Honestly, I'm kinda disappointed that the directors are so out of the loop, and their plan is so mundane. Sure, destroying the world sounds sinister, but we already have the gods ready to do that before the Snarl gets loose if the last Gate falls.
This adds another side to the conflict, by getting Nale back into it (however they manage to send him back to the land of the living), but the reason behind it is pretty weak.
Ok, I stand corrected. They're trying to outmaneuver the gods, after all.
The oracle said LONG ago that Belkar would be dying permanently by the end of the year. That may have been 10+ years ago in real time, but in OOTS time, it's only been a few months, so they're still in the same year.
I'm trying to remember if Roy remembers the oracle's offhand remark about Belkar not surviving until the end of the year. That was when Roy was watching as a spirit, right? So he remembers all of that?
The GM describes gurgling sounds coming from an approaching steam elemental. Knowing that elementals are often neutral, we try to talk to it instead of just fighting.
My group is REALLY slow. After taking 5 years to get through Rise of the Runelords, we're now only at level 11 in Kingmaker after almost 5 years. The odd part is that we meet 3-4 times per month, but we just play slowly, and spend a lot of time chatting outside of actual play. We rarely do 2 combats in the same session, just because some people are so slow while we're in combat.
But we're still having fun with it, which is what matters.
And a year later, we're now at level 13. We just took down the major "boss" enemies (as far as we know) of the current book. Given how much our GM tied one of them into the back story of a PC, I'm kind of curious as to how much he customized vs how much is in the original published adventure path, but it'll probably be another 2 years before we finish and I can ask.
So this is going to sound ridiculous, but my nephew has got it in his head that he wants to make a character with a goose theme. His first thought was a druid who can wild shape into a goose, but it was unclear how to do that in the rules. A goose as an animal companion or familiar might work for him, though. I haven't looked at the summoner class in 2e - can an eidolon look like a goose?
Any recommendations for a geese themed PC? This is for PFS, so RAW only.
Question: Got the bundle & all the files have gone to my acct...except for the Foundry VTT/Abomination Vaults file it appears. Am I overlooking something or will this be a reach out to customer service moment?
You have to redeem that on Foundry's web site. IIRC, there should be a link with your redemption code.
Note that it's not usable unless you buy the Foundry software for $50 first. So you may want to hold off redeeming that if you don't plan on buying that right away. Maybe someone else you know will buy the Foundry software at some point, and you can pass the redemption code to them later.
My group is REALLY slow. After taking 5 years to get through Rise of the Runelords, we're now only at level 11 in Kingmaker after almost 5 years. The odd part is that we meet 3-4 times per month, but we just play slowly, and spend a lot of time chatting outside of actual play. We rarely do 2 combats in the same session, just because some people are so slow while we're in combat.
But we're still having fun with it, which is what matters.
The remark about dwarves having a civil war is so Eugene
Where is this ? I cannot find it.
Roy talks to him after the Godsmoot, and Eugene thinks it's fine if the gods destroy the world. Roy, among other things, expresses concern for the dwarves who will die dishonorably, and Eugene suggests a civil war as a way for them to all die in battle before the world ends.
Been playing first edition Pathfinder for over a decade now. Still doing a home campaign with friends, but stopped playing PFS in public when the pandemic started. Before that, I bought the 2e Core Rulebook and played enough to get my first 2e PFS character up to level 4 or 5 (I forget now), but I was still doing 1e more than 2e, so never picked up any additional books or made a second PC.
I'm hoping to get back into PFS in the near future, especially since I just bought my first Gen Con badge since the pandemic started. I know most of the rules are on the Archives of Nethys home page. But in Society play, you have to own the books in order to use character options on your PC. So what would everyone consider the most important/best books to buy, given that most focus is on character building, not GMing?
And before you ask, no I don't know what type of character I want to make. I'm the type who looks through the rulebooks and finds options that make me want to create a character that uses that cool thing I just read about. But after decades of D&D/Pathfinder 1e, there was nothing that exciting and new in the 2e Core Rulebook, other than finally being able to make a goblin PC, which I think may be part of why I was slow to embrace the new version.
After GM describes the forest we're searching as getting weirdly colorful, as we seem to be getting closer to a wild magic portal that we knew we were looking for.
Cleric player: Either we're getting close to the portal or Willy Wonka's factory.
Rogue player: Starts singing Oompa Loompa song
Me: Willy Wonka's big secret: Oompa Loompas are actually Pathfinder gnomes.
Rogue player: *singing* Do you see what I see?
Cleric player: *very matter of factly* No I don't. My perception is lower.
So Roy and Durkon realized that they've treated the goblins badly, and never really thought to question why Redcloak and the goblins were doing what they're doing. And this has brought me to a major realization, too.
Belkar was right.
I mean WAY back. At the first mention of a plot back in OOTS #13:
Plot, Ahoy!
"I just figured we'd wander around, kill some sentient beings because they have green skin and fangs and we don't, and then take their stuff."
All I know is Redcloak could have just cast Miracle and asked his god what he thought. :P
But that's just me.
If he has that spell prepared. Remember, he's adventuring every night behind those doors, so having a spell that can "save or die" up to 4 targets with a saving throw based on being a level 9 spell is a pretty good prepped spell for him.
I looked up the spell, since I wasn't familiar with it. It's a level 9 fort save or die.
