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I have done GMing since around 2015 I think. I don't remember the last time I had to check a physical book to resolve a rules thing when preparing to run a game. Nethys has pretty much everything these days now that they've added skills as well. I can understand being cautious, but in my experience, running as a GM (if you have a stable internet connection) can be done based purely on the scenario and websites.
I don't have any triggers myself, but from what I know about dealing with mental health, I can see the point in at least some kinds of warnings. The main thing is that explaining your traumas/triggers every time there is a possibility of them is *exhausting*. So if we could reduce the amount of people who have to go through this even by some would be good. Also if you can deal with your triggers on your own time (by this I mean looking at the trigger tags at home and prepared instead of at the gaming table where people notice and ask things) it may reduce the stress. Also for some people the surprise is the worst part. So you might be able to deal with your triggers if you know they're coming. And of course you cannot warn about everything. But this is not a binary choice of all or nothing. We can start somewhere and perhaps work from there. A partial solution is better than nothing, at least it shows that people understand the concept and will consider your problems valid. When it comes to spoilers, I do consider people's mental health more important than the potential for spoilers. I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept. Just hide the warnings so that those who don't need them can ignore them. If someone has such a strong triggers that seeing the word would trigger them, that would happen anyway, hidden trigger tags or not. And seeing the "Triggers here" button again gives them time to mentally prepare if that is what it takes. Perhaps doing this as a community effort could work, if it takes too many resources for Paizo to do it. We already have the Shared GM prep site, compared to the work there, trigger lists are nothing. tl;dr If it helps even some, I consider a good idea.
I always draw my maps. We have both the blank flipmats and a couple of the Chessex vinyl maps. For the latter, I have found that Staedtler Lumocolor non-permanent markers work the best. The red can stain if left on for days, but all of them do wash away with a damp cloth or paper towel if wiped the same day. Dunno if they're sold in the US, though. The "sometimes 10 feet squares" is a good heads-up, now I know to look out for it. One thing that might help is making it extra clear that the map is on different scale than usual. Like just make the text on the page that says 10 feet squares a bit larger than before. It might still annoy people that these maps exist, but would lessen the chance of someone mistaking it for the standard 5 foot square map.
It does say in the Guide in the Character Creation section, under Feats (page 26), that all "item creation" feats are banned, so creating magic item. Just above that, under Skills, it says that Craft skills are usually not used for crafting mundane items, just for Day Job checks. After that it lists the exceptions. These exceptions are the ones the part you quote refers to. Thus, Alchemists and Investigators can use Craft (alchemy) to make alchemical items, and Gunslingers can use Craft (gunsmithing) to make bullets. There are also some other archetypes that grant access to crafting poisons, like Starglim said.
If you have a rank in some Craft, Profession or Perform skill, you can use that for your Day Job roll. All of these skills require you to specify the craft, profession or performance you are doing. So it could be Craft (carpentry) or Profession (sailor). Sometimes these come up in the scenarios as well, so if you lean more into the optimizing side, choosing one that might actually help you instead of just being part of your background is a valid choice. Profession (sailor) is the most common one, think.
What happens is that the GM tells what the character should do, and the player acts accordingly. Sometimes the dominating person/thing gives quite strict orders, other times looser. When I run this, I think I told the dominated player "your character picks up the stone, and tries to take it out of the dungeon, otherwise the stone doesn't care how you act", so they could still contribute to getting out instead of blindly walking into trouble, but couldn't do things like backtrack or stop to rest. After the scenario the domination needs to be removed, of course, as all continuing effects do. The module itself doesn't seem to take Society play into account, going for the more dramatic "character is taken away until you complete this next quest". But I'd let them buy some domination breaking magic anyway like normal. Considering that no skill DCs or even the skills for recognizing the Wraithsoul Stone are given, you kinda have improvise on that front. Only thing that the module actually gives is the fact it radiates an evil aura.
