Pathfinder ACG #8-00: Cosmic Captive (Table 1) [TIER 1-3] (Inactive)

Game Master cartmanbeck

Hi Guys!
On this Discussion thread, you can feel free to... well... discuss! Logistics, character selection, strategy, anything!
Tyler

I believe the new Tiering rules allow you to play up to 6 unique scenarios per Adventure before being forced to advance, instead of being tied to Adventure completion.

This is correct; you do not automatically tier up upon completing an adventure, but instead are forced to tier up once you have completed 6 scenarios in a tier according to the most recent guide (v4.2). The main advantage I can see in getting everyone to T3 before starting is that we'd theoretically have more die bumps available should things go south (there's always the risk that something in the process of grinding up uses up said die bumps...). We'd also be a bit more capable of handling whatever the scenario throws at us, hopefully. I've never played Cosmic Captive before nor seen any spoilers for it, so I have no idea what is coming our way.

In any case, I should be 1.3 tonight (T1, completed 3 scenarios), and should be T2 by the weekend at the latest. If I want to get up to T3, should have that by the week after that.

If we have a Feiya and Kyra already, it may be best to have someone with Dexterity competency (at least two of Acrobatics/Ranged/Disable would be nice to have).

I can only play Kyra in the non-advancement mode (which is fine by me).

Assuming I do that she'll be 3rd level with two die bumps available.

I'm not especially concerned with party balance, overcoming adversity is half the fun, happy to take people at whatever tier the want to play. I'll be taking advancement.

What box does this play out of if any? (For loot purposes?)

I've got a cure spell to help out with healing but no divine skill so will be looking to hand it off.

It plays using rise of the runelords with almost all of the locations and Hench/villains replaced. It's super fun and I can't wait to run it for you all :)

Okay, sounds like we've got skizzers playing CD Feiya, JohnF with either Kyra (for no tier advancement) or a Warpriest or Paladin, zeroth likely using CD Sajan, and Pirate Rob using Agna. That's actually a really well-balanced party, so I heartily approve. :)

I'll be PMing each of you to ask your email addresses today, so that I can share my character tracker Google Sheets and eventually get chronicles out to you. I'll also be doing some back-end stuff to make sure the box is all ready to go in a month when we get started!

Assuming the choice of non-advancement is per-character, it will be Kyra - I've finished converting her to the Tier system.

If you'd like to update the link on the 'Characters' tab, you can find her details here.

Assuming the choice of non-advancement is per-character, it will be Kyra - I've finished converting her to the Tier system.

If you'd like to update the link on the 'Characters' tab, you can find her details here.

Sorry, yes, this is per-character, so you don't have to do tier advancement even if other players are. :)

If I end up playing Arushlae at PaizoCon a few times there's some possibility I'll bring her instead but I think it'll be fine for our party either way.

I'll commit by the end of the month.

I think either Agna or Arue are fine (or anyone else you'd want to table, but both of them bring unique strengths not found elsewhere in the party).

I have a question for everyone; I'll be running 3-2B pretty soon (probably tomorrow night), meaning I'm going to get another power feat. Do you think it'd be more useful if I extended the difficulty reduction power to also work on monsters, or if I took the feat to let me choose what location a monster is shuffled into if I fail the check to defeat it (and somehow have a spell I can recharge, aka it doesn't handwipe me).

The former is more generally useful, as making checks easier is nice and also lets me cycle my deck a bit faster. However, I can already shuffle my deck at any time for an effective -1 hand size penalty provided there's at least one spell in my discard (easily arranged), so I can also churn up my deck that way instead of having to dig through everything to get at the stuff I recharged.

The latter is more niche, but it is phenomenally useful to targeted-shuffle a location deck (for example, if it has face-up cards on top we don't want to deal with, or we examined it and said "lolnope" to what was coming next and wanted another shot, or the villain goes to the bottom of the deck and we'd like to hopefully encounter it a bit sooner than that). The best way to make this effective is to either acquire an armor or have someone pass me an armor they don't mind being banished to negate damage, as the Witch CD has very few options for mitigating lots of damage (and lots of damage is probably what I'd be taking if I tried to d4 a combat check to intentionally lose...).