I see two possibilities:
1. Durkon has to make the saving throw or die.
2. This is exactly what Thor wanted. Red Cloak just gave him the energy of a 9th level spell from the Dark One, just like Thor asked for. That might not be what Red Cloak intended, but if Thor can step in to save Durkon and take that energy, then it's a win.
Helpful for counting, though
I love how the pets are full on members of the team. Even the cat. I'm convinced he's a full on animal companion these days, and he'll be truly useful in battle when the time comes.
And I'm still waiting for the day that V casts Dispel Magic on the lizard to turn it back into a t-rex.
Another thing I'm realizing is that he's going more into the details of secondary team members than I would expect. It's almost as if he's setting up Minrah, Bandana, etc to be OOTS: The Next Generation when the current story ends.
Given the title, I was expecting it to focus on Julia (somewhat posing as a spirit) giving Roy advice. This was interesting in a completely different way.
As for Durkon, I'm sure playing with his kid takes up some time too.
Yup. The entire point of this interlude is that the rest of the team are killing time while waiting for the team clerics (note the plural) to say their goodbyes and gather their stuff.
I haven't read all 500+ posts in this thread to see if this has been addressed yet, but I have to ask: Why are these books so expensive?
136 pages for $37 (or $35 in the case of the next one, Lost Omen Character Guide) is nearly twice the price per page of what Paizo used to charge for hardcovers in 1st edition. Compare to 256 page books like Ultimate Combat or Advanced Race Guide, which are only $45 hardcover today, and I swear I remember them being only $40 when they were new.
And adventure paths used to be 100 pages for $20. I can understand that they need to raise prices once in a while, thus the 2e AP is now $25 per book, but it's still almost as many pages as this thing that sells for $37.
Whatever happened to monthly softcovers that were only $13-20? I don't have unlimited money to spend, so I pick and choose which books to buy based on content. I'm still on the fence about 2e, having only bought the Core Rulebook so far. But if every monthly book is going to be this stupidly expensive for so little content, then the books I pick and choose to buy aren't going to be from Paizo ever again.
What part of "carry someone off the battlefield" is not clear? Who is naked on the battlefield...?
Here's the exact quote from the book:
Core Rulebook, page 272 wrote:
You might need to know the Bulk of a creature, especially if you need to carry someone off the battlefield. The table that follows lists the typical Bulk of a creature based on its size, but the GM might adjust this number.
It doesn't say that's the bulk of a creature and its gear. Just the bulk of the creature. The chart that follows has small creatures listed as 3 bulk. How can someone wearing 4 bulk full plate, a 1 bulk heavy shield, sheathed weapons that might add another 1 or 2 bulk, and a 2 bulk adventurer's kit in their backpack be only 3 bulk?
As for who's naked on the battlefield, how about an ogre in a loincloth (once it drops its club), or a dragon, or any wild animal, or any of various other monsters that don't typically wear armor or carry much gear?
Saros Palanthios wrote:
Ask yourself, what's more likely: that Paizo's whole team of professional designers, writers, and editors are a bunch of incompetent fools who created a system that makes no sense... or that you made a mistake in your reading?
You haven't been playing Pathfinder long, have you? I'm not saying that Paizo's staff are incompetent. But mistakes happen. Sometimes major ones. Nobody's perfect.
When Starfinder first came out, the entire spaceship combat system just plain didn't work at high levels, because they got the math wrong, so an errata was necessary. When coming out with a 640 page rulebook for a whole new version of Pathfinder, something like doing the math on a small creature riding a medium mount to make sure the encumbrance works is a relatively trivial detail that I could certainly see them overlooking.
Saros Palanthios wrote:
The table on pg 272 lists the "typical" bulk of a creature, then qualifies it with "but the GM might adjust this number". Both of your examples are obvious cases where the GM should apply an adjustment for atypical circumstances.
You're grasping for a hard-and-fast, one-size-fits-all rule, but that's not how this game works. The whole PF2 system is built around the twin ideas that
1)it's pointless to try to predict and make rules for every possible corner case or combination of circumstances, but
2)most GMs and players are reasonable and can be trusted to apply the rules in a way that makes sense in the context of their narrative.
Except that "GM discretion" has always been a code word in Pathfinder for "this doesn't apply to Pathfinder Society". In PFS, the table GM is just a judge for that particular session. Whenever a Pathfinder book says "Your GM might allow this", the GM for the entire campaign is the one who has to make those calls, and for PFS, that campaign GM is the Paizo employee who manages the entire organized play campaign.
Exactly. Plus, some of us play PFS, which is RAW only. If the rules say something doesn't work, we can't just hand wave it away in PFS. And as far as I can tell, the rules say that small creatures riding medium mounts don't work in 2e.
The Gleeful Grognard already answered your original question about small creatures riding medium mounts-- as he said, the "Bulk of Creatures" table on pg 272 of the CRB gives the typical bulk for various size creatures, and the table is clearly referring to fully armed and armored creatures, since it's introduced with a line about being especially useful "if you need to carry someone off the battlefield".
Except it's not clear that it includes the bulk of their gear. That's just the bulk of their body. Maybe. That's the ruling we need from Paizo.
And until we get that ruling, anyone playing a small character on a medium mount in PFS is going to get screwed at some of their tables by GMs who don't agree with your interpretation of the rules. That's why I won't risk it. I'll save that build idea for when I'm 100% sure it'll work at every table.
