Tamago's page

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Zeil999 wrote:

I lied. One more question: If picked up at Gencon, will there still be a shipping charge on the subscription for the base set?

No shipping, but Indiana sales tax - the Paizo booth will effectively be a normal shop in Indiana

To answer the inevitable follow-up question, IN sales tax is 7%.

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I actually did notice this, and I like new shiny stuff, but its hurting ye old bank account. Over the last few years it seemed an ambitious goal to get these products into the 1/month stream, and I hope I'm not looking a gift hours in the mouth, but once a month is a goodly number.

/me dodges things thrown at head by others...

I agree. Not only for the cost, but also because there's only so much new material I can absorb into my games at once!

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The Block Knight wrote:

2) While there is no absolute confirmation one way or the other for why the gods imprisoned Rovagug over killing him (so what I`m going to say is as much conjecture as anything else); I`ve read all the lore as heavily implying that Rovagug is so powerful that they couldn't kill him. They didn't really have a choice in the matter - imprisoning him was the best they could hope for. Certainly, they were aware that gods can be killed by other gods since Rovagug chewed up several of them during the great battle, and they weren't necessarily "minor" deities as it's implied that several of these unknown gods were as powerful as the surviving participants.

If killing was an option, they probably would have, but given that apparantly just binding him required the all out effort of ALL the gods combined, it seems like they chose the only option available outside of letting him burn up the entire chessboard.

My own personal theory is that they could have killed Rovagug if they'd wanted to. However, doing so probably would have required so much force as to basically wipe out the material plane, or at least large swaths of it.

Essentially, the collateral damage would have been so high that they decided to imprison him rather than have to start over from scratch and rebuild the world.

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Michael Brock wrote:

But most gamers like the randomness of rolling a d20 in my experience. I just don't think there would be as much excitement over choosing a boon instead of rolling for one. Maybe I'm wrong so I will keep watching this thread.

Agreed.

Incorporating that into David's idea it could be that: 2 tokens = 1d20
and that 3(4/5/?) tokens = 2d20 choose one
or that 1 token + one boon = 2d20 choose one

But this thread is about non-con boons. :)

I like this idea. The "2d20 choose one" option would be a cool and interesting way to handle the extra tokens if someone plays an odd number of games. You're still not giving out any *more* boons, but giving the player some choice is a nice bonus!

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But most gamers like the randomness of rolling a d20 in my experience. I just don't think there would be as much excitement over choosing a boon instead of rolling for one. Maybe I'm wrong so I will keep watching this thread.

If you wanted, you could have different boon "classes", and still roll for which boon in particular you get.

For example, you could have a bunch of boons for a +5 bonus on a skill check, usable once. Which skill in particular could be determined by a die roll.

For a greater number of tokens, you could get a free trait, or a permanent bonus to some skill or other. Roll for which boon in that class you actually get.

For an even greater number of tokens, you could get access to a race. Which race could be determined by a die roll.

I don't know if that would be too complicated, though.

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Does anyone know roughly how long it takes to run this mod (in a PFS environment)?

It took our group about 7 hours. This one is easily doable in one long session.

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233. The PCs stumble across the remains of an old cottage, now little more than a weathered hearth and a bit of wall, with a mud floor. As soon as they step inside, a small fire kindles in the hearth. If they stay and look around, they also notice a small pool of clean water forms in a small hollow in one of the rocks, the biting wind outside calms to a pleasant breeze, and if they stay long enough, the floor of the place sweeps itself, revealing the old, half-rotten wood beneath.

The cottage might be possessed by a friendly kami, the remains of the house of a powerful wizard, or perhaps attended by some benevolent invisible creature.

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Without spoilers, are there any scenarios in particular that I should play before this one, to get the full story impact?

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I think the intent is obvious; you can either take two traits as normal, or a drawback and three traits.

Agreed. I think it's pretty clear what they intended here. A character can choose either two traits, or three traits and one drawback.

It does say you *can* take an additional trait, not that you *must*, so I suppose theoretically you could choose to take only two traits and one drawback. I'm not sure why you would, though.

