Darkbridger's page

Darkbridger wrote:

How does a Human with Unconventional Weaponry get access to the Critical Specialization effect of their chosen weapon? I suppose Adopted Ancestry would work, but at that point, you wouldn't need Unconventional Weaponry.

You'd want to pick a class that gives you critical specialization effects. For example, a level 5 fighter increases his proficiency to master with the simple and martial weapons in a particular weapon group, and gains critical specialization with the weapons in that group that he's a master at. But Unconventional Weaponry lets a fighter treat even an advanced uncommon weapon as martial for the purposes of proficiency. So by level 5 a fighter would get it quite easily. The ancestry feats are mostly intended for if you're not a martial class.

Problem here is that the class in question doesn't do this. Every other ancestry has a crit spec feat, except Human. I'll recommend the DM add one if his player is insistent.

There are generally two ways to get access to an uncommon thing:

- If a mechanic gives it to you, like Unconventional Weaponry.
- If you work for it during the campaign, you might get it as a reward.

Weapon Proficiency isn't a really great feat.

And this is the point I think. I'd go a step further and say it is an outright terrible feat. I guess I can tell him to house rule a couple of new feats for crit spec and proficiency scaling, but doubtlessly someone will point out that would devalue the ancestry feats. <shrug> This is for character creation, so in-campaign access would be too late in this player's view. And sure, the GM could just allow it like the rules seem to imply.

How does a Human with Unconventional Weaponry get access to the Critical Specialization effect of their chosen weapon? I suppose Adopted Ancestry would work, but at that point, you wouldn't need Unconventional Weaponry.

You can use Dexterity modifier to attack with Unarmed Attacks and you can also apply Sneak Attack damage to such attacks, but a Thief Rogue cannot add Dexterity modifier to damage with such attacks, correct? Seems odd, but I assume there is a design reason for this. Taking Monk dedication would then be super overpowered or something? The player in question mentioned Wolf Stance, so that is probably why?

Does the Weapon Proficiency feat give access to Uncommon weapons? The only Advanced weapons are uncommon, so the feat seems to do little if you can't actually purchase the weapon. A Versatile Human that takes General Training can do this at level 1. Yes, I have already pointed out that this is a dead end as the weapon(s) gained won't increase Proficiency with their class and there are no Expert, Master, Legendary, or Ancestry-like Feats to keep up. And the Critical Specialization problem shows up here again as well. Are Ancestry, Monastic Weaponry, Cleric Deity, and Deific Weapon the only ways to gain access to Uncommon weapons and the only way to get the follow-up improvements (crit spec and proficiency)? Can a character with access buy such a weapon for a character with proficiency but not access? (ie, can a Gnome buy Kukris for a Human Rogue? Can a cleric of Zon-Kuthon buy a Spiked Chain for the Fighter?)

It would be easier if all this was not tied to a single item like the Backpack. Simply a rule that says something along the lines of "if your character has appropriate containers (backpack, belt pouches, sheaths, quivers, and/or bandoliers) for all of your carried equipment, your maximum allowed bulk is increased by 2". This abstracts everything and makes it simpler, as well as giving a reason for buying appropriate containers. But of course, there will be arguments about how much a given container can hold for those groups that prefer to track such things in detail I guess, so can't please everyone.

Why are there no Quivers?

Roswynn wrote:

Colette Brunel wrote:

The emperor birds in the vaultway are supposed to be sentries. They have no darkvision. The room is pitch black. How is this supposed to work out?

For ease of use, just give them darkvision this time.

If someone ever uses emperor birds in a homebrew adventure, I'd say make sure they have at least dim light to see by without having to rely on the party's light cantrip.

And again, consider this from the original intent that was to give characters with darkvision a chance to enjoy their advantage.

In most cases, the PCs need light too, and they'll be bringing light with them, and thus the birds will be fine.

In cases where no PC needs light, or a PC with darkvision sneaks ahead... this encounter gives that party or that PC a fun reward for a character choice and lets them use something to their advantage. That's a nice change of pace now and then for players to encounter, and makes them feel like the world isn't always perfectly poised to defeat them. Sometimes the bad guys make mistakes too.

Is this the intent with the half-orcs in Guardians Way as well? As I noted in my earlier post, my group all had Darkvision and we showed up at night prepared to be stealthy. But our new DM was at a loss at how to handle surprise or coup de grace/knockouts of sleeping enemies.

We've run in to a couple issues in the run through I am taking part in and advising a new DM on:

First, the birds in B1 do not have Darkvision and are effectively blind according to what I can make of the rules. Even a moderately competent Stealth check seems likely to allow a party to head into the northern or southern hallways without issue unless the DM puts the birds close to the secret door, which doesn't make much sense. This is what our party did and it did not create major issues at this point, but then...

