Sorry but been a long day. Just got home. Will get post up in the morning.
This lack of is annoying...
That aside, I'm leaving Saturday (March 25th) to head out of state. Father-in-law is having brain surgery Monday. Not entirely sure how my internet access will be so my posting may be sporadic next week.
Just giving a heads up so you aren't wondering if I abandoned you. I promise that is not the case.
Father-in-law doing well. I'm back home now. Thanks for bearing with me this past week.
Will get back to posting tonight or tomorrow so we can knock this out! :-D
?
By next week we should be done?
Yes. This combat is the end.
Doesn't Magic Missile always hit?
Or did they use some other spell/effect that produces a magical projectile?
Doesn't Magic Missile always hit?
Or did they use some other spell/effect that produces a magical projectile?
It sure does. Brain fart. Sorry about that.
Giri moves west and suddenly jumps forward, ending with the woman in between him and Vaetta.
Hey Giri... I'm pretty sure you have to make five acrobatics checks for that action (not just one); one for every threatened square you want to avoid AoOs for Moving Through (three from the male warrior, two from the female spellcaster.
It would actually be one per enemy. Each additional enemy in a round increases the DC by a cumulative 2.
Granted, he may only wish to tumble past the one and take his chances with the second.
Hmm, I can't find where it says you only need to make one check per enemy per round. All I found was "you can move through a threatened square without provoking an attack of opportunity from an enemy by using Acrobatics" (which explicitly states they have to make a check for every square threatened by an enemy). The cumulative +2 to the DC would apply to the last two checks (against the woman), but not the first three.
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.
Thanks for the link, you are correct. That really ought to have been put into an Errata/Revision of the PRD by now. I hate the "FAQ As A Platform For Rules Revisions" system Paizo has going on.
Thanks for the link, you are correct. That really ought to have been put into an Errata/Revision of the PRD by now. I hate the "FAQ As A Platform For Rules Revisions" system Paizo has going on.
I'm with you there. :-)
Yeah I was even trying to set you up for an easy Flank with the warrior, but a flank is a flank, and the caster will drop faster if I don't get turned into filet-o-human first.
They can be fairly viable I think, Alchemists get to add their INT Mod to damage with Acid and Alchemists Fire and such. IIRC if you have the Alchemy Manual and the right feats you can create Alchemist Fire's as a Standard Action.
Alchemists make strong martials when they are appropriately buffed, and their Bombs class feature is also a pretty decent source of Damage.
IIRC there is a broken spell which has yet to be Errata'd that allows you to duplicate Alchemical Items, and replaces their DC with the Spell's potential DC (if higher). I cannot remember what it was called though... I'll try to find it.
Found it:
Full Pouch Entry
And here is a discussion about it's brokenness:
Full Pouch Discussion
I approve of the thunderstone. That was unexpected and quite nice.
Another thing that I've have used against me before that was just as unexpected is smelling salts.
If Vaetta's attack hit and downed the male warrior, I'd like to know asap before combat continues so that I can choose to use my remaining move action to reposition myself.
Yeah... I would have liked to have been allowed to use my remaining Move Action before the enemies went. I would have been able to move into a position where casting provoked.
Where did you want to move to Vaetta? Likely would change where the enemy moved to as well. But yes, your strike dropped him.
I have no issue with you using your move to go somewhere.
Its not a huge deal to me, I'm just sour because I am a tactical perfectionist. At this point it would mean backing up all of the NPCs actions for that round because my position might have changed their tactics. Besides, the first rule of narrative roleplaying is that you never directly contradict the existing narrative... It would be bad form for me to demand a retroactive Attack of Opportunity just because they "might have provoked one if I had gotten my way".
I would have gone NE one square (which IIRC would have put both casters within my reach).
It may be tomorrow before I get the chronicles up, but I'll get them up in the next day or so. Thank you for taking this journey with me.
Officially, this was my first PbP PFS campaign as GM, though I've GMd several PFS campaigns before. Feel free to offer any advice for the future regarding the PbP format, just be nice. :-P
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I don't think we have to heal HP damage before the conclusion of the scenario. We can always sleep for a couple days until we reach full anyways ;)
I thought you did a great job, I'm surprised to know that this is your first time doing this! I would be more than happy to take part in one of your games again. The AoE squares on the map were a nice touch that I haven't seen before (consider it stolen). You did well spoilering rolls when needed and just letting them sit in the open when they weren't. I appreciated you including buffs in your initiative block. It saves the support characters a lot of suffering when they have to constantly remind their fellow players to add in buffs!
Thank you for taking the time to do this for us! I had a wonderful time playing under GM RePete and with you all :)
All in all I think you did a great job with your descriptions and roleplaying the NPCs. Every NPC felt like they had a voice, a personality, and lived in the world you were describing. These elements really helped support my immersion in the story.
This adventure was a lot of fun, and I'd love to play under or with you again some time!
My critiques are as follows...
In Combat
There were several times in where combat could have gone smoother if we had more feedback than one summary post a round.
