Starting the discussion thread for our next PFS game! Please feel free to discuss whatever you like here, and dot in to the gameplay thread when you're ready.
Again, the release date is set for the 24th, so I'll start in earnest then (reading it fully as we get started). I've got some new Pathfinder books coming, including the technology guide, so I'm looking forward to getting into the meat of season 6 a bit more.
Not that anyone cares, but I've hooked up an event for this and our ongoing sessions:
Gunari, I'll keep this event open. Feel free to report against it if you run the next session!
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Cyrus the Flea, Checking in! (you all know me as Jaender.) Get ready to meet one of the most awkward, yet acrobatically capable humans you have ever seen!
Edit: Going to be pushing the GM of the game Cyrus is currently in to finish quickly, we should be almost done, so I don't see any issues there. he will also join in the fun here as a level two, soon to be re-written as a Ninja. Same personality and flavor, slightly different abilities.
Another note... We don't have any females in this group do we? So one less avenue for me to make it awkward... no worries, I am resourceful :)
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I wanted to post and let everyone know that this is the toon I will be playing in PFS 06-05 Slave Ships of Absalom with. However, I will be using the level 1 re-write rules to update this toon from a bard to an investigate/ranger.
For my initial posts in the gameplay thread, I will use this toon, but he won't be fully updated to the investigator/ranger until the current scenario I'm playing in finishes within the next few days.
Just wanted to try to help avoid some confusion at the outset for everyone.
No problems at all. Some exciting new options and new rewrite rules make this a very exciting time for PFS! Now I wish they'd hurry up and incorporate the new factions already!
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I swear, I'm going to roll up a catfolk rogue, call her "Sheeba" and actually play her in PFS one of these days.
You should make the alias anyways for these scenes... Just a thought! I love this part of the game :)
-Posted with Wayfinder
I wanted to post and let everyone know that this is the toon I will be playing in PFS 06-05 Slave Ships of Absalom with. However, I will beI using the level 1 re-write rules to update this toon from a bard to an investigate/ranger.
I've only just received my copy of the Advanced Class guide. Do you mean to have a multiclass investigator/ranger? Sounds interesting. Multiclassing with a hybrid class!
Who's up for a brief pre-adventure bar fight with an enlarged, drunken Lort?
Oh, and just saw Finarin's current conditions. Classic.
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I've only just received my copy of the Advanced Class guide. Do you mean to have a multiclass investigator/ranger? Sounds interesting. Multiclassing with a hybrid class!
That's the intention. Multiclass Investigator and Ranger (to start), and who knows what else later on. Hopefully it's not terrible!
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I had to request access to the bar room map, sjhanis ... Not sure if I was supposed to...
-Posted with Wayfinder
Ah, sorry, forgot that shared editing is off by default. Fixed now!
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Hey, I looked some things up on the acrobatics check because I hadn't seen it handled that way before. I am glad it came up now!
According to the FAQ on the core rulebook, only one check is needed per foe.. I copied and pasted for reference. I wanted to look it up because I am going to be doing this a lot probably, and want to make sure I don't make it to difficult!
Acrobatics: How does Acrobatics work when you use it to avoid attacks of opportunity? When do you make checks? How many do you make?
Acrobatics allows you to make checks to move through the threatened area of foes without provoking attacks of opportunity. You must make a check the moment you attempt to leave a square threatened by an enemy, but only once per foe. The DC (which is based of the Combat Maneuver Defense of each foe), increases by +2 for each foe after the first in one round. The DC also increases by +5 if you attempt to move through a foe. In the case of moving out of the threatened square of two foes at the same time, the moving character decides which check to make first.
For example, a rogue is flanked by a meek goblin and a terrifying antipaladin. The rogue move away from both of them, provoking an attack of opportunity from both, but uses Acrobatics to attempt to negate them. She must move at half speed while threatened by these foes and can choose which to check against first. If she fails a check, she provokes an attack of opportunity from that foe. If she makes it, she does not provoke from moving through that foe's threatened space this turn.
On a slightly related note... holy crap, I hope you got that good roll out of your GM system... :)
Yeah, the table says threatened area, but the text says "you can move through a threatened square without provoking an attack of opportunity from an enemy by using Acrobatics", which is the bit that my regular GM always fixated upon. Seemed harsh. Glad there's an FAQ and the next time Eric the Hand needs to escape from an Ogre, he can have a much better chance of doing so! Oh, and Cyrus too.
FYI, if this had happened in game, I would definitely have allowed a retrofit. Always feel free to question my rules interpretations!!!
