Please provide the following:
Player Name/Alias:
Character Name:
Character Level:
Organized Play # / Character #:
Earn Income Roll:
Faction:
More information to come
The game will start at 4th of May
@Watery Soup - hey mate, it is good to have you at my table! I hoped for some friendly face at my table
@Hornbori - hey good to see a familiar heavily armored dwarf ;)
@Anjo - hey mate, good to see you. I am fine with whichever ranger you take.
@Avonathalanthalasa - I don't think we played together, It is a pleasure to meet you. Does your PC have a nickname? As copy-pasting that name will be a pain ;)
@Mirtha - hey, good to be playing with you again. I played with your Roots and years back with Buster (in SFS)
Ok folks, So as I wrote, this will be my first scenario run as a PF2 GM. I did run 1 bounty ;) So I went through the basics of creating and reporting the game. I also am just finishing GM'ing 2 SFS scenarios.
I planned to make the first GM'ed scenario a low tier (1-2) run, but I like your PC's so I decided to go with that.
With regards to expectations:
- I would want this to be a fun game, good RP means more to me than amazing rolls, it should be role-playing game and not roll playing game.
- I value highly good description and interaction between the players, bantering, chatting etc. If you have any side stories that you would want me to weave into the story DM me. (with the loot I can put some irrelevant note or whatever that ties to what your PC cares about).
- I do expect 1 post during weekdays and I do appreciate 1 post during weekends, if you have any vacations, long absences etc. please inform me so that I know to bot you.
- Feel free to raise questions, concerns etc with regards to the rules, my way of GM'ing and anything really.
We start at 4th of May as, during this weekend, I might not be able to spend too much time to properly begin.
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Nice to play with you again!
Player Name/Alias: Watery Soup
Character Name: Emdi Emmay
Character Level: 3
Organized Play # / Character #: 2358909-2002
Faction: Radiant Oath
Earn Income Roll: Raves! You're all gonna be there, right? It's gonna be sick! Meet up at the docks. If we can't find a warehouse, we'll send a runner to guide you through the sewers. It's gonna be sick!
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Player Name : Quen Pah
Character Name :Avonathalanthalasa Caldon
PFS Character Number:43330-2006:
Faction Vigilant Seal
Character Ancestry / Background / Class / Level : Elf/Seer/Artisan,Wizard 3
Downtime Crafting Scrolls
Special Notes She is a elven wizard proud of her tradition but also learning about the Magabayaan traditions so she has lots of knowledges and is blending arcane and nature magic right now.
She usually goes by Avonatha. She knows that elven does not roll well off human tounges :), She is kind of inspired, at least in my mind, by Laurana and Alhana Starbreeze from DL.
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Player Name/Alias: Tarondor
Character Name: Hornbori, Son of Mjothvitnir
Character Level: 4
PFS #: 2405-2003
Earn Income Roll: I honestly can't tell anymore. The PFS rules are difficult to understand now that they're no longer in a PDF.
Faction: Radiant Oath
Special Note: Tower Shield (Core Rules, p. 270) - If you would normally provide lesser cover against an attack, having your tower shield raised provides standard cover against it (and other creatures can Take Cover as normal using the cover from your shield).
Botting Instructions on character sheet.
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I honestly can't tell anymore. The PFS rules are difficult to understand now that they're no longer in a PDF.
The Earn Income table and instructions can be found here. In PFS, Task Level is Character Level minus 2, unless you have special boons.
Assuming you're Earning Income for 8 days with no boons to boost Earn Income, you'll make a single Lore check vs Task Level 2 (DC 16).
Crit Success (paid out as a Success on a Task Level 3 job): 0.5 gp/day x 8 days = 4.0 gp
Success: 0.3 gp/day x 8 days = 2.4 gp
Failure: 0.04 gp/day x 8 days = 0.32 gp
Crit Failure: 0 gp
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Thank you, but those aren't the PFS rules. Nothing in that link to standard Pathfinder rules limits you to earning money with Lore checks, but I've heard that PFS does. Lore isn't consistent with my character's skills or interests, so I prefer to just skip it.
Also, the boon rules keep changing, so I ignore them, too!
Now if he could make money with Medicine, Hornbori might be interested. Anyway, it's such a tiny amount I don't know why we bother. It just seems to take up more time than it's worth.
Not griping, just observing. Well, okay, I am griping about how difficult it is to find out just what the rules are for PFS these days.
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Now if he could make money with Medicine, Hornbori might be interested.
There's a Radiant Oath boon called "Practiced Medic" - you use Downtime and it turns a Medicine-based Crit Fail into a Fail. I have it on one of my characters.