For example, spellcasters should be given the opportunity to Identify spells before their effects take place. Particularly at higher levels there are immediate actions we can take to mitigate or prevent their effects. If your players are amenable to it, you can make the rolls yourself in order to save time/post counts.
Likewise, watch out for Swashbucklers in future campaigns, their Opportune Parry and Riposte has to be declared after the enemy declared their attack, but before the attack is actually rolled. I'm sure there are other abilities like that as well which I'm not familiar with.
Also, letting players know when they hit/drop an enemy lets other players and themselves make better tactical decisions; so that might be worth the extra time/post count in future campaigns. As does encouraging everyone to post in initiative order... but you have less control over that element.
Out of Combat
I am not sure if this is simply the nature of PFS (this being my first PFS game), but there were several points in the story where you led us to the conclusion or pushed the story forward rather than let us flounder and find the solution ourselves. This made the plot feel somewhat harried, and likely deprived us of opportunities to roleplay as well.
Finding the right balance between "sandbox" and "railroad" is actually really difficult. I've been GMing for years and I still have trouble finding it. This is something you'll get better at as time goes on, so don't worry about this point too much, just bear it in mind for the future.
You're right. Sorry, was thinking about poisons/haunts/deafness/etc. Those conditions have to be fixed, but negative HP doesn't. As long as you are alive you could just sleep a few weeks if needed before taking another mission.
In last 2 days, I've been on shift for 28hrs with 4 hours sleep total. My brains been a bit foggy for the last 12hrs or so.
By all means, anything you found useful...steal away.
Ref In Combat
I hadn't considered the immediate action stuff. Thank you for pointing that out. Even at level 1, someone could have Feather Fall and negate falling damage from say a Pit spell. I'll have to look around and see if I can steal a decent way to handle such things.
Regarding swashbucklers (since they are an extremely viable example for if this, then this...) I played a PbP game with one on the party. They way he and the GM worked it out was he posted spoiler tags. Ex:
As for the dropping an enemy, I fully understand your meaning. If able to even just a quick could help the rest of the team respond.
I have played a couple games with GMs that insist on going in Initiative order and a few that use the block initiative style I used here. I personally prefer the block format as a GM and as a Player. I've had too many times where 1 round of combat took a week or more due to having to wait for the player to have a chance to post once their turn comes up. I imagine that part is just a preference issue.
Out of Combat
Regarding sandbox vs railroad, each scenario is different. Some are 100% Sandbox and if you don't pick up on the right clues, you can either fail entirely or lose one of the 2 prestige points. Meanwhile, others are 100% do this, then this, then this and don't deviate or I will kill you! Most are a mix of the two.
For this scenario for example, you got 1 prestige point for making nice with the bar patrons. Your second was for retrieving the papers in the hidden cavern. Everything in between was an attempt to get you where you needed to go. The first time I played this, we simply could not find the chalkboard or the door in the last part. In a level 1 evergreen a GM is encouraged (at least in my area) to help out new players. I had a higher level campaign where we lost a prestige point because we sold an item to the wrong NPC.
But I 100% agree, it can be difficult (especially when playing with people you aren't personally used too) to find the right balance. Running this in a table-top setting helps because it's much easier to get a feel for the players.
I might run something in a week or two, but it depends on my free time. I have a local convention I'm running 4 sessions for next week and my oldest daughter is coming up on a few band concerts next week.
Thanks everyone for your thoughts. I enjoyed running this. If you have a Day Job and didn't roll the check before we started the campaign, feel free to do so now. I should have the chronicles up sometime tomorrow (Sat) but no later than Sunday night.
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Thanks a lot for the great game!
I love the effort you put into it and I really enjoyed it. I wasn't sure if I wanted to move out of my comfort zone of GM's I play with but it sure was worth it!
As for the balance between pushing and waiting, I liked it the way you did. It didn't feel forced and the tempo of the game was just right. Games in pbp tend to go very slow when pc's can go their own way. Most important for me is roleplay and the opportunities to do so, the hooks offered by players and the GM. Pathfinder tends to get really focused on combat but the roleplay for me is the most important part, and is what I really enjoyed in your game. You offered plenty of hooks and directly reacted to the pc's with npc's instead of just hammering out the standard text in the books.
If you ever decide to run another game, and I am available at the time, I would love to join you again!
Glad you joined us Giri. I love Grippli's. In a home-brew with a buddy I played a grippli aclhemist and had a lot of fun.
I've actually turned him into a deity my players can follow in my homebrew stuff. :-P
If you see any errors, or can't access it, let me know. I'll leave this up a few days before I mark it inactive.
The Prestige Gained value on my chronicle is out of place (its overlapping with the phrase "Initial Prestige")
Will it matter that the initial and total fields are blank on my chronicle?
Should I just print a copy of the chronicle and my faction card and fill them in myself?
K. I'll try to adjust the prestige gained section to fit better.
The initial and total fields are yours to fill in. Same with selling/buying things.
If you want to save it digitally instead, you should be able to save the PDF to something of yours (I save my pdf to my drive) then you can make adjustments to the other areas as you need. I also keep a physical copy with my character sheets.
I have a print out of the faction cards I keep with the relevant characters.
Awesome, thank you very much!