[PFS 2e] GM Ladile & the Pathfinder Society Present: The Absalom Initiation (Inactive)

Game Master Lady Ladile

An unfortunate bit of metagamery right now for the opportunity to learn, but it doesn't reveal plot or convey a significant advantage, so hopefully I won't lose my head.

Right here is where the Interrogator investigator could initiate Pursue a Lead to use Calstro as the clue, talk with her for 1 minute, and set the Haunted House as your Investigation. That way you get the +1 bonus during the (spoiler) actual investigation of the house, where my Forensic Medicine needs to wait until he hopefully runs into a physical clue before we solve (or fail to solve) the mystery.

So, who's next?

I'm fine with any one in any order. :)

Added a spoiler up top to keep track of any useful items/bonuses you might accrue throughout the scenario~

@Pawero - You might be amused to know that the Shattered Shield game I picked up actually takes place in Azir! What funny timing :)

Entertainingly, magic missile is the only scroll Maldlethu doesn’t already have. So that would be his vote. That being said, it’s very rare that we’ll not appreciate having more healing at the ready - so feel free to override him. They’re all magical, after all. XD

Swayaah has no magic, so the choice doesn't matter to her.

Ezren already has the Magic Missile spell memorized so I vote for the Heal scroll.

Do we have anyone who can cast the Heal scroll?

Pawero can cast Arcane scrolls, but rebuilding to Primal in the future might be more advantageous.

This non-magical front liner votes for Healing, but alas, cannot cast it.

Do we have anyone who can cast the Heal scroll?

You're killing me Smalls. XD

Then it sounds like the heal scroll is the one for us!

As you may have surmised, Bubba doesn't cast any magic!

Oh. Yeah. ;)

Looks like Heal it is! Go ahead and decide who you want to talk to next (Fola or Eando) and I'll get a post up either later tonight if work permits or tomorrow :)

Though there is plenty of scenario left to go, don't forget that we have Hero Points.

It is 1 Hero Point to reroll a d20 check.

It is all of your Hero Points to stabilize if Dying.

Most frequently I use HP to reroll likely crit failures on important skill checks. A couple times I've used them to not die. You can have up to three I believe at maximum, you start the scenario with one and the GM can award additional ones at different stages of the scenario.

^Speaking of Hero Points, I have them tracked on the slides but also added a spoiler to the top of the campaign page as well.

Added a spoiler for available tasks to the campaign page as well as updated the list of Helpful Items~

I'm not sure if I make her one of my leads now or if we have a chance to gather information about it later.

As an interrogator, you can set the lead now by talking to Gorm and gain the bonus on any investigation checks leading up to it. I need a piece of physical evidence.

Maldlethu looks a bit peeved that the group doesn't immediately want to see what sorts of possible magic this researcher's ritual might be using, but with his voice still sore from trying to enlighten and educate Society leadership he merely grumbles under his breath all the way to the Petal's district.

The researcher is in the Petals District.

Since the Gather Information moments are coming up, just a reminder that Streetwise allows 1-action Recall Knowledge using Society in place of Diplomacy and hours of gathering information in the city the character frequents.

Apologies for the delays folks; Tuesday & Wednesday proved busier than expected in regards to getting stuff in order for my trip. I'll be heading out of town today for a convention and won't be back until Monday afternoon. I won't make any guarantees about posting but I will say that I'll have my Chromebook with me and probably won't completely fill my schedule up with games, soooo...we'll see!

Back from my trip & now back to our (mostly) regularly scheduled programming :)

The con went well; played a lot more board games this time around which was actually a really nice change of pace, partly because they're only scheduled for half of a slot instead of a full slot. After taking one entire slot off at ScareFest '19 I've decided that I'll probably never schedule myself for a full day of activities at a convention ever again. Downtime is important!

It was also nice to see some con friends for the first two in two years as well as a bunch of regular faces in general. The weather was beautiful and sunny and HOT and I bought way more swag than I'd initially planned to buy. The final tally of being asked 'So where are you from?' was 5, which happens enough when I travel that I've decided to start keeping track just for my own amusement.

I didn't do much Society play but I did play in #2-09 The Seven Secrets of Dacilane Academy and enjoyed myself quite a bit. Of course the group being composed of two gnomes and three kobolds, two of which were stylized as luchadores, might've had something to do with that :)

It was killing me to not have this character simply walk up while everyone was talking about sneaking and knock. But since I've run it, I sat on my hands, with difficulty. :)

Random comment ahead!

It's taken some time but I think I'm finally really warming up to Pathfinder 2e and am starting to get more invested in the Society happenings and such. Wasn't opposed to 2e or anything when it was announced and first launched, but it was a bit of a challenge to make the mental switch between 1e and 2e.

But now I'm actually kinda looking forward to maybe running some more 2e material and making more 2e characters for Society play. Yay :)

That's nice to hear! I hit that point probably this winter or maybe Spring. Too bad I'm short on time right now for much playing.

Looking forward to more 2e adventures!

If you want suggestions on scenarios that are fun for GMs to run (or to avoid, at least early on), please ask. :)

^That'd be great! Same for Quests, Bounties, and One-Shots too if you have any advice there.

Getting ready for work; will update later this evening if I have some time.

