Flaxseed Lodge (PFS1)

Game Master Redelia

or were you talking about the Adventurer's Guide? lots of new prestige classes and archetypes... not sure what will be pfs legal though.

Lots of new books come out. If you are referring to First Contact it just mentions a few Starfinder rules, a couple of class abilities that will be in the Core book, and has some sample monsters including a couple of PC races that are not in the Core Starfinder race so won't be SFS legal. Not right away anyway. Since one of them is large I doubt they will be legal at all without a boon.

It was a funky booklet, I just hope they get the SFS Guide to Organised play out shortly so we can get across what is in and what is out! :)

Is there any guidance on how the social talent Reknown works with PFS for vigilantes? I'm guessing, it looks like you just choose a town/neighborhood of a city and hope that someday there's a PFS scenario that goes to that town or that neighborhood, but if there's something that I'm missing, I'd be glad to know it.

Yeah - pretty much that - pick a city and hope. Shoot for Absalom.

It's a bit like picking a Rangers Favoured Terrain - you might get lucky with Urban, but even that is not consistent.

The boon is Welcome to Pathfinder. Any GM can give it out to any -1 character who is still on level one. Distribute it as widely as possible.

Hmm

Well darn. I never got that boon.

-Posted with Wayfinder

Thanks, Hmmm!

Michael Brody wrote:

Does anyone know anything about the new book that just came out? Is it any good? Does it have any new classes? pfs legal? Thanks

Lots of new books come out. If you are referring to First Contact it just mentions a few Starfinder rules, a couple of class abilities that will be in the Core book, and has some sample monsters including a couple of PC races that are not in the Core Starfinder race so won't be SFS legal. Not right away anyway. Since one of them is large I doubt they will be legal at all without a boon.

I was actually referring to pathfinder but thanks

Well darn. I never got that boon.

I think they are relatively new, I only heard of them when some came in whilst I was organising convention support and they came with the support package.

Will there be any legal non boon races in the upcomin g season?

The last few seasons they have done quite a bit of shuffling of the races, dropping the planetouched ones, adding in the Tien ones, and then this season adding in the elemental ones.

I *think* they said they wouldn't be dropping any, but that may be a season out of date now.

Per this post from the PaizoCon 2017 Bloggery thread, it sounds like there won't be any additions or retirements to the always-available PFS races this year.

Thanks Lady Ladile for finding that link!

Yep. Linda announced that clearly, with both Tonya and John nodding in the background. Everything that is legal now will continue to be legal in Season 9.

Hmm

Everything that is legal now will continue to be legal in Season 9.

What happens when a race comes off the legal list; are you still able to play those PCs, or do they immediately retire?

How they've handled it in the past is that you can keep playing a character that was legal at time of creation if they have a certain amount of XP when the legality changes.

For instance, when aasimars and tieflings stopped being legal without a boon you could keep any characters of those races who had 3 or 4 XP (or something like that) at the time of change. Likewise for normal summoners - although only the unchained version is now legal to create, the ones that existed got to be grandfathered in.

As a note, it has only happened once and it was for Aasimars and Tieflings. I (in my non-official what-I-think I-wasn't-even-involved-in-the-decision opinion) think it might have been the only time it happens.

Hehe, I remember that period. A lot of level 1 Tieflings and Aasimars signed up for anything, no matter the scenario, as long as it finished quickly.

Gameday IV gave away a boon to let you play as an Aasimar. That was in late 2015.

It was a sure sign that the rules for aasimars/tieflings were a problem, since so many people were creating so many characters just to stuff them through the door. Novelty would dictate there would be some, but the level was just insane.

They were pretty powerful races.
Tieflings got a bonus to Dex and a penalty to a dump stat and resistances to commonly encountered elements. Many GMs I saw ruled that resist cold and fire let them ignore penalties from extreme heat and cold.
Aasimar didn't get fire resistance but they got a bonus to Wisdom and Charisma which are both key stats for many classes, Especially many healer builds.

Both races got access to spell-like abilities that at the time let them take certain prestige classes early.

And best of all they had their own books with alternate bloodlines. Meaning you could be good at nearly any class you wanted by taking the right bloodline. So there was no drawback to having a bunch of them set aside.

