Mosaic's page

I've never been before. Would I need an actual Comic-Con pass to play in the Pathfinder games? Or is there such thing as an RPG-only pass?

It was actually a combat situation - vs. a couple of giant scorpions - so he couldn't take 10.

But I guess the conclusion that I'm coming to regarding all-or-nothing and degrees-of-success skill checks is that it depends on the risks of failures. Kinda' like retrying a skill check after a failure. Is it possible to have some adverse effect if you actually blow it? Acrobatics - yes. Climb - yes. Knowledge - probably not, unless you make up some rule about remembering wrong information.

Still, I think it's interesting that there really do seem to be two ways of doing skill checks and I've never seen it discussed in any of the books.

There seem to be two different kinds skill checks.

First, there are the all-or-nothing kind of skill checks with a set DC that you have to beat. You try for it, and if you meet or surpass it, you succeed. There might be several DCs for doing more difficult versions. Ex: Acrobatic - opponent's CMD to pass through a threatened square, and his CMD+5 to actually pass through the square he occupies. You decide what you want to attempt and you succeed or fail.

Then there are skill checks like Knowledge and Perform where you just try to roll as high as possible to see what degree of success you can achieve. With rumors and monsters, the higher the DC, the more information you get. DC 15 gets you common knowledge, DC 20-30 gets you more obscure knowledge. Or Perform, DC 10 for a routine performance and DC 20 for an great performance. You never say, "I'm going to try for a great performance. [rolls a 16] Damn! I missed it. My performance fails." You roll and see how good your performance was.

So this occurs to me last Saturday when I'm GM'ing. A character is trying to climb a tall ladder. DC 5 for climbing at 1/4 speed and DC 10 for climbing at 1/2 speed. Player rolls and ends up with a total of 4 (low roll + 1st level PC). I say "No progress." He says, "No, I fall prone. I was trying to climb at 1/2 speed and missed by 5 or more." He's right by the RAW, but climbing speed seemed like one of the degrees-of-success kind of things rather than an all or nothing. If you make a DC 10, you go at 1/2 speed, if you only make DC 5, 1/4 speed.

I guess my question is, how do you decide if a skill check is all-or-nothing versus degrees-of-success?

I remember a pretty good article a year or two ago (or maybe three) on the WotC site where one of the writers re-worker beholders and switched out some of the eye attacks for ones that made more sense. Don't remember what he did, exactly, but I remember liking it at the time. Might be worth looking for to get some inspiration.

EDIT: re-reading my post, I'm pretty sure I contributed pretty much nothing to this discussion ;)

How's this one going to work? Given the size of a Flip Mat, will it be beach on one side and jungle on the other?

To be clear, we're never going to allow the 3.5 alternate class features into Pathfinder Society. I was correcting the "1.1" stated in the post above mine to "2.1."

BTW - Thanks for the clarification.

So I bought these and they look great but they didn't quite fit with the way we've always used "initiative cards." I spent a few minutes filling out the information I wanted on each opponent (there are a lot of spaces for info I didn't need). Then, when a combat came up, I did what we've always done - I put the PC and monster initiative cards in initiative order to create a little stack. As each person's card came to the top, it was there turn. Works great with index cards. The problem I had - and it's not necessarily a problem with the Monster Initiative Cards - is that when someone attacked the monster (as players are known to do), I had to dig back through the stack to find the monster's stats! SO for me, these make great Monster Stat Summary Cards, but I probably won't use them to keep track of initiative.

Alternative class features would = Awesome.

Okay, so just to be clear...

Verasatile Performance includes:
• Ability score: use Cha instead of the original score
• Ranks: use Perform ranks instead of rank in Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Acrobatics, etc.
• +3 because Perform is a class skill
• Bonuses: any random bonuses to Perform, like Skill Focus

But...

• Situational bonuses and penalties to the original skill still apply and get added to/subtracted from the Perform check, things like magic items, boons, pre-disposed favorable attitudes, etc.