In Tampere, Finland, PFS and SFS are pretty much intertwined, as in most players and GMs do both. So it's a bit difficult to say whether SFS has affected the amount of PFS offered. Maybe in the sense that it didn't bring new GMs in, so the old ones have to divide their time between both. Our monthly gaming days are running okay, with 2-4 games at each. In my view there is a little bit less new faces showing up, but it might be more about the time of the year (university town, so a lot of new faces in autumn). Some of the old guard plays a bit less because of being busy in personal life, and some only have time for one of the campaigns that people in the PFS group started (I think there are three going on at the moment, and a couple in planning stages). Our games have never been at stores, it's mostly at people's homes and the monthly gaming days are at a space owned by the university. I do know that D&D5E games are run at the local boardgame cafe, but have no idea whether they have taken potential players from us. At least I haven't heard of any one of our previous players switching over.
I'm of the opinion that if you used a creative solution and made at least some skill checks with DCs similar to the original ones (say Stealth instead of Perception), you get the rewards. (Unless it goes to weird meta where the players know that they might have to use skills they're not that good at and device the creative solution to get to use the skills they feel better at with the explicit goal of still getting the loot). If you instead just well, decide not to use your skills at all (like deciding you're in too much of a hurry to use Perception in every room), you do miss out on rewards. This is just one opinion, really, though. And yeah, most of the time I do get kinda explicit about "no, you really do need to take that with you or you'll lose rewards" to the players if they seem to be missing something. Then they can decide themselves if their characters would actually be greedy/steal/etc. or not. (Like my paladin did refuse to do a faction mission once because it would have required her to make forgeries).
It literally says this in the Starfinder Guide (page 12, under "Creative Solutions"), and basically the same in the Pathfinder Guide (page 13). "If, for example, your players manage to
and "If that scene specifically
So yeah, if what they did was actually manage an obstacle somehow instead of just I dunno, not doing anything for some reason or actually failing at what they were trying to do (like sneaking, getting caught and running away totally), rewards should be full.
Here I think we have went with "everyone can keep track of their factions and fame/reputation the way they want, as long as it is consistent". I agree that the way we're supposed to mark the points at the bottom of the sheet is in no way clear. In a more general sense, filling the chronicles usually goes here like this: "Okay, here is my GM chronicle, everyone fill their char names and numbers on the back of it while I fill your chronicles". Then the GM goes around the table asking everyone their track, dayjob results and if they're in-subtier or not. GM only fills the GM only parts (XP, reputation and money gained and the bottom tracking information), hands out the chronicles and the players fill out the rest. I guess having a small scene and most of the same players all the time helps in this kind of more informal approach.
It is assumed that the time between scenarios is kinda nebulous, ie. not defined, so Day Job rolls have been simplified to be "once per Chronicle", without any regard to how much time actually passes in the game world. If you buy stuff between sessions, just mark it down and when you get your next Chronicle, mark the credits spent there. It doesn't take any time as such in the game world, but spending the credits and what they were spent on needs to marked down.
I as a GM would prefer the heads-up to prep the 4 player adjustments of the scenario as well as the normal version. I mean, if I'm looking at a full table of sign-ups, I normally won't even look at the adjustments, and some of them are a bit more complicated than "remove 2 of mook A". Same thing goes for tier, if it might change because of someone not showing up.
What's the name of the grippli tribe in this? I'm using this for the back story of my grippli ranger. He was away on a hunting trip and returned to find his tribe dead, and a group of Pathfinders cleaning up, so he went to Absalom with them. I couldn't find any mention of it in the text, Purpurrup only talks about "my tribe" and the description say "local tribes" or the like.
In my opinion: undead-looking no, sick and creepy yes. What with the "no re-skinning" rule, some people could argue that you were trying to make the enemies confused about the creature type or something. But as long as everyone can know it's just a dog (or whatever), make it look as creepy as you want.
You can find the relevant information from the NPC Codex from the Paizo PRD here: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ if you don't want to buy the whole book yet. Especially useful if you have a printer you can use, or run games from your tablet or the like.
Thank you leathert that was a fantastic explanation and one that I could follow and absolutely makes sense.exactly what I was seeking. Thanks others as well but for my inquiry leathert has the gold medal for a perfect answer. I understand much better now. No problem, I'm glad that this explanation was satisfactory.
