Chris_Fougere's page

What I've done is have Nyrissa back/influence numerous NPCs who could potentially form a worthy kingdom. Tartuk, The Stag Lord, Hargulka, Darivan, etc. All the "bosses" are being influenced by her to drive to establish a worthy kingdom so she can take it. She does this through dreams and magical mirrors she has gifted to different people (so the PCs can put two and two together as they collect the McGuffins). She doesn't care which want to be kingdom comes out on top, just that the strongest will be ready for her when the time comes.

It ties almost everything together and foreshadows her much, much better.

Chris_Fougere wrote:

Cordell Kintner wrote:

It's not an innate spell, it says "You can activate your wayfinder to cast that cantrip at will"

This would use the Activate an Item rules, and since it doesn't specify what actions are needed to Activate it, you should default to Cast a Spell. This means you can't activate it without the Spellcasting Class feature. The closest analogy to this would be a Spellheart.

That whole archetype is written poorly though, so if you're in a home game it's best to work with your GM on changes for the archetype to not be bad.

Alternately "Certain spells are natural to your character, typically coming from your ancestry OR A MAGIC ITEM" which to me indicates it would follow the rules for innate magic item.

It's easy enough to HR that the activation takes however many actions the cantrip would normally take.

Certain items grant innate spells, such as the Pendant of the Occult giving you Guidance as an innate cantrip. If this gave you an innate spell it would say it was innate, but it doesn't.

Is that the intent? Probably. But as written it requires you to Activate the Item.

Since I'm the GM and don't need to convince anyone I think I'm just going to rule that it's figured as an Innate spell with an activation action cost equal to the normal cantrip casting time. Doing so doesn't seem like it'll break anything so I'm good.

Thanks for the advice folks!

Since there is already an influence system, I had thought of combining it with a victory Points system with the same checks but higher DCs only for those who reached maximum influence, or a system separated.

The Influence system IS a Victory Point system. They lay out the Victory Point system and then give specific, concrete examples of using different permutations of it. You could cobble together a Romance system from scratch and could probably be done in like 5 minutes flat with the tools.

It's not an innate spell, it says "You can activate your wayfinder to cast that cantrip at will"

This would use the Activate an Item rules, and since it doesn't specify what actions are needed to Activate it, you should default to Cast a Spell. This means you can't activate it without the Spellcasting Class feature. The closest analogy to this would be a Spellheart.

That whole archetype is written poorly though, so if you're in a home game it's best to work with your GM on changes for the archetype to not be bad.

Alternately "Certain spells are natural to your character, typically coming from your ancestry OR A MAGIC ITEM" which to me indicates it would follow the rules for innate magic item.

It's easy enough to HR that the activation takes however many actions the cantrip would normally take.

I do camping pretty easily. Someone prepares the campsite and then we run down the list - who's camouflaging, who's cooking, who's organizing watches etc. Then make the rolls.

Once all the mechanics are out of the way (which takes like 5 minutes tops), folks are free to RP. "I talk to Amiri while I'm cooking dinner".

I don't roll all the random encounters. I usually do one during the day, one during camping and others that come up as a result of critical fails on activities. Otherwise the game can really bog down into nothing more than random encounters which isn't fun for our group. One here or there? Fine, it happens. 2 or 3 during the night while people are sleeping...ugh.

If you need a system, use the victory point subsystem. Over time have the PC make appropriate rolls to earn a Romance option with the companion.

How does one calculate the attack/save DC? Is it an innate spell? Does the person need to have proficiency in spell attacks and spell save DC?

I'm aiming to tie Nyrissa and the machinations into things much tighter and foreshadow a behind the scenes force super, super early. Ideally to have clues of her manipulating the various "bosses" along the way - Tartuk (who in my game is separate from Tartuccio because that plot is bad in the AP), The Stag Lord etc.

Is there a list anyone knows of that lists the "bosses" or what one would perceive a boss to be? If not it's not a big deal to go through the AP and earmark them myself, just thought I'd see if I could save a bit of prep work that way.

I do also plan to have her feature as elements of one PCs Willing Host background and another PC's Enigma muse.

Thanks.

Chris_Fougere wrote:

If you have players like that you will 100% have to tweak things. Adventures are written for the lowest common denominator. Which means for combat, if you have a skilled and min-maxed group the encounters are going to be easy. It's the nature of using a pre-written adventure.

