I also understand it's GenCon. I don't think this timing was intentional, but it did hit them at the worst possible time. They are already quite busy and were blindsided by this. I don't expect a lot about this until perhaps after GenCon, maybe just a mea culpa for now, and something more in depth next week. Some were blindsided, yes. We saw that in those employees sharing Diego and Sara's posts on Twitter that they were no longer with Paizo. To the folks that terminated Sara Marie and saw Diego walk because of it, they have only themselves to blame for doing it the week of Gen Con.
I'm very glad I don't have to make the decision on whether to run games or not for Paizo live at GenCon this year. While there are events that are *safer* than others, I don't think sitting around tables in the Sagamore was on the list for me this year.
I think, just like I've been the only person paying for copies of formulas, you were probably the only person doing this =\I was thrilled that there were tutors at the Grand Lodge for wizard to learn any common spell from. We no longer had to buy a scroll to do so, just pay the cost to Learn a Spell.My wizard is so happy with the ruling on spells for prepared casters!What ruling? My level 5 crafting wizard waves in solidarity.
Fame is a spendable resource. You gain Fame for getting stuff done in the adventures. Reputation is how much people in Faction X think you're cool. You gain Reputation for the faction you represent on an adventure, depending on how much Fame you got in that adventure. This never goes down. Depending on how high your Reputation is, influences how much Fame you can cash in with that faction for some bonus (faction boons). There is an "all factions" list that totals your Reputation from all the factions. Think of this one as how much the Society as a whole thinks you're cool.
Rogues quickly become the undisputed masters of skills. They get more skill upgrades and skill feats than any other classes. A rogue should be hitting as often as any non-fighter, as they're trained and have lots of reason to boost Dex for their key ability score with finesse weapons, or brute rogues with strength as key.
Good change: having women's fit options in some of these Even better change: would be having women's fit options for your volunteer shirts: the purple, orange, and blue shirts
super difficult if...you cannot get slotted as a GM He was talking about the RSP GM boons for this one. You can only get credit for those at an RSP supported store.
What is a "chase" boon? And what connection would it have to being announced after a Con?
This is one of the few things Thursty has ruled on that I disagree with. I have 11 SFS characters, because I've played 1-01 3 times and GM'd it 8 times. I've played 6 of them. 2 are large piles of GM credit (currently 9th and 5th level). I can't apply any capstone boons to any of those remaining 3 characters, who only exist because I GM'd 1-01 and so created a new PC.
We often see these threads pop up before the major cons. I didn't see one, so I made one. I have a group of 4 with Tier 1-2 tickets.
I played a bioHacker at 4, 8, and 14 in playtest. When I absolutely, positively needed to deliver a boost to an ally (it was always a breakthrough, there was never a NEED for an injection). I walked up and jabbed my ally without an attack roll. Yes, it introduced me to more danger. Yes, it required being within walking, or later, flying range of my ally. But, if my Breakthrough was that much of a game changer, the risk was worth it.
It sounds like you were running the durations awfully short. I'm assuming you have a 20 Int at 8th level. That would mean the counteragents go for 2 rounds and your restoratives for 5. You would need to shoot the boss only every 3rd round to keep the confusion up and you'd have 5 rounds for your allies to use the +2 to skills.
Their +2 enhancement will get them through the lower levels, sure. But the other classes eventually get the following: Envoy - Expertise +1d8+4 to 6 skills (chosen from subset)Mechanic - Bypass +6 to Engineering/Computers Mystic - Channel Skill +7 to their connection's 2 skills Operative - Operative's Edge +6 to all skills Solarion - Sidereal Influence +1d6 to 6 skills (but only 3 at a time) Soldier - Nothing Technomancers - Techlore +6 Mysticism/Computers Vanguard - Aspect Insight +2 to 2 skills (through Aspects) Witchwarper - Compound Sight +6 to any 2 chosen skills This means a Biohacker will never be able to compete with any of the skill classes on their respective bonus skills once we hit the mid levels and beyond.
While their Enhancement bonus is definitely more flexible, and can be given to others (amazing!), it's limited uses per day. Not saying this is necessarily a detriment to the class, they'll have almost as many skill ranks as an Operative, and good flexibility. It is however, a divergence from the way all other non-Soldier classes in Starfinder have been presented.
I love how absurdly quick Dinosaur Planet got completed ahead of the others. Everyone saw a mission called "Dinosaur Planet" and said 'sold!'My experience from overseeing and wandering the tables, is that roughly half the tables went to Dinosaur Planet, while the majority of the remaining tables were evenly split between starship combat and the remaining missions. The tabulations are a bit skewed when shown live, because the starship combats tend to take longer. That being said, gee howdy, we have a lot of tables who went all in on starship combat for this special! I'd like to think my table and the charity boon Manticore Ship influenced this. Every time we were given an option we went for Starship.