Part (though not all of) the explanation is keeping the world consistent. The Core rulebook races are all very common in Golarion, so it makes sense to have them all be always available. Ok, then the Society got more contact with Tian Xia, so some tien races (kitsune, nagaji, tengu) become available. Then we hang around the Worldwound so the outsider-based races become available (aasmiar, tiefling). Then Society has more contact with the elemental planes, so the elemental races (ifrit, undine, sylph, oread) become available. Some other races are not common anywhere, so their availability is still limited to getting a boon. Some other races just would not work within the Society context. Mostly the "defaults to evil" ones. Some of them have been released in very limited numbers (I think there were 30 goblin boons given out for some special occasion). But you have to be able to co-operate, so no evil races. And some races would just be too powerful to balance the Society scenarios around. This was what let to the eventual limiting of aasmimars (15 Race Points) and tieflings (13 Race Points) in my opinion. Especially with the alternate heritages available, it was so easy to make almost any build with these, there were a lot of them around. A counter-argument to this might be that tengus have the same amount of Race Points as tieflings, but well, they're less flexible, and tieflings and aasimars seem to be a kind of package deal. But yeah, no svirfneblin (24 RP) around even though they're not evil or anything. Sometimes it's a combination of these things. But the most common explanation seems to be "they're in the 'Uncommon Races' section for a reason".
I can kind of see defeating the ships as a way of covering your tracks, I mean if the characters just run away, they can be tracked, and it's easier to figure out where they ran away to. Maybe, I dunno how tracking really works in this system. My players just went and fought the ships, so I didn't have to figure this out during my run.
I would be sad if all of my characters become shelved. Mostly the mid-tier ones, the ones whose stories are not over yet, nor so near the beginning that I can just reset them. Of course a lot of concepts won't be available at the beginning of 2.0 (mostly races, I guess, luckily I don't usually play that much into class as flavor).
The concept of favored weapons doesn't seem to mechanically exist in Starfinder. At least the deity entries in Core don't mention them in the stat-block like part of the entries, so it's not a required part of the deity. Looking at Pathfinder deities from Archives of Nethys, very few of them actually went for hammers. (Search brings up Arlachramas, Aroggus, Azathoth, Brigh, Circiatto, Droskar, Grundinnar, Kols, Kostchtchie, Lady Nanbyo, Magrim, Minderhal, Nivi Rhombodazzle, Torag and Trudd). I guess you could argue that Triune likes hammers based on the fact that it's part Brigh, and Brigh's favored weapon used to be light hammer?
My party figured out the disease problem pretty quickly, because the oracle happened to have a scroll of Diagnose Disease with them. (She did take a negative level when casting the scroll). After that, I didn't manage to infect anyone, and they figured out the cleansing room pretty quickly (thanks to it being a trap), and made the cure pretty much perfectly. However, the party was really light on casters, especially arcane ones, so this could have gone very differently for a party of wizards and witches or something.
Yeah, there is no mechanical way to make the Kitsune shapechange make you change your physical sex. Sorry. I'd go with the "part of the Vigilante disguise" explanation. -2 really isn't that much, and "pretending to be different gender" is kind of a classic trope when it comes to masked heroes and the like that Vigilante is trying to emulate. It could be a cool part of your character.
A season 9 scenario has the BBEG have following text for after-battle interaction: Spoiler:
While Shinri Dells won’t surrender, the
PCs can attempt to capture her in order to question her directly, or possibly present her to the Senghor leadership to further their case against the Aspis Consortium. If they do, Shinri provides little insight into her activities. She believes that she will be reincarnated into a higher being upon death, so no threat is enough to persuade her to speak. The last sentence pretty much says "will not give out any information if captured alive". So not total immunity (I mean you could get them shaken in combat), but close.
In Pathfinder, a Wand of Cure Light Wounds has 50 charges and costs 750 gp. So even a first level character can afford one, and anyone who has CLW on their spell list can use the wand (for core that would be clerics, paladins, bard, rangers, druids). So PF has much more healing available on the "between combats" level. CLW heals a little (1d8+1 for the wand), but the 50 charges mean that with a wand, it's easy to patch everyone up even if they only lost a couple of HP. It's almost never going to go much over your max HP. Starfinder on the other hand only has either single-use items or x/day resources from classes, and fewer classes in general have HP healing capabilities.
