BretI's page

Hi everyone!

I’m completely new to Pathfinder and Paizo Organized Play, and I’m really excited to start getting involved! I’ve just started my first two adventures here on the forums and it's been a lot of fun so far.
I’d love to find a good beginner-friendly adventure so If anyone has recommendations for scenarios that are great for first-time players — I’d really appreciate your suggestions!
I’m still learning the ropes of Pathfinder and the online Paizo community, so any advice or friendly guidance is very welcome. Thank you so much in advance :)

For introduction to the Pathfinder Society and the various factions:

For raw fun in a quick game:
Bounty 4 Cat's Cradle (level 1 only)
Bounty 5 Witch's Winter Holiday (level 1 only)
Bounty 9 Fishing in Anthusis (level 1 only)
Bounty 10 Hillcross Roundup (level 1 only)

Series 2 Quest 20 The Dacilane Academy's Show Must Go On (level 1-4)
Series 2 Quest 22 Friends in Need (level 1-4)

I would add one piece of advice though if you go for a level 1-4 adventure, make sure there isn’t too big a gap in character levels. Being a first level character in a group where everyone else is 3-4 tends to be a lot less fun. The Pathfinder 2 and Starfinder 2 rules system doesn’t work well when character levels are too far apart. The low level characters can often find they are unable to be effective.

If you are using a published adventure and don’t like applying the Weak adjustment to everything, allow the PCs to be one level higher than the adventure calls for. It achieves about the same thing.

How often do you give out Hero points and under what conditions? Handing out more hero points can certainly help a group.

As the GM, you can also look over the group and come up with some items you feel would help them. I had already mentioned the Boots of Bounding and 2nd rank wand of Tailwind. If you have a group going up against 9th level threats, hopefully they are at least 7th level. At that point some interesting runes and interesting staves can come in.

Assuming you are not using automatic bonus progression, you should also review the players equipment. Has anyone not had a chance to get an armor potency rune? This is the time you could start giving them armor resilience runes. Has everyone who uses weapons got a striking weapon? Has everyone got an item to boost one of their primary skills.

If you are trying to do a low magic campaign, you should just use the Automatic Bonus Progression. The math in Pathfinder 2e really does assume certain equipment and lacking that does make everything harder than it should be.

Just to add to this, anyone playing a rogue should expect to go down more than the other classes. That has been my experience and talking to others they say the same thing. Rogues can hit hard and are great for skills, but they generally get knocked out more than the other classes.

Them not having a full martial (Fighter, Ranger, Champion, Barbarian, Swashbuckler) is going to make fights a little more difficult for them than if they had one. Experienced groups can work around this to an extent.

I would dial down the opponents a notch and maybe have some discussions about strategy.

If they are complaining about mobility, have any of them taken the Fleet General feat or ancestry feats to improve their speed? Have you considered dropping them a 2nd rank wand of Tailwind for the casters or Boots of Bounding for the martial characters?

@Violet-Jade,

I was really excited when first looking at the Faith Tattoo, but then realized it wouldn’t help. Since I am already sanctified that part of it doesn’t help. It does not make the Strikes Holy by itself.

The first time I read the tattoo, I thought it allowed casting any 1st rank divine spell. Then I realized no, it was the 1st rank spell given by the deity.

Trick Magic Item isn’t a good solution because you would need to have the scroll in hand, spend an action to Trick Magic Item and then use the scroll. Minimum of two actions in the same round, likely three actions if you include getting out the scroll. I realized that I would seldom do this.

If there were an item that allowed me to activate it to Infuse Vitality that would work for me.

Still would prefer a boon or item that just allows Holy characters to apply that trait to their Strikes.

Sanctioning is something that the community badly wants. I will note that Driftbourne's comment above that 'no one I know wants to play unsanctioned adventures' is a common complaint. Not sanctioning these adventures means that we don't run them in our...

