ARXOIAS Rosenthal's page

Mustaparta wrote:

Mika Kitsune wrote:

GM, does this mean the original chronicle sheets are still correct?

Yes, we have quite discussed this in detail and Organized play rules don't allow GMs to fix this after game is finished.

Kind of surprised that having to go back and do the fight had no effect on our sheets, though I guess this enemy didn't have any of the loot.

Which is also why the minotaur is easy to hit, since as a ghost it cannot carry most physical object...and armor, which most living minotaur relies on for defense along with natural armor

Since the GM is the final arbiter in the matter anyway I figure I might as well present as many argument and solution as I can and let the GM decides. Sorry if I was too pushy.

Putting GM hat on, chitchat time
Oh the maze part is even worse. On high tier you are supposed have 12 of those 10x10 maze tiles for players to wander around looking for the exit, and they almost has to make check every round to determine which small portion of the wall is fake, and which portion of it is real wall. Even if the PC can beeline the exit, there're minimum of 4 tiles of maze to go through.
What I did is to roll a d4 and pick the corresponding maze tile from the 4 given, and just say that's where the ghost minotaur decided to strike, and play it out from there. They took down the minotaur with ease just like we did, and all had fun.
You see, normally incorporeal undeads are good at hiding in walls and places where you can't hit it. But when a large sized ghost 5-ft step into the wall, half of his butt is still showing through because how the wall here are diagonal or fake, so the PC can still smack at it...

Not to mention the title on the top of many pages are still The Confirmation (5-08, the one we just played is 5-09) instead of the title for this scenarios, The Traitor's Lodge, shows how much room for improvement this scenario has...

I fully support whatever the GM decide to be the outcome. And I would like to use my Elixir of Treasure Seeking boon to increase my gold earned by 150gp to compensate for the missing reward.

Colin, I think you are failing to understand that not getting all the gold due to player actions is a common thing.

I see your point, and I acknowledge that not getting all the gold due to player actions is a common occurrence. However, my concern is that just because something is common doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good design or should happen as frequently—kind of like how car accidents are common but not something we’d want to normalize. My issue here is less about missing gold in general and more about the specific way this scenario handles it, which feels arbitrary and disconnected from meaningful player agency.

Let me explain:

When our characters descend to room B1, we’re presented with two directions to explore. If the GM uses a hand-drawn vinyl map, Roll20, Foundry, or a Google Slide map—even with unexplored rooms obscured—it’s often easy to infer from the visible space and boundaries that there's more content to the right than to the left. This creates a metagaming dilemma: choosing to explore left first, without triggering the Koth’Vaul, requires some degree of metagaming, which we’re told is forbidden. If, instead, a player makes the decision completely free of metagaming—like Arxoias flipping a coin—there’s a 50% chance they miss the content in room B3 and, consequently, lose the associated gold.

Having played 157 different PFS scenarios and run 99 of them (not counting modules and quests), I’ve seen a wide range of approaches to rewarding or penalizing players. For example:
- Scenario where you lose 16gp for not going into a kitchen and grabbing a knife set.
- Scenario where you can earn full gold rewards but still fail both the primary and secondary missions.
- Scenario where you lose gold for not fighting neutral NPCs or digging through the belongings of companions you’ve traveled with for months.
- Scenario where bonus gold outside the chronicle sheet is handed out for murderhobo behavior.
In most cases, players lose gold by failing to overcome a challenge. If the obstacle is bypassed or resolved in some way, the PFS Guide instructs the GM to still award the associated rewards.

This scenario, however, is different. Here, players aren’t failing in the traditional sense—they aren’t incapable of completing the objective or willfully choosing not to. As I explained earlier, without metagaming, there’s a 50% chance the relevant rooms are simply skipped. As we’ve seen, once you move on, there’s often no clear way to return without significant GM leniency. What did the players subjectively do wrong to justify reduced gold? Nothing. There was no failed challenge or unaddressed obstacle—it’s simply a matter of which direction they chose first.

Even more frustrating is that the missing loot in this case, the cooling component in Thurl’s walk-in fridge, a wand of something, isn’t hidden behind any meaningful challenge. There’s no trap, no lock, no puzzle, and no skill check to find it. It doesn’t require identifying magical properties or overcoming an enemy. It’s literally a “grab and go” item.

Penalizing players and withholding rewards for something so trivial—especially when they aren’t at fault—is, in my opinion, poor design. It’s akin to saying, “Flip a coin before heading to work, and if it’s tails, you earn 20% less today.” It feels arbitrary and unjustified.

