Sky King's Tomb

Game Master Lia Wynn

And Dyrm learned a valuable lesson in not being TOO helpful ;)

I agree that we were confused; it was not described clearly. I thought it was far larger, the kind of thing you'd need multiple people to move, or that we couldn't reasonably see under it. I made a post pushing things forward just because no one else was, and thus didn't ask as many questions as a rogue should :)

So just to clarify, Korox's "Read Aura" was not very effective because it was not on the rock but the rune? In that case since weapons aren't magic the runes on them are? Just want to be sure, as I'm not really sure how this spell worked in this instance... and it mattered because he would get a +2 to his recall knowledge roll if the aura was studied.

Korox's Read Aura was effective. It tells you that something is magical, that is all. The Aura was not studied. It also does not have anything to do with Recall Knowledge.

Every Lore check, or Skill check that tells you something. is not RK. RK is pretty specific. It lets you Recall things you may have read or learned in other ways. RK does not identify things.

Read Aura does one thing - it tells you if something is magic. If you then use Identify Magic on that item, you get a +2 bonus to that check after 10 minutes of study. None of you did that. The bonus also applies to anyone told that the item is magical. I was assuming Korox shared that information, so if anyone would have tried to find out what the magic was, they would have got that bonus.

In effect, Korox cast a spell to see if magic was present. It was. Nothing was done after that to try and learn more.

In the case of a magic weapon, the weapon would glow, and if someone made the roll to ID it, I'd tell you the full abilities of the weapon.

I apologize if the size of the stone was in question. I had mentioned it was a gnome village, and they are small, when with both the mention of a crowbar and Dyrm's offer to help move the stone, I did say that was not needed.

Okay. I thought Korox was taking the 10-minutes using his RK Religion to try and identify the magic item. How would he recognize otherwise if not a Recall Knowledge check?

Not disagreeing... just wondering how to identify things going forward. Korox also has "Crafters Appraisal" which would allow him to use crafting to identify magic items... which would be the same bonus.

Religion Trained Actions
Decipher Writing of a religious nature, including allegories, homilies, and proverbs.

Identify Magic particularly magic of the divine tradition.

Learn a Spell from the divine tradition.

Once you discover that an item, location, or ongoing effect is magical, you can spend 10 minutes to try to identify the particulars of its magic. If your attempt is interrupted, you must start over. The GM sets the DC for your check. Cursed magic or esoteric subjects usually have higher DCs or might even be impossible to identify using this activity alone. Heightening a spell doesn't increase the DC to identify it.

Critical Failure You misidentify the magic as something else of the GM's choice.

You never said that.

If you want to do a specific action, you need to tell me that. You cast Read Aura/, then rolled Religion with no context, so I ruled it as you were casting the spell, which is a six-second activity, you were also looking to see if you saw any religious iconography, which you did not, but could be done in that same time frame as you were casting.

If you had said something like "If Read Aura" shows that there is magic, I want to try to Identify Magic", then assuming you had 10 minutes to do so, that could be resolved.

But, if you just roll dice with no context, then I can't resolve the action that you want.

You never said that.

If you want to do a specific action, you need to tell me that. You cast Read Aura/, then rolled Religion with no context, so I ruled it as you were casting the spell, which is a six-second activity, you were also looking to see if you saw any religious iconography, which you did not, but could be done in that same time frame as you were casting.

If you had said something like "If Read Aura" shows that there is magic, I want to try to Identify Magic", then assuming you had 10 minutes to do so, that could be resolved.

But, if you just roll dice with no context, then I can't resolve the action that you want.

Gottya! I'll try to be more specific. I see I'm tending to not express myself fully in the game I'm running as well... so I'll try to be clearer.

Okay. It's been a crappy week, but I think I'm finally back on track. I'd rather not get into it all, but suffice to say getting back to the game by Wednesday was a failure. I should be back now, and I apologize for the long duration of my spotty posting. The laptop is in working order again.

I'll get a post up very shortly, once I catch up on reading.