The exact wording of the powers are as follows (I'd be looking to check off the currently-unchecked box in either case -- a checked box means I already have that power feat):

• When a character at your location attempts a check to acquire an ally or defeat a barrier (☐ or a monster), you may recharge a card to reduce the difficulty of that check by 1 (☑ 2) plus the card's adventure deck number.
  
• When you fail to defeat a non-villain, non-henchman monster, you may recharge a spell to shuffle the monster into a random (☐ or any) other open location deck.

I'd go for the first one - being able to add anything from +2 to +4 to a check means you're significantly less likely to fail to defeat that non-villain, non-henchman monster!

Hey guys!
Just FYI I'm going to be PMing each of you here in a few minutes to get email addresses. :)
Tyler

Sticking with Agna.

Has everyone had the chance to play around with the character sheet that I sent you all? Any questions?

Also, zeroth has graciously offered to step out of the game so that our fearless organized play leader Tonya Woldridge can join us and see how this all works. I'll be sending her the same info that you guys got, along with a copy of the "back-end" database.

I would be delighted to have Tanya along, but am sad to have lost zeroth.

I have indeed played around with the spreadsheet a bit and things seem to make sense.

Haven't had a shot to play with it yet, but I've looked it over. I get back from vacation next week and have 1 more scenario to play in order to tier up to 3. I've been duplicating the chronicle sheet on the alias profile so you can see that everything is legit.

I would be delighted to have Tanya along, but am sad to have lost zeroth.

I have indeed played around with the spreadsheet a bit and things seem to make sense.

+1 to everything Rob said above (as long as that doesn't cost me a die bump ...)

(Tanya? Is that a melange of Tonya and Tanis? :-)

I've played the Cosmic Captive and Tonya hasn't, so I'm glad to give up my spot so she can play.

Seeing everyone's playstyles will be interesting, I'm keeping my eye on both threads.

Also, I've seen Tanis and Tonya in the same room, so they are definitely not the same person :)

Hi everyone!
Okay so we're supposed to get started in 8 days! Very exciting!

I sent Tonya the link to the thread and a copy of the character worksheet. I'll be getting the box all set up and the first post made in the very near future.

Looking forward to running this with you guys!

Could you update the link on the 'Characters' tab to point to this character? Thanks!

I've removed my name from the signup and put Tonya's name on it.

Could you update the link on the 'Characters' tab to point to this character? Thanks!

Dot into the Gameplay thread with that new avatar, and then I'll figure out how to remove the old one. :)

Hi all!
I'll be sending you PMs today if you haven't yet dotted into the Gameplay thread. Part 1 of the game will start AND end on this Friday, June 9th, and then we'll be jumping into the actual gameplay right after that. Please let me know if you have any questions about how to use your character sheet, or if you have any questions in general!

REMINDER: I'm expecting everyone to post once a day at minimum, and the more often you can post the more successes we can contribute to the overall storyline of the scenario!
Tyler

Oh one more thing, has everyone decided if they want to play this for tier advancement or not? If you would like to, it will advance your character one full tier, as if you'd played a full adventure in one of the organized play adventure paths. If not, your character will still earn the other rewards, such as card upgrades and such, but no feats.

I am playing for tier advancement.

Oh! One more thing that you all need to be aware of... My wife is due with our second child on June 27th, so I'll likely be much less active for a few days around that time. I promise to let you all know when that happens and keep you updated as to when I'll return to normal posting (probably as soon as we get back from the hospital, realistically). :-D

We can chill when need be. Spend that time with your wife and kid. I suspect if things get really behind Hawkmoon can help us out as well.

Definitely. If CMB needs it, I'd be happy to take a few days running the game for him. Congrats on the baby!