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VERY FRUSTRATED! First I was mad that issue #7 didn't come with a map, like many of us thought it would, but now Paizo's customer service is letting me down as well. Issue #7 arrived at my house heavily damaged by the postal service, it looked like one of their sorter machines shredded one of the corners of the envelope and the comic inside. For the first time in my entire order history with Paizo I contacted them asking for a replacement of this $4 comic and after all the business I have given them, they won't ship me a new comic unless I send them pictures of the damaged comic. Of all of the other places I do business with I have never had any other customer service do this.

One other thing to keep in mind is that the comic is not actually published by Paizo; it's published by Dynamite. So the photo requirement may be a Dynamite policy rather than one from Paizo. Or it could be a Paizo policy for third-party products.

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I really enjoyed Issue 7. I'm loving the idea of having Black Fang as the villain for this arc, and I thought the cliffhanger ending was fantastic! I'm looking forward to where this one will go :-)

I also think the new artist is a big improvement. The artist for the first six issues was, frankly, too gory for my taste. Plus, it was often hard to tell what was going on. The new art is much cleaner, which is nice.

I do have one concern, which is that I'm really not a fan of changing artists in the middle of a run. Some other comics I've read have done this, and it's really annoying and breaks the immersion.

The "dream sequence" stuff from Issue 5 was a very nice way of handling the change in art there, and didn't break my immersion (since it wasn't really happening anyway). And I don't mind having the artist change between #6 and #7, since this is a new story arc, and I like Jake Bilbao's art better. But please don't switch to a different artist before this story arc is complete!

Thanks!

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What about implementing a 'meta' prestige/fame system similar to the one for player characters, but in this case make it for players.

Allow players to accumulate points similar to the way you count GM tables for GM stars, then allow players to spend there prestige to buy boons that have been unlocked by their fame tier.

So maybe the Kitsune boon becomes available after 20 life time points, and it costs 10. Limits the total number of the varied races by making it an expendable player level resource, but makes it open and fair.

If you do X you get Y, not you "might" get Y.

You can still give away the same boons that they might buy, so con attendance gets a chance at a perk, but a perk you can still earn.

I think this whole thing could quickly become a management nightmare for folks who don't report online, but I guess it could be a perk of online reporting?

Additionally, it would be good if a player forced to replay a scenario for no credit (do to shortage of players to fill extra tables) still gets the player fame so that they are incentivized to stay and fill out the table.

As a final though as a local organizer always challenged to find GMs, perhaps GMs get 2 per module?

I love this idea, but it would probably be a huge pain to implement. If they could pull it off, though, it would be very cool!

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I think this idea sounds swell! Thanks for listening!

I also like Rycaut's idea of offering the boon in waves. Maybe something like a 10% chance to get the boon if a scenario is played in the first month, and a 5% chance six months after the scenario was released? That would give at least some chance of getting a boon for players who are not able to play things right away.

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Slight change made here because Survival no longer makes any mention of identifying tracks, just following them.

The wording was cleaned up to dispel any confusion on the topic.

ID'ing the monster based on its tracks seems like a better use for a Knowledge skill anyway.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Fair enough. Did Survival ever make mention of identifying tracks? I don't see it at all in the 1st-to-5th printing errata document, nor do I see it in the 3.5 SRD.

Personally, I like Survival better than Knowledge as a means of identifying tracks, but I could see a strong argument either way.

Thanks for responding!

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What would identifying who the tracks belong to (race) fall under? Tha's how I understood 'identify' in the previous description, the roll allowed you determine "Ok, this is a goblin track" instead of an orc (insert any other race) track.

To me, that sounds like a Survival roll. Granted, there are no published DCs for that kind of thing, but it sounds like the sort of thing that ought to fall under the category of tracking, which is covered by Survival.

You might make a convincing argument that once a track is found, identifying it should be a Knowledge check (with the Knowledge skill corresponding to the creature type that made the track). I'd probably allow that at my table. But using Survival instead avoids giving away any information ahead of time ("Oh, the GM just asked for a Knowledge: Dungeoneering check, so this track must have been made by some kind of abberation...").

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Actually because

Perception is used to Identify Tracks because anyone can find them...

But only people with Track can follow anything over a 10 difficulty.

It was a clean of the confusion about locating tracks vs Follow them.

Actually, from what I can tell, Survival can be used for both finding and following tracks. Also, anyone who is trained in the skill can follow tracks of any difficulty (assuming they roll high enough); Track only gives a bonus to the roll.