When I ran it, I just respawned however many I needed to get back to 6 on their initiative count and had them move towards PCs to attack. Nako kills one on any hit with her doshko that manages not roll a 1 for the damage die. Nako stood in the middle of the room yelling "Not pets!" while full attacking. Nako killed so many of them before they got the Mysticism checks rolled.
Super glad to have worked on the quest pack! It was a great experience to work with Natalie, Nate, and Tineke, and I'm very proud of what we've all done. After Natalie magnanimously didn't slaughter my table, I look forward to playing it again. I loved the NPC you wrote for this!
They're all singles. There are no other pictures of ships.
For other GMs, I'm kicking ideas around on how to handle the Preparation missions before Part 1 starts. Do you think 3x5 cards would be a good way to approach it? One side has a pic of the Venture Captain (or Faction leader) and the name of the task. Back side has the benefits for easy, medium, and hard, with one of them marked based on their rolls as I hand it to the players.
Recon Mission 5: City of the Ancients
Is there any way we could get updated RSP player boons for SFS too? The only one I've seen is Relics of Lost Golarion, which is not ideal when dealing with new players.
At what point do Operative's get to add Dex to damage?
I was reading it the same way other folks here seem to have, just wanted a sanity check. I'm not very familiar with either 9th level spells or mythic abilities.
Say a mythic monster has the Dual Initiative ability and has access to Time Stop. How many "turns" does it get per round in the Time Stop apparent time? Dual Initiative:: The monster gets two turns each round, one on its initiative count and another on its initiative count – 20. For example, if the monster's initiative is 23, for its first turn it could make a full attack (and take a 5 foot step) at initiative 23, and for its second turn at initiative 3 it could take a move action and cast a spell. This allows the monster to perform two actions per round that normally take an entire round, such as using a summon monster spell. For the purposes of spells and effects that have a duration of a round or longer or trigger at the beginning of the creature's round or the start of its turn such as saving throws against ongoing effects or taking bleed damage), only the monster's first turn each round counts toward such durations. Time Stop: This spell seems to make time cease to flow for everyone but you. In fact, you speed up so greatly that all other creatures seem frozen, though they are actually still moving at their normal speeds. You are free to act for 1d4+1 rounds of apparent time. Normal and magical fire, cold, gas, and the like can still harm you. While the time stop is in effect, other creatures are invulnerable to your attacks and spells; you cannot target such creatures with any attack or spell. A spell that affects an area and has a duration longer than the remaining duration of the time stop have their normal effects on other creatures once the time stop ends. Most spellcasters use the additional time to improve their defenses, summon allies, or flee from combat.
I'm not sure any beer goes good with Skittles, but I'm trying to eat as much as I can between now and election day. Homer: "I'm feelin' low, Apu. You got any of that beer that has candy floating in it, you know, Skittlebrau?" Apu: "Such a product does not exist, sir! You must have dreamed it."Homer: "Oh. Well then just gimme a six-pack and a couple of bags of Skittles."
My only negative specifically tied into the 3D terrain between the front info booth and the HQ tables. The volunteers at the front of the hall had no idea what the 3D terrain was for when I asked. Later, I ran into folks running through the encounters there, got to play, and greatly enjoyed it. Both tables I had tickets for, mustering was done before I met my group there and got a text with a table number, so I didn't experience any actual mustering. My final table was the Saturday special on generics and we got seated quickly once I lucked myself into the 6th player for another group, most of which were new players. I would have liked to have traded my simpler pregen for one of the more complicated ones the newer players had, but nothing to be done for that. I stayed out near the airport, parked on the other side of the stadium, and did tables Friday AM and the Friday special. I slept in a LOT on Saturday to recover from that. Much thanks to all the leadership, volunteers, and GMs who do so much to make the PFS experience at GenCon as amazing as it is.
I'd like to thank @Athos710 Hey, that's me! Sorry, for not being as clear as some others, I was live-tweeting and some of it was the 140 character limit and some of it was me trying to keep up while being super enthused about what they were saying and not keeping up. All spelling errors are completely my own, other sources have different spelling for the Solarion class and I have no faith mine is correct.
Will Eoxians be playable? During the GenCon Starfinder panel, Erik Mona said their goal was to have PC playable stats in every bestiary entries. He also acknowledged they might not be able to make that goal, but it exists.
In your parlance I have reached 7th level as an Empiricist Investigator. I find that the Decemvirate always seems to send me off on missions with the strangest groups of people. It's fantastic! I've met so many interesting folks, and they generally seem to appreciate how useful I am at knowing all kinds of things, and being able to pick locks, as well as talk the pants off a Taldan noble (the poor fellow). I'm always finding ways to make my allies more capable in combat and keep enemies from hitting them. Bartok is my current favorite character and I find he basically crushes most skill challenges, and auto-aids with his helpful +4 when someone else can take point. For early levels he mostly just aided another in combat, but with bodyguard feat buffing with his AoOs, plus studied combat he's been taking a more direct combat roll in recent levels.
