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In my Iron Gods campaign I have a player that did not have too much Background, so I made some up for her.
In part 1, she discovered she is not human at all, but an Android.
We have another Player whose character is an Oracle of Time - he actually is from the Divinity, and as a last ditch effort the Captain tried to send him back in time in order to Prevent the crash. This failed spectacularly, instead he ended up as nanite data in the timetravel pod. This is the pod which Held Khonnir Baine, so he ended up in his Body, Quantum Flux style.
He did recognise Casanda as his former Science Officer - so basically, my Android Player is in Casandas former Body.
Hellion also recognised her and is already bugging her About mindmelding.
Now we are just about to enter Hellions Domain, and I am thinking about interfacing her with the personality Crystals.
My initial idea is that they will see in the Vision of the Haunted Wrecks that the Inhibitor Facet is something like an Obedience Chip installed in Androids. So instead of just finding it, I want it to be actually in her head.
This hopefully will make for some great roleplaying opportunities, where I basically allow my Player to install the Personality Crystals in herself. My initial plan is to limit it to one at a time, first to make it easier to roleplay for her (you are now all Anger, All, Ego, etc.) but also to drive the storyline - the have to Gather all her personality Crystals AND find a Computer powerful enough to restore her full AI.

What I am Looking for is an interesting Interpretation of the Inhibitor facet as personality trait AND a good idea what it would take to remove it from her head. Probably comparable to installing Cyberware?

Hi guys,

I will be running a scenario soon where the adventurers fight an Evil priest in his temple. Now specifically this is even in the presence of his god.

Are there any rules that influence magic if you are in a temple or sacred place?

Due to my ongoing confusion with Exploration Modes Goal I took a deeper look into Red Flags. As per it's description, it favors cunning skill use and spell casting as well as Investigation themed adventures. That sounded like a lot of Exploration mode to me. To Quote the Adventure:
Much of this chapter is free-form and played in
exploration mode within the common areas of Whark’s
stronghold. Instead of exploring a stretch of wilderness,
the PCs are investigating numerous personalities at the
party. While the PCs are free to act how they wish as they
mingle with partygoers, partake in the food and rum, and
even gamble with cards and dice at the various tables, the
gala is restricted to the front portions of the Talon Citadel
(areas N1–N7).

To get this out of the way - there is Zero guidance in here how to use them. Instead, there is an utterly different System how to Approach the one (in letters, ONE) apporachable NPC.

There is an NPC that you can impress, but only for 1 Minute with a normal roll or 5 minutes with a critical success. Remember, this is a roleplaying challenge. Are we going to time now how long we talk to this guy? Or do we enter encounter mode, because requests are for some reason Actions and you can only request 3 things a turn. So in the Minute the guy is friendly you can do 30 requests??? Oh, and the good old "Intimidation never works" is back. Can somebody explain to me how this guy simply resists my Master of Intimidation by not talking to you anymore? I am one step away from literally scaring People to death, yet there are some dandies that stand above this. And this is a pirate Scenario where I would expect Intimidation to be their "Good Morning" and "How are you?".

Then you have an interesting idea in that the Head of the Party, your Nemesis and a freaking contract devil sit at the same table. And what an interesting James Bond like Situation this could be, going back and forth with your actual Nemesis while unable to fight, trying to cajole the captain to your side while a contract devil tries to seduce you.

Nope. Your Nemesis doesn't want to talk. Not even if he recognises his Nemesis.
The contract Devil ONLY has a reason to talk to you if
A) you f~+~ed up and he's there to distract you
B) You out of the blue suspect him of being the guy that betrays Cpt. Whark You have no proof of this and your only lead is that there are only t NPC's with a K in there Name, and no one ever uses codenames.

And finally the Captain. As written, he knows something about you, but you don't know what. You are allowed to approach and hand a suitable gift (there is no way to find out beforehand what gifts are suitable, or even that gifts are expected). We don't know what happens if your gift is bad. Or you don't have one. Hi disposition is probably as nothing is stated. You have to make a Request of her to accept your aid. What DC, you ask? No idea. I know how to make her friendly or helpful (vaguely), but then? Up to you. No guidance.