Follow Tracks: To find tracks or to follow them for 1 mile requires a successful Survival check. You must make another Survival check every time the tracks become difficult to follow. If you are not trained in this skill, you can make untrained checks to find tracks, but you can follow them only if the DC for the task is 10 or lower. Alternatively, you can use the Perception skill to find a footprint or similar sign of a creature's passage using the same DCs, but you can't use Perception to follow tracks, even if someone else has already found them.

(emphasis mine)

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TriOmegaZero wrote:

Luckily, I will be running Way of the Kirin next week to get my lone LL character her credit. My two Shadow Lodge characters will be a bit more...problematic.

Play once, GM once. Of course, that's assuming at least one of them is in the proper level range. My only Shadow Lodge PC is level 14.

I believe if you GM "Rivalry's End" you are allowed to apply the chronicle to any character, even one out of tier for the scenario. I don't have the reference handy, though; it might have been something Mike said on the podcast.

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I'm wondering about this change that appears in the newest errata for the Core Rulebook:

Track (Ex): A ranger adds half his level (minimum 1) to Survival skill checks made to follow or identify tracks.

(emphasis mine)

Was changed to this:

Track (Ex): A ranger adds half his level (minimum 1) to Survival skill checks made to follow tracks.

I'm curious about the reason for this change. Why do rangers no longer get a bonus to identify tracks? I haven't seen any discussions here on the message boards about how "Rangers getting a bonus to identify tracks is broken" or the like. Is there some unforeseen edge case where identifying tracks interacts with some other part of the rules in a way that causes problems?

It's not like this comes up very often, so I'm not all bent out of shape about it. I'm just curious since I don't see the original rule as wrong in any way, and I'd like to know the reason for the change.

Thanks!

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Haladir wrote:

Hmmm... I don't think that Feast of Ravenmoor can be scaled up to present a challenge for an L10 party without making changes so radical that make it a fundamentally different adventure. It's designed to be a low-level investigative adventure from the bottom up. Part of the mystery in the module is that the evil is so low-level that most cultists don't have evil auras.

I'd recommend just making the town creepy, mysterious, and unfriendly to travelers. If you want the PCs to have an adventure there, I think you'll have to design your own.

I think the only way to run it as a side quest in Runelords would be to run it between Burnt Offerings and Skinsaw Murders. The PCs should be the right level then (4th) and you could just run it straight with a 4-PC party. (It's designed for 6 3rd-level PCs).

My guys are lvl 6 and I'm planning on using it to give them some additional xp. I think as far as the Cr of the module is concerned I can accommodate their APL by adding in multiple of the end boss, via multiple cultists dieing with it in them. Or something along those lines.

Edit: My group is 4 pcs, and I'm running it on the way to magnimar as a favor they need to do for a local NPC who knows the Tax collector from magnimar.

I think it wouldn't be too difficult to make this a suitable adventure for level six characters. You might want to increase the skills of some of the townsfolk, to make the difficulty of checks like Sense Motive come out right. And it's easy enough to add some extra cultists or whatever.

I would probably just give the end boss a couple extra levels, rather than having more than one of him. I think that works better in terms of the story. But either way would work from a combat perspective.

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I did end up running this for my Rise of the Runelords group after all, and the game was fantastic! However, I did change a few things about the Party, even though the module itself was pretty much by the book.

I started off by including a new spell in Mokmurian's dungeon at the end of Fortress of the Stone Giants. It's called "Summon Adventurer VI", and it summons a sixth-level adventurer to assist the caster. This allowed me to include a bit of fairly low-level backup for the BBEG in that book. But the real point was so that I could use it as a segue into this adventure.

The Party's hapless NPC bard decided to run away and succeed at an adventure, in order to prove he wasn't totally useless. He stumbled into the stirges outside Ravenmoor and used a scroll of Summon Adventurer VI to call someone to aid him. However, he bungled the casting of the spell, and ended up summoning six adventurers, instead!

The twist is that the PCs were both "de-powered" to sixth-level versions of themselves, and that they all landed in the wrong bodies! So, the Halfling archer landed in the Dwarf cleric's body, the Shoanti Fighter landed in the Druid's body, and so forth. And the Dwarf cleric ended up being in the body of the Summoner's Eidolon, which led to one of the best session quotes ever, with a cutaway of Erastil saying to Desna, "I just channeled energy through a giant crab! Do you know how hard it is to channel energy *through a crab?!*

Anyway, between being lowered to sixth level and swapped around into bodies that didn't exactly play to their strengths, this adventure proved very interesting for the party! It was still easy, but people had a *ton* of fun, and it wasn't such a cakewalk that it was boring for anyone.