They were good, but in our local area they were pretty uncommon - until the call was they'd be 'taken away', and then they were run a dime a dozen and put aside as 'one day' characters.

The SLA entry into early Prestige class caper has also been 'corrected', but that was a problem more broadly that needed looking at.

In the grand scheme though I get more horsepower out of good builds than I did the underlying races :)

Of course! But a good race is simply a part of the good build that can't be retrained later.

Around here, when they were legal, we had full tables of aasimars/tieflings very commonly.

We didn't have full tables of them, but there was always at least one or two at every table. But the same can be said for the elemental races for the past year. They're new, so they're popular. Just yesterday, I played my grippli at a table with an oread and a sylph.

Btw the PbP Game Day VI event Discussion Link on the signup site just links to Paizo's home page and not to any thread.

Around here, when they were legal, we had full tables of aasimars/tieflings very commonly.

I was pretty much the only non-tiefling/non-aasimar at most of my tables for all of season 5 and much of season 6. At least with Kitsune I only have 1 or 2 per table, but still get sick of them.

I practically almost never saw any other race when I sat down to GM. My dwarf was usually the only Core race when I played. So yeah it became pretty obvious.....I still get players who has 20+ characters and still an Assimar or Tiefling.

I'm rather sad that I missed out on Aasimars and Tieflings, but I don't think I like any race enough to stockpile tons and tons of them for future use.

On the other hand, I'd love for Catfolk to be made legal someday or at least be a boon race >.>

I would love to have a catfolk boon or have them made legal. I am playing one right now in an Ironfang game, and I love it.

I came on to Pathfinder right before they took away the teifling and the aasimars, and am very fortunate that my first character was a teifling.. although the build is not what I meant it to be (Chock that up to inexperience with the format..) he is still a fun character for me to play.

...but I don't think I like any race enough to stockpile tons and tons of them for future use.

Agreed. My first character (this one) was an aasimar, third was a tiefling, then both races were phased out about six months later. I think Paizo made a good decision there, but the stockpiling by players was definitely annoying. Maybe they could have made it an "effective immediately" thing, like they did with Unchained summoners?

-Posted with Wayfinder

Lady Ladile wrote:

...but I don't think I like any race enough to stockpile tons and tons of them for future use.

Agreed. My first character (this one) was an aasimar, third was a tiefling, then both races were phased out about six months later. I think Paizo made a good decision there, but the stockpiling by players was definitely annoying. Maybe they could have made it an "effective immediately" thing, like they did with Unchained summoners?

-Posted with Wayfinder

That's probably a little too severe, especially in the case of ones that were played, but still level 1. I could see no brand new as of immediately, but giving a month or so for existing ones to reach the 3 XP cutoff, though.

Btw the PbP Game Day VI event Discussion Link on the signup site just links to Paizo's home page and not to any thread.

Good catch. I'll see if Jesse can fix that!

____

Meanwhile, I have a favor to ask all of you eager beavers. If you are already signed up for 2+ events (especially if one of those events is Starfinder) for PBP Gameday VI, can you let new events sit for three days before signiing up for them?

I'm not saying don't sign up for more things. I'm saying: give other folks a chance to find open seats first. Thanks so much!

Hmm

That's probably a little too severe, especially in the case of ones that were played, but still level 1. I could see no brand new as of immediately, but giving a month or so for existing ones to reach the 3 XP cutoff, though.

I think the cutoff for aasimars and tieflings was actually 1 XP, so if you had your first Chronicle before the cutoff date, you were fine. But it still wouldn't have worked, because players in the middle of an online game, if it was their first, would have been given the shaft. (Summoners avoided this because as we all know, it isn't finishing an online game that determines the end of your rebuild window-- it's starting one.) I just wish there was a way of avoiding the race-rush in the future.

-Posted with Wayfinder

The only way to avoid the race-rush is not to allow one to happen by announcing the cut-off of races on the day they are no longer allowed. That way, there is no chance to have seventeen Confirmations run in four hours to keep tieflings and aasimars around.

They have not closed off any other races but aasimars and tieflings. From what I've gathered, they thought that retiring races causes more problems than it solves. At any rate, all races that were good in Season 8 are still good in Season 9!

