Please Change This


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Grand Lodge 1/5

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To The Powers That Be:

This has been nagging at me for just about two weeks now so it's time to put a post about it. I played scenario #7–22: Bid for Alabastrine a few weeks back and something needs to change...

Spoiler:
I was at a table with four other players and we were told this would be a social scenario. We had a social paladin, a social fighter/rogue another fighter, a sorcerer and a couple others I don't remember. We utterly failed in this adventure because we didn't have the right knowledge skills or profession skills.

Scenarios like this are NOT fun. As as matter of fact I'm seriously considering walking away from any future games that use the Ultimate Intrigue rules because of the way scenario #7–22: Bid for Alabastrine was written. But that's beside the point.

What I want changed is that any time a Pathfinder Scenario is going to show off a new set of rules that it's explicitly stated right up front, in the blurb, and the GM is required to tell you ahead of time. Also I think that for scenarios like this the GM should be required to look at the character sheets of the characters at the table and tell them if they have any chance of success or not (and to be clear, having a chance of success doesn't mean getting a natural 20, 10 to 15 time in a row because you can only make diplomacy or bluff checks that are heavily penalized for not being the a "social" skill).

I also really hope that all future scenarios like this one come with a warning at the beginning that you need social skills like Knowledge "x" or Profession "y", you know, the typical social skill that everyone has, in order to actually play the scenario.

Scarab Sages 5/5 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Netherlands

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I recently played this and had no trouble with my cavalier that had just knowledge religion and a little bit of diplomacy.

If you say, 'social paladin' I take it you mean one with Diplomacy.
Diplomacy is perfectly usable in this scenario. The checks are just a little bit harder then the profession or knowledge checks.

Grand Lodge 5/5

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Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Society Subscriber

I've heard more complaints about this.

I was at the same table as Tineke, and to be honest DarkKnight27 has a point.

The character I used was my least social character of the bunch I have, with an 8 charisma and no points in the traditional social skills (Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate), but with a good amount of knowledge skills.

Because I read up on the ultimate intrigue rules, since I plan on incorporating bits of that for my Kingmaker group, I figured that I could assist the actual social characters by making the discovery checks and enabling other more social characters, but it turned out that I was also really good at the influence checks due to the knowledge skills.

From what I heard (I haven't read the scenario, only played) the penalties for using the traditional social skills over the favorable skills determined for each NPC are rather harsh, and not just a little bit harder.

Scarab Sages 5/5 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Netherlands

They do get easier if you work with their strength/weaknesses and use the 'terrain' to your advantage. I made several checks, and if they had been truely harsh, I would never have succeeded with my +5 diplo

Grand Lodge 5/5

Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Society Subscriber

To learn those strenght/weaknesses you'd needed two specific skills though. One a very rarely used knowledge skill, the other a sensory skill that's more often than not skipped by low skillpoint characters.

We also played on low tier, and I don't know how the checks vary between low and high tier :) The upgrade in difficulty for the traditional social skills might be a little less harsh for low tier :)

Liberty's Edge 5/5

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Bid for Alabastrine was hands down a top 5 scenario for me and in the discussion for #1.

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5

I've played it and GMed both times with parties that were not particularly maximized for success. Both groups completed the Primary success, the group I GMed did not complete the secondary success condition but that was more due to strategy then not having the skills. On the other hand without realizing they had nothing to lose at that point based on their strategy they took the deal, which was pretty entertaining. Overall I felt the scenario actually offered enough different skill options that as long as you had some prior experience with social/ skill heavy scenarios and had built a character to have a little bit of usefulness you could still participate a little.

On the other hand when I ran it another GM was supposed to be running it at the same time with a lot of fairly new players. He checked out their characters before hand and switched over to running the Confirmation for them because they were not going to be able to succeed.

