Ermalov's page

Missile weapons. Spells. A good defensive fighter. There are so many ways for even a 1st lvl party to do it.

It might kill someone?

Ever see the damage an orc does on a crit with a greataxe?

Yes, if a party member rises as a second wight, that's bad...but what's the CR of 2 orc Bbn1s?

Level 1 parties are fragile. That's the way it is.

A greataxe crit happens something less than 5% of the time. To get the same chance of dying against a Wight, you need 23 AC. A character with an 18 AC, much more reasonable for a level 1, dies 30% of the time. No save.

One's an unlucky die roll, the other is Russian Roulette with two chambers full.

There's a difference between challenging your players and murdering their PCs. At level 1, unless you make sure to give your PCs the opportunity to understand and prepare for what they're dealing with, you're murdering them.

Kyle Baird wrote:

Victor Zajic wrote:

What if there was some sort of warning or tag on the more difficult modules

One person's easy scenario is another person's meat grinder.

...

So how do we tag scenario's X and Y? You can't. They're all built around the same flawed CR system. The best anyone can do is read the reviews and hope to gauge its difficult based off personal experiences.

I understand the point you are making, but I've been playing/running PFS for less than three months and I can name half a dozen more deadly mods off the top of my head, just from chatter on these messageboards and at the local gaming shop. I haven't even played/ran most of them.

To Kyle's point, I've played "Rise of the Goblin Guild" and steamrolled it, but the week before I had my first character death in "The Devil We Know part III." Difficulty is different for different characters and different groups. Reviews really do seem to be a pretty good way to get a feel for the scenario, though, and I haven't seen a serious spoiler outside of a spoiler tag, nothing I would have made any pre-game decisions on beyond what the blurb told me.

That being said, I second the suggestion for a "Next Steps" type adventure or series of adventures somewhere around level 2 or 3. There really can be a big jump in the danger level of encounters in tier 3-4, but not all tier 3-4 scenarios have those encounters. When my character died in "The Devil We Know," I had played up several times and nothing yet had hit my 22 AC more than 1/4 of the time. Our bard had something like +11 acrobatics and hadn't run into anything with a CMD higher than 20. In short, as new players we had no concept of how dangerous the stuff we were facing could be*.

I think a scenario that introduces players to dangers that fly, are invisible, will hit you regardless of armor, do massive damage, have high CMBs and CMDs (and use them) and the other things that higher level scenarios might throw at you. Just do it in a survivable manner with a narrative that explains what's happening as you go along.

Courageous is a no brainer for Barbarians and ESSENTIAL for Eldritch Heritage (Orc) builds.

What does Benevolent do?

Is there anything which helps will saves?

Benevolent armor adds the armor's enhancement bonus to the increased AC from an Aid Another action. It costs a flat 2,000gp. So, if I were wearing +2 Benevolent full plate and aided my rogue (or bodyguarded him) to increase his AC, he would get a +4 AC bonus not +2.

Benevolent eeapon enchant adds the weapon's attack bonus to the bonus for an aid another action on an attack roll. It costs a +1 enhancement.

(For reference, Courageous weapon enchant adds a morale bonus to saving throws against fear equal to the weapon enhancement level. It will stack with other morale bonuses at 1/2 its enhancement level, and costs +1 enhancement.)

Hire an NPC to guide you around, and tell you what's up ahead. A simple beggar boy/girl should cost a few coppers per day, and you'll be doing a good deed while you're at it. Or get a Familiar to do just that.

Since this is for PFS play, I think you can spend a couple prestige points to hire a porter. That way you not only get an NPC guide, but also someone to carry your stuff, and it's through the lodge, so they should have known better...

If you take the Lore mystery, you could probably just role play your character as just knowing this stuff, or being such a good diviner that you can tell roughly where major things are through a sixth sense.

Or maybe just have someone at your table parrot the first couple descriptions from the GM, then handwave that they're doing it for the entire session. Extra points for only "hearing" descriptions when the helpful PC is within 10 or 20 feet of you.