This was not the Rasheen scenario I was expecting! (It's short on crocodilians, among other things.)
Noting some things as I come across them.
1. Hey, a good use of in media res for the intro! Sort of. Maybe not technically.
2. DR/wound? I guess bypassed by a weapon with the wounding critical hit effect? Hrm. I'm not familiar with a rule as to whether it's any weapon with the wound property, or on an attack that creates a wound, which would usually be a crit. I'm thinking any weapon with the property?
3. The sphinx's makeshift haste circuit is "broken." By using up a swift action as normal, but forcing it to only last one round (as abnormal), it means that she really only benefits from the increased movement speed. She doesn't have a swift action to use for her full attack, so she can't move and full attack in the same round like you would expect as someone benefiting from haste. Smells intentional to me, but I'm not 100% sure.
4. Keystone's mentioned (a possible victim of the editorial process?), but it sounds like they're supposed to be lumped in with the four other AIs that are working in the background and go undescribed.
Hey, new authors! Woohoo! I'm excited to see what everyone put together.
I was going to start with a question about page 5:
Quest 1, Endless War wrote:
PCs who rolled less than a 20 on their check feel an odd tingling around their heads as they recall these facts; this sensation is a manifestation of Myrrium’s assistance, as the orrery helps the PCs remember relevant information.
It's very confusingly worded, but I think I just put two and two together: the "actual" DC is 20, and the orrery is giving the PCs a +2 bonus which is already reflected in the DC, so if the orrery is responsible for the PCs succeeding at the check, then and only then do the PCs' heads feel fuzzy. I don't think that whole head-fuzziness-thing is supposed to happen if the PCs fail, but that particular bit didn't make it into the text.
I dunno, maybe that'll help someone else puzzle through it.
Just to let you all know: we are currently experiencing an unplanned, extended outage of organizedplayfoundation.org, which is the website for the Organized Play Foundation. It also hosts the Pathfinder Society Second Edition and Starfinder Society guides. We are actively communicating with the hosting service, who are working on restoring access. Unfortunately, we do not have an ETA on when the website will be available again. As part of restoring access, we have taken steps that may cause the guides to remain unavailable until Monday morning. We will provide more information as we receive it. We apologize for the disruption, and thank you for your patience!
I'm a Society VC who's supposed to get the varied and sundry Society PDFs dropped every month. I got mine earlier, and Bounty #7 was not among them. Could you please
A. set me up with the bounty, and
B. check to see if there's something weird going on that would make me the one person who didn't get it?
I have no idea if this would affect anything, but I did recently asked to cancel an accessories subscription. Granted, it was for Starfinder, so it seems unlikely. But it might be a place to start if you need it?
Thanks much! I don't need the bounty super soon so don't treat this as an emergency. I'd like to get it sorted out before we all forget about it, though!
I'm a little puzzled. Pathfinder 1e confusion is all creatures in a 15-foot area. I'd been reading Starfinder confusion that way, but one of my players just read it very differently and as written, he seems to be right. In SF, confusion seems to... be an area spell that doesn't actually target creatures? It lists its effect as a 15' area burst (note: no targeting language, like in PF1) and the text says that creatures within the area are confused. Putting all that together, as written the confusion spell lingers in an area, and as long as you're there, you're confused. Leave the area and you're fine.
Casting Time 1 standard action
Range medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Area 15-ft.-radius burst
Duration 1 round/level
Saving Throw Will negates; Spell Resistance yes
This spell causes confusion in all creatures in the area, making them unable to determine their actions. Any confused creature that is attacked automatically attacks or attempts to attack its attackers on its next turn, as long as it is still confused at the start of its next turn. Note that a confused creature will not make attacks of opportunity against any foe that it is not already devoted to attacking (either because of its most recent action or because it has just been attacked). For confused creatures that have not been attacked, roll on the following table at the start of each affected creature’s turn each round to see what it does in that round.
Is there something I'm missing in the Magic section or something? Or is this intended? I seem to have failed my will save.
you should be able to easily see the error in the map itself. More detail is available on the console, the most enlightening of which I believe is:
Google Maps wrote:
The Google Maps JavaScript API v2 is deprecated and will be turned off on May 26, 2021. Please visit https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/v2tov3 to migrate your application to v3.