The half-orcs in Guardian's Way suffer from the same issue. They don't have Darkvision and if your party does and they think to go there at night, how does an effectively blind watch person spot anyone? Also, when we arrived here at night we came equipped for a stealthy approach and tactics... Invisibility, Silence, the entire party is Trained in Stealth, etc. But even if we decide the lookout can't spot the party, and even if one of us climbs up to C3 or C5 (we originally looped around to C5) without waking the occupant, what are the rules for taking out a sleeping opponent? In fact, what are the rules for surprise? Is this all now simply DM fiat about what the party can or cannot get away with? Our Rogue also had the idea to use Invisibility and Silence to climb the platforms and steal the alarm bell once she saw it, and again that brought up numerous thorny questions.

I am keenly aware of my 1E bias coming into this game, so I am trying my best to advise the DM without making references to the rules of that game. But after 15+ years of 3.5/PF1E rules, it's hard to yank my brain out of it at times.

Anyone else gone through the above, and if so, how was it handled?

Why do some of these require two abilities? Monk for example seems to require Strength and Dexterity of 14, even though you can create a Dexterity focused monk on its own. This seems to run counter to at least one of the descriptions...

'Rogue monks are incredibly effective because stances grant some of the best agile finesse attacks...'

Except you need a 14 Strength to use them suddenly? Am I misreading these requirements? The Fighter suffers from the same confusion. And an argument could be made that the Rogue dedication should have a choice of abilities. Barbarian and Champion are less clear as they require a 14 in a secondary ability, not two different primaries you could build the class around. This seems overly punitive toward the martial classes, as all the casters only require their casting ability.

Darkbridger wrote:

I am trying to help someone that is new to DMing and I have not read or run 2E yet. Can someone verify the XP awards for the first encounter:

Moderate 30 And a Hero point?
Fire Mephit 40
Fire Hazard 40 It's complex, right?
Saving Spectators 100
Dousing the Fire entirely 30

For a total of 240xp? That seems... high... since it isn't divided by the number of people in the party. Does the encounter only award a max of 130? Trying to parse the new AP presentation and I'm not doing a good job it seems. :|

Wait, where's that extra Moderate accomplishment coming from? I'm coming up to 180 XP on my end (Accounting for the now burnt-down husk of the Town Hall):

Moderate encounter: 80 XP (Mephit + Fire; hoping the encounters levels mentioned match up with the XP budgets so I don't have to calculate XP for each creature/hazard)
Saving Spectators: 100 XP
Dousing the fire: 0 XP (would have been 30 if not for the aforementioned failure)

Not that I mind having a reason to give my players more XP, I'm just not seeing where this accomplishment is noted in the book

I think that is my fault. I am confusing a Moderate encounter with a Moderate accomplishment. I'm not sure the entry in the module is designating a Moderate accomplishment though, so it should probably be a max of 210xp. The naming here is unfortunate and maybe I missed the "how to read an encounter entry" cheat sheet somewhere. I didn't realize the mistake until my friend showed me a later encounter that was "Low 1" and I realized what it was referring to.

I think the accomplishments should have been Minor/Average/Major to avoid confusion, but oh well.

Also, thanks for the quick answers Mr. TRex!

Also how was the Stealth +6 initiative modifier calculated (if it was calculated) as the Mephit Bestiary entry does not list the Stealth skill. Or is this just part of the “monsters follow different rules” paradigm shift?

I am trying to help someone that is new to DMing and I have not read or run 2E yet. Can someone verify the XP awards for the first encounter:

Moderate 30 And a Hero point?
Fire Mephit 40
Fire Hazard 40 It's complex, right?
Saving Spectators 100
Dousing the Fire entirely 30

For a total of 240xp? That seems... high... since it isn't divided by the number of people in the party. Does the encounter only award a max of 130? Trying to parse the new AP presentation and I'm not doing a good job it seems. :|

Why have they never made a bard archetype that does not cast spells? I have been scratching my head on that one.

Not sure if this is a serious request, but... wouldn't that just be a rogue or swashbuckler of some sort? If not, what would you be expecting? What would you give up the spellcasting to get?

I hope there isn't a way to do this. You're essentially looking to get two full attacks every round while moving, which combined with the enchantment will be all sorts of broken against CR appropriate encounters. If the DM is tweaking the game to handle/account for this, then just have him create a feat that allows reliable AoOs.

A come and get me barbarian build can sort of do this, if you are willing to encourage things to attack you. But as a Ranger you are limited to the mentioned style feats or things like stand still and pin down, none of which are guaranteed.