I’m relieved to note that I haven’t encountered similar designs in later seasons' scenarios. But this one stands out as an example of how not to design player rewards. I hope my explanation help you understand where my frustration comes from.

B3 shows on the map as explored. And just because some really experienced agents defeated some scary monsters does not mean our relatively inexperienced agents are going to be so reckless.

If B3 is shown as explored, then we should have gotten full gold. But our chronicle sheet says otherwise. The discussion can end right now if the GM could fix the chronicle for us.

In character, at this point of time, demon's stronghold Drezen has been reclaimed, Nerosyan and Pathfinders has shown its capability to defeat an demon assault that includes something as powerful as Balor #5-00 Siege of the Diamond City, Wraith of the Righerous book 3 Storm King Khorramzadeh. Anything weaker than a balor should think twice before messing around in the Nerosyan alone and should not lingers here, since they come here with their real body so if they're dead, they're DEAD dead unlike summoned creatures.

It's B3 that has the loot. It's a simple grab and go for the earth elemental.

Anything more awful than Shadow Demon cannot attack through the wall and can't harm the earth elementals. Anything weaker than Shadow Demon also cannot attack through the wall and can't harm the earth elementals. If it's Shadow Demon then it still can't end its turn deep inside the wall and we're well equipped to handle incorporeal threat now anyway. We should put more faith in our capability in resolving the issue without having to deal with the potential scriptted TPK.

In a sense, it doesn't matter what the GM decides. There is no loot in the rooms we did not explore. The only thing the rooms would have provided is more points for exploring. This adventure was written with the knowledge that many groups would not be able to explore that area because of being chased out, so there are not any negative consequences to that happening.

There is loot in the room that we did not explore and is worth 20% of the final payout (700gp). If the player come up with a creative way to safely retreive it, I don't see why not.

I am saying that, while the party evade the creature, RawkNRole can check out the room for the missing loot as it can Earth Glide and the creature can't harm it.

Actually, Wither can do that as well, since a 6th level druid can Wild Shape into a small earth elemental.

Hold on, can our earth elemental RawkNRole Earth Glide down to check the room and get the loot for us? That way we can do it without the big bad's detection.

Last time I checked, True Seeing doesn't allow you to see through the wall.

Gonna invoke the p.13 Creative Solutions here...

I believe we're before the...

We absolutely can try to earn that boon and missing gp......If you don't directly challenge the demon, you could explore to the left of staircase. Everybody wanting to continue?

...part

"We don't even know where Thurl is, heading home right now would be ending our search too amateurly"

Musket Touch PBS: 1d20 + 7 + 1 ⇒ (7) + 7 + 1 = 15 Ghost Touch, full damage: 1d12 + 10 + 1 ⇒ (12) + 10 + 1 = 23
Musket Touch PBS: 1d20 + 7 + 1 ⇒ (10) + 7 + 1 = 18 Ghost Touch, full damage: 1d12 + 10 + 1 ⇒ (5) + 10 + 1 = 16
Arxoias double tap the minotaur

Does the minotaur's movement provoke? It left Wither,Ekanta, and Mika's threatened area based on Google Slide's editing history.

Does the minotaur's movement provoke? It left Wither,Ekanta, and Mika's threatened area based on Google Slide's editing history
Will: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (5) + 8 = 13

Arxoias will make some of her alchemical cartridge Ghost Touch this turn and move to an overwatch location.

Touch paladin's scimitar and makes it Ghost Touch, then move back.
"Go Mika go go!"

I am willing to bet a ghost minotaur in the maze of Baphomet is evil enough to be SMITE-able

Well, we had 8 hours of Greater Magic Weapon going on two of our our martials, and Arxoias can make people's weapon Ghost Touch via Legacy Weapon.

I picked her so that she can be a support in fighting the ghostly minotaur and not just shoot everything to death like normal Gunslinger.

As Redelia explained earlier, we can continue to play after the convention is over as long as the report are in before the deadline. I would like to vote for keep going, so that we can experience all the content.

ARXOIAS Rosenthal wrote:

Right, so we're rushed out the the maze and lose out on 20% of the payout? When Arxoias said that we can come back later, she means coming back after Koth'Vaul is gone and search the entire basement.

Agreed - and getting gypped out of the Boon(s) is even worse! I thought this had been weirdly quick; if we can call backsies and continue, I'd like to.

The ghostly minotaur on the cover has been skipped, if you're wondering.

Right, so we're rushed out the the maze and lose out on 20% of the payout? When Arxoias said that we can come back later, she means coming back after Koth'Vaul is gone and search the entire basement.

