Alexander Lenz's page

Thank you all and especially the Rhein/Main - Frankfurt lodge who gave me a very nice place to play in a period where i would otherwise only GM. Now that that problem is solved i will happiely give back to the community and try to unburden some of our GMs so that they can see the other side of the table from time to time. (Even when they spend most of the time cursing their dice or the targeting of the monsters...)

My fastest Module (not scenario) was Emerald Spire Lv 4 (we needed like 7 rounds of Combat and less than an hour realtime)

My fastest scenario was Assault on the Kingdom of the impossible but i think if you run something from season 0-1 with some halfway optimised chars it should be very fast.

I also can only recomend the talking to you players part -> While i am quite a powergamer myself the constant talk with my players and GMs led to the question of my wizard: "Do you want support or summoning" (He is purely build for conjuration but I will swich focus to support when we have 6+ players or I know I have competent players on my table) The most memorable Situation was as my VC told me in my fist game under him "I know you will play a slumberwitch but please consider you are the one Lv 6 playing down to tier 3-4 it would help the enjoiment of everyone at the table if you tone down a bit."

My Problem with suboptimal characters is that i learned the hard way in my first scenarios what happens if noone on the table is able to carry his weight in combat or able to make the Diplomacychacks in the scenario. That is the reason why I have no hesitation to build very competent characters who have easyly the option to make many necessary skillchecks (mostly one of the social skills Diplo/Bluff/Intimidate) and are able to dominate a combat if necessary. But if I am asked to tone down the characters are able to (other spells/not using the ugliest combos).

In my opinion it happens rather often that the players invalidate the tactics so that the gm has to improvise. One thing that happens often is "... uses his ranged attacks against the party" but he is in close combat after the first round. But i have to agree that we as GMs should follow the tactics as much as possible and if the tactic states DO NOT USE ABILITY X than you should never use it.

We have the right to give the players small bonuses +-2 to their skillchecks based upon how they roleplay but it is very important to not chnge the actual DCs or statistics becuase the scenario should be the same no matter who GMs it. There are many storys of GMs who have changed the scenario which lead to a tpk or much more ressources used so this is not appreciated.

I think it is worng to preread ONLY to get information about the chronicle but at least in our region the Gm will sometimes say: "This scenario would be great for you ..." This might be because of an recurring enemy, an boon or the general theme so it does not spoil anything but helps to get the rewards to the right characters (sideffect the chars fit the scenario much better.)

In my opinion they should be able to use it, but it would be nice to hear something official because if someone buys one of the more expensive tecitens and is told that is illegal that coulb de a huge blow to the character.

Just like I thaught, but this is definetifly the opponent our lodge will love because we are playing the Aspissaga/Tapestryarc at the moment and they liked the aspisstuff in season 6 very much.

1.) GMcredit is a normal chronicle with full xp/pp/gold and you get to choose which boons you want (factionboons only if you are in the faction)

2.) No

3.) The party do not need to be all slow or all fast and what your party does does NOT affect your chronicle in any way

4.) You run a PREGEN (or let a player run one) and there is no extra credit

5.) There is only one downside i know of, you cannot complete any factionrewards other than the gming one from the factioncards and you might not be able to get one specific boon that is called out in the scenario

I would not have a problem with that but maybe that comes from playing with a VL who fanaticly tries to get the (non divine casters) to worship his Eidolon as a God of Fluffyness and "all cute things" -> As long as everyone at the table is ok with that i do not see a problem if there is you can remain silent because you do not get anything mechanicly from this. Not to say that I play with a Paladin of Erastil since 4 Levels and must ask every Scenario what god he worships because it could be any "good god wiht something to do with nature/boats" so i do not think it is THAT relevant to know the exact god of a divine class -> Heck there is even a seperatist archetype for those wierdo Clerics.

And because of Crossovers: After seeing someone playing Sara Kerrigan (Starcraft) as an Eidolon of his (pretty nonexistant) summoner and that contributing much to the fun of the table i have no problem with crossovers.

But all in all as long you do not disturb the table with it do it if it makes the game more fun.

Gratulation, wenn du was in der Gegend organisierst frag einfach.^^

My call about invisibility and AOEs is that if you are going invis and do not telling the party where youll end up you will get the AOE without speaking against it, becuase the caster has no way to see you or take you out without metagaming. That said, I am mostly the one in the AOE -> yesterday the wizard began casting sleep, the enemys dropped a darkness and i moved to one of them and killed him so when the wizard fired the sleep to the place where it would have reached the two enemys last round it got me (failed save) and en enemy (made his save) and the whole table agreed to that was how it is handled if you fire an AOE blindly (or cant see your teammembers otherwise).

As a player an Gm I have always seen it handeled the way -> You ask if it is ok, if yes fire if no do another thing.

I first got in contact with this rule in a scenario where you fight a Troop (much uglyer swarm with automatic ranged dmg) where my only option was to include a already downed Character in an AOE to get the troop down to kill it before it would TPK us -> Our GM said it would be ok because ALL players at the table agreed to it including the downed player. The result was the downed Player was at -Con+1 and survived barely becuase of a shield other and the troop went down so that the party could survive.