Yeah, PFS is run by Paizo employees, but not all Paizo content (actually nearly nothing) is written with PFS in mind specifically. A few things are (like Pathfinder Society Primer, Seeker of Secrets and Pathfinder Society Field Guide) and with those basically everything is allowed. Things that work in a home game might not work that well in PFS. In a home game a GM can watch out for things like balance and adjust encounters accordingly or things like that. In PFS that people in the lead have to often err on the side of caution, because allowing something and then realizing it doesn't really work and having to ban it later leads to a lot more annoyed and angry people than just banning it from the start.
Okay yeah it does say that the doors are "otherwise (if not completing the puzzle or disabling the traps) completely impassable in room 15, that one was my mistake (I was very tired). But my general question stands: If the module doesn't say what the walls and doors are made of, I cannot really make them extra strong to stop the party from trying to bash through them, can I? Like it only says that most doors are metal, walls are huge slabs of stone (at least the outside of the building is), and sometimes even gets more specific (like the bars in room 6 are "steel"). I'm more looking to discourage players from brute-forcing solutions without outright making things up that amount to "no, that won't work because of reasons. What no, no it isn't in the module, I just don't like when you do that". I mean this is run as PFS, so I cannot really do that. (If it was a home game, oh boy would everything just magically transform into something really difficult to break through).
My group of four just steamrolled through this by the virtue of some strategic pre-buffing. Resist Energy 20 to all four basic elements really took the edge of some of the encounters, and the first two rooms were much easier because of Air Bubble. But what can you do, except congratulate your players for using their spells well. More interestingly, what do you do when your players go "eh, I'm just going to use my adamantine weapon and whack at a wall or door until it collapses" rather than do what the module expects them to do? I had a couple of instances of this when running, but luckily not all the time (Steel bars in room 6, the narrow wall separating Marza from the party in 8 and the door to room 16). Like only the last one actually skipped what the room was intended to do completely (they did try standing in a column, but took no damage because of the Resist Energy). I mostly just wish there was at least some handwavy "the walls and doors here are build of some special adamantine-proof material/magicked so that they're extra strong" counter to this tactic, because at these levels, you gotta start expecting adamantine.
My druid went with the Pygmy Hippo (from Heart of the Jungle). Not an optimal choice in that it only gains one attack and it's only special offensive is trample, but yeah it was a lore choice for me as well. Hariti the pygmy hippo has fared pretty well so far (level 10) and hasn't died once, so I guess pygmy hippo is not the worst possible choice either. My cavalier got a boon and could choose Giant Weasel (for a gnome it works as a mount eventually), not very optimal either but a lot of my friend group love mustelids so she's kinda liked anyway. The weasel only gets one attack, but can do small amounts of con damage, which is pretty unique. Where I come from, big cats and certain dinosaurs (the ones that get an insane amount of natural armor or more than two primary attacks) seem to be the "default" choice, so stay away from those if you want to be unique. And often anything that only druids can get is more unique than the stuff that other classes can as well, so I'd stay way from the following (ranger list): badger, bird, camel, cat (small), dire rat, dog, horse, pony, snake (viper or constrictor), or wolf; as well. Aquatic creatures don't work in PFS, so no choosing those. This limits your choices to a more manageable levels quite well.
The effect of the spheres moving is described at the very beginning of this room's description, right before the "Creatures" heading. "The giant stone spheres roll at a
A lot of Society Adventure players seem to be kinda miffed that "The Shores of Heaven" is Tier 1-5. You can count me as one of those. The character I wanted to take to a gig in Heaven has just leveled to level 6. All those delicious RP opportunities gone. On a more general level, it is a bit odd choice to continue two 3-7s with a 1-5,but knowing nothing about what's actually in the scenario, I cannot really theorize on why.