I had this debate with a player when I was considering running Hell's Vengeance. In the end, we determined that Perform (oratory) is language-dependent, so as long as everyone understands Infernal and he delivers the performance in Infernal, it works on them. But that was our ruling at that time, and as you pointed out, it's been debated elsewhere with differing arguments on each side. It's ultimately up to whoever is running the game for you.

On those occasions where a rule is ambiguous and the player and I can't immediately resolve it in an agreeable fashion, I ask the other players to essentially vote on how we as a group want to handle this rule today and going forward. Everybody gets a voice. A minute or two of discussion and usually we have a majority. This can also result in house rules being created, as long as the group as a whole likes the solution.

This is how I've been doing things for a long time as a DM. I've made some bad calls along the way and learned some difficult lessons along the way. Sadly, I was not the best player when one of my players wanted to try DMing 4e when it was new and I was the only one that wanted to try it. The first version of Stealth in 4e was terrible and it lead to a rather lengthy rant. Not an argument, just me raging at the rules. After that, some characters were changed and my approach to the game changed and things got better, though 4e only lasted through most of the way into Tier 2.

The only other arguments I've had over the years have been related to alignment. I've been the Paladin that was given an immediate alignment shift from one act created from a very deceptive and problematic series of events. Four out of six characters had their alignment shifted because of this and it fell to me to argue about it as the most affected. I learned a lot about handling alignment in game from that single event. This particular DM was amazing at Call of Cthulhu and... not so good... at every other game he tried. This probably stemmed from his flawed assumption that characters in every game were expected to be as expendable as they were in Cthulhu.

As I see it, there are a few reasons why the list is how it is. First, no witch should be good at all of those things, even if we all agreed they are "traditional witch spells". The better you make the witch list, the less reason there is for the other classes to exist. I can see granting one subset of those things via Patron or Archetype (or both) and not having a problem. Some of those things can be accomplished with existing tools.

Hedge Witch has already been mentioned and the Healing Patron covers even more.

Boundaries + Infernal Contract can get you the allies and circles, but it's not rules legal by default I don't think. If your DM is flexible and creative, you could even come up with a good or neutral or whatever variation on Infernal Contract.

Poison use is the most questionable to me, as it's probably easier to just re-flavor a curse as being delivered by food or drink. If someone really wanted poison, I'd create a custom archetype that adds some poison use, save bonuses and maybe a patron with some suitable spells... but I probably wouldn't add both poison use/save bonuses and the curative spells. I'd be more likely to offer up things like accelerate poison to make things nastier rather than the witch safer.

I usually reverse this. The party needs to be given a broad description of each AP under consideration and then each player comes up with why their character is involved in the AP with the help of the player's guide. Character integration is a player duty, not a DMs. Find the AP the party is interested in playing as a group and then let them tailor the backstories individually, with DM help if necessary.

As an example, the Alchemist might love Iron Gods, but if the other players are turned way off by the magic/technology mix, it won't be a fun AP for them.

While the already mentioned APs may fit the diversity, you still have to make sure the theme of those are interesting to the players. The DM will also benefit from knowing the broad course of the entire AP as well. The group I had at the time loved the intro to Serpent's Skull, but things fell apart when they got to the city and it turned into a timed competition.

EDIT: Oh, when you narrow it down to one or three, read the product pages and the sub forums of each to get a better idea on the good and bad of any given AP.

Yeah, I am a little skeptical as well...

First the cleric swiftly enlarged to double size,

Cast the spell as a swift action? Enlarging comes with a -2 Dex which means 1 less AoO. Enlarge also isn't on the Cleric list, so Strength Domain. But still swift casting at 5th? Or was the achieved some other way? EDIT: Gah... missed Growth Domain. :(

threatening most of the battlefield with a longspear.

Standard Reach cleric so far

Then the cleric channeled negative energy in a variant channel Earth-effect that harmed everyone on the field and made the whole field difficult terrain.

This cleric can also channel positive energy though? That's possible, but it's not usual.

The friendly fire damage stung but I took solace knowing that every foe on the field took the same amount of damage.

No Selective Channeling Feat then

The cleric had already distributed potions of Featherstep, a buff that lets one ignore difficult terrain, to allies.

Distributed implies they were crafted... Brew Potion from somewhere?

The large cleric then dished out numerous AoOs, which usually hit for about 25 damage each.

Definitely possible if there is a high Strength score involved. But again, Dex penalty from Enlarge.

Enemies struggled in difficult terrain to close the gap while the cleric, wearing Featherstep Slippers, danced about and nimbly avoided them. Each round enemies would try to close with the large cleric and she would slay a few with monstrous AoOs. She'd then slip away, without AoOs, before the survivors could harm her much. She'd then channel again.

