...If however you are of the opinion that the story is just that, aka a story that wants to be told, and will be told countless times as many different groups will progress through it, then perhaps you will allow a different point of view. ...
That to me is antithetical to the TTRPG experience. If the GM I was playing with (although most of the time I'm the GM) wanted to run games like this I would politely decline and find another GM. The PCs absolutely 100% should be the center of the story. What happens at any other table is completely irrelevant to the story being told with the PCs at your table.
Ubertron_X wrote:
...How do you build an adventure that is not only fun but also provides at least some kind of a challenge? ...
You follow the guidelines in the book. Moderate encounters provide moderate challenges, severe ones, severe etc. When the PCs want to rest, they rest, when they don't they don't. PC rest frequency is not something I feel the GMs should ever decide. That is 100% on the PCs. They control their characters, and their characters are the ones that decide when to rest. Things the GM set in place (encounter placement, dungeon layout etc) may effect what the PCS need to do to rest (retreat, ect), but it is always the PCs choice when to rest. They are the protagonists.
...This would certainly be beneficial for many players and groups who like to gauge their own performance, i.e. how did we do vs expectations...
...How many TPK's does it take unless you realize that 4 severe encounters back-to-back might not have been your best idea for your current adventure stage?...
... Can't imagine them not having some inhouse rules when designing new adventure paths or stand-alone adventures.
1. They can't answer this question because they don't have an expected baseline. Thats like asking how the protagonists in The Hobbit did compared to the baseline. Its a nonsensical question. It isn't a race. The adventurers handle encounters as the story flow and their comfort level permits. There is no above or below average. That would presume a right or a wrong answer, and there isn't one.
2. According to the rule book, a severe encounter has a roughly 50/50 chance of TPKing a fully prepared party. So you should never do them back to back unless your group likes that kind of story. They have already told you what to expect if you do it (50/50 chance of success each time, assuming full rest). What more do you need?
3. I'm pretty sure they don't. They have already said they don't. (see James Jacob's quote posted multiple times in this thread) Why is it so hard to take them at their word?
Look, this boils down to Paizo being completely silent on a frikkin huge factor in how the game sets the difficulty.
Please tell me y'all don't think it's unreasonable to question that?
I do think the question is a bit unreasonable. Paizo isnt being silent on a huge issue. This is an incredibly minor issue, that honestly would have never even occurred to me as a problem that anyone would have had until it was brought up in this thread.
I've been running games for almost 30 years now, typically as the primary GM of my group. I don't think I have ever forced any kind of pacing on groups except in the rare occasion when an adventure calls for it, and even then its usually on the scale of days/weeks/months, not minutes/10 minutes/hours.
When the players want to rest, they rest. When they don't they don't. Its not a GM decision, its a player decision. If that resting would logically have story consequences, it has story consequences. But the resting or not isnt something that should be up to the GM, but the players.
So for examples:
The last 1e AP I ran was Return of the Runelords. Something was obviously going on behind the scenes, and the PCs could perceive the effects of it, but didn't have a firm idea of why. This lead a rushed feel to the game, a frantic pace that the PCs enjoyed. But even still the rushing was on the scale of days. During the course of adventures, PCs would spend a few minutes healing up after fights and carry on. Once the casters were running out of slots, they would pull back and set up camp, frequently using spells to secure their camp. (Alarm, Magnificent Mansion, etc) There were a few times when the dungeon they were in was already occupied and time mattered, so they didn't get any full days rests in those, but still had basically all the time they needed between encounters. If what they were doing was loud enough for someone somewhere else in the dungeon to hear it (it happened several times) they would end up fighting most of the dungeon at once.