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Do these issues have the same page count as the previous ones? I'm a little disappointed to hear that there is less "game content", but if the comic stories are longer, that seems like a reasonable trade. So were the extra pages of game content replaced with something else (and if so, what?) or simply cut?

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Seth Gipson wrote:

I think if you wanted to increase it from the current number, 3/month is a good target. If you get much higher, you cater to the small number of people who play a TON of games and run out quickly, but you leave the much larger group who finds 2 to be enough or more than enough in the dust by releasing more content than they can hope to play in a timely manner.

I think that the maximum reasonable frequency is 1 per week, which is ideal for a gaming group that meets weekly and has characters at various levels so that they can play anything that comes out. That group will play every scenario that is released.

I think that most groups meet at least once per month. So it would be good if the 'keystone' adventures that outline the story-arc for that season fit into 12 episodes. That way they get to join in all of the meta-plot and don't get left behind.

So the remainder of the adventures have some level of Pathfinder flavour to them, but are not tied directly to the arc for that season, or if they are they aren't milestone adventures where the summed reporting results direct the course of the meta-plot.

I think this analysis is basically spot-on. No more than one scenario per week would keep people from being overwhelmed (honestly 4/month is probably a better target number, just because it's easier to manage). And no more than one "keystone" adventure per month would allow people who aren't "hard-core" players to participate in the metaplot without getting completely left behind.

Personally, I'd prefer 3/month rather than four. I like Drogon's idea of one 1-5, one 3-7, and one higher-tier adventure per month. It's simple, easy to keep track of, and helps ensure a steady supply of content for new and/or casual players, while still giving dedicated players more content they can play.

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AcidicWind wrote:

only 28 scenarios a year is not nearly enough, especially for players where pfs is the primary source of their pathfinder games.

This is something we receive a good deal of feedback on. I'm curious what the best number of scenarios released each month is. I know there are some people who would advise they could play 10 scenarios a month. However, 10 simply isn't feasible. So, what do you think is the target number for players where PFS is the primary source of their Pathfinder games.

This is a really good question. I can think of four major considerations:

1) Limited development resources. This will obviously impose some kind of upper limit on how many scenarios can be produced per month, regardless of anything else.
2) "Hard-core" PFS fans who play very often will want lots of scenarios.
3) "Casual" players will want a few scenarios, but not so many that they can't play enough to follow the ongoing storyline (assuming they care about the metaplot).
4) New players need a good selection of low-level scenarios. More specifically, they need low-level scenarios that veteran players haven't played yet, so that they have someone to teach them the game.

Personally, I think I fall into #3. I'm worried as it is about "missing" the metaplot, since I only play about once a month (plus occasional convention play). So I would prefer to not see too many more scenarios. However, I think a shift towards more lower-level scenarios would be a good idea.

One possible solution would be to produce a few more (say, three per month), but also have more of them be "one-shot" adventures that don't really tie into the overarching plot of the season.

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The fourth season of PFS, while amazing for story and challenge, forgot about capturing the new player. Fewer tier 1-x options were published for this season than ever before. At the same time, plans were put in place to REMOVE existing tier 1-x options. To make matters worse, months would go by with no new tier 1-x scenario being published, months during which conventions and game days struggled to find options. And, now, going into the summer, with all kinds of major conventions on the horizon for the fall, coordinators have 7 new scenarios to choose from, only one of which is tier 1-x.

Why is this a problem, you ask? Why can’t the new players play the older 1-x scenarios? Because the available pool of veteran players who will sit with them and “show them the ropes” is busy playing the new stuff. There are hugely anticipated, story-impacting scenarios coming out that veteran players HAVE to play in order to get the boon that they need for their Shadow or Lantern Lodge character. There are high level scenarios that showcase everything that was going on in Season 4, and brings all those stories to a dramatic conclusion. There are higher level special events offering double gold and cool items and a “deadly” factor unequaled in standard PFS play. There are other PFS players who have a magical elixir that gets more powerful provided there are more players who own it at the table.

