Your reading is too legalistic. I read it with "and" not leading to a separate effect (otherwise that'd be worthy of a new sentence), but rather connecting the two effects; being Fascinated is what leads to spending one's actions that way/doing nothing. It's a package deal.
As you've pointed out, it would be too horrible if interpreted the more severe way. And the CRB has a rule about that, that if a game mechanic seems to good or bad to be true, then it's likely being misread.
So in effect, the Viper Vine can bring the party to itself, but once combat starts, they're all there to fight. They might not want to be there though, and they might be Sickened 1 or Stupefied 2.
Funnily enough, your interpretation operates a bit in reverse. When the Viper Vine attacks, the effect ends completely, but unless they critically saved, the PCs have to save again at the beginning of their turn or become captivated (unless they've left the cloud of course). So the amount of heroes fighting will fluctuate every round, which yes, makes the cloud quite strong and why it has the Incapacitation trait so it can't be used as a minor minion w/ that game-changing ability.
The save DC is normal for its level.
CRB: "If any other effect has the incapacitation trait, a creature of higher level than the item, creature, or hazard generating the effect gains the same benefits."
Thanks, I think your interpretation makes sense, but I do think it could have been written better, since none of the additional effect has anything to do with the RAW of fascinated.
My players encountered this creature tonight. As we played through the encounter, it seemed to me the signature ability is broken, or I am interpreting it wrong.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=854
Captivating Pollen (enchantment, incapacitation, mental, poison) The viper vine releases a 60-foot emanation of invisible pollen that stays in the air for 5 rounds unless dispersed by a moderate or stronger wind. Each creature that enters or starts its turn in the area must attempt a DC 33 Will save or be captivated. The viper vine can't use Captivating Pollen for 1d4 rounds.
Critical Success The creature is unaffected and is temporarily immune to Captivating Pollen for 24 hours.
Success The creature is sickened 1.
Failure The creature is fascinated, and it must spend each of its actions to move closer to the viper vine as expediently as possible while avoiding obvious dangers. If a captivated creature is adjacent to the viper vine, it stays still and doesn't act. It ceases to be fascinated if it's no longer in the pollen aura at the end of its turn.
Critical Failure As failure, plus the creature is stupefied 2 for 24 hours.
So, with a single action it releases a 60' emanation that lasts for 5 rounds. Players in it have to make a high DC will save or be fascinated AND move towards the creature/stand next to it doing nothing AS LONG AS THEY ARE IN THE CLOUD (which lasts for 5 rounds) AND it can do this every 1-4 rounds, meaning it can keep the cloud going forever.
Now fascinate normally gives a -2 to some checks, restricts concentrate actions but is broken as soon as the creature or friendlies are attacked. But the AND part is not fascination, but rather an additional effect not seemingly subject to fascinate's limitations.
So in this case a party of 5 had 3 characters fail their saves, meaning the other two had to take on a level 13 creature.
I decided to let the players re-save every round, since otherwise 3 of them would just stand their slackjawed for the whole fight, and in fact everyone would likely fail their saves eventually as well (I also didn't have them roll additional saves after they had succeeded).
Also, how does the incapacitate trait work since the attack doesn't have a 'spell level'.
I can't think of anything specifically in PF2E right now, but 1E has the Siabrae template, which sounds like it may be a good place to start. Maybe someone has converted it over to 2E already?
An evil druid has raised someone (who died) close to a player as an agent of his druidic circle. Trying to think of what a good monster base might be for this? Want something humanoid (or could even pass as human in a pinch), sentient, will probably give it the druid abilities it had in life.
I can create something from scratch but wondering if anyone has a good idea of something Pahtfinder to use for inspiration, or even something from mythology.
Matthew Colville has a great perspective on when you design an encounter that you think ought to work and end up with a situation where you're likely to kill PCs without meaning to. As a game designer he enjoys the ability to test encounters until it's juuuust at the right difficulty, then he ships the game. As a GM, we don't have that luxury - we put an encounter together, at best we do a bit of math to figure out if the party can reasonably hit the enemy, then it's play time, and real people's PCs are there facing whatever it is we put in front of them - good, bad, or otherwise.