Now in 2e I am running a group through Extinction curse. There has not been a single encounter where they have not had a 10 minute rest after. Most of them they get several 10 minute blocks to rest and heal up. There is no good in world reason why they wouldn't. They are almost done with book one, and only once did they have to stop mid dungeon to recuperate. In that instance they went into a room, boarded up the door with heavy furniture, set watches, and rested for the night. They didn't know it at the time, but they had already killed everything in the dungeon that could have stumbled across them, but if they hadn't the probable result would have probably been the rest of the dungeon swarming their resting spot in the middle of the night. Because that is the logical in world consequence of their action.
No need for artificial pacing constrains. Let the narrative and your PCs drive the pacing.
The biggest problem when transitioning from PF1 to PF2 was not the goblin in our group but how to handle goblins as an "accepted" race in general. Even without some traumatic goblin wars to begin with our group more or less directly went from Rise of the Runelords to Age of Ashes and most players were: Wait, wait, wait, haven't those creatures been the baby-eating bad guys before?!
So the earth equivalent is saying "We just finished a game in France, where the local goblins were eating babies. Why does everyone accept the goblins in this game set in Italy?"
Well. Because you are hundreds of miles apart, and the goblins in Varisia are not the same as the goblins in Isger.
2e has done away with (the frankly ridiculous) idea of world spanning mono-cultures.
Why would goblins from one part of the world be exactly the same as those in another? In some areas, goblins are despised. In others they are welcomed with open arms.
I've played in 5 PFS sessions (at conventions), run about 13 (locally). Every single one has had at least one goblin character. Not a single one of them has been even remotely disruptive.
In our Extinction Curse game (first session last night!) one of the players is a goblin that was born into the circus, and is infact the circuses book keeper. He insists that the goblins have a rich written history that has been suppressed by the longshanks. He brings a bit of levity to the game without bothering anyone. (It is a circus after all)
My group spent several days clearing out the last section. The fight with the orcs completely tapped them and was almost a wipe. At one point 3 of the characters were bleeding to death with only the monk still up.
After that they stopped to rest for the night. The next day they went through the rest of the complex, and got to Vilree almost completely tapped. Fortunately they were able to finish her off with a combination of cantrips and bombs they found in the rest of the dungeon.
They also snuck up on her so that she didn't get her monologue before combat, and when they killed her, they didn't take her dying speech to indicate that there was anything they could do to stop the drudge. They just assumed she Ozymandias'd it and sent the drudge out that first night when they were resting.
Consequently they didn't chase after it and the town died a horrible death.
Overall I think the difficulty of the adventure was way over tuned. Someone went down almost every fight, and that was with a Healbot cleric, a champion with lay on hands, and a Chirurgeon alchemist.
In short, fantasy game or not, crafting has to make sense. No one can afford to sell items for 100% of the cost that it took to make them. So I created my own crafting rules.
A lot of people seem to be missing this, but PF2E is not, and was never meant to be an economics simulator, nor a physics simulator. It is an adventurer simulator. The rules are designed to accommodate and encourage adventurers doing their thing.
NPCs do not function by the rules in the book. They do their crafting and make their money and go about their lives, and the rules neither address nor care about how they do so. The rules only care about adventurers doing adventure.
GM: "The enemy wizard casts fireball. Everyone make a basic reflex save or take *rolls* 15 damage. If anyone has Fireball in their repertoire you know he just cast fireball. Otherwise all you know is that he just made a big ball of fire appear unless you use your reaction to make DC X Arcana check."
In regards to your first issue, you do realize that if the Archetype feat has the <skill> tag that it is a skill feat and is taken with your skill feats instead of class feats right?
As for the second. I'm not sure how you would have some feats not be better than others for certain builds? Thats the nature of the game. Unless you are advocating removing all roleplaying aspects from the archetypes, which once again seems like it would be stripping the base nature of the game itself from the game.
"One tread forth beyond the Eclipse, but without death yet in the world, this Prince became Bound to a throne in the Spire’s shadow to await his time."
I'm pretty sure it's the Oinodaemon (or his precursor? Things get fuzzy that far back in time)
As the neutral Evil progenator it lines up perfectly with daemons, further.