I ran this on Saturday. Full six player table, higher tier with at least one playing up from between tiers. They managed to do pretty much everything right (with some hints about being able to stealth and stuff), diplomatized the xorns, got one to guide them (I named it Xick when they asked), went the diplomatic route with the guards when they realized it was a possibility. That's the one where I kinda had to tell them it was possible, they just thought it would be a battle straightaway. Readily agreed to help Gravetreader. They figured out the puzzle pretty much on their own, though I did let some general Perception checks help them even before they actually started thinking about it. I couldn't very well say that they find nothing, could I? I ruled that instead of rising to 10 feet above the ground, the clockwork xorns rose from the ground and left behind 10 feet tall tubes or something like that, which couldn't be moved through. At least that was the feeling I got from the description, otherwise the guardians would have been in plain sight when Gravetreader runs to the altar. On higher tier the guardians hit deceptively hard. It didn't look like much, but they have three attacks and a very high attack bonus, so they hit most of the time. The guy playing up did go down (he stabilized), but the party gave as much damage as they got, so in the end the party won quite easily. Still, I wasn't expecting this to be that much of a challenge. Left the temple with one clockwork buddy with them, agreed to Gravetreader's tactic, went to confront the boss. 2 of 6 realized that there was something suspicious about the bandits' joviality. I let them join a surprise round with the bandits. The battle went well for the party, because they had two archer types with them, so Jathune never got into melee with anyone, he died from arrows. Fireball at least hurt them a bit, but everyone saved against it, so no real panic. I also didn't throw more fireballs, as the bandit mooks were in melee with the party, and I wanted to make Pamari seems more like a good guy and not kill them. In the end she was the only one standing, but at full HP. I let the party use Diplomacy even though she was hostile, because I couldn't figure out why she would be more amenable to listen if they beat her up first. They managed to get her to just unfriendly, so I ruled that she stops fighting and retreats to her tent to sulk. The party then left her alone. I listed out the options Gravetreader had going forward like it was her sorting out her thoughts aloud. My party apparently remembered the briefing. They convinced her to rejoin Society, but I didn't make it so that she would just pack up and leave with them. Instead I said that she would contact Sorrina and sort everything out. This I think mitigates the "but she would be more useful if she stayed here" -idea somewhat. Emphasizing that she might still help around here, just as a full member of the Society instead of a contact. Or something like that.
I'd probably go with 3 as well. No need to punish you further for something the other players likely would have given to you, considering the value of a CLW wand. So yeah, keep the wand, pay of the amount you gained from it now, and mark it on the chronicle what you used that money for. Mark on your sheet which items you purchased with Prestige so as to not make this mistake again.
I was talking about this scenario with a friend while prepping it, and showed them the map (GM version). They immediately pointed out that anyone with survival experience (him being a former Scout) would take one look at the map and start circling around all of the relevant terrain, just because traveling on plains is that much easier than the other terrain types. Because of this, I'll also probably just provide my players with a reduced map of only the relevant tiles on it, just to avoid the dreaded "beyond the scope of this scenario" statement. It just takes everyone out of the game when your only argument for "don't go there" is "it will be a very short and boring game if you do".
Any of the 1-2 evergreens might work, if you don't go into the background details too much (First Steps, Confirmation, Wounded Wisp, Consortium Compact). I myself really like Nightmarch of Kalkamedes for its possibilities of rewarding creative solutions, but not going to recommend that be run in 3 hours. As Phylotus said, quests might be your best bet, as if the time seems to be running short, just run less than all six of a batch and you should be good.
Let's try to combine the previous two answers. There are two types of items, those that can be used as many times as you like, and expendables, like potions or scrolls. You never get more than 150 gp for starting a character, no matter how many times you rebuild them. You can, however, turn whatever things you've already bought back into money and buy new things. This is a bit different from normal reselling, in that you get the full money back, while normally it's half the money. The exception to this is stuff you don't own anymore. If you drank that potion, it's gone forever, and so is the money you used to buy it. Same thing would apply if you used your starting money for stuff like meals or bribes. There is nothing to turn into money anymore, so you don't get the money.
I'm really surprised there isn't a belt of magnets or bandolier with magnets to hold your many many steel daggers... Versatile Vest (from Seekers of Secrets) comes kinda close, but only for like, six daggers. So not really, if you're truly serious about daggers. (My Cardcaster used it for decks of cards). |