So, Colville's perspective is, why make the players suffer for the lack of playtesting? if it was supposed to be a low stakes encounter and it's shaping up to be a high stakes encounter, do something about it.
In this case you've already attacked them so they have a rough idea of how dangerous the attacks are. They've hit the thing and know how the split works. What they DON'T know is how many HP the jellies have. So... change the HP. I'm too lazy to scroll up, I think you said the jellies have around 40-50 HP left - cut that in half, at least. 20 HP ought not to be too hard to burn through even with punching. The champion is likely STR based, so a d4 punch is around 7 damage per hit. At 4th level the punch should have a + 10 or so to hit so hitting is practically guaranteed - even the 3rd punch is fairly likely to land. So in 3 punches a 20 HP jelly is dead or nearly dead.
You've hit it on the head here. This was a random encounter to give them a slightly different challenge than before and give them a little bit of loot. Depending on how things progress, I may do exactly what you say.
I grabbed that thread after the fact. I was using the die rolls in Roll20 for 2nd edition so its essentially the same.
I actually think torches might be a better option than fists since they do 1-4+1 bludg/fire which all works, though that does mean spending a round getting them out and lit.
The problem is the players have repelled into a cave via ropes, so escape is going to be very difficult, thus the fear of a TPK.
Also, much of the group does have alchemist fire, though remember at 4th level they can only afford moderates, which at 10gp a pop are a significant part of their overall wealth (suggested net worth of a 4th level character is 140gp). At 2d8+2 persistant, that's an average of 9 damage + 2 burn, which means a ton of alchemist fires to take down a 150 or 75 hp monster. Thus my point about maybe the jelly needs to have a weakness to something.
So I'm a very experienced GM but relatively new to Pathfinder 2. I've been running a side game with friends on Roll20. A few people started with Fall of Plaguestone and more joined in as the COVID pandemic had everyone with more time on their hands. We've since moved on from Plaguestone and into stuff of my own creation.
The recent setup is the party was hunting a bunch of kobolds through the forest when the ground gave out and a couple of them ended up falling 25 feet into an ancient dwarven crypt. They duested themselves off and the rest of the party came down via rope (currently 5 players, all 4th level). As they are examining the crypt an ochre jelly comes oozing out of part of the collapsed ruin.
Initiative goes off. Party rogue, not knowing what it is, runs up and stabs it, splitting it in two. There are now two 75 hp ochre jellies (Which do full damage per the rules). Party champion makes a surprisingly good Occult role untrained and announces don't hit it with slashing piercing or electricity. Unfortunately he doesn't have any fire or bludgeoning weapons so he lights a torch. Party fighter (a glaive specialist with no other melee weapons) throws a moderate alchemist fire for like 8 points. The jellys go, first one crits the fighter (who is already down 7 hp from the fall), and grabs him. Second jelly goes, grabs the party fire sorcerer, crits again (knocking her down to 1/3rd hp), and grabs.
Party cleric casts 2 action harm, rolls 4 damage on 2d8.
Sorcerer goes, fails to break out, does get off a burning hands, rolls below average and the ooze doesn't crit fail, so it takes another 9 or so.
So coming around on initiative, we've got two ochre jellies with about 50-60 hp each, grappling the party fighter and sorcerer (the only one who can do consistent non-slashing/piercing in the party. Its quite reasonable via this thread: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rrdi?Ochre-Jelly-maintaining-a-grapple-damage
that the Jellies will do 4d4+6 plus 2d4 acid on their turn, or about 21 each, easily taking out the sorcerer and either taking out or almost taking out the fighter, with the rest of the party left with torches doing 1d4+1 as their only options.
Now the players did get unlucky here with the back to back crits, though with a +15 against 4th level characters with ACs around 21 thats not that unbelievable (about a 1 in 15 chance).
I don't see a way out for the party here. It feels like in a relatively confined space (30x50 room) the ochre jelly is WAY above a CR 5 monster. They fought a troll in a previous encounter while already severely weakened (coming off two major encounters with only 10 minute rests) and did just fine. In this case the party came in at full strength. If anything, a full strength 5 player 4th level party should overmatch a single CR5 monster.
