GayBirdGM's page

I've received my shipping notice. ^-^

I hope others receive their own shipments soon.

Do everyone else’s shipping notifications tend to always come by around 9AM PST? I’ve only gotten one later than that once, so I feel like I should probably not keep my hopes up once we’re past that point.

When I get mine it's actually typically around 5pm central or so, with the occasional noon shipping notice. I can't recall ever getting one before that time.

I am also still waiting, sadly.

Huh, are we complaining about subscription shipping or something?

I figured such complaints would happen after street date rather than before. In any case, still waiting on my shipment email and I'm not too pressed, I believe I will get it during this week. If not, then I'll make an inquiry to at least get my PDF.

Ahhh...still waiting. Hoping I can get mine before the weekend but outlook seems bleak. OTL

Well goodness, I post that and get my shipping email an hour later. Speak and it occurs!

Still watching myself, but hoping I get it today for some good weekend reading!

There's a module called Roll Tracker that'll track that. You can clear the results between sessions, it let's you know if you're on a streak, gives you the median and mode of rolls, and all that fun stuff.

I was correct, my wait it over today! Time to read some books~ ^-^

I got my email to say my order was pending last Thursday, so hopefully Thursday is my lucky day, yeah?

Ending my work day with a shipping email! My watch ends and I'll have good reads this weekend. :>

Well I got a notification from my card that my payment has gone through, now just waiting on a shipping email.

My f5 button will not be happy.

It's getting pretty lonely in this watch tower lol

Don't worry, I'm still watching with ya!

Can't wait to finally get book 6 of SoT. Definitely stalking my email inbox this month.

I guess I should chime in and mention mine are still pending.

Giuseppe Capriati wrote:

Having translated and played almost all of 2nd edition APs...

6. Keep experimenting with the shorter APs. The way we all play RPGs is changing, and we find the new format much more suited to our needs. We cannot afford to play 5+ hours/week anymore, and longer APs, although immensely enticing, just stay that, because it would take us two to three years to just complete one.

So how'd you play them all in the time since they started being released?

If we had maintained the same playing schedule as we used to before unfortunate circumstances caused us to cut short our time, my table would definitely have been able to play the released 2e APs fully. Not counting SoT, because book 6 still doesnt exist.

We used to play Friday/Sat/Sunday, about 6-7 hours each day. Lots of fun!

How did I forget about poppets? Being a walking voodoo doll is amazing!

I change my vote to poppet now. I have been shown the light.

...also 9 confused the heck out of me.

Leshy is the mascot ancestry for 2e for me. I had no interaction with them in 1e, and they seem widely loved, and brilliantly varied.

All glory to Paizo selling little potted leshies.

I, too, would like to purchase small potted leshies. I will give much of my money for such a thing. Glory to the leshies.

I dunno how to feel about this whole thing really. It feels kinda irresponsible for the caretakers of a world to just kinda say "Well were not going to detail certain kinds of content anymore we already established existed" I kind feel like its the responsibility of the world builders to detail the ugly bits of their world so there can be a shared expectation and baseline when one moves from table to table. Things like the 1e 'candy van' demon were.. unlikely to get used but also kind of were a safety net for GMs and players in that it existing and being detailed meant that GM's didn't have to stomach doing it themselves.

Turning your head from the slavery thing just means putting the work on a lot of GMs who might really screw it up and make something actually offensive rather than just use the default that is provided and carefully measured. Same with a lot of things. Having it written down is a safety net for a LOT of people GMs and players included. Not providing that is, in my opinion, irresponsible.

Things should always be more fleshed out, not less. The creator should never bow to pressure to veil or hide something just because it might make a few people uncomfortable. Art is not supposed to make people comfortable after all. Art can never truly thrive and be vibrant when created by someone afraid of what people might think when they see it.

I think if you absolutely HAVE to have slavery as a big part of your games, there are resources available to help you put it in a manner that is safer and comfortable for your table.

Paizo has decided they are not going to be one of those resources. They've written stuff about slavery before, and it's been largely misses with maybe a hit or two. I haven't read everything they put out to truly say, but the people here that have read into their older stuff definitely don't seem to think they DID a good job with the subject matter. They DID screw up and make offensive content. So they're not going to anymore, and I'm perfectly okay with and supportive of their decision.