How about things like traits (like "Fashionable" that grants +1 Bluff, Diplomacy and Sense Motive, or "Fiendish Presence" that grants +1 to Diplomacy and Sense Motive), Orcs' bonus to Intimidate, Rangers' favored enemy bonuses to Sense Motive, Ranger/Druids' bonus to Handle Animal their companions, spellcasters with viper familiars' bonus to Bluff, spellcasters with bat familiars' bonus to Fly, small characters' penalty to jumping with Acrobatics, armor check penalties to Acrobatics, etc. These all seem like things that would logically transfer to a Versatile Performance skill check. Would these all be considered "situational"?

I'm assuming masterwork instruments would not assist a Versatile Performance check as you are not actually performing, just using your performance skills in other areas of life.

I thought the official line was to calculate CMB and CMD, and call it a day? No further modifications needed. Might me a little underpowered, but with backwards compatibility and all, not too bad.

I haven't really looked, but d you see a lot of things you think need re-stating? Monsters could just be swapped for new ones with Bestiary stats. Probably mostly just stuff with class levels?

Might make a nice feat though. Either for the mount or the rider - Share Ability or something, kind of like extending spells though familiars.

For those who don't know, PCGen has just released the 4th version of its Pathfinder data set. Data sets are MUCH easier to load now (just a menu command, no more manually burying folders in other folders), and it runs great. There may still be a few bugs in there somewhere, but I haven't found any yet. Great work code monkeys!

And again, it's free and it runs on Mac...

Consensus in other threads seemed to be that it really was "total bonus" - meaning you use everything from your Perform instead of everything from your other skill, and that seemed to mean ignoring any normal penalties you had. I'd love to get an official clarification on this as it's come up in several threads.

Nethys, oh god of knowledge, you around? Or Jason?

If I've got Versatile Performance (Oratory = Sense Motive & Diplomacy), and I've got situational Diplomacy bonuses from boons or traits or things like that, can I apply them to my Performance check, or do I lose them when I trade one total bonus for the other?

If the answer is "I lose them," I'm starting to think Versatile Performance needs some work. The basic idea of swapping ranks it great. Being able to switch base stats to Charisma and make dump stats easier is really nice (maybe too nice). Avoiding armor check penalties to Acrobatics because you're using Perform, which doesn't take armor check penalties is somewhat illogical. But having to give up all your other bonuses really puts the utility of this ability in question.

Another gripe - I can wait a level and not take any ranks in Sense Motive or Diplomacy at 1st because I know I'm going to get them via Versatile Performance at 2nd. But am I really going to wait until 6th level to put any ranks into the skills I get through my second Versatile Performance? And If I don't wait, I just wasted a bunch of skill points.

I know it's not, but maybe the rule ought to be swap Perform (Oratory) ranks for Diplomacy and Sense Motive ranks, but not total bonus for total bonus.

My wife is trying to put together a more elemental themed Druid and wants a small elemental as her animal companion. Is there any legit way of doing so within the RAW? (Other than taking a level of Wizard.)

Thanks.

Thrown broken glass = improvised shuriken? I've building a new monk with Throw Anything for his ranged attacks.

DM_Blake wrote:

The big problem I see here is that this destroyes defensive tactics. It makes the guys in back impossible to protect.

Besides, you know, choosing not to step aside and block their overrun...

Method 1 and I'll post additional details next week.

Okay, I thought I understood Versatile Performance and now I'm totally confused! As I read each conflicting post, I say to myself "That makes sense." Arg!

My original understanding was the same as Abraham's but I'd love to see some official Paizo confirmation of this. Any staff reading this thread yet?

Zark wrote:

Abraham spalding wrote:

Versatile performance: This ability is fully reliant on Charisma, you use the skills full bonus in place of the original skil ... meaning that it's a charisma skill check with all appropriate modifiers... so when using Dance instead of Acrobatics your Dex doesn't matter... neither does your ACP either... since it doesn't affect Charisma based skills. Same for the sense motive (which is WONDERFUL of course since you take a dump stat skill and basically convert it into a prime stat skill).[...]

