Almarane's page

Yup yup, as others said before, it's a nice follow-up on Carrion Crown. The Whispering Way is really weakened in this one since the events of Carrion Crown.
I actually distanced myself from the official timeline and said the story took place about 20 years later, so to give my players the possibility to play children of their characters from Carrion Crown.

If you want your characters' deity to have an impact on the story, do not pick Sarenrae. Once Book 2 is done, you will never hear about her anymore. This is really a trap choice in my opinion.

Having someone following Iomedae really helps with the story. Especially because almost every plot points regarding religion are linked to her, for at least the first half of the story ; and if your GM plays their cards right, it can stay relevant for the whole AP.

Pharasma is also thematic, and there's a heavy emphasis on her at some point. It does not last long, but being a follower of Pharasma in this AP can be a real big motivation to do what the AP asks you to do and can open some good RP opportunities. (Plus there are a bunch of undeads to destroy since Lastwall is a bit of a cursed nation, with all the "land filled with necrotic energies since the big battle against Tar'Baphon some centuries ago" shenanigans).

Torag's religion shows up at one point, but it's even less interesting than Sarenrae's and it shows up really late in the AP.

Gorum is a sound choice because setup-wise there is a large cult of Gorum in Lastwall, but he never gets any influence in the AP.

Mimics! They're so fun to hide in an adventure. I recently rain a dragon's lair encounter where everything in the dragon's vault was a mimic.

One day, I want to make an adventure where the dungeon itself is a mimic, inhabited by a bunch of mimics.

Almarane wrote:

And the summonable monsters' list is so outdated and unbalanced... After you reach the second half of the list, most of the creatures are demons and devils. Plus, there are so many fun creatures from the newest bestiaries that you could summmon, such as new demons/devils/angels, daemons, psychopomps, animals, etc etc...

I had the same thought several years ago. Here's the list for expanding for summon monster I. It has links to the other lists. I hope you enjoy the expanded list.

You, sir, deserve a medal. Thank you :)

I always play scholars (mostly spellcasters) and silver-tongued characters, since I like gathering lore and interacting with NPCs. Most of the time I end up being the party face, and if not I at least can stand my ground in terms of social encounters when I need to. People with high charisma and intelligence, and most of the time low wisdom.

I am currently playing with a group where everyone wanted to be a party face. So... in the end, I gave my seat to the other players and I'm playing a very polite but mostly silent and docile noble lady (slayer). She's not really good at talking to people and prefer letting others do the negociations. She's also not very clever - or at least feels less clever than most people - and puts her faith in the intelligence of her companions.

It's... really hard sometimes. I have to force myself to not speak and let others do their job, even when they are terrorizing or angering key NPCs because the other PCs are pragmatic as heck or when they don't think about searching for something. It's a really humbling experience.

But at least I can focus on being a murder machine with a big scythe >:)

Not sure if this has been said already, but, first, revise the summoning system and update the list of summonable monsters.

Summoning is weak if you are not a Summoner because you have your summon for 1/lvl rounds.

And the summonable monsters' list is so outdated and unbalanced... After you reach the second half of the list, most of the creatures are demons and devils. Plus, there are so many fun creatures from the newest bestiaries that you could summmon, such as new demons/devils/angels, daemons, psychopomps, animals, etc etc...

Also, another alternate spellcasting system, something other than vancian casting. Or at least some new content for Word-casting.

Plus, balancing and adding support for more classes for Mythic adventures. Post-Mythic adventures classes and some older classes such as Summoner really have a bad time as mythic characters. There's not enough options in my opinion.

Finally, a comprehensive book/article about how to properly create a dungeon and/or an "adventuring day". Balancing your encounters without making a "1-encounter day" is a lot of trial and error to me.

I once played a bartender, Mary Daniels. Mechanically speaking, she was an Alchemist with the Infusion discovery. Naratively speaking, she was a bartender so talented in her craft that she was able to brew magical alcohols that gave incredible powers to those who drunk it or had the power to heal them, and liked throwing molotov cocktails. She tried selling alcohol to some NPCs in order to solve the group's problems. Every time she had some rest, she would tinker with her portable alambics to create new recipes.

She was also a drunkard, but unable to be drunk thanks to her poison immunity (we ruled that alcohol acted as poisons) after drinking so many magically enhanced alcohol. Her liver was in such a bad shape that its cancerous cells developped their own will and became a Tumor Familiar under her command.

(...)

Well, as much as I know, Jabberwocky was a real challenge for translators. There's even a book about the multiple attempts to translate this poem. They had to keep the rhytmic quality, but in a way understandable for French people.

So there were multiple attempts at translations. For the Jubjub bird, I saw "JeubJeub", "Jubjube", "Jub", etc etc...

For "Jabberwocky", it either stays "Jabberwocky" or become "Jabberwock" or "Jaseroque". The most outlandish translation I saw was "Bredouloch".

"Frumjous" was translated with "frumieux". The same root ("frum"), to which they affixed one of the classical suffixes used to create adjectives ("ieux"). "Brillig" was sometimes translated by "reveneure". It still doesn't make sense. Other nonsense-words in the poem had the same treatment : either take the same root and apply a french suffix to tell your reader what type of word it is, or translate it with another senseless word.

But even with all this, in the end, "Jube-jube" is the translation created by the French translators of Pathfinder, not of the poem. They did not have to care about how well it worked in the poem, since it wasn't for the poem they were translating, but for the RPG. "Jube-jube" is probably said the same way than "jubjub", it's just a different, more "Frenchy" way to write it (the "e" at the end of words is silent most of the time, and "b" and "j" are weird letters to put one after the other in French). "Jabberwocky" and "Bandersnatch" were not translated because their pronunciation is feasible in French and there are no "weird association of letters" in their name.

English lyrical poetry tends to be structured around patterns of rhyming the last words of each line (...) Is end-rhyme scheme even a thing in lyrical French poetry?

Dude... French poetry is all about end-line rhyming and rythm. When we learn about poetry in school we learn at least about half a dozen ways to make rhyming patterns. We had our prose period, sure, but most of our greatest poets were using rhymes.

Even when you look at modern-day music, French singers will rhyme as if their life depended on it. While I saw many singers not rhyme in English and give more attention to rythm and images, or prefer words that sound like they end the same way but not exactly (chain/claim for exemple).

But in English it is typical for the adjective to come before the noun it modifies: I don't know what a bandersnatch is, but I do know it is the frumjous ones I need to be aware of. Regular bandersnatches, not so much. But in French, the adjective normally comes after, and that means that it is the frumjous that you must be aware of, particularly the bandersnatch variety of frumjous. Referring to les bandershatches frumjus seems presume meaning on words that were created to have no meaning at all!

That's a false assumption. French is more flexible than English about where to place the adjective (from what I know about the English language). You can either place the adjective before or after the noun it modified. That allows you to emphasis either on the noun or on the adjective. Sometimes it's even preferred to put adjectives before nouns because it's "more beautiful". It's just that you may not know about it because nowadays, in talked French, we mainly put adjectives after the noun because it's easier, and putting adjectives before nouns in talked French will probably make you look like a pompous person. But you can find adjectives before nouns in books, in speeches, and in any instance where you need to carefully and "beautifully" craft your sentences.

For exemple, if I were to translate "the gigantic barbarian" in French, I can either say "le barbare gigantesque" (adjective after noun) or "le gigantesque barbare" (adjective before noun). Both translations are correct. But in the first case I emphasis the fact that our character is a barbarian, and in the second I emphasis the fact that they are garguantuan.

What about iambic, trocheic, dactylic, and anapestic metrical feet?

I'm... not a poetry expert, but according to Wikipédia, yes we have those.

Almarane wrote:

My all time favorite is the Jubjub ("Jube-Jube" in French).

Are you sure a French pronunciation is appropriate? The wizard who created the jubjub bird is quite English, if I'm not much mistaken.

Dunno. I just find the French name even funnier than the English one. Plus I'm French, so I'm more used to the French name.

Almarane wrote:

Always prefer options that allow you to ignore After acting powers.

Not sure about this one. After Acting powers are fairly rare in Core and Curse. Before Acting powers are common, however, and often painful.

That's why Liquid Courage was a keeper for us, but we didn't seek out boons that ignored After Acting effects.

I agree that Before Acting powers are common, and sadly there are no easy ways to prevent them. The Dog is one of those ways, I'm not sure about others.

Maybe you were luckier than me, but in my plays After Acting powers were my bane. Losing 1d4 cards from your hand when you are an Ezren without your False Life and already have to use a bunch of cards to explore and/or when you are low on life, or taking a Scourge without being able to make a roll to prevent it is a pain. Or maybe it just depends on which character you play with which builds (I suppose most After Acting powers are not very painful for a healing specialize Kyra, for exemple).