Hermea came up during the "Secrets of Golarion" panel at GenCon. There was a little bit of discussion, but basically boiled down to, "we're unlikely to learn more until they (Paizo) fully determine the implications of Mengkare's eugenics".
Investigator and Ranger will give you every skill in class except Fly. There might be a pairing that gets them all, but Investigator is a good base class for lots of skills to start with.
Paladin of Sarenrae with Dervish Dance feat?
I wish I had written down names.... My GM for Serpents Rise got 3 kinetisists dropped on him, without knowing much about the new class. If you're out there and remember the short people party (4 dwarves, a gnome, and Yoon) thanks for being able to run things smoothly when we weren't the tier you were prepped for. Saturday morning at a Core table of Wounded Wisp I saw the best RP of NPCs I have ever seen. The GM said he'd run it ~30 times and it showed. While my Qadiran Paladin is still very confused by the strange customs of Absolom, I hope the Fire Beetle God is out there ruling justly.
WW NPCs: That Asmodean cleric is my new standard for roleplaying, the Drendle Drang was just how I've imagined him, and the Boretusk twins still make me smile.
I know it's been said, but it bears repeating. If you want Mammy Graul to be a challenging encounter, give her a way to get around Silence. She hit the party with Black Tentacles in the surprise round, but then went dead last in Initiative. She provoked to move outside of the spells range, but got hit by a second Silence. So much for Dimension Door'ing outside to raise all the defeated Grauls as Zombies.... I even positioned the zombies to block the party from surrounding her. So much prep time to have all the stats ready, wasted.
Name of PC: Qakisst Vishtani
Story: My group found themselves on a rescue mission after defeating Xanesha. It seemed the party Ranger had been captured and replaced by a faceless stalker (revealed when X knocked him to negative hp). With Shalelu's help they tracked the kidnappers. They found themselves without a true front line combatant and spread out facing 2 skeletal champions, a cleric (necromancer), his zombie worg mount, and a scarred witch doctor. Qakisst's cohort, a level 5 Bard probably saved the entire party by using silence to keep the witch from cackling. Sadly, after having already used the False Life powers of the Sihedron medallion, Qakisst lit up one of the skeletal champions with 2 hits of a scorching ray to the tune of 30+ damage. Skeleton did not like and stepped up landing 2 blows with a great sword dealing enough damage to drop the Ifrit to -2 hp more than enough to kill him. Having received the reward from the Lord Mayor, the group can easily afford to bring Q back and are headed back to the temple of Iomedae in Magnimar now. The rogue in the party also plans to finally buy a bludgeoning weapon so he can be of use against skeletons in the future.
Wtf did I just read... This is why Drow just can't have nice things....
Runelords Book 1:
You fought a Bugbear in Thistletop, Bruthazmus. Speaking as the GM, I've already written the player and his girlfriend about their IC spats and how it is distracting from the larger game. I appreciate being called "evil" and already have some plans for things that will come up while the group is in Magnimar. I'm hoping that the lesson of "just because you're chaotic, doesn't mean you can do whatever you want without repercussions" will sink in this time.
I have a party of 6 PCs at 5th level that are escorting Ameiko to Magnimar. She'll be recruiting to get the Glassworks running again, while they testify against Lyrie and Orik before Justice Ironbriar. It's been slow going in getting Book 2 started. The original target for the Skinsaw Man had to leave the group, and I had to use a lot of "around town" time to set up the new object of his attention. We've had LOTS of role-playing and virtually no combat time over our last few sessions. A couple players have expressed to me they're getting bored with all the role-playing and I want to interject some combat, fast. As it was, it was going to be 2 more sessions before they started the murder investigation. It looks like it will take a while after that to get to the Insane Asylum and then the ghoul farms. I've looked around on the adventure finder, but can anyone recommend a good hack-n-slash that I can interject either into Magnimar or the road from Sandpoint to there? We're set to play this Sunday the 22nd and I want to do something a little more coherent than random encounters on the road while traveling. Perhaps having Ironbriar send them off on an errand to reinforce his position of authority? TLDR - I need a 5th level module to sub into Magnimar or surrounding area this Sunday. The more combat focused it is, the better.
After having played around a bit with some of the ACG classes, I couldn't help but think that Justice Ironbriar would make a good Warpriest. I know folks have re-skinned him as an Inquisitor in the past with success. Also, Mammy Graul as a Gravewalker Witch. It captures the Necromancer feel while eliminating that pesky spellbook she doesn't have. Anyone have any comments, suggestions, or critiques on the idea? Any other NPC that could benefit from a different class? My party is just starting Book 2, but feel free to chime in wherever. |