In essence encounters being too easy for some groups is a thing. Absolutely without question. However that's part and parcel of pre-written adventures as a whole and I don't think the encounters in Pathfindre are outside the norm on that front. My group has extensive experience with other games but are new to PF2e and none of them are the optimizing type so they're finding the encounters to be just about right.

A bit of a philosophical correction here: we develop and create our adventures not for a "lowest common denominator" but for what we perceive to be the average group of four players with average skill at the game. That means that some folks will have trouble with them as written while others will breeze through encounters as written, and the difficulty of each individual encounter will vary depending on party makeup.

Furthermore, the math of Pathifnder is pretty tight and expects 4 players. Even shifting away to 3 or 5 players can alter the expected play experience, and once you get to 2 or 6 it really needs adjustments at the table end of things.

Which is where the GM's role comes in. We write and publish our adventures for the entire world of potential gamers, but you know your group's interests and skills and ability. Hopefully we can do the majority of the work creating the adventure so the GM doesn't have to spend ages adjusting things for their group, but the more skilled your players are, the more work you'll have to do. That said, and in theory, a group of skilled players has an equally skilled GM!

Anyway... these boards, reddit, and so on are great places to go to compare notes with other GMs like this to dial in your table's experience.

Really, just wanted to say...

Sorry I meant lowest common denominator as in the broadest possible base for the adventure. In my mind that means average experience and average characters and average party size.

If you have players like that you will 100% have to tweak things. Adventures are written for the lowest common denominator. Which means for combat, if you have a skilled and min-maxed group the encounters are going to be easy. It's the nature of using a pre-written adventure.

In essence encounters being too easy for some groups is a thing. Absolutely without question. However that's part and parcel of pre-written adventures as a whole and I don't think the encounters in Pathfindre are outside the norm on that front. My group has extensive experience with other games but are new to PF2e and none of them are the optimizing type so they're finding the encounters to be just about right.

A single troll against 3 5th level PCs is a low threat encounter so them winning with minimal danger is the expectation, especially with some semblance of basic tactics and when the troll is outnumbered 3 to 1.

When it comes to tweaking, you're pretty much always better adding (or removing) a creature instead of using Elite/Weak. Fights are better when the number of opponents is equal or slightly more than the number of PCs.

As a note though - making a creature Elite bumps AC, Attacks, DCs, Saves and Perception by +2 which is a fairly big boost.

I honestly do feel that there are some balancing issues here in play, it's just tough trying to figure out how to make them work so that the players can be challenged without having to swap to milestone leveling, which ends up making random encounters effectively pointless.

Tweaking encounters for any particular party composition is <always> going to be part of the GM's job. Pre-written adventures generally play to an average party and average group of players. Fine tuning them is, broadly speaking, mandatory. My party has cake walked through moderate encounters, did okay with a severe one and then got tuned up by a low encounter that happened at night when folks didn't have armor and needed to use actions to grab their weapons etc.

Dice rolls are also a huge factor. There's a big difference in an encounter when our giant instinct barbarian rolls well (especially with Magic Weapon cast on him) and when his high roll is a 7 all session.

It's well worth analyzing why the encounters aren't challenging so that you can look at where things need to be tweaked.

If a Rogue takes Elven Weapon Familiarity I understand that elven martial weapons become simple weapons but what about things like the Longbow, Composite Longbow and Longsword, would they be treated as simple weapons as well?

Just trying to figure out proficiency level as a character advances.

The things we've found let us get through the Camping activities fairly quickly with 6 players.

1. Much as we have a default marching order and default exploration activities we have default camping activities.

2. We do a quick check if anyone wants to do something other than their default.

3. Make the rolls, adjudicate the mechanics (other than cooking which is done after people choose what they are eating).

We basically do all the mechanical parts quickly and efficiently which then gives a frame work for any RP the players want to do. A talk between two PCs could be while one is cooking and the other is organizing the watches or maybe one is Hunting/Gathering while another one Aids.

We can get through the mechanical part in like 10 minutes tops and then get back to the RP quickly.

That's what my party did when I was a player through this AP using PF1 - we told bandits that we captured that if they agreed to work at Oleg's for a year and a day, their slate would be wiped clean. Even got Happs to reform that way.