Personally, I'd try to warn my players that something very powerful comes their way. That could be giant footprints, the crushed remains of powerful other creatures or a closing thundering. So they might have the choice between fight and flight. Or at least the chance to prepare, both mentally and mechanically. And if they flee, still I would have established that really dangerous creatures roam here.

Okay, I will keep that in mind and try to warn them more in advance.

If they had real trouble with Huge+ creatures (which not necessarily equates very powerful), I'd give them some hints how to fight them. Reach weapons, specialized feats (Just out of Reach) and size increasing magic come to my mind.

I have to admit I never thought about talking with my players about how to defeat such and such types of monsters, since most of them are more experienced than me. I will give it a shot :)

Monsters killing average PCs with a single hit have their place, but I'd rather use them as story elements than as regular encounters. To sow despair when the party has to watch the inevitable destruction of a settlement, as bodyguards of creatures that are not supposed to be attacked (at least right now) or as threat that could be released if they don't act fast enough. And leveling / gearing up to be able to beat an once overwhelming foe is very satisfying, so I'd try to offer my players a rematch.

If other monsters don't really challenge them, more battlefield diversity (fog, lava, walls etc.), NPC magic usage (illusions, healing, slowing etc.) or special combat tricks (Pushing Assault, Improved Reposition, Spring Attack etc.) can make a difference.

*takes notes* Gotcha. Thank you for your advices :)

I dunno, that Cetus looks like it could take down pretty tough characters with ease. +26 to attack and 6d6+27 with Greater Vital Strike for 24d6+27, then +46 to grapple for another 6d6+27. That's 159 fairly damage. A lvl13 barbarian with 18 Con has 168hp while raging, but pretty much everyone else is going down hard.

Compare this guy to the Froghemoth, the Carnivorous Blob or an Ice Devil. That CR feels...a little off.

And that's only its bite attack. You add to that the Combat Reflexes which cancels most repositioning options with its 21 Dex, the SR 24 which cancelled most of the Witch's attempts at casting spells on it, and the Mariner's Misfortune which makes you 50% less effective. And a free grab with its bite attack with a +46 to grapple, doubling the damages from the bite if it succeeds, at triggering Swallow Whole the next turn. Even with 20 to Dex and Str a level 13 character would have at most 33 to their CMD.

I feel like the more recent the bestiary is, more Huge+ creatures' CRs are weird. Maybe there's a way to rectify a monster's CR depending on its damages ?

And what I meant by "something different" was something besides the regular "roll initiative, make attack rolls" combat.

In one of my games, my players had to deal with a sentient hill; basically a 500,000-ton stone golem. I made it clear that if they were struck by one of it's blows, they'd be dead. And that attacking a small mountain with any sort of traditional weapons was pointless.
So instead of a combat, the encounter involved them trying to climb up the giant's body, which was covered in traps, falling boulders and gargoyles. The monster felt BIG, because they couldn't engage it like like a foe. It was heavy and slow and unstoppable, and made for a much more compelling encounter than "roll initiative, make attack rolls."

Oooh, Shadow of the Colossus style, I really like the idea ! :) It will be a bit difficult to have something like that for every single encounter, but thinking up alternate methods such as this one can be interesting for some of them.

Use lower cr giants

Yeah, maybe using lower CRs might be a good idea. Something like CR-1 for regular fights, and CR +1 for boss-fights maybe. But in that case, I may need to give them some extra HPs so that my players don't one-shot them either.

and don't make up the cr by using more giants?

Sorry, I did not understand this part of your sentence ^^"

We started book 3 some times ago with my group. This book has some cool ideas, but after talking a bit with my players, they didn't like the execution of the investigation :/

I tried to present them some NPCs from the main ones you have to report to, using the fact that some of the characters came from/to Vigil earlier (the cavalier studied there to become a Knight of Ozem, and the Sorcerer/Draconian disciple met Evni who told her to go to Roslar's Coffer) as a hook.
They immediatly tried to present Valtazar's diary and the fragments of the Fetoring Maw as proof to Varvatos... I had to improv there since it was not told those were acceptable proofs. They found it weird that Varvatos allowed a group of nobodies to investigate in Vigil without believing them and without asking some guards to keep an eye on them, but they ended up accepting it. They also did not ask anybody about Gildais (they explained to me that in their mind, they had to investigate that themselves, and that this was a secret mission), and I had to remind them that they had to investigate on him when they were talking to Evni. They couldn't understand how Evni just thought Ranton was talking about another Gildais without pressing him more about it while she is the one to give them the more backstory on him. Then, there was the fact that Doeswen was reasigned just for sounding a false alarm. That one was really hard for them to accept. The cavalier almost lost his values of hierarchical respect when Veena Heliu told him the group was probably the victims of some illusion magic (quoting my players : "Even if you're right, if someone took the effort of making an illusion of an entire city, then that's because they have something huge to hide"). The straw that broke the camel back was when Brunna told them she did not think that forging a replica of the Broken Shield with cracks in it was suspicious...

So... yeah, my group and I are not great fans of this investigation part, and I had to change some parts afterward.

But, appart from the investigation, the rest of the book looks promising, and they had fun with what we did :)

Anyway, on my summary of those sessions...

*Session 1 : Winning their trust*

They interacted with most of the NPCs on the first day (the only one they did not was Ceto Malderra, and they spoke to Veena later). They were pretty bummed that Varvatos did not trust them, but pressed on with the help of Ranton and Evni nonetheless, decided to save the city weither it wanted it or not, agreed with Varvatos to meet her at the cathedral when the sun set, and went to the Northguard post.

They spotted the hanged guard and had the nice idea to give their Ring of Feather Fall to the druid who polimorphed in a crow, put the ring on the guard's finger, and pecked the noose to cut it. Then they proceeded to climb, and to crush the wights. As they were not particularly stealthy in B3, Usundra and Okagu embushed them behind the door in the corridor next to B3, Okagu acting as a meatshield for Usundra while scarring the sh*t out of the PCs. This was a very neat battle.

They found the documents, and came back to the cathedral to meet Varvatos (who was talking with Veena Heliu at the time), and presented the documents to both of them. Then, with Vavatos and Heliu's blessing, they went to Brunna's forge, killed the elemental, spotted Dondun, and saved Rolf. When they went in C4, the druid was polimorphed as a Fire Elemental, so... Rolf panicked, shot, and the swarshbuckler promptly charged him and knocked him unconscious. They took the shields and ran for an escape... which was fun when Brunna told them to take one of the shield she stocked in C4, and the cavalier got them out of their bag of holding while saying "you mean, those shields ?"
We ended the first session after Brunna told them about the shield.

*Session 2 : Kilibrandt's downfall*

I retconned a bit Brunna at the start of this session, changing her dialog. Basically, I made her explain that she worked for Kilibrandt under duress, playing Kilibrandt as something more of a mastermind. Dondun put a mark on Rolf, and Kilibrandt and him told Brunna to craft a replica of the shield, then to keep silent, or the curse he put on Rolf would kill him. In the end, Dondun activated the curse in order to destroy all proofs, thus summoning the fire elemental. Now that the mark disappeared from Rolf's body, she told the truth to the PCs, and they convinced her to report to the authorities and to seek a mean to check the shield currently displayed to prove it is a fake. They visited the swashbuckler's mom, then went to sleep.

First thing in the morning, they went straight to the Erstwhile Dieworks. On the way, they met "Kilibrandt" (a double that was working for her under duress), and after some talk the combat started. The PCs really liked this battle, as it was very strategic due to the buildings. 10/10 would knock out Kilibrandt again. They captured Kilibrandt (unconscious) and the hunters (dogs dead, body double and one hunter unconscious, the other surrendered), and the last hunter explained to them that his adopted sister (the gnome), his brother and him were - you know the pattern now - working under duress for Kilibrandt, who had captured their father, a merchant. The PCs told Jando to get those suspects to the guards, and ran to the dieworks, fearing that the rest of the Wise Crows were destroying proofs there.

They almost lost the sorcerer to the specters. Those things hit easily. I don't think they are that dangerous, but our swashbuckler really had a hard time because of them (he was the only one to fail his save against them). The Otyughs almost TPK'd, but that was because of an error of translation from one of my players (we translated "sickened" as "nauseated" ^^' Rendering the cavalier and the sorcerer useless for the entirity of this battle). As usual, the druid got grappled (I swear, this happens every time they meet some creature that can grapple, and I'm not even trying to target him).

And then, they met it.

The Putrid Ooze.

This creature absolutely cancelled the group. Red Dragon Sorcerer specialized in Fire spells ? Nope, Resist Fire 20. Druid who's only means of dealing significant damages are Electricity spells ? Nuh-uh, Resist Electricity 20. Cavalier trying to hit it with a sword ? Lol, your sword takes 2d6 acid damages, and take 6d6+16+2d6 slam damages. Swashbuckler trying to hit it with a crossbow ? DR 10 baby.

