GM Bret’s PbP Gameday XIV Core What Prestige is Worth (Inactive)

Game Master BretI

In case anyone didn’t see the message, the update is delayed.

Hopefully all our players know the boards are up.

roger

Boards are finally back up.

Yay!

And I'm back.

I’m here!

Numair / Luke,

Could you please sign into RPGChronicles?

Sorry I'm here

Glad to see you again Grog. Unfortunately other than saving throws you didn’t miss much.

Numair / Luke,

Could you please sign into RPGChronicles?

In case you missed it, the link is here as well as in the campaign information.

I will bot any Will saves we don’t have yet to go through the scroll tonight. I want us to finish this.

GM question, bardic fascination.. its not a spell (but is supernatural), if I started talk and activated fascination would that be regarded as an attack or assault? Or is it a bit more subtle than that?

Mostly I'm wondering if I could try that to give Two Blades a chance to disarm the trap, but if it is something that would be seen as offensive then I don't think it is worth it.

Khellek, your character doesn’t know about the trap.

How I have run the fascination is that people who fail the save don’t realize they are fascinated until they come out of it. Other people observing would know what is happening.

Gah! I say the k..... name in the spoiler and must have just assumed it was me.

Scratch that plan. Waiting for our spokes-elf then.

There are ways others can alert you to it. None of them that I can think of are foolproof.

We will see how this works out. The idea is a good one.

Korvan, Two Blades and Grog,

I am told you have played this adventure before. I assume it was on a different character.

Are you using a replay for credit?

played it in standard ages ago. i do not think i need a replay for a CORE game.

Yep, played it as Standard with 66136-17 (Alchemist)

Checking on this, will relay whatever answer I get.

As a former VL (back when CORE was introduced), I can confirm that Standard and CORE were separate campaigns - you could play a scenario once, in *each* campaign, without needing to use a Replay.

As a current local VA (not online), I confess that I don’t remember the ruling on this but can confirm they were intended them to be separate campaigns. I will work with resolve it.

Paizo Blog Wrote:

Just like in the current campaign, a player may receive credit once for playing and once for GMing a scenario in the Core Campaign; this credit is independent of player and GM credit in the Pathfinder Society Organized Play campaign. This means a player can play once in each of the two campaigns and GM for credit once in each of the campaigns (four credits total, two per campaign), not including any limited replay opportunities established in the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play.

Thanks for the reference and link.

Still waiting to hear if the problem was failing to report as core. That is a common cause of problems.

Looks like it is reported.

Sep 4, 2025

114768-15 Korvan the Hunter Liberty's Edge — Player has already played scenario at session # 6 of event # 2707141 Isle of Gamers PFS Feb/Mar/Apr on February 10, 2022.

66136-9 Two Blades in the Shadows Sovereign Court — Player has already played scenario at session # 5 of event # 2691000 RapierCon 2019 on February 09, 2019.

2072-27 Grog half orc Liberty's Edge — Player has already played scenario at session # 162 of event # 338745 PFS/PACG at Gritty Goblin Games on February 09, 2019.

If one or more of you could confirm those previous plays were Standard campaign that would be great.

Lots of Core characters also appear in the reporting scheme as standard :-( That may also be contributing to the errors.

Yep. ran into this issue in the past with Core games reported as standard.

The game in 2019 was with 66136-17 (Wayang Alchemist(Grenadier)), Two Blades is 66136-9

Korvan, Two Blades and Grog,

I am told you have played this adventure before. I assume it was on a different character.

Are you using a replay for credit?

Not in Core. It might have been an error when I created the PC. I forgot to click CORE but this is a CORE PC.

It looks like the errors started in 2024. Bret you ran a game for this PC before and I think there was an error in 2024. But none of the CORE games before that show errors. Not sure what's up.

the game i already played it was a standard game reported to a standard character. i contacted Paizo support and they were going to flip my CORE characters that had somehow been misreported by GMs as standard when the games were CORE. it used to be that once that happened the character was SOL put they changed that recently. I received an email from:

Alex Speidel (he/him)
Convention and Organized Play Manager
Paizo Inc.

These characters should all be corrected now, please let me know if there are any further issues!

That my CORE characters are back to being CORE characters.

It didn’t flip mine.

Looking at the summary page:

# 873-13 PFC

# 873-19 PFS(1ed)

The character I gave credit to is marked 1st edition rather than PFC.

I’ll work to get this straightened out.

Bret

it flipped mine back to CORE on my organized play scrren but the games he played as CORE when he wasnt registered as CORE due to a mistake are still listed as having been played in standard with a different character or that he is the wrong type of character for a PSFC game. That may not change but at least Korvan is now reclassed as CORE.