In our game Happs met a pretty violent end (Giant Instinct Barbarian on a crit while raging..) but they did convince some others.

That works, too, although I'd make sure that the PCs still have a way to ally with the Sootscales if they are so inclined.

I agree that Tartuccio needs more time to become a credible antagonist. A lot of the PF2 conversion stuck with the PF1 AP story-wise, while incorporating some new content based on the PC game, and the result is that some of the new stuff works, and some of it isn't so good.

I actually just had the idea of replacing Grigori with Tartuccio, as, depending on what the PCs do with Grigori, he's another one who doesn't come back up despite being an annoyance to them. Apart from not being a Bard, I think he could fill the same role fairly well.

One of the PCs is inclined towards the idea that if folks are already living here and not posing a threat then they should be asked to join the Kingdom (when they get there). It gives a strong RP hook and means they approach things with a goal of diplomacy when possible, force when it's not. Heck they've convinced a couple of the bandits at Oleg's and Thorn River to try for rehabilitation as general laborers or hunters etc.

Nope, no reason.

In the original PF1 AP, Tartuk was a gnome who had tried to sell out his village to raiding Ogres and instead got killed for it. The village thought that he was trying to save them and died a hero, so they all chipped in for a scroll of reincarnate and Tartuk was reincarnated as a purple-scaled kobold. He hated kobolds, so he fled his village and since wanders around, looking for Kobold tribes he can try to destroy from within. The players learn this from his journal.

Owlcat took that original backstory and expanded on it with Tartuccio, making him less of a random addition and more integral to the game. You could easily just go back to the original backstory, or maybe even make him Tartuccio's cousin. If the PCs ask Tartuccio about it, he could tell them all about his craven cousin who was reincarnated as a kobold. That way it's not just a matter of there happening to be two unconnected purple gnomes.

I'm inclined to completely do away with the gnome who becomes a kobold and instead have Tartuk be a completely separate character more akin to Hargulka so that when the PCs encounter the trolls later on there will be a resonance with this earlier situation and thus a stronger story tie.

In the AP that whole storyline with Tartuccio is...bad. Just bad. The timeline makes no sense. There's no time really to build him into a credible antagonist. There's no real reason for the PCs to care about the reveal.

So far I haven't read anything that necessitates Tartuccio being Tartuk. My PCs don't have any real hatred of Tartuccio. I mean they certainly found him irritating and full of himself but the reveal will likely have zero impact. On top of that they did succeed at influencing him to some degree during the feast (faked though his attitude towards them may be) and it makes way, way more sense for him to capitalize on that to spy on them then to run around pretending to be a kobold.

Is there any reason beyond "that's how it is in the video game" to not have Tartuk and Tartuccio be two different people?

AFAIK it's under Build Roads (page 523)

I know the PCs have to spend 1 week a month attending to their duties, but if you do a "time skip" and do 12 campaign turns back to back. Would you give them 252 days of downtime to spend? I feel like they could accumulate decent amount of money earning a living (and basically living for free as rulers of their capital)

It'll likely be 9 turns so the return to live play will be when the Kingdom is level 4 but that depends on what level they are when they found it.

In terms of money it's not that much really. Until the Kingdom is level 4 they still need to pay for standard of living, which can easily be narrated as needing to fund things out of pocket until established.

The monetary amounts for Earn Income are quite meager at the lower levels and assuming the following

a) Paying for a comfortable standard of living
b) Earning Income 5 days/week
c) Spending one week per month on position duties

It's a total of about 33gp. They'd probably earn more by exploring the map over that time.

It doesn't appear that you do. Some activities specify that you must have laid claim (Build Roads for example) and Build Work Site does not.

Personally I'm fine with having lumber camps, mines etc. that aren't part of the kingdom proper exactly. It meshes with so, so many adventures that are set in just such places.

If you're using the full camping rules from the Companion Guide then in stage 3 - Eating, folks either use rations, eat a prepared meal or Subsist.

The big thing is that Subsist means you don't need rations but also you don't get the benefits of the prepared meals.

As for any benefits of standard of living, for me that's a RP thing more than anything.

I think as long as your consistent and everyone at the table knows how it'll be ruled then you're fine. For me, for ease of play I'd base everything on the assassin's initiative.

