Man, you guys and your sufficient amount of Defense Points + 4-player Scaledown, removing what was probably gonna be the neatest thing for me in this scenario after talking to the old guy. Such a fun archetype; such a waste. :3
I do want to express again (since they're incredibly relevant for this scenario) that identifying humanoids is Knowledge (Local), a Skill Focus I see on a sheet; I'm hinting as hard as I can. It's not like every creature you're going to fight from here-on-out is a human or anything...
I just never see anyone use Local for IDing humanoids, which is right in the description, and it's mildly irritating to me. If you can just look at a Lantern Archon and somehow ID that it's different than some protean thing or just some space-based anomoly, why is it different for looking at people? How they move, knowing combat styles, etc. etc. should be just as common/easy.
It's more for class level and whatnot, though, since those are often so much more variable than when monsters show up. If the gug has 4 arms, you can expect him to want to hit you a lot with his arms. If a guy whose most notable feature is his fancy rapier shows up, you may not know if he's gonna stab you in the kidney specifically, as hard as he can, or may just simply some noble wizard who really likes slender blades.
If you see them in PFS, though, they're probably not Maguses (they're always invisible at the start of combat.)*
I actually just finished that one; I was playing my 20 Int Conjuration Wizard, with Greater Spell Focus (Conjuration). My mantra of "Solve all the problems by putting them in a pit" worked pretty well...
...until the cleric stepped onto the side of the pit to throw alch fire and slid right in at the end of her round.
One of these days, I'm going to buy the stone from the Taldor book that announces a phrase really loudly and circles your head to make sure I have a PA system that announces that "Ernest's pit is a bad thing to stand next to. Do so at your own risk."
You do realize that still won't work right? I had a separate giant table tent for my inspire courage in LG and no one ever remembered to factor it in. Things like that require people to pay attention which is is apparently really difficult.
Hee hee hee hee hee.
Though, to be fair, I've never forgotten a buff that was attached to a little table tent or one of those push-to-turn-on lights with buffs written on them. Amira also never rolled a single attack roll until last scenario...
Though that item would mainly be there to make the other players feel silly for falling in.
The raucous canard appears to be a small, nondescript piece of rolled-up parchment. Unrolling the parchment, however, allows you to record up to a 25-word message. Once you record a message, you may throw it into the air, causing it to animate, sprout small feathery wings, and circle overhead for 10 minutes while loudly repeating the message over and over in a bland, genderless voice. Alternatively, you may close the scroll, and the next person to open it triggers this animation. After 10 minutes, the raucous canard disappears in a small shower of sparks. Scheming Taldan nobles like to use these to spread gossip about their enemies.
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This guy right here in our F2F games gives me damage, waits for me to write it down, the goes "Bard song dmg." He now has the rest of the group doing it as well...
Still waiting for the "Operation Darkness" combo with Ashur and Erin. I have multiple darkvision potions if you ever decide to go lights out in a combat.
For Burglar:
Fortune Hex + Cackle People discussing it once
Fortune Hex + Cackle redux People discussing it until you're sick of it, but, importantly, a designer weighs in on it here, supporting the idea that Fortune provides its benefit for each round of its duration.
Not a big deal, but it'll probably impact tactics for me down the road depending on how you are ruling it.
My reading, unless its been directly errata'd would be as follows.
If Sharna uses Fortune Hex on Pinchy and Cackles (to increase the duration), he can roll a d20 twice within the next round or if opt to not benefit from the hex in the first round. He could then take the benefit in round 2 (since the duration was increased by a round.) Sharna can keep increasing this duration as long as she can keep laughing, but once he takes the benefit (roll two d20s and pick the better result), he can't be affected by it for 24 hours from it.
The biggest cheese possibility is hitting everyone with the fortune hex while traveling and infinitely increasing the duration until combat happens, but that literally requires the witch to laugh for hours on end.
Hopefully that's clear enough.
EDIT AFTER EDIT: Oh, a dev clarification. Going with that, even though "We'll get it in the FAQ" happened, what, last year? Do ho ho.
Yes, I hate the cheese potential there as well, which is why I avoid even things like Sharna extending it for three minutes since that seems so dumb and cheaty to me.
Haha, yeah, well, nobody ever said Paizo was quick.
Running on metaphorical fumes of caffeine note: GMing thing I learned as of the last two weeks: I need to generally describe enemies better in pbp; I tend to do it well (at least in my mind) when knowledges are made, but I tend to forget to add basic descriptions like "HE'S GOT A BIG STICK" on things that may or may not have a big stick. I think I'm better IRL, but there's no instantaneous, helpful bugging in pbp.
If you guys ever have feedback, please let me know. I'm pretty dense to learning without horrible, horrible amounts of prodding. Like adding Bard Song to damage for things.
I think you're doing pretty well so far. God knows I've been in PBPs that were GMed worse. ;)
"Looks like someone needs to teach you how to use a real sword. I am surprised my armor didn't snap that toy in half." The large man growls back, entangled in the melee.
I'll be honest, I considered having him grind his sword into the cavern roof for humour purposes, but decided against it to keep this fight at least semi-serious.
I'm so bad at reading statblocks (or anything in general for that matter); I think this is the highest-level NPC I've run ever. But yay for practice (and rolling enough 3s that it didnt matter most of the time)!
No worries, practice is good, yep!
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As a heads-up, my laptop's power adapter seems to be missing. I'm hoping it will turn up in short order, but until then I'm on battery power with minimal computer time, so I may be slow to post for a while. I suppose this might be the straw that breaks the camel's back of forcing me to get my PC's screwy connection sorted out again....
Anyway, barring something happening of a crisis-nature, I know what Sharna would be doing on her next turn: cackling, and Misfortuning the big bad guy, DC 18. Hopefully that'll make you less dependent on waiting for me should it become a problem.
Erry-body lemme know when you've received an adequate chronicle sheet and I'll get this shut down whenever you're done talking to the lady you'll likely never see again and possibly gave you faction missions.
I've got mine! Thank you for running, sirrah.