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No posts. Organized Play character for Derek Schubert.




Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Does a character with the skill feat Powerful Leap get any different results out of an Emerald Grasshopper talisman, compared to one without the feat?

The Emerald Grasshopper talisman gives a benefit when a typical character succeeds at an Athletics check to High Jump, but a character with Powerful Leap gets the same result as a success without rolling. The talisman doesn't seem to account for that. (Rules quotes below.)

If I'm GMing and a character has the feat and the talisman, here are some options I could see for myself:
(A) RAW, ignore Powerful Leap and make them roll the DC 30 Athletics check
(B) also RAW as in the High Jump wording, make them roll Athletics at a lower DC "due to the situation" (the feat and/or the talisman)
(C) make them roll Athletics but treat the result as one better because they effectively succeed at a DC 30 High Jump without rolling: a 21-29 "failure" would become a success and grant the 50ft Grasshopper leap, or a 30+ "success" would become a critical success and grant the 75ft leap
(D) not make them roll for an automatic 50ft leap, but they can roll and try for the 75ft critical success
(E) house-rule Emerald Grasshopper before this situation even comes up, and say that it enhances all vertical Leaps to be 10x higher than normal.

Thanks for looking.

Emerald Grasshopper wrote:

...Trigger You attempt a High Jump but haven’t rolled yet ...

... When you activate it, if you succeed at the Athletics check, you Leap up to 50 feet vertically and up to 10 feet horizontally. If you critically succeed, you can Leap up to 75 feet vertically and 20 feet horizontally.
High Jump (Athletics) wrote:

You Stride, then make a vertical Leap and attempt a DC 30 Athletics check to increase the height of your jump. If you didn’t Stride at least 10 feet, you automatically fail your check. This DC might be increased or decreased due to the situation, as determined by the GM.

Critical Success Increase the maximum vertical distance to 8 feet, or increase the maximum vertical distance to 5 feet and maximum horizontal distance to 10 feet.
Success Increase the maximum vertical distance to 5 feet.
Failure You Leap normally.
Critical Failure You don’t Leap at all, and instead you fall prone in your space.
Leap wrote:
The Leap basic action is used for High Jump and Long Jump. Leap lets you take a careful, short jump. ... If you make a vertical Leap, you can move up to 3 feet vertically and 5 feet horizontally onto an elevated surface.
Powerful Leap wrote:
When you Leap, you can jump 5 feet up with a vertical Leap, and you increase the distance you can jump horizontally by 5 feet.

5/5 ***

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I have a suggestion for revising the threshold between low and high subtier for Pathfinder Society 2nd Edition scenarios, based on the total Challenge Points:

8-15 CP: low subtier (no change)
16-18 CP: low subtier with 5 or 6 PCs, high subtier with 4 PCs (no change)
19-21 CP: low subtier with 6 PCs, high subtier with 4 or 5 PCs (new)
22+ CP: high subtier (raised the bottom value)

This would be a revision to Step 2 "Determine the Subtier" on the GM Basics page of the Pathfinder Society Guide to Play (Second Edition):
http://www.organizedplayfoundation.org/encyclopedia/pathfinder-2-0-gm-basic s/

My friends and I played a Tier 1-4 scenario at ConCurrent, in which the party had five 2nd-level and one 4th-level character, for 21 CPs (3+3+3+3+3+6). We played the high (3-4) subtier. We fled before the final encounter, mainly because the probabilities in combat were just too hard for the 2nd-level characters to overcome -- it was unlikely for us to hit our opponents or save against their effects, and very likely for them to hit us and save against our effects.
Under the 1st-edition scaling rules, our Average Party Level would have been 2.33, rounding down to 2.

Has anyone else found the high subtier too hard with a 6-PC party of mostly 2nd-level characters in Tier 1-4 scenarios, or mostly 4th-level characters in Tier 3-6 scenarios? If so, what do you think about this suggestion?
Thanks for reading.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Will you be GMing the end of Hell's Vengeance part 1 ("The Hellfire Compact") and do you want a set of maps/terrain to build the tree-fort in 3-D?

If so, ask me and I will mail mine to you. This terrain has already provided me and my gaming group with several hours of fun, but I won't run it again and now they're just collecting dust. I would like to give them to someone who will use them.

I redrew each platform on a piece of mat-board (extra-thick cardstock), cut them out with branching edges, cut out additional pieces for stairs and bridges, and made "trunks" (rectangles that I rolled into tubes 4", 6", or 8" tall) to support each one. I'll mail the pieces in a flat envelope, so you'll have to re-roll the trunks and then tape them to the undersides of the platforms. You'll also have to draw out the ground-level map (tree trunks) for yourself, since I drew mine on a battlemat that has since been erased. But the upper-level parts and trunk-tubes should save you a few hours of effort, and I hope your players will enjoy having the 3-D setup as much as mine did.

--Derek