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Awesome! I always figured it was something like one roll per enemy, but never had anything to back it up. That is part of the cool thing with PBP, I don't feel like I am being a nit-picky, time-waster at the table by spending extra time looking for clarification. I personally like to double check rules, it makes me more knowledgeable, and everyone else at the table really.
Reading that clarification also lets me know I was being too generous as a player, I didn't realize I had to roll once per enemy, at a cumulative +2 to the DC... Now I know!
It is slightly unfortunate that we have to dig so far for clarification, the rule itself is just very ambiguous. I am glad I found it though, for this game and others!
Agreed. We have never gone to the Paizo FAQ for a clarification in our home game before, though, we've just found the appropriate rule in one of the books. I think we should start!
Heh, I guess one of the other advantages of PbP is you can ask the entire Paizo message boards for advice mid-round! ;-)
As hit happens you didn't (the dates were before the last game)... and I wouldn't have minded if you did.
Gunari’s last post reminds me of a point that I’ve always thought about but never raised before…
Please, please, please do not take any of the following to be an accusation in any way shape or form. This current combat really does not matter and so there is no problem with anything that has been posted in it. It just reminded me of a point I was going to raise at some point for this and other PbP games that I may run in the future.
Gunari looks towards Cyrus and Sheeba, to see if Cyrus still lives. [dice=heal check]1d20+7 Gunari shakes his head, sure that Sheeba is cradling the dead body of Cyrus. [dice=perception]1d20+3. Her singing is far to quiet for him to hear in the din of the barfight.
He takes a mighty swing with his god-infused tankard, [dice=attack]1d20+4+2 [dice=for]1d4+4 "Gotcha, you big lug!"
The lovely preview feature that includes dice results allows many wonderful descriptions, and for games to be sped up to some degree (though multiple posts could also handle this, it reads nicer this way). It also allows players some degree of creative rewriting with dice rolls.
The d20 roll results for the above provide an excellent example. 3, 11, 19. If they were attack rolls using Gunari’s attack bonus against Lort’s AC, they would be miss, miss, hit.
Unscrupulous players could easily just add spurious skill checks (up to a certain maximum where it becomes absurd) until their attack succeeds. This is one of the reasons I roll perception checks and sense motive checks (though mainly I do those to speed things up and/or hide the result). It’s just too easy for players to “see if someone’s lying” or “check over there” until they get a high roll.
So, has anyone run or played any PbP where this was handled well?
What are your collective thoughts on the following attempt to resolve the issue:
Too harsh / restrictive? Appropriate? Loop holes? Better ideas?
Note also that there is a time out on rolls, so it is technically also possible to cheat by waiting for a better roll (found out about the time out when I saved a post for later, with loads of descriptive text, only to find that the rolls changed over completely by the time I got to post it). The timeout is over 24 hours, though, and I bot you after 24 hours (sorry Amaranti, I looked back and it was 24 hours, 2 minutes!), so this isn't an effective strategy in my games anyway.
As an aside for heal checks to check on someone's status, inspect wounds and the like... I've normally ruled that these are all perception checks. You don't need to be a healer to notice someone is breathing or spot the serrations on a wound. You do, however, need to be perceptive to notice that your comrade is breathing from the other side of a combat.
Interpreting that information would then either fall under heal or an appropriate knowledge roll. Eg. How long does Cyrus have until he is conscious again?
None of the above uses of heal are covered by the skill description, so I'd love to hear your thoughts (or view any threads you've found).
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Awesome question and topic - I had recently found out about being able to manipulate rolls to some extent.
The easy answer is, don't do it, because failing once in a while adds flavor to the game. However, in a game like this, it is nice to not have to question whether someone is being above board. As a note, I am the kind of person who would never question someone on something like this until they gave me a reason to, and based on the last game, I doubt we have anything to worry about.
With that being said, I really like the idea of some form of consistency with rolls, even if to eliminate the temptation of manipulation.
I do think it will take a little getting used to, but what you have laid out seems very intuitive, and is typically the way I would write my posts anyways. I would advise caution with the penalty for messing it up, at least until everyone in the party is familiar with it (assuming everyone agrees on it)
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See what you are saying. For Spell Combat w/ AoO or Concentration checks, Finarin makes 3 d20 rolls. So 3 posts or one post in a specific order:
1) AoO Damage or Concentration check
2)Off hand spell
3) Weapon
Your sandbox - whatever you want me to do I am game. You have proven to be a fair and reasonable DM so no reason not to trust your decision making skills going forward.
I couldn't agree more about the group being awesome and trustworthy. Other than the aforementioned "GM rolls perception & sense motive" I don't think I'll institute any of the above as rules for this group. Conventions? Maybe. Definitely not rules, though. This post is purely a theoretical exercise for how to deal with it in general.