Grand Lodge 5/5

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So, Bid for Alabastrine at least locally has proven to be an interesting case. The GMs that have run it, said that it surprised them how well it ran and enjoyed the social mechanic from Ultimate Intrigue, thought the combat was similar to a number of other combats throughout the seasons, but warned that if the characters at the table didn't have two specific knowledges (one of which is uncommon), you should be prepared to hand out 0 (PP at the least, if not other zeroes) chronicle sheets as there is little to no chance of making discovery checks. It is one of the few season 7s I have yet to run or play so I can't judge it personally, but the GMs that did run it are both pretty experienced. If so much really hinges on two trained-only skills I find that a bit harsh, yet experiences overall have been good.

1/5

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I played it with my 2nd level swashbuckler which had next to no knowledge skills, he did have one that is used but not high enough at +4 to make any of the checks consistently, but pretty good traditional social skills. He was utterly useless after the sole combat of the night. I hated this scenario. I'm with the OP.

5/5 *** Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht

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I played this with Tineke and Damanta. I was kinda ticked off that we had to use rather specific skills while I brought a social character with no knowledges, but between the party we managed to get a nice balance between social skills and knowledges. But yeah, even I felt some frustration about that. It isn't immediately obvious you need to use those skills in a scenario like that, though in retrospect it isn't totally unexpected.

Slight sidetrack: I'm kinda ticked off with a specific skill Damanta hinted at, but not necessarily in relation to this scenario, more in general. Spoiler tags just in case.

Skill use:
Sense Motive is a weird skill for me. Unless it's your casting/main stat, it won't be amazingly high, I think. And of those, some classes don't get it as a class skill, so there's not much incentive to use it (Druid, Ranger, Hunter, Gunslinger, Shaman), or don't get enough skill points that you can keep upping it reliably (Cleric, Monk). The only class who has both the skill points and the stats for it is the Inquisitor, and they have such a wide array of class skills that even then it isn't that high a priority, I feel. I think that unless you heavily invest in it, it will only be mediocre at best.

4/5 5/5 Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Tampere

Quentin Coldwater wrote:
** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
Over here, it seems like every single monk has full ranks in Sense Motive and Perception (and Acrobatics, natch) and absolutely no other skills whatsoever.
Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 ****

I have both played and run this scenario, and found it quite refreshing. While I don't disagree with a disclaimer that it will highlight a new rules set, I do not think this one was poorly done. In fact, I quite like how the social interactions worked out.

First, you need to talk to folks or learn about folks to see what they are interested in (the analyze checks). Then, when you try and influence them, you use the skills that most interest them.

However, in _all_ cases, you can use diplomacy, and in most you can use bluff or intimidate. They are rarely the optimal choices, but that's fine.

DCs for influence checks:

At tier 1-2
Easy check: DC12
Moderate: DC17
Hard: DC22

In fact, 3 of the 4 people you are trying to influence have diplomacy as a moderate check. There is one where it is a hard check.

At tier 4-5, the checks are all +5DC


Now you can make your life harder by not learning which buttons to push, or not to push, as each has benefits and penalties(also in the analyze checks).

Comments on diplomacy skill checks in this scenario:

So, with what I would call a non-optimized diplomacy skill, at level 2, you can get a +7 (CHA14, class skill, 2 ranks).
That gives you a 55% chance of success at the DC17 if you roll... 100% chance if you take 10. And that is before you factor in possible bonuses and penalties.

That isn't "Diplomacy is far too hard to use" -- it is a likely success.

One thing I would ask of GMs running this, though. Please stop implying that "traditional" interaction skills are far harder to use (even if you think they are). Their DCs are in range for the levels, and, while they may not be the easiest skills, they are most definitely usable.

Shadow Lodge 5/5

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I really see where the OP is coming from. I don't mind the UI rules, I honestly thought the scenario was fun, but I also played at a table that blew it out of the water. Seeing where the OP is coming from, it does make me concerned that scenarios like these (which will become more common) are stacked to cause an average party to fail. I think the fundamental flaw might be in the discovery checks, which can really break the scenario's outcome in a negative manner.