We have tried running unsanctioned content at a few of our conventions. In general it is much easier to fill a table of sanctioned content than unsanctioned content. Although I am willing (and at times eager) to do things outside of Org Play, I have an unopened box of Murder in Metal City sitting in my gaming room because it isn’t sanctioned. I doubt that I will buy another of this type of adventure unless they become sanctioned — I am more inclined to explore other RPGs in order to bring more variety into my gaming.

APs don’t have the same requirements as Society adventures. The Mode of Play section of the guide explains this.

I do tend to run as close to the script as I can. Can’t say that I can recall any instances where I really pushed the rules.

APs are a very different thing. Running Agents of Edgewatch, my players had to patrol the beach and docks for a day. If my anime can have beach and spa episodes, I see no reason that I can’t bring it into a Roleplaying game. I also changed around one of the investigation segments to make it much more of a sandbox adventure. I felt it was way too linear and railroaded in the AP so I changed things around there.

Neither of those changes would be appropriate for a Society adventure. I made mechanical changes and added encounters not in the AP. They would still be within the bounds for “Adventure Mode”. Since it was Agents of Edgewatch, it didn’t matter any ways as that AP is not sanctioned.

I would like a boon that would allow someone who is Holy to make their strikes carry that trait.

Champions that are sanctified have this. None of the other sanctified options provide it.

War Priests and anyone taking the Mortal Herald archetype could be Holy, depending on deity of course.

Agreed that Weapon Infusion with Strength works really well. It gives a lot of flexibility for attacking, even with a single element. If you are doing this, build for the armor infusion that your element provides assuming there is one. If there isn’t, consider branching out to an element that provides that.

Single element is tricky as each element lacks something. Picking two elements that have different strengths allows you to adapt to the situation.

Also if they have too many AoEs, perhaps they should retrain one or two infusions from AoE damage to something else that would be effective against a single opponent.

I don’t know what AP you are running, but also consider changing around things slightly to put in a boss that is vulnerable to their element. Sounds like they have already had enough instances where they felt less useful, putting in someone where they are much more useful can make it feel better.

Let’s all do the time warp again!

Errenor wrote:

'Aura' trait has no meaning apart from possible specific and explicit rules interactions.

...

If the designers want these area effects (emanations) to works differently they must change the definition.

So... The two rounds of Errata (Core Rulebook 3rd printing, and Player Core Fall 2023) to add the Aura trait do spells that needed them but didn't have them... were just to make sure that critically needed reminder text was in place?

….or so many people complained about the missing trait that the designers figured it was easier to add the trait than argue.

At this point I am not clear on what the Aura trait does. The point about emanations going out from a creature is a good one for arguing that Emanations need to move with the target.

* Once the spell is cast, the emanation area is fixed relative to the ground because the effect does not have the Aura trait.

Could you please point out where this is said in the rules? I’m not doubting you, I’m trying to find what I missed.

Having said that, I will also go on record to say that I believe that in this case RAW is a troll ruling. I agree with Claxon that this should be run as though it has the Aura trait and that the emanation effect should affect 'you and allies in the emanation' so that the caster can be affected by the spell when they cast it on an ally.

I’m currently inclined towards treating it as an aura as it makes more sense and (as noted above) they have failed to put traits on spells. I think it becomes clearer doing so.

So the normal Rank 1 version of Protection is pretty straightforward. The touched target gets a bonus to AC and saving throws.

When you cast it at Rank 3, it gets a little weird.

Heightened (3rd) You can choose to have the benefits also affect all your allies in a 10-foot emanation around the target.

It becomes an emanation.

Does that mean that the allies need to stay within the emanation in order to get the bonus? Can those who move into the emanation gain the bonus?

The spell obviously continues to protect the target, but does the emanation move with the target? I think that is an aura (which is a specific type of emanation) rather than general to all emanations.

Rules references would be greatly appreciated.

Well, the idea is that it’s happening before the scenario timeline (at the Grand Lodge). The rolls simply happen here.

As I understand the rules, Learn a Spell is an exploration activity so in the scale of Downtime it could happen at any point. You had Downtime from the previous game so plenty of locations it could have happened in that downtime. Anywhere along the path that took you from your previous adventure to boarding the boat we are evidently now all on. Most likely that could include the Grand Lodge.