How about modifying the punishment from:
Failure to comply will result in the GM rerolling any skill checks for you and taking the lowest d20 roll for your attack (and/or save).
to
Players who break the above rules will be warned. Repeated breaking of the above will result in the GM rerolling any skill checks for you and taking the lowest d20 roll for your attack (and/or save).
Again, don't want or need it for this game (especially if last scenario is anything to go by), but I wouldn't mind having it in my "GM PbP house rule" toolkit. It may even make my play guide.
Still curious about those heal vs perception checks, too...
@Fininjarin: Just one post, and that order would be correct for the above rules. I wouldn't mind if 2-3 were rearranged, unless 2 had an impact on 3. Again, though, don't think I want to put in those rules for this game. I'm loving the fluid posting styles and the great descriptions. Great work all around!
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I personally like the idea of a (mostly) set/standard way of posting those things. truthfully, the more I think about it, the reason why it seems so intuitive anyways is because it lends to the flow of the storytelling part of the post.
RE: the heal/perception check. I tend to look at it with a mathematical viewpoint. What you are saying makes sense, but it adds a statistical degree of difficulty when you have to make two consecutive checks to discern the information you want. This actually ties into the acrobatics check we discussed above. Even with a high bonus, having to make multiple rolls in order to fully succeed reduces the chances you will actually succeed. (I have issues with climb checks for this reason... make 3 out of 4 climb checks is a pretty good percentage, except when its the last one and you end up falling to your death...)
The perception than heal is obviously a much less impactful set of rolls, but my personal GM style is to just give them one check to see if they succeed or don't, unless I am purposely giving the players a skill encounter that requires a series of different checks.
Does that make sense? Just my thoughts on the subject, wanting to add to the discussion (I like discussions...) I agree with Finarin 100%, you have shown yourself to be a good and fair GM, and I am certainly not worried that you are going to rake us over the coals for the fun of it.
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Look at me... flooding the boards this morning... Sorry!!
Just wanted to say randomly thanks for the cool bar fight scene, to everyone. If you don't already know, Ibid and I game together in real life, and this backstory was something we had loosely chatted about in passing. When I got clobbered, it was a very spontaneous thing for me to start writing it, mostly just so I could still be involved. After that, it was all just playing off of what was going on, and Ibid playing off of the things I had wrote to tie some history in together.
That whole scene was incredibly fun for lots of reasons. The fight was awesome, the descriptions of how everyone used weapons like their real ones... I think we are on to something here, we should propose to Paizo that you could do a 'mini-game' out of barfights with this style of rules. :)
And it was fun because I totally stole it as an opportunity to develop some backstory I hadn't written down yet. So thanks! Hope I didn't steal the spotlight (I try hard not to do that...often) Hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did!
I had a great time, too. It allowed me to play Lort at level 2 - something which I may end up missing out on. I've very specifically elected not to take a warpriest and instead do the fighter / cleric thing - mostly to take advantage of the strength domain spells and powers. Oh, and also the armor training and weapon specializations for the fighter down the line. The travel domain's pretty cool, too... certainly at cleric 5 (fly!!!). I'm still not sure if it's a better (or even as good a) build than a straight warpriest yet... but I'm willing to find out. :-)
I don't think Cyrus stole the spotlight - added much needed flavor while the PCs who could do some damage (because they were conscious) got to the business of doing it.
I'm not sure Paizo would ever accept something as radically departing from the rules as this bar fight, but I'm certainly up for including similar things in future downtime segments.
So... for the rolls rules, let's just make it somewhat of a convention. No penalties, and no cracking the whip. I trust all of you, and we've been having a great time up to now. No need to add any extra headaches to our posts. Loving the work, all!
For heal, etc...
I see the rolls as achieving two separate things. First is detecting something about the appearance of the wounded creature (eg. bite marks along his torso, still breathing, etc). This is something that a detailed examination (eg. take 20 on perception, maybe even take 10, or whatever) would automatically reveal. It's more if you're trying to spot it form a distance and/or while in combat - in which case, perception.
If you want further information about what happened (or is happening) to the wounded creature, then it's just like finding out something about a locale.
Eg.
You notice that the man is dead and there are bite marks on the corpse's torso, likely the cause of death.
How does that fit with everyone's view of heal checks (and similar)?
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Ok sample scenario:
Fianrin uses Spell Combat adjacent to Lort:
I cast Shocking Grasp Defensively DC 17, I get a +7 for my check
Then I roll for a Touch Attack
Then I roll for a Rapier Attack
If you want it all in the same post it would be
1)
2)
3)
Unless I take the AoO, in which case you need to make an attack roll/damage, and I need to repeat 1 with different modifiers, but 2&3 would remain the same.