Channeled 4 times then? 5 if that casting was Swift and the first one was on round 1, then another at the end of combat? Reach clerics normally make use of Summon Monster to deal more damage, not channeling, but obviously the terrain makes that less effective. So a pretty good Charisma here as well, at least a 14 or higher depending on how many channels were actually used.

The last survivors tried to flee.

I noticed that this cleric never attacked on her round, yet caused more hp damage than the rest of the party combined. After killing most of the enemies, and considerable friendly fire, she then channeled positive energy to heal the entire party, which was quite badly banged up by now.

Your 400 damage claim is probably reasonable. 7 or so damage (all 5s) per target on each channel (EDIT: unless saved against, and then it is 3 or 4). Even if 100 of the damage was channeling, that's 300 from AoO which implies roughly 12 attacks across 5 rounds... not many if a decent Dex is indeed at play. If you were outnumbered, they had probably 3 HD at best for an average 13 hit points. If it was an above APL encounter, maybe 22 hit points, so each target is probably dropping from a single attack even without the channeling and that lines up with killing half the enemy.

A fireball from a Wizard would have done around 17 per target (425 total before saves, more if optimized a bit) and maybe hit all of them, wiping the entire field in two castings probably, but then there is the Will vs Reflex save discussion.

EDIT: This is less about the build being good and more about the circumstances and action economy. A Come and Get Me Barbarian built for AoO would probably shine in this moment as well, without the difficult terrain. Or any AoE caster prepared and in position to exploit the target rich environment. If this Cleric was built with Channeling instead of Summoning, I'd consider it a notch below the Summoning variant, as that is far more broadly useful than damage + difficult terrain, particularly in the later portion of the game when flight and teleporting become far more common. Cleric got to shine, good on them... it'll be someone elses turn next time. Just don't fall into the trap of comparing characters on damage alone... Bards, Wizards, and Sorcerers will make you regret it when they neuter an entire encounter is a couple of actions.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

What is EotE?

Star Wars RPG with the gimmicky dice.

Which is another boon Starfinder has, it's not setting neutral in and of itself but it is FAR more setting neutral friendly than EotE, which is Star Wars. Plenty of people want to play in a Space Fantasy game that isn't Star Wars.

Yes, the dice were problematic and required hefty rules tweaking in our games. Do note that I did not claim that EotE was the better game, I was simply pointing out that Starfinder does not exist or compete in a vacuum. To the general gaming public, both are simply "sci fi games".

Starfinder has probably been one of their best strategies, filling a niche that no one else has in quite awhile. So they don't even need to compete with 5E, as they are running unopposed for the sci-fi gamers.

My now disbanded group was running Edge of the Empire when they wanted a break from Pathfinder. After trying out Starfinder, they chose to stick with EotE for their sci fi needs. I don't think Starfinder can claim to be unopposed, unless you were referring specifically to WotC.

Scepter of Ages + whatever

Arachnophobia all the way. Then they started doing things like making them phase, putting swords on them, basing all sorts of *other* monsters on the spider body type... spiders everywhere I tell you!

Darkbridger wrote:

After reading through the playtest documents when they released, I realized I wouldn't want to play the game even knowing the adventures will still probably be the same quality ...

No product strategy is going to change the above. Expecting the company to continue to support PF1 is being blind to the resource reality of the company as a whole. Starfinder is not supported at the same rate as Pathfinder, and there is no way (barring a significant employment surge) they can support a third product line. If they can replace me as a customer in PF2, then I won't be missed. If they can replace me with two new customers, so much the better (and my opinion of PF2 flat out does not matter at that point). If they can do that on a large enough scale, then PF2 will certainly be successful.

I think it's useful for Paizo to hear this. You may be just one person but you still represent the opinions of a proportion of the customer base. How much, of course, is debatable -- that is for Paizo to ascertain.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume you represent a sizeable and irreplaceable segment of Paizo's customer base:
1. What, if anything, would make you eventually decide to switch to PF2? (In general terms.)
2. If PF2 proves a bust, and Paizo resurrected PF1, would you buy back into it? (Perhaps helpful for Paizo's contingency planning.)

Answering the easier one first...

Now...
1. This will be a difficult hill to climb. There were a lot of things in the playtest that immediately evoked a negative reaction.

I am fully aware of the age and warts of 1e. But this is a significant departure. While I appreciate their claims to find a middle ground between easier to run and option rich, the playtest simply does not serve to illustrate this. One of the great and terrible things of 1e (and 3.5 before it) was the sheer number of options. Sure, only 15-20% (completely made up debatable number) of them are considered "good", but if you wanted a lower power campaign you could reign in that 20% and makes things a bit more equitable. 2e seems to have thrown out the 80% and left us with 2 good options and 8 bad ones. The disparity just became painfully more obvious.