Hmm

Meanwhile, I have a favor to ask all of you eager beavers. If you are already signed up for 2+ events (especially if one of those events is Starfinder) for PBP Gameday VI, can you let new events sit for three days before signing up for them?

I was wondering how much of an issue this was so I pulled out my spreadsheet and took a look (I ignored the couple of Mythweavers games and didn't include GMs or players signed up as the 7th+ player)

Data is accurate as of 1pm PST 6/20/17. Not a high degree of precision, it is possible that mistakes may have crept in, especially if players used different names on different sign up sheets.

I got to 195 player instances signed up over 35 games.
Averaging 5.57 players per game, basically almost every game on that list is full.

50 Players are signed up for a single game, at 26% of the seats.

94 total unique players.

Luke_Parry is signed up for the most games at 10, putting him in 29% of all games, and using 5% of all player slots.

Meh, I am not really fussed about stockpilers - if someone really wants to run17 sessions of the confirmation to keep a massive reserve of whatever race up their sleeve then go for it, doesn't impact me in any way, and if that's their idea of fun then go for gold.

I reeeeeealy dislike tengu, but if other people want to play them then go right ahead.

17 confirmations is also my idea of hell - but I know there's enough people up into the high teens of it that it is clear that our tastes are wide and varied :p

That's a lot of confirmations...

I could run that many...likely on autopilot at that point. But I don't think I could play that many without losing my sanity.

It's definitely from left field, but when I imagined 17 confirmations, all I could think of was Groundhog Day. @_@

Also, Pirate Rob is clearly a spreadsheet god. I think I would've gone a bit blind - did you have to do that all manually or were you able to just combine the sheets? o:

It's pretty common in the Flax Lodge - I won't be running Confirmation or Wounded Wisp on the PbP boards anymore, too many players can recite every line and every encounter like a cult movie singalong :p

The scenario itself is alright, most of the encounters seem a bit random and not really related to the plot though.

Is there a reason those two are popular? Or is it just 'cuz they're evergreens? In which case, why aren't the other evergreens equally popular?

Looking through my records, seems I've run it 8 times now (only twice on PbP). O.o

Thinking I'll put that one on the back burner for a while...

The evergreens I've played personally are First Steps, The Confirmation, Wounded Wisp, The Silverhex Chronicles, Phantom Phenomena, Honor's Echoes, and We Be Goblins.

Of those, First Steps is pretty bad, and should have been retired. Until recently, Silverhex and Phenomena required pregens, and Echoes still does. WBG uses goblins, and how many times do you need to play that?

That leaves Confirmation and Wisp, both of which I feel have fun boons to reward new characters.

I reeeeeealy dislike tengu.

"But, um, I thought we were . . ." Fek shuffles away, disappearing in his oversized cloak. See, nobody likes me!

"Eh, who's this? What's he got against fine respectable Tengu businessmen like us, eh? He's probably a mammal, yes?"

Hi GM Shifty ;-)

Confirmation and Wisp definitely have a lot more in the way of Boon incentives, but I think my preferred Evergreen is Consortium Compact. It's not necessarily a fantastic scenario, but I feel it fosters creative problem solving.

I GM'd it once and played it 2 or 3 times I think, and each time it was a pretty different experience.

Now that Rob has called me out for above-average signups, I might have to step up and GM that one on Gameday.

Well, here's a question - even if there are more Boon incentives, aren't they made more expensive after playing through them once? For example, the wayfinder is free the first time, but it costs GP/PP for them afterwards, right? c:

1 PP for a Wayfinder on a level 1 character is still pretty decent. It adds RP flavor, saves you from needing to buy torches, etc. The Explore, Report, Cooperate boon is handy in any scenario where the PC's are stumped or afraid they might be losing prestige points. and Prized Find from Wounded Wisp lets you recover a lost Presitge point even if you do manage to fail some success conditions.

Pretty handy to have on any character.

Now that Silverhex and Phantom Phenomena are opened up to non-pregens, I think we'll see a lot more of them in PbP. Length is less of an issue, and they have some nice discounts and boons.

I'm planning to run Silverhex starting sometime next month.