Just curious as to how people handle Recall Knowledge for creatures that have been encountered before. Especially if the character is one to keep notes. So like the first time they encounter a Troll they Recall Knowledge to know about it's weaknesses but what about the 2nd or 3rd or 15th time?

To outline these are my issues with it as written.

1. The wording makes it sound like I need to decide if the bad guys are doing Avoid Notice which is an exploration activity. I get what they mean but the wording is clunky and normally PF2 language use is clearer.

2. If the above is the case then that means that the bad guys need to roll Stealth vs. Perception DC and then if they are successful the character with this feat gets to make a roll of their Perception. So two points of failure and back to back rolls on top of that.

3. In case 2 is the DC for the Perception check the Stealth DC of the bad guys or is it the total of their roll? Someone with a +8 stealth would have a Stealth DC of 18 but they could have rolled a 27. If you use the Stealth DC then they are somehow easier to notice? If you use the rolled number then we're into opposed rolls which PF2e seems to take great pains to avoid. More confusing...how would you adjudicate a critical success on their Avoid Notice?

It's the wording that's odd to me. Like it really does read like it's from an unfinished take on the rules and maybe it is since I don't know what the publication order was like. The wording "You can attempt a check to notice hidden creatures attempting to Avoid Notice nearby even if you aren't actively Searching for them. You still need to meet any other requirements to notice a particular creature."

In my (admittedly limited) experience that's not consistent with most writing which would be more along the lines of how many actions it's used and what the DC would be. Especially since the Search Activity doesn't, by RAW, include finding creatures anyway. It seems to introduce unnecessary dice rolls and increase the odds of the creature failing to hide.

Chris_Fougere wrote:

That just sounds needlessly complicated for me. This is more a matter of a player saying "I don't really care for level class feats so can I take 2 Level 4 Archetype Feats instead"

I would just be careful not letting a PC take a Archetype feat that is higher level than the PC currently. the levels are usually set to either prevent a Multiclass PC from stepping on other's toes (MC Wizard being as good at spellcasting as full wizard) or to keep you from getting access to abilities that the game assumes are not available until a specific level (no one should fly earlier than level 7)

Absolutely. This isn't a matter of "I know I'm 4th level but can I take a 6th level feat" but "can I take two 4th level archetype feats in lieu of the free archetype feat and the class feat"

I'm just curious if this was written with an early draft of the rules or something as it seems at odds with the fact that creatures who are attempting to avoid notice roll vs your Perception DC.

3rd vote for that ruling.

The rules for Free Archetype don't restrict you from taking Archetype feats in your regular Class feat slots.

But since Free Archetype is a variant rule - basically a formal houserule created by the game devs - it is rather common for a GM to further modify the rules.

One variation that I have thought up that would be relevant would be to have the Free Archetype and regular Class feat archetype paths not interact. So you would be able to take a second Archetype early using your Class feats because it wouldn't 'see' the Dedication feat that you have from your Free Archetype feat slots. The drawback being that you also couldn't take feats from your Free Archetype dedication using your regular Class feat slots because it also wouldn't 'see' the Dedication feat it needs as a prerequisite.

That just sounds needlessly complicated for me. This is more a matter of a player saying "I don't really care for level class feats so can I take 2 Level 4 Archetype Feats instead"

I am the GM so that's covered :)

Just was wondering if I was missing something or if things would get wonky if people sort of double dipped to "clear" a dedication requirement faster.

If you're using the free archetype variant can you still pick an archetype feat with your class feat at the appropriate levels - essentially getting two archetype feats at the same level?

I'm planning on giving them a year and a day before any plots events happen.

We'll still roll for random kingdom events though.

That was my thought as well. Do full Kingdom turns, including the possibility of events, for the set up phase of 6-12 months.

We're still a little ways off from getting to the Kingdom part of things in our game but I like to be prepared.

One of the things I was looking at was doing multiple kingdom turns in the initial setup to show some time passing as the kingdom gets established. I want the players to make choices so I'm going to play through the turns rather than just time skip and give them a starting position.

I do plan to use another suggestion about leveling the Kingdom with the PCs rather than having a whole separate other XP grind so by the time the first Kingdom phase (representing several turns) is over the Kingdom will be of a level equal to the party and grow from there.