Before my next turn comes up, GM Lia, should I interpret your narration as meaning the dolls have piercing resistance?

No, you should not. It's just meant to mean you have no real way of knowing how hurt they are.

By the way, for any of you that don't know, next Monday, 4/29, drops the playest for two new classes (Commander and Guardian), that will be coming out in Battlecry! next year. I'm really curious about both of them.

Okay, thanks. And yeah, I'm also really curious about them! Will likely be casting about for a game on the forums to play the Guardian.

Looks like Remastered is catching up and then some on Class options. I'm not a tactically minded player, wish I was, because Commander sounds it would be great for certain concepts.

I am on a ysoki kick and I badly want to make a ysoki guardian. Tiny little mouse person in big fat armor!

That would be adorable! Tiny mouse guardian, tiny mouse commander would make a great combo IMO! Also, because I'm Bad Influence Luna™, have you played the Dark Souls-alike Dark Maus? It's exactly what you expect, in 2D.

I definitely want to give these new classes a try; they've got some strong 4e D&D inspiration and I think PF2 is a better system to explore those ideas in. The Champion gets pretty close to the Guardian (and, indeed, plays the same combat role as the 4e fighter the Guardian draws inspiration from), but yeah, a class dedicated to those mechanics, the "come back with your shield or on it" philosophy, is 10000000% my thing.

We don't know yet if it will be shield-based, but we'll find out Monday. I expect it will be, but, it might not be.

I was going to apologize for missing the post that said I was up until now.
Instead, I'd like to apologize for those die rolls

Hope everything's okay, Dyrm! I don't know where you're located, but with the serious weather going through the US I was quite worried.

I believe I'd hero point part if that :-)

Hope everything's okay, Dyrm! I don't know where you're located, but with the serious weather going through the US I was quite worried.

Just rain over here. Some RL stuff hit but it was not weather related. Mostly I just missed a clueby four. Thanks for your concern though

Yeah! Combat mice GO!

While not exclusively shield-based, the guardian does have several abilities that greatly benefit from a shield (or don't work at all without one). So it's not technically required for all the class's abilities, but a lot of options will be out of reach without one.

No crazy weather here, just crazy work. Sorry for the slow posting. I just haven't been able to find my stride these last couple months and it's slowing things down for y'all. :(

Fingers crossed things ease up soon.

I wanted to do a quick base touching because of the nature of text-based games.

I was concerned that it might look like the 'hold up on first aid' might come across as cutting Korox off at the knees, and if it did come across that I wanted to clarify that it was not meant that way.

First Aid is a powerful, and very good, element of PF2E, but, both on threads here, and on places like Reddit, there seems to be an assumption that a party will always have all the time they need to First Aid everyone, and I wanted to nip that in the bud.

Sometimes, you will have lots of time. Sometimes, you may only have a single 10-minute segment. It's even possible - though unlikely - you might not even have the 10 minutes at some point.

But, barring unusual circumstances, you'll have one segment. I figure that's the same amount of time used in older D&D editions and D&D clones for 'we search the bodies and look for secret doors.'

When it comes to non-combat activities, (ie Exploration mode), don't worry about calling out specific activities, just give me a general idea of what you intend to do. I'm starting to think that Exploration mode may not be well done, and I can go into that if people want, but I also want to give you narrative flexibility and not lock you into one thing, especially given the nature of PbP.

I don't feel you're nerfing Korox in any way. Everyone runs things differently. I try to speed up non-encounter things up a bit by hand waving things in my games, but I understand you not allowing that and don't have a problem with it. Korox also has "Battle Medicine" so he can heal in 1-action in an emergency... but only once per day per person.

I guess my thoughts are that since Pathfinder 2e had few (Except narrative based) random type encounters, that the PC's can take as long as they want between encounters to get healed up. Since the balance of the encounter system assumes the party is near to full HP I just kind of let them take the time to heal up and refocus before moving forward.

There could be a monster waiting in the next room that gets curious as to where its friends went and decides to investigate stopping the healing. I was just hurrying to do my treat wounds but have no problem waiting till you say go in the future.