Much like everyone else i have my own spreadsheet to track my Standard and CORE characters.

@Grog
You are missing some of your CMB

CMB reference

Add any bonuses you currently have on attack rolls due to spells, feats, and other effects

So all those normal bonuses to attack rolls should also go on your CMB I think, so haste, IC, heroism and inspired greatness. Given it is against a fiend, your evil outsiders would also contribute.

On the surface it looks like you are a total of +6 short.
+4 favored enemy
+3 Inspire confidence (competence)
+2 inspired greatness (competence)
+2 heroism (morale)
+1 haste
-4 symbol of pain

Although, with your roll of a 2, that might not make a difference.

Doing a tiny bit of research,

When you attempt to perform a combat maneuver, make an attack roll and add your CMB in place of your normal attack bonus. Add any bonuses you currently have on attack rolls due to spells, feats, and other effects.

I am not an expert at Combat Manuevers. I could be missing rules.

I believe the above means that all the spells that Khellek mentions would apply to the CMB. I believe that the penalties from Symbol of Pain would also apply.

It looks to me like the Grease was included, but not the Symbol of Pain, in Grog’s roll.

I don’t usually do this, but in the interests of speeding this up I’m going to tell you that Leventi’s CMD is 38. High tier has big numbers.

I’m going to go forward with the action, but would appreciate if someone could do all the math to determine if Grog was successful. I think the Symbol of Pain penalty prevents it but would be happy if I’m wrong. I would like someone to double check the math and figure this out before Leventi acts again.

Yes, I’m a softy who likes it when the heroes win.

My understanding is also that if you could hide or dispel the symbol of pain, you would no longer take those huge penalties. Zarta does not have Dispel Magic unfortunately.

Now to go post in gameplay so we can move a little forward.

So, Grogs second attempt looks to total
7 (roll)
+10 Grease 17
+9 (BAB) 26
+6 (STR) 32
+4 (Favored enemy) 36
+3 Inspire Courage 39
+2 Heroism 41
+1 Haste 42
-4 Symbol of pain. 38

I think that means he makes it. Just.

Thanks for breaking it down for me, Khellek.

Grog’s escape attempt worked, if he has something he wants to do with his move action I will allow that.

Thanks for running this :-)

Yes, much appreciated. Core high level content is hard to find.
And thanks to all the other players for being willing to wait for my getting free for it.

Oh, a quick reminder that I am SLOW advancement.
day job: 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (12) + 14 = 26

FJC question: Does that special devil armour count as a unique magic item? Or maybe our talkative head? Or, is there a chance to try and talk with our head and recruit him to the Dark Archive?

Oh! Good point.

Numair spends his downtime wrestling with a particularly nasty artifact...

Will: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (11) + 9 = 20.

...finally destroying the Wraithsoul Stone, and attracting the attention of an angelic patron as a result.

FJC question: Does that special devil armour count as a unique magic item? Or maybe our talkative head? Or, is there a chance to try and talk with our head and recruit him to the Dark Archive?

Gellius Thrune Is a soul without a body and although Dark Archive people are going to see them, I don’t think Gellius is going to like the experience.

None of the devils would be recruitable either.

This isn’t a good adventure for recruiting. Most of the people you met were dead and consigned to hell.

I need to look over the chronicle and figure out the best way to handle them. I would like to just automatically mail them from RPGChronicles but this one feels like one that I should customize to the person because of boons.

Glad that everyone was happy to get a high level scenario. Although this one was good for filling in some of the background on Zarta, I think there were things I could have done to make it move smoother. The store upgrade certainly didn’t help.

I will post here once I’ve figured out how I want to handle the chronicles.

Sailor: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (2) + 6 = 8

You did a great job, GM! Thank you so much for running this. Doodle had been parked for over a year waiting on a high level Core game!

I also can't believe that I made every single one of my spell resistance checks - at this point, Numair is convinced that devils only have SR when they are on Golarion, not when in Hell ;-)

thanks for running!

TYVM for GMing.

I will get the chronicles out either tonight to tomorrow.

Perform Sing: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (9) + 5 = 14

Chronicles have been sent.

Contact me if you see any problems. Since I manually mailed them, the most likely issue is me mixing up the e-mails and sending someone the wrong one.

Now for the longer process of trying to get it fixed so it is a core game.

Bigrin has reset our characters to Core.

Now to see if it stays that way…

Sadly for Two Blades, that is not the first time that he showed up as Standard when playing a Core game.

Thank you for running it!

Chronicle has come through. It looks good. Many thanks once again for a fun scenario. I thought I was about to die. Right down to the wire there. I think if he had kept hold of Grog for one more round we would have been toast.

Chronicle sheet looks fine :-)

Thank-you for running!