But like all of us, I doubt anybody has done a really well reasoned analysis (except maybe John Compton) to confirm or deny our suspicions. Until then I'm concerned about what this kind of scenario represents, a pendulum swing too far in the other direction, for the reasons noted.

As I've said to Jack already in PMs, I disagree with a number of his postulates (especially that a non-optimized diplomacy character has a 14 CHA in the first place). Hopefully in the next few days I'll be able to pull together an analysis on a "fairly average but not broken optimized, and not broken underoptimized" group would fare on average in this scenario.

5/5 5/5

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I played it with my Exchange character, who has good social skills but few knowledge skills, and I did find it a little frustrating until we figured out the whole Discovery process. I may have missed it, but I didn't recall our GM giving that option at the introduction of the bidding chapter. When I ran it, I gave an outline of the social combat rules and my players were able to make significant use of the Discovery process immediately and had a much easier time of it. I agree that if it is not presented clearly, the social combat can be hard to figure out and could be frustrating.

Shadow Lodge *

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Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

I love this scenario. Traditional social characters are very useful in this scenario. The only problem I could see having is a party at high tier, where everyone put two or three points in diplomacy, and had no other non-combat skills.

I have no problem calling out Sense Motive as the useful skill for discovery, because that's mentioned in the UI rules, not just the scenario. Sense Motive should already have been considered a necessary skill for a social scenario -- in a social scenario you need to be able to talk, listen, or research, and all the UI rules did was standardize how that works.

When I ran it, four of the party members had no social skills, and one was a social bard. Three of the four with no social skills had a skill which matched up with one of the NPCs. So each of them worked on influencing their own person, the one without any skills pitched in in situations where she got situational modifiers (which were very common) and the social character cleaned up any misses by the others. They were apprehensive going in, but ended up having a great time. They even had time to complete the exchange faction mission.

4/5

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Please be more careful. The title of this thread doesn't have spoiler tags, there's very little information hidden by spoielrs, and it doesn't even tell you what scenario it is spoilering in the title.

Please be courteous to those who haven't played/ran the scenario. Use spoilers and have spoiler warnings.

(I have flagged the original post of this for spoilers)

Shadow Lodge *

Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
Pete Winz wrote:
I played it with my Exchange character, who has good social skills but few knowledge skills, and I did find it a little frustrating until we figured out the whole Discovery process. I may have missed it, but I didn't recall our GM giving that option at the introduction of the bidding chapter. When I ran it, I gave an outline of the social combat rules and my players were able to make significant use of the Discovery process immediately and had a much easier time of it. I agree that if it is not presented clearly, the social combat can be hard to figure out and could be frustrating.

The GM should *definitely* go over the Social Encounter rules ahead of time. They even have a 2 page synopsis of the rules included which can be used as a handout, since it has no spoilers for the scenario.

I can definitely understand a group being confused and upset if the GM doesn't explain the rules first, and I wouldn't blame them one bit.

Grand Lodge 5/5

Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Our GM had a printout of the rules for us.

It contained the discovery proces, the influence proces and how to use everything. It really helped.

The biggest flaw to me was actually the repetitiveness of the rounds, but I've already stated that in my review.

Truth be told, now that I've seen the DCs, I have to say that spread could've been slightly tighter.

Spoiler:
I'd probably have made the DC: low 14, mid 17, hard 20.

4/5 *

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We're Pathfinders. ALL scenarios will have some social aspects, so if you can't contribute to that you should at least understand that it will happen to some degree in every scenario.

There are plenty of combat-only scenarios already and no one is complaining that we should have special rules requiring GMs to tell us we might get into a fight in this one.

I think the issue is, there has been more and more demand for scenarios that actually make sense for the campaign background of the Pathfinder Society, instead of scenarios that could as easily have been handled by a group of mercenaries who met in a tavern that day. People who sued to be able to just run combats now have to deal with the rest of the campaign, and frankly it's a part that many of us like/love, and are glad to see it making a comeback.