New PFS players dipping their toes into these waters can’t experience any of that, and aren't even aware of most of it. Thus, the veterans will be off doing their thing, leaving those new players to fend for themselves.

I've seen this myself in the last couple conventions I've been to. Nobody wants to schedule the older scenarios because we know that most of the veteran players have already played them. But there has been a real dearth of low-level scenarios recently, which makes it hard to seat new players, particularly when there are only a couple newbies and therefore not enough to make up a whole table by themselves.

I hope that Season 5 will have more good low-level scenarios, and I agree with the OP that the focus on the Worldwound will be a great attention-grabber for new players!

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I may post up my character for an audit or ask for equipment advice. I made a human fighter (out of the desire to play something 'simple' for my first character) and so far, she's had good luck surviving anything she can hit with an axe. I'm just wondering what to do when I meet things that don't respond to that.

You may want to post your character's stats on a new thread in the Advice forum. Or if it would make you more comfortable, I'm sure I or any of the other helpful people in this thread would be happy to discuss your build over private messaging. (To send a private message, click the username in the top-left of the person's post to go to their user profile. Then on the user profile page, click "send private message" (just to the right of the portrait, above the tabs).)

I'm not telling you to go away, but it might be good to not let this thread get too far off topic. :-)

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AdAstraGames wrote:

rebutle wrote:

*raises hand*

Hi, I'm a new player, and I'm assuming that makes me a non-optimizer by default. How can I voice my fear that "more options for dealing with optimizing players" and "raising difficulty of scenarios" means that I won't have safe ground to grow on, that by not being an optimizer I'm somehow holding my group back? I don't want to play the numbers, I want to play my character, and at the end of the day, this conversation makes me wonder if I'm wrong for having that (clearly narritivist/simulationist, if you subscribe to GNS theory) philosophy in the PFS campaign.

I hate to break this to you and possibly scare you away.

If you're a narrativist/internal consistency fan, PFS is going to be a poor fit.

Not because of the Power Gamers or the supreme specialist players, but because of the general constraints of the system and program.

1) PFS tables are run in 4 or 4.5 hour slots. 5 if you're lucky.
2) You have no guarantee that you're going to have meaningful continuity between sessions and characters. You don't even know who's going to be playing with you from session to session.
3) Missions tend to be very linear, though less so as the seasons progress.
4) Combat (the tactical/crunchy part of the game) takes a disproportionate amount of time...and gets top billing over spending a session roleplaying through the first mission briefing.

It can be fun, and it is fun, but you're not going to get a good narrativist/simulationist game vibe out of PFS. Trying to make a good narr/sim supporting Organized Play system is one of the things I've been pondering for two years.

Honestly, I've been realizing that. Though, due to limited choices of gaming venues, PFS is the best option for me to get any gaming in in the area. I've taken to writing sidestories for my character to get my narrative fix.

(Also, if you ever get a good narr/sim solution, do let me know.)

It might be worth looking into a Play-by-Post or Play-by-Email game. Without the 4-5 hour time limit, GMs have a lot more room to expand the story and get involved with roleplaying scenes. Of course, different online groups have different playstyles, and not all groups would be happy about taking an already long form of the game and stretching it out even further. But some groups would love this!

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I'd actually disagree with most of the above; at my table I'd allow you to put arrows in all of the compartments. My rationale for this is that an arrow is smaller than a javelin or a staff, so there's no reason why it couldn't fit. The intent of the item is to allow the user to store more items than normal in the same amount of space. I don't see how having a few more arrows in an already-efficient quiver is really any kind of problem.

I can see Jiggy's point about not being able to draw them as efficiently, and that's certainly a valid opinion. At my table, I'd just hand-wave it and say that the quiver's magic places the arrows easily at hand, just like items stored within a Handy Haversack.

Where I would be a little more restrictive is the number of arrows that could be stored in the other compartments. I'd probably rule that the number of items allowable is the same (so, 60 arrows in the first compartment, 18 in the second, and six in the third, for 84 arrows total). I'd rule that way mostly to avoid any potential arguments over how many arrows are equivalent in size to one javelin, or the like.

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Agreed. I think someone needs to do a Hawkeye Initiative version of this. "Valeros Initiative", anyone?

It's disappointing, because I've really liked most of the Lucio Parillo covers so far.

