Calpal's page

I have been playing in a dedicated PbP Discord server for a couple years now. It's very good for this purpose.

One thing that has been working well is using Threads to split off conversations here and there. Also works wonders for having dedicated secret channels for imparting information to only a certain person.

I would consider play by post on here but I would definitely need a lot of the suggestions from above such as markdown options, more images for avatars and colours.

Looking forward to the Nipplemancer being released soon.

Sorry, "Nipple Lord". Forgot the naming convention.

Looking forward to the Nipplemancer being released soon.

I already own them all but I might suggest this to some friends!

Great that this is coming out!

A bummer that I'll likely be almost done running the campaign by then :(

This month's subscription shipping hit a few technical snags as well as the expected pressures of Gen Con preparation. As a result, we will not be done with shipping today, but are continuing to work on it to get everything shipped as soon as possible. We will keep this thread updated with more information as we receive it from our Warehouse department.

No problem! We know you're doing all you can and working hard!

SO SOON!!!

Is the Pathfinder community toxic? No.

It is not a community except in the most tenuous of definitions. People who play Pathfinder do not have a common definition, do not follow a common social mores, nor have a common method of communicating with and correcting the behavior of others.

It would be more appropriate to say that social media users or, even more appropriate, specifically to the venue where the activity takes place are the community of interest: the Twitter community or the YouTube community. Those two communities may overlap but they are still distinct. Even more specifically, the Twitter posting community or the YouTube posting community, because even though I watch YouTube videos, I do not post comments. However, those still aren't really communities.

When a number of individuals related only by their opinion and the media upon which they communicate that opinion repeat an action, it is stereotyping to refer to a community of such superficially definition as toxic.

There are irritating or rude or mean or antagonistic individuals, but to define all people who happen to play a given game system by their posts would be unfair.

That said, it is a moment for each individual to consider and reflect upon their own posting habits.

This is by far the best response I've seen to this yet.

And my watch has ended!

I'm back into getting unreasonably excited every time I get an email.

We live in Canada where an R rating is considered roughly a "14A" rating. So we would play a 14A game at maximum. Quite often it would probably just be rated PG. Fist of the Ruby Phoenix is not super out there and the players aren't particularly gory.

On a side note, I always find the American movie rating system wacky and unnecessarily restrictive. You all need to lighten up!

This is some wholesome content.

I took a skim through that chapter (my players are only on Book 2) and it looks like the intention is that the locations and events in that book happen at the GM's discretion.

I don't think I would make my players role survival or use overland travel rules. I would probably just play up through description how they travel for hours and objects in the distance don't seem to get closer or how they go in circles for a while. Maybe make it similar to being lost in a fey filled forest when they are playing tricks on you.

If you wanted more concrete rules you could roll some dice to see how long it takes them to get between one spot to the next. Or have them make survival checks to estimate how well they are able to navigate through the changing landscape.

Either way, you're going to end up having them go to the events listed in the book, which is really the main point of the chapter. How they get there doesn't seem to matter as much.

I've taken a similar approach to this adventure path in general. I'm not making my players roll knowledge checks for magical items as this isn't really a grindy, dungeon crawl adventure. This is a lot of action with wild creatures and wacky high level antics. The thought of having them do overland travel never occurred to me, particularly for this magical island in a pocket dimension formed by a mad sorcerer out for revenge.

Ok, but how do I explain to the players that they can see where he is going clearly enough to follow him the right way, but at the same time cannot see him clearly enough to shoot him?

If it is going to be cinematic, it should not be producing a sequence that would end up on CinemaSins :)

It's a chase so it follows the chase mechanics. There should be an understanding at the table that when you say "this will be using the Chase Mechanics" that the chase mechanics are used. No different than any other chase.

You could make the exact same case for a chase through a mountain or a city street. Your gunslinger also can't just take aim at the creature they are chasing because it's a chase.