The other issue may be, that many GMs are used to running with little or no prep, and the scenarios are becoming more complicated. I've always said that no one should ever run cold, and scenarios like 7-22 show why.

Grand Lodge 4/5 **** Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento

Sense Motive is an essential skill for *any* social focused character. Without sense motive, you don't know if you have convinced the person or if they are just placating you to make you go away and are going to turn around and rat on you the moment you are gone.

Spoiler:
For a tier 1-2, Diplomacy 17 isn't bad. You should probably be able to pick up at least 2 aid anothers.

Sovereign Court 2/5 RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Quentin Coldwater wrote:

Slight sidetrack: I'm kinda ticked off with a specific skill Damanta hinted at, but not necessarily in relation to this scenario, more in general. Spoiler tags just in case.

** spoiler omitted **

The key is that this skill doesn't have to be amazingly high. You can be competent at it with one skill point every other level, +1 to +2 from the stat, and +3 from it being a class skill.

Spoiler:
I find that about half of my characters, other than wisdom-based casters, have a decent sense motive score. Sure, you're not going to catch a bluff-specialist, but in most social scenarios it works well enough.

4/5

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I haven't played this scenario yet (it's on the list!), but my immediate thought is that 1-5 scenarios should not require any Trained Only skills to achieve their primary success condition. 3-7s, sure. Want to gate a secondary in a 1-5? Sure, I suppose. In subtier 1-2, it is unreasonable to assume that any given party will have access to every Trained Only skill and it becomes a complete trap to include that in the design.

3/5

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Sounds like this is one I should avoid, or GM first so that I'll know which skills I should have going in when I play.

4/5

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I know there's another campaign that puts them into categories (such as "Investigation," "Combat," "Travel," etc) that is published information and putting many of them in multiple categories. That way, you know what kind of character you should bring to a scenario. I wonder if that's something that would be of benefit here.

(Note: This is all my opinion, and not representative of anything official)

#7-22: Bid for Alabastine:
I have to admit, when I schedule this locally, I made it very clear that characters with little to no skills would be terrible in this scenario. I phrased it "This is not the scenario to bring your 7 int fighter."

Dark Archive 5/5 5/5

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The Fourth Horseman wrote:
Sounds like this is one I should avoid, or GM first so that I'll know which skills I should have going in when I play.

No, definitely play it first. Ask a GM you think awesome in preparation and Role Play to run it for you. If you do the reverse, I think you will find the experience lacking.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Absolutely concur with Jon. Walked in not knowing who I was going to play, went with my cavalier. Had a freaking blast navigating the political dynamics with my 8 Wis wayang.

Scarab Sages 4/5

Kurald Galain wrote:
Quentin Coldwater wrote:

Slight sidetrack: I'm kinda ticked off with a specific skill Damanta hinted at, but not necessarily in relation to this scenario, more in general. Spoiler tags just in case.

** spoiler omitted **

The key is that this skill doesn't have to be amazingly high. You can be competent at it with one skill point every other level, +1 to +2 from the stat, and +3 from it being a class skill.

** spoiler omitted **

Keep in mind also...

Spoiler:
The 5 point difference between the DC levels is not arbitrary. Achieving a success by 5 points grants an additional benefit (a discovery). Achieving a success by 10 points grants yet another benefit. Either a second Influence point or a Discovery (player's choice). So by setting the Easy DC at 12 and the Moderate DC at 17, it means that achieving the same result with an Easy skill as you do with a Moderate skill affords you an additional success, essentially. Achieving the Hard DC with an Easy skill gets you the +10 level. I actually think that works out quite well.

There are also ample opportunities to gain additional bonuses, either through the Discoveries, Impressing the Host, or plain old Circumstance bonuses for role-playing.