Sure I made some mistakes by not realizing how badly the party was equipped to handle this. But it does feel like the ochre jelly should have some more weaknesses than just a low AC.
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I have already received the regular editions of the Bestiary and Pathfinder Core Rulebook via subscription. I'd rather not get the deluxe versions as well so can they be removed?
Also, I had planned on cancelling my Starfinder Adventure path after Dawn of Flame #6.
I have started a Core Rulebook subscription. No matter how many times I keep selecting 'start with core rulebook' it keeps adding Planar Adventures. I definitely don't want this.
Please make sure my sub starts with the 2.0 content!
The game, like most games, is made to assume you want to be good at things. It's not going to cover corner cases of wanting to be bad at things.
One reason is because being bad at things can make things more difficult for the party, not just for you.
They may have to save you due to a weakness, and therefore put themselves in danger. If they elect to not save you it could cause OoC issues.
I'd just talk to the GM about allowing you to be bad at ____ if that is what you want.
I can see the augment of hindering other players. It might just be my knee jerk reaction of a lvl of control being removed from 1ed where I could fine tune my skills E.G max ranks in one thing, a point in another for to show some lvl of competence, then nothing in a knowledge I know nothing about.
One thing I want to say in addition to my starting point is if no skill can be bad no skill can be particularly good ether. If you have two PCs with the same abilities the score the skill difference is barely noticeable.
I will be playing as written for the playtest ofc but I'm hoping for a more flexable version of skills in release. On the bright side it is still better than DND5ed skills where your forced in to certain skills based on class, I can at least choose to be untrained here even if it doesn't make much difference from being trained.
I think this is one of those rules where it seems fine while everyone is very low level but starts feeling stupid at high levels.
I believe in 5e if the group is required to make checks for something like stealth then only half are required to succeed. Given the rules around Exploration mode something like this makes sense.
So as I read it on page 291, all skills are modified by level regardless of proficiency. So a completely untrained lvl 20 pc with a 18 associated ability will still have a +18 modifier. A legendary indivishal will have a +23. That seems bizarre to me, even taking into account some actions can't be done untrained.
OK. Thanks for the response. I searched thoroughly for 'space goblin ac' and 'space goblin armor class' both here and on google and found nothing, thus I posted. Nothing in the first contact book mentions that they don't follow normal rules for AC.
I'm at GenCon, this adventure sold out on day one and its listed unavailable on the website. Will it get more printings? I loved the Starfinder intro game and would like to have from the beginning so I'm subscribing, but it starts with #2.
I assume you cannot hold tickets in your cart forever. Anyone know what the expiry on that is if people don't pay for the tickets in the cart? Some tickets may get freed at that point
They did attempt to deliver something on the 28. I then used their website to rearrange delivery. they never attempted this and have now already returned to sender.
Can you ship it out yet again using a trackable shipping method? I will pay the difference.
I have not received the replacement order you listed above
2858408. It says it shipped back on the 24th of October.
I have been receiving my regular subscription shipments without problem so it can't be my shipping address as a problem. I also received the original Skull and Shackles crate order without issue.
I think it's worse than you are making it sound. By your own admission you have a roleplay centric group, and yet you had to condense the 20 days to 12. And even then, I think asking even a roleplaying group to spend 6 sessions essentially near-powerless victims of tedious lashings will stretch their patience to the limits. 10 sessions definitely would.
As for the swarms, lets be clear here. Swarms have always been one of the more broken parts of Pathfinder/3.5 rules, and placing these in a scenario where there is no clear way of combatting them is beyond 'deadly', its malpractice by the adventure designer. As mentioned, without a very specific type of PC in the party, this is a near certain TPK, especially in the scenario where the party is attacked by the ankheg at the same time as the swarm.
Finally, the overuse of monsters with improved grab and high-damage output means that you are likely taking multiple PCs out of each fight, not only threatening a lot of deaths but also being constantly frustrating.
Not even mentioned is that the group supposedly only has 48 hours to get through the island the only fresh water source is miles from the coast.
A more creative selection of opponents on the Island (no flying creatures? how about some goblin primatives?) would have presented challenges to different character types without making it a cakewalk.