But my favourite? A critfail on an Diplomacy roll can lead to you being cursed by the Gods and getting a condition that needs to be removed by a 10th Level spell. Yup, that's right. Asking questions about a supernatural ship that happens to be around can get you cursed. No warning. Guess how much Investigation will be done going forward once this happens.

Then we have a trap that can only be identified by a critical success during thievery. That's right, no amount of searching for the trap can find it, you need to crit during your happy Thievery Marathon, otherwise it's trap city.

Did I mention that while this lock/trap Combo has a rather high DC, it has no Proficiency requirement? That's right, a Magical Vault Door can obviously be opened by rolling enough untrained Thievery Checks. It's DC 33, so a Dex focused Lvl 14 Ranger or Fighter (Dex +6, Proficiency +12 (Untrained) actually has a decent Chance of opening this.

We started in Pale Mountains Shadow yesterday and I wanted to share my experience. This time, we were 4 players, so all my careful preparation of added monsters was for nought! Joking aside, I do like the simple way to scale encounters and I had prepared 5 and 6 player versions within 15 minutes.
Our merry band of adventurers were:

Datlev, a flamingly gay elven Barbarian with the Cavalier dedication
Diani, aka Superkyra, on her trusted mount Kyra, a Sarenite Cleric with the healing domain and Cavalier Dedication
Grommosh, a supposedly shapeshifting dwarfen Druid with a Vine Leshy familiar
Darulf (?), who I consistently misread as Donut, a dwarfen Dragon Monk

All but Darulf are cornerstones of our Pathfinder Society and have been playtesting since Day 1.
We jumped into the introduction and right off the players were a tad confused about the +1 Handwraps of mighty Fists and the scroll of flight. I was even suspected of going easy on them due to the awful reports of deadly Manticores on the forums 
We then got into an interesting discussion about travelling with minions. I am still unsure if companions and familiars can have their own Exploration mode tactics, but can see the arguments that they could, at least the intelligent ones.
Pg. 416 Minion trait
If given no commands, minions use no actions except to defend themselves or to escape obvious harm. If left unattended for at least 1 minute, mindless minions don’t act, whereas intelligent ones act as they please.
So, between this and the way Exploratoin tactics are done I think we need some clarification. Especially as Familiars could be very helpful during exploration with their high perception and special senses.

As we actually had two Cavaliers, they could without any problems take exploration tactics, while the stout dwarfs wandered along. I still fell odd about having people without Ride on horses being as slow as if they were walking and it being exhausting, by the way.

But they did take up the offer of pack Camels, due to them being expected to plunder a tomb and bring back potentially heavy treasure. This brought up another good point – do I need to have someone assigned to pack animals and have them Handle/Command them as well? I decided against it and let the druid lead them along – in the end, we could have given that task to one of the riders to avoid the issue, but it’s another data point worth clarifying.
The five days of travel went by – we actually found a use for Assurance (Survival). It let’s you Auto-assist oon survival checks. That was nice. It did feel really strange that Diani was also the best at Survival, despite there being a Druid and a Barbarian. But the player couldn’t roll woth anything, so with three missed rolls and vs. one success they actually took a day longer for the travel than expected.

Encounter 1: Hyenas

Both lookouts failed to beat the Stealth of the predators, So I started the encounter with Stealth vs. Perception intiative and the Hyenas unseen. The mighty barbarian miffed his seek vs. the Hyanodon. Btw, does anybody else feel it’s off that the Large Hyanodon has a better Stealth than the medium Hyenas?
The Monk found one Hyena, but had no action left to point it out. This led to an interesting point where I put the miniature on the table but had to tell the other guys that they still don’t know where it is. But overall, I am fine with that mechanic.
So we came around to my beasties attacking. I had some fun with trying to kill and drag the Barbarians Horsie off, but had to realise that with the whole table being difficult terrain the whole drag mechanic was a bit pointless. Also, it is quite difficult to drag large creatures anywhere if there are a lot of other people around.
Overall, I fought it was a good demonstration of how special monster mechanics and difficult terrain work, and the Dragon monk stole everybodies thunder by ignoring difficult terrain and killing all three opponents (not singlehandedly, but he heavily contributed)
I awarded him a Hero Point for it, because I like hero points and was more stingy with them in the first module. I like to give everybody a lot of them so they can try out all the mechanics involved.