I think I never saw my players so scared for their lives. And I made them fight Tar Baphon himself last year.

The druid burned the heck out of their Rod of Ice with snow storms just to slow it down, and I allowed the cavalier to make the mill wheel spin so that the ooze is even more slowed. The ooze sniped the druid with its splatter, making him go unconscious, and everybody freaked out when they realized it had a ranged attack. They almost ran away through the sewers, but the sorcerer kept bombarding the ooze with Fireballs, and it ended up dying thanks to some crazy rolls. Huh... As they say, "if brute force is not the answer, that is because you did not apply enough brute force"... They were SUPER proud of them after this, and this was super fun :)

This ooze is insane. If you don't have a character able to make spell damages other than electricity and fire, you need some crazy luck to kill it.

Now they are taking a break and investigating a bit more, and rescuing Doeswen. Next session : the sewers :)

-------------------------------

Prepping the sewers and the redoubt : the Crystal Golem

Those parts look really fun, and with Serisan summaries as an indication I'm sure we will have a lot of crazy shenanigans.

However, I would like to know if some of you had the chance to try out the Crystal Golem encounter, and how it went out. This thing seems as crazy as the putrid ooze, at least for my players. Just the Explode Head can one-shot anybody in my group, and they don't have any mean to resurect somebody. How well did your groups do ? Do you have any advice on how to run this encounter ?

I was saying that I did not understand if you were agreeing with my post or Rysky's post (sorry, English isn't my mother language, so maybe I am missing something on your last post ^^")

Oh, Ultimate Wilderness, that explains why I did not hear about it. Well, thanks for the link ! This page still states that leshies need druids to be created, though... The Vine leshy is just really weird to me as an adventurer. I see leshies as the nature equivalent of constructs, golems and necrocrafts, since they have to be created by someone else, and that someone else must have a purpose for them in mind.

I guess I'm just gonna "leaf 'em" =/

Well... Anyone is technically able to create leshies if they have the right knowledge, but it is stated in their descriptions that they most of the time were created by druids. From what I red most of the time druids create leshies, and then older leshies help them create more leshies, but the druid is still the main actor of the creation process.

Also, regardless of how easy or hard it was to have a leshy familiar for a druid, leshies are druid familiars in PF2. I sense awkward situations happening x)

(I never heard of a leshy race in 1e. Are you maybe talking about Ghorans ? If the leshy race does exist in official Paizo 1e material, I'm curious to see it)

(PS : not sure of who you are agreeing with here Corvus, your post is a bit confusing to me @_@)

But... aren't Leshy's druids' familiars ? Like, creatures druids litteraly garden to create ?

So you can have a Leaf Druid Leshy with a Leshy familiar ?

........ Am I the only one seeing the problem here ?

The more I see of the Age of Lost Omens, the more I want to keep working on my homebrew setting. Now I'm waiting on the playable Necrocraft, Eidolon and wolf...

I do love leshys and I was happy to see them being full-fledged familiars for druids. But they are familiars. Who need a druid to be created.

Hello

To the hero who made the maps of book 4 of Tyrant's Grasp :

Thank you

Finally maps where the secret passages are drawn in way that the "S" symbol is on a different layer than the actual map, and that there is enough space between the room and the secret room that I don't have to spend 15 minutes on Photoshop to edit the map enough to make the secret passage invisible.

I know I tend to be pretty harsh with Paizo, so I really wanted to let you know that this made my day. I hope future official maps will stick to this.

You can change the words, sure, it doesn't really change the core mechanic :) Take the words you are the most confortable with !

Just, for the "heretic" term : the "you are wrong" aspect of the "Heretic" term could well work (since as a cleric you will think something that is against your beliefs to be wrong). As I see this, a Pharasmin cleric that casts a spell that deals damage to Heretic targets deals damages to a cleric of Urgatoah (because they have ideas directly clashing) but not to a cleric of Gozreh (they don't have a subject in common). But you could say such effects also englobes "infidels" in the category opposing divine/devout. I would let the GM determine who are "your religion's allies" and who are "your religion's ennemies" :)

I'm a bit sad that some dedication feats don't give you the other classe's weapon/armor proficiencies. As a wizard, if I multiclass in Ranger, I still can't use a bow or a leather armor :(

Hi everyone ! :)

One of my players suggested me a workaround I will probably use to remove alignment from my games: Divine and Heretic. So I will expose it here in case it could be of help for another GM :)

"Divine" is related to your patron god's / concept's values. For exemple, showing mercy to your ennemy will be Divine for a follower of Sarenrae, and a spell raising an undead will be Divine for a follower of Urgatoah. Divine targets are targets that follow your values, such as an angel for Iomedae. Divine damages deal damages to targets that are Heretic to you, such as fiends for Iomedae.

"Heretic" is related to your patron god's / concept's anathemas and ennemies. Showing mercy to your ennemy will be Heretic for a follower of Asmodeus, and a spell raising an undead is Heretic for a follower of Pharasma. Heretic damages deal damages to targets that are Divine to you, such as psychopomps for Pharasma. (Heretic damages would be quiet rare, since attacking a Divine target would be an Heretic act unless special circumstances).

Replace all occurences of alignment by either "Divine" or "Heretic", depending on the context. For exemple, the Champion's Divine Smite, Holy Cascade and Hellfire Plume will now deal Divine damages (so a Champion of Pharasma will deal damages to undeads but not to psychopomps, and an undead casting Hellfire Plume will deal Divine damages to said Champion of Pharasma while a psychopomp casting the same Hellfire Plume on this Champion will deal no damages).

It is somewhat of a redux Loyalty system mixed with the Anathema system that only impacts divine characters and outsiders (since they seem to be the only characters with alignment-based mechanics). You will have to make judgment calls on what is considered Divine and Heretic on a per-character basis, but IMHO this can be improvised quickly when the situation presents itself and at character creation if you have a solid comprehension of your setting's gods'/concepts' values.

Hope this helps :)

Note: Please do not debate here about if removing alignment from the game is a good idea / a bad idea / necessary / not necessary as it is not the point of this thread. If you like alignment and want to keep it in your game, or if you don't like it and want to remove it, that's neither good nor bad, that's your decision and nobody should judge you on this. But you can debate about the Divine and Heretic rules or other ways to replace alignment here if you'd like.
Let's stay civic folks :)

That said, one thing that I really enjoy about RPGs is when the players play different types of characters, personality wise. Every time I've run a game without alignments, everyone ends up playing what's essentially chaotic neutral, and that's repetitive and dull.

And here I am with my alignment-less campaign where I have the equivalent of a Loyal Good with Chaotic Weird moments Iomedian, another Loyal Good Sarenite, a Chaotic Neutral and a Neutral Good/True Neutral. I think you stumbled into the classic problem of "my players act like chaotic neutral because they started playing back when playing a gold-hungry chaotic mercenary/adventurer was seen as the norm or learned how to play with people with this mentality" too many times and it painted a dark image of alignment-less games for you. (or maybe not, my intent is not to judge you or your players, but that's something I noticed about other groups after reading a bunch of RPG debates/horror stories)

Since Golarion has so many gods/half-gods/fake gods, and since people in Golarion have solid proof about the existence of gods, religion would be a good driving force for most characters who will still follow their god's precepts.

I sadly can't argue with the "it is harcoded into the multiverse" argument since the rules are mainly based off Golarion, even though I prefer a home setting.

(Sorry for the errors in my post, English is not my mother language ;w; )

I've only played the first half of the first book, and red the first 3 books and skimed through book 4 and 5 so far, but I'd say this AP is pretty good so far !

The combats seem quite dangerous if your players are not careful, which makes for challenging fights, which is to be expected coming from an AP that categorizes itself as a survival horror (but may need the GM to add one or two batch of healing potions at the start of the adventure, especially if your party doesn't have heal bots). You have some classic creatures (such as Mites) mixed with some rarer ones (Ostovites, Sahkill). Almost all of the battles and monsters have a reason to be where they are and to act how they do story-wise (from the top of my head, in the first 3 books, I can only think of the Venedaemon and the Xenopterid from Book 2 that seemed out of place to me), and not every conflict is black and white. Plus, most of the battles against intelligent foes have a pacifist route, which is cool in my book. Also, the first two final bosses are well crafted. They are foes to the players, sure, but they have their reason to be ; and it's particularly hard to hold a grudge against the first boss.