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Actually, I think this could be a pretty fun group. So no one wants to play a beefy front-line fighter with a target painted on his shield. So what? Let 'em play their ranged and/or sneaky characters! It actually opens up some interesting tactical possibilities.

For example, sneaking past the bad guys becomes a lot more attractive when there's no one clanking around in full plate. Or maybe the Rogue could sneak ahead and flush out the enemy, drawing them into an ambush where they will get caught in the ranged crossfire from his allies!

DM_Blake's idea of using summoned creatures is a good idea as well -- if the spellcasters are specced for it.

Ultimately, if no one wants to play the fighter, then don't force it. Instead, have them play what they think will be fun, and design adventures to support that play style. Remember: there is no badwrongfun here!

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As to the in-game reason for the modules granting only 4PP instead of six, that actually makes sense to me. There are no faction missions in the modules, so there just isn't as much of an opportunity for a character to distinguish herself. However, the things characters are doing during a module tend to be more impressive than what characters accomplish during a typical scenario, so that's why they get four instead of three.

That's the way it works in my head, anyway ;-)

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One other point: a Module is roughly equivalent to three scenarios. So if I were playing normal scenarios, I'd get to roll three day job checks for the same amount of XP.

Now, I'm not suggesting that people get multiple Day Job rolls after a module; to me that doesn't make sense in-game. But it is worth noting, I think, that even if day-bov rolls were allowed for modules, players would still be earning only 1/3 as much as they would otherwise. So if the worry is that allowing day job rolls for modules would be somehow unbalancing in terms of wealth-by-level, I think it's less of an issue than it might seem at first glance.

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I wondered the same thing.

Ironically, my first PFS character took up his day job because of the events of a module!

** spoiler omitted **

Ha! That is fantastic! Just the sort of thing my players would do :-)

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1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

I'm just curious: I played the Fangwood Keep module over the weekend (which was a ton of fun, BTW!), but afterwards my GM informed me that no Day Job rolls were permitted for sanctioned module play. That was surprising to me, but I looked it up in the Guide later, and sure enough, on page 30, it says, "There are no Day Job checks when playing a sanctioned module or Adventure Path."

I'm just curious what the rationale is for this. As I understand it, Day Job checks represent what your character is doing in his or her "down time" between adventures. While it makes complete sense that a Day Job roll would not be allowed between sessions if a module took longer than one sitting to play, I don't understand why there isn't one after the whole thing.

Surely the characters have just as much downtime between a module and the next scenario as they do between individual scenarios!

I could even understand not allowing DJ rolls for adventure paths, since that might be confusing given the rules for playing home games for the APs and receiving chronicle sheets for them. But I don't understand why players shouldn't get a single Day Job check after playing a sanctioned module.

I'm not trying to complain, just to understand. And perhaps persuade ;-)

Thanks!

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... I thought the purpose of a rating system people have been asking for would be before they played it, not afterward. With this system, Sure it gives every one a good metric 6 months after release but it doesn't solve the problem people have been asking for - a rating system when a scenario is released before they play.

Making an assumption here, but the large majority of people who post here, and have been asking for such a thing, play a scenario in the first few months of release. A check box isn't going to do anything for those people.

I see your point. We already have an informal "rating" system, in that people discuss the scenarios on these very messageboards. I know that before I run a scenario, I read all the threads I can find about it to see if it would be appropriate for my group, and how much I need to push things or ease up in my GMing to give my group an appropriate challenge without wiping them out.

Some form of centralized feedback system might be useful, though. Then there would be one initial place to look for an easily-understandable rating, rather than scouring through reviews and messageboard threads to get a sense of the difficulty.

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Mattastrophic wrote:

Stop publishing 4+-combat scenarios. Set a maximum of three combats per scenario for slugfests, and two for story-driven scenarios, and use that saved page count tell a good story which lets the players bask in Golarion canon.

My experience as a Writing Director for LFR tells me this will only exacerbate the problem. Squeezing the same XP into fewer encounters makes the mod more difficult, not easier. In LFR the time crunch issues surrounding mods combined with authors desires to limit action points forced a 2 to 3 combat encounter paradigm. In a normal D&D adventure you get a mix of encounters, some easy, some hard, some moderate. Easy encounters make players feel good about themselves. Hard encounters challenge them. Two or 3 encounters only leaves room for hard. Because authors could not spread out interesting fight components over several encounters they tried to squeeze all of it into the few encounters they had. The overall effect was to create overly complicated and difficult grindfests that took even more time to go through than the 2...