Also, there are things in 2e that seemed to be done for a rules or balance reason that don't hold up against the "realism" of the game, such as racial abilities spread out over twenty levels. The aforementioned "everything is a feat" thing is mind boggling to me... it waters down everything, regardless of formatting them as "<Race/Class/General/Magic/Etc> Feat".

And now I'm about to be overly (unfairly?) critical of Paizo...

A lot of the things presented in the playtest seem to be creatively lacking. For example, instead of looking for reasons to make playing a Fighter interesting, we've instead been given a Fighter who gets to keep all the toys everyone else previously got to make use of. Great for the Fighter I guess, but its outright terrible for any existing 1e customer that liked building Fighter-y non-Fighters in 1e. 1e may have been a rehashing of 3.5, but I guess I was hoping for newer and better, rather than what we got. I don't find it likely that this sort of thing can be course-corrected at this point. <shrug> As an aside, the 2e archetype thing I feel *is* creative, or would have been if it existed alongside the normal archetypes from 1e. I can envision a lot of class-agnostic archetypes that would fit 1e and would serve the system better than prestige classes. But I consider that an addition brought in by the Starfinder work.

I know that Paizo tends to over tune prior to finalizing something. But even if some of these dials drift back toward recognizable territory, I don't think it will be far enough back to recapture my interest. I will pick up the final product and make my decision then. At current pace, my WftC game won't be done until late 2019-early 2020 unless we move the game to a VTT, so at best I won't even have an opportunity to play until mid-2020.

I find it difficult to offer any advice to the company on direction, despite realizing (as of now) that I will not be a customer of PF2. I am currently embroiled in running War for the Crown for a small group, which started before PF2 was announced. I did download and read the first playtest documents. That brief appraisal is unfair to Paizo and their product, but it is all I have time for. Things might change before next year when the first products start appearing.

They aren't losing me entirely as a customer, as I will be buying up PDFs of products that I only have physical copies of due to not being a subscriber for a large part of the life of PF1.

I can contrast my reactions in a "then and now" sort of frame. When the original Rise of the Runelords was released, my 3.5 gaming was waning, for a variety of reasons. Upon reading the first adventure, I realized I wanted to run it, despite some of the issues I had with 3.5 at the time. As expected it was a huge success for the group that I took through it. Curse of the Crimson Throne was even better.

After reading through the playtest documents when they released, I realized I wouldn't want to play the game even knowing the adventures will still probably be the same quality. As before, with 3.5, this is for a variety of reasons that I won't go into. With no playtesting, it feels disingenuous for me to provide feedback or fill out a survey, so I haven't done that.

No product strategy is going to change the above. Expecting the company to continue to support PF1 is being blind to the resource reality of the company as a whole. Starfinder is not supported at the same rate as Pathfinder, and there is no way (barring a significant employment surge) they can support a third product line. If they can replace me as a customer in PF2, then I won't be missed. If they can replace me with two new customers, so much the better (and my opinion of PF2 flat out does not matter at that point). If they can do that on a large enough scale, then PF2 will certainly be successful. In all honesty, I hope this happens, because I'm rooting for them to beat out WotC eventually whether I am a customer or not.

Biggest PF1 regret: Not getting Second Darkness and Legacy of Fire reworked/reprinted.

What survey? I think your site address in the first post is wrong.

Hello all, first time poster.

I am looking at the info in Concluding the Adventure and am curious how others interpreted the "If PCs resisted the urge to loot royal property" requirement for the bonus cloaks. There are the three specific instances, but "such as" implies these are only examples. That being the case, which things are "royal property" here? I get the idea that it would be ridiculous for them to be prying pearls off of the walls and looting library books, but are they really supposed to put forth all this effort and then get to the vault only to look at 10k in gold and just walk away? What about the fancy billiard balls? When are they looting Panivar/Bartleby and when are they looting what belongs to Martella?

I'm tempted to keep it simple or just make executive decisions on it but I'm curious if anyone else decided differently.

The easiest way to handle this in my opinion: Include a "no looting" line in the note you give them from Martella before they move against the Bartleby. Then at the end of the adventure, evaluate the party wealth (use the WBL charts if you like, or take them and add/subtract whatever you feel comfortable with) and if you feel they are coming up short, throw in some additional cash along with the cloaks to allow them to pick up items they want... or even award the desired items outright along with the cloaks. Then you don't have to worry about what is or isn't loot, whether it is or isn't useful to your party, and whether the NPCs should be angry or not.

I love the APs in general.

As for specific favorite parts (from Dungeon to today), those have always been deep backstories and histories (such as in CotCT & S.Star), the exceptionally dynamic, complicated NPCs (such as Nualia and Aravashnial), and the involved, complex roleplaying opportunities (such as in HR and WftC).