The story also has a good bunch of twists and turns. I found myself being pleasantly surprised at what clever and unexpected ideas they had for this AP. It really feels like the authors did their best to always surprise the players. Plus, there is just enough foreshadowing for my taste. If you pull it well enough, this can have quite an effect on your players. Here are some of my favorite exemples (beware, those are heavy spoiler for big plot points, don't read those if you intend to be a player) :

There are tons of little details in the scenario that I find enjoyable and funny, and which make the scenario coherent with itself without being too "in your face". Here are some from book 1 to make you understand what I am saying :

The AP seems hard, but it also seems quite generous on the loot your players can get.

Finally, there are some simple but fun puzzles from times to times, which allow your players to think a bit between two encounters. The scenario provides some alternate skill checks if your players don't like puzzles so that they don't end up stuck.

But... this AP is not perfect. Althought I find them minor compared to the whole quality of the first half of the AP, it does have some problems in my opinion.

For the books released so far, PCs will be able to sell and buy equipement only in book 3 and 5 (and they might have difficulties doing so in book 5). Sure, this is coherent with the fact that it is a survival horror, a genre where you have to manage your ressources carefully. But this makes the party heavily dependant on the treasures they find. And they will find even less loot if they choose the pacifist route. Plus, the loot is heavily themed around specific classes and quite uneven in terms of non-consumable : book 1 and 3's most interesting weapons and armors are best for warriors, paladins and heavy martials who can use any martial weapons and heavy armors, with not much love for casters and nimble martials, and book 2 is mainly dispatched between martial caracters (with a tendency for heavy martials, but at least more interesting things for nimble martials than on the other books) and profane casters. You might need to change some of the loot depending on your party.

As stated by Serisan in the GM Thread, the first book is deadly. Most of the battles are APL+1 (challenging), and there are a bit too much of APL+3 (epic) in my opinion. My party only has a druid and someone with the Word trait, and they were mostly down by the end of the first level of the first dungeon, and got one of them almost killed by one shot twice after clearing most of the first floor of the first dungeon from part 3. There are also a lot of DR in this book which stretches the battles. If your party does not have a dedicated and good healer and a heavy hitter, or if your party is repeatedly unlucky with their heal rolls, you may need to add some extra healing items. Now, having deadly ennemies in a real-time game where you can dodge or parry is fine, but it's way more difficult to protect yourself against those in Pathfinder.

Roleplaywise, the player's guide heavily encourages the players to be followers of Iomedae (because Lastwall) or Sarenrae (because the priests in Roslar's Coffer are mainly sarenites and there was a temple of Sarenrae there some times ago). But I find that sarenites don't get much love compared to iomedians. Having an acolyte of Sarenrae might be of use only in the second book, and that is if your character is old enough to have clear memories of before the orc raid - which would need this character to be at least 25-30 years old, where most humans tend to be old enough to go to adventure from 16 to 27 years old. Gorum doesn't get anything, even though he is one of the main deities of Lastwall.

Some bits of mecanics are a bit confusing. In book one, there is one skill check which becomes way harder if you don't succeed on your first try, and one of the puzzles is confusing. On the third book, you have to find three things and bring them back somewhere to have the best ending, but you can only find four of these things and, if you're not careful, you might miss the best ending because two of those things are near the point of no return in the scenario (which locks you out of the possibility to bring back those things) ; you also get rewards each times you bring back one of those, which is nice game-wise, but a bit strange and not realistic story-wise. Luckily, those confusing parts are very rare and can easily be handwaved.

The maps are pretty and the layouts are nice, but as usual the grid is not even. This makes it hard to import them on virtual tabletops softwares.

And... I know this might sound petty, but... Mictena's illustrations. She has 3 completely different illustrations, and none of them seems correct to me. I heavily rely on pictures in my games, so it was a bit of a pain. Luckily, the other illustrations in the first 3 books seem mostly correct.

I hope this quick review helped you :)

Warning : this thread spoils both the first book and the end of the AP. If you are not a GM or do not want to be spoiled the last two books, do NOT read what comes next !

You have been warned.

We're between knowing people now?
Good.

I had an idea, and I am leaving this here, in case it can be of use for someone.

So, yesterday my party cleared Roslar's tomb from book 1, and one of them did something I did not expect : instead of taking the offerings under Roslar's statue, he donnated some money. He told me that this was to compensate for the weapons, healing items and Roslar's equipements they took from the tomb. I was pleasantly surprised by his generosity. Plus, they tend to not mercilessly kill whatever they see, which is good. So I have been searching for a way to reward my players who putted effort into their roleplay. Plus, this would show them that good deeds have as much consequences as bad ones, and encourage them to keep on being generous.

I am also reading Book 4 and 5 in advance, and I came accross the bit where the players learn they have to die to stop Tar-Baphon. I was not really thrilled by this : sure, this would be a heroic death, but I really don't like killing my players if they don't deserve it. The scenario suggests to make an NPC tell them they can link their soul to a specific tree to be resurrected later, but I didn't like it either. It defeats the idea of the characters throwing their lives to save the world, and the heartbreaking drama that would ensue.

And then, I had an idea. Let's go back to Book 1.

We know that Barzakh is conscious of the PCs presence in the Dead Roads, and uses his powers to see the PCs journey through the Boneyard. Pleased by the PCs' generosity (for leaving an offering at Roslar's Coffer to thank Roslar for the equipement, and for their continued misericord on their opponents), Barzakh will give them a coin stamped with his holy symbol. If a PC tries to magicaly identify it, they will see the aura of an artefact and won't be able to determine its powers. If questioned about it, Barzakh will only respond that "this coin will show you the road when you need it the most".

During the adventure, the first time a character dies, they will be transported to the Dead Roads in front of Barzakh, who will ask them to "pay the toll". All they will find on them is Barzakh's coin. If they give it to him, Barzakh sends them back to Golarion, alive, and the real life's version of the coin will disappear.

BUT... If all characters manage to stay alive until the end of the AP and sacrifice themselves, they will all be transported to the Dead Roads in front of Barzakh. He will congratulate and thank them for their sacrifice for the greater good, which was a heartbreaking decision, but a righteous one. If the players want to talk a bit with him, they can. If not, or once the players don't have anything to talk with him anymore, he will ask them to "give back what I lent you". If the PCs give him the coin back, he sends them all back to the living world as their final reward.

I hope to maximize the drama from the final climax this way :) Plus, this keeps Barzakh relevant until the end, him being the one who allows the players to start their adventure, and the one closing it. I also think it's as important to reward your players for good actions as to penalize them for bad ones.

I hope this idea will help some of you ! :)

I would add to Serisan's infos that the first level of Roslar's tomb is really, REALLY dangerous if you don't have a dedicated healer, with or without planar traits. I play without planar traits, and my party consists of a Tactician Cavalier, a Dragon lineage Sorcerer, a Child of the Moon (Thunder domain) Druid and a Dervish Dancer Swashbuckler. They struggled to hit the Ostovites who nearly killed them.

The most dangerous ennemy was the Bone Cobra : the 14 AC was making him a pain to hit, the immunity to critical hits came into play once or twice, and the DR 5/bludgeonning made almost all attacks from the Swabuckler useless (luckily they found the warhammer and the Sorcerer began play with a hammer). I had to drop the SR 13 because both spellcasters were out of HPs because of the ostovites and were on their last spells per day, and this SR is a pain at first level. And it still was the longest battle they had (longer than against Abdell).

Now my party cleared the first level of Roslar's tomb, but both spellcasters are out of spells/magic powers, and three characters out of four are on the brink of death :/ They already used all the potions they found. I'm planning on adding potions on the mites in A10 to help them.

Can someone tell me how the puzzles went? I have no issues with 1 and 3, mirror stuff is easy, and honestly my party will probably use the right key cause it's the name of the place.

But the circling thing.... my god how is anyone supposed to get that? Sure you circle the number 11, but at least the way I think and maybe my party, that is now one number, not two. so we would be stuck back on impossible.

Has anyone had a party that solved this organically?

I tested this puzzle with two friends to see how it would go. One of them found after a few minutes of thinking, but instead of the correct answer he answered "13", "5", "3", "1", "1", because nothing states in the puzzle that you must read the number only from left to right. The second one did not find the answer without the hint, and he said it was because of how the question is asked. They tell you to circle 6 digits, and not 6 numbers. So he told me that, by "RAW", you can't circle 11 since it is a number composed of two digits, and not a digit.

For your version of the problem, John, you have to circle 6 "digits", not 6 "numbers". So if you circle 11, you indeed circled 2 digits, so it's fine.

I think you have to tweak a little how the puzzle is explained. I was thinking about something like "Circle any six digits so that the sum of all circled numbers add up to 23." (and allow the players to give me other answers than the one in the book).

Pathfinder is a narrative roleplaying game

John Cena: Are you sure about that ?