The druid did nice roleplaying in caring more about the pack animals than the rest of the group (I think he spent more actions on handle animal in this part than on casting ;), and Diani could shine by saving Detlevs Horse from dying twice in a row. I decided on the spot that heroic animal companions get dying conditions as well. It did go down to dying 3 once due to a critical hit and a follow up drag, but I did not get to finish it off.

Encounter 2: Quicksand and Ankhrav

This time Diani actually beat the Stealth of the Hazard, so went into encounter mode and gave them a “Something is off there in the middle of the map, next to the strange mound.”
Unfortunately, the barbarian went first and did not find anything, leading to the Monk wandering right into the quicksand. But, as he had an action left, he just moved right out again. That was a bit underwhelming, I would have expected at least an Athletics check to move out, but that’s the way it is.

Meanwhile, the Ankhrav had buried unnoticed right next to the party, popped out and gave half the party a nice Acid shower. Here I think I noticed an oversight in the description – I do not think it’s intentional that the Ankhrav causes persistent damage even on a successful save. We played it as written, but I gave half the persistent damage to the guys that made their saves.
In an absolute first, all four characters and horses I hit with persistent damage got rid of it in the same turn!
The Ankrav tried unsuccessfully to eat the Barbarians Armour and got pummeled to Death for it. I was thinking about how to get anybody in the quicksand, but couldn’t find a good position to shove anybody in. And it really wouldn’t have done anything, as on their turn they probably would have just moved out.
I also thought to late of Burrow/Bite/Burrow to protect the Ankhrav from the onslaught more, but that’s what a playtest is for ;)
We did get to test Natural Healing, as both Diani and Grommosh had it. Interesting point, RAW you can try Natural healing until it succeeds, as you only can heal with it once per day. Don’t know if that’s the intent, but I am all for healing options beside Clerics, so I’m fine. It’s also a bit strange that it’s a per person thing, because that leads to a bit more bookkeeping (Did I get naturally healed from Diani or Grommosh today already?)

Encounter 3: Gnoll Camp

I fully expected my players to just walk around the camp, but despite having no one speaking Gnoll (getting extra languages is not easy), they tried to parley with the beasts. We got into some sign language Diplomacy, and I transcribed the -4 for not having the language from intimidate to diplomacy. With the whole group helping him (Diani would have been the best at Diplomacy as well, but as the Druid came up with the idea I had him make the roll) and the Monk giving a critical success at support, they actually convinced the Gnolls to let them pass for one of their horses.
I gave the druid a hero point for avoiding the encounter with this nice piece of roleplaying.

Encounter 4: Pale Mountain and the Manticore

The players spent a whole day (12 hours) looking for the easy path up the mountain, being very aware that they were shit at climbing and would have to leave their mounts. This gave me the opportunity to foreshadow the Manticore a bit with his roars in the night and the sounds of him killing the Gnoll party drifting off the mountain.

We had some fun with critical fails on Lore rolls, leading to the Cleric identifying the manticore, while the barbarian thought of a dragon. When they found the quills, they changed positions, with Diani being now convinced that Detlev was right, it’s a spine-shooting Dragon!

A little later they finally encountered the only Manticore on Golarion that thinks hiding in clear skies is the best strategy when his perception is six points higher than his stealth modifier…
To make it less stupid, I had him actually hide in the rocks above them on the map and spring into action. Calculating up/down and lateral movement did give me some headaches during the fight, never mind calculating distances for weapons and spells, but my players helped me a lot, so that was ok. The barbarian got to use his longbow without the dreaded volley. They send the Monk flying, and though I was initially worried he would just end up as Manticore chow, being unsupported in the sky and slower than the monster. But then we realized that in Dragon stance, he can actually rise faster than the manticore, due to him ignoring the difficult terrain!
That made it a really interesting fight, with a lot of getting up and down to stay in Heal range (because the Manticore bites horrifically hard). I tried out some Intimidation to spice things up, but Monks are no slouches at Will Saves. I finally grappled him in the intent to fly up with him out of heal range and munch on him, but in that round the monk Hit with a critical Dragon Tail attack followed by a max damage punch, kicking the beast out of the sky!

That’s where we called it a night. Much fun was had by everyone, so I call it a successful start.

