Dhenn's page

A few things:

That's what I'd hope and how I want to interpret it. I was just looking at it side by side with Monstrous Mount from Inner Sea Combat, which is more explicit. It did seem grey enough to me that I wouldn't be 100% comfortable telling someone it was a valid option for a Paladin, hence the clarification request.

Just to be clear, especially as the Qadira clarifications are still forthcoming:

The AR provide a way for Cavaliers, Rangers, and Paladins to get a Shissah companion:

A PC who must select an animal companion from a limited list (e.g. cavalier, paladin, or ranger) may select a shissah in place of a horse, but unless it is that PC's first animal companion selected, the PC must spend 4 Prestige Points to gain such a mount; each additional shissah acquired costs 4 additional Prestige Points.

However, the other cool variant horses, the Genie-Touched, are still inaccessible to Paladins and Rangers, by the strictest RAW. The feat requires the "animal companion or mount" class features. The Divine Bond (Mount) and Hunter's Bond (Animal Companion) class features wouldn't qualify.

If that's intended, that's fine. If there should be a way for those classes to take them, a clarification would be appreciated.

I'm sure we'll need to work out the local details about our requests, but I had a question about how recurring events will be handled. If we have a recurring event with no end date, do we request support for a limited period, or the entire duration? If it is a limited period, how do we decide how long to request coverage?

Steve, while that might be a possibility, I'd say the opposite might also be true. I can see this program as providing an incentive that gets first-time or otherwise reluctant GMs to start running more, hopefully not just at supported events, but also at others.

I'd be interested in Lyrics, if there's space.

It's cool to see so many people interested in joining the GM pool! As others said, evergreens are a good place to start, especially if you'd like more experienced GMs to participate.

My one comment would be that it's most important to get started running something you really like. You should be having fun as a GM too! If there's a scenario you really loved as a player, that might be a better starting point than an evergreen you're not very excited about.

Oh, and on the more unusual character descriptions, I have:

snip

Not entirely related, but since it is somewhat con-relevant: Could you share a little bit more about the new player folders you mentioned? We've got something similar over in Boston, but it's always nice to swap notes about what works well.

Dhenn wrote:

I cant wait for this one, though count me as another voice sad we're not getting ten pages on the spice trade.

Jessica, would you have book recommendations for people interested in learning more about the real world cultures that provided inspiration for parts of this book? I know next to nothing about the Scythians, and have only really encountered early Persian history as it related to Greek and Roman history, for example. I've been trying to read more about events, regions, and cultures that haven't been featured in my formal history courses, and this is definitely one of those areas.

I most certainly do! :-)

This one is great -- comes at it from the "were the Amazons of legend Scythians/Sarmatians?" angle.

And this one.

It took me long enough, but holiday travel meant the Adrienne Mayor book finally escaped from my "things I'll get around to reading eventually" shelf. I'm loving everything about it, especially how it manages to bounce back and forth between looking at classical histories/myths and modern archaeology. Just wanted to say thanks for the recommendation!

Sorry for the holdup. Just need to add in gear and the familiar.

One note from my in-person run: In Ustalav one of the rooms mentions containing an unassembled ballista, a bit of description I read without thinking too much about it.

Naturally, the party couldn't wait to put it together. On the fly I flipped open Ultimate combat, and after two failed tries putting it together they gave up. In the future I'll either prep a bit about siege engines in advance or (as I realized in hindsight) specify a lack of ammunition.

I would love to write some classes for the neutral and evil deities. ^_^

I would love to see one or both of those books. I'm super excited for this book already, to the point where I've almost exclusively been playing my neutral PFS characters until I get a look at the goodies in here, since many if not most of by goodies follow relevant deities.

That said, if we could get a Chronicles of the Righteous style book for the Psychopomp Ushers, Primal Inevitables, etc. first that would be literally the best thing.

Thanks! I can see both versions of that table making sense story-wise. I just put it on the Pandemonium schedule a few weeks from now so I'll have time to figure out a few possible configurations.

I'm very excited for this, but I did have a few questions from my first pass through.