Anyway, it's such a tiny amount I don't know why we bother. It just seems to take up more time than it's worth.
You are preaching to the choir on this point. :)
The last time I GMed F2F, I ended up spending an extra 20 minutes explaining to a new player why they ended up with 0.08 gp when the player next to them rolled lower and got 1.6 gp.
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I think that the chart actually being in the Core Rulebook instead of page 46 of the Society Guide is an improvement actually. It looks more complicated than it is at first glance but it's pretty straight forward once you've done it a few times.
It's not a lot of money, but it wasn't in first edition either. At least it automatically scales up with your level in this system.
And you couldn't do dayjob checks with Heal in 1st edition either.
You can complain about it if you'd like, it's a free country after all. Or throw away free money for the sake of self expression I guess.
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You can complain about it if you'd like, it's a free country after all. Or throw away free money for the sake of self expression I guess.
It's less about free expression and more about just not being interested in learning a new subsystem I know they'll change again when the whim strikes. It sounds curmudgeonly, but really it's just about deciding what matters to you and what doesn't. This, to me, is not such a big deal.
In 1e I had a cavalier who never did Day Job rolls because he always said that day jobs were for peasants. That was role-playing. This may be a bit of laziness. :-)
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Sorry, my response was a little crankier than it needed to be. I'm caring for a newborn and sometimes I'm not firing on all cylinders when I'm posting.
I've also said that my character thinks day jobs are for commoners or that they're too pretty to work. But I also often didn't bother with Day Jobs for 1st edition or Starfinder characters because I never have enough skill points for my characters.
I like that they made Dayjobs available to everybody via the Lore skill in 2nd edition; but its really not much money. I've had players say that it basically pays for their arrows at low level. And I have to admit, while I think its easy to figure out how much money you've done it a few times; it was very confusing the first time I had to figure it out for a group of players.
Also you mentioned the boon changes. I hate it! I get what they are trying to go for with the new system, (and I like how you can use Achievement points to buy Ancestral boons) but I just don't think its worth the time or printer paper to individually download and print most of them.
@Hornbori - as a GM I take care of the understanding of the rules. You want to do a day job: roll d20 and give me Lore modifier. If you want to stand up to the Man, by all means ;)
If anyone wants to discuss with me why Paizo made certain rule one way and not the other, I am not your guy ;) I play PF2 for pleasure not sport. I can spend hours discussion RP approach, impact of your upbringing on personality etc. But with rules I don't care that much.
I go with the certain approach: does certain rule annoys me so much that I can't enjoy the game? If the answer is no then I keep playing ;)
Ok, enough of rambling. As I said, I will start the game on 4th of May feel free to RP (I created Sunken Maiden for that purpose) ;)
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Ok folks, So as I wrote, this will be my first scenario run as a PF2 GM. I did run 1 bounty ;) So I went through the basics of creating and reporting the game. I also am just finishing GM'ing 2 SFS scenarios.
A couple of questions, not counting the Bounty:
1. Have you run PFS 1 before?
2. Have you run PbP before?
3. What other system have you GM'd?
4. How long have you been GMing
I ask because I can give you some helpful suggestions, but don't want to tell you stuff you already know.
1. Have you run PFS 1 before?
No. I never played nor run PF1 game. However I have a feeling that Starfinder have similar rules (roughly).
2. Have you run PbP before?
I've played 80+ PBP games including AP. And as said, I am finishing GM'ing 2 starfinder PBP games.
3. What other system have you GM'd?
Starfinder, and like 20 years back: Werewolf, Warhammer
4. How long have you been GMing
Realistically saying: 2 months ;)
I try to analyze what other GM's are doing and cherry-pick the things that I like (like for GM to roll secret checks, initiative etc.).
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Cool, let me offer some tips, and these would apply to anyone GMing PbP.
This seem obvious, but I've seen GMs post scenario boxed text and the players have no clue what they are suppose to do next.
2. Be wary of the Idle > Initiative transitions. The nature of PFS scenarios and the nature of PbP will frequently result in players going from talking to a Friendly NPC in one post to rolling for Initiative in the next after having traveled three days to get there. Because there is no intervening action, players often don't get a chance to prep spells, prepare weapons, or anything else they might have done before the GM has them advancing to the the next encounter.
A more subtle version of this but equally broken is when the PCs are in a parlay and the opposing side takes actions that make it clear combat is imminent. For example, if the NPC starts talking about arresting us, or world domination, my Ranger is obviously going to make the NPC his prey long before an actual fight breaks out.
3. Consider allowing PCs to take obvious actions i.e. drawing weapons when they would obviously expect combat, retrieving items dropped after combat i sover, searching and dead creatures, regaining Focus points, healing wounded, etc. I've seen some GMs try to be very particular about these administrative aspects, but in PbP, a player may not get a chance to post before the game has moved on.
