[PFS_2_Aerondor] 01-01 The Absalom Initiation (Inactive)

Game Master Aerondor

Makes a nice difference between the various ranged weapons rather than longbows being for all.

Well, it's primarily just about nerfing ranged damage. The shortbow and crossbow already had purpose, by virtue of the fact that some classes got the proficiency for those and some didn't. If was really about making the shortbow preferable, they could have given it a circumstantial buff. Like allowing people to shoot it in melee without triggering an AoO. But Volley penalty's main purpose is to nerf ranged damage by either lowing everyone's accuracy and crit potential or forcing them to use shortbows which do less damage.

Volley also allows Paizo to effectuate the Fighter as the superior archer by virtue of a Point Blank Shot removing the Volley penalty, even thought a Fighter will do more damage with a shortbow.

Sorry, I was insanely jetlagged yesterday. Also, my downtime in Madrid is.... considerably less than expected. Will try to catch up.

Oops, sorry: Milady is the Yellow Line w. arrow

By the way, in normal PFS and SFS for that matter, I tend to roll secret dice in a tag on the board. The sheer volume of them in PFS2 and the regularily of misinformation being provided by the scenario means that I've been rolling these IRL, so there is no audit trail to them. While this is no worse than a GM rolling behind a screen at the table, it is a bit of a change from normal PBP protocols.

If anyone is concerned about that, let me know. I can go back to using spoiler tags (and sometimes will if I have no dice available) but it just makes life easier and quicker doing an actual roll.

I don't really have a problem with it as a player in this situation, though I won't play with GMs who do roll non-secret dice in RL.

As a GM, I find it important to be able to keep track of what I rolled in case I need to fix something or I make a mistake. One of the (many) reasons I prefer Mythweavers for GMing, is so that I can roll dice and put them in Private tags.

Happy to have you do the secret rolls however you like. I still hit the roll button occasionally even when I shouldn't. Feel free to ignore those and replace with a secret roll if desired.

Same here, I don't mind you rolling irl.

I don't mind at all. I'm a grognard, so it's all good. You know I wonder if having a thread for JUST secret rolls in all your games is a good idea.... I'll think about it for me (I currently roll that stuff in Slack.)

So, Milady moves to dying 1 via her recovery check, but then goes to awake again (0 hp wounded 1) via the temp' HP, that it?

Per the rules, you gain 5 hp (temp), are conscious, and have Wounded 1. As I read it, regardless of your Dying condition, if you get healed, you get those hit points but have the Wounded 1 condition. Regardless of how much damage you take, you go to Dying X and 0 HP. You never have negative hit points that are counted against your healing.

That is my reading too.

But when those temporary hp vanish, if you don't have real ones to replace them, you will transition back to dying, but with the +1 from your wounded condition. So dying two.

That is what I would have said too, rereading the rules, so, happy it fits!
Thanks!

Hey Folks, till Saturday I will be on vacation. I might not be able to post on a daily basis. If this happen please feel free to bot me. The bot me rolls are updated.

@GM - Finally figured out what I was doing with the PFS Schools and decided to go 3 sword and get two potency runes. One on bow, the other on bastard sword.

As an FYI on Exploration mode (prompted by Arrus). Here is my understanding on how it works with regard to looking out of for danger.

1. Search - finding objects or hazards, but not creatures. - you move at half speed.

2. Scout - Gives a +1 bonus on Init - you move at half speed.

3. Seek - You search for objects or creature in a specific area - you don't move during the search.

If a player believes that someone may be hiding, then they can use the "Seek" activity. But this is a specific search, not a default mode, so players have to stop and do the search.

You scan an area for signs of creatures or objects. If you’re looking for creatures, choose an area you’re scanning.

Normally, when you move into an area with a creature that is hiding, they have to beat your Perception DC (Perception Modifier +10) with a Stealth check. This is a per person check. So by default, everyone is passively using Seek via forcing Stealth checks.