Oh, and one more serious one:

D Hennessey wrote:

But most importantly:

** True Dragons of Absalom spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **...

Thank you SO MUCH for that! Though I do need to now drop everything and go make the Shelynite Fashion Police Inquisitor I've been considering for a while now.

A couple others, that might not strictly qualify as unresolved arcs, including a few from general lore as opposed to specific scenarios. Trying to avoid specific spoilers.

Tonya Woldridge wrote:

We currently have over 760 Venture-Officers in 49 of the United States...

We need someone to step up in Hawaii ;)

Any chance Paizo wants to pick up my relocation expenses?

I do wish there was a bit more leniency with the rules on this issue, now that it's been brought up.

Considering how incredibly lenient Campaign mode rules are in some respects, not having more flexibility respect to running the whole thing seems especially weird.

It's currently kosher to run an AP with 30 point buy, Race Builder races, gestalt 3PP classes, and a smattering of 5e rules kludged in if you really felt like it. But deciding book 3 doesn't make sense for your party and doing something homebrew or substituting a different published adventure is no good.

For APs, at least, I'd like to see the ability to play campaign mode on a book by book basis. That removes any potential issues with people leaving a group early or joining late, and gives AP GMs a lot more flexibility in how they run things.

FWIW, Vudrani and various other ethnicities are still explicitly legal via a variety of other sources, notably the Inner Sea World Guide and Inner Sea races.

I don't think adding Vudrani to the Guide would be controversial (unless it causes a cascading series of formatting troubles or something).

If the word count can stand a slight increase, throwing in a line explicitly saying something along the lines of: "This list is not exhaustive, check the Additional Resources for ethnicities made available by other sources" might be nice.

Godwrecker, I'll give you an update about the play by post game later today, but in the meantime, I wanted to let you know there is PFS in Maine.

While he's based in the Boston area, Venture Captain David Montgomery has taken point on coordinating PFS up there. He can tell you what's going on up there. Send him an email at cambridgepfs (at) gmail, and he should be able to help you out.

Barbarian Lockpicking Method: A strength check to break a door

Alternatively, a barbarian's adamantine greataxe.

Two additional suggestions:

For in person play, your local Venture-Person who you can find here, is probably a great source of information about what's going on in your area. Even if there's not someone who's exactly where you are, someone in the general area can likely either answer your questions or introduce you to someone else who can.

Another online option is Play By Post. Games tend to take a long time to complete (~4-6 weeks is most common), but the daily time commitment is much less (~15 mins per game you're playing in). It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it can be nice to have a little bit of gaming to do each day. There are lots of ways to play it, but the most common is right here on these forums.

Play by Post Gameday V (basically an online convention) begins at the end of the month, so pretty much everyone's holding off on starting new games until then. I will be offering a game specifically for newcomers to PBP, so if that sounds like something you'd be interested in, let me know and I can hold you a seat.

Fully aware this is possibly the worst possible time to ask this question, but giving it a shot anyway...

Is there any hope for a Campaign Clarification to make Occult Hellknight Signifers more viable? Path of the Hellknight and a recent PFS scenario have made me interested in having my Psychic join the Order of the Gate. There's just one problem...

Currently, the prestige class requires one of two feats: Arcane Armor Training or Warrior Priest. Arcane Armor Training provides 0 mechanical benefit, while Warrior Priest requires a dip.

While I can work with those restrictions, it'd be nice to have an option that's more suitable, especially as Path of the Hellknight does present a canon Psychic/Hellknight Signifer. As it's from a Campaign Setting book, a clarification is likely the only way to make a change possible.

To throw a couple suggestions out there, Logical Spell or (non-PFS legal) Third Eye from Occult Adventures both seem relatively on theme. At first glance, there's not a "warrior caster" sort of feat that's a good fit for the occult classes as a whole.

Nefreet wrote:

Albeit lower in electrolytes.

"Electrolytes; they're what plants crave!"

BRAWNDO: The Thirst Mutilator!

Rushes off to make an Undine Barbarian...

I cant wait for this one, though count me as another voice sad we're not getting ten pages on the spice trade.