No he doesn't use the perform skill. He uses the bonus from that skill. "He can use his bonus in that skill in place of his bonus in associated skills."It doesn't say, He can use that perform skill in place of the associated skills.

You mean like I said? Cause you know, total bonus in performance skill includes the Cha bonus...

To get technical, we probably should have given the half-orc a "Light Adaptation" ability, but without the context of what most orcs get, this would have been kind of silly and a waste of space.

How are wayfinders, ioun stones, and resonant powers going to work int he Pathfinder Society. Prices for regular, cracked and flawed stones are listed, so I assume we can buy them if we have the gold and prestige, just like any other magic item. But 75% of regular ioun stones and 25% of cracked and flawed stones have resonant powers. Do we do this roll in front of a GM and put it on our Chronicles, or do we just assume that we always buy stones with resonant powers? And then, do we determine those powers with Method 1 (standardized) or Method 2 (random, again, probably rolled in front of GM)?

TWD gives you a +1 shield bonus to AC, +2 if fighting defensively. Is that it? Ever? Do bonuses from masterwork or magical weapons raise the bonus?

Fending off attacks with a parrying dagger just fits so well with my image of my swashbuckler guy, but do I really spend a feat to get +1 to AC, which I can just as easily get from Dodge or a 15gp buckler (okay, I'd have to spend 165gp to get a penalty-free masterwork buckler).

Seems like there ought to be a bit more to TWD. Thoughts?

Disclosure: I am part of the PCGen team, Yahoo board moderator and minor data monkey.

(I have to confess, the current Pathfinder data sets are called "Beta" and it took me a while to figure out that Beta referred to the status of the PCGen data, not to the Beta version of Pathfinder.)

Hey Papa-DRB - Any particular reason - other than lack of volunteer time - why nobody has created a data set for the Pathfinder Society stuff yet? Mostly traits, I think, but there aren't any Golarion languages or factions in the current data sets either. Is this kind of thing legally trickier to put in a data set than something that is totally OGL like Pathfinder?

EDIT - Oh, and PCGen is the only option for Mac.

I do not personally know the identities of anyone known to me to own a blowgun.

I have had blowguns used against me.

And you're not going to share the story???

Actually, the DC of the caster level check to cast a 2nd level Bard scroll would be DC5. There's nothing there that says you need to add 10 as a base starting point.

I've got a 2nd-level bard and would like to use scrolls to cast spells before I've actually got the levels to do so.

As I understand it, 1st-level spells, no problem, because I can cast those already. 2nd-level spells and above, I have to do the caster-level-check thing, right? Only I can't actually find "caster-level-check" explained. I assume it's just d20 + my caster level (2). But do I get to add any ranks from Spellcraft or UMD? UMD has mechanics for using scrolls, but only if they are not on your list. I want to use bard spells, just of a higher level. It seems like UMD ought to give me some advantage.

And the DC for a scroll is caster level +1. So, since the minimum level at which a bard can cast a 2nd-level spell is 4, that'd be DC 15, right? And minimum level of 7 for 3rd level spells, so DC 18, right?

Thanks

I searched the pdf a while back and there really are quite a few (though I can't remember all of them now). Things like climbing, balancing, running (not double move, but running x4), not being surprised but not having acted yet in the first round, etc. all deny Dex bonus and thus make you sneak-attackable.

I use Rogue for a swashbuckler and get a lot of mileage out of Improved Feint. It allows me to use Sneak Attack in all kind of non-sneaky situations. I also invested in Skill Focus (Bluff). At 5th level, I can add 3d6 damage to many of my attacks. Pretty sweet. I've never done the math but I feel I get more damage output from that than from TWF.