I would like to discuss exploration mode in more detail. I agree it's a bit clumsy, and my players hated me enforcing it at first, but as they grew accustomed to it, they no longer balk. I think it's an attempt to keep everyone from rolling perception rolls every time they go around a corner or find a door. I remember many past editions had everybody rolling non-stop and they seldom missed anything. Often, the fighter with a +0 in perception rolled a 20, and the rogue with a +12 rolled a one. I think it gives characters a chance to shine at what they're good at... not just rely on the luck of the dice to decide things.

What are your thoughts?

I wanted to do a quick base touching because of the nature of text-based games.

I was concerned that it might look like the 'hold up on first aid' might come across as cutting Korox off at the knees, and if it did come across that I wanted to clarify that it was not meant that way.

First Aid is a powerful, and very good, element of PF2E, but, both on threads here, and on places like Reddit, there seems to be an assumption that a party will always have all the time they need to First Aid everyone, and I wanted to nip that in the bud.

Sometimes, you will have lots of time. Sometimes, you may only have a single 10-minute segment. It's even possible - though unlikely - you might not even have the 10 minutes at some point.

But, barring unusual circumstances, you'll have one segment. I figure that's the same amount of time used in older D&D editions and D&D clones for 'we search the bodies and look for secret doors.'

When it comes to non-combat activities, (ie Exploration mode), don't worry about calling out specific activities, just give me a general idea of what you intend to do. I'm starting to think that Exploration mode may not be well done, and I can go into that if people want, but I also want to give you narrative flexibility and not lock you into one thing, especially given the nature of PbP.

Speaking for myself, Given how I was VERY late on a post before that one due to a mix of RL and lack of observation skills I got no right to gripe when you put the brakes on. I do appreciate the clarification though, thank you :)

I think I see what Paizo was trying to do with it. I think it was trying to deal, to an extent, with what you said, Korox, and also with the fact that classes with less skills might feel unable to do things when not in combat. I think that was why it was the declare a type of action and that's what you are doing.

I just don't know if it does that. First of all, if the party is worried about traps, say they are in Tomb of Horrors, everyone can Search and therefore everyone can roll.

Secondly, it can create dissonance. For instance, Halenstra is a rogue. She should be able to sneak ahead of the group and look for monsters and traps. Rogues (and Rangers) have always done that.

But, she can't! She can sneak ahead (Avoid Notice), or she can look for hidden monsters (Scout) or she can look for traps/secret doors (Search). Now, while at low level, I am ok with that, as there should be limits to what low level characters can do, it's the same at high level.

For Halanestra to do all of the above, things should stay in Encounter mode, so that she can actually do some of the things that Exploration mode is for. Now, I'm ok with that, and it can be a good way to resolve things for a short ranged scout, like a hall or two over.

But, what if you are in the wild, and she wants to scout a mile ahead?? It breaks down at that point.

Also, to do most activities, you move at half-speed. That makes sense!!! You are being extra careful, or pausing to cast a spell every few seconds, or moving ready to defend yourself. In a dungeon, no biggie. It takes 10 seconds, not 5, to get to the next room.

But, when you are actually exploring, you don't want to halve your movement rate. You don't want to make that 10 day voyage take 20! The downside may very well outweigh the upside when you are actually exploring.

That doesn't even touch on timing issues of how you can, when you can, and how long it might take to change exploration actions.

I think all of this matters less around a table, but it's very hard in PbP to transition in a timely manner between sub-modes, hence then give me the general idea of what you want to do.

What do people think?

I see where you're coming from, but while I agree Exploration Mode has its limits, I do appreciate how it simplifies the matter, even if that simplification occasionally makes for odd or clunky moments narratively. As to overland travel, I think it was probably intentional. If you're moving along well-traveled roads and the like, there's not as much reason to keep your guard up the whole time so moving at normal Speed is probably fine; if you're moving through hostile territory, then you as a group have to decide whether you want to move cautiously and strategically (eg, perform Exploration Activities like Scout and Avoid Notice) or if you want to just haul ass through it as quick as you can (no activities, just move full Speed ahead).