Major takeaways:
1. I am getting more familiar with exploration mode, but it still needs a lot of clarification for me to make it a smooth and useful part of the game. Interaction with companions, Animals, riding and how to transfer from exploration to encounter actually works with clearer examples.
For example, the players did not feel good about the quicksand/Ankhrav thing. They actually beat the Stealth DC of the thing, but that only meant they had to search for it again. While I am not against this, it felt off to the players. It is even fuzzier with stealthy enemies. Do they start out as sensed? Unseen? How many of them do they detect? I can rule all of this, but clarification would be very much appreciated.

2. The small self prepared encounters need more guidance. Positioning of the enemies has a major impact on the start of the encounter, especially for ambushes like the hyenas. Also, while I think the dangerous terrain was interesting, I did not know how to actually utilize it with the hyenas. Would they drag their victims through it, taking damage themselves?
Ankhrav/Quicksand. How does the Ankhrav benefit from being next to the quicksand? Does he drag/shove his victims in? Is he unaffected by it due to his burrow speed?
For the Manticore – how far away you spot him has a major impact on how the battle starts, and there is no guidance on that at all.
And the Gnoll camp encounter is also bad design – you autospot them first, and there is no incentive to interact with them at all. I have the feeling my druid player was just bored and wanted to do something for a change.

3. Balance. If the playtest was to check if a +1 weapon on one player unbalances the party, I will answer with a clear yes. While there were other factors involved (Dragon stance ignoring difficult terrain and good rolls), the Monk completely outshone everybody else in the damage department.
Neither the Druid nor the Cleric touched any of their spell slots. That does not worry me as such, as they only had two Low 4 encounters and one High 4 Encounter, and that on alternating days.

Unfortunately it will be quite some time until we finish this, due to Work and family interfering, but I look forward to it!

Thanks to Fuzzy-Wuzzy who identified it in the errate thread:

playtest rulebook page 414 wrote:
Acid Effects with this trait deal acid damage. An item with Hardness 5 or lower takes 1 extra Dent from acid damage.

How would you interprete the extra dent? Do I need to cause an initial Dent or do I cause one independently of my initial damage?

Welcome to my overly wordy report on DD1 – The Lost Star

Feedback is clustered on the rooms, including info on where I had adjust for 6, later 5 players. I am listing the rooms in the order my players visited them. In the end there is a short overview of my main takeaways.
I had 6 players, 3 PFS veterans and followers of the playtest info and 3 D&D roleplayers with years of experience. They had a very different approach to both the adventure and encounters.
The veterans brought premade characters and helped two of the PF2 newbies create their own. The last player was late and decided to play Valeros – he hates the nitty gritty of mechanics anyway. The only longish part was chosing equipment and spells, and the TEML layout led to lots of confusion where and how you end up with your actual bonus. It took overall a bit over an hour to go, with lots of spell and mechanics info still missing.

We ended up with the following
Elf Barbarian, Friend of the Family
Self identified Kyra clone, Pathfinder hopeful
Valeros
Goblin Bard, Renegade
Human Alchemist, Mindquake Survivor
Human Sorceror, Angel Blood, Mindquake Survivor

I set up the Elf Barbarian as Keleris trophy boy and strongman, who should gather some pathfinders to clear out the troublesome goblins in her cellar. What he found was Valeros tagging along two drinking buddies he had picked up at a local bar that wouldn’t stop talking about the tentacles behind the night, and Not-Kyra that was hanging around the lodg hoping to impress some actual pathfinders.

He gathered them all up with a promise of 100gp (I made that up on the spot – is there an actual reward in the adventure I missed?) and they confronted the two fungus addled goblins in the cellar, one blasting away at his blowpipe, the other singing so badly as to make make Zon-Kuthon weep.

Valeros introduced them to the fun of Coercion by Intimidation, but they locked the backup goblin up in a cupboard.

General layout and adventure structure:

I am not a fan of non reactive dungeons. At some times, the more experienced Players highlighted that it would be tactically better to rest and regroup, as they had 7 days to regain the Star. Our roleplayers persisted that it would feel off, so they pushed through, which could have very easily led to a TPK.
What felt strange was that Drakus was supposed to sit in his room and eat Goblins for days, even if all his minions were slaughtered around him. There should be at least a few sentences what he does with his remaining minions or how it impacts the Overall dungeon.
Finally, having a Goblin that can explain you 3/4 of the dungeon takes away a lot of the challenges. So I ignored that, otherwise there would have been no interest at all to investigate Areas 3-5 (as there is not even any loot in there), both the Alarm and both the traps of the goblins and the Pharasma statue would have been detected without any Action by the Players - this info would have been automatically available, which seems very odd.
Therefore, I agreed with the Goblin player that he had overdosed on the mindfog shroom and gave him untrained Lore checks for each room, and we came up together with some hilarious half-truths. When they finally met Drakus, the had actually prepared stakes for a vampire.