Furthermore the Temple of the Oinodaemon is located near the base of the boneyard (in the spires shadow) and lies under a great eclipsed Sun, said to be the prison (or the body?) of the Oinodaeom.
The listed deities of the 'First 8' are Pharasma, Desna, Sarenrae, Achaekek, Rovagug, Ihys, Asmodeus, and a nameless God bound to Pharasma's throne.
The Speakers of the Depths are probably the Proteans.
I'm not sure that Pharasma counts as one of the first eight. The way I see it is that each of the eight sides of the seal is one of the outside alignments (with Neutral being the center)
I would interpret it as
LG: Ihys
NG: Sarenrae
CG: Desna
LN: Achaekek (before he descended into savagery apparently)
N: Pharasma (Not counted among the eight)
CN: Speaker of the Depths
LE: Asmodeus
NE: Throne dude
CE: The guy that stepped off and got eaten by Rovagug (or just Rovy)
Because when I play the module with the new rules, my character is expected to end as a 4th level character.
And I only get one level of PFS credit for my “real” PFS character.
Playing the module with my PFS legal character under the new rules would be perfectly possible if we just got 3 levels of PFS credit.
Oh, I wasn't referring to XP given. On that I totally agree. This should either be one chronicle sheet with 3 levels worth of XP, or three chronicle sheets with 1 level of XP each.
I was referencing the difference between campaign mode and pfs mode, which i see as a totally separate issue.
Consumable use, death, risk/reward, continuity of story etc. Go read the link to the 2011 blog I linked for a more in depth explanation.
I still don't follow.
If I drink 3 potions while playing in campaign mode, I can cross those consumables off of my tracking sheet. (If you need to justify it, say you drank them at the beginning of the next PFS module you play)
If you die, you can mark your PFS character as dead. (If you need to justify it, say you died at the beginning of the next PFS module you play. Just pick a repeatable one and mark that you died.)
Following the above two the risk/reward is the exact same. You get the same loot, and your can still kill your character.
Continuity of story: you can still role play your character as having done all the things you did in campaign mode. How you role play your character is not regulated by the rules. Continuity of story persists.
No, there are diffeences. Pirate Rob's posts up toward the top of the thread spells them out.
I'm not seeing it. How is what I described not exactly the same as running it PFS mode? Just use all the rules you would normally use when running a module in PFS mode. Campaign mode gives you the freedom to do that.
Please forgive me if I am overlooking something, I've only ever done modules in campaign mode.
What is stopping people from playing their PFS characters in Campaign mode? Just make an identical copy of your PFS character, call it your campaign character, and play that? Then assign credit to your identical PFS character after the game is over?
Book 6 might be challenging. The first dungeon boss fight consists solely of creatures with Immunity to Magic. Not sure how this group would handle that, but for the most part they should be ok.
The intent of "encounter mode only" is to stop PF1 arguments/shenannigans where people were trying to walk around in a stance all day to avoid spending the action in combat. You absolutely cannot start combat in PF2 in a stance without the appropriate feat, it's a GM call whether you can use it outside combat to get noncombat benefits.
Sure you can
"The fighter and I spar as we travel, spending one action per round to walk, circling each other as we move, and one extra action every minute to take a nonlethal swing at each other." You can do this indefinitely. Probably move at half speed, but you were probably doing that anyway.
No you can't. Its explicitly called out as encounter mode only. Sparing with your party member while you explore is still exploration mode, and thus not encounter mode, and thus no stance.
nothing Heroic in selling every single consumable you find.
Who said anything about selling every consumable you find? In fact I specifically said selling consumables is typically forbidden in the games I play.
And quite frankly they probably should be in most games. Especially since in PF2 more control is being placed into the GMs hands. Not every merchant has to buy every item, nor have every item available for sale. One of the big talking points Paizo has been bringing out for this edition is putting more control in the GM's hands. This seems like an area where the Gm should take control.