I loved this scenario. I'm not sure yet where I rank it. The original Influence mechanic scenario is still my favorite of them. I ran this one for a group of three plus a Seelah pregen, and they had no trouble with it. Granted, the 4-player adjustment helped greatly. They had an Investigator, but he rolled poorly for the most part. Diplomacy from Seelah and the Cleric got them the majority of their successes. Even the Dwarf Sorcerer with the Empyreal bloodline and a dumped Charisma contributed, though. Anyone can aid another on Diplomacy, Bluff, or Intimidate, and a +2 can mean the difference between a single success or multiple successes in any given round.

Scarab Sages 4/5

Serisan wrote:
I haven't played this scenario yet (it's on the list!), but my immediate thought is that 1-5 scenarios should not require any Trained Only skills to achieve their primary success condition. 3-7s, sure. Want to gate a secondary in a 1-5? Sure, I suppose. In subtier 1-2, it is unreasonable to assume that any given party will have access to every Trained Only skill and it becomes a complete trap to include that in the design.

The scenario can be completed without any trained only skills and you can achieve both success conditions. It's just easier in some instances if you do have them.

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 ****

Serisan wrote:
I haven't played this scenario yet (it's on the list!), but my immediate thought is that 1-5 scenarios should not require any Trained Only skills to achieve their primary success condition. 3-7s, sure. Want to gate a secondary in a 1-5? Sure, I suppose. In subtier 1-2, it is unreasonable to assume that any given party will have access to every Trained Only skill and it becomes a complete trap to include that in the design.

Based on what you have read above, I can see how you'd come to this conclusion.

However, there are at least 4 options of skills that can be used for each NPC, and many of these are usable untrained. GMs are also allowed to use their discretion on "creative solutions".

But, please, be very cautious about being hyper-critical about a scenario that you have neither read nor played. It is easy to be misled by statements coming from others... they may also be as in the dark as you are. Worse, they may have had a GM that didn't prep as well as they should have, causing a less than spectacular experience.

That reminds me, I need to update the cheat sheet I made for this scenario on PFSPrep, because I think I had a small error on it.

Shadow Lodge 4/5 5/5 RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8

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Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
Absolutely concur with Jon. Walked in not knowing who I was going to play, went with my cavalier. Had a freaking blast navigating the political dynamics with my 8 Wis wayang.

Agree with Jon and TOZ. I think almost universally you should play a scenario before you GM it.

1/5

I heard the table next to me play this.
They had a 5 int paladin, a 5 int brawler, a 7 int sorcerer, and an occultist.
They passed the scenario. Not sure how, when I asked how their band of idiots did they said they managed to succeed.

Grand Lodge 4/5 5/55/5 ***

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Quote:
so that I'll know which skills I should have going in when I play

Why should the scenario tell you what character you need to play? Sometimes we fail missions. It probably should happen more often than it does. Sometimes you just won't have the right skill or ability to "win."

4/5

Jack Brown wrote:
Serisan wrote:
I haven't played this scenario yet (it's on the list!), but my immediate thought is that 1-5 scenarios should not require any Trained Only skills to achieve their primary success condition. 3-7s, sure. Want to gate a secondary in a 1-5? Sure, I suppose. In subtier 1-2, it is unreasonable to assume that any given party will have access to every Trained Only skill and it becomes a complete trap to include that in the design.

Based on what you have read above, I can see how you'd come to this conclusion.

However, there are at least 4 options of skills that can be used for each NPC, and many of these are usable untrained. GMs are also allowed to use their discretion on "creative solutions".

But, please, be very cautious about being hyper-critical about a scenario that you have neither read nor played. It is easy to be misled by statements coming from others... they may also be as in the dark as you are. Worse, they may have had a GM that didn't prep as well as they should have, causing a less than spectacular experience.

That reminds me, I need to update the cheat sheet I made for this scenario on PFSPrep, because I think I had a small error on it.

My point was not about any scenario in particular, but rather as a design principle. I've heard that there was a creative solution clause in Bid for Alabastrine in other threads. I suppose I wasn't very clear on that.

Scarab Sages 4/5

Walter Sheppard wrote:
Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
Absolutely concur with Jon. Walked in not knowing who I was going to play, went with my cavalier. Had a freaking blast navigating the political dynamics with my 8 Wis wayang.
Agree with Jon and TOZ. I think almost universally you should play a scenario before you GM it.