It would provided a cinematic bonus. But not a materially useful one. Not that I am saying this is a good analogy, but imagine a person draped in sea-weed facing someone with a flame thrower. Sure, they will be better off than if they were naked. But in the scheme of things, it is not likely to make a material difference.

1. All of this falls under "GM Discretion" and "Creative Solutions." So nothing I'm suggesting is based on specific rules or a mindset of entitlement, just trying to leverage the more open approach of PF2 to GM discretion.

2. Yes, being covered in wet seaweed or clothes would provide a real and substantive benefit from a flame thrower. The amount of benefit is totally dependent on the type of flamethrower and how long you stood there getting roasted.

Commercial flame throwers (probably most comparable to breath weapons) are completely different than military flame throwers (more like alchemist's fire). In the former case, wet clothes or seaweed are not going to catch fire (i.e. no persistent fire damage). Military flamethrowers spray you with a gel that sticks to you (similar to napalm), is water repellant, and easily reignites. There's a reason why the Department of Defense has stopped using them since 1978.

Again, this is about being able to leverage the environment/props in creative ways.

I'm happy to provide a small circumstantial bonus to a save vs a fire/heat if you want to prepare by soaking yourself or covering yourself in seaweed.

I guess mechanically that would be an item bonus to the save, but at first level I doubt the type of bonus is of importance.

I'm more keen on characters taking actions that are in character for them, rather than worrying negotiating explicitly about how the mechanical benefit might or might not play out if a situation arises.

I guess mechanically that would be an item bonus to the save, but at first level I doubt the type of bonus is of importance

In PF2, where you don't have negative hit points, I'm inclined to agree with you.

I'm more keen on characters taking actions that are in character for them, rather than worrying negotiating explicitly about how the mechanical benefit might or might not play out if a situation arises.

Well, that's what I'm trying to do. As a Ranger, I would think using something natural like seaweed or available seawater would be consistent with Anjo's thinking. If there really is a fire creature, it's too bad the scenario didn't contemplate/provide a bucket for seawater. I recall the First Steps battle with the invisible Mephit and the scenario specifically talks about PCs using the blanket to cover it and reveal it.

As far as "negotiating explicitly," I'm merely pointing out that being wet, could make a difference even when dealing with a flamethrower. That's not really about the details (because you were just using an analogy), nor does that mean you have to provide one. And as we both agree, it's not that big of a deal. I was just trying to be creative in a way consistent with my idea of someone skilled in Nature.

But if it can't impact the outcome in any way, then I'm not going to waste time doing it when I might find something else more helpful/useful to the party.

I'm not saying it can't affect the outcome, just I'm not going to codify that "covering yourself in seaweed gives you fire resistance/1 against the first flame attack against you".

I'm happy to play a bit fast and loose with things - especially if they are cinematic and in the players favour. e.g. with the level bump that crit shot against the shadow, technically, wasn't quite enough to kill the shadow. But you know what, a critical with max damage (or one off) on two d12 should be a spectacle.

If you cover yourself in seaweed and roll a one on a save vs a fireball then it's not going to make a difference. If you dowse yourself in water and a fire attack takes you down to 0 exactly, heck, by all means I'm happy to leave folk on 1hp to stay in the fight.

I guess what I am saying is that, unless the scenario calls it out explicitly, trust the GM to do what is right. I'm not out to kill PCs. That is no fun for anyone.

I've got over 100 tables of PBP GMing under my belt, and not a single PC scalp. Oh I've come close a lot of times. Ask Shifty what it is like being swallowed by a Remorhaz! One day the dice will conspire against me, but it hasn't happened yet.

I'm not saying it can't affect the outcome, just I'm not going to codify that "covering yourself in seaweed gives you fire resistance/1 against the first flame attack against you".

My original question was just about being wet. I was expecting a yes or no answer, not a number. You suggested covering myself in seaweed, but I thought it was a tongue-in-cheek comment, so that's why I asked. I didn't actually expect you were serious, but no harm in asking, right?

especially if they are cinematic and in the players favour.

