[Outpost III / PFS2 Luke_Parry] 1-01: The Absalom Initiation (Inactive)

Game Master Luke_Parry

Dotting for fun and profit.

Hi all, checking in. I've decided to use the merisiel pre-gen since the next char idea I'm really excited about is from the APG and don't want the hassle of building a char only to rebuild it after one session.

Note: I have played this scenario before.

Name: grimsnik
Character Name: Chug
Faction: Horizon Hunters
Pathfinder Training: Swords 3 points

I have GMd the scenario.

I goofed GM and wrote my character sheet question in your 1-15 thread and not here. Sorry!! I'll get my sheet written up here as soon as I can though!

Hey everyone. First time with play by post, though I've been doing play by discord for two years. Heads up for the GM, Caelan leveled to 2.

Name: efildam
Character Name: Caelan Benedetto
Faction: Grand Archive
Pathfinder Training: Scrolls 3 points.

I have NOT GM'd this yet. :)

Oops. Sorry about that. I wasn't paying attention and assumed the link on the Outpost signin was to the discussion forum and not gameplay. I can't seem to delete my post.

Well, at least it's dotted to be added to my character Campaigns page.

This is my first time playing PF2 (outside of a couple of playtest games), so I am probably going to screw at least a dozen things up, but I've been playing/GMing Starfinder Society games for a couple years now and have been doing tabletop for over 25 years (I think I may be pushing 30). I never played PFS and never played Pathfinder outside of homebrew (that was primarily 3.5), so I'm only tangentially aware of any of the lore or setting info. I have all the books on Paizo PDF, but have only read smatterings of them. The only PF2 book I have is the CRB and Playtest materials.

I'm about to try filling in my character details on my profile, but this is my first game, so there won't be much.

Chronicle Info
Name: Pithica42
Character Name: Guinoq
Faction: Horizon Hunters
Character ID: 327796 - 2001
Pathfinder Training: Swords (2), Scrolls (1)
Game 1, Chronicle 1, 0 everything. I'm not sure what else you need.

I think I have everything I need in my profile. Hit me up if I'm missing anything.

Name: Elektra
Character: Elixia Zielle
Faction: Envoy's Alliance (4 reputation)
PFS #: 57894-2001
Pathfinder training: Spells x3

I'll try to get my character typed up into my profile soon. Work/life is getting insane right now since I'm still "essential" and have to be out and about :(

Name: X Hums
Character Name: Dazzatir Goldbrand
Faction: Radiant Oath
Pathfinder Training: Swords 3 points. Will be taking both my consumable items in potency crystals.

I've still got to get Dazzatir's stuff online. He's a fresh level 1 just dying to get his hands on some full plate.

My wife's family experienced a pretty severe tragedy last night. I'm okay, but there's a very real chance that I'll be in and out in the first week because of it. If this is going to be an issue, let me know and I can drop from the table. I'd prefer not to drop, but I understand and don't want to hold anything up.

Sorry to hear that and hope it all works out and is ok.

If it's the difference between dropping or not I could do some botting if you're taking longer than a day to act. I'm backup BR for card game during this event and currently have no extra tables I'm running outside my long term games so I have a bit of extra bandwidth for the time being. I'll leave it up to you/GM but just throwing that out there as an option and/or backup plan for the first week or so

The person who introduced me to organized play has a saying he likes to use a lot, rl > game. Take care of yourself and family *hugs* we'll be here.

It's all good - we'll slot you in whenever RL gives you a break :-)

Chronicle Info
Name: Redeux
Character Name: TBD
Faction: Horizon Hunters
Character ID: 274929 - 2003

The funeral is this morning. My wife decided at the last minute that she needs me to go with her. I'll be unavailable today. Please bot me if needed.

forgot to mention earlier slotting no boons, and school items 2 lesser healing potions.

minor healing potions***

I didn't mark taking a potency crystal on rapier and minor healing potion for my items.

Faction Boon and
Cryptid Scholar (untyped boon): When you recall knowledge to identify a rare or unique creature, you can use the following reaction.
R(fortune) Uses 3 [] [] [] Trigger You attempt to Recall Knowledge to identify a creature you see; Effect roll the skill check twice and use the better result.

Sorry if it sounded like a stupid question GM but this is only my 2nd game of 2nd edition. I'm used to SFS telling us "no boons" on a lot of the intro/replayables, and since you hadn't said anything about boons or hero points I assumed that meant we didn't get any.

Envoy's Alliance champion
Traveler on the spirit road

Scroll of heal
Scroll of harm

I have no boons on this character aside from the Radiant Oath faction boon.

