

The second solution that I arrived on (which still is contended by Wolfgod) is that the PC classes are just less common.  My reasoning is that, even though as players we think, “I want to be a cleric” or “I’d like to play a barbarian this time”, the people in the world don’t make that conscious decision.  They simply do stuff and then their actions are translated into classes, feats, skills and such as best modeled by the rules.  The rules of the game, as I see them, are like the laws of physics in our world.  Physics does not force an object to fall when I drop it.  Physics describes how the object fell and can help me predict what other falling objects will do based on centuries of data.  In the same way, being a fighter or cleric or druid was not a conscious decision by the character, but rather a reflection of the decisions that he made in his life.  With this outlook in mind, the NPC classes are just easier to fall into.  It’s easier for your average soldier to have made decisions that made him a warrior instead of a fighter or for your skillful NPC to be an expert rather than a rogue.  My basic viewpoint is that not all priests are clerics and not all soldiers are fighters.  Most are NPCs and a select few are specialized PC classes.

With these two constraints in mind, we have gone to building the various armies.  We are still hammering out the finer points and balance issues, but our basic conclusion was that the vast majority of an army needs to be made up of rank-and-file guys with spears (or swords or whatever) and that spell slingers are a small minority.  We are setting a fluid limit of no more than 5-10% of your force can be casters and I would eventually like to see a rule that states how many of your infantry need to be warriors instead of fighters/rangers/barbarians/paladins.

If you have any comments or advice on how best to achieve our desired low-medium magic world, I’d love to hear them.  We are always looking to make our world fit our vision for it and would like to have reasons why it has developed and remained that way.

I made a couple of assumptions about the various characters involved. The baseline character was a level 5 commoner with all 10s in his stats. It doesn’t matter what his profession is (farmer, baker, librarian, sailor, etc.), he’s just a basic laborer. With two skill points in Profession(X), your average worker can earn 9 gold a week, which is 468 gold over the course of a year. Subtracting the price of a loaf of bread a day, two hunks of meat and two hunks of cheese a week, Average Joe nets 116 gold a year. This will buy him a masterwork tool and a new set of clothes every year with a couple of coins left over for a pint or two a week to forget the fact that he’s a commoner.

Next we’ll take a look at your average performer. In a decent sized city, a street performer who has specialized in his trade (full ranks, skill focus, masterwork item and a +2 CHA) can command a +15 to his skill check at level 5. This nets him 3.5 gold per day, 1278 gold per year (assuming he works every single day). Dropping 100 gold on a masterwork performing item, he can afford a “good” meal and a pitcher of wine every day and still have 922 gold to buy himself a villa with.

Now let’s take a look at a blacksmith. I am assuming here that our master craftsman is able to sell every item he makes. Also, since he could make any of the dozens of weapons or armors, I’m going to give an average weaponsmith and an average armorsmith. Your “average” weapons costs 32.5 gold (and is a martial weapon) and your average armor costs 259 gold. The “average” weapon nets the weaponsmith 21.6 gold per unit. He can make 2 units per week with his +15 to crafting (and using the accelerated crafting DC). Your average skilled weaponsmith can net himself 2246 gold per year. The “average” armor nets the armorsmith 172.6 gold per suit. It takes him 2.7 weeks to create a suit and, since the crafting rules are based on one check per week, this means he can make 17 suits a year. With this your average skilled armorsmith can net himself 2934 gold per year. He does pretty well for himself.

If we take a look at your average alchemist (with the same skill bonus as the blacksmith), his typical fare costs 31.8 gold, which nets him 21.2 gold per item. He can make two alchemical items per week, just like the weaponsmith, which garners him 2204.8 gold per year. He does have to buy a 200 gold alchemist lab to do this, so he’s slightly worse off than the blacksmiths, who only have to spend 100 gold for their specialty items.