I guess I didn't understand what that meant when you said this in your response. I thought you meant it would add to how you described the outcome, but that's it. So just a narrative impact.

If you cover yourself in seaweed and roll a one on a save vs a fireball then it's not going to make a difference. If you dowse yourself in water and a fire attack takes you down to 0 exactly, heck, by all means I'm happy to leave folk on 1hp to stay in the fight.

I figured you'd say either "Sure, it will provide some help," or "No, no real rules provision for that." As I stated, I thought the seaweed suggestions was your just having some fun. I responded to the flamethrower comment in OOC as a just a thought experiment, not as an attempt to change your mind one way or the other.

In a situation like this, if the answer is no, I don't feel that a GM has to give an explanation. It's all GM discretion.

I guess what I am saying is that, unless the scenario calls it out explicitly, trust the GM to do what is right. I'm not out to kill PCs. That is no fun for anyone.

Not sure how we got here. There's no lack of trust on my part or feeling of entitlement. Just trying to think outside the box in a way that's consistent with the character's theme.

Regarding the boat. I was just anticipating someone going over board and using the boat as a raft instead of having to tread water. If that's not realistic or if its problematic, then let's just skip it.

No worries. You can certainly alert the crew of the boat that took you over to have a rescue row-boat ready in case someone goes overboard.

** spoiler omitted **

Okay, thanks for that. I think I was confusing Gather Info with Recall Knowledge.

I think if you have failed a recall knowledge you wouldn't after a minute suddenly know something.

What's funny about that is in real life, it happens all the time. You forget someone's name and then you remember it a few minutes later. Or, you forgot what happened in a movie, then after thinking about it, you remember.

I've always felt that the whole Recall Knowledge paradigm was kind of broken in PF1. It's unfortunate they didn't substantially alter it in PF2. In fact, they made it worse by removing Take 10.

I'm not too sad about take-10 going, but I think they could have given us a take-9 or even take-8. So you only do it if you really do have a very good chance at things.

I think there was some discussion during the playtest about Paizo's decision to remove T10. I may have imagined this, but my recollection was that Paizo's philosophy was that anything that you normally would have been able to do with T10, should no longer require a skill check. In other words, GMs should not go fishing for crit fails.

Yet, that still doesn't solve the problem, IMO. I think you're on the same page with asking for at least a Take 8 or 9. From my perspective, Paizo doesn't really get the skill system. That sounds silly, but consider this: Take 10 achieves two things:

1) It allows a GM to reward players for skill investment. Because you have Take 10, a GM can put in skill checks specifically targeted at the characters who are highly skilled and allow them to Auto Succeed. If you want to reward the Barbarian who has invested in Acrobatics, you can put in a bunch of physical challenges that the Barbarian can beat with Take 10, but Wizard or Bard cannot. This makes people's characters feel like they have purpose.

2) It provides players with a feeling of competence and accomplishment. By 10th level, a Rogue should be able to pick any common lock without fail. T10 allows that.

WIthout T10 (or some mechanics that alllows a PC to accomplish routine tasks) the Skills system is kind of nonsensical. Assurance isn't T10 as it is intended to work in or out of combat.

I wrote a post on this in the playtest forms if I remember correctly (I should try to find it, but am too lazy).

Effectively a d20 roll gives a certain degree of randomness. That degree of randomness totally outweighs the "value" of skills until they are of a high level.

In PFv2 the amount of "skill" you have makes at most a six point difference (assuming any degree of skill vs a legendary master). The ramp up between unskilled and trained is good - at high level - but it still takes a very long time to kick in.

A talented untrained (DEX 18, no training) lockpicker at level 1 can hit a DC 24. At level 10 a trained character with the same talent (Dex 18) is still going to fail that check almost half the time. Okay, so the first level person will only succeed one time in 20 (1/10th as often) but it still seems odd.