Is this ok to have all 3 in the same post, in that order? Many times the spell attack would effect the melee attack like daze, flare, or grease so that is why the spell is first.
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I like it... I like that it gives a nod to people (potentially different in the party) who have put ranks into those skills, giving those people a chance to shine.
It also makes sense when you split it up as to what the person is doing, there is a difference between noticing something and understanding it. My concerns about adding layers of checks in order to succeed are in a way nullified when you are specifically talking about out of combat, because it is easy enough to just take 20 on perception checks (there is some debate as to how long that takes... I have heard from 1 minute to 20 minutes...)
I think that is a good example too Finarin - That is in line with what I would expect, and what Damien posted above. I think it will be nice to see everyone post with the same kind of style too..
All in one post is fine (preferred even!). Add damage in there, too, if you like. For the AoO thing, I'd say roll concentration with an unknown DC and assume all goes well. I'll make the AoO and fill it in as needed.
Again, though, these won't be rules. Just a suggested convention.
@Ibid: Can you please update your tag line to be in line with everyone else's? How to do so is included in my play guide (under how to post vital stats), if you need help with it. Let me know if you have any problems.
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Sorry to be a downer on the Gameplay thread - but Finarin is not a forgiving character by nature. I loved the bar fight though, and would enjoy rolepaying in between encounters again.
So I am relatively new to Piazo and PFS - do they hold a tight release schedule. My last 'Living' campaign was Living Greyhawk and they were notoriously late so I wasn't sure if you were 100% sure to get the scenario tomorrow.
I kinda feel like a kid on Christmas Eve ...
When Paizo say they'll release a PDF of a PFS Scenario tomorrow, they'll 99% release it tomorrow. It may not be at 6am CDT (when I'll be checking it), but it should be tomorrow.... and (checks) it says "Will be available tomorrow". Yay! Only got to fade that 1%...
Then again, they usually don't ship core rule books with "Pathfinder Adventure Path" written on the front for all to see at GenCon. Sigh.
Also, Greyhawk? Wow. Bad that you bring it up, bad that I remember. TSR and release schedules - there's a reason they went bust, and it wasn't that they had great management.
Finally, totally no stress on being a Debbie Downer (you guys watch SNL, right?), it's all fine. You should hold true to your character. I was personally surprised how forgiving the others were!
Oh, and FYI, there's an Australian foreign minister called Alexander Downer who gave notoriously "down" speeches in a bland voice. You can imagine the days of fields the Australian press had with that one!
Will be available today
But it is today already!
Ergh. According to the product discussions on most PFS scenarios that I looked at (yes, my impatience knows no bounds), the most common release time seems to be about 8pm CDT. Sigh. At least I can stop hitting "refresh" so often.
I'll try my darnedest to post the initial hook from the adventure before I go to bed tonight. No promises, but I think we all know that (unless it comes out very late) I won't be able to help myself.
So... after checking out the other product threads for info, I decided to check the actual adventure's product thread (yes, I am still obsessed with it).
And Gunari, guess who's commenting on it for running a session?
Want to make a finish first bet? Or do you think he'll run it in RL? Even if so... I'd be willing to place odds on me.
Heh, this is also being run on the Paizo forums by someone who loves Painlord's Advice, here.
This reminds me, though, I was going to ask everyone to make day job rolls now. We've got some time anyway, and it will just save the hassle later on. Feel free to post here or in character on the gameplay thread. Note that you can take 10 on a day job check - y'know, if you're happy being mediocre. ;-)
Ibid and Cyrus, please let me know what your PFS Character Numbers are, and also which Chronicle Number this will be for each of you.
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So... after checking out the other product threads for info, I decided to check the actual adventure's product thread (yes, I am still obsessed with it).
And Gunari, guess who's commenting on it for running a session?
Want to make a finish first bet? Or do you think he'll run it in RL? Even if so... I'd be willing to place odds on me.
I'd guess he's running it IRL.
Still...
Oh, I guess I'd better get Gunari leveled up to 3rd by Friday?
Two feats... one a combat feat... what to choose. What to choose? Probably should read through the ACG feats, in case something is really good there. I know he might retrain whatever I take at 3rd to be Weapon Spec at 4th... but...
Friday? Today! :-)
Hoping to make the first post tonight.
As for feats, no idea. Depends on what you like for your character. I've got very little experience with warpriests - some I'm curious to see what you choose and how it goes, but not the best person to advise.
OK boys, just got a better offer than the refresh button. Expect the first in-scenario post tomorrow by midday. Have a good night - nothing to see here for 14-16 hours.