Forth is one of the languages that I didn’t like. We have parsers for a reason! I shouldn’t have to deal with reverse Polish notation!

Lisp is supposed to be very powerful at what it does.

Sorry, I never learned Lisp.

The mission to Akiton is in the special 3-99 Fate in the Future Levels 1-8 (Two products, one Levels 1-4 and one Levels 5-8)

It isn’t repeatable, but can be played once at 1-4 and (on a different character) again at 5-8. You also could use a replay if needed.

Notably blind Vlaka do not have the Blinded condition. That condition is for characters that are used to sight suddenly becoming blind. The blind Vlaka just always fail sight-based perception checks.

The Vlaka always having scent is one of the ancestries that I thought might support other senses over a comm unit.

So with the vast array of sentient forms out there with their various senses, just how full is the sensory data for a ‘normal’ comm channel?

We know it has video and audio capabilities.

Does the video include other wavelengths such as Ultraviolet and Infrared? Can you do a frequency shift on the video and/or audio in order to present frequencies that your senses can not normally detect?

Is there smell-o-vision?

Although humans have a limited sense of smell, there are plenty of ancestries that include scent as an imprecise sense. Considering humans have imprecise hearing, this idea really isn’t all that ridiculous for some of the ancestries.

How about tactile pads for texture?

What other senses should be represented? Do some of the races that detect thoughts find the normal comm channel lacking because that sense is missing?

If Paizo had any evidence to believe that GMs who would not otherwise buy the book are buying the book in order to run the adventure specifically for Society credit and that this is a significant factor in adventure book sales, then this decision would not have been made.

They have some data for Pathfinder 2, but I doubt it is conclusive and I have no idea what the analysis would show.

They can inspect the Org Play reporting data to get an idea how often people supplement their society adventures with APs and modules. They would want to filter out the FreeRPG Day modules from that.

They also have a few APs (Agents of Edgewatch comes immediately to mind) that are not sanctioned for Org Play. They could look and see if there was a noticeable difference in sales for those projects. Unfortunately there are plenty of other reasons that people may not have bought them so it would be difficult to say how much Org Play was a part of anyone’s purchase decision.

I doubt the data would be conclusive, but it should at least indicate how much crossover there is between the APs and society credit.

Fill in with all the normal qualifiers including past performance being no guarantee of future performance.

I think the most important part of this is slow track allows a friend to catch up while playing the same games.

I see a fair number of people playing mostly as a group. Usually this is either a family playing together or significant others playing together. They want to play those characters together most of the time. This becomes harder with the narrower bands of levels allowed in an adventure — only two levels. Without slow track, if someone gets out of sync they either have to play without any of the rest of the group (to catch up) or skip a session (to slow down).

Slow track would allow the people with more XP to slow down so the person that missed a session can catch up.

Katana doesn’t require expending ACP anymore either.

Character Options under Pathfinder Player Core says:

All Pathfinder agents have access to the following Uncommon options:
Ancestries and Heritages: changeling and nephilim versatile heritages (pages 76-79).
Items: katana, kukri, spiked chain and wakizashi (page 278); [NEW] scholarly journal, scholarly journal compendium, survey map and survey map atlas (page 292).
Spells: raise dead (page 352)

—-

Bola is an excellent idea. Tripping a creature should allow the group to catch up to them.

It would be kinda strange, but it looks like a build of sufficient level could go Captain America with a thrown shield such as the Meteor Shield. The damage would be on the low side but with a shield boss or shield spike attached it could work.

I would go with a different weapon until you could get it with a returning rune.

This would make it much easier to use a pendant in one hand and a shield in the other, with the Shielded Recovery commander feat.

This is purely theory at this point. I am much more confident in Trident with free hand and a pole for the pendant.

Yeah, the pole sticking out of the pack makes it easier to be able to switch-hit. Use a thrown weapon when there are too many others in melee and a melee weapon when you are the best front-liner. Could also use a ranged weapon, but the damage will likely be better with a thrown weapon because I expect that most commanders will focus on Strength over Dexterity.