I think they tried to get around this (and I suspect they played with the idea of not having skill checks at all) with minimal training levels for things like perception to see some types of traps.

That degree of randomness totally outweighs the "value" of skills until they are of a high level.

There is a similar argument that came up in a thread on min/maxing. A stats guy pointed out that the variance in a d20 outweighs a +1 bonus. The idea being that the is no substance difference in outcomes between someone who has an extra +1 to hit given the number of rolls you actually make. It's not until you get a +3 or higher that an average person would perceive a real difference. So this is inline with your position and I think it's a valid observation.

What boggles my mind is that in PF1, if T10 was "broken" it was because PCs could stack bonuses and get such massive modifiers that they were trivializing checks mean to real challenges and T10 felt like an "I win" button to GMs. But to the extent that this was true, T10 wasn't the problem, it was the unregulated stacking. So PF2 has eliminated much of that stacking. This would/should mean that T10 would once again be reasonable and function more like a Take 6. Yet....Paizo got rid of it.

Worse, they went with Assurance with totally undermines the GMs ability to control when a PC could use Take 10. T10 could be disabled by a GM with a simple distraction and was never an option in combat. Now...a PC can use Assurance and the GM has zero ability to prevent it outside of setting the DC high enough that Assurance won't work.

To be fair to PF1, they did try to limit stacking, but then in splat books kept introducing new stuff.

SF they did lot of good work in trying to move most bonuses to "insight", and they have taken that a step further in PF2 - although they may have gone a step too far with that, as now all characters feel a bit generic at the moment.

BTW you are pretty much all done. I'll try to cut chronicles for everyone today.

Chronicles will be a little delayed as I try to work out how to do them in PFSv2.

I know some of you have done this before, so maybe you can help?

The scenario lists 2 fame and 2 rep for primary condition success, and then another 2 for the secondary. Is that right? 4 PP and 4 fame?

Secondly I'm, still a little confused about how we do XP in PFSv2. Is a scenario worth 4 now and 12 for a level? If so, where is this spelt out?

Experience Points

Each time you play an adventure, your character will gain Experience Points (XP). Typically, you gain 1 XP for completing a quest, 4 XP for completing a scenario, or even 12 XP for completing most sanctioned Pathfinder Adventure or Adventure Path volumes. For every 12 XP your character earns, they advance 1 level. You cannot delay increasing your character’s level once they earn the requisite number of XP.

Wish I could quote you a page number but...

I think it's from the Organized Play Basics chapter, but not 100% sure on that.

4pp/fame is correct assuming we completed both the primary and secondary conditions.

PDF

I much prefer viewing the pdf version above than trying to sort through the wiki at at the moment.

Also, the 1-01 table I wass GMing wrapped up recently, and while it's always possible I've done something wrong here are the chronicle sheets from that if you want to see.

Thanks. I see you answered in my other forum post too, so double thanks! Now, back to your regularly scheduled chronicles.

Max/normal XP is 1 for Quests, 4 for Scenarios, 12 for AP/modules
(w. 12 xp per level for our characters)

So you only get 1/2 xps when you Slow Track a Quest

Right, chronciles are now available.

Some of you have not done downtime checks, so I've not put anything in for you for downtime yet. If you want to earn an income or do something else, let me know.

I think GMs get downtime now as well, so I'll roll mine here

craft: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (19) + 6 = 25

What do you get for a critical success?
No.. move down a rank to the next highest level task. Which for a level 0 task is actually better than double.

What a Craft-y GM!

Oh, boon rolls! I should have saved that 19.

This is basically in the order you provided your details.

flint: 1d20 ⇒ 8
milady: 1d20 ⇒ 15
arrus: 1d20 ⇒ 18
anjo: 1d20 ⇒ 2
hopper: 1d20 ⇒ 16
zanderel: 1d20 ⇒ 12
pell: 1d20 ⇒ 16
GM: 1d20 ⇒ 17

And my luck for rolling boons continues to be abysmal.

