GM Chadius: 1-23 - The Star Crossed Court (Gameplay) (Inactive)

Game Master chadius

Seconded.

How does Thrass feel about Enlarge Potentially casting on him depending on how rest of turn went.

Thrass will feel great about Enlarge, regardless of how the turn goes. :)

Eyes go wide.

I could occupy multiple constellations! If only the enemies will stand next to me. :P

You'll get a 10ft reach to help with that to go with the enlarge if it happens at least.

Apologies to the GM, I just realized that in PF2, you must use Dex when throwing a weapon. I've been using STR as was allowed in PF1. All my thrown attacks are +2 higher (because of the glyph I'm on) than they should be. Hopefully this doesn't change anything for the sod hounds.

PF1 defaulted to Dex as well, unless you were using a specific item. Starfinder uses STR though, maybe you're confused with that?

Thanks for pointing that out, Azu. It sounds like your attacks should be 2 AC lower, then? It won't matter for now as it will be too much to retcon.

Thrass, both of those attacks hit because the sod hound is flat footed. Please roll for damage.

PF1 defaulted to Dex as well, unless you were using a specific item. Starfinder uses STR though, maybe you're confused with that?

Interesting. I have it in my head that Thrown weapons could use STR instead of Dex on attack but maybe I'm confusing that with getting to add STR for damage. I don't play Starfinder, so I didn't get it from there.

Thanks for pointing that out, Azu. It sounds like your attacks should be 2 AC lower, then? It won't matter for now as it will be too much to retcon.

Thrass, both of those attacks hit because the sod hound is flat footed. Please roll for damage.

Ooh, I thought AC 20 was too low to hit, so I didn't roll damage. I edited in my damage.

This battle can get out of hand if you aren't able to keep up with them. But your rolls are on fire. You're supposed to be overwhelmed by their superior number.

Not too superior when there is exactly one of them remaining.

Thanks for pointing that out, Azu. It sounds like your attacks should be 2 AC lower, then? It won't matter for now as it will be too much to retcon.

Did a quick check of my attacks. I don't think anything changes with a -2. But I could be wrong.

Whee, skeleton doing work today.

This battle can get out of hand if you aren't able to keep up with them. But your rolls are on fire. You're supposed to be overwhelmed by their superior number.

Not too superior when there is exactly one of them remaining.

I hate to ask this, but is it suppose to scale up for six?

Shhh, Azu! ;)

Yup, this is scaled for 6. I forgot to add the adjustment during round 1, so I'm playing some catch up.

Yeah, they could in theory overrun us, but we've been rolling really well. On paper, 10 of those creatures adds up to a big challenge, but staggering them like that gives us a big advantage. They're also quite low level compared to us, so they fall really quickly. I mean, it's season 1, so I'm sure they hadn't really figured everything out yet, but level-2 enemies really aren't that big of a challenge.

Not meant as a slight against you, GM, you're doing great. :) Our real enemy are those Diplomacy checks. :P

It's amazing how a few levels can make mincemeat out of difficult challenges. I have a level 3 party of 4 that struggled against 2 Brine Sharks.

It's time for our second optional encounter. It's mostly skill checks as you perform in a rodeo. There is a reward if you do well. There are items on the chronicle sheets you will have access to if you win.

This encounter is supposed to be run if we have "more than 1 hour to complete the scenario" but we're in PbP so that's difficult to time.

You can optionally join the event and bow out after each round. I'll put the preamble up once we leave the observatory, and you can decide then.

It's amazing how a few levels can make mincemeat out of difficult challenges. I have a level 3 party of 4 that struggled against 2 Brine Sharks.

It's a consequence of the "tight math" that PF2 uses. The game is severely overtuned. That means that as soon as you have someone with a +1 more, or a couple of +1's more than the expected modifiers, the game falls off a cliff.

Where I've really seen this play out is when you have a Tier 3-6 with a bunch of lvl 3's and one level 5. This happened in a scenario where we had a lvl 5 martial and he just about one-shotted everything. Because of the +10 crit rule, a few extra modifiers can dramatically increase the spike damage.

The other factor is that at lvl 5, you're almost doubling your damage output from the striking runes. So lvl 5's are putting out nearly double the peak damage of lvl 3's. In fact, the damage jmp from lvl 4 to level 5, is probably the biggest damage jump in the whole game. Consider that at level 5 you have the convergence o martials getting: 1) the striking rune, 2) Stat boosts, and 3) weapon proficiency going to Expert

I’m for playing the optional encounter.

And I agree about the difficulty and the complexity of good scaling and the power gap between 3/4 and 4/5

Second vote for doing the skill check rodeo.

We're gearing up for the final challenge soon. And that means it's time for Hero Points!

Please nominate 2 people who should get a point. Either Post it here, put it in a spoiler or PM me.

I'll try to give the points away in 48 hours.

I might need to use one :) Currently seeing how many I have. Hiow many did we start with? I had two glyphs.

You all started with 1, but I didn't keep track of the glyphs.