You may not like it, but that makes it neither terrible, nor untrue. It is simply different from what you want.
You want a game where the rules define all aspects of the universe, but that is not the game that Paizo wanted to make. They wanted to (and did) make a game where the purpose of the rules is to create a system for playing heroic adventurers. Simulating things other than Heroic Adventurers is outside of the scope of the rules.
Its like complaining that you don't like chicken, so the wing place down the street is an objectively bad restaurant. You just want something different from what the owners want to provide. Neither option is bad or wrong.
Once again. The rules are not a universe simulator The rules are not concerned with who makes them. They exist for the purposes of easy loot to distribute. The rules for crafting exist for PCs. NPCs are not bound by them. The NPCs don't pay full price to craft potions, because NPCs don't pay anything to craft potions. The rules do not exist for how NPCs get potions. They do *something undefined* and potions come out. The rules do not care to simulate that level of non PC detail.
The market doesn't collapse because the market does not function on PC rules, because the rules are not designed to simulate an economy.
Do you know any Adventurer that'll go, "let me grab 4 potions of resistance for the 4 times i'll face fire", instead of "Let me grab a ring of resistance that'll use in my career forever"?
I don't disagree that adventurers buying potions is dumb. I'm pretty sure in all the years I have been playing I have never had a character buy a consumable beyond those necessary for the core functionality of a class (Scrolls for a wizard, wand of cure light for survival etc). For that matter, outside of organized play I am pretty sure I have never sold a consumable either. They get stashed away in case they are needed in the future. Most GMs i have played under have a no selling consumables rule, because, why would the general store merchant want that potion of barkskin? It will just sit on their shelf forever.
That being said, adventurers find consumables constantly and found consumables get used when needed. That is why they exist. Its easy loot to put on an adventure that doesn't destroy the long term balance of the game.
Such a bad market will naturally wither away since no one has a use of said market.
No it wont because once again The rules are not an economics simulator. The devs have said this multiple times. They are a narrative engine designed to tell stories about heroic figures going on quests. It is not a simulation of how the world markets work, it is not the physics engine of the world. It is a tool designed to tell stories about heroic figures. Simulating a realistic market is not and has never been a design goal. Constantly trying to make it so is an exercise in futility.
As it should. The player controls their character. This includes skills, feats, attributes, and all choices the character makes.
The GM controls everything else. Including item availability, what loot you can find, what loot you can sell, what shops there are, and what those shops are interested in buying.
Your character is for the Player, the world is for the GM, and items are part of the world, not your character.
The only benefit that I can see to crafting magical items yourself is that you can potentially obtain one in a situation where you are unable to buy one (such as when you're stranded on a desert island)--provided of course you are somehow still able to get the crafting supplies and formula first.
This assumes the PF1 standard of all items can be purchased everywhere and everyone is always willing to buy your leftover junk. While this may still be the case in PF2, I'm not 100% sure that it is.
It sounds like you want the game to be simulationist, when it is actually gamist. This general type of complaint seems to be rather common, as 3.5 and its direct descendants (except 4th) had very simulationist tendencies.
For most of these types of questions the answer is "because it makes for a better game flow, and gets the probabilities where the game designers want them."
That is to say, the rules are not based on simulating reality, but creating a fun game.
Name: Rozen
Race: Sea Elf
Classes/levels: Wizard (Necromancer) 15/Mythic (Archmage) 2
Adventure: The City Outside of Time
Location: The Palace Miasmoria
Catalyst: Disintegrated by Belimarius
The Gory Details: After making an alliance with the Rune Giants to storm Belimarius's palace, the PCs snuck past the guards, and ambushed her in her court. After a long fought battle featuring lots of Prismatic spells, many reflected spells and attacks (Rozen managed to Polar Ray herself earlier), and unfortunate Maze (the bloodrager rolled a nat 20 to escape almost immediately) Belimarius is beginning to get fed up, and so double taps Rozen with disintegrates (I gave her MR1 so as not to get instagibbed by the PCs). Fortunately the party bloodrager finished her off next round, and scooped Rozen into a bag. Fortunately they have scrolls of True Resurrection from waaaay back in book 3.