My party is a veteran group of 5 members and is on 25 point buy and if I hadn't removed the swarms and fudged in a few cases they would have been wiped out. I question if this was ever successfully play tested without many player deaths as written now.
I just posted this on the product message board but perhaps more relevant here. Maybe people can give me some feedback on this. I almost feel like I'm doing something wrong:
I am taking my group through this, and there are a number of questionable design decisions that I wonder were play tested.
SPOILERS BELOW
1) The initial 'time on the ship' is set to 20 days. This includes 2 ship actions at a minimum per day per PC (with lots of seemingly pointless DC 10 checks, but with occasional con checks which are quite hard and result in various whippings.) Add in 5 bonus ship actions per pc at the end. Lets make an EXTERMELY conservative guess that a ship action takes 2 minutes of real time to resolve. 20 days x 2 actions +5 x 4 PCs is 180 ship actions!!!! At 2 minutes per action that's 360 minutes or SIX HOURS. And we aren't even counting the actual encounters and events during this time!
I ended up cutting it in half and it was still tedious and dragged over two sessions.
2) Shipwrack Isle or whatever its called: I hope you like monsters with improved grab. Giant frogs, Ankhegs, vine-chokers, giant crabs. All with improved grab. This is a nightmare for PCs with average CMDs (and are 2nd level at this point). Being constantly grappled is NOT FUN.
3) Botfly swarms? Sure, these are CR3, but if the group lacks a character with an AoE spell, they are a TPK waiting to happen. 31 hp? 2d6 damage automatic, IMMUNE TO ALL WEAPONS. Oh, and they give ghoul fever? Basically if the party doesn't have a sorcerer with burning hands, its game over, or they do a lot of un-fun running. I just took them out completely but since they were factored in to get the players up to level 3 for the caves at the end, I had to fudge XP.
I love pirates and was so psyched to run a pirate themed campaign, but I'm definitely going over each adventure going forward and dramatically re-working anything like this I See again, as it is constantly annoying and frustrating my group.
I am taking my group through this, and there are a number of questionable design decisions that I wonder were play tested.
Spoiler:
1) The initial 'time on the ship' is set to 20 days. This includes 2 ship actions at a minimum per day per PC (with lots of seemingly pointless DC 10 checks, but with occasional con checks which are quite hard and result in various whippings.) Add in 5 bonus ship actions per pc at the end. Lets make an EXTERMELY conservative guess that a ship action takes 2 minutes of real time to resolve. 20 days x 2 actions +5 x 4 PCs is 180 ship actions!!!! At 2 minutes per action that's 360 minutes or SIX HOURS. And we aren't even counting the actual encounters and events during this time!
I ended up cutting it in half and it was still tedious and dragged over two sessions.
2) Shipwrack Isle or whatever its called: I hope you like monsters with improved grab. Giant frogs, Ankhegs, vine-chokers, giant crabs. All with improved grab. This is a nightmare for PCs with average CMDs (and are 2nd level at this point). Being constantly grappled is NOT FUN.
3) Botfly swarms? Sure, these are CR3, but if the group lacks a character with an AoE spell, they are a TPK waiting to happen. 31 hp? 2d6 damage automatic, IMMUNE TO ALL WEAPONS. Oh, and they give ghoul fever? Basically if the party doesn't have a sorcerer with burning hands, its game over, or they do a lot of un-fun running. I just took them out completely but since they were factored in to get the players up to level 3 for the caves at the end, I had to fudge XP.
I love pirates and was so psyched to run a pirate themed campaign, but I'm definitely going over each adventure going forward and dramatically re-working anything like this I See again, as it is constantly annoying and frustrating my group.
I have switched my shipping method to UPS a few days ago because of these issues. Will you refund the shipping cost from my original shipment and apply it to the new one?
There will be no shipping and handling charge for the replacement (which is why we're bundling it with your next subscription shipment). :)
Thanks,
cos
I appreciate it thank you. As I said I'm sorry this had to happen I am a loyal Paizo customer and want you guys to do well!
I will get replacements put in your next subscription shipment.
Thanks,
cos
Thanks.
It's a real shame this is necessary.
I have switched my shipping method to UPS a few days ago because of these issues. Will you refund the shipping cost from my original shipment and apply it to the new one?