I realize it's only described as deprecated in that particular error, but there are a number of important features that are now unavailable in v2, so it's largely unusable and marked as "for development only" now.
(Sending sympathy [empathy?] to those developers stuck supporting google APIs. I hated how frequently those got retired when I used them for tiny incidental projects.)
I was just trying to help out a colleague of mine access the paizo forums.
The error is that they can load the original page, but when the page makes an XHR to, for example:
https://paizo.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Store.woa/wa/Spinny/forumDisplay?forum =v5748dmtyzkl0&sort=-1&page=-1&_u=AUCForumDisplay&160704683 0952=
it 404s on them, or returns a "The requested application was not found on this server." error. Consistently, every time. Firefox 83.0, 64bit. Windows 10 I believe.
When I attempt to load the page, it works for me! I can even make the network request and it loads fine.
We've done the usual: private tabs, clearing caches, different browsers, different machines, clearing DNS caches, and so on.
Because this is a 404, that really strongly suggests to me that the request is getting to the Paizo servers and something's happening server-side.
One distinction between the two is that the person with the problem is connecting from Finland, while I'm attempting to connect from the US. I have no idea if it's related, but it's probably worth noting and I'm running out of other ideas.
It's been a while so I thought I'd check in again. A number of us (although not all of us!) aren't seeing our full star and nova count displayed on the forums. I seem to have been knocked down to 4/0/0 (stars/novas/glyphs) although I should be 5/2/0. Not super urgent, but it's been a couple years now...
I'm looking forward to running this! The ambiance is fun. The race against the hellknights is a nice way to keep this from being a run-of-the-mill dungeon crawl, too. (That, and the relative lack of combat compared to your typical dungeon crawl.)
One thing I'm not 100% on: the infrared laser trap. I'm guessing that the assumption is that if someone has darkvision, they see the lasers. Should be a pretty safe bet that out of 3+ high-level Starfinders someone will have darkvision up. The thing I'm less sure of is, how frequently should a PC make the save? The trap's less a triggered single effect and more an environmental challenge. I'm thinking that it'll be a once-per-round thing, at the start of the PC's turn.
One other thing I'm excited about--a varied team to challenge the PCs at the end! I have to imagine those hackers will go down easily, but if they don't, for some reason, this could be fun.
I wanted to use some Paizocon vouchers for this order but it would be Even Better if it could be sidecarted? Is that something you can help me out with, please?
I think someone forgot to punch some holes in my box and then it got shipped through some Superfund sites. My wereleopards died en route and now, instead of a surplus of cute cat videos, I've got these half-melted undead monstrosities who keep wrecking my Geiger counters while roaming around the house! It's kind of a pain.
Er, I mean: I ordered a pair of "2019 Promotional Figure: Wereleopard" (WZK73655) and my box arrived with a pair of "2019 Promotional Figure: Radioactive Skeleton" instead.
Anything you can do to help? And what can I do to help you help me?
Thanks guys! Hope you're all staying safe and healthy. This isn't an emergency, especially not as long as you don't run out of backup wereleopards.
Hi everyone! I'm working on getting myself situated. More information (botting policies, etc.) coming soon.
Fair warning to you all: this (in concert with another PFS1 play-by-post I'm running) will be my first PbP GM experience! I've played some here, and I've got some experience in other mediums, so I won't be completely lost, but I'm sure I'll screw up at least a few things. Please have at least a little patience. I promise I will try not to suck. :)
Congratulations, graduates! You've passed your Confirmation and are now full members of the esteemed Starfinder Society--well, the formerly esteemed Starfinder Society. Since the Scoured Stars incident cost the organization most of its agents and almost all of its endowment, it's lost a lot of its glamour and influence in the Pact Worlds. This year, the ceremony's more of a hollow formality than ever. Years of training were condensed into months, and study abroad in the Veskarium was canceled due to budget cuts. You even had to bring your own graduation attire! Some Starfinder trainees got deployed to live missions before they matriculated--no surprise given how few agents remain.
The ceremony was brief, featuring only one speaker--Venture-Captain Arvin, of all the people they could have gotten. Afterward, you were instructed to wait on a bench in a hallway in the Lorespire Complex. Guidance, the artificially-intelligent Starfinder Society mainframe, should call you in soon.
