GM Doug's Troubles in Otari (Inactive)

Game Master Doug Hahn

Good thing it is a moot point! Well worth the Hero Point :D

It was an epic shot — worth it!

Also I assume you can stabilize the bugbear before he dies, and heal him. I’d rather assume you can achieve your intended goals than spend rounds to see if you can make it. It feels earned to me, considering with the lucky shot.

Who knows what Dethor's thinking there. Probably not even Dethor. I mean the dwarf's got himself fooled about pretty much everything already.

Just for reference: Transfering a Runestone

DC 19 craft, 10 gp, and a day off to transfer the rune.

Funny.
Actually, 10% the cost of the rune, so a striking rune would be 6.5gp.
Less if we have more time (which we don’t)

I’d pay that if we had the time.

Essentially this is now a dead-end. You can move on to Slab Hill a bit later tonight! Lucius might also want to refine his lead if he’s going to investigate the Leadbusters.

Thanks, that’s right on the gp!

I want to check in on how you're all feeling about the difficulty levels in this module. The module is designed for four new players, and there are five experienced players here.

I am happy to start adding in an extra mook or putting an elite template on a boss if you feel things are too easy and want some challenging fights now and then. Personally, I'm happy either way, but I wanted to put it out there in case anyone is disappointed with the ease of combats so far.

Except for maybe squashing the spiders, I think someone has dropped or gone to stone each encounter, so I'm not feeling it's excessively easy.

Generally, when I run non-PFS stuff (such as APs) I will follow the balancing encounters guidelines.

Since PF2 does tend to hit harder, it seems pretty much expected that someone could drop on each encounter... but as long as they keep getting up, I am fine with that.

I like the challenge, and I also wouldn't mind experiencing it a little from the other side of the screen (the effects of balancing).

From my experience, though... be VERY careful when you are considering adding the elite template to a single boss fight. That can go very poorly. Usually adding lower level mooks and such works well.

YMMV

I also follow those guides, Dethor. It's a good resource.

The difficulty definitely ramps up in part 2.

I feel like this party is more interested in the narrative anyway, but wanted to throw it out there for now or later on if anyone feels that need.

And of course, I crit Biltri immediately after bringing this all up lol.

Ha ha. I wouldn't mind *more* things to hit that hit less hard individually! ;)

I need to give out hero points. Biltri, you can have that one and use it on this save if you want.

I meant to do that before we started this combat.

I will also give another one out during this mini-dungeon.

I hadn't considered that things may be too easy. I guess I'm not feeling that way. The encounters seem just right so far to me.

Lay on Hands should have put me back to full-esque health.

Lay on Hands should have put me back to full-esque health.

Thank you!

Poor Dethor. If he didn't have bad luck, he'd have no luck at all!

Okay the math here may be off, but isn't 13 halved 6? If these are normal skeletons, they resist 5 so... I should have done 1 damage to it.

That's assuming I have the math right?

Flaming Sphere isn't a normal basic save; if I make the save I take no damage!

"Creatures that succeed at their save take no damage (instead of half)."

Oh phooey. Well, at least that spell lasts a while. Eventually, I will get one of them!

Hmm

I always forget too. The spell says "basic save" and then is like "read the fine print!"

"How did these mushroom hunters manage to get into this place?"

Lucius is only trained in Thievery, so does that mean he can't try?

Yeah. You can't try unless you're Expert or above.

"As with detecting a hazard, disabling a hazard might require a character to have a certain proficiency rank in the listed skill"

https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=674

Huh? Did I just preview that post from an hour ago...

Biltri's eyes flicker with embers, and the chains in his hands begin to glow with heat. "Bunch of trouble in here!" He charges toward the closest zombie (#2) and flings the heavy weight forward. The steel fist at the end of the chain begins to glow like iron in a forge.