A1: Starting the playtest off with a Monster that is nothing but a pile of hitpoints but without any exploitable weaknesses is boring. I had troubles where my Players would be when I have them enter Encounter mode, and I didn't really understand if I could give them info about the hidden Ooze or not. Also nobody knows which recall Knowledge works on Oozes (I went with Nature and Occultism). As I didn't remember the rules for Setting the difficulty of the Task, I gave up, made up a number in my mind - and then realized I had no idea what info to give them. What is the most known Thing about oozes? Or something more subtle. This was made more complicated by 2 users of dubious Knowledge and some other critfails on Knowledge. Coming up with interesting erroneous Knowledge on the spot is not easy.

A2/A5: My next problem with exploration vs encounter mode and perception. Does it make any difference what tactics people use if they want to hear the goblins? What do I roll for the goblins to notice the players? None were sneaking, so there should have been a chance. As is, I just started encounter mode as soon as one of my players set foot in the room, as nobody was sneaking and he had a light source. Was that right? No idea.
I did not run into much of the lighting trouble, because my players got lucky with initiative and the Barbarian with the Nightvision power had the light spell on his sword and just ran to the goblins. What felt odd was that even he had not seen any of them (he was in the hallway) he went off with a Sudden Charge. So he essentially charged the darkness until he luckily found a goblin in range.
In the aftermath I could have worked better with the Goblins to set up flanks on him with Goblin shuffle, but this takes some getting used to. I realized that my monsters were already at a disadvantage because they had to spend an action to get their weapons out. This goes back to “When does the encounter start” Is there a perception before that? There was a fight next door involving alchemical bombs. Should my goblins have heard that?
They slaughtered the Goblins nicely, the Barbarian took some damage, and I fled the last Goblin run into the Fungus room. Due to my group being 6 players, I had placed two already confused Goblins there (also to give anyone a reason to enter this room).
The Fighter followed and got confused, The alchemist blew up the Shroom with a Fire Bomb, and the Sorceress entered the room as well. Both Fighter and Sorceress stayed in there for a looong time. Here I misunderstood the Hazard Statblock. I thought that Routine: Action (1) meant that It costs him one action to disperse the spores and had him do it three times initially. I am not sure that changed anything, because I don’t know if the Fighter failed his first or only a subsequent save. This could have very well been the end of the sorceress, as the fighter had to attack her, but bad rolls saved both of them. They just staid in there. Again, and again. Until the Sorceress even got the critfail.
I then improvised a Pull Maneuver from Shove and finally allowed them to improvise a Lasso in order to get them out of the room. We then realized that despite having three healers including an alchemist with Antidote and Antiplague and a first aid kit, there was nothing there could be done about the stupefied condition. It feels off that the spores are a completely traitless effect with no means of counteracting it. At least Someone got off a great Nature roll so I could tell them it would wear off in an hour.

I had my goblin player always roll Lore untrained to see if he would remember anything useful about the dungeon due to Shroom aftereffects. Even after he told them that the two other rooms were dead bodies and vermin, they still went in.

A3: I had put a Bat Swarm in with the Centipedes, to try a low level swarm and to make the room more reactive (basically any movie ever has a cave full off bats that then fly all around once someone enters.) Swarms are still nasty, but at least they can be hacked up now with some work. Valeros actually guessed right in using slashing with his sword and the killed them between an AoO and some normal attacks, but not before I got four players into the swarm and could bite twice. Including a critfail on the Dex Save by the alchemist, that hurt! What felt counterintuitive to me was that bleed doesn’t stack, but it was harsh enough.

I flubbed the centipedes as I didn’t notice their climb speed. But having a three dimensional fight already would have been horrible anyway. So they got into a chokepoint in the tunnel. At least my players obliged and ran into the readied attacks of the waiting centipedes. No poison saves were failed. The cleric pumped everybody to full to stop the bleeding. Splash and persistent damage by the alchemist bombs actually did something here, I think one wounded centipede got killed by splash, and one by persistent damage.