However, everyone got an extra >Hero Point due to Martin King Luther Jr. Day.<

I forgot how many you spent during the Basilisk encounter, though. I'll do some bookkeeping in a bit.

We all started with 2 HP each, I have two glyphs and Sylvia has three.

I think Celestia already got one last time, but as our only diplomat, I don't mind her getting another one.

I still have the one from MLKjr day, so I'm good.

Oh. I forgot about MLK day, so I do have one. I'll spend it on that Athletics roll then.

I have three now, so I can't take any more.

I vote for Celestia and someone else who has the least. If that's a tie, put my vote on Azu, since he may have to use a Hero Point for Ako as well as himself.

Celestia and Azu, have a hero point.

We're up to the final encounter. Please make sure your character info is correct.

All of you will have to speak up during each topic. You will make a skill check from a list of potential skills.

Repeating the same skill in any previous topic increases the DC by 1. So if you use Diplomacy 5 times The DC will by +0, +1, +2, +3 and +4.

Is that repeating per person, or as a group? As in, if I use Diplomacy in round 1, do the others take the penalty in round 2? I presume not, but just checking beforehand.

The penalty is per PC, so if you use Diplomacy in round 1, only you are penalized for Diplomacy in round 2.

And by the way, you do have to make a check for each challenge.

I'm going to say Follow the Leader is usable, but you have to wait for someone else with Expert proficiency to make the check first.

Wow...this scenario seemed to go by fast.

Even if Azu critically failed all of his checks you would still succeed, so I moved us on to the final set of negotiations.

I tend to keep up a decent pace in my games, because when games are too slow they get very delayed. But sometimes that means I go too fast and players feel ignored.

I like the way you're handling this series of checks. One at a time would drag interminably in PBP; all at once would be overload. Letting players know how many of these checks there will be also helps.

Yeah, same. Rolling them one by one would take a week, and this way we can plan ahead and allocate our skills somewhat. Breaking it into two sections helps process things, nicely done!

As for the speed, I personally don't think you're going that fast at all. It's a pretty straightforward scenario with not much input required from the players, so it's go to place A, do some checks, continue to B, and so on. That speeds things up significantly.

My comment wasn't that the GM was going fast, but that the scenario seemed to fly by compared to other ones...for whatever reasons.

Howdy folks, we're at the end of the scenario. >CLICK HERE< to look at and download your chronicle sheets. Make sure I didn't put any errors in there.

As of recent updates, players are now responsible for their own downtime rolls - GMs don't have to mark it down. It's pretty easy for me to do it so I can always go back and update them.

I will roll here for ease of play.

Earn Income Performance (E) (8 days) DC20: 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (12) + 14 = 26 +8 gp
Earn Income Performance (E) (4 days) DC20: 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (9) + 14 = 23 +4 gp

Great thanks GM! I was looking for some time to be able to play this scenario with Kamil, I had a great time playing it with you :)

Thanks all!

Same here.
Earn income Performance (E) (8 days): 1d20 + 13 ⇒ (16) + 13 = 29

Thanks all! Sorry I was a bit of a dead weight during the diplomatic bits (and that I somehow dodged all of those stupid Basilisk stares, I still feel guilty about that), but I had great fun with you all. Hope to play with you again sometime. :)

Also big thank you to the GM, you did a great job running us through this. :)

Not rolling for Earn Income, it's gonna be terrible anyways with my +6 (damn you, 8 INT...).
*Secretly writes down +50 gp.* :P

Itka will continue her re-training to change her Patron Theme during her downtime.

The Chronicle looks good. Thank you, GM chadius, for an entertaining and well-paced game. It's always a pleasure to play at your table.

Thrass, I enjoy putting my characters into situations they're not well suited for since the RP potential is so great. Considering how well you fought against the basilisks and elementals, I'd call it even.

Thanks for playing, everyone. See you around the boards!

Earned Income: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (19) + 8 = 27

Already tracked my own downtime, but here it is:

Sylvia is currently mid crafting 4x scrolls of Earthbind and at 87.5/120gp. Being level 6 and an expert in crafting, with a critical success and Field Commissioned she makes 12 days * 2.5 = 30gp of progress brining her to 117.5/120gp

She spends the 2.5 gold to finish crafting the scrolls.

---

Thank you very much for GMing, I had a great time.

Great job, GM. I will be happy to sit at your metaphorical table again.

Looking at the boon, whose advice did we follow?

You followed Eras the Needle's advice to diplomatically work with the beaurocrat and help her with the documentation.

I'll wrap up the story in a bit and then report these sheets by tomorrow. I'll mark this thread inactive by the weekend, so feel free to PM me if anything else comes up.

Don't mind me. I'm just rolling for the GM.

Performance: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (17) + 11 = 28

Critical Success. 5.60 gp earned.

Azu, I forgot to update your character number to 2002. I updated your chronicle sheet >HERE< with the correct number.

This game has been reported. I'll close this game in a few days. Feel free to message or PM me if there are any mistakes.

This thread is now inactive. Thanks for playing everyone!