Rage, Stride, Strike

[dice=+1 Meteor Hammer]1d20+10
[dice=Magic, B, +4 Fire Rage]1d8+4+4

Biltri isn't up yet! Moved your token back.

Baux and Lucius are up and then the strange creature, denoted by "??" in the initiative block.(I'll change it to "strange creature" so it stands out more, maybe you missed it.)

Ack! Apologies! And didn't make it back in time to delete the post.

I read Biltri in the bolded informative text and my brain told me I needed to post.

No worries! I wanted the bold to stand out to avoid confusion, but I guess that goal failed :p

Just a function of human brains. I even thought to myself, "So odd that Biltri and Baux are at the top of initiative again."

The map appears to have gone private or maybe my device is glitching.

Huh.

Thanks. I have no idea how that happened (it was set to private), but it's open again. Let me know if you have other issues.

Crap...
Forgot about trap finder... I could have disabled those traps. May do that on the way out.

Your trap finder secret check failed. But Billtri noticed it, luckily.

Crit failing one check would mean it goes off, and you need to disable 4 separate pillars before the whole trap is disabled. With four opportunities to roll poorly, it is relatively likely a crit fail happens; you are free to do so on the way out!

Smashing the pillars is probably the safest option beyond that.

No, GM Doug H, it wasn't that I thought you missed something... I assumed you had caught it. I personally forgot that with trapfinder, you can disarm traps up to Master in thievery.

It's such a good feat! I can't imagine building a rogue without it.

It’s possible to have resistance to all damage. When an effect deals damage of multiple types and you have resistance to all damage, apply the resistance to each type of damage separately. If an attack would deal 7 slashing damage and 4 fire damage, resistance 5 to all damage would reduce the slashing damage to 2 and negate the fire damage entirely.

— Resistance

I believe this means Biltri's fire damage is effectively negated because resistance 5 gets applied separately as the effect does two types (B and F).

Biltri would probably know how his own effect works, and Lucius made the knowledge check and told you "all damage" so if you can switch off the fire component of your rage you can have done that, or move your token instead. I don't mind that small retcon.

I believe the draconic instinct ability without the extra energy damage is the vanilla 2 damage instead of 4 fire.

Ah, yeah, I can do what I did with the hellhounds and opt to not use the fire enhanced damage, leaving it +2 from Rage instead of +4, but all Magic Bludgeoning (so 12 and 13 for 7 and 8 after reduction).

It's such a good feat! I can't imagine building a rogue without it.

Agreed, but I do see a lot of rogues without it!

Probably because before Swashbuckler, Rogue was the next best thing. :)

I also find it odd that "Thief" is what gets Dex to damage. Should have been "Assassin" or something and make something more thief-related and call that racket "Thief."

Lucius has trap Finder too!

I don't think Shield block helps a Magical-trait attack.

The magical trait isn't what invalidates the Shield Block trigger. All the magical trait imparts is:

Something with the magical trait is imbued with magical energies not tied to a specific tradition of magic. A magical item radiates a magic aura infused with its dominant school of magic.

Some items or effects are closely tied to a particular tradition of magic. In these cases, the item has the arcane, divine, occult, or primal trait instead of the magical trait. Any of these traits indicate that the item is magical.

It's the Incorporeal trait on the Shadow:

An incorporeal creature or object has no physical form. . .

Since the trigger is a "physical" attack.

Otherwise, nobody could Shield Block a magic weapon. :)

Great explanation. Thanks!

Not that I want to make our fight harder, but since Lucius opted for the non-magical sword cane rather than the Devil's Lantern, the resistance should be 10, I recall.

Thanks. I knew some of you didn’t have magic weapons yet! I was too busy double-checking the rules on crit immunity and incorporeal to notice. It's appreciated!

Biltri also killed it regardless. Good work!

Hero point to Baux for surviving the shadow's focus-fire.

(Attacking divine characters is the creature's tactics as written, plus I personally think Star-Hand would HATE seeing a Desnite in her tomb).

