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I'm reminded of one adventure where we have to stay some place for several days. The GM set the scene of the entire place being grungy and run down, and I was playing an upper class, urban cleric, who thought the whole area was gross and didn't want to be there. So I decided that my cleric would cast Purify Food and Drink on every meal, not because I actually thought there was something to be afraid of, but just due to the "ick" factor of my cleric thinking it was all beneath her. After the adventure, the GM told us that this had side-stepped a sub-plot involving the chef trying to poison us the whole time we were there.
Also, from all the past tense stuff dealing with Durkon's family in his memories, I'd been expecting them to all be dead by now. But given the young priest recognizing the last name and knowing Durkon's mother, I suspect she's alive and probably about to meet the Order. So apparently, I made a correct prediction a year and a half ago.
They gotta find the diamonds for her. Just cause Hilgya has them doesn't mean she will share. It's not just diamonds they need - it's also spells. Durkon doesn't have any spells prepared, and Hilgya already cast Raise Dead twice today. How many do you think she prepared?
That reminds me of GMing a PFS adventure a few years ago, and one of the players had a wand of Summon Monster 1. Why spend 2 prestige on a wand that takes a round to summon a critter that only lasts 1 round? Well, they went into the sewers, and kept sending ponies ahead to scout for traps as they approached the area known to be a monster lair. It worked twice - once to set off a trap, and once to set off the ambush so no PCs took the hit in the surprise round. This led to many jokes about where the ponies come from, and where do they go after they're done. Is there some pony dimension somewhere, where the ponies keep disappearing, then reappearing dead 6 seconds later, while the other ponies watch in horror, waiting their turn?
Again, I'm reminded of one of my own adventures. I was a PC for this one, but we were on a mission to infiltrate a group of Hellknights, and one of the other PCs was an actual Hellknight (prestige class). Since the Hellknight PC had 7 int and 7 wis, we decided to just not tell her that we were undercover. The player just "played dumb" (as she always does with that PC) while the rest of us did the investigating, under the cover of her character's authority.
"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave... like this." My favorite character on that show.
Thor motivates his followers like he battles his enemies: with a hammer. I thought that last panel was awesome. Durkon's god is showing complete faith in him. It's a perfect role reversal in that regard. But plot wise, this is exactly where we all knew this was going once we found out about the god color thing. Durkon has to make peace with Redcloak. Probably behind Xykon's back. But first Durkon has to be resurrected. Not sure if Thor can do that without a mortal casting the spell, which is where Hilgya comes in. But she'll have to be convinced to actually do it. Which is probably where Loki comes in. And I am kind of wondering what the rest of the Order has been doing while Durkon is busy here.
So I know Paizo has been having issues with their web site and all, but it seems to be relatively stable for now. So it seemed like a good time for me to download the Playtest rulebook and give it a look. But I can't find it. I only get links to buy the hardcover and softcover versions when I type "playtest" into the search box at the top of the page, but no pdf version. I was told at Gen Con by Paizo employees that the playtest rulebook would be free to download. Is that true? Can someone provide a link? Where is it?
The part I still don't understand is why Paizo ever agreed to partner with Ninja Division in the first place. When the Kickstarter was first announced, I hadn't heard of Ninja Division, so I looked them up on Google. It took me all of 2 minutes to discover that the one thing they're best known for is disappointing their Kickstarter backers. So I intentionally avoided the Kickstarter. If I could find that out so easily, why didn't Paizo do at least that much research before making such an obvious mistake?
Am I the only one who has a problem with the banner on the top of the page? The search box overlaps with the "Sign In" or "My Account" option. I resize my fonts to larger than average because of my lousy vision, which sometimes create problems like that on some web pages, so it wouldn't surprise me if nobody else has the same issue. But given all the empty space between the Paizo logo on the left and the search bar, it would seem to be an easy fix - just move the search bar a little to the left, so it's not so close to the other stuff on the right (which overlaps for me).
I think that was my group. Had a fun time with this at Gen Con, now prepping to run it locally.
I had to look it up: Belkar getting the clasp from the gnome. I remembered he had it, but wondered why it didn't help earlier. I forgot that rubbing it was the activation, which Mr. Scruffy did. Interestingly, Belkar is expressing his feelings, and the clasp isn't hurting him. His alignment just officially shifted - he's no longer evil! As for Durkon's revelations, now I want to go back and read ALL of it, to see all the memories and how this was all set up. I'm not sure how I feel about this payoff, though - does this mean the vampire is no longer evil and no longer works for Hel? Shouldn't all vampires go through this when they're done absorbing all the memories of their hosts? I still don't quite get where that's all going.