I think this is a great idea ! :D

Which corruption(s) do you plan to use ? I'd suggest the Accursed to reflect the hateful magic that was used to create the obols, and the "curse" of not being able to die properly. Lich could be fun too regarding... well... who's magic is pulsating in the obol in your heart, and because you are dead without being fully dead.

Will you tell your players about this, or will you keep it a secret ?

Hey, people more creative than me:

Can someone come up with a list of things about each (er, a good number) deity that I could have Kalamuk shout?

/!\Trigger warning, this does not reflect what I think/!\

Here are some ideas :

Iomedae : Something about her being raped by demons (since she hates them), cheating at the startstone challenge (she used her cloak to access the starstone, making a bridge with it. I'm thinking about making her tell that she in fact used a banal magic item and that the witnesses are idiots who got bluffed), or betraying Arazni so that the Whispering Tyrant could kill her in order to take her place. She's also known for having "a stick up her a**". All these also apply to her worshippers.

Calistria : Insults her worshippers by saying they are STD dispensers.

Cayden Cailéan : God of the Drunkards

Desna : Her worshippers are a bunch of hobos that can't afford a tavern chamber. And you have to be pretty dumb to worship a stupid butterfly.

Erastil : Animals f*ckers.

Gorum : Muscles for brain. Insult their intelligence.

Lamashtu : "Yo mama so fat" jokes

Néthys : A bunch of bipolar, short-tempered psychos. Real dangers for society.

Pharasma : Corpse f*ckers. Also, party killers with a stick up their a**.

Sarenrae : Hypocrites that say they want peace but don't hesitate to kill whoever does not agree with them. I also know that some clerics of Sarenrae tend to be too trusting, you could play with that.

Shélyn : Insult her beauty. Or tell that she has a "brother complex" (she wants to bang her brother). Or that Kalamuk loves whipping her bottom with shelyan paintings.

Torag : Torag's clerics are supposed to know how to craft weapons and armors, so you can make her insult the PC's craftmanship by saying things like a piece of equipment they crafted themself is so badly crafted that a baby could break it or that it would give diarrhea to a Rust-monster. Or make Kalamuk say she loves eating digging animals (Torrag's favored animals).

Urgathoa : nothing, she's cool

So, I was curious about what funny things your players did in your campaign :)

(Of course, this thread is going to be spoiler heavy. Read at your own risks !)

I will try to remember some few things myself.

• Book 1 : Everyone but the barbarian got afraid by the Poltergeist's power and fleed. The barbarian did not understand what was happening and just kept on attacking the Poltergeist for several rounds without making any damage to it, and the Poltergeist couldn't damage him as well.

• Book 1 : The group fights their first Ectoplasmic creature, and the Witch Necromancer uses her powers to control it. Ensues a 30 minutes debate between the Witch and the Inquisitor of Sarenrae on "should the Witch keep controlling this undead, or should we realease it and kill it".

• Book 2 : After fighting the Manticore, the PCs discover she was pregnant. They then proceed to burn through all of their spell slots and numerous Medicine rolls to save the baby Manticore. And they succeed ! But sadly they don't know how to take care of it and give it to someone :( No mascot Babyticore here :(

• Book 2 : The PCs turned an abandonned church into a Disco Night after spamming light spells to kill a ghost.

• Book 2 : The group fights through Schloss Caromarc. The Inquisitor and the Paladin bravely enter the destroyed laboratory. Then they spot the two Rust Monsters, run the other way and close the door after them, leaving the With and the Oracle alone.

• Book 2 : A bit later, they encounter the giant ape-thing-golem. The Witch uses a power to reduce its Strength for 24 hours, and then another character uses their brand new Ring of the Ram to push the golem off the bridge. The golem lost just enough Strength to not be able to climb back :(

• Book 3 : First conversation with Estovion Lozarov. They manage to talk about EVERY subjects that increase Lozarov's paranoia. Half a day later, they triggered every remaining points that increase his paranoia, except talking to his assistant before talking to him.

• Book 3 : PCs are attacked by a bunch of werewolves while going to Desna's temple. The werewolves start by killing off their horses so they can't escape. The Witch necromancer resurrects the horses, jumps on one of the undead horsies, and yells to her comrade : "Jump on these horses if you want to stay alive !" The Paladin of Iomedae looks at her for a few seconds. Before muttering "may my goddess pardon me" and jump on one of the zombie horses.

• Book 3 : PCs were not discreet in the abandoned town and trigerred every encounters at the south of the map. This resulted in the random spawn of one cultist and 15 undeads. How did they manage to kill them ? The Hunter got on his Roc and flew, while the Witch used Fly on her and the Paladin of Iomedae, and then the Witch casted Black Tentacles on the ground. With the Warpriest of Desna in the middle of the zone. And the Warpriest failed his save. Ensues hentai references. The cultist will forever be remembered as "Bob, the cultist with 15 undeads, who went a little too trigger happy with his Animate Undead wand".

• Book 4 : Paladin gets attacked by a swarm. Hunter casts Resist fire on him, and then summon a bunch of Small Fire Elementals who proceed to do a group hug with the Paladin.

• Book 4 : The group lets a Necrocraft babysit the baby they just found.

• Book 4 : "F*ck, I don't have any Teleport spells left." - The Witch in front of the Spawn of Shub'Nigurat.

• Book 5 : The group finds the hag's skull and turns it into dust. But not before wondering if they can turn it into bone meal, bake it, and eat it.

• Book 6 : In the middle of Virlych, the Witch and the Hunter cast multiple spell to create a little hut at the border of a little pound, surrounded by berry schrubs. In the middle of Virlych.

• Book 6 : After discovering that the giant doors in front of Gibet is made of adamantium, one of my players tried to calculate its price... (Aproximately 150 000 000 GP) They begged me to take the doors and resell them.

And you ? Do you have fun stories to tell about your campaign ? :)

How many scenarios will be in this core set ?

Just one thing that is bothering me with this particular scenario...

Why would the paladins of Vigil, the paladins supposed to keep watch on the Virlych, would not believe that the Tyrant has woken again ?

I don't need a clear answer to this question, but what I wish is that the authors thought about a good reason for this. I hope those paladins are not being dumb just for the plot.

So, the playtest will end in three weeks, is that it ? I will only do my second session next month =(

Don't forget the Philosopher's Scone. You can either mix the scone's crumbs to an infused true tea of life to create an elixir capable of completely healing you and allowing you to learn the "English (Great Britain)" language with a flawless accent, or spend a month of dowtime to apply it to lead to create mold.

Edit : Also, Aeon Scones.

Porridge wrote:

I’m definitely a fan of the simplified death DC. I’d also be fine with many of the variants suggested here, such as having the DC take Con and/or Fort proficiency into account. But IMO, not having to slow down the game to work out/look up the DC whenever someone goes down is a big quality of life improvement.

I figure if they do keep flat DC but allow Con and such to lower your personal DC, they would just have an entry for that on the character sheet and in the monster listings. :) That way the player and GM could see at a glance what a creature needs to roll to recover from dying.

Wait, monsters are affected by dying rules ? e_e I thought monsters die/get knocked out instantly once they reach 0 HP, unless the DM says otherwise. Having an ennemy priest constantly wake up their buddies or having to roll for each goblin's stabilization check seems like a hassle =S

Anyway, I don't really mind if Con lowers your personal DC. I like the simplicity of a simple flat DC + dying. Adding Con/Fort to the mix makes it a bit more complicated (not as complicated as building an airship, but it adds another parameter to the mix) and, as I said, it makes not maxxing Con a double punition, but I guess that if Paizo makes this change, I wouldn't particularly mind.

Still, I agree that we'd need somewhere on the character sheet where to write down at what stage of dying and/or the DC (if we add the Con/Fort option). If I remember correctly, D&D5 has something like that on their character sheet. But the current character sheet already seem pretty complicated for me. Making conditions cards/tokens could be an alternative solution.

I don't see how the new dying mechanic is "demonstrably disfunctional", and how the fact that a sequence where you roll for 5 rounds is "horrible". Of course you can roll for dying save for 5 rounds, whatever the system.

According to Joe M's maths, your chances of staying at "dying" drastically drop the more rounds go, and both your chances of stabilizing and being dead raise at the same rate. To roll for 5 rounds, you need to be extremely unlucky, and you have more than one chance out of two to have woken up earlier.

You also forget to take into account that Pathfinder isn't a solo game. You're down ? Someone else will try to come and heal/stabilize you while the rest of the group keep the danger at bay as best as they can. Even if you have a medic or a healer, always carry emergency potions with you when you go adventuring, with everyone having at least one potion on them so that anyone can always come and make them drink it while they are unconscious. In five turns, someone should have tried to wake you up. At least that's how all of my groups play.