Also, point of clarification: while normally you are correct that Halanestra can't, by RAW, sneak and search for traps, the Trap Finder rogue feat actually allows the rogue an automatic secret Perception check against nearby traps just as if they had been using the Search activity. And there are a few Master skill feats that let you perform two Exploration activities without any additional slowdown. Now granted, that means that for non-rogues, multi-activity options are pretty much nonexistent until 7th level, but they're eventually an option.

All that being said, I certainly don't have anything against making Exploration a bit more freeform (which is what I think you're suggesting here; if not, please correct me). Let's try it out! If we give it a shot and it doesn't feel quite right, we can always come back to it and discuss it further, but I don't foresee it being a problem. :)

Using me as an example is rather useful, coincidentally, for this discussion, because this exact thing has been on my mind a lot with this character in particular. I don't have a lot of experience with PF2. I've played a few VTT sessions, played in two PbPs, just started running the Beginner Box, and that's it. So I don't have the seasoned perspective that folks who have been playing for years do.

I have two opinions on this. The first is that, you're right, it's very traditionally the rogue's job to go ahead and scout for everything. As you say, I can't do that without switching my exploration activity every "turn" (which doesn't exist in exploration mode). As you said above, older editions did have turns that were more amenable to exploration mode, and they were indeed ten minutes. In sum, I agree with everything you've said. That I can't do so runs contrary to the fantasy of the class and the heritage of the game.

But there's also the designer's perspective, where the goal is to create a design space in which there is no single best choice. We see this perhaps most concretely and most simply with the way PF2 handles weapons, especially compared to D&D 5e: each weapon has a reason for using it. There are traits and critical specialization feats and ... which means you need to make a meaningful choice about which one you want to use. I initially struggled with this with my champion, wanting to use a shield with my glaive to embrace all the class features the champion offers and to fulfill my own fantasy of the class. There's some initial gratification of making the best™ choice, but there's no depth when there's a single best choice. PF2 limits what you can do, deliberately, based on the belief that choices are interesting.

Both positions have merit, and both have their value. As I start to approach games, and TTRPGs in particular, from a design mindset, the choices Paizo has made here make sense. There's an element of restraint that is a welcome respite after the indulgence of 3.5/PF1. Do I find it annoying at times that I can't do all those things? Sure. But when I think about it more realistically, how would I be able to split my time between all those activities while still performing them commensurate with my heroic levels of competence?

Separately to this, halving movement speed seems very reasonable to me; I'm not going out on adventures in the countryside, but when exploring a new city, I certainly walk a lot more slowly than I do when I'm walking around my home city. This is homologous to the Search activity, where I'm not so much looking for traps or the like, but rather checking the map on my phone, comparing that to street signs and landmarks, and so on. I don't do this when I'm home because I know the layout of the city, I know where things are, I know how to read the street signs and what their locations are relative to one another. In trackless territory, it makes even more sense to not move full speed.

Hi. Crazy week of business associates in town and trade show, so I'll be able to post (Probably) but it will be later at night... so feel free to BOT as necessary.

Thank you Halenstra and Batsu for input, and yes, Batsu I do mean to make it more freeform, if I do make any changes.

I will be happy to see things go more freeform, to be clear :) Design is not an objective thing, and as I said, I only have that theoretical understanding of the game.

Apologies... there's a cold that has been making the rounds at our household and I finally caught the short straw. I'll be slow posting, and please feel free to bot Dyrm is need be.

I hope you feel better soon!

I'm going to give other players a chance to post before Thenur replies to Dyrm's last one.

Oops, I was waiting for a response from Thenur before posting :) I'll get something up tonight, my apologies!

Concious not to have everyone bombard Thenur with questions all at once, Zolthan stays quiet for now, and studies the living doll intently.

And this is why I was keeping quiet; it's quite rude to barge into someone's home uninvited and issue a barrage of questions!