Second great encounter was with my Swashbuckler who said to our blaster: "Nuke me (with Refsaves) if you would get more Enemys with it" (I had an Refsave about over 20 and a kind of evasion (MANY multiclassing)) It was kinda ironic, that i rolled two times a 1 to evade him (and took the dmg without complains (but laughing with the table) -> But it got absolutly hilarious when he got dominated later and was ordered to nuke our party: Because of his actions earlier (he always had me in his AOE) our GM let him place his AOE so that the Big Bad was also included. (Hey you nuke your allys all the time^^)

And the third encounter was where I was scouting (invisible) and gave the Group the Attacksignal and moved back in (while invis) and got cought up in the black tnetacles of the witch because she placed it where it would be most usefull (and wihtout asking me because she had no option th know that I was in the radius) It took me out for a potion of the encounter but teached our groop that invis must be used with communication or at least preperation.

So I think this rule should be used carefully and if noone is activly trying to fight PC vs PC you should allow it if they are ok with it.

As someone who gms Emerald Spire, I must say the time to prep/run ES is much less than run/prep 3 pfs Scenarios, but that is also the case with We be goblins, where a clever GM could potentially farm his fist Star in under a day because the TPK by achemist is legal and incharakter for this scenario. I think it is much easyer to say all modules count as 3XP/4PP/2ToC becuase it would otherwise open a con of worms -> But i must say it feels wierd how fast you get your ToC if you master Emerald Spire and some Mods.

Ok, this is pretty much the announcement i have expected after reading the Book for the first time, i am a bit sad about the "loss" of the old summoner but i appeciate the grandfathering. (Especially for my -1)

I think the previewtext should be everything you know before the scenario, maybe this is because we read tthem while signing up on warhorn but i appreciate if our GM says bevore the game: "this scenario would be grat for your ...." or "You realy should play this scenario with a charackter that knows ... (the blackros/ recurring Big bad)" But there should no list of enemies per scenario in the net becuase there will be people who abuse it -> I know that they likely can cheat with GM-prep but with more options there will be more temptation.

The prep is realy easyer with preregistered characters -> especially if you know the APL

And mastering many modules it is very clear that some of them are just not fun if you have too many players (either because of it is too easy or the characters have literaly no place to move)
Another Reason I could understand ist the space -> some games may be able to seat 7 (or any other number) of players but it is so cramped that you cant even roll a dice or place your bnotes on the table without hindering any other player.

I ask only for things that seem "odd", but that is mostly how some mechanics of an obscure Archetype or Class I have not played are handled. We have nearly none fullaudits in our area, I have checked some Lv1 Chars with Attributes that seemed too low and correctet them but we only ask if you have the book in question. This is a huge help for myself if I show up to a gameday or evening and have 4+ Chars with me so i would need to pack all hardcovers and many softcovers to cover all things for them.
For my own characters I do an "audit" everytime i use a new Charactersheet and it is not unusual to find your skillpoints a bit off (mostly to low... that human bonus)

But as some other posters already said, it helps if you play with a smaller group of people and talk outgame about the chars, so that mistakes are either not made or corrected very quickly (my own -2 used a racial not legal which was correctet the fist time I told the group about the concept.
As a rule of thumb, on cons i would be a bit warier (additional recources seems to be a often ignored document) but for my regular groups i trust them and will only audit for scenariorelevant stuff like carrying capacity for an recent scenario where the mcguffin was quite heavy and youll need to run with it.

After my game yesterday I would say the Lv2 uplaying character decides to buff himself offensively and says I can ignore these little Aoos and used Actions to lower his AC...

You can use fey foundling (+2 per dice but only for yourself) in combination with shield other/lifelink.

My own PFS-Healer is a dualcursed Aasimar Lifeoracle (FCB for channel) with Fey foundling/Misfortune (rerolls)/Battelcry (More rerolls AFTER the save is failed)/Fateful chanel. This gets quite asurd when i can heal the whole group, get them to roll twice (on one roll) and if they fail a save they can reroll if they have failed it. Misfortune is for Critnegation or forcing to reroll 1s on skills.

So in my opinion there is no better Healer than an lifeoracle because you dont only heal but also improve the saves of your allys massively and ist very nice to say to an enemy who critted "Reroll"

So here the prep for level 3 and 4:

First I have to say level 3 was very fun to run while the group (led by my VL)tried and managed to trump (with 23 rounds) the ingame time (30 rounds) set up while one of my current players was gming for me, my VC and some other people at a convention. It was not very challanging (expept maybe the beast in the cells) but one of the funniest points was the Bloodrager identifing the Wight and saying: "What ... do you want to kill us?" It gets up, eats the Aoo, crit, confirmed = Bloodrager 1: Wight 0.

After the Level my VC asked if we had enough time to run the 4th Level (we had approx 2h left) to which one of my players replied that this is more than enough time and that it will be very easy. So one of the players changed from his Boltace to his Arcane Tricster (in making) and we started. After the briefing they were set to kill the trogs, won the initiative and killed the trog that should greet them before it could react. The rest of this 7 rounds of Combat were mostly the players woundering if thes should not be the new 1-2 replayable and laughing at what should be their "opponents". It was fun to watch but it was very disappointing to master an adventure where the enemys are total crap and a joke against 1st levlers and only be able to hit on a nat 20.

In my opinion The 4th level should be the first level because it was by far the easiest level thus far. To get this even remotly interesting all of the trogs should get alt least 2 Class levels AND some better tactics. The conflict with the total crap sucess conditions was a bit lessened because they were never greeted in the first place but in my opinion ther schould never be such an sucess condition in a module (or the option to "win" a module by rolling 1 diplomacy chek)
All in all that level will be the easiest and safest 3 XP/4800 GM or even 1XP/1600GM you will ever get in society play. The only reasonable point to run this level outside the fact "We want the whole Spire" is if you get an TPK early or midscenario and all Players want to play something beacause ths scenario can reasonably run in about an hour.