But as I've said for ten years -- I feel that the six volume format every time isn't best. An occasional six volume, occasional three volume or four volume, etc. would be better because, in the same way that 'one-type-of-adventure-design-does-Not-fit-all' -- neither does one-Size-adventure fit all groups.

I remember being completely understanding and appeased ten years ago when Jacobs explained that a fixed schedule is crucial for Paizo's operations, that juggling lengths of APs (especially the risk because it's the flagship line of products) is a poor decision.

But I bring it up again because, you know, it has been a decade and who knows. It seems as though for each one person on the Boards who wants longer APs -- APs that go to 20th Level -- there are five to ten more who never play through an entire AP (even they they intend to). The Six Volume AP is such a time commitment that many groups never complete one.

This is also something I think could be done in their module line. Put the occasional links for 2, 3 or 4 modules together to make smaller sets. If they start breaking things down to this size though, there may then be a need to start at something other than 1st level. The great thing about linking modules is that it doesn't have to be done up front in the development process. The person(s) that write module 2 (or later) just have to provide the linkage with module 1 (or later). I have occasionally wondered if an author somewhere sees a module and thinks "hmm, I can think of a kick butt follow up to that", but it never gets tossed around given how the work is schedule.

DISCLAIMER: I don't buy modules... I've only ever bought the APs due to preferences and I simply couldn't afford to buy every product Paizo makes, no matter how good said products may be. The only times I've been tempted is when I see forum posts indicating a link from an AP (or story from one) to a module.

Timelines are a tricky thing and I think Mary may have been noting things *during* an adventure as well. My most recent example is War for the Crown part 2 where there is a mention of Persona phases. The first two are noted to occur within the week of downtime between modules. Then the bulk of them are simply noted by number (8 of them) but there the timeline given is once per week. This kind of implies (loosely) that there should be 8 weeks between the PCs arriving and the beginning of Part 3. But when the second set of Persona phases started I immediately had a player ask 'why aren't we getting two of them per week now'.

This is complicated by references in an adventure that says things like "three days later" or whatnot. Where possible, timelines should be based and addressed on plot points, not hard time frames, and usually Paizo does this. Even sandbox adventures should provide some sort of guidance of what happens when, even if it's a grouping of encounters by level and/or rough time frame. However, with downtime being a hard system now (even more so in 2e), better defined timelines for adventures are going to be needed.

I've run parts 1 & 2 of this, and here are some notes for those who plan to run it in the future...

Baron Okerra was Friendly coming in to this, and the party pretty easily pushed that to Helpful during the Jubilee. This made the Night Swan Hostile before the event even progressed to her assassination attempt. We are on a limited play schedule, so I am trying to cram as much stuff into limited play times. This made making use of Night Swan very difficult without it devolving into endless hit-and-run attacks on the party as they travelled or attacks on their allies, which seems pointless in the larger scheme of things. I did things in a background nature... "the Night Swan has struck again, killing X and carrying off Y, etc". The most effective thing was to let her siphon off 10%-20% of the improvement rewards they got from befriending the other parties in the area. While there was never any danger of them not having enough funds to complete, they still worried about it and her raids rankled them each time. Also, unless you are careful to introduce several NPCs by name outside of the main noble players, it's almost impossible to make use of the Night Swan's normal personality without the party figuring out who she is. This becomes even *more* of a problem if the party ever encounters the Night Swan and learns aspects of her physical appearance. Lastly, one member of my group is playing a Vigilante, so this entire aspect of the adventure was a bit tougher to pull off. That player seemed to know what was going on from fairly early on, but was also not overly interested in direct confrontation. She seemed more inclined to do more than the Night Swan did to help people and simply make her name more well known. If your party lacks a vigilante, it might be better to have the Night Swan show up at key places trying to "help" people and set her up as a more involved antagonist.

The Beggarwood encounter area can be interesting as well as problematic. There aren't any guidelines about what should happen if that area is dealt with later rather than sooner. Taking out Gul early can lead to all sorts of fun issues with the Count, or if your party is like mine, they'll try to frame the Night Swan with the note left at their estate. They even added a "you were warned" note to the bottom by forging her handwriting. But they also very nearly opted to kill the group due to the questionable religious connotations of the Friar. The book does not state or even imply that she hides her religion any longer, but I suppose it's debatable whether she should be or not. They also assumed the Halfling here was a spy since "every Halfling we encountered in Oppara tried to stab us". They waited until almost the end of Part 2 to resolve this and I am making use of the chaos around Gul's death to lead into Part 3.