Edit : Plus, keep in mind that succeeding your stabilization check only makes you not dead. You don't wake up immediatly. Not until someone heals you or 10 minutes have passed. So rolling for 5 turns after being knocked down is no different from rolling for 1 turn or 20 turns, since you won't wake up and go back to fight anyway.

I like the new rules. It's easy to understand. Plus, you are already punished from a 8 Con by having way less HPs than a character with 20 Con (a delta of 6 HPs per level, accumulating to 120 HPs at level 20), and thus dying more quickly. Having to do a Fort save feels a bit like a double punition : you get to Dying quicker AND you can't stabilise yourself.

Dying as easily from a goblin scratching you than a dragon breath doesn't seem weird to me. If the goblin put you down to 0 HPs, this means you were already really low on HP (which would translate to bleeding everywhere, with slices and bruises all over your body, only your will to live keeps you standing up, and just a push would be enough to make you fall at this point), or low level (in which case a dragon breath would obliterate you anyway under the Massive Damages rules).

Thebazilly wrote:

TiwazBlackhand wrote:

And for your fungal themed druid, Cone of Mold

I prefer Cone of Scold, for the times your party is misbehaving in the grocery store.

Cone of Gold. Your money problems are over now.

Just throw money at your problems !

A food genius! The Lard. His specialty is pig fat.

Would they gain the ability to craft Bacon Shots at level 3 ?

Hey hey ! I wanna play too ! =D

*rolls dices*

Hmm... a Keen-Eared Elf Street Urchin Fighter. My dices are feeling classic today.

I would probably be some kind of brute for a thief guild, or a mercenary, whose main job is to scout, guard and scare/hit things if needed.

Stats :
STR 16
DEX 16
CON 12
INT 12
WIS 10
CHA 12

My goal was to max out Strength at first, but I also wanted a good Constitution to take more hits. Dex came as high nearly on its own. And a bit of Charisma to help with intimidation.

Skills (by order of importance) :
1 : Intimidation
Class : Athletics
2 : Thievery
3 : Stealth
4 : Society
5 : Acrobatics

Some well round out street fighter. I'm really glad the fighter now gets 4+INT trained skills, it helps making a fun concept not revolving around Athletics and Acrobatics only. I would probably increase Intimidation as I level up, followed by Athletics and then Thievery.

Feats :
Nimble (no other lvl 1 feat except Weapon Familiarity was particularly fancy, and Weapon Familiarity is not needed for a Fighter)
Sudden Charge (can be swapped with Combat Grab if I end up using a one-hand weapon, but Sudden Charge is a more safe pick since it doesn't have requirements)

:)

I only played Lost Star with my main group (one month after everyone), and I'm just after zone B4 with one player playing four characters...

I'm part of a club, and it is impossible for us to follow the playtest's pace. We can only meet the weekends because 5 out of my 6 players are working. Since we are a bunch in our club, we are part of other campaigns (which are deemed more important than the playtest by everyone since they are more fun to play and we are more invested into it, me included), so I have to juggle with that. Plus, there are times when we do club activities (such as helping out at a convention) and when we just want to lay down at home and take a rest from our week, after a month of doing nothing but RPGs all weekends. We can only make one session of playtest per month top, when we are lucky.

How did the party spend 31 Hero points ? O_o What are your criterias to hand Hero points ? I don't understand how a party could do so many heroic deeds.

Hi everyone :)

Two weeks ago, we finally got the chance to play Lost Star. I will post about Doomsday Dawn from now on, with a breakdown of the characters, how the sessions went on, and some afterthoughts.

At the end there will be a section named "GM's questions". To keep this thread clean, I will link each question to a thread on those forums, so you don't have to post the answers here and they can be available for everybody :)

Before we start : all future characters' sheets created for this playtest will be available here :D You will find my player's sheets and some extra experiments.

The players

GM and reporter : Almarane : experienced PF1 GM and player

Players :
• Littlerogue : experienced PF1 and various tabletop RPGs GM and player
• MM : novice PF1 and various tabletop RPGs player
• Damann Lorem : novice tabletop RPGs player, has never played PF1
• Zukma : experienced PF1 and various tabletop RPGs GM and player
• Deoda : experienced PF1 and various tabletop RPGs GM and player

Players were given copies of their class and race’s chapters, as well as copies of the equipment, the feats, the skills and the actions’ chapters to use during play.

All players created their characters at the same time.

The characters

Chiros
Played by Zukma
Dwarf (m) Cleric of Thorag 1 [Esoteric Scion]
• Critical Success : 4
• Success : 17
• Failure : 10
• Critical Failure : 0
• Remaining Hero Points : 2
• Used Hero Points : 0
• Starting Resonance Points : 1
• Remaining Resonance Points : 1
• Starting Spell Points : 4
• Remaining Spell Points : 4
• Remaining 1st level spell slots : 1

Siri
Played by MM
Goblin (f) Alchemist 1 [Goblin Renegade]
• Critical Success : 2
• Success : 9
• Failure : 8
• Critical Failure : 2
• Remaining Hero Points : 2
• Used Hero Points : 0
• Starting Resonance Points : 4
• Used Resonance Points : 4

Lorem Ipsum
Played by Littlerogue
Human (m) Fighter 1 [Pathfinder Hopefull]
• Critical Success : 4
• Success : 11
• Failure : 11
• Critical Failure : 1
• Remaining Hero Points : 0
• Used Hero Points : 2
• Starting Resonance Points : 2
• Used Resonance Points : 2

Archibold
Played by Deoda
Gnome (m) Sorcerer (imperial) 1 [Family Friend]
• Critical Success : 3
IMPORTANT NOTE : Two critical successes were made on Perception checks (natural 20) when there was nothing to find, and the last critical success was an Electric Arc on the Mindfog Fungus which did 0 damages.
• Success : 2
• Failure : 9
• Critical Failure : 1
• Remaining Hero Points : 2
• Used Hero Points : 0
• Starting Resonance Points : 5
• Used Resonance Points : 0
• Remaining 1st level spell slots : 0

Eau-pâle
Played by Damann Lorem
Half-orc (f) Monk 1 [Mind Quake Survivor]
• Critical Success : 1
• Success : 12
• Failure : 17
• Critical Failure : 3
• Remaining Hero Points : 2
• Used Hero Points : 0
• Starting Resonance Points : 1
• Used Resonance Points : 0
• Starting Spell Points : 3
• Remaining Spell Points : 2

The monsters
• Critical Success : 5
• Success : 17
• Failure : 27
• Critical Failure : 7

The game

A full summary of the game (with actions and rolls breakdown until the bossfight) is available here.

• Preparation time : 8 hours (4 hours to read twice, 3 hours and a half to print and redraw maps, 15 minutes to screenshot and print the player survey, 15 minutes to make a document for an Assistant GM)
• Character creation : 3 hours
• Actual play : 5 hours (1 session)
• Number of Hero Points given : 5 points
• Number of Hero Points used : 2 (used for a reroll)
• Number of times a PC was reduced to 0 Hit Points : 2
• Number of PC characters killed : 0
• Number of rests : 0
• Days taken : 1
• Update document used : 1.1

Encounters (in order) :
1. Sewer Ooze : defeated
2. Goblins in the crypt : defeated (one killed, three unconscious)
3. Skeletons : defeated
4. Drakus the Taker : defeated (Lorem fell to 0 HP)
5. Goblins in the crypt : Diplomacy check to stop the encounter succeeded, goblins fled the dungeon
6. Minfog fungus : destroyed
7. Giant centipedes : defeated (Lorem poisoned and fell to 0 HP because of it)
The Quasits were not encountered.