1-10 Tarnbreaker's Trail will get your tables filled in a hurry. I found out the hard way and had to juggle 2 tables. But man, I had so much fun playing with the NPCs. Highly recommended.

Some nuts and bolts discussion:

With Pawero's investigation being the cause of the shadows, the occultism check to understand probably should have gotten the +1. However, success is a success either way, so no worries.

I know Linda clarified that performing the ritual is one action, but can that action be taken more than once per round? I do not recall.

I recall there's a special rule around the Occultism DC, it's not for PCs to know per se, just pointing out it existed on first printing but was easy to miss.

(1) Whoops, yes, you're correct. Still a success either way, but I did forget to account for that.

(2) I couldn't find anything in the GM thread for the scenario stating one way or the other. The one time I played it (very shortly after release), I believe my GM ran it as one check allowed per round but of course you could still do other things with your remaining actions. I'm inclined to rule the same way.

(3) Yep! I'll be taking that into account as the action proceeds :)

Technically I gave you guys a bit of info regarding actions you can't take just yet (beating on shadow wisps) but I wanted to make sure that any characters who don't have skills relevant to the encounter know that they'll still have a way of contributing.

Of course I may very well try keeping it more on the vague side next time.

I don't recall if you are prohibited from using the defensive reaction if you participated in the ritual. Ladile?

If you are not prohibited, you had best hope you have really good saving throws because you'd be struck twice (but the oddity of being hit twice by the same AOE effect is why I think you can't do it if you participated).

Huh. I never thought of that. Is it either/or? This encounter is always oddly written to me.

If I have to choose I'll pick disabling the ritual. Sorry Tavvar.

It doesn't specify but given the other mechanics of the encounter I'd say it's probably just one or the other, not both in the same round.

*edit* In retrospect I suppose I technically didn't pick the easiest scenario to start GMing on in terms of mechanics and general amount of stuff happening...BUT plenty of folks got started with this when the system launched so by golly it's good enough for me, too :P

IIRC, the scenario doesn't even specify how many actions it takes to fix a flaw. The first time I ran this I thought it took 2 (similar to disable device checks) but that made the ritual way too dangerous.

The scenario didn't when it was released. Linda clarified it in the GM thread a while back that it takes 1-action.

Did a bunch of thinking and reading to see how other GMs have handled this encounter and made some changes to how I'll be running the remainder of it as well as how I'll likely handle it when/if I run the scenario again at a future date. Posted them over in Gameplay so as to keep it all in one place.

And also it's hopefully a little clearer and easier to understand now.

And that concludes one of the four tasks! I believe your proposed order has you hitting up the so-called haunted mansion next, so I'll get you moved along to that hopefully tomorrow evening :)

So much dramatic irony that I could insert if not for the sake of spoilers. ;)

I'm not sure how Ladile's interpreting this particular item in the scenario, so I'm going to hold actions for further information/clarification from her.

FYI: I'll be leaving on vacation this Saturday for a week. I expect to have wifi, but plan on posting once a day in the late evening.

Pawero should have all attack, save, and skill dice expressions prepared for cutting and pasting if botting is needed. The only thing not prepared is Devise a Strategem which requires a d20 roll and that number inserted into the expression if choosing to use it.

Thanks for the notice, Pawero!

On my end of things, we had company over this evening and while it was fun, such things tend to drain my batteries pretty quick. So I'll look to get an update posted tomorrow.

While they probably should be applying at different times anyways, both Investigation and Trap Finder are circumstance bonus so they don't stack.

Ah, good point. I haven't been paying attention to bonus types. Seems like it's a lot harder to stack them in 2e than 1e.

It is given only 3 types of bonuses: circumstance, item, or status.

It’s not a rule but the trend I’ve observed is equipment gives item bonuses, feats or mundane abilities grant circumstance by bonuses, and spells or magic items grant status bonuses. Of course, I can name several exceptions, e.g., shield spell.

It's taking some getting used to but I'm really glad they cut down on the types of bonuses for 2e...and that they simplified how AC works.

*rude gestures @ FF & Touch AC*

For those that may not check the lodges very often, the announcement thread for PbP Gameday X went up yesterday afternoon! You can find it here:

PbP Gameday X Announcement

If you want to GM, be sure to get your games submitted sooner rather than later!

Normally I like to run something spooky (or spoopy) during Gameday but those of you with sharp eyes will see that I'm House GM for the PF1e special this time around. In addition to that, I'll still be GMing for TL;DR and it'll likely be my turn to run for a group where most of the players are taking turns GMing soon. So I'll have to think on whether I can or want to add anything else.

But if I do, it'll be something 2e this time around. Maybe I can squeeze in a quest or a bounty :)

Ah, I was thinking being House GM would be too attention consuming but a Bounty would be easy to run. Quests have a little more plot but still relatively easy.

I'm gonna GM 1-10 again. The first I ran it, 2 tables filled up fast and I had a blast running it.

Before PbP or during PbP based on my workload I may run some quests.

Yeah, I think I'll sign up to run some Bounties; should be the easiest thing to manage :)

Deciding to save the rest of the rooms on the mansion's northern side for later

I thought that I remembered another room over there, but I also double checked the posts and thought all the described doors had been accounted for.