I really don't like the "if you don't explore the map in the correct order Koth'Vaul shows up and screw with you" design. Without metagaming (i.e. characters token/minis are put on the upper left corner of the flip-map/vinyl map which means there're more to the right than left), we wouldn't know which door lead to more content and has a 50% chance of missing out.

For faction journal card purposes, did we Resolve a combat encounter nonviolently through bribery, diplomacy, trickery, or a similar tactic?

Day job result is in the Recruitment threat.

Boon?: 1d20 ⇒ 12 nope

Thanks for running!

"You should come with us, it's not safe here. You're still a Pathfinder afterall, and we might even figure out a way to cure you!"
Diplo, if needed: 1d20 + 12 + 3 ⇒ (19) + 12 + 3 = 34

"Well the Wardstone obviously stop working now. The entire abyssal force might as well Greater Teleport here."
Arxoias loads a cold iron bullet as she points at the spiral stairs. "But we can always come back later, just like how they also always come back..."

Most Demon does not have Plane Shift and need to go to the Worldwound first through the rift then Teleport out to other places in Golairon, if they're not summoned directly.

Arxoias puts two bullets into that abomination.
Musket PBS Touch: 1d20 + 7 + 1 ⇒ (10) + 7 + 1 = 18 Dmg: 1d12 + 10 + 1 ⇒ (10) + 10 + 1 = 21
Musket PBS Touch: 1d20 + 7 + 1 ⇒ (16) + 7 + 1 = 24 Dmg: 1d12 + 10 + 1 ⇒ (8) + 10 + 1 = 19

Moved my token to the right door of room B1. Arxoias thinks whatever that were in the growth vat has got out and everyone should get ready for that

Percp: 1d20 + 13 ⇒ (15) + 13 = 28
"We got company in the stair room"

There's a room to the left of B1 that we haven't check out yet

Arxoias will Read Magic on the scrolls. auto IDing

Not smart enough, untrained, and untrained
Arxoias wait for the smarter teammates to figure things out as she loads an cold iron bullet into her musket.

Tips for Gunslingers: The first shot should always use normal bullet, as it's not only cheaper than paper cartridge, but also less likely to misfire. The reload speed increase doesn't matter if you load it out of combat for the future encounter

Rogarch bashes really hard the green creature but it is still alive. Arxoias shoots the blue and one bullet is enough for a kill. If you want to shoot green instead, we can use the same rolls

Yes please. Against green there will be Point-Blank Shot so +1 to the attack and damage. Soft cover is already included as penalty in my roll as usual.

@GM Mechanically does those monster/enemy has at least 3 HD? If so Arxoias will regain 1 Grit point with a killing blow

Can Devaan be botting to move down the stair just 1 square south of where he is? Arxoias really need that 5ft of distance to hit touch AC

@Devaan Thanks!

Arxoias fires twice at blue softcover penalty included in roll
Musket PBS vs touch: 1d20 + 7 + 1 - 4 ⇒ (14) + 7 + 1 - 4 = 18 Dmg, magic P&B: 1d12 + 10 + 1 ⇒ (6) + 10 + 1 = 17
Musket PBS vs touch: 1d20 + 7 + 1 - 4 ⇒ (4) + 7 + 1 - 4 = 8 Dmg, magic P&B: 1d12 + 10 + 1 ⇒ (12) + 10 + 1 = 23

Arxoias, your post comes across as a bit more hostile than I think you meant.

I am very sorry if my post comes off hostile to anyone. That was not my intention at all. (I was in the middle of edting and was like 'ehhhh let me try reword them so I don't come off as pointing fingers" when my attention was needed elsewhere, so I hastily clicked Submit Post before I left so Paizo website won't eat it) I was just really worried that, under erroneous assumption, we might failed the mission because the game go overtime.

Thank you for clarifying, Redelia. That is very comforting to know that such incident is, well, only an incident and not the norm.

Totally understand your feeling. The 8-00 table special I'm playing had GM consistently botting some players to move us along; and my 2-13 Murder on the Throaty Mermaid's investigation was carried by only 2 players. I guess that people (including me) just had a lot going on IRL this fall...

We have 3 weeks left for the Gameday XIII, and we're only at our first combat. My guesses are we still have quite a lot of content to go through for this scenario. Out of combat, I can do null posting to keep us forward, but there's not much I can do once we're in initiative order and I've completed my turn.