I wish I'd had that option. I took one for the team, since I hadn't run anything in a while. I usually try to play the scenario online first in that situation, but I wasn't able to work that out this time.

Thomas Hutchins wrote:

I heard the table next to me play this.

They had a 5 int paladin, a 5 int brawler, a 7 int sorcerer, and an occultist.
They passed the scenario. Not sure how, when I asked how their band of idiots did they said they managed to succeed.

Assuming the Paladin had a decent Diplomacy, the Sorcerer a decent Intimidate, the Occultist one of a few common Knowledge skills, and the Brawler at least a 40% chance to Aid another on the social skills, it should be doable. The 4-player adjustment really does help out a lot in this one.

EDIT: Fixed formatting.

3/5

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Bob Jonquet wrote:
Quote:
so that I'll know which skills I should have going in when I play
Why should the scenario tell you what character you need to play? Sometimes we fail missions. It probably should happen more often than it does. Sometimes you just won't have the right skill or ability to "win."

Meh. I like winning. It's part of my fun. Losing doesn't feel good, and in fact feels pretty crappy.

Others, like you, I'm sure have other opinions.

For the record, I'm not a fan of GMing first in general.

4/5

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My typical argument to bridge the gap between metagaming and in-character choices of party is:

1. Why would the Pathfinder Society send a team of brute fighters with no tact to a mission that requires lots of finesse and tact?

2. Conversely, why would a the Society send a team of social butterflies to investigate "Death Crypt"?

Shadow Lodge *

Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
The Fourth Horseman wrote:
Bob Jonquet wrote:
Quote:
so that I'll know which skills I should have going in when I play
Why should the scenario tell you what character you need to play? Sometimes we fail missions. It probably should happen more often than it does. Sometimes you just won't have the right skill or ability to "win."

Meh. I like winning. It's part of my fun. Losing doesn't feel good, and in fact feels pretty crappy.

Others, like you, I'm sure have other opinions.

For the record, I'm not a fan of GMing first in general.

Yeah. But reputation aside, you really don't need a silver bullet skill for this. One social character + a bunch of non-social characters who simply put a point or two into non-combat skills can definitely be successful.

5/5 5/55/55/5

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Bob Jonquet wrote:
Quote:
so that I'll know which skills I should have going in when I play
Why should the scenario tell you what character you need to play? Sometimes we fail missions. It probably should happen more often than it does. Sometimes you just won't have the right skill or ability to "win."

There are very few points in the game where you need to be playing a certain character because there's only one way of doing things. Scenarios mandating an oddball skill check are one of those ways.

Lantern Lodge 3/5

Walter Sheppard wrote:
Agree with Jon and TOZ. I think almost universally you should play a scenario before you GM it.

You aren't wrong, but someone has to bite the bullet and run it first. :p

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Thankfully, someone already has! :D

Scarab Sages 4/5

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BigNorseWolf wrote:
Bob Jonquet wrote:
Quote:
so that I'll know which skills I should have going in when I play
Why should the scenario tell you what character you need to play? Sometimes we fail missions. It probably should happen more often than it does. Sometimes you just won't have the right skill or ability to "win."
There are very few points in the game where you need to be playing a certain character because there's only one way of doing things. Scenarios mandating an oddball skill check are one of those ways.

I've only run into that situation once, and I'm not even sure the GM ran it correctly.

To Scale the Dragon:
Part of the scenario requires taking some dog pulled sleds up a mountain. The GM explained it to us as requiring Handle Animal. He did not allow an untrained roll. None of us had Handle Animal. Rather than end the game and hand us failed chronicles, he let one of the character that had Breadth of Experience use Profession: Dogsledder. One sled still wasn't enough to carry everyone, so my Monk ended up running along beside it (I'm not sure, but I think I burned all my Ki using Feather Step to avoid the difficult terrain, and I actually had a faster base speed than the sled).