You enjoyed PF1 via a method that it was not designed for, but for which it was well suited (Making characters without having a game to play them in, ie theorycraft)
In the processes of improving the method for which it was designed (making characters with the intent to play them) it has made it harder to enjoy the product via your preferred method, even though that method is not the one for which the system was designed.
The devs of the video game seem to have a very loose grasp of how alignment actually works, and to me seem to mischaracterize Pharasma quite a bit. I wouldn't take anything that happens in the game to be reflective of actual tabletop pathfinder.
I believe he meant check with the GM (If you know the GM) or your local VC, not a VC of a convention you don't know.
Not that I have the issue (all my playtest points were recorded properly) but just thinking of my playtest experience, I have no idea who my GM was, nor who my local VC is. Most of my society play is at home with friends, or at far away conventions.
If you were a player, notify the GM or your VC, they may be able to edit the reported table. If its a table that was never reported, not sure. AFAIK they closed Playtest reporting.
How would you even find the GM or VC of some convention you went to 9 months ago? They are essentially just some random person by this point.
Name: Cora Dove
Race: Half Elf
Classes/levels: Occultist (Occult Historian) 14/Mythic (Guardian) 1
Adventure: The City Outside of Time
Location: White Death's Diadem
Catalyst: Stealing from Incariax
The Gory Details: Having snuck through Frozen Tears, one shot Lyraesia (well 2 shots, a Finger of Death and a Disintegrate), stolen her amulet, and infiltrated White Death's Diadem, the group was feeling very confident. They debated stealing the 50,000g worth of gemstones from Incariax, and decided they would wait until the last minute of the ritual to do so. With 1 minute left they pried out the gems. With the PCs being mythic I decided to have Incariax show up a bit different than the defaul scenario and rolled a d10 to determine how many rounds would be left in the ritual when he showed up, and got a 6. The PCs had to survive for 6 rounds while their witch finished the ritual. Cora, did an admirable job holding his attention for the first 4 rounds. Round 5, having realized that they had put over 400 points of damage into him, they decided to pause the ritual, and try and take him out instead. The next round Cora finally fell to Incariax's blows, fortunately she had Pharasma's boon, and much to Incariax's confusion, she ignored his fatal blow. The round after, they finished him off, absorbing his essence and hitting mythic rank 2.
AP's I've played that had precisely 1 session before falling apart:
Rise of the Rune Lords (GM)
Kingmaker (PC)
Skull and Shackles (PC)
Serpent's Skull (GM)
Skull and Shackles (again, PC)
AP's I've Completed:
Strange Aeons: PC'd this one we finished in about a year playing sporadically, sometimes 3 times a week, sometimes once a month.
AP's Currently in Progress:
Kingmaker (Again, PC): Just started book 2, been playing about a month, maybe 5 sessions.
Return of the Rune Lords (GM): Just started book 5, been playing since the end of September, and took a break during December. 2-3 hours once a week like clockwork. Looks like we are going to finish in just under a year of play time.
So it looks like if I get past one session things tend to go well. Its that first session that's a doozy. Also these were all largely with the same group.
Well, after all that, it ended up being a 130 damage Finger of Death from Erigantus that melted one of my members. Sorshen's fight was challenging but never really incredibly threatening, except when the kineticist almost got trapped in melee.
I believe level 9 should be the proper level for Korvosa though unless I'm mistaken? Were you running milestones or tracking XP? Also, I know James has already addressed it, but it's still funny to me how quickly you level up in this campaign - we almost hit lvl 11 and lvl 12 in the same session.