Since Hmm is looking to use this in Org Play, she will never know what the group composition will be. She will want to be able to operate from either the front or second rank.

Trident might be a good weapon for her, it is a thrown weapon that does enough damage to be respectable in melee. She would want to get the returning rune on it as soon as she could.

The only tactic Hmm expressed initial interest in that has the Brandish trait is Strike Hard!

In order to make use of her Officer Medical Training, especially Battle Medicine, she will want a hand free.

It seems that there are no restrictions on the type of weapon you can affix a banner to. That seems strange to me — I was expecting it to need to be a spear, staff, or some other weapon with a long haft. Guess you can attach it to a dagger regardless of how silly that sounds.

The banner needs to be in your possession. I think that precludes putting it on a thrown weapon and having it active as you throw the weapon. Some GMs may declare since you no longer are in possession of it squadmates become Frightened 1. There is even room to argue you would need to spend an action once it returns to activate the banner again.

I don’t like pushing the rules that far, I would recommend not trying to put it on a thrown weapon.

I think that I would put the banner on a pole that I had sticking from my backpack and draw it when I thought I would need to brandish it.

Second: With regards to Bloodmoon (both tiers), in relation to Reactive Strike: The high tier Empowered Bloodmoon mentions that the weapon is Tiny but has reach. I'm assuming that the regular Bloodmoon (and the low tier Empowered Bloodmoon) do not have reach?

The base weapon is a reach weapon. If you treat it as a Small or Medium creature it would have 10’ reach, which can be very powerful. Making it act as a tiny creature makes the reach 5’.

I would guess it is an editing error that the same text isn’t in both tiers.

I’m hoping that Flexible Spellcaster is one of the archetypes they allow into SFS2.

Although the Medic archetype would be really useful, I would really rather they do a high tech version of the archetype that deals with MedBays, cybernetic implants, and other such things. The non-magical healing options should be a lot better than in Pathfinder 2 / Golarian just because the tech is so much better.

Oh, and to echo another poster:

Poppets in Space!

I would say they just can’t use the invested item while in the Spa. Otherwise it would be too punishing to many characters.

As it happens, in my run there wasn’t any combat.

One of the players took an interest in the Appraiser having critically succeeded in their check to identify it. I had them give me a sense motive as they talked to the creature. This was during the round where they could question Minister Jo — the player decided to talk to the Appraiser instead. They rolled well so I had them notice how the creature was looking at Minister Jo’s bracelet.

While one of the players used deception to distract Minister Jo, another used Thievery on the bracelet. Then the fighter used Athletics to finish the process of removing the bracelet.

One little piggy left the market.

No combat?

I don’t see a good way to prevent the combat for A2. MUSTARD MARKET MADNESS.

Then again, I don’t see how anyone would know about the bracelet so they could event attempt anything with it.

This would be a late entry for Outpost, but if I were to run one of the following as CORE would there be enough interest to get a table?

5-13: Weapon in the Rift (5-9)
6-21: Tapestry’s Toil (5-9)
7-19: The Labyrinth of Hungry Ghosts (3-7)
8-19: Treacherous Waves (3-7)
8-23: Graves of Crystalmaw Pass (3-7)
8-24: Raid on the Cloudborne Keep (5-9)
10-11: The Hao Jin Hierophant (5-9)

I’ll add a few points to the several excellent points made above.

Simplicity of scheduling

When I got involved with PFS, I had a job that often made excessive and unpredictable demands on my time. Many of my friends also had schedules that were full and/or plans would change with little warning.

PFS was a way for me to play the game when I had time. It did not require me to compare my schedule with 4-6 other people in order to figure out when the next game was.

Now that I am retired my schedule isn’t nearly as hectic, but for my home games we still need to do a lot of comparing of schedules to try and find a time that works for everyone. There is very little possibility of a pick up game.

The ability to drop into a game when my schedule allows is still a huge advantage.

Rotating GMs

Many locations will have multiple GMs that will run the adventures. You can see how others manage their table and hopefully get ideas for how to improve your own games.