Other :
• The group did not find the owlbear claw but found every other hidden loot
• The fountain was not purified
• The Boneyard trap has been triggered and damaged 3 characters (another succeeded their Fortitude save)
• The group found the magic dagger but did not take it, thinking it was a trap
• The group received the blessing of Pharasma
• The group did not trigger the Poison Lock (used the master key)
• The group recovered the Star of Desna and the Notes on the Last Theorem
• The group talked about the Notes on the Last Theorem to Keleri

 
Players’ and GM’s afterthoughts:
• Rests and resilience: The group was gladly surprised they did not use any rest to complete the scenario. (GM note : It was probably due to the monsters making low rolls and combats taking 1 to 2 turns, except for Drakus and the Giant Centipedes)
• Shields: The players liked the new shield mechanics, but they said they found the shields fragile and were disturbed that Raise a Shield cost an action.
• Fighter: The players found the Fighter interesting compared to PF1.
• Level of difficulty: The group found Drakus too hard for a tutorial (especially because of his bludgeoning resistance), and the other encounters too easy. They felt like killing Drakus without having a dead character is somewhat of a miracle, and they were not surprised when the GM announced other parties had TPK at this battle.
• Dying: With the presence of a positive energy channeling Cleric, an Alchemist who could make healing elixirs and a Gnome who could cast Stabilize as an innate cantrip, the group felt like it was impossible to die and never felt in danger.
• Poison: They found the poison quite strong.
• Characters’ usefulness: the group found that Chiros and Lorem were the two most useful party members. On the opposite, the other players felt useless most of the time. We talked about that, and it seems it was mainly due to the fact that Chiros and Lorem were good melee fighters with good tanking and could take hits, for the rest of the party, and could pack a punch during fights, while the rest of the group lagged behind in term of damages and utility: Archibold failed his two 1st level spells and most of his cantrips while using every Arcane Surge he could and being an optimized caster ; Siri had to be weary of not hitting her allies and felt like her bombs were useful, but nothing else from her character was ; and Eau-Pâle did less damages since she was unarmed and was a Dex-based Monk. Someone said it may also be because they were 5 players instead of 4.
• Arcane Surge vs Ki Strike: Arcane Surge needs one action and Ki Strike is a free action, while they seem to have the same effect. This was frustrating for the Sorcerer. Even so, the Monk hesitated to use her Ki Strike multiple times, but ended up deciding it was not worth it, except once.
• Alchemist’s bombs: bombs being a limited resource while still being the main damage option for the Alchemist was frustrating, forcing Siri to use her Hand Crossbow more often than her bombs. Unlimited bombs (like unlimited cantrips and unlimited representations) would have greatly helped enjoy the Alchemist’s flavor, even if they were less powerful than normal bombs or than a crossbow.
• The Cleric became a Paladin: The Cleric was probably the most useful character from the party, with good damages, training from his deity, good tanking thanks to heavy armors and shields, and healing. In the end, he felt more like a Fighter with healing abilities or a Paladin than an actual spellcaster on par with the Sorcerer, or other spellcasters who have a hard time competing in terms of weapons and armors.
• The rules are hard to understand for everyone: The group stated that the rules were horribly hard for new players to understand, and horribly hard for old players because of the change rules.
• Door-Monster-Loot: The group felt quickly bored with the Door-Monster-Loot dungeon. Most of the players accepted that because it was a playtest scenario, but some expressed disappointment about it, feeling like most Pathfinder adventures were like that.
• Player knowledge vs character knowledge, and Take 20: The group was frustrated about the polluted fountain’s enigma. They knew there was something in the fountain, but since they all failed their Perception checks, their characters could not know it. The GM decided to play this scenario RAW and did not allow another search check until the context changed (which never happened). During the session’s recap, someone said nobody tried to Take 20 in the fountain. When the GM announced that Take 10 and Take 20 were removed from the game and talked about the Assurance feat, the players expressed disappointment and did not understand why it was removed.
• Action/Reaction system: The system is interesting, but the players found that what you could do was not flexible enough, depending on your character’s class (3 out of 5 characters did not have reactions, while the remaining 2 had two reactions) (GM note : it may be because they were only lvl 1 characters. We will need to play at higher level to find out more). It felt like PF2 was aiming at being more and more simulationist (and it was not necessarily a bad thing, but it was not making the game easy to understand). Nonetheless, they were pleased with this new system and found that having 3 actions allowed more modularity than the old system.
• Magic system: The spellcasters liked that you could modulate your actions for some spells (in this instance, heal) to make them more or less powerful, and that your spellcaster bonus would add to the spells’ efficiency. The Cleric liked that you could cast spells at higher level, while the Sorcerer did not like that. We are waiting to see how this plays out at higher level.
• Aid/Assist: It took the group a long time to understand how Aid worked, and they felt like it was too hard and not useful enough to use. Assist was hard to use for spellcasters too because they had to go next to the enemy and hit them with an attack, which was unlikely for the Sorcerer.
• Focus action: Someone suggested to add an action to focus on your next action, giving you a bonus on your next action. This would help to make hard actions during combat at the cost of an action.
• Monk not trained with weapon: The Monk would have liked to use some basic weapons against bludgeoning-resistant enemies. Using weapons untrained felt too inefficient. The players missed that monk weapons were behind a feat. Maybe add a limited range of weapons available as trained for every monk to be able to attack bludgeoning-resistant ennemies.
• Recall Knowledge takes too much time: Recall Knowledge as an action felt too taxing for players, who said they felt like it was not useful enough for its cost. They would like it to go back being a free action, or a reaction to take the time to think about what it is and tell other characters.
• Confusing character sheet: The character sheet was confusing. Players were surprised it was a landscape format. (GM note: Luckily the new character sheet seems to resolve most of those problems. We will see next session)
• Hero points: The group felt that they were useless. Only one character used it to reroll. There was also a small debate over morale implications of giving out Hero points for out-of-game actions, especially since they are limited in online games.

GM only afterthoughts :
• Monster capacities in damage blocs and Drakus’s grab: I thought for the whole fight against Drakus that the grab after his claw attack was a free action, while it was in fact an action. I am used to PF1, where this way of writing means this is a free maneuver, while in PF2 this means it costs actions and is an automatic success. The confusion in PF2 is even legitimate when those maneuvers are written in the same way as poison, which are not automatic. An action symbol was missing, and maybe it should have something like “automatic grab” written instead. That would have cleared that for me.
• Recall Knowledge: It was hard to adjudicate which skill was the good skill to use for Recall Knowledge and Identify Magic Item. In the end, I made the Sewer Ooze be a Nature check and Drakus an Occultism check. I also ruled that you could identify a magic item mimicking a spell (like scrolls and wands) only if you had the skill linked to the spell’s magic tradition, and other magic items could be identified with any skill.

GM’s questions :
• Bite: Unlike Fist for the Monk, the Bite from the Goblins’ feat is not listed anywhere. What its stats are supposed to be ? I ruled them as doing piercing damages, and having no trait.
• Special senses: There was nowhere to write down special senses in the first character sheet. The new character sheet has not corrected this issue.
• Pouches: Do Backpacks and pouches add bulk you are able to carry to your encumbered and maximum limit ? Or do they just store bulk with no changes to your limits ?
• Thrown and ranged weapons: Are thrown weapons such as shurikens retrievable, or are they lost after use? Same questions about ranged weapons with arrows and bolts.
• Attack spells and multiple attacks penalty: Is it intended that spells with the Attack trait (and particularly ones with no attack rolls) count toward multiple attacks penalty? => Yes, they count toward MAP, this has been answered here.

Can you retrieve thrown weapons such as darts and shurikens and ammunitions for ranged weapons, or are they lost once used ?

I'm in favor of putting "problematic" spells such as Scry, Teleport, etc etc... in the uncommon list. For new GMs, that means the players will have to ask for those spells to them, thus reducing the "surprise" effect, and the GM will have time to read and search about those spells. For experienced GMs, they can rule that those spells aren't uncommon in their settings (or rule the rarity rules out of the spells if they want to).

Edit :

4. Decrease the casting time of at least some of the attack cantrips to one action. If the cantrip is doing less damage than a weapon attack and requires an attack roll I do not see what would be unbalanced with letting a caster cast more than one. Just add on the multiple attack penalty and it is unlikely to cause a problem.

Aren't those Attack cantrips already subjected to the multiple attack penalty ? I thought all actions with the Attack trait were subjected to and increase this.

Edit 2 :

Just checked. It seems like Acid Splash is the only "attack" cantrip without the Attack trait.

Unfortunately with Golarion lore not being built off of 3.5 lore - It still is, as elements of 3.5 lore that Paizo created are still present in Golarion with references to people, places, and events.

I was going to make a long answer to your post, but after re-reading it, this sentence made me change my mind. Pathfinder is not D&D. Golarion is not 3.5 lore. They created their own setting with 3.5 rules. That's all. As long as you don't understand this, nobody will be able to change your mind. Sorry if I seem harsh, but I'm tired of fighting windmills.

You want LG only paladins ? Make them be LG only in your game. Knowing other tables allow non-LG paladins is enough to make you want to stop playing Pathfinder ? I don't know what to say.

*bails out of this debate*

The point is, we are discussing if this alignment restriction should go or not. Using the fact that it is currently alignment restricted to justify it being alignment restricted in a discution about removing the alignment restriction does not make sense in this debate.

Also, I was not pointing at "All can choose without restriction", just at the fact that they are common, and thus you have the same chances to meet a paladin, a fighter and a wizard...

On the topic of "number of paladins in a city" : did you know there actually is a 100-paladin army in the Worldwound ? Yeah... Mendevian cities have bigger numbers of paladins than Magnimar. Because Magnimar does not need Paladins. And I would not be surprised if Lastwall was 100% paladins. You forgot to include geopolitical factors in your calculation.