I think this is an important point to remember. I am thinking of one scenario in particular,

, which was a FANTASTIC adventure with great story and RP -- and then a brutal final encounter, presumably to make up the XP gap.

I love the adventure, and it perfectly fits the playstyle of many of my home PFS players -- but I'm leery of running it because I know that my home group is an unoptimized four-person party, and I don't want them to get steamrolled at the end.

Two things that I think would help with this:
1) Remember that an Encounter does not necessarily mean a Combat. Social encounters, puzzles, and traps are all ways to include more challenges without necessarily making things super difficult. This will also help to address the OP's issue, at least somewhat -- Bond may be fantastic in a straight-up fight, but what about convincing that noble to accept a bribe?
2) Since we all get 1 XP per scenario anyway, the encounters don't *have* to all add up. If there's a great story to be told that only takes two encounters, let it take two encounters -- and it doesn't need to be two CR+3 slugfests, either. Conversely, if some scenario demands a lot of short fights, they don't all have to be super-easy. (The latter is harder to manage in PFS, though, since we are constrained to a 4-5 hour timeslot.)

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I liked the "homage" covers, but to be honest, I didn't buy many of them. (I have the one with the goblin and the lightning bolt, and the "Pathfinder No More" one.) TBH, I base my decision on which one I think looks the best :-)

I could see an argument for the Paizo.com covers being more traditional, now that you are down to only two "normal" variants per issue.

That said, I was looking forward to getting a "Seven Samurai"-style cover for this issue ;-)

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Tamago, as an FYI, both retirement scenarios are currently planned on being offered at InCon Junction in July in Indianapolis as well, if you wanted to get them in before GenCon.

I hadn't heard that. InConJunction has been really slow at getting their event list up (not that Gen Con is doing much better this year, but still...). I'll bet that means I will be running at least one of them then :-P

It's nice that it will be offered there, but if you look at the number of people at Gen Con vs. the number of people at InCon ... it's rather lopsided ;-)

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To the campaign leadership,

I first want to say that I think the changes you've announced for Season 5 sound really cool, and I'm looking forward to many of them -- particularly the stuff about character choices having a more significant impact on the campaign as a whole and on our characters in particular.

While I'm disappointed to see two of the factions be removed, I understand the reasoning (ten really is too many) and I trust that it will be in the best interests of the campaign. I also really appreciate that the two factions are getting "retirement scenarios" to tie up their story arcs. Thank you!

That said, I really wish that you'd extend the date for when we must transition characters to the new factions by a couple of days. From what I understand, players have until August 14th, 2013, to transition our characters. In what I'm sure is *not* a coincidence, Gen Con this year is August 15-18, 2013. That means our characters must be transitioned *before* Gen Con this year!

I humbly request that we be allowed to continue playing our old factions through Gen Con. There are two major reasons why I think this would be a good idea:

1) Many of us don't get to play very often, except at big conventions like Gen Con. That means there are many players who potentially will not get to play their faction retirement scenarios except at Gen Con. And even if the players could run their characters through the scenarios at Gen Con, it would be *very* disappointing to be forced to use the "wrong" faction for the character.

2) There's a good chance that some players will not know about these changes before the con. Not everyone reads the message boards, after all. I would hate to see someone blindsided by these changes and forced to change factions before being able to play at the convention -- particularly if the PC must pay a Prestige penalty to do so! That is a recipe for some *very* unhappy gamers!

I'm not asking for the old factions to be permanently kept. But I would really like to see a four-day extension of the timeline, to allow Gen Con to be a "last hurrah" for our characters in those factions.

Thank you!

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If they follow past precedent, the previous chronicles will still be OK, because they were valid at the time they were applied to the character. I would expect that you couldn't continue to apply the old chronicles to new characters once the new versions are out, but if you already have them you should be good to go.

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I really like the look of this cover, but is there really no Pathfinder logo or issue number on this one?

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Bestow Curse is probably my favourite spell in the whole game. It has amazing potential due to the fact that you can make up curses of your own!

I had a player once curse a hag with beauty, meaning that her Evil Eye stopped working. Classic!

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I've noticed this. However, I've actually seen *more* of Season 4 at conventions than at our local game days. I think your reasoning on why is probably about right, though.