Travel times can make Part 2 take excessive amounts of time unless the party is carefully monitoring every day they spend. I pre-made an 8-week calendar with days where rumors were introduced and tasks expected to be undertaken. If you order the rumors just right, you can sort of guide where the party will go to do things. In hindsight I should have also added construction timelines, but I don't think they were detailed in the module and I never dug out the kingdom building rules as I didn't think I had the time to for detail being spent on that area. I simply allowed the party to allocate funds for a chunk of buildings at a time, dictate an order, and then declared each one "built" after a few days.

I repurposed Titus to serve as an antagonist that was mentioned in one of the characters backgrounds. It mentions that he will constantly goad the party (or a PC in particular for me) and spread rumors, and since the PC in question was a Dandy Ranger, this allowed me to make use of the Rumor abilities of the archetype when I didn't expect they would come into play. Physical confrontation will finally occur in Part 3 of course as no duel took place during Part 2, but the animosity has been built to a nice heated pitch, especially since the same PC is the one that was "gifted" the estate and title. It all worked amazingly well actually, moreso than the Night Swan.

The Gold Canyon was the one area where my scheduling and timeline screwed up. The group didn't visit Lotheedar until later, when they wanted help dealing with the body of the Queen without a Face. Then they promptly forgot about the missing acolytes. Then the bridge got built while the acolytes were still missing. And of course the inevitable "didn't the construction crew see this giant snake and floating body" question came up. Whoops! If your schedule for the bridge looks to come up before the encounter (and for most parties it should, given the effect on travel times it will be viewed as a priority), you can have the initial construction crew scramble back bloodied from a snake encounter and use it to lead into the acolyte mission or reinforce their memory of it if they forget.

Best moment from Part 2 - Having Baron Telus scramble down from his hiding spot near the ceiling and put a shocking grasp on the Ranger who was already assuming this was just an Ettercap. Always fun when meta-gamey expectations are thrown awry.

Pre-planning has been a bigger part of this module than almost any I've run to date, with the exception of some parts of Kingmaker. I don't expect Part 3 to be anything but a standard dungeon delve with some key moments. I'm still not sure if they'll talk the Count down or just off him. Looking forward to the next module more than I am the assault on Birdsong really. The party still talks about avenging Kalbio and still have the note from his parents. :) They also kept and still carry around Duke Squiggles as a reminder of how treacherous Halflings are. And yes, I plan to make use of that. :D

Pg 10 states the party gets 2 Loyalty Points if Baron Okerra is made helpful. But on Pg 26, it states that they would get 4 points normally if he becomes helpful. Which is correct?

I think 4 is correct, since it matches the value that Night Swan grants. Also, if it is only 2, it is impossible to hit 51 or more Loyalty Points by the end without at least one of the Personal Victories from Pg 39. I calculate 50 total points if everything is done (and there are no loses) and the Baron is helpful. If the party opts to make Night Swan helpful, the total jumps to 52.

Of course, there is the question of whether the Baron's award (if it is 4 points) should be divided between Friendly and Helpful the way the Night Swan's award is as detailed on Pg 37.

For anyone that's already run this, how did you handle the above? Did you use the Personal Victories? Is my 50/52 point tally somehow wrong?

Other reasons you might want two weapons...

As already mentioned, two or three damage types available
Having one with the parry trait
Having weapons with different maneuver traits
Having a weapon with the thrown trait ready

Whether those remain valid reasons through all 20 levels (or at all really) depends on what your character build is hoping to do.

There are no Common Exotic weapons, so does it also grant access to those weapons?

I am having some minor confusion from your original post. The adventure states the goblins are on the north side of the room constructing a statue. The north side of the room is nearest the entrance the PCs would be coming in from. There is no "North" indicator on the map sadly, but the first room description indicates direction. Did you allow them to notice the light early enough that they moved south?

Is it stated somewhere that you can critically fail with thieves' tools 5 times before destroying the entire thing? Do they become poor-quality after a single critical failure? I realize that 5 replacement picks is the same price as a full set, but I'm not sure that means you get 5 critical failures.

Also after the first attempt the first locked door in Doomsday Dawn, the lock picking system is decidedly unfun for us.

Just browsing through the treasure section, it seems like arcane casters have a bit more item support available (ring of wizardry, robes of the archmagi, in particular) than other casting traditions. These are relatively mechanically powerful, and can mean a big difference between different casters of even the same class in the case of sorcerers. Is this intentional?

I've already had a player try to buy the above item for one of the later parts of the adventure, but it's an Uncommon item and it isn't at all clear that the players can take those as part of the chapter setups. Well, it's clear in that Uncommon normally can't be taken... but then you read the section on GM awards and gets less certain.

There isn't even a quiver in the normal equipment section even though there is a sheath.