Jessica, would you have book recommendations for people interested in learning more about the real world cultures that provided inspiration for parts of this book? I know next to nothing about the Scythians, and have only really encountered early Persian history as it related to Greek and Roman history, for example. I've been trying to read more about events, regions, and cultures that haven't been featured in my formal history courses, and this is definitely one of those areas.

Day Jobs make sense for The Exchange, but they should be less of the be-all, end-all.

On this particular point, I think a relatively minor change that would go a long way would be to open up at least some of the tasks that call out Profession (Merchant) to a broader range of options. Showing up in three of the goals and one of the rewards can make it seem almost mandatory.

Perhaps open it up to any Profession of Craft, to represent the different sorts of businesses, legitimate and otherwise, that fall under the Exchange? It wouldn't change the mechanical burden in most cases, but allow for a bit more diversity in flavor.

In fact, depending on how the developments from a certain season 7 scenario play out, Scarab Sages may become the faction that gives paladins the most problems...

I'd say F. As far as I know, I'm the only person who owns one locally, on my Sentinel of Shelyn. My main use for the bird shape function is remembering I could have used it shortly after I completed a climb, swim, or similar obstacle that's a challenge for a heavily armored character.

Step 2 is completely unnecessary. You can do this just as effectively on scenarios you haven't played/GMed before, so you really don't know what's coming. Just keep the statements vague, and you'll be "right" often enough to claim to be a true fortune teller. That's how fortune tellers do it in the real world. When you're playing Pathfinder, vague predictions of trouble coming, and a fight about to start will be right more often than they're wrong.

This is definitely true, I GM for an extremely pessimistic dwarf, who jumps to extremely pessimistic conclusions about everything. He's usually right.

Your primary isn't at risk. The primary is:

The second half of that refers to the information on the warrant. As long as you at least see the warrant you meet that part.

But pretty much every Pathfinder should care about one of the few allies the society has in the country, and a source of uncensored historical information, getting carted off to prison.

Ok. That makes sense, especially rereading the room boxtext. The description of tripwires, coupled with the map, had me imagining a scene more like this.

I'm excited about this one, but still not quite grasping the "right way" to run the trap in A11. How are PCs supposed to get to all eight statues without triggering the trap? It sounds like touching any of the chains triggers it, so it seems almost impossible to navigate the room safely, even if they do manage to notice all the switches. The only option that comes to mind aside from shooting the winches is spells like mage hand.

For that matter, how would the Inquisitor disable the trap? He's probably not shooting the winches every time he wants to use the room, and his Acrobatics is pretty mediocre at both tiers, so he's probably not dodging and weaving through the chains.

There are more than a few scenarios where recovering Pathfinders, sometimes dead sometimes alive, is very important to the scenario's success. In some, it's your primary mission. Usually, the "reward" comes in the form of the GP and PP you'd earn from the scenario, though sometimes there's a relevant boon.

The Absalom book was from the 3.5 era, I believe, so I'd consider that out of date. PFS Field guide has the modern map of Absalom (matching the ones in Wounded Wisp and First Steps). I believe that's the most recent campaign setting source to provide one, so I'd call that the correct one.

My paladin is also a cleric with the Friendship subdomain, so he took Gamin along as a new friend. Gamin is now serving on the board of directors of that paladin's international restaurant chain.

While GMs and players can make a big difference in a scenario (for good or for bad), focusing on the actual content of a scenario seems to be the intention here. My first thoughts, in no particular order, overlapping quite a bit with some comments by others:

This list will actually be more current, as there have been some changes since the guide came out.

I'd throw in a fifth mounted question, that I've seen more than once.

How does Mounted Combat interact with grapple? Specifically it comes up in the context of grab. If a creature with reach grabs a mounted character, is the rider pulled off the mount? Do the mount and rider both move adjacent to the grabber?

It doesn't seem that they can. However, you can access the familiars of other Society witches in your off time. See here for a bit of discussion. It costs half the fee that it would take to scribe the spell [normally=10*(Spell Level)^2], which is pretty reasonable, especially as you can take 10 on the spellcraft checks, which makes failure almost impossible.

yes - but they should have service dates, aka 1123-1145.