Two items are going to be potency crystals.

I had said this already in the gameplay thread, but it should probably go here for reference. I only get the one item, and I took a minor healing potion.

This is my very very first game/character for P2S. So I have no boons other than Horizon Hunters faction.

1. Move 2. Verbal 3. Somatic. 60ft line of wind directed at the crowd until the start of my next turn. Fort DC 17? (It's 1st level and I have an Int of 18, but my auto-calc sheet says the DC is 17 and I'm not sure how to calculate it myself). Details are here

If you're interested in knowing how that's calculated... Basic saves are done against your spellcasting DC. Since you are a wizard this is covered under your "Arcane Spellcasting" class feature which specifies your spellcasting attacks and spell DC use your key ability of intelligence and then points to page "Spell Attack Rolls" on pg 447 on how to calculate. At the end of that referenced section you see Spell DC = 10 +Abilitiy Modifier used for spellcasting + proficiency bonus + other bonuses + penalties.

So for you 10 + 4 (int) + 3 (Trained + level 1) + no bonuses/penalties = DC 17.

Thanks. I bought the CRB a couple months back, but I'm still behind on Starfinder Books so I haven't actually gotten to read it.

So it sounds like the DC is basically the same as a trained skill, Level+2+Ability Mod, but as if you took 10 on the check. Right?

Guinoq throws out a Gust of Wind...

Fort: 1d20+11.

...but the mob is largely unaffected.

Please, PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm very new to this. But if the DC is 17 and they rolled a 26, I think that should be a success (meaning they still can't move toward us according to the spell) and not a critical success (meaning they would be unaffected). I thought it was 10 or higher (unless you rolled a nat 20) for a critical success. Also, I mostly cast this so that they couldn't throw trash at us. I'm assuming the trash is objects of light bulk or less and should automatically be blown back by the spell regardless of the save for the crowd itself.

The wind extinguishes small non-magical fires, disperses fog and mist, blows objects of light Bulk or less around, and pushes larger objects.

That's the part of the spell I was mostly focusing on when I read and then cast it.

Correct, it was not a crit-success, so they could not move (hence, 'largely unaffected' as opposed to 'completely ignored').

Nothing in the spell description specifies that it prevents ranged attacks, however; if it was supposed to, that would be specifically called out as being the case.

More importantly, the spell is a 60' line, so technically, since we are in an open area, I could have them move *out* of the wind's area, and then move forward; however, I was trying to reward the thematics of what you were trying to achieve, so I had them held in place.

Thank you for the explanation. I misunderstood both what you meant by 'largely unaffected' (I read that as the critical success) and the effects of the spell on the objects.

Another dumb question, related to this...

*cough* Hero Points do exist for a reason ;-) Feel free to use them...

Not sure if this was directed at me, but, I thought we only got one of those per session? I had already used mine in the diplomacy stuff leading up to the riot in the last mission. Am I mistaken? Or are you saying we earned a hero point for something we did and I just missed it? (Or was this directed at someone that hadn't spent the point yet and I should ignore it?)

By the way, sorry for the delay. We had storms blow through yesterday and last night and I've been without power/internet and even cell phone service until about 2 hours ago.

Apologies for the delay on my part as well. Had the final session of a home game this weekend, and the players threw me a curveball that required a bit more prep than I'd originally signed up for.

Another dumb question, related to this...

Luke_Parry wrote:

*cough* Hero Points do exist for a reason ;-) Feel free to use them...

Not sure if this was directed at me, but, I thought we only got one of those per session? I had already used mine in the diplomacy stuff leading up to the riot in the last mission. Am I mistaken? Or are you saying we earned a hero point for something we did and I just missed it? (Or was this directed at someone that hadn't spent the point yet and I should ignore it?)

By the way, sorry for the delay. We had storms blow through yesterday and last night and I've been without power/internet and even cell phone service until about 2 hours ago.

I didn't get the impression it was at anyone in particular, but instead just indicating that it was an important roll and someone should use a hero point because we were rolling poorly.

But yes, you start the scenario with one hero point and then sometimes that's all the hero points you get for the whole adventure unless the GM gives you another. When GM's give out hero points it typically is only to 1 or 2 people at a time.

Correct. I wasn't targeting anyone in particular.

Cool cool cool cool. Sorry if the questions seem like anything other than me genuinely trying to learn. In some ways it's a lot easier to learn the rules in a PbP forum, in other ways it feels weird to me.

I'm running games for Crittercon this weekend starting tomorrow AM. I'll do my best to check in at least once a day, but feel free to bot me if needed without waiting on me.