As a GM, I want to keep up with the metaplot, but I have been reluctant to do so because I tend to like teaching new players, and it's tough to pull my punches with Season 4 scenarios to make sure they still have a good time.

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I don't force my players, but whenever I have a new player at my table, I generally will say something like, "Oh, you got your faction mission and succeeded at the overall mission! Congratulations, that means you get two Prestige Points. These represent your fame and influence within your faction. You can also use them to call in favors, or to get equipment you wouldn't otherwise have access to. See, this table lists what you can get by spending Prestige. For example, you could spend the two prestige you just earned to get any item worth up to 750 gp. Coincidentally, that's the exact same price as a 1st-level wand. Such as a Wand of Cure Light Wounds. Which could be very useful for a new Pathfinder without very many hit points (wink, wink)."

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Another really good gaming podcast is Fear the Boot.

It's more of a general gaming podcast, but they cover all sorts of things relevant to Pathfinder as well.

They also keep up a very regular release schedule (about once a week), and they try very hard to keep their episodes under an hour (in contrast with a behemoth like Chronicles with its 8-hour-long shows).

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I think this has been mentioned before, but I think it bears repeating: one very simple adjustment that could be made is to give 5-player tables the option to choose the 4-player version of the scenario or the 6-player version.

This would require *no* additional development, since the two versions of the scenario are already there. And it would give five-person tables more flexibility to decide whether they want a "hard mode" challenge or an easier time of things.

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Hey, all!

Apologies if this question has been asked before; a cursory glance through the threads did not find it.

I have a couple of character sheets for which I'm holding credit for when my character hits a higher level. One of those characters is a Shadow Lodge character. What happens to the prestige for that character if the Shadow Lodge no longer exists before that character becomes high enough level to qualify for the chronicle?

Are there any special circumstances I should be aware of regarding reporting for that character, or others that might be in the same situation between now and when the factions disappear?

Thanks!

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Any chance we will be seeing a set of Paper minis for Fangwood Keep? I'm loving the fact that you're expanding the line to include some of the modules! :-D

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However, if one is running with a custom shopping cart solution, how exactly will this free software get integrated with the shopping cart? For that matter, will integrations be developed for ALL shopping cart solutions that are out there?

Or will the cost of having the free federally required software play nicely with whatever shopping cart solution you are running with fall on your shoulders to code/pay to have developed? I would assume that commercially available shopping cart solutions would implement their own integrations (which hopefully would...

Not to mention that each state will probably end up with different software. Now you don't just have to integrate with one piece of software, you have to play nice with 50 of them! (Well, okay, really it would only be 45 (and probably less than that because some states will most likely end up using a common system), but still, you get the idea...)

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The real problem with this is that it would require retailers to handle all sorts of bizzare sales tax rules. For example, did you know that in Massachusetts, shoes are not taxed -- unless they cost more than $175.00, in which case it's not a shoe, it's a "luxury item", and is taxed at 6.25%. But only by the amount by which it exceeds $175! Unless it happens to be August 11th or 12th, 2013, in which case it's a "Sales Tax Holiday" and no tax should be charged at all.

Amazon and the other really big players might be able to keep it all straight, but I can't see how a business that makes $1,000,000.01 in online sales would have the resources to figure out all the crazy tax laws in *every state!*

</rant>

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armac wrote:

As Drogon said, it is more a comment of remembrance for those of us who were here.

Fair enough. Sarcasm withdrawn.

armac wrote:

calagnar wrote:

I think this is a very good idea. As it is not XP, and it dose not give your characters gold. This could encourage DM's to rerun scenarios they have run. Just a blank sheet with 0XP, 1PP(or 2PP), and 0GP. Fill in the top with what scenario you DM along with the character you want to apply it to.

I know people that would find PP to be even better than gold or xp. It would allow them to get stuff for free, and also increase the limit of what they were allowed to buy. Personally, I don't like that option.

Huh. You just gave me an idea: What if we gave GMs PP that could only be used for vanities? You can't swap them for equipment or spells, but GM 15 scenarios and that townhouse in Absalom can be yours, all without touching your precious Raise Dead savings fund!

I don't know how many people would be enthused by that but I would be all over it.

Interesting idea! It sounds like it might be a pain to keep track of, but I could see this as being a nifty sort of bonus :-)