If you want to allow the gunslinger to fire then what you could do is have them shoot at rubble or have the attack count as their action during the chase. Maybe you count it as slowing Razu down and it's a victory towards completing the chase.

Either way, I think you are 100% overthinking this situation or not having clear conversations about expectations with the players.

It's wild that you read "The map purposefully does not include a scale; the mutable and unpredictable nature of time and space on Syndara’s Island makes calculating distance both impossible and largely unnecessary" and thought "this is definitely a problem".

I read that part and thought "oh, that is neat". It will never ever come up in play. If you didn't mention it to your players they would probably never know.

You definitely inferred that Syndara is constantly changing the island to suit his whims as opposed to it being mutable and unpredictable. Unpredictable means it can't be predicted. To me that also means that Syndara is not predicting it. Otherwise it would be mutable and predictable. The predictable part would be Syndara constantly making things too far away.

But ultimately, as Grankless has stated, there would be no story.

Truthfully, that isn't how I'm going to run the chase mechanics at all.

I wouldn't let the players take ranged shots as it's a chase. If they ask (which they won't as they have zero ranged support) I would just say that things are moving too fast/too bumpy/too far away/too much zig zagging for anyone to get a clear shot.

You've already done the chase though so it's a little too late for that.

I guess if they catch up to Razu then you (being more of a general anyone) could always say you can just start the last encounter and go into it. I mean, the PCs ARE supposed to win.

Personally I enjoy the chase mechanics. I've run them a couple times and they are fun to chase things up. But when I'm using the chase mechanics I'm using just the chase mechanics. They have to pass the checks for the tasks. I definitely allow for some creative thinking but it would be more like the gunslinger tries to shoot something out of the way to clear a path and then have them make an attack roll. That's more honoring the chase mechanics and letting the gunslinger have some pew pew fun.

Hmm, initiative is about how fast you react to combat, no?

Seems like it would become a bit too meta for me to do it that way, interesting idea though and you can really create strategy and tactics based on it.

My thought was sort of how Starfinder does starship combat where the better you role the better you're able to jockey for position. The pilot with the higher roll goes last so they can choose where to be.

Well, the Phoenix Challenge was a bust. Hao Jin had to quickly correct the rules to add that flying isn’t allowed, but just jumping over the area in two actions wasn’t a problem, and the person climbing the spire of Earth had a climb speed and did it in one round.

Since Hao Jin will ensure nobody is permanently harmed, there is no reason for every team not to volunteer for every event.

Oh, and it is a strange thing indeed for Hao Jin to “cast a spell to protect the rune giant from the heat, but not direct contact with the lava” because Rune Giants are immune to fire anyway.

Sorry, really not impressed here.

Being immune to fire is not the same as taking no damage from heat. Nor is Lava the same as fire. It makes sense to me that she would put this ward in place.

Also, just because a team won't be killed or permanently harmed doesn't mean it's "fun" to get beat up. If you are wondering why a team wouldn't volunteer to face the Rune Giant it might be that they just don't particularly want to face an unknown threat at this time in the day. Or they are trying to retain resources for unknown threats/opportunities later in the day (the same reason the PCs might not want to fight).

So does anyone have any good excuses for why Hao Jin gets taken out by the disintegrate?

I really want to make it clear that they were super lucky to do it and I think it would be hard to have her injured from before.

My take is that she took the hit, knowing she would be fine, so that she could see how everyone would react. She's constantly testing these teams and was curious what other teams would step up as a result.

I don't imagine my players to overthink things. I think instead they'll go "WHAT!?!?!?" and dig into the shock.

1-02: The Mosquito Witch is my vote!

I do really like the thought of having the Golden League strike during the Kaiju attack. Anything where you think the focus is one thing and then Golden League strikes out when you least expect it. Maybe you could have a rooftop battle with things crumbling around. Could even just go for a couple rounds before the building collapses and the party has to move on to the final fight.

