
Vetch |

I leave tomorrow for FL to visit my folks for a long weekend, and we don't have internet at the house there so you won't hear from me likely until monday or tuesday.
In other news, we are buying a new house! Just getting something with another bedroom and bath, but same area. Excited but it all happened quite fast and my head is spinning.

GM MattMorris |

Congrats Brian! I'm sure we'll talk more about it soon. Enjoy Florida! (The both of you!)

GM MattMorris |

They have released the sanctioning documents for this for PFS! They will award 12 XP (1 level) and 30 treasure bundles.
I recommend not reading them as there are some minor spoilers in the boons and rewards sections.

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yeah? what were your thoughts? I've enjoyed the little i've experienced, but i'm well aware that i may just be enjoying learning new mechanics at the moment (as well as there not being aoo's for everything and healing being better).

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All in all, I think it's great. The combats were very fluid, with lots of movement on the map. It retained enough of the old feel to make encounters a thrill while not getting bogged down in the tedium that 1e sometimes produced.
Both fights I was in teetered on the brink of being a rout. They were really exciting but it did make me wonder if the mechanics are balanced correctly. We had 6-player parties with all the bases covered--melee, spellcasters, and a healer--and we nearly TPK'd both times. Really fun, but I thought the DCs of monster abilities and their attack bonuses were a tad high.
Did the GM have a hot hand? Was it the first level blues? I worry that routine combat encounters will be nigh unwinnable without optimal party balance.
Lastly, although the fluid combat is a big improvement, it does mean that your frontliners can't establish a skirmish line. The baddies swarmed past them to get to the squishy middle of our party. Clerics aren't proficient with any armor, so my poor little healer got owned by a pair of mites (who didn't have much trouble getting through my Sanctuary and then critting me into a heap.) The arcane casters got in trouble as well. Players might have to learn to find chokepoints to get the squishies behind a shieldwall. There's no reason to stand your ground in the new system.
I was thinking of skipping pf2e, (I've resigned as a venture agent), but my experience at the local con has won me over to the new system!

GM MattMorris |

Glad to hear it, Tim. I've been having a lot of fun as well. The mobile combat makes a big difference. Robyn is playing a monk that basically Spring Attacks at first level (Stride, Flurry, Stride), and that has been very fun to watch. I'm playing a feint-based rogue (you know I love that).
I think that the combats do feel swing-y, especially at 1st level. I played a little bit at level 2, and it makes a big difference when you can stay up after a crit.
I've definitely been in some parties that don't have optimum balance at PFS, and the group I'm playing with for Age of Ashes is a fighter, a monk, a rogue, and a cleric. The in-combat healing from the cleric has definitely been clutch. Champion and Barbarian both seem super strong at 1st level.

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Most of my lvl 1 combats have been with my warpriest and the first two in-combat heals I rolled were 10s on the die, so that may have skewed my sense of survivability :-)
looking forward to my first combat as a lvl 2 next week!

Guldun Deepforge |

Tim, you have pretty much hit on everything I have had complaints about in 2e.
I think they need to re-tool the math a bit. I have yet to run a fight where I didn't down at least 2 players (only gmed levels 1, 2 and 5 though)
Monk has been really fun, but man, when enemies do have attack of opportunity, I get wrecked

Vetch |

Just a note that I am headed out of town for Thanksgiving and will have very limited internet, so bot as needed. Hope everyone has safe travels and too much food!

GM MattMorris |

Haha. You guys are getting eaten by stirges!
J/K. Let's just have a break until the weekend! Enjoy your travels.

GM MattMorris |

Yes, I went. Robyn was there doing her due diligence, as well.
We played Passing the Torch on Saturday, which I would be happy to run for you folks at some point--it was a very well-written high level series. Maybe we could work out a Roll20 session or two. The GM for it was on the ball, and was much more focused on telling the story of the scenario than antagonizing us, which was nice!
I got to hang out with some of the Paizo people a little bit on Saturday (Lyz Liddell and Luis Loza). They were very nice--and Luis stopped down to say hi when we were playing. He was happy to see that Alex Augunas had died three times so far in the first fight of the scenario. (I think he subsequently died a 4th time, but he might have just gone unconscious again.)
The rest of the convention was fun. Simon and I demo-ed a bunch of different games (of varying quality) on Sunday. We bought a Danish table hockey game called Klask.

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That sounds like a lot of fun. Would definitely love to play Passing the Torch! Also glad to hear that someone was taking the stick to Augunas. IDK if I mentioned it, but in my last game Gm'ing as a VO, I tpk'd my table twice in one scenario.

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He is indeed Uhtred's namesake (I'm suddenly worried that that is not how "namesake" is used :-).
I haven't tested out the books yet, but Jenny and I are definite fans of the show!

Vetch |

I like Alex/Uhtred's idea: we just pester folks until the guilty party attacks us!
Matt: I guess I was unclear - we already visited that abandoned house on the hill that got mentioned during our walkabout?
Also, at some point we need to go looking for this supposed witch . . .

GM MattMorris |

Yeah, I think you guys were going to go look for Finnick. People have given you some clues that he might be living in the abandoned part of town.

GM MattMorris |

Yes, you can still freely rebuild at first level. Retraining afterward is much freer now. You can basically retrain freely using the rules in the CRB. Retraining a feat takes a week of downtime--now that you found who was immediately responsible for Bort's death, you guys have time to do that if you want.

GM MattMorris |

awesome. i feel like maybe Uncle Good Good is not gonna be a trap spotter.
I wish that there were better 1st-level rogue talents. I don't really like any of them. Alex A and I have a long-running joke about how Nimble Dodge never works for me. (Numerically, it is fine, but every time I get attacked, it seems not to do anything.) And none of my characters have done the two-weapon thing yet.

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Well, damn. That was my plan for a feat. Let's face it, among rogues there are back rank charlatans and there are corpses.
I'm generally underwhelmed by the rogue feats unless you're going in for a damage build. I think I'm going to multiclass bard or sorcerer and go arcane trickster.

GM MattMorris |

Unsurprisingly, that's the road I went down for my Age of Ashes character.
I think Nimble Dodge would feel better in PBP, since the real-life time between the incidents when you use it is longer. The problem with it in face to face (for me) is you end up having several in a short period where it feels like it didn't do anything because the monster would have hit or missed anyway.

Vetch |

Went back through this last dungeon and compiled treasure:
Plaguestone Treasure summary:
Cash total: 27 gp, 5 sp 14 cp.
Distribute?
50 gp worth of alchemical reagents that can be used in Crafting alchemical items
a runestone containing the shadow rune
2 everburning torches
lesser healing potion
a vial full of silvery liquid
2 vials of lesser alchemist’s fire
Silver rapier
Sell?
heavy crossbow with 10 bolts
kukri with a rune inscribed on its blade
leather armor
Whetstone
Dagger
15 feet of rope
hammer
2 candles
Keep?
strongbox key - or was this for something we already found?