Edit: Also one to Biltri for helping with the rules & reminders in the discussion while dealing with awful rolls on the play side.

I also feel like I should have given one out before, and didn't. So we're all caught up now.

So now shadows only have to hit a few times to take anyone down? It used to be strength based for how many hits you could take.

No. The creature is alive if it has survived the 3 steal shadow actions, but its shadow becomes an independent mini-shadow creature under the original shadow's control. If the creature to whom the shadow belonged dies, then the shadow spawn becomes a true shadow.

The shadow spawn dies when the original creature recovers from Enfeebled in 3-4 hours.

Makes me think there should have been a Baux-shadow to kill after he got hit that 3rd time, which I guess has the stats of a Shadow + Clumsy 2.

Pulling the shadow is an Action that requires the last Action was a successful Strike, so it actually didn't get to make a shadow-spawn due to action economy (e.g. stride, sneak, strike on rnd 1 — now I can't pull the shadow away because I'm out of actions). Baux would have had a shadow if he was hit once more with the available action economy on my monster, when he went to Enfeebled 3.

Losing your shadow doesn't kill you outright.

I actually really like Shadows now, they're flavorful without insta-killing PCS!

Decided to look it up, because even with the partial description it didn’t sound right.

I only got to enfeebled 2, so no shadow spawn. The creature needs to hit (extremely likely) and then use an action to steal some of the shadow. The first hit it didn’t steal any of the shadow, I don’t think it had enough actions for that.

This way of doing shadow steal makes the shadow a little different than it was in 1e. It doesn’t matter how much strength you may have, 3 hits with shadow steal and there is a shadow spawn. That means it is much more likely that you will get shadow spawn in a fight. It also means when things start to go bad they will escalate quickly.

It feels like this is more likely to give TPKs than the 1e version. Shadows have always been nasty, but these feel like they are just a little bit nastier.

It feels like this is more likely to give TPKs than the 1e version. Shadows have always been nasty, but these feel like they are just a little bit nastier.

Crossposted :)

Eh, I think they are less deadly because action economy prevents it from stealing shadows every round, it doesn't "double drain" on a crit (targeting incorporeal touch like in 1e…), and the spawn can't steal shadows either.

Incorporeal in general is also a bit less troublesome in 2e, in my opinion. Biltri's crit made a huge difference for example (they can be crit, unlike 1e!), and their AC isn't high for their CR.

Edit: Then again, maybe I've just had too many terrible experiences with Shadows in 1e. There's definitely a few that come to mind :p

I guess it would depend a lot on tactics.

You never want to stand toe to toe with them. Although I didn’t know it at the time, moving each round was important. If I had stayed toe to toe with it, it could have done Strike, if missed Strike again, Shadow Steal. Makes it very likely to create a spawn after 3-4 rounds.

On the other hand, it seems that the light vulnerability actually hurts it in this edition. You can now cast light on a weapon in order to make the weapon effective.

The point about them now taking crits is also good for the players.

I guess we will have to see how it plays out over time.

My oracle got her shadow stolen and then went unconscious when I played this, but we also ran in softened up from the trap. It worked out okay, but it definitely felt like a Severe+ Encounter due to those factors (it's ranked Moderate 3).

I honestly wasn't really worried about you guys at any point here, because I knew you had heals that could help you and punch through DR. I also thought you were playing Baux smart by keeping away!

Another thing to think about... the positive energy would have done 50% damage against the shadows in 1E due to the incorporeal trait. So we'd still be fighting the thing.

I had a character in 1E that got critted by a shadow for near max damage... went from STR18 to 4 in the blink of an eye, and I was the primary melee hitter for the party. Any other character in the party would outright died, and we would have had a second shadow.

I do like the color of this version, and how they affect the shadow of a target, not necessarily the target itself. They are tough creatures, no doubt about it, but to me it feels like the better fit for the rules system.