Now, we have the weird one. The guys who make the random gear that fills up the rest of the equipment table, like ladders and nails and cloth bags. Since I don’t want to have to divide each of those various categories up into their component craft skills (leather, wood, fabric, glass, pottery, etc.) I’m just going to find an average sundry item and assume the maker has the appropriate skill, feat and item. Since these are relatively more common folk, I’m only giving them a +1 INT, which nets them a +14 to their skill. The average sundry item costs 41.3 gold (since spy glasses and water clocks are so expensive) which nets the crafter 27.5 gold per item. Since he can make one item per week (actually, one every 4 days but the craft rules are weird), your general crafter makes 1430 gold per year. This puts him slightly above your common laborer.

Incidentally, an apprentice to any of the various crafters (who, by RAW, has no ranks in a craft skill) only makes 36.5 gold per year. He had better be juggling on the weekends if he wants to survive.

Now,  before you say that level 5 is pretty high for a commoner, I did the math for a level 2 farmer. He earns 416 gold per year.

The numbers for the crafters would change considerably, since their craft bonus would drop from a +15 to a +12 and, with average rolls, put them out of range of accelerated crafting.

If you go with crafting by the day instead of by the week, our level 2 weaponsmith can make a weapon every 5 days. This earns him 1554.9 gold per year, assuming he sells all his weapons. Let’s say he has a military contract in a martial state. If you don’t allow crafting by the day, he can make one weapon a week, which cuts his potential income down to 1107.6 gold per year.

As for our armorsmith, at level 2, it takes him 5.2 weeks to make a suit of armor. If you allow crafting by the day, this lets him make 10 suits of armor per year and a potential income of 1726 gold. If he crafts by the week, he can make 8 suits per year, which 1380.8 gold per year. Both still set him well above the commoner and his “profession” skill.

Our alchemist was already unable to do accelerated crafting, so he’s not as bad off. He still makes 2 items a week, or one item every 4 days. With weekly crafting, he can earn 2204.8 gold per year (the same we will 3 levels from now) and with daily crafting he makes slightly less, at 1934.5 gold per year. This seems slightly curious to me, but alchemy is a weird science.

Our level 2 sundry item maker can still accelerated craft, since his average of 21 to his skill check puts him 10 over the average skill check needed for the average sundry item (can I say “average” again?). He makes an item every 5 days, or one a week, depending on which rules you want to use. With weekly wages he makes 1430 gold per year and with daily wages he can make up to 2007.5 gold per year. At lower levels, furnishing the general store is potentially better than forging armor or weapons.

If you exclude the spy glass maker and the water clock maker, the numbers drop significantly. The average price of a sundry item drops from 41.3 gold per item to 12.7 gold per item and nets our item maker only 8.5 gold per unit. However, since the value of the item went down, the crafting time also went down. He can now craft an item every 3 days, or 3 per week, depending on how you want to do the math. Weekly wages earn him 1326 gold per year and daily wages earn him 1028.5 gold per year. He is still significantly better off than the commoner.

Because I split the water clock and spy glass makers out of the sundry items group, I figure I should calculate their wages too. Each craftsman can make one of their items every 24 weeks, or about 2 per year. Earning 666.6 gold per unit, they make 1333.2 gold per year. Pretty comfortable living, compared to the common item maker.

And now to our journeyman juggler. With his +12 skill bonus, he can only manage a “great” performance every day, rather than a “memorable” one. He averages 1.65 gold per day, and assuming he juggles everyday for a year, he can earn 602.25 gold per year. Ouch. This cuts his wages more than in half. He’s barely better off than the industrious farmer, or the sailor who risks his life at sea or the baker who makes the bread he can barely afford.

Our apprentice crafter, with no ranks in a crafting skill, still only makes 36.5 gold per year. Perhaps he should be crafting spoons and lanterns instead.

Finally, all you job hunters out there can quantify your ranks in ‘rope use’ or ‘disable device’, and brag about your +10 to hit with a keyboard.

So, roll up some confidence and get out there and slay an interview or two!  Any experience points are good experience points.