Milady will offer some lessons at the Grand Lodge, in an 8 day long seminar (!) in order to explain to new recruits how to board a boat, clear the rooms while conducting a sweep, and mop up the resistance--

Warfare Lore, trained: 1d20 + 1 + 2 + 0 ⇒ (2) + 1 + 2 + 0 = 5

--and she will only have one person attending, a janitor, who thought this was about how to sweep and mop the floors.
But the guy was happy to not be working during this time, so he remained all 8 days.

She will not earn much money.

At least not a crit' fail - by not much! - and so 1 cp x 8 days = 8 cp

THANKS for the game!

There's no pfs2 boons anyway, just ACP

Well, we all get points for playing games (more points if it is a special event like this one) that we accumulate, and then we can buy the boons we want etc..
So we get some bonus points for playing during a GameDay.

Right, well this is reported now. I'll leave it open over the weekend so you can all check your chronicles.

Especially as this is my first PFS2 game, I'm keen on any feedback about what worked well, and what I should try changing around. Either here or in PM.

Thanks for running this, I enjoyed it.

EDIT: I thought our starting gold was 15?

Question for anyone: Does PFS2 allow us to rebuild our characters while we are 1st level?

Yes, you can rebuild like in PF1.

Change all you want until you PLAY at level 2.
Except if you've consumables that you paid for.

Starting gold is 150 sp, so 15 gp, yes. At creation.
But if you start the game with 1 gp and 2 sp left, then that would be noted down as your starting gold.

@GM Aerondor - first of all, thanks for running it. My chronicle looks good and I downloaded it.

@All - thanks for letting me be the 7th Goblin on the team, I enjoyed playing with you.

@GM Aerondor - with regards to feedback. I really liked how you run this scenario. I enjoyed it, it had a good paste and opportunities for RP.

For opportunities for improvements: in this scenario, the team could possibly benefit from keeping the mission objective description of the slides. I found myself 3 or 4 times reading through our initial conversation to recall what we were supposed to do in given places. If you ask, why I didn't add those descriptions when I saw that I am lacking it. The answer is obvious... I am a Goblin accustomed to tedious work and complaining :P

A few times I was a bit lost on what can I try, but it is more related with not knowing the rules of PF2 than anything else.

I enjoyed this game a lot, which is the most important for me. So thank you for that. I hope to meet you in the future!

Yes, you can rebuild like in PF1.

Change all you want until you PLAY at level 2.
Except if you've consumables that you paid for.

Starting gold is 150 sp, so 15 gp, yes. At creation.
But if you start the game with 1 gp and 2 sp left, then that would be noted down as your starting gold.

Okay thanks.

This is my first scenario and I noticed everyone started with 14 gps, so I was trying to figure out why?

What happens to the consumables we get from the PFS "Network." Do they expire every scenario or can we stock pile them?

New characters start off with 140sp worth of equipment.

The "freebies" from your factions are only for use in the scenario, and are returned if not used. The idea is to encourage folk to use them rather than provide something for people to hoard.

@Hopper, good idea about the objectives. I found myself having to go back and check quite often as well.

New characters start off with 140sp worth of equipment.

I am a bit lost, because the PFS Guide states:

Starting Wealth and Equipment
(scroll down to point .9)
All characters in Pathfinder Society begin with 15 gold pieces (150 silver pieces) that can be spent on starting gear.

Sorry, I meant to say 150. Typo.

So I should change my starting gold to 15.

Yes. Most people give me the remains of their gold after initial purchases - it depends on whether you want to have all the initial stuff you buy appear on the chronicle. I can just update that starting gold figure for you if you like and leave you to annotate it with your purchases.

You might also want to do a "earn an income" roll if you have appropriate skills, as that can net you some extra cash as well.

I think I've also just realised something.

The 14gp on everyone's sheets is not the starting gold (the layout of the chronicles is slightly confusing) - it is the about that was gained from the scenario.

Your games are always solid GM. I'm still learning the rules too, so I don't have much advice ATM!