Plus, you made assumptions without any proof to base them on. First by dividing the number of people with a class evenly (which would not have been a problem if you did not count restrictions later on your calculation, reducing the number of potential paladins). Then by, once again, invoking the alignment restriction to remove a total of 33.25 + 37 = 70.25 characters. And finally by saying there are an equal number of people of each alignment - which is definitely not true - after saying 50% of the population is neutral - which is contradictory with what is said after.

I'm sorry, but your math doesn't make sense.

And Golarion is not built off D&D3.5 lore-wise. It is a completely different setting. I'll reiterate my example : Bioshock does not have the same lore than System Shock 2.

Almarane wrote:

I don't know if this has already been said or not, but in the Classes survey, there is a question asking what alignments Paladins should be allowed to have ;)

Edit :

Quote:

It is special because of its uniqueness and rarity.

It isn't something you could just choose to become, you didn't just go to an academy and study, you either were or were not a Paladin.

I'll get to Antipaladins in a minute...

If the class is opened, in any way, that uniqueness is lessened. Open it up? Well now it is just a class.

You.... do know the Paladin is supposed to be just a class every player can take, right ? And now with the rarity system, they are supposed to be a choice as common as wizards and fighters ?

I feel like you are mistaking the Paladin for some sort of Prestige class... =/

And even without alignment restriction, Paladins are still pretty special thanks to their class abilities and their class feats. They're the only ones with Retributive Strike and the Ally abilities, for exemple.

Edit 2 : And Paladins get their powers from gods in Pathfinder. You are thinking about D&D there.

1. Pathfinder is a D&D derivative legacy product.

Yeah, "derivative". Pathfinder is NOT D&D. Nor a spin off. Nor a fanfic. Or we would be fighting beholders.

It's like saying Digimon has to follow Pokemon's lore because you have approximatevely the same gameplay. Or, for a better comparison, System Shock 2 and Bioshock, the latter being the spiritual ancestor of the former.

2. Paladins in PF were rare by the lore and by dint of having alignment restrictions were, by mechanics, not available to everyone.

They never seemed rare "by the lore" to me. It's one of the classes I see most comonly in play. There is litteraly 3 countries in Golarion filled with Paladins (Mendev, Lastwall and the Worldwound).

3. We have not seen any part of PF2 that says they are more common now or that they are intended to be available to everyone. In fact since (at present) only lawful good characters of specific gods can be Paladins that shows they aren't available to everyone.

From the "Common Ground" blog post :

Common

Something is common if it's ubiquitous in its category, like any of the core races and core classes, longswords, fireball, bracers of armor, and the like. All characters can select common options without restriction.

I don't know if this has already been said or not, but in the Classes survey, there is a question asking what alignments Paladins should be allowed to have ;)

Edit :

It is special because of its uniqueness and rarity.

It isn't something you could just choose to become, you didn't just go to an academy and study, you either were or were not a Paladin.

I'll get to Antipaladins in a minute...

If the class is opened, in any way, that uniqueness is lessened. Open it up? Well now it is just a class.

You.... do know the Paladin is supposed to be just a class every player can take, right ? And now with the rarity system, they are supposed to be a choice as common as wizards and fighters ?

I feel like you are mistaking the Paladin for some sort of Prestige class... =/

And even without alignment restriction, Paladins are still pretty special thanks to their class abilities and their class feats. They're the only ones with Retributive Strike and the Ally abilities, for exemple.

Edit 2 : And Paladins get their powers from gods in Pathfinder. You are thinking about D&D there.

Cyouni wrote:

I was under the impression that most people arguing against it in the thread were basically fine with how it was in 1E, and want a return to that, except the things that were completely and utterly broken.

I don't know what to tell you. The complaints being raised in this thread are against what's considered an overnerfing of spell casters. How you get from that to the extreme of "basically fine with how it was in 1E" save for things that were "completely and utterly broken" is not something I can explain, and those are strawmen that I have zero interest in defending.

My opinion on what needed to be changed for magic :

- Find a way to remove the "crossbow-shooting wizard" problem [corrected]
- Divination magic was broken. I have no problem with spells like True Strike, but being able to spy anybody via magic kills the fun
- Detect Alignment destroys plot twists, and I don't like alignment-oriented mechanics
- I don't like spells dealing effects depending on your alignment for the same reason
- Aligned spells you can't cast because you don't have the right alignment
- Some spells designed to be long-duration spells (Mage Armor) would benefit being directly having a 1 day duration [corrected]
- DCs were way too low, making a blaster less effective and a debuffer feeling like a trap option most of the time [corrected]
- Some spell lists made me sad [corrected?]
- Some higher level spells such as Miracle, Wish, etc etc... were ridiculously powerful
- Resurection spells should be harder to find (but that can be achieved thanks to good GMing) [corrected?]
- Save or die spells [corrected]
- Prepared spellcasting
- Race/Ancestry restricted spells [corrected?]
- Dispelling magic is too hard (except via AoO and readied action)
- Dispelling magic via AoO and readied action is too easy [corrected?]
- Summon Monster/Nature's ally lists being static, not taking into account new bestiaries, and dominated by Evil-aligned creatures, and the spell itself being not long enough if you are not a Summoner

Other things I did not ask for but I like in the new magic system :
- Spells with modular actions allowing to add effects depending on how many actions you spend
- With the good combination of actions, you can either cast one powerful spell or two simpler spells
- 4 degrees of success
- Traits that make it easier to get what the spell does and to apply effects such as resistance, immunities and enhancements

Things I do not like in the new magic system
- Less spell slots (I already had problems having enough slots to do something)
- Duration of spells seriously nerfed
- Heigtening system makes your low-level spell slots useless (at first I was okay with it when they previewed it, but not anymore. I can understand heightening for Baleful Polymorph and Heal, but not for Endure Element and Fly. In my opinion, they overdid it)
- Some utility spells never used are now even more useless (Phantom Steed, Prestidigitation)
- Sorcerers have to learn the same spell multiple times to have the heightened version of a spell, sacrificying versatility

@Makarion : Such a setting can be interesting, but this is not what Pathfinder is. You are asking for a low-magic system where Pathfinder has always been a high-magic one.
Also, technically, in Golarion, only legendary spellcasters can cast 5th level spells =P You'd need to be a 9th level wizard at best, and you don't meet everywhere. The most important NPCs I saw in Golarion tend to be 10th level on average, with the exception of the BBEGs and their minions. And those are people who's names are known through the whole country.

You know, I am actually working on adding conversions after every imperial metrics in my PDF file. I am currently in the middle of the barbarian chapter and it did not take more space (thanks to all those non-full lines at the end of each paragraph). I don't think you really need to cut out other content to make some space for this : you just have to add 5 character top after every measure...

Graystone : would it really be a problem if those conversions were added ? Would it prevent you from playing ? If not, would it slow down your games ?

Converting values on the fly tends to slow down my games. At least you can do it rather quickly after some years for foot to meters (and even like that it takes me some time, I'm not really good at mental calculation), but you always need to Google it for temperature because Farenheit and Celsius have no easy translation. It's even worse when you have to translate on the fly non-translated scenarios.

I think reading/ignoring two words takes less time that mentaly calculating.

Hmm, I get your point. And don't worry, I have no beef against you :) I do admit I felt a bit attacked, but I think it was mostly due to fatigue, both from the playtest and IRL. You did not mean harm : that's enough for me :) Sorry for misreading your intentions.

I agree with you that these forums are becomming more and more toxic. People I actually looked at as examples during the previews seem like completely different now. I think everyone's nerves are on edge right now due to multiple factors. Now I find it exhausting to read those forums, and I'm not even part of the dev team.

Now, for your answers :

1) You are making a point. The only thing I would say is that this does not give me the same impression... but it is pretty subjective, and my problem is greatly due to having been used to it in PF1 and the fact that PF2 is supposed to be a sequel to PF1.

2) I... did not think about it. Usually, when someone does something other than searching a room or identifying items, we tend to play it like "nobody else does anything". It's easier this way. But we never thought about letting the wizard ID an item while the rogue spy on the guards. I think this is because we are used to ID'ing being nearly instantaneous, and because we all are focused on "intense" scenes.

Also, even like that, ID'ing an item takes way more time than most other activities. Healing takes one round, maybe four or five more if you really need to. Searching a room would take you 10 minutes top. Instances of activities taking 1+ hour, such as spying guards, do not come up that often compared to finding a magic item.

3) Yeah... That's the major problem I have with most official modules :/ Don't misunderstand me, they are pretty fine, and most I played were interesting and fun to play. But I guess the traditionnal D&D/Pathfinder adventure can feel kinda... old sometimes ? They tend to be pretty static, with little indications telling you what to do if things don't go the way the scenario wanted it to. I guess experienced GM can easily change things and monsters' reactions on the fly, but when I started GMing, I was afraid of breaking the game balance if I chose to not follow the scenario's directives.