My question is, has anyone else done this? If so how many turns of building did you find worked well?

This is great I'm going to be doing a similar cheat sheet for my players since we're playing via Foundry.

I am 100% not rolling as many random encounters as the camping rules say. That's just nuts.

And since this is in the Rules section instead of Discussion, then for rules errors I would list:

Not reading traits to find rules.
Forgetting to add level to proficiency.

I had actually meant to put this in advice but since most of the mistakes that are likely to come up for me are rules related it still works :)

Just wondering if there was a list of common mistakes or pitfalls to look out for when moving from other games to PF2e.

I don't think it's stated since it's largely irrelevant. If a hex is 12 miles across that's a big size (something like 124 square miles) but I suppose you could look at real life metropolises and extrapolate if you really wanted to.

Yeah, the intent is that you activate the Jolt Coils to cast Electric Arc for you, not that casting Electric Arc causes the item to also cast Electric Arc on top of your existing cast.

Our group had an understanding issue with spellhearts as well, and they felt like the rules poorly portrayed how it was supposed to work, and I kind of agree.

That's what threw me as well. Like if I'm casting Electric Arc then I'm using the Cast a Spell Activity so doesn't that activate the item?

Glad to see it doesn't and I understand now.

Question - if you activate the Jolt Coils by casting Electric Arc does that mean you'd get two Electric Arcs? One from the spell you cast and then a second from the coils?

1 - A friend told me that it would be beneficial to have something linking the various "bosses" to the BBEG otherwise they show up kinda out of nowhere. Anyone have experience with that?

2 - Do folks handle Kingdom events as Kingdom skills or as adventure seeds (or a combination of both depending on time and inclination)?

Also worth noting that most adventure paths include more wealth than the tables would recommend because it assumes players won't find it all. So if your player is looking to get extra copper, they should usually take a completionist approach.

We're talking about the sort of players who will loot every dead NPC, turn over every cushion, take whatever monster or animal part that might be sellable. Completionist mentality is what I'm trying to avoid by telling them that they don't <need> to do so for a few measly more silver etc. because the tools in the game encourage me as the GM to ensure they find what they need to be successful.

Another option to consider: the automatic bonus progression, which makes it very hard for treasure to break your game.

I did look at that but with our group finding/acquiring things is a big part of the game.

Chris_Fougere wrote:

I think they are more concerned about actual cash.

A curious question for that player from me would be..

If you had an infinite supply of money but could not buy anything higher level than your level, would you feel just as constrained?

I've basically given the group two choices.

1. RAW with wealth capped by the Wealth By Level table
2. The opportunity to make more cash but the availability of what can be bought will be capped.

With the understanding that windfall amounts of coin and items of higher tiers being available based solely on the settlement level will lead to significant game balance issues so there will be a cap in place on one or the other and it's up to them to decide as a group which they'd rather have.

Thanks!

I still need to map the zone borders to my map at some point but once I do this is an awesome resource rather than scouring the book.

I think they are more concerned about actual cash.

Just to pre-amble by saying I love the Wealth by level table to stop weird things like 5th level D&D characters with +2 weapons etc. "because that's what the random roll was".

However, one of my players feels...constrained...by knowing that no matter what they do between levels the wealth is artificially capped/constrained.

I know the math on the game is super tight and I know items matter but any idea how much wiggle room there is on the wealth by level table.

Which encounters?

Black Tears

What level are the PCs?

1st

The Black Tears are not meant to be a threat, the encounters are low or moderate.

They have an AC of 15 so if your monk is critting often that's dice luck. A +4 attribute + 3 proficiency and +1 handwraps gives them +8. Linzi brings that to +9. So they need to roll 16+ to crit. Not unheard of for sure but possibly an anomaly.

I'd print out the maps on pages 56-57 which already have the encounter keys on them. Use those to track the party's location and simply strike them out when the encounter has been used with a sharpie.

What are you using to play? Pen and paper? VTT? If so which one? There's various tools but without knowing how you're playing it's hard to make suggestions.

Having just done this my biggest piece of advice is to not approach it with the idea of "it's like 5e" If you do then the players will get tripped up on things that aren't the same (like Dex not adding to damage for finesse weapons, for example).

Treat it like it's its own thing. Use the beginner box and the pregens so folks get a feel for things. There's a ton of value in that.