When building characters of higher level, are uncommon permanent items allowed to the players? What about spells or scrolls of uncommon spells used for learning a spell?

Perhaps it would be better to have a class ability for both Bards and Sorcerers to key their "knowledge" skills off their primary stat and leave them as Int/Wis for everyone else?

Also, the Sai should have the Parry trait.

Does this allow a Heavy Crossbow to be reloaded in 1 action?

Only the Fighter in my group grumbled about the backgrounds. He wanted Family Friend, but the stat boosts did not suit him. He liked the Quick Repair feat, but of course he isn't a Goblin. The other three all had Lore backgrounds that seemed too obscure for his character to be interested in. He ended up with Pathfinder Hopeful, and is the only character with two Lore skills, which he finds amusing. When my old group used Background Skills in PF1, no one ever took Lore (well, except once) and they consider Lore in PF2 to be just as underwhelming and not worth a full Training pick.

Anyone else feel like this weapon should be in the Rogue proficiencies? I have already had a player ask to use a Rapier/Main-Gauche pair on a Rogue.

Does the guard dog really frighten and flee in combat?

On page 18 it does say this...

"When your character advances to 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th levels, she receives ability boosts in four different ability scores."

I have already had a player ask this very thing. We're going with the 18 max being the only limit, but I can see where it could be parsed either way.

Adding my voice to this chorus. No list. No concrete examples of use (I haven't looked over the adventure yet). Why on earth would anyone spend a feat or any other resource to pick up another Lore skill? Almost any other skill is going to have a broader usage and appeal. Also, I remember seeing a feat that says you can become Legendary in a specific lore... and yet the Lore section itself says Lore skills are always considered signature skills. At least part of that feat is pointless and a waste of word count, or there is some difference I've missed somewhere. (I don't recall the name and I don't have access to the PDFs at the moment, but will try to find it later.)

Darkbridger wrote:

Maybe I'm reading something wrong... but the Fighter has Acrobatics, Athletics and Crafting as signature skills in the sidebar.

I agree with your point, I just don't think that example is accurate.

I already noticed this and corrected myself above. Sadly, I did not do so in time to edit the original post.

Yep, and of course I saw it *after* I posted. :( Your point stands though... signature skills actually make things restrictive.

Skills:

On a somewhat related complaint: The most limited Classes in terms of magic also mostly have the least Skills. And often Signature Skills that have huge and lamentable gaps (if we're gonna have those at all). Take a Fighter Blacksmith, for example. He can never have Crafting above Expert, because Crafting isn't a signature Skill.

Maybe I'm reading something wrong... but the Fighter has Acrobatics, Athletics and Crafting as signature skills in the sidebar.

I agree with your point, I just don't think that example is accurate.

Same here

I thought “rocket tag” came from people chasing each other and playing “tag” with bottle rocket fireworks? Maybe it was just my twisted youth though and not the general populace.

Regardless, it’s pretty hard to discourage reducing target count over other tactical options. My experience with Starfinder does not give me any hope that combats will last longer. They claimed it there and was not true in execution for the games I ran.

I agree with the sentiment that more DM-friendly treatment would be nice in an AP. It's commonly accepted that owning the entire AP before you run it makes for the best experience. This has proven true with every AP I've started, whether I started early or when all volumes are available. In that vein, I'd like to see the synopsis section of the first installment expanded into something with more detail. Layout who is important to the story and why, what things the DM needs to keep in mind right at the start, and call out any aspects that will be important later. I'm loathe to suggest a separate DM Guide like the Player's Guide because I'm sure there are workload concerns there. But I'd be willing to give up extra content (a couple pages?) in the first installment to get this.

These are things the Developer should know early on, yes? Are they known for the entire AP before the first installment is finalized for printing? If so, a DM Guide of sorts in the first issue would be very welcome, and I think it would also allow Paizo to explore some more complex AP setups. Anything that minimizes that "own the whole AP before you start" paradigm would be really useful. While I never make use of the ability to run one piece of an AP by itself, I can understand the appeal for a wider audience, at least a little. But I don't think it would be terrible to, on occasion, ignore that goal for an AP and really go all in on connectivity and related sub-plots or whatever else. It's an Adventure Path... the onus should be on the standalone user to make it work, not hobble the content to widen the appeal... that's what the Module line is for... in my opinion only of course.

The AP line is the most important product for me outside the core game rules themselves. Modules are ok, but my group greatly preferred a longer, more involved story, even though we didn't finish many of the ones we started.

On the Dwarven front, I've had one Heavy Pick/Light Pick dual wielder in a game, and my Giantslayer game was due to have a Dorn-Dergar user that would eventually dual-wield them. We never got past the first module though.