I had the unpleasant experience of running out of time in the convention back in Outpost VI, and the GM decided that we were too ill-prepared to handle the final encounter and call it a mission failure (which was totally fair as we played up in season 3 with 4 and APL barely between tier, and teammates made some questionable tactical combat decisions that result in character death.)

This time we had a well-rounded, competent teams with 6 players. I very much would like to finish this scenario in time, so that we don't fail the mission for faults not of our owns.

I would like to ask the GM to consider taking an more active role in running our game. Looking at our campaign in October, the GM posted in:
Week 1: Oct 1, Oct 4, Oct 6
Week 2: Oct 8, Oct 12, Oct 13
Week 3: Oct 16, Oct 20
Week 4: Oct 21, Oct 22, Oct 23
Which average out to be 3 posts per week, below the usual "one post per day" expectation of PbP games. If we continue with this slow pace we might be able to finish 1 more small combat but probably not enough to finish 50% of the scenario's content.

Musket: 1d20 + 7 + 1 - 4 ⇒ (1) + 7 + 1 - 4 = 5Magic P&B: 1d12 + 10 + 1 ⇒ (2) + 10 + 1 = 13
Misfire
Arxoias tries to shoot, but her alchemical cartridge is not having a good day. Boom! A puff of black smoke instead of bullet comes out of her gun. She sighs and start clearing it.
Move action Quick Clear grit to remove broken condition from misfire, spent 1 grit

Would like to move into Rogarch's square for Ppint-Blank Shot, so will wait for her

Arxoias fires an cold iron bullet to Red.
Musket, vs flat-foot touch: 1d20 + 9 - 4 ⇒ (9) + 9 - 4 = 14 Soft cover penalty included
Dmg. Magical Peanut & Butter: 1d12 + 10 ⇒ (12) + 10 = 22

Perc: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (19) + 11 = 30
Ever-ready as alwasy.

Arxoias would ask Mr. Soul Seer Ekanta to check the condition of these larvas and/or the humanoid? within.

"Rock buddy, don't forget your body lotion."
And I guess the oil of Magic Fang can go to RawkNRole? I don't know if it will be in melee or not

"I mean, he was already cutting up and sewing together evil outsider, so it's not a surprise to see him make deals with one."
If there is no further thing to explore/investigate in this room, she will get ready for the other door. re up Heighten Awareness
"Time to put up the Magic Weapon oils we found eariler. I mean, they are so Great that they last 8 hours anyway."

Moved my token to the room with the bookshelves, that's probably where we found Thurl's disturbing books.
"There are two doors here. I guess we need to choose one to open first."
Perception check for trap on doors: 1d20 + 13 ⇒ (20) + 13 = 33
Flip coin: 1d2 ⇒ 1 "The coin says go right/up if you can't decide."

Oopsy on the classical PDF line break on the last line here, I find copying them to Word doc before moving them to Roll20/here fix those tricky linebreak (most of the time)

"This mission get dark real quick."Arxoias sighs, "Now that we can confidently say there's 99% percent chance Thurl being a traitor to the Society based on the crazy stuff he did, feel free to 'confiscate' his potions and wines."

Arxoias will suggests giving the oil of Greater Magic Weapon to Rogarch and Ekanta who I took the liberty of peeking their profile and didn't find magical weapon. Cat's Grace can go to Mika for her Dex to dmg and AC, Fox's Cunning to the wizard.

Disclaimer: this is merely what Arxoias, follower of the Torag---God of Strategy, think for the distribution of potions from a stratigic point of view to increase the oveall chance of success of the whole team, and is only a suggestion and by no mean forcing anyone to take or give up on any of those supplies. Feel free to rock-paper-scissors for it or whatever violent/civilized/funny method you prefer to determine who get what.

Heal: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (6) + 7 = 13 The Gunslinger shakes her head, whatever it is, it is beyond the scope of the battlefield first aid course she took.

1 Left 2 Right: 1d2 ⇒ 2 Arxoias flips a coin.
"The crown says right."

Added my token to the combat map. I will suggest other do the same so we can continue.
She hands her wand of Mage Armor to the wizard.

Arxoias frowns at the horrific scene and asks Valais "And......you don't happens to be the sole experiment subject, do you?"

"Wizard, what do you see?"
Does Devaan Zeleye would like to have Mage Armor? If so he can use Arxoias' wand

Arxoias takes out some wands and get ready.
Lucky Number: 1d20 ⇒ 2 and also Heighten Awareness

STR check, Aid Other: 1d20 + 1 ⇒ (17) + 1 = 18 "PUUUUUSH!"