GM Lia, I think you're doing a great job portraying Thenur :) There's clearly some complexity here which I appreciate. Initially, Halanestra was going to try to attempt something diplomatic--she's had enough fights for one day, thank you very much! Lots of complexity there that has analogs in real world philosophy around things like assisted suicide. I wasn't expecting things to get that dark so quickly, but here we are! Can you say, without spoilers, whether it was possible to avoid a fight with Thenur? Also, to be clear, I'm quite comfortable with most any theme you can come up with--to illustrate, one of my favorite pieces of art is Bojack Horseman--but if things do go in a direction that makes me uncomfortable, I'll be sure to make that very obvious.

It's not. Not because she is not open to it, but because she wants to be free of the gem, and once she knows that the party can't help (and it can't, both because of level, and things you'll see later in Chapter 3), she'd attack you.

You guys are /almost/ done with Chapter 2.

That is unquestionably the best turn I've ever had. Crit the RK, crit the save (no damage!), max damage on the attack, which itself may be a crit? That's Dream luck.

Hey. I was busy with PaizoCon so I wasn't able to post much, my apologies. Posting will continue to be spotty for the next week or so as I'll be traveling.

No worries. It's also a holiday weekend.

I'm fine with using the out-of-order turn I posted a little bit ago. GM Lia, is that all right with you? The circumstances haven't materially changed enough that I would want to alter my tactics.

That's fine.

This is just a heads-up so that people can start thinking.

After this fight, you'll only need to recover the dagger itself from the Xulgath camp to finish Chapter 2.

When you get back to Highhelm, you'll have a week or two of downtime. During this downtime, I'll narratively have Zothan meet the Firebrands to join them and learn Tut-Tut, which will be his downtime activity. The rest of you can start to consider what you might want to do during that time and ask any questions that you might have re: downtime.

My damage is pretty terrible so I'd like to earn income to save for a striking rune. I'll review the rules for that. My best skills are diplomacy and stealth, both expert. I'm thinking something along the lines of public speaking classes? :)

I should also mention that I almost certainly won't be around this weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday have Pride events I want to attend (400' record-breaking flag!) and I'll likely be too exhausted to be able to put posts together. And as a reminder for everyone doing Pride stuff, bring a water bottle and sunscreen as appropriate :)

Back from vacation!

My partner and I went to a drag show yesterday and it was a ton of fun! I live deep in the tumbleweeds of a Midwestern red state. We don't get a whole lot during June, as you can imagine, so that was a welcome sight. We had a blast and made some new nerd friends! I'm hoping to convince them to move from 5e to PF2. Fingers crossed! :D

Sounds like you had a good weekend.

Ooh, new nerd friends sounds lovely! Converting folks from 5e tends to be pretty hard in my experience, there's a lot of brand loyalty there. I wish you all the luck!

I was one of many, many people carrying Philadelphia's 400 foot flag, explored a bunch, did some very awkward dancing, and absolutely collapsed on my couch when I got home. :D It was pretty icky hot, and started to rain, so between that and my sore feet it was time to head home. Thankfully Pride is right on my doorstep (a very deliberate choice) so it wasn't too long of a walk :)

Also, remember that you get a new hero point today!

I do? O.o

I mean, yes! Of course I do! How could I forget? (*cough*)

On a side note, prior to the fight with Thenur's doll, one of you - I think it was Zothan or Batsu - mentioned the idea of grabbing at the gem should there be a fight. While none of you did that, that would have been a valid strategy. An attempt to Disarm, Grab, or Steal the gem, while not actually being able to knock it away from the doll due to the energy tendrils, would have done Mental damage to Thenur. I wanted to point this out so that you knew that the thought process was solid.

Perhaps we Dwarves can disguise ourselves as valuable prisoners captured by the others, to trade for the enjoyment of the Xulgaths... or in exchange for the dagger... before we unveil the nasty surprise.

*LOL*
Poor Halanestra...
"They're learning..."
Then Dyrm Clank Clanks