Now, I'm not sure the scenario doesn't allow for the roll to be made untrained. If it doesn't, then that's a very situational skill. Even more so than most of the Knowledge skills. If you don't have a pet class in the party, you're very likely not to have anyone trained in Handle Animal. The way that situation was handled (pun intended), the fact that two PCs were killed due to using the most powerful interpretation of a creature's abilities, and that the gold awarded was the lowest I've ever seen in subtler 5-6 all left a bad taste in my mouth, so I haven't been able to bring myself to read it, let alone run it.

I've played plenty of scenarios where having no skills in the party beyond Perception and Diplomacy can make things much more difficult, but that's the only time I've seen a single skill almost derail a scenario before it even gets started. That was also a season 0 scenario, so a lot can be excused with the campaign still finding its footing.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

You should read the scenario. It's quite good. The Handle Animal problem is a common misconception because people don't check the clause at the end of the skill description.

Dark Archive 5/5 5/5

Lormyr wrote:
Walter Sheppard wrote:
Agree with Jon and TOZ. I think almost universally you should play a scenario before you GM it.
You aren't wrong, but someone has to bite the bullet and run it first. :p

Yep! And that person is usually me! In fact, myself and another person volunteer to run the month's new scenarios for our store coordinators for just this very reason.

Scarab Sages 4/5

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
You should read the scenario. It's quite good. The Handle Animal problem is a common misconception because people don't check the clause at the end of the skill description.

It's been a couple of years, so I can probably give it a read now without having flashbacks.

Silver Crusade 4/5

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
You should read the scenario. It's quite good. The Handle Animal problem is a common misconception because people don't check the clause at the end of the skill description.

Yeah, that's a common misconception. Handle Animal CAN be used untrained most of the time. It's just for training an animal that it can't.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

My Suli had:

Bluff +10
Diplomacy +12
Sense Motive +10
And 1 rank each(with no Int mod) in various Knowledge skills

Basically, what he did was ass around with his outrageous American accent and failed to understand anything discoverywise but aced influences just by taking ten.

Scarab Sages 4/5

Fromper wrote:
Steven Schopmeyer wrote:
You should read the scenario. It's quite good. The Handle Animal problem is a common misconception because people don't check the clause at the end of the skill description.
Yeah, that's a common misconception. Handle Animal CAN be used untrained most of the time. It's just for training an animal that it can't.

I have to admit, I've never run a pet class, so I've never read the whole skill (There's a lot in there!). Just glanced over the relevant area for whatever the player is trying to do. That would have helped, since the Oracle's CHA check would have been better than an untrained Profession check, even with the +2 from Breadth of Experience.

Ok, sorry for the derail. Back to Alabastrine.

Dark Archive 4/5 5/5 ****

Muser wrote:

My Suli had:

Bluff +10
Diplomacy +12
Sense Motive +10
And 1 rank each(with no Int mod) in various Knowledge skills

Basically, what he did was ask around with his outrageous American accent and failed to understand anything discoverywise but aced influences just by taking ten.

FIFY

But, your SM+10 should have been pretty great! As well as the skills.

Sovereign Court 2/5 RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Ferious Thune wrote:
There are very few points in the game where you need to be playing a certain character because there's only one way of doing things. Scenarios mandating an oddball skill check are one of those ways.
I've only run into that situation once, and I'm not even sure the GM ran it correctly.

I find that almost always, when the players claim "there's only one way we could do it", then either there ARE alternatives but they haven't considered them, or the GM is overlooking something :)

Shadow Lodge 4/5

Jack Brown wrote:
Muser wrote:

My Suli had:

Bluff +10
Diplomacy +12
Sense Motive +10
And 1 rank each(with no Int mod) in various Knowledge skills

Basically, what he did was ask around with his outrageous American accent and failed to understand anything discoverywise but aced influences just by taking ten.

FIFY

No, see, he was acting like a fool aka fooling or arseing around.

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