The hallway is clean, but it's not aging well. The cushions on the bench are flat, and there's a dent in the alloy wall next to an unmarked door a few dozen feet to your right. Across from you is an old-fashioned inkprint portrait of First Seeker Jadnura here, a kasatha who led the expedition into the Scoured Stars. It probably should have been replaced with a portrait of Luwazi Elsebo, the new First Seeker, by now. A rumor you heard from your classmates claims that something's holding up the transition, and it's not the maintenance budget for once.
We've got a few "minutes" before your appointment. Feel free to introduce yourselves as your classmates trickle in, or poke around the hallway, as I get the rooms (and myself) situated.
I'm running a little behind! This coronavirus thing has been a real kick in the pants in all sorts of interesting ways, even though we've been lucky and nobody we know seems to have caught it. I am in the process of catching up and we should start on time or thereabouts.
Also: I would ask for at least a small measure of patience, as this will be (in conjunction with another game) my first time GMing a play-by-post!
(This is in addition to the usual complaints that Starfinder novas don't appear in the forums.)
Some new behavior as of today: multiple users (including myself) are reporting that our Starfinder table counts are showing as 0 despite us having earned one or more novas by running lots of Starfinder Society.
It looks like we got everything except for Forbidden Tides, which shows as purchased to me but didn't end up downloadable--either from the Digital Content page or from the product page.
Can someone please give the scenario-granting-process a good poke with a big stick please?
I thought I'd canceled two subscriptions, but it seems I didn't. Oops! Could you please cancel them for me? I'd like to cancel:
* Pathfinder Accessories
* Pathfinder Pawns
Well THIS is an interesting one. Can I say how much I love the maps? The water effects are really beautifully done.
Request: can you please please please include more information about weird races into the scenarios? This adventure has a race appear in it in a way that makes it kind of a cluster... well, you know what.
page 6 wrote:
However, the ongoing media smear campaign has soured the opinion of Lead Representative Tsisitra (N female syngarathrix) toward the Starfinder Society, and she keeps her distance from the PCs throughout the event.
First of all, no reference was added for the race. It turns out that that's because it's not from a book, it's from another scenario! Calling out the scenario would have been helpful, in part because the spelling of the race's name differs between this scenario and the other, so nothing I did (including full-text searching every PDF I own) got me to the right place. It wasn't until I started reading through Honorbound Emissaries that I turned it up, but I was really reluctant to do that because I haven't played the scenario! :(
For future GMs:
Syngnathrix
Syngnathrixes resemble a chameleon-seahorse cross, with coral-like growths on their heads which differ from individual to individual, with those of females being usually larger. Syngnathrixes move on land on hundreds of cilia, and manipulate objects with a prehensile tail. Male syngnathrixes carry young to term during gestation. (Honorbound Emissaries)
Mystic Haze is a Push action, but it doesn't seem to depend on any system in particular.
Quote:
If you have at least 6 ranks in Mysticism, you can spend 1 Resolve Point and attempt a Mysticism check (DC = 20 + 1-1/2 × your starship’s tier); if you succeed, you call forth a magical burst of static to block your enemy’s view. This obscuring field garbles your opponent’s sensors and hinders their ability to gain information about your ship’s defenses and positioning, providing your starship a +1 enhancement bonus to AC until the end of the next round. In addition, the increased interference means all science officers on the opposing starship taking the scan or lock on actions before the end of the next round must roll twice for their checks and use the worse result.
Anyone have any idea what to do with this one, other than ignore the Push tag?
You employ a substantial form of divination, such as dealing from a digital harrow deck, reading the future by interpreting the splatter of leaking coolant on your ship, or visually scanning the readouts of your starship’s myriad screens to pull deeper and predictive meaning from the lights and sounds around you. This functions as the scan science officer action, but you attempt a Mysticism check instead of a Computers check. For information about the effects of a successful scan action, see page 325 of the Core Rulebook.