I've got some rl drama coming up but I hope I can keep up with whatever is left. Because this is just my second 2e game I've been asking a VO I met in a different online game a lot of questions and I'm learning a lot from his commentary on this, too.

Alright, chronicle links have now been sent out via PM.

Please download them at your earliest convenience :-)

Thanks for a good game, everyone!

Got it, many thanks for running!

Thanks for running! That was an interesting one! Definitely not for this character, though!

Sheet looks good. Thanks for running.

That was a blast. Thanks so much everyone, thank you for running. I was a little nervous about play by post (having only ever done play by discord).

Thank you GM.

I'm not sure I really enjoyed doing pbp as a "speed run" though. One thing good I can say was what limited RP I had with the rest of you was fun and I got to ask a VC a bunch of questions about the game and learned a lot of things to look out for in future games.

Also GM you didn't ask for any of our downtime rolls before firing out chronicles.

Performance: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (6) + 6 = 12 DC 14

You also didn't give out any hero points during the game even though I mentioned it a few times. so without any of those to spend from what I'm reading in the core, a failure on a task level 0 still gives Elixia 1cp per day so 8 copper pieces for her downtime.

There's other stuff too but I really don't want to go into it since the game is over and it won't change anything.

Still thank you for GMing. There's a lot of stuff going on RL right now for everyone so if you had RL stuff distracting you and you wanted to just get this over with I guess I understand.

Take care everyone.

Of course! Please, if there are any downtime actions that you wish to take, roll them in this thread, and record them on your chronicles :-)

For what it is worth, from my perspective, I didn't view this as a 'speed run' - when I have done *those* in the past, this scenario was finished in under two weeks (and this took just shy of a month).

I also deliberately picked the options that led to more roleplaying, and fewer combats?

That said, I am sorry that you had a poor experience.

Good luck in your future games :-)

Earn Income Scouting Lore Task 0; DC 14: 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (19) + 4 = 23 0.4gp

You also didn't give out any hero points during the game even though I mentioned it a few times. so without any of those to spend from what I'm reading in the core, a failure on a task level 0 still gives Elixia 1cp per day so 8 copper pieces for her downtime.

You can't use a hero point on earn income since it has a fortune trait. Constant effects and psuedo-constant (something that can apply constantly so it might as well be constant) can be applied, so assurance works even though it has the fortune trait (CRB pg 500-501). You're correct that your roll would be 0.08gp (8 copper)

Of course! Please, if there are any downtime actions that you wish to take, roll them in this thread, and record them on your chronicles :-)

For what it is worth, from my perspective, I didn't view this as a 'speed run' - when I have done *those* in the past, this scenario was finished in under two weeks (and this took just shy of a month).

I also deliberately picked the options that led to more roleplaying, and fewer combats?

That said, I am sorry that you had a poor experience.

Good luck in your future games :-)

I enjoyed it, though I have played it before (why i tried not to push exploring too much). The other time I've played it was on roll20 and I do think there's a bit of suspense played up in parts of exploring the map and having multiple rooms explored at once in one post takes some of that spark away. On the other hand, exploring room by room in a pbp adventure that is basically 4 quests doesn't seem like a better option either since it would be 7-10 days between talking to anyone save a few hazards. I think the issue is more with the adventure having too much to do. So I'm not sure if it's so much an issue of how you run it and more just the format for this scenario which is why I didn't say anything initially.

This isn't to say that I had a bad time. It's just that to me it felt like we hardly got to interact with each other or the plot of the game much. Yes the game was about a month long but it still felt like we only spent like 2 RL days with half of the locations except the last one. This does mean that when I play (or GM?) this I'll get to do more for the first time. Again I didn't have a bad time, but I always try to be 110% honest with people I play with especially since so many of my characters are duplicitous and I know I have a play style that not everyone meshes with all of the time either and I wanted to make sure I gave you honest feedback.

You can't use a hero point on earn income since it has a fortune trait. Constant effects and psuedo-constant (something that can apply constantly so it might as well be constant) can be applied, so assurance works even though it has the fortune trait (CRB pg 500-501). You're correct that your roll would be 0.08gp (8 copper)

My roommate who has our house's copy of the CRB took it to work with her today and I can't find the exact thing he quoted on archives of nethys right now but the VC who ran my first game said there was something in the downtime rules that allowed us to use hero points on day jobs but not other fortune effects. I'm still learning the rules for 2e so I don't want to get involved in that kind of a discussion until I've had a lot more time to read but just wanted to share that experience.

Thank you for the page number though. I know where to look later now!