Some should have a expired date (as in dead) or presumed dead.

I believe the Wiki intentionally leaves that information out (and plot elements of non-retired scenarios in general) to avoid spoilers.

Hi everyone,

I just had a situation come up that I haven't seen before, so I wanted to see what the proper way to handle it is. It basically boils down to this:

When casting a spell with a casting time greater than a standard action (like Summon Monster or Sleep), do characters who begin to threaten the character while the spell is being cast get an AOO?

The particular situation involved a character summoning from a position of relative safety. An enemy approached by double moving, and was able to threaten the target. Giving them an AOO seems to be legal, though it also seemed strange to basically get a double move and an attack. Just wanted to double check that letting the AOO happen is the best way to rule.

Hi all,

I noticed a couple of conflicts with the Additional Resources that seemed beyond the scope of the Additional Resources Update thread.

Bumping this because of the discussion that dominated the thread about pregen-only scenarios, not the OP.

I'm about to run my first Core table of a Season 7 scenario that has a connection to #6-98. Trying to phrase this in as spoiler-free a way as possible, if any of the players have the chronicle and certain other conditions are met, certain content related to the special appears.

I assume the normal firewall between the campaigns applies, but that does mean that there's no way for the 6-98 boon-related content to appear in Core?

The point I'm trying to make is that hard is good, but mathematically impossible is not. For example, Act 3 is supposed to end after 70 minutes or when all three districts are reduced to 0. Using the numbers given, there is no possible way to reduce any district to 0, never mind all of them.

Getting a district to 0 in act 2 would require every table to run both floating encounters in the same district, and even then it couldn't be the Northeast.

I'd like there to be enough encounters that you won't get through all of them, but at the low tier I'm not sure that's the case.

Anyway, my advice for people running the low tier would be to save encounter A1 for last in part 2, as it's the easiest one to stretch out if necessary.

I hadn't noticed the compass rose bit, but I had noticed the inconsistent terminology. I suppose knowing there's an explanation makes it somewhat better.

I expect the below to become part of a review once I've completed running the scenario, but I think its worth saying in the meantime:

I know it's been said many times above, but the HP for the different acts really doesn't make sense at all (Act 2 has 7 encounters, but complete success would require each table to succeed in 12 encounters, Act 3 has only 3 encounters versus 6 HP/table, and then Act 4 seems to dramatically overcorrect and wrap things up before most tables have even started the final encounter.)

I'm currently running this as part of the PBP Gameday at the 1-2 tier, so it's not the typical experience, but I expect to run it in person in early 2016. We're about to wrap up Act 2, which is very good because I'm just about to run out of encounters for that act. I am concerned they'll run through act 3 and be stuck waiting for the other tables.

I do hope future specials make sure that there's no chance for a party to just have to sit around and wait for others to catch up, especially at the low tier where combats can be quick. At the very least, throwing in several more floating encounters would be nice in the future. As a player, part of what's made these specials so fun is the feeling that there's too much for any one team to do, but I'm not really getting that from this scenario.

Thanks!

Hi,

Apparently I'm supposed to poke you if I haven't received a shipping confirmation yet? This order includes my August and September subscriptions (Sharaya helpfully consolidated them while fixing a billing address issue).

If there's any particular object(s) causing problems, I'd appreciate them being sidecarted or cancelled.

Thanks!

Definitely interested in this. Because I'm usually playing PFS, the opportunity for something more exotic is interesting. I'm thinking about a Samsaran Shaman with the Ancestors Spirit and the Speaker for the Past Archetype.

General concept would be that he (or she) has left Tian Xia to follow in the footsteps of one or more past incarnations who traveled this way, perhaps even one alongside Khiben-Sald himself. I'd plan on leaving the specifics vague, so that if you'd want to integrate them, you'd be able to fill it in as needed. If it stays as backstory the whole way through that's cool too. Thoughts before I get too far ahead?

Keep in mind you do need to own the source for all material your characters are using, so you'll need to pick up Occult Adventures to make that character.