Hey everyone!
I'll be posting the locations and scenario text tomorrow, as well as the henchman/villain text. You guys will have until Friday night at Midnight Eastern time to post which location you're going to, and your starting hands (if you haven't already). You can also feel free to do some planning/strategizing as a group. I'm still waiting for Tonya to let me know which character she's using and to dot in, but she just got back from the UK so I'm hoping she jumps in here tomorrow.
Tyler

First post is up on Gameplay!

Normally, I would include the Henchman and Villain text in the very first post, but the scenario specifically says not to, so you'll all just have to wait and see!

REMINDER: GM Hmm will be jumping in tomorrow with the overseer announcement of the beginning of the game, and then we will start with our first actual turns Saturday morning. I'll plan to do an update post every morning before our west-coast players are out of bed, and then intermittently as time allows throughout the daytime each day.

Feel free to roleplay your characters a bit as you choose your starting locations. Also feel free to strategize!

You four are free to decide the turn order in any way that you want to... normally in our playtest sessions we've been rolling 1d1000, then turns proceed in order starting with the lowest numbers. I believe all of you are on the west coast except perhaps Skizzers, and if that's the case I would recommend we allow him to go first, since he'll be able to see my update posts before the rest of you in the mornings.

I'm in Arizona, which is currently the same as Pacific time (west coast). Soo... 1d1000 ⇒ 546

Ha! So the guy on the REAL coast is running this for all you Westerners. Gotcha. :)

Hawkmoon put together an excellent sample turn, so I'm pasting that here. I'm going to make a few edits where he is clearly wrong in every way. :-D

This example turn picks up in the middle of a scenario. We'll pretend I'm playing RotR Sajan (he's the best after all) (he's alright, though Mavaro is obviously the best). As way of background, at the end of my previous turn this was my hand:

Skills and Powers:

Skills

STRENGTH d6
DEXTERITY d10+2
-ACROBATICS: DEXTERITY +2
CONSTITUTION d6
-FORTITUDE: CONSTITUTION +2
INTELLIGENCE d6
WISDOM d8
CHARISMA d6

Powers
HAND SIZE 5
For your combat check, you may use your Dexterity skill (☑ you may add the Magic trait) (☐ and/or the Fire trait); you may not play a weapon on the check.
You may play any number of blessings on your combat check; recharge them instead of discarding them.

Hand: Crowbar, Potion of Healing, Crow, Blessing of the Gods, Blessing of the Gods
Deck: 8 Discard: 2 Buried: 0 Displayed: 0
Notes: Anyone can use one of my Blessing of the Gods if they need it, but leave one of them for me.

And we'll pretend that someone did take me up on my offer of a blessing. When your cards get used "off turn" like that, you can post a quick update if you happen to have time before your turn, or you can just acknowledge you noticed it at the start of your turn. So, my sample turn starts now:

Dexterity 9: 1d10 + 2 + 2d10 ⇒ (6) + 2 + (3, 6) = 17

Defeated! Let's see if I can recharge that Crowbar.

Strength 3: 1d6 ⇒ 6

No luck. I'll need Random Weapons: 1d4 ⇒ 3 from our super awesome GM.

Odds are that weapon won't help me much, so I'll continue without knowing what it is for now. I'll use my Crow to explore.

Next card is...a Zombie. I'll use my blessing to help defeat him. Also, Mike has a Blessing of Erastil he said someone can use, so I'll use it.

Combat 9: 1d10 + 2 + 1d10 + 2d10 ⇒ (3) + 2 + (1) + (5, 4) = 15

Defeated. All that is left in my hand is that random weapon and a Potion of Healing. I've got 5 in my discard, so I'll go ahead and use that Potion of Healing.

Potion of Healing: 1d4 ⇒ 1

Sweet. Can't beat that. I'll end my turn there. I'm going to go ahead and discard that weapon, whatever it ends up being.

Skills and Powers:

Skills

STRENGTH d6
DEXTERITY d10+2
-ACROBATICS: DEXTERITY +2
CONSTITUTION d6
-FORTITUDE: CONSTITUTION +2
INTELLIGENCE d6
WISDOM d8
CHARISMA d6

Powers
HAND SIZE 5
For your combat check, you may use your Dexterity skill (☑ you may add the Magic trait) (☐ and/or the Fire trait); you may not play a weapon on the check.
You may play any number of blessings on your combat check; recharge them instead of discarding them.