It also means that there is more room for people to try out GMing with a single, relatively short and simple adventure. They can see what it is like on the other side of the screen. I strongly feel that even if you don’t stay with GMing, trying it out gives you perspective that can make you a better player.

As others mentioned, rotating GMs also means everyone gets a chance as a player as well.

Pre-fab stories

It takes a lot of time and effort to do your own world building and planning of adventures. Yes, that means that you can customize the story to your group of players, but planning that also takes time and effort.

Although scenarios can take different amounts and types of preparation, it is still less than what I would need to do for a home campaign even when using something like an adventure path or module.

Good news for skittermanders who want to jump rope and wield a flamethrower at the same time: you are now going to be able to perform actions and use items with your other hands, but you can only wield items (such as shields and weapons) with your active hands.

So the definition of wielding something is in Player Core.

Wielding Items

Some abilities require you to wield an item, typically a weapon. You're wielding an item any time you're holding it in the number of hands needed to use it effectively. When wielding an item, you're not just carrying it around—you're ready to use it. Other abilities might require you to be wearing the item, to be holding it, or simply to have it.

I believe this means you can not use a comm unit (lists Hands 1) while wielding a shield and pistol in your other hands. I think it would allow for Grapple and Grab an Edge, but not a toolkit or Explorer’s cantine. In the case of toolkit, I am not sure if you could wear it and use it while you have a shield and pistol ready.

The rules change is a little better, but I feel the multi-hands are still over valued and this level of detail isn’t really needed in the rules. With these rules there are only a few times where the multiple arms are giving more than the swap action.

——

The rest of the changes sound good. I am glad they are reducing the price of weapons. Being able to have two to three weapons to choose from is common in science fiction and having to choose between accuracy and multiple weapons was problematic.

I have not played all of them yet, but agree that Q20 The Dacilane Academy's Show Must Go On is the longest of them. I also agree it is about three hours.

We have been able to run Q14 The Swordlord’s Challenge and Q16 The Winter Queen’s Dollhouse in a two hour slot reliably.

One and a half to two hours is definitely a sweet spot for scheduling these quests. If they run much longer than that it becomes more difficult to sell them as short adventures. This can be a big deal for conventions and stores with limited hours.

It shouldn’t say basic reflex at all since it doesn’t do damage. It should probably be Reflex negates.

I would rule an attended object would use the Reflex save of the creature that has it while an unattended object would automatically fail the Reflex save.

avagdu wrote:

Now, if something has a skill or saving throw value of over 100, that's obviously an error, but if the number is "+112", should we assume that it's supposed to be "+11" or "+12"? Saying that GMs should fix obvious typos or errors is a great start, but there needs to be some sort of guideline for folks to refer to.

:AskYourGM:

sorry emoji don't work here

Serious answer: use your best judgement. If this is an attack bonus, I'm gonna look at what the monster is supposed to do. If they're a big bruiser, I'm giving them +12; a rogue or a spellcaster is getting a +11. I don't think I can give guidelines for how to correct obvious typos without going mad down an infinite spiral of possibility.

Perhaps the correcting errors could start with something being outside the expected values given in the GM Core.

You have a whole chapter of GM Core on Building Hazards and Building Creatures. If the Attack is listed as +132 for a creature, look at the Strike Attack Bonus table keeping in mind the Base Road Maps sidebar and figure out what the attack bonus should be.

You have an expected difficulty listed for encounters, you have challenge ratings. Using the information in the GM Core should help you not only figure out if the values are reasonable, but give an idea what the correct values should be.

People could also take guidance from the other tiers encounters to double check that the value is out of bounds.

This would also hopefully allow GMs to correct errors in either direction, where something is way easier than it should be. A Will save of +1 where you expect it to be double digits, especially if it is double digits in the low tier but +1 in the high tier.

umopapisdnupsidedown wrote:

I would also like to see a provision explicitly allowing GM discretion for enemies to retreat or surrender when it makes sense for them to do so. It's written into some scenarios but not others.