Man, after so much build up, the big fight against Mokmurian turned into a big dud after he rolled a natural 1 on his save vs. feeblemind just a couple of rounds into the encounter. I knew that sort of thing was a risk going in, but it's still frustrating. Oh well, the players still had fun and enjoyed their victory, and I guess that's the most important thing. I had something like that with Barl Breakbones. My group killed him way too easily. Mokmurian, on the other hand, caused the group's second PC death - that was actually a pretty epic fight.
I don't know Michael Eshleman. From the way he's described here, he sounds like a good guy. But I do know Paizo. I've been a PFS player and GM for 7 years. For the first year I was a player, the area where I lived had no venture officers. The first guy who applied for the V-C job got it, but he was a jerk who drove female players away, and he was quickly removed from the position. I've known several good venture officers who have never been removed by Paizo, though some have stepped down over the years, as life got in the way. So from what I've seen, Paizo does a pretty good job at deciding who needs to be removed from V-C positions when something goes wrong. So who do you expect me to side with? The point is we don't know the specifics of this situation. And if the details can't be posted here in this thread, so we can all find out what went down and judge for ourselves if it was fair, then this thread is pointless. You can't expect everyone on the Paizo forums to go wandering all over the internet looking for information on a situation that doesn't concern us.
Agreed. Since the rest of us don't know why he was removed from the position, we have no basis to judge whether or not it was the right decision. So why would any of us support a petition? And what's the point of this thread?
I remember playing Race for the Runecarved Key at the high tier (14-15?) with the same group of us who had gone through Eyes of the Ten together. There was one encounter where the GM flagged a "runner" over to the table to let them know we were done with an encounter, and they were like "already?". At high levels, a well coordinated group can sometimes totally break encounters. Things like teleportation to get ahead of the enemies or Dismissal spells to remove summoned foes can really wreak havoc, even besides the uber-optimized damage dealers.
That were ... intere'stin'. Durkon seems to have more control over showing Durkula memories than I realized. I knew Durkon's mind could jump to something and show it, but this seems like they're talking about a greater level of control than that. And Durkula cares more about that than I would have expected. Now I'm really curious where this latest memory is going.
I wonder how much of the fact that it doesn't come up in regards to NPCs is the fact that only until recently has Paizo been doing anything in regards to non binary cultures. Its weird to say that when canonically there are groups within Golarion that have no cultural understanding of gender that its not necessarily relevant. I completely agree with Hillis and Lau on this one, and I really don't understand your reaction. PFS isn't like a longer campaign, where players might want to take the time to get to know NPCs for their personalities. In PFS, the players are only focused on what they need from an NPC for the mission, and rarely care about the NPC's details unless the GM really plays it up. Half the time, the players don't even remember the NPC's name, let alone gender or anything else about them. I can't even count how many times I've heard "What's the name of the mayor we need to talk to?" or "Who's the other guy we were supposed to see?" (regardless of the gender of the "guy" in the latter) And when it comes to enemies, it's even worse. Those are just minis on the map. Generic thugs are always assumed to be male. Unless the GM specifically says otherwise, in which case they're assumed to be important NPCs, not just generic thugs, because generic thugs are always male (and usually light skinned humans).
I'd just like to point out that I was only pointing out the logical fallacy of your argument, but that doesn't mean I was taking sides. I don't have a problem with the Paizo schedule the way it is. As Hillary said, the big specials are so noisy that they MUST use the entire Sagamore, because it would be challenging to play anything else in that room at the same time. Pathfinder gets two of them and Starfinder gets one, based on their relative popularity and importance to Paizo. It makes perfect sense. And personally, I'll only be in the Sagamore for two sessions the entire weekend this year - the Friday night Pathfinder special and a regular Pathfinder game Thursday afternoon. I have other plans for much of the convention, though depending on how late I stay up Saturday night, I might consider wandering into the Sagamore Sunday morning with generic tickets to see what PFS game I can sneak into. And despite being a 4 star GM, I don't like spending my vacations "working", so I've never GMed more than 4 sessions at Gen Con. This year, I won't be GMing at all. For those who are complaining that you don't have anything to do in the evening when a special is going on for the game you don't play, I highly recommend trying True Dungeon. It doesn't matter if you Starfinder fans aren't a fan of the medieval fantasy/Pathfinder/D&D genre - the experience is worth it, anyway. Those tickets are expensive though, so if you don't want to spend that much, I'll recommend Upper Deck's Marvel Legendary deck building game that I've gotten into lately. You can get into a beginner/intro game of that for only $4.
Yeah, it'a a pretty big bummer to have ZERO offerings from the flagship game on the last night of the con. It's not very fun to be force fed Starfinder as the only Paizo offering that night. Especially two years in a row. My two cents. False equivalence. Pathfinder is the flagship product of the company, and makes up a large majority of their business. Starfinder isn't.
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