4. Don't be afraid to RETCON. I never expect a GM to be perfect. But it's greatly appreciated when the GM goes back and fixes things where it makes sense or is possible to do. If you get a rule wrong, simply fix it when possible.
5. Don't' be afraid to enforce the rules, especially with regard to the action economy and combat in general. What a lot players and GMs don't necessarily understand is that the rules, especially in PF2, are about creating "balance." So letting things slide for one player, can adversely diminish another players's PC.
6. It really helps to update frequently in combat. PF2 combat can be very tactical. As a player, knowing if someone hit or missed or if a creature was disarmed or affected by a spell can a have a profound effect on my combat decisions. Some GMs will update after each players actions, which is what happens in F2F, and I personally enjoy that way more than five people posting without knowing what any one's actions did.
My last tip is more of personal thing in that I don't need the GM to "make" the game fun with regards to the rules. I play PFS because I prefer a consistent application of the rules. I am not a fan of GM's using house ruling in PFS and technically, I think it's prohibited. I think there are some unwritten exceptions made for PbP e.g. GMs rolling init for players. And those things are generally fine, IMO.
Hope some of that helps or is useful.
Hey,
So we kicked things off. I've included the slides (linked under the campaign name). You all should have access to it. Please fill in slide number 2.
If anyone has glyphs that would be the time to pass on additional Hero Points. I will try to remember to pass on hero points every 1.5 weeks ;) (translating roughly to 1 hour of live play).
@Anjo thanks you for your notes, I found them informative, and also for telling me something about your experience with PBP. With regards to fight and resolving after each player, I love it but this is something that I will not be doing. I am aiming to post once per day, with few additions here and there, but I can't commit to waiting for players to post and updating after each one. So if it happens then cool, otherwise I will update when I update ;)
I recommend introducing cases to your post: if Hornbori took that crazy frog then I would do Y instead. It is more work for the player but PBP requires some compromises.
And one more thing. As part of this scenario, there will be an [ulr=https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1201]Influence encounter[/url] (I've linked the rules next to the slides). It is a roughly week away from now, but it would be a good idea to get familiar with it. I will speak on that as we come closer to it. This is just a heads up. Btw. I loved your interactions on Sunken Maiden ;) That is a good start!
Glyphs - yeah what Hornbori said. After GM'ing 10 games you get 1st one, 2nd is at 30 games the last 5th after 150 games (with some additional conditions to met). When a person who has a glyph joins a table they may give a hero point to another player (1 glyph - 1 hero point, 2 glyphs - 2 hero points).
@Anjo - with regards to Wayfinders, yes if you have one you should be giving it up during the briefing.
As I asked in my previous post:
Please fill the details on slide 2 ;)
Other technicalities - Challenge Points:
- We have 4 times lvl 3 (4 challenge points each) and 1 lvl 4 (6 challenge point) = 4x4 + 1x6 = 22 challenge points
I realized that knowing animate dead would be anathema to Mirtha's religion, being a follower of Sarenrae. I haven't played with her at level 3 yet, so if its alright, I am swapping faerie fire for animate dead.
Sure
@Anjo - sure, do you want me to capture that on the chronicle?
@Anjo and @Avonathalanthalasa you still haven't filled in the details on slide 2.
Hey folks, I misread the scaling and the enemies were missing one guy with the shovel ;) So there are 4 of them now.
@GM,
Is it alright if I add a Dusty Rose Aeon stone to my purchases prior to combat?
I feel a little uncomfortable with this. I am fine with you buying it between the combats. So you would be able to use it for the next one.
Btw. there is an interesting aspect for this fight for 1-2 and 3-4 tiers. In your tier they add more gravediggers causing the enemies to have to cross the difficult terrain. In 1-2 they add more range peasants which either means => range combat or the PC's need to cross the difficult terrain.
Ouch. both Hornbori and Emdi got affected.
Btw. I looked at the scenario and I got it wrong with regards to number of diggers. The way how it is stated is: For every 4 challenge points beyond 16 add a grave digger. You have 22 challenge points so that means 1 extra grave digger = so 3 in total. I will remove 1 full hp grave digger (sorry for the mess) - I removed orange
Yes, you can. I had to spend some time looking at the rules but:
Identify Spells says that you need to spend an action to recall knowledge. The spell is from divine and occult traditions which mean => recall knowledge Occultism or Religion. Give me the modifier and I will tell you the outcome.
As well as it allows you to simply identify the most common spells of level 2 and lower: Recognize Spell good feat, but I haven't seen a lot of cases of identifying spells in society games :(