Hand: Caltrops, Burglar, Standard Bearer, Blessing of the Gods, Blessing of the Gods
Deck: 8 Discard: 2 Buried: 0 Displayed: 0
Notes: Use 1 of my 2 BotGs if you need it.

-----

That is the basics. You can add in roleplaying if you want.

On the occasion that you need to shuffle a deck in the middle of a turn, just use a roll to determine the cards. So, if the deck had 7 cards and you evaded a monster then explored again, you'd just do this:

Random Card of 7: 1d7 ⇒ 2

And then open the spoiler for that card.

If the deck had 7, but you'd acquired a card, then evaded a monster, just adjust the roll. So this would work, since you'd acquired card 1:

Random Card: 1d6 + 1 ⇒ (3) + 1 = 4

But this would work too:

Random Card, skipping card 1: 1d6 ⇒ 5

There will be times you'll just have to wait for the GM. Usually that will be when you need a random card or when cards need to be added to locations. I'll do my best to check the thread as much as I can to accommodate that.

Remember, this is a suggestion, do what works best for you. I'd strongly encourage the following though:

Bold another character's/player's name if you end up impacting their resources. i.e. if you use one of their cards, if they are at your location and all characters at your location have to summon and encounter a Zombie, etc.

Share your tentative plans for the future. For example, if you are close to closing your location because it will be empty of cards in a turn or two, state where you might go next. That way if someone else also moves locations, they can factor in your preference if it is strategic to do so.

Let others know what resources/cards of yours they can use. And be clear. It can be tricky. If Lem had 2 blessings in a 5 card hand, you might say something like this: "If you are at my location, you can use my power to add to your check. And I'm also ok with someone using one of my blessings. But over all, don't use up more than 2 of my cards."

Also, despite what others have said about their willingness to let you use their resources, if you think it would be best to have them reconsider, pause and ask them that. For instance, in our Lem example above if the group had already used 2 of Lem's cards but he still had one Blessing and someone else encountered a villain. If someone needed help closing a location, it might be best for Lem to let someone use that blessing. So don't attempt to close the location until you've asked Lem and gotten a response. He might think it valuable enough to give up that third card.

Above all, be ok with how others manage their characters. They might not play the way you would. But that is ok. We can still have fun and be successful.

If you have any questions about how to post, please ask.

John, I'd suggest fishing for henchmen instead of monsters, as the henchmen/villain may be a barrier. That said, if you want to just shove the monsters to the bottom that's fine too. I can eat the bury without too much issue I think, as my deck is good at cycling itself with an occasional shuffle and I can use any arbitrary spell as an attack when combined with my staff.

I like the idea of starting things off with an Augury. The turn order is lowest to highest roll, so 152 is good for you starting early in the rotation.

I didn't think fishing for henchmen was allowed - I thought you had to match the "Type" listed on the Villain/Henchman card. I was guessing that it was slightly more likely to get a hit on "Monster" rather than "Barrier", but as we don't know anything about the Villain and Henchmen it was only a guess. There are two monsters and only one barrier, so I chose the one that is more likely to yield a hit. Once we find out a little more about the bad guys I can adjust my strategy accordingly.

My plan is to put a villain/henchman on the top if possible, or else put any monsters on the bottom. But as we're commonly better at handling monsters than we are barriers (and monsters are less likely to hang around and force characters to encounter them every turn) perhaps I should switch to looking for barriers!

There are more than a dozen different card types in the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. Among them are character cards, roles, and tokens; story cards, which include an Adventure Path, adventures, and scenarios; locations; support cards, which include scourges, traders, a bazaar card, and a defensive stance card; banes, which include villains, henchmen, monsters, and barriers; and boons, which include weapons, spells, armors, items, allies, blessings, and loot.