Mosaic wrote:

Why, Paizo of course. Here's their page.

Uh, he said cheap. Paizo is way, way overpriced in the DDM market and always has been.

As I understand it, you'd only need to spend PAs if you used the extra 750 gp. PA establish a ceiling on your purchases, but then you spend gold to actually get them. You spend PA on "free" items of certain values and all those spells/bonuses listed there.

Actually, I don't think you can use the "free" 750 gp item to raise the normal cap on your purchases, either.

You can hide both light weapons with Slight of Hand. With Quickdraw you go from nothing to two weapons as a move action. But then there isn't anything that allows you to do two attacks as a single standards action, is there? Bummer.

If a justice of the peace tried to do this with me and my girlfriend I would be pressing racism and discrimination charges with the cops with the hour.

Plus, who says the cops don't agree with him? That's why the Federal government has to get involved. The office of civil rights that handles this stuff was pretty inert during the Bush administration - I think it file one case ... one the behalf of a White guy (Hey, I'm a White guy, and I know we can be discriminated against, but I find it hard to believe that the only act of racism that rose to the level of "criminal" in the previous 8 years was against one of my people).

I raided my son's little plastic animal collection. Glued them to bases. Very handy. The ones that come in tubes work really well. Got a bunch of African animals, marine creatures, and a variety of horses. Can't seem to find a elephant of the appropriate scale, though...

The little rubber "good luck" animals work too.

This place is pretty cheap.

Also, I would suggest that you not just stick with D&D minis. Many heroclixs, mage knight, horrorclix, and star wars miniatures can be used.

I'd like to see some alternative race-builds in the APG too. I'm okay with stats staying the same, but I'd love to see some new racial abilities to swap for old ones.

I think this does belong in the APG because it's more of a system mechanic than campaign fluff. "Dwarves of Golarion" with have info on Golarion dwarves, but I'm looking for some Pathfinder-wide possibilities. As has been mentioned, short templates for aquatic, elemental, etc., al la Unearthed Arcana.

I'd love to see some "ethnicity builds" for humans and non-humans, but being world specific, this would have to go in a Golarion book. I'd want suggested racial traits, weapon familiarities, maybe a few "always a class skills" (almost like racial skills), tweeks or alternative racial abilities, flaws, etc.

Somebody on another blog pointed out that some of those poor, confused biracial kids the guy claims to be protecting go on to be become president. Can Obama do marriages? That'd be freakin' awesome if he stepped in and married the couple.

Why, Paizo of course. Here's their page.

And if Paizo doesn't happen to have what you're looking for, I sometimes pick up a few from Auggie's. Never had any bad experiences with him.

Love the map of Ilizmagorti in today's blog! Really happy to see streets and buildings outside the walls! Can't wait to see more.

This does bring up an issue, though. There really isn't much incentive or reward for me to GM in the Pathfinder Society. As a GM, I only get the 1XP/1Prestige/1/2gold for running a scenario that I "eat." Okay, I'll do that once in a while. But most of the time I'm GMing scenarios I have already played. And for doing that, I get nothing. Okay, I get 4 hours of fun, but playing is fun too, and a lot less work, and I advance in the Society when I play. So why should I volunteer to GM?

It would be nice if there were some reward for GMs who run scenarios that they've already played, and even if they run those scenarios multiple times. Maybe not something as large as the reward for those who "eat" scenarios, but something. 1 Prestige point?

Does that only apply to Season 1+ scenarios, or does it mean anyone who GMs ANY scenario in season 1+ will receive that award?

How will these be different from their regular coins? What will be specifically Golarion about them?

Didn't the Living Eberron Xendrik campaign have something where you could buy a more expensive version of a consumable and then it regenerated each game? Spend 500 on a potion of CLW and get to use it in every mod?

I miss Search.

Would have loved to see a better Counterspell mechanic emerge, but the current one (with Improved COunterspell) is a little better than 3.5.