Unfortunately here it got late so our Barbarian had to leave. We continued on with 5 players.

A6: Purification Fountain
We realized neither Detect magic not Read Aura give you any useful information on the fountain. Neither helps you to find the Idol either. I had to guess that the fountain would have transformation magic as Aura? The Sorceress tried to pick the lock with the help of the Alchemist. After two broken Lockpicks they got lucky in just under ten rolls. Nobody in the room felt that this was an interesting mechanic.
They also found the alarm on the other door, but never used it.

A9. They successfully identified the Pharasma statue and were sure it’s a trap, but nobody thought of disabling it. They tried with prayers and some water directly from the fountains face. I liked the idea and let it pass, unfortunately only the leading character did it, so as soon as another player passed they got a faceful of sand.

A8. This unfortunately led them northwards, because it was easier to evade that way, and they decided to raid the Ossuary. Despite multiple questions from both the Cleric and the Fighter if ransacking this crypt is a nice idea, the proceeded to go in, blasting positive energy. The Cleric had a short oh shit when his 3 Action Heal basically woke up all 6 Skeletons plus the Plague Zombie I had upgrade the encounter with. But with the support of another 3 action Heal from the sorceress that left a battered plague zombie. He ate another disrupt undead from the bard, and then was gloriously decapitated by the alchemist with a thrown dagger. I still have trouble imagining how a thrown dagger would cause slashing damage, but it made for a nice finishing move.

A6 (again) Then they actually decided to go back to the fountain room, because they were convinced they had to solve that riddle before they could pass the statue. Finally someone made the Perception roll to find the Idol. They “Telekinetic Projectile’d” it out of the fountain, which led us to the fun realization that this Cantrip has no Bulk limit. Look out, unattended Wagons! Which released the Quasits.
We had some fun trying out the invisibility/unseen/sensed mechanics, and this actually felt like teamwork, with the Sorceress and Alchemist pointing out the baddies and the Cleric and Fighter killing the beasties. The Fighter ate a critical Sting and critically failed the poison resistance, which led to some distress, but finally a use for the alchemists antidote. I like the new poison rules, even though we got confused if you take damage if you succeed at a subsequent saving throw or not. I ruled wrongly in favor of the player. So our fighter would have died after the fight was over, but I am not too worried about that. The poison rules felt quite exciting, but it’s a not easy to track, especially with multiple instances of the poison involved.

A10. They finally battered down Drakus door in an great display of ineptitude (three 1s were rolled)
I messed up Drakus action economy by using his transform ability on turn 1, because between him stepping and transforming I only had one action left. I wanted to grab the sorceress in front of me, but as the Grab ability of the claw actually needs another action, I was unable to use that and instead Athletics-grabbed her, thereby squandering his +2 to damage.

The fight was actually a pretty cool boss fight, even though Drakus failed miserably a lot of the time. I think I hit once with the sword, and never got that Claw/Grab/Sword with Sneak attack damage to work. Nevertheless we had quite a cinematic moment with the sorceress restrained in a critical grapple, with her using three actions to escape and succeeding on the last with two hero points invested.
Valeros got to shine when Drakus critically failed to grab him, so the Fighter b!+$$slapped him to the ground and gave him an AoO to the face when he stood up.

Even though my roles were shit, everybody was quickly aware that they were always only on crit away from Death with this guy, and with only Valeros having an AoO there was no real way to stop him from attacking whoever he wanted.

Luckily the quickly dispatched the two rats in the room, so Drakus could not set up any flanks.

I am still convinced that this combat is extremely dangerous and swingy, but there were multiple things to think about, actually interesting and feasible combat maneuvers involved and everybody had fun to kill this guy in the end.

We ended the scenario there, because it was late and there were no more challenges worth fighting over, there was no reason for them to enter the Goblin Cave.