Note how villains and henchmen are listed as card types. Note that loot is also a type but it is not subject to the "one card of each type per check or step" rule due to page 24: "Also, loot cards list a type, such as “weapon”; apart from the way loot cards are acquired, loot cards behave just like other boons of that type and count as cards of that type rather than loot when played."

I didn't think you could either but I took a look and found this

Yep, Henchman and Villain are valid card types for Augury. So are cohorts, for that matter. So yep, if you wanted to specifically search for Henchmen, that is allowed.

That's one thing I've learned already, and the game hasn't even started!

I'm still somewhat more inclined to look for barriers/monsters initially, rather than henchmen.

A post over on Hawkmoon's table made me remember something:

The preview function will show you what the result of your die rolls will be. This brings out a good point that we hadn't mentioned before about cheating...

You'll notice as you do preview posts that the Paizo boards will always keep track of the order that dice were rolled in, and keep the results in the same order. So, if you do a check like this:

Inserted during preview: 1d10 ⇒ 1
Combat 14: 1d10 + 1d6 + 3 ⇒ (10) + (5) + 3 = 18

And hit Preview, it'll show you this result:
Combat 14: 1d10 + 1d6 + 3 ⇒ (1) + (5) + 3 = 9

BUT If you then insert another 1d10 before that original check, like I'm going to do now during the preview, you'll end up with something like this:
Inserted during preview: 1d10 ⇒ 1
Combat 14: 1d10 + 1d6 + 3 ⇒ (10) + (5) + 3 = 18

As you can see, it kept that 1 I originally rolled as the first d10 result, then rolled a NEW d10 with a result of 10, which changed my overall check result significantly.

For this reason, PLEASE never insert dice rolls in the middle of your turn. If you need to re-roll a die, ALWAYS put the re-roll farther down in the post, with this format:

Re-roll Combat 14: 1d10 + 1d6 + 3 ⇒ (2) + (4) + 3 = 9

Also, the scenario is adventure deck 2 for any veteran stuff that cares about it.

Also, the scenario is adventure deck 2 for any veteran stuff that cares about it.

Yes, thank you. I'm going to put that in the Adventure text to remind all of us about it.

Also, we keep copying posts from one thread to the other that have rolls in them and those rolls get recalculated and ruin our examples.

Time for another stupid question (it looks like I might well be going first, so I don't want to have everybody waiting for me).

I've studied the play example, and I think I have everything pretty much sorted out, except for perhaps the most fundamental issue: it tells me I might want to open the spoiler for a particular card (in the location deck, say), but it doesn't tell me where I can find that spoiler. I'm hoping this will become clear before play starts, but just in case I've missed something obvious I thought I'd mention it here.

HAHAHAHA DANGIT!

Time for another stupid question (it looks like I might well be going first, so I don't want to have everybody waiting for me).

I've studied the play example, and I think I have everything pretty much sorted out, except for perhaps the most fundamental issue: it tells me I might want to open the spoiler for a particular card (in the location deck, say), but it doesn't tell me where I can find that spoiler. I'm hoping this will become clear before play starts, but just in case I've missed something obvious I thought I'd mention it here.

That will become clear as soon as our Overseer GM pops in to tell us that Part 2 has started and I post the updated scenario post, which will include a spoiler for each card in every location. We of course can only plead with you guys to not look at the spoilered cards unless you're examining or exploring them. If a card becomes known through examining, or with an Augury, etc, The name of the card will also be listed int he title of the spoiler. Otherwise, it'll just say "Scorched Obelisk - Card 1".

Here's a couple quick examples of card spoilers (that you can feel free to open):

Dotting in here so I can see how things progress. Good luck guys!

We are getting zeroth-hour2 back as a fourth player, FYI. He'll be jumping into the gamplay thread soon.

Since I am coming in late, to move the table along I will go last. Standby as I post my initial hand/location (still using Sajan as intended, Tier advancing)

Thank you for jumping back in! Theoretically things will get started within a couple hours, and I'm ready to go! Here's the turn order:

Kyra/John
Agna/Pirate Rob
Feiya/skizzers
Sajan/zeroth