I agree with Curaigh. You could definitely have another team be a Golden League plant. Or, you could have one of the assistants that are with teams or an enforcer with the tournament staff be a secret Golden League agent. While they're at the market or just after fighting a team you could have the assitant secretely talk to them. Then when you have the Golden League stuff happen in the second book it's driven home even more.

Unfortunately, I have two local gaming stores and neither are particularly reliable about stocking products. There isn't really any incentive for me to shop with them for Paizo products.

To me, the free PDF with a physical book is 100% the main reason I do the subscription. I want the physical book but, truthfully, the PDF is what I use more. Particularly for adventure paths.

I'm here to echo what everyone else has said. Not cancelling my subscriptions yet. I will definitely be watching.

Hello. I wanted to share a map I made of Danger Island.

The map of the island in the adventure path is awesome but I wanted to have something that I could give my players that simulated getting handed an actual map. I’m also planning to use this as the top layer of a hex map that gets revealed to show the real map underneath through the VTT we’re using.

I made the map in Wonderdraft and added the labels and vintage paper effect after.

Feel free to use!

https://1drv.ms/u/s!ApDdV3vSwjA86bU8JwoE2gE61qdAKQ?e=vkGTbe (thank link should hopefully work)

There are lots of good traditional Chinese or Japanese bands that have excellent music for backgrounds. Japanese Taiko drums are also excellent for combat. If you have spotfiy there is loooots and lots of that kind of music. Otherwise there is lots of YouTube as well!

If the picture is relevant the one of classes is the Model Builder.

The overpriced miniatures class CONFIRMED!

I'd personally love to have the mesmerist but that's JUST ME. I'm going to be hype for whatever they announce.

When I was perusing the various APs I thought that Iron Gods looked absolutely amazing. I'm a huge fan of the sci-fi elements. Any time I see artwork from Numeria with barbarians fighting robots I'm instantly drawn in.

Truthfully, I'm a much larger fan of science fiction than I am of high fantasy. I enjoy the Golarion/Pathfinder setting because it lets me mash so many elements together. Pirates, martial arts tournaments, sci-fi, dinosaurs, Victorian crime drama, etc. If it was just (you're a wizard and you fight a dragon) on repeat it would be *fine* but I'm not sure if I would have gotten so hooked on the lore.

During character creation I told my players that they probably wouldn't get as much out of it if they played Evil characters. I'm not against Evil characters (it's up to the players to figure out how they are motivated to be taking part in the adventure path). But this one is really tailored around the spirit of friendly competition and making bonds with the other teams. I think that if they played as evil characters they would miss out on a lot of that kind of thing and also not be as fulfilled as evil characters in not being able to actually act evil.

Almost missed it! Thanks for the heads up!

https://youtu.be/cskYZGBy8Uw

Just throwing it out there that I would also love cards for the APs. Mostly for the PDF as I find those very handy.

Without a doubt the correct thing to do. Stay safe out there, everyone!

The 3 book APs are very enticing for me as I can actually foresee my players finishing the book. Life gets in the way and having that goal be ab it more attainable is a benefit to me.

We plan to run the Ruby Phoenix series when it releases and I'm incredibly hype for it.

Personally I'm hoping they do a 6 part adventure and two 3 part adventures a year with one-shots and modules littered about to supplement everything.

I love how this has turned into how none of us are working in the field went to university for.

Did a masters in physics and now I'm a property appraiser for the GOVERNMENT.

Back to checking this page every couple hours!

This was excellent. I really enjoyed reading it!

I won't be able to watch until after I play the video but I'm excited to see Glass Cannon do some more 2e!

I love the idea of starting off with a festival and announcing the new nominees for mayor. I've started with the Beginner's box and I'm planning to throw in stuff from Trouble in Otari as well (assuming the Beginner's box peeps want to keep playing).

The festival is perfect for making that connection to Wrin, though, and then having her ask them to deal with the Abomination Vaults.