Major takeaways:
1. I still have no idea what exploration mode is supposed to do. But as this dungeon was so small, we could have basically done it all in encounter mode anyway, interrupted by strange 10 minute pauses for read aura or waiting an hour for stupefied to pass.
2. Hazards and poisons are interesting, but complicated. Hazards are similar enough to creatures that their slightly different format (Hardness instead of hitpoints, routines with a set number of actions instead of the normal action setup) that it can lead to misunderstandings. It was for example really strange for me that the players would save for the fungus cloud when it was the fungus turn, for the sand trap at the beginning of their turn and for poison at the end of their turn.
3. Inititative is king, even more so with the three action economy. Had I beaten them in initiative with the Goblins or the Quasits, much pain would have happened.
4. Ambushes with Perception vs. Stealth are nice once you are in encounter mode, with the interesting Sensed/Unseen mechanic and point out. But it is really ill defined when to transfer there and what kind of actions you can take before/who senses whom first. So the transfer from exploration to encounter mode was still strange for situations where both sides could have been aware of each other. And as drawing your weapon costs an action, that small a thing can make a major difference.
5. The boss fight was long enough and had just enough interesting mechanics to be fun. Unfortunately, even if my players had somehow found out that the boss is not a vampire, but a faceless stalker, it would have made no difference. Finally, having him already linked to the Heralds of the Night would feel more natural than a random faceless stalker that wants to impress the red bishop, but that’s just me.
6. Cleric Healing is absolutely OP versus everybody else. We had a Bard, Angelic Bloodline Sorcerer and an Alchemist. They all felt like idiots when they compared their healing to the Clerics spell point healing, before even talking about his spells! After seeing how harsh battles are, my clear recommendation is to buff other classes healing. You need it. If you want to get away from mandatory clerics, you need to give meaningful options to these other classes to make up for it.
7. Combat Maneuvers are nice, but rolling them against Fortitude instead of Athletics was a surprise. Also the inexplicable absence of a Drag maneuver.

Based on the discussion of Break DC vs Thievery DC I delved into the material chapter. I am wondering how to kill doors via damage now.

Page 175 lists the type of immunites of objects:

Inanimate objects and traps with object immunities
are always immune to bleed, disease, death effects,
healing, mental effects, necromancy, nonlethal attacks,
and poison, as well as the asleep, enervated, enfeebled,
paralyzed, and stunned conditions.

They are notably not immune to critical hits or precision damage.

So, what is the AC of a door? Because with the new +10 crit rule, this may be a very interesting alternative to Athletics/Thievery checks.

A typical wooden door Needs 20 Damage (Hardness 10) to become dented. That is feasible on Level 1 but only if we are critting.

Do you know any guidelines? I've been looking for constructs, but they are honestly even more confusing with their construct armour trait and HP on top.

As I am new to hero Points in Pathfinder but very much like the idea, I wanted to learn how you use the Guideline for 1 Out of Play activity.
To take an upcoming example, I organise a playtest Event in a local Pub. What kind of activity could I look for people to do to get that out of game Hero Point?
There will be no map drawing, Snacks will be provided in the Pub, I did the Invitation and Organisation myself. I Kind of struggle to find something, yet would love to give my Players hero Points to Play with. Especially as the most interesting use is only possible with the full three Points.
Do you think something like filling out the tracking sheet and participating in the playtest Survey would fit?

Hi webguys,
on my Moto G5 using Chrome, the button for the Playtest Survey of "The Lost Star" does not appear. The links for the PFS Surveys are ok.

Another Limitation I find strange, plus it doesn't really gel with the new rules for perception. First of, why do I Need to be Aware of an enemy to affect it with Dragon Roar? Everybody around me that hears me Roar makes a save, why does it matter if I know they are there?

And why not use "Sensed" as established in the perception rules? Can I use it against an unseen creature or invisible creature if someone tells me it is there?

Right now, it would Impact the goblin in front of me, but not the invisible Stalker right next to it, even though they are both in the Area of Effect. That seems clunky and unnecessary.

Looking through the Fighter Feats for interesting styles, I came up with two very strange interactions.
1. Agile Grace and Two Weapon Flurry. These Sound like natural Feats for two weapon Fighters. Yet, If I have agile Grace, it actually keeps me from using Two Weapon Flurry.

Agile Grace: Your multiple attack penalty with
agile weapons and agile unarmed attacks becomes –3 after
the first attack and –6 after the second, rather than –4 and
–8, respectively.

Two Weapon Flurry: Requirements You are wielding two weapons, each
in a different hand. Your multiple attack penalty
with both weapons is –8 or worse.