This is already explicitly allowed, though it could be clearer. Morale is a part of the tactics section, and tactics are one of the things GMs are already specifically allowed to change if the existing tactics no longer apply due to player actions.

I would like greater clarity on this as it wasn’t clear to me how much leeway a GM had in calling a battle.

I know how to do it. That takes two page loads.

There are other ways I could do it for myself as well, including things like making it a bookmark.

In order to make Play by Post more convenient on the Paizo forums, it would be nice if there were a “My campaigns” link under the My Account drop down that would bring me directly to the Campaigns page.

https://paizo.com/people/<insert user name>/campaigns

Hopefully adding to the drop down tab isn’t that difficult.

Yeah, I only have a few characters that have more than one of the mentor boons. Needing to get to Liked in two different factions means it takes a while — part way through 4th level at a minimum.

Each player receiving a level bump can receive the benefit from up to two mentor boons. Other than needing to qualify for each, there is no limit I am aware of for how many mentor boons a character can offer to those getting a level bump.

Note that the wording of the mentor boons states that the character receiving the benefit must be lower level, preventing those receiving the level bump from providing mentor boons to anyone.

The rules in the guide are here.

As for what the level bump gives, it is more than what you listed.

Any plans to update it for the Player Core 2 Remaster changes?

The big change is in generating Panache, but some feats changed names and there are other details that have changed.

How many Hero Points did we start with?

Two each.

If Tess is going to be our front line, that doesn’t leave a lot of time for healing in combat.

Why, what character were you considering playing instead of Atea?

So of the options mentioned, I think we are looking at:

Hmm
Tess, ancestry oracle 7

Bret
Tarcog, summoner 7 with dragon eidolon that can melee
or
Brekovi, wizard 7

Ira Kroll
BakBat, 7th level sorcerer

Farol
Xun Saburo, Bard 7 or 8

Jason R
Atea, cloistered Cleric 8, versatile font (harm or heal)

phaeton_nz
Luna Moon, witch 7

I can not see the Pathbuilder character sheet for BakBat so I don’t know what they bring to the table.

Atea and Tess both have Battle Medicine.
Atea and Tess have Heal while Xun Saburo has Soothe.

It looks like the group has fairly broad skill coverage although there are a few holes.

Although Brekovi fills in the group skills better, I think we probably need someone to support Tess in melee.

Shall I bring Tarcog?

Players are:

Hmm
Bret
Atae
BakBat
Farol
phaeton_nz

phaeton_nz wrote as Luna Moon

I've got the following:

7th level healer/cleric
7th level Witch of the Night - this one which needs levelling.
7th level elementalist
6th level Angelic sorceress
6th level fey sorceress
5th level cosmic oracle
5th level Baba Yaga witch
5th level Magus
5th level winter witch
5th level poppet wizard

Do we want to go high or low? Also offering 3 glyphs

I have a few characters that can do, depending on need

5th level champon,
5th level ranger/acrobat
7th level wizard/magabayyan cascade bearer
8th level cleric, her :)

Copied from Gameplay.

One of my other options would be to bring two dragons.

Dragon-Scaled Kobold Summoner 7 with Dragon Eidolon

I may have missed it, has BakBat said what they have for characters?

I believe you are correct.

On the other hand, it has no effect on the rewards of the scenario. If you feel like they should get the information, I see no reason they can’t get an update after the mission about the site. The flood of scholars would presumably discover it.

Given the information in this blog, I expect to be retraining out of “After You” into something more interesting. The change to gaining panache will make a huge difference when trying to punch above your level.

This mechanism also opens the possibility of gaining panache from casting a spell if they create a feat encouraging a swash/sorcerer combo. It could be similar to the Magical Trickster feat that rogue had in the original CRB.

Jonathan Morgantini wrote:

More lasers please!

Starfinder Playtest Feedback Survey, Question 1: Do you prefer...

A) Lasers
B) More lasers
C) Most lasers
D) Entirely lasers

Mazer-Laser-Phasor-Taser-Doshko please!

It’s a A Brand New Dae!