I use milestones. I find XP tracking far too fiddly. Here is what I use (note that I also gave my PCs a mythic rank after defeating Zutha, and have been up-scaling most encounters appropriately)
My Milestone tracker:
2nd: Clear Rodericks Wreck
3rd: Free the Dwarven Merchants
4th: Defeat Dolland / Get Runeward Gauntlets
5th: Defeat the Peacock Cult or Mozamer
6th: Defeat Viralane & Cora / Arrive in Magnimar
7th: Defeat Hira / Discover the Gauntlet
8th: Defeat Thybidos
9th: Defeat the Polymorph Plague (Magnamar)
10th: Defend the Manor House (Riddleport)
11th: Defeat the Peacock Phoenix (Korvosa)
M1: Defeat Zutha
12th: Learn the Viridian Transcendence ritual
13th: Reach the Temple Gate
14th: Reach the Refuge of Violent Vanity
15th: Defeat Lyraesia
16th: Discover the Time Anomalies/Defeat Solethex
17th: Defeat Belimarius
18th: Acquire Zinlun’s Skull
M2: Activate the Cyphergate
19th: Close 3 Temporal Wounds
20th: Enter Alaznist’s Demesne
Optional Mythic Bumps:
Defeat Incariax
Defeat Tawil At’Umr in combat
Defeat the Oliphaunt of Jandelay in combat
Close all of the Temporal Wounds without a single failure
Name: Rozen
Race: Sea Elf
Classes/levels: Wizard 13/Archmage 1
Adventure: Temple of the Peacock Spirit
Location: The Dungeon of Fiery Fury
Catalyst: Dhanishti
The Gory Details: Having started a fight with every Asura in the dungeon at once Rozen, the squishy necromancer, decided to run up and vampiric touch Dhanishti. One full attack later, she was very very dead.
Fortunately the Keeper of Stethelos showed up to undo that little hiccup in the time stream, leaving Rozen only unconscious. Fortunately the rest of the party Killed the remaining Asura before Dhanishti got a second chance to kill her.
• Monk fighters are great at combining unusual weapon styles. For instance, a monks isn't hindered by a restriction to keep one hand free, because they want to punch you with that hand anyway.
It causes so many problems when enemy humans of about your party's strength break the in-universe laws that you are bound to.
This is a problem I struggled with for years, but I think its important to remember that the rules of the game are not the in universe laws of physics. They are an abstraction designed for us players to tell an interesting story and to have fun while playing a game. Their primary function is to make the game fun, not to establish the laws that bind everything together.
Just because their is no rule for a thing does not mean that thing doesn't exist in the universe. And just because there IS a rule for a thing doesn't mean that it must always happen the way the rule lays it out.
I mean on the actual planet Golarion, when throwing a knife at someone 50 feet away, in universe you don't always have a 5% change of hitting regardless of who you are and who you are throwing at. A 3 year old with a knife will hit that trained soldier way less than 5% of the time. But according to the rules out of 100 throws 5 of them will hit on average. That's because it is an abstraction meant to create a fun game for us real humans to play. Not a physics simulator.
If you're losing a powerful class feature for a whole game session (say you're missing out on an extra attack as part of your full-attack action, as a random example I just thought of =P ) then it is acceptable to stop the game and argue, but you still have to put a time-limit on it.
If I am playing a martial character and the gm says I get one less attack than the rules say I do the time limit for arguing is exactly as long as it takes me to either convince them they are wrong or realize they will not be convinced. At which point the game would end because I would get up and leave. If a GM doesn't know the rules well enough to run the game, then I wouldn't trust them to run the game fairly. No gaming is better than bad gaming.
Its pretty much one of the core setting conceits of Pathfinder that prophecy just doesn't work any more. If you go back in time a couple hundred years ago in the setting, prophecies were coming true with pretty much 100% accuracy an there was nothing that could be done about it.
Now that Aroden has bit the dust *shrug* who knows. Maybe it will come true, maybe it wont? Prophecy is unreliable so that your PCs can have agency.