These seems like a very strange resttriction for something that seems like a natural Progression for a two weapon Fighter.

2. Double Shot and Point Blank Shot both have the Open Tag. Again, very annoying. Not only does it Limit interesting combination of feats, it also limits my actions. Why is it bad if I, e.g. shoved someone away before entering the Point Blank stance or doubleshooting the guy?
There are a few other Open Feats that feel a bit shoehorned in.

Strangely, being paralyzed only makes you flat-footed, but does not incur the same -4 to AC that being asleep or unconscious does. Any specific reason for this?

Ever since Starfinder introduced bulk with it's vague guidelines, we ran into the problem of estimating what our unconscious/dead/paralyzed party members take up in bulk. The Playtest finally answers this question in an unexpected place.
Page 323, the petrified condition states:
"You become an object with a Bulk equal to twice your normal Bulk (typically 16 for a petrified medium creature or 8 for a petrified small creature)"
So, a medium drunk human is 8 bulk, his small gnome so bling buddy is 4 bulk! Good to know!
For the CRB, please move this to the initial description of bulk as an example - it comes up way too often.

I just realized after my first game that my drone cannot keep up with me. It can never double move at the same time I do and it can't take the run Action.
So, in overland travel situations, does my drone actually slow us down? Never mind any chases.
I guess it has to do with game Balance in combat, but it does feel rather strange.

Something that has been bothering me for quite some editions now - why do we need the actual scores? Wouldn't it be easier to just use your bonuses for everything?
Aside from Carrying Capacitiy and odd feat requirements, I can't think of an instnce where the actual Attribute Score is used. And for those instances they could easily be replaced.
I would actually help roleplay Immersion, because right now, it makes it more Abstract for People to compare/imagine characters: "I have strength 15, you only a measly 10!" This sounds like the strength 15 guy is one and a half time as strong as the average guy.
Well, in actual Play that means our strongman is only 10% stronger/more likely to succeed in any deed of strength. So basically having them as +0 and +2 respectively is much more descriptive than the current system.

This is a real question - in a world where good, bad, lawful, chaotic, are tangible forces of the universe, does a person know if they are good or evil? Starting at level five, I pop up on detect evil/good, etc, so I am measurably somewhere on this scale.
Is the greedy, lying, CE merchant aware that he is going for an afterlife in the Abyss? Is he surprised when the Paladin asks him pointed question afte looking at him for a while?
In our current WotR campaign, where redemption and damnation are necessarily important topics, this is a really interesting question.
I have one of the NPC's drifting toward evil. It just takes away a lot of the roleplaying involved if the Paladin or Cleric can just cast a spell and prove to the guy "You went to far, you are in neutral territory. Better change your ways, or you will become evil." And the guy knows that's true!
So, rambling mode off, have you ever encountered this dilemma and how did you work with it?

I made a similar post in the WotR forums but got the good advice to rather ask here.
So, what are the go to ways to identify demons in disguise? We do have a paladin and a witch, so Detect Magic and Detect Evil are quite easy. I am just wondering if that is not too easy. I mean, if it is just a matter of having a paladin looking at every stranger or casting a quick detect magic, how ddo you ever challenge your parties with shapechangers?
Also interesting is how the general populace would handle this if they are very aware of shapechangers. If it doesn't burn, it's at minimum a Tiefling? That led to my players asking if a shapechanging demon could not simply imitate burn marks.
So, how are your demon hunters handling this?

I am in book 2 of Path of the Righteous and now the topic on how to detect shapechanged demons has come up quite a few times. Their first run in with on of the deserter demoms (forgot the name) has made them exceedingly wary, and I have to admit that I myself am a bit fuzzy on what should and should not work. Now that in Drezen the Succubus traitor comes up, this will become even more interesting.
So, what are the go to ways to identify demons in disguise? We do have a paladin and a witch, so Detect Magic and Detect Evil are quite easy. I am just wondering if that is not too easy. I mean, if it is just a matter of having a paladin standing at the gate and looking at all the incoming traffic, how did any demon ever get into Kenabres?
I played a little loose with the way the burners are doing things, to get some witch hunting madness going (if it doesn't burn, it's at minimum a Tiefling). That led to my players asking if a shapechanging demon could not simply imitate burn marks.
So, how are your demon hunters handling this?