(emphasis mine)
The Scan action (after errata) reads:
Quote:
Scan (Helm Phase, Push)
You can scan a starship with your sensors to learn information about it. This action requires your starship to have sensors (see page 300). You must attempt a Computers check, applying any modifiers from the starship’s sensors. You can attempt this check untrained. The DC for this check is equal to 5 + 1.5 × the tier of the starship being scanned + its bonus from defensive countermeasures (see page 298). If you succeed at this check, you learn the first unknown piece of information on the following list. For every 5 by which you exceed the check, you learn another unknown piece of information. Subsequent checks reveal new pieces of information, continuing down this list.
1. Basic Information: Living crew complement and ship classification, size, speed, and maneuverability.
2. Defenses: AC, TL, total and current Hull Points, total and current Shield Points in each quadrant, and core PCU value.
3. Weapon: Information about one weapon, including its firing arc and the damage it deals, starting with the weapon that uses the most PCU. Repeat this entry until all the starship’s weapons are revealed.
4. Load: Information about how the starship’s expansion bays are allocated and any cargo the starship might be carrying.
5. Other: Any remaining ship statistics.
(Emphasis mine--see point 3)
The wording isn't great here and I'd like to double check that I'm interpreting this the same way as the rest of the community? My read is:
1. "This functions as the Scan science officer action"... isn't actually right. Instead it could be "Attempt a Mysticism check against a DC of [...]. If you succeed, you gain information as per the Scan science officer action." This is bolstered by the last line of the Scrying action (the word "successful" bolded above).
1a. Specifically, you don't need access to sensors, even though that's a requirement of the Scan action
1b. it's not a Push action, since it's not described as one under the Magic Officer entry--another point in favor of not needing sensors, although since it's not called out in the text it's hard to tell what the intent was.
2. The DC is the same: 5 + 1.5 × the tier of the starship being scanned + its bonus from defensive countermeasures
2a. This gets weird, though, because that DC is balanced with the assumption that you add your bonus from your starship's scanners to that check. I'm willing to say you don't get that bonus, but that does make this a little harder than just scanning. Which is okay. Although...
2b. Should the bonus from defensive countermeasures be added at all? In a home game I'd totally be comfortable ruling the DC was 10 + 1.5 × the tier of the starship being scanned but that doesn't work in RAW environments like SFS.
3. Can you attempt the Mysticism check untrained? :P (I mean, it does say that. See bolded text in the Scan action.)
1. Area A1, Waste Chute II. The hybrid scrapyard electromagnets (HSE?) say they pick up anything within 40 feet of them, measured from the center of the HSE. The scenario also goes to great pains to note that they're suspended 40 feet up in the air, with the waste piles 30 feet up.
- Subquestion 1: do the piles slope appreciably, or do they just have a sheer 30-foot drop at the edge?
- Subquestion 2: is this an actual 40 feet we're supposed to measure, or should it be measured only horizontally, as though the HSE is affecting a 40-foot radius cylinder 50' high?
2. Area A1, Waste Chute II. The "computer panel on the southern wall" is supposed to be marked with an X, but I can't find an X on the map. Assuming that's actually missing (and isn't user error or PDF reader error), where should it appear? I'm guessing between the two southern piles, but it'd be nice to know...
3. A Skillful Display: The DCs look wrong for interacting with Uko. Outside of the DCs seeming a trifle high for an "everyone try this, and count the failures" style check, anyway. The more specific skills have a higher DC, while any skill could be used... with the lower DC. There doesn't seem to be any benefit to taking the higher DC that I could see, though. Are these DCs correct? Should they be flipped, or something else?
4: Area C: Purging Guidance. A minor note: the map in C isn't labeled with C1 or C2. It probably would have been handy to note that on the map, as well as perhaps have a key noting that the dotted line is the glass enclosure that raises on Round 2?
*edit*
Actually, having the surprise glass enclosure flattened onto the map in such a way that a key even makes sense is kind of a problem... us GMs will want to edit that out if we want to use the map as provided I think. It makes sense that the PCs could notice the gates for the enclosure, but if Guidance is trying to lure the PCs in, it kind of sucks to have the area made super obvious on the map.
Obvious reference is obvious wrote:
"Good news! I figured out what that thing you just incinerated did. It was a morality core they installed after I flooded the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin to make me stop flooding the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin. So get comfortable while I warm up the neurotoxin emitters."
"That core may have had some ancillary responsibilities. I can't shut off the hologram defenses. Oh well."