I can't design for 3 players and design for 8 players. PRPG (and its predecessor) assumes in every way a party of 4-to-5 PCs. Once you get above that number, the assumptions break down rapidly and once you go below that number you get TPKs quite rapidly. I have to set a ceiling and a floor somewhere and that floor is 4 and the hard ceiling is 7.

I just know, as someone who helps organize small meet-ups, it's sometimes really hard to get 4 people. We have people who drive an hour or so to come to our games, and I dread the day when they get there and we can't fill a table. What then? Sure, we can play for pure fun, but folks came expecting to play a Society game. They will want to play, and there will be a fair amount of pressure to "fudge" things - run a GM PC, allow a player to play 2 PCs, whatever, and attribute it to a ghost player. We've never gotten in that situation yet - and I suppose this is where I say I'd never falsify my log-in sheet - but we have on two occasions grabbed teenage kids who were in the hall, given them pregens, and made them play, just so we could hit 4. Once it went fine, and once the kid goofed around the whole time and lessened the experience for everyone else.

But I do get your point - you've got to set limits somewhere. I get it and respect that. I'm just kind of venting/thinking out loud.

How will these be different from their regular coins? What will be specifically Golarion about them?

Thanks Chris.

EDIT - One thing though (not that you're the official spokes person), 8 players DOES NOT split to two tables of 4 because you don't have a second GM. If you ask one of the 4 players at the 2nd table to be GM, you've just dipped below minimum table size; you'd be 1 GM and 3 players. You need a total of 10 participants to get 2 legal tables. That might happen at medium and large cons, but that's a pretty tall order for game shops, hobby days and small cons, especially when Pathfinder Society is still gaining momentum. Another reason why I think the minimum table size ought to be 3 - you'd only need 8 participants to run 2 tables.

Some GM/reporting Q's...

1) Say somebody uses one of the official 1st-level pregens. What happens afterward? Must they continue to run that pregen as-is (same name, etc.), or can they modify it, or do they get 1-XP-credit to be applied to a personal character they create later? Or are the pregens only good for 4 hours of fun and no official credit?

2) There are official 4th-level pregens. Can someone jump into a game with one of these and then just keep playing the pregen in future games, basically starting Society play at 4th level? [Then the above q's would apply about modifying the pregen.]

3) As a GM, I know I only get the 1XP/1Prestige/1/2gold for running a scenario once, but do I only get that if I'm "eating" the scenario (i.e., running before playing so that I will never be able to play it)? Or do I get that for any scenario the first time I run it? If the first is correct (eating only), is there any incentive or reward for me to GM a game, other than the joy of pre-game prep and 4 hours of fun? [I'm not being totally sarcastic about the "4 hours of fun," but playing is fun too, and a lot less work, and I advance in the Society when I play, but maybe not when I GM.]

4) I think this may have been answered before, but given the 4-person minimum rule (man, I'd like to see that dropped to 3), can someone who has previously played a scenario play it again with a pregen or a throw-away character (and receive no credit), just to fill the table? Would that be legal, if that were the only way for the game to meet the 4-person rule.

5) Legal games are 4-8 people at a table, right? And I can't modify the number of monsters in an encounter or anything to compensate for double the number of adventurers, right? So big parties just have an easier time? Seems weird.

6) What is the assumption behind the max gold? Total value of all treasure ÷ 6? So parties smaller than 6 are getting short changed, and parties larger than 6 get extra gold?

7) Should I be subtracting the value of items consumed from the max gold? Potions, scrolls, wands with 5 charges...

No rush, just thoughts that occurred to me while GMing last night. Thanks.

Not much discussion on this one in a while (and much of the old discussion went sideways on minimum table size). I'll be running it this weekend. Anyone else have any insights?

I seem to recall it being pointed out somewhere during the beta that the intent was to have Int bonuses apply skill points retroactively, particularly to ease the creation of high-level NPCs, like wizards, who would have their Int changing.