I've been running this AP as well and was really enjoying reading this to see how your group made different choices from mine. Our groups were pretty much perfectly keeping pace in content until the updates stopped.
that when everything got destroyed the only thing that was left was basically hard vacuum at all spacial locations. What would one day be the physical location of the prime material plane. Basically just big old empty outer space. Forever in all directions. Also Pharasma, the Seal, and Outer Gods (Maybe the Dimension of time, since it has been implied that it IS an outer god).
I get the impression that around this localized vacuum the Big Lady P build up the various spheres of existence (inner and outer) and just happened to catch some of those that remain inside it. So basically you get a bubbly of vacuum (prime) surrounded by larger and larger bubbles of new planes. Out side the last bubble (the maelstrom/abyss) you have even more vacuum where more of those that remain live. Which is also basically just the Prime (hard vacuum) again, but with an infinite quintessence bubble of this multiverse floating in it.
When this reality eventually ends, it gets exposed to that hardest of vacuums, and pops like a bubble.
Edit: Also forgot to add. This is an amazing book, definitely in my top 5. Great job guys.
My party ran through it at 10 and had zero difficulty. I can definitely see how it might be challenging at 8 though. I think that's why the book generally recommended doing the sections in order, so parties don't get overwhelmed.
For the Time flayer fight I stuck the Mythic Agile template on it and gave it the ability to teleport as part of a 5 foot step and they still destroyed it fairly easily.
The fight with the peacock phoenix was challenging mostly because it was both flying and incredibly hard to hit with ranged attacks. The monks were trivially dispatched (only hitting my melee PCs on a 20). The phoenix finally bit it when the party landed a hold monster to bring it down to ground level. Their lesser talismans of freedom from book 1 negated the beast's grab and the party made short work of it.
Are any of the core 20 deities currently or have they ever been Outer Gods? (assuming outer god is phenotypical and not sociological)
I'm thinking specifically the oldest ones like Pharasma (ancient, inscrutable, and more powerful than even the other gods) and Desna (mysterious entity with an affinity for the Dark Tapestry whose shadow is also a god level entity (Desna/Black Butterfly v Yog-Sothoth/ Tawil at'Umr)
For me, redemption is appropriate for relatively small things, not reigning as a blood-mad tyrant for thousands of years. And especially when the reason you're giving that up is not because you realized it was wrong, but because it got boring and might get you killed (not that it actually would, because you have a plot shield).
She didn't go from Evil to Good. She went from Evil to neutral. So its not like she did a complete 180%. She is still probably a selfish dick. She just isn't malicious about it any more.
Corrupting Touch is specifically a standard action normally, which is not compatible with Vital Strike. Do you happen to know which module it was?
Return of the Rune Lords book 3
I had a PC in the game I'm running die to the same thing.
Tiny spoiler for later in the AP:
I used some plot shenanigans from later in the adventure that I shifted to happen at this point instead in order to stop the character from dying. Because yeah... 10d6+vital strike, on top of an AoE stagger at the end of every move action. (And she has no other attack actions)
The tactics do call for her to stop making melee strikes once she gets below a certain HP threshold though, and once that happens she was largely useless against my PCs.
Full Name
Apteryx, Dowager Countess Mantelli
Race
Elf
Classes/Levels
Witch
Gender
F
Size
Medium
Age
157
About Apteryx Mantelli
Near permanently dressed in a black cloak fastened with a black cameo of an elven man, Apteryx joined the Pathfinders to follow in the footsteps of her brother, Ghyullin, who is presumed to have died on a foolhardy mission for the Society.
Apteryx, Dowager Countess Mantelli, is, to all intents and purposes, an elf but the humans in her heritage make her less slender than other elves.
She is the widow of the late Count Mantelli, a minor Chelaxian nobleman; their philosophical inclinations drove them to leave Cheliax and move to Lastwall to aid in the defence against Ustalav.
In the permanent struggle against the dark, she learnt much of herblore and healing and began to develop altogether more arcance powers...