Hey gang, it looks like we have a count of the replays we've been granted! I seem to have 30 to burn. (My wife has 28. And it seems like those are in the same ballpark as a number of other regular players and GMs.)
Thank you!
I've got some questions about how this will actually work in practice:
1. Is our use of these going to be tracked automatically?
1a. Many of us have a number of other sources of replay, like GM stars, that aren't tracked--but for the GM stars, they're the renewable resource. We want to burn those before we burn the nonrenewable replays. If this is tracked automatically, how do we represent the use of one of these other replays?
1b. Edge cases: if the system is automatically tracking things, how do we need to change reporting to compensate? Are there any rules we should follow? (Example: GM does not want to take credit; player is replaying a scenario for no credit, but with a non-pregen character)
2. These replays are just for Pathfinder 1 (and, I presume, Pathfinder 1 Core), right? (They're just labeled Replays at the moment)
3. We're still operating under the assumption that, if we've replayed something in ages past, we cannot use the new pool of replays to replay that scenario again, right?
I started wondering about this stuff because I've got a couple of GM star replays burning a hole in my pocket, and I'd like to make sure I use them (and not these new replays) before Gencon hits. I'll probably start finding out sooner rather than later, but some official guidance would be helpful for everyone!
Hey, there are some really awesome-looking new features! Thanks for getting us our playtest points back, and the new boons tab looks pretty spiffy.
Thou giveth and thou taketh away, however--it looks like I can't make any more (non-CORE) PFS1 characters, which is pretty frustrating for me as an IRL VO (we've been on a long crusade to get people to register their characters) but it's got to be a huge deal for the online crowd, particularly the Play by Post-ers who rely on creating characters in order to play.
Could you please bring that button back? And soon?
This sounds like a fun little romp. More goblins... I don't mind, but they're kind of being levered in everywhere. It doesn't feel very organic. Still, Dragbog seems fun and it's nice to see Dolok Darkfur and Nelket again! The centaur chieftain seems to really love kohl. Probably helps with the glare.
I have one request for authors or Paizo staff, even though they're the same in this case: could you pretty please list the tile IDs when you're using maps made out of map tiles? It would be really amazingly helpful, and the whole point of having those IDs on the tiles is so that you can list them in the adventure and save the players from digging through all 84 of their tiles to find the right ones. :)
For the record, it looks like we're using:
F00/05B ... F00/01B ... F01/04B
F00/31B ... F00/02B ... F01/01B
F00/17A ... F00/13A ... F00/40A
Separately, we have yet another different mechanic for putting out fires... previous users of create water may be disappointed that they can't just use that spell to put out a square. At least this one saves us the hassle of tracking squares and spreading flames! Seems solid, but the inconsistency with past fires will probably confuse some players.
All in all, I'm looking forward to it. It looks like this might run a bit short?
I'm winding my way through this scenario. It sounds interesting--makes me wish I'd had a chance to play or run The Hao Jin Cataclysm, though!
Some interesting characters. Is there a way I'm missing for the players to understand that Aislynn is responsible? (I know, I know, it's not uncommon. But it seems like an important tie-in here.)
A note to GMs: prep the stat blocks for this one in advance. If I'm reading things right, Lin Fen Hai's low subtier attack with her sword is 3 points too low. The high-subtier Onhae Guards statblock doesn't have a two-weapon fighting entry, although they're built as two-weapon fighters. In neither tier does the stat block for the guards include two weapons, so I'm making an assumption that's how they're supposed to be played.
Props on bringing a Silver Squall in--interesting that it neither uses the quick resolution nor the verbal duel rules as recommended, but rather a third solution. I'm not a fan of this system but it seems like the right choice for the scenario.
Well, that's an interesting bug. I posted in the PbP forum as an alias (familiar) and then as the primary character, and the posts appeared out of order with the post by a character being back-dated by about 3 minutes.
I tried to fix it by deleting the latter post, but it turns out I can't delete the post.
Any idea what's going on here?
I then posted an OOC note about the accident in post order that is blinking in and out of existence as I reload the page... but it seems to have finally stuck, so I'm less worried about that one.
Two things: first, something that was going on seems to be damaging these flip mats in the same way. Are you or the manufacturer misaligning these things under a press, or just sitting heavy things on them after they're done? If you have a pattern of these things, you might want to look into it. If you don't, then don't! :)
Second, as far as I'm concerned, Wizard's Dungeon is probably fine, but I'm worried about Ghost Ship since it looks like it's delaminating. Think you guys can help me out with it?
Everything else seems to be able to charge my credit card just fine, including Paizo subscriptions, but the Paizo website is failing to process an order for a couple of the new Concordance pins. Could someone take a look at that at some point and let me know what's going wrong, please?
My wife and I had a disagreement about how this works, and the example isn't helping!
Step 4: Four Free Ability Boosts
After you’ve chosen your character’s ancestry and
background, you have four free ability boosts you can
assign to her ability scores as you see fit. These represent
your character’s variety of experiences growing up
before she became an adventurer.
I read this as meaning that at level 1, if I wanted a dwarf to multiclass into wizard, I'd be able to drop a bunch of ability boosts into Intelligence until he (or she) qualified.
My wife doesn't think you can, based on this, though:
When your character receives an ability boost, the rules
indicate whether it must be applied to a specific ability
score or one of two scores, or whether it is a “free” ability
boost that can be applied to any ability score of your
choice. When you gain multiple ability boosts at the same
time, you must apply each one to a different score.
Has anyone heard anything official one way or the other?
I'm looking forward to this, but I have a lore question. Did you (author, developer, etc.) have any particular lore in mind for the grippli tribes? I mean, just stuff as simple as a tribe name and a quick description would be cool for consistency's sake and worldbuilding. I can make my own up, but I always like to get lore from the source(s) when I can. :)
I'm entirely confused about how this is happening, but here goes.
I made a post here. It's not got the most complicated formatting, but I wrote it on my laptop, previewed it, and everything seemed to look fine. I posted it, and everything still looked fine.
I later spotted it on my Android phone using Chrome (a Pixel 2 XL, if you care; I'm not sure it matters, but stranger things have happened.) The formatting generally worked, but the underline formatting did not.
I'm not sure how this even happens, where the BBcode is parsed in one browser but not in another, but it seems to be happening to me. My phone shouldn't be able to see the bbcode to begin with, I'd thought.
On the recently-rebranded Digital Content page, the Mark All as Downloaded link reloads the page but doesn't mark anything as downloaded. It's been broken for a few months, but now that I look, I don't really see a bug report for it, so I made one. Apologies if you already know about this!
If you could fix it, though, that would be useful for those of us with hundreds of things in our list. Managing those downloads is a pain! Especially when we don't care about having things broken out by chapters.
This seems suitably epic for a 5-9, with suitably dire implications should the PCs fail. I'm really looking forward to running it.
A couple of observations:
Lieutenant Riko's main tactic is trivially negated. With no built-in 5'-range melee attack the whole "reach weapon with disruptive" thing doesn't really work all that well unless she dimension doors directly above a target, 10' up, so she threatens a 25' x 25' square at ground level. I'm not sure that many GMs are going to consider that an option, especially given the tactics, which seem to argue against effective positioning. That leaves the PCs with a relatively easy "take a 5' step to avoid the disruption" challenge.
Reach weapons work best when you force people to walk through them, especially on a combat reflexes build, but teleporting into the middle of the group will almost certainly negates their one advantage for poor Riko, who will probably not survive a round. And the disruptive ability should never come up in a 5-9 because at that point, the players should know to 5' step out of the threatened area before casting.
Separately from the fine work of the author, I'm a little disappointed in the chronicle sheet. We've seen the capstone scenarios for the Scarab Sages, Sovereign Court, and Dark Archive, and they've all had really excellent scenarios and really cool rewards on the chronicle sheet. I was hoping we'd see something similarly awesome for the Silver Crusade, but... sad trombone. The scenario lives up to the hype, but the chronicle sheet is incredibly mundane.
The weapon boon even seems specifically specced to not work with 8-99's, which seems like a missed opportunity. Just another chronicle sheet that will barely get any use, I guess!
Anyway, that sounds more negative than I actually intended it to be. There's a nice mix of social stuff and combat, and you've found a clever way to incentivize the PCs to care about their fellow intelligent creatures. It should be fun!