Hello,

I am looking to switch my current payment method for my subscriptions and preorder to my Mastercard on file, but cannot seem to figure out how to get that done. Any assistance would be appreciated!

A bit late but, for making scenes and foundry and getting the map to align, I've found that if you count the tiles of the map, so get the width and height, and then change the image size to match it works perfectly.

And example would be you have a map that is 25x25 tiles. Change the image side to 2500x2500, and upload it to Foundry and it should fit perfectly on a 100 size grid. If you have a larger map, you can easily cut the dimensions in half, so the 2500x2500 would be 1250x1250, and change the grid from 100 to 50.

Of course, changing image sizes can cause loss of quality, so use an image upscale tool first if you can.

Yeah. The current system is fine. It's just disheartening. I'm sure it's not uncommon but I know that any shipment I have that includes a Lost Omens or rulebook will take generally a week longer at least to get to me in the queue than if it were just an AP entry.

It's just no fun for anyone to see folks on here and elsewhere having their files a week or two before you get them.

It does sting a bit when you're getting it rather late in the shipping window often. Last month was a great surprise for me when I got mine earlier. This one looks like it's going back to my usual expectation, getting it near the end.

As I recall, they strongly prefer to wait to release PDFs until both sides are committed (they can no longer stop the shipment, and you can no longer cancel the order).

Of course, exceptions are possible, as happened once last year when shipping took much longer than expected and they released the PDFs for people who were still waiting for PDFs several days after the street date.

Of course, I suppose it would be possible to release the PDFs as soon as shipping begins if they could be sure that customers would accept that any refunds on a canceled subscription order would be reduced by the combined prices of the granted PDFs.

I would 100% be fine with being charged when the order authorized, having the PDF, and waiting for shipping.

I tend to read the PDFs here at work to make the days go by, rather slow lately here.

GayBirdGM wrote:

trevco613 wrote:

Is the order they ship random or is it the same every month? If I shipped on the last day of shipping for January should I expect the same thing going forward?

I want to guess it depends on the order numbers.

Mine is 36352720, I dunno what the numbers of people that already got theirs are, but I was hoping since I auth'd on day 1 of authorization spawning I'd get my shipment week 1 of shipping, but it's looking likely I'm waiting some more. :c

According to Paizo shipping is based on grouping like shipments together to do them faster. And nothing to do with the order number.

Interesting, thank you!

I guess my two-book order is more unique than I thought.

Is the order they ship random or is it the same every month? If I shipped on the last day of shipping for January should I expect the same thing going forward?

I want to guess it depends on the order numbers.

Mine is 36352720, I dunno what the numbers of people that already got theirs are, but I was hoping since I auth'd on day 1 of authorization spawning I'd get my shipment week 1 of shipping, but it's looking likely I'm waiting some more. :c

Auth'd on the 4th, still waiting for shipping here. Checking my email every ten minutes since work is slow.

I am so excited to get my hands on the LOAG.

kcunning wrote:

I have no shame about my new habit of checking my Paizo account twice a day.

Checking your Paizo account only twice a day while your monthly subscription shipment is pending actually demonstrates a supreme degree of self control that very few of us have.

Right? I've been checking mine once every ten minutes and I feel I've been restraining myself!

I remember a thread where JJ (I think) actually stepped in to say something on the matter.

Perhaps you were thinking of this post in particular? He talks about how the AP dungeons and such are presented as a "snapshot" in time, and playing it as shown can be fine. They cannot account for every action groups will try to do, and if they did it would probably mess with their page limit, if they have one.

I imagine the intent is to use the encounter building rules, what constitutes a certain level of encounter, and use the tools provided in the ruleset to decide if you really want encounters to merge together or if you want to come up with reasons for it to not happen. All table-dependent, of course, and also this is just my opinion on the matter. If there needs to be some sort of blog post or guide to point out encounter-merging math, or extra sidebars in APs for people, then it wouldn't bother me any. As long as people find it helpful, I'm all for it.

It's definitely a good rule for thematic campaigns like EC. We started PF2 without using that variant rule, and now we don't want to play without it. The only question I think would be if you have any at the table that get "choice paralysis", we have one at ours with it and that was the major hurdle for even trying the ruleset out in the first place.

Still wonder how that player even survived in PF1....

As far as complexity, I personally don't find it too complex, but probably because I made an excel sheet for tracking my character build choices and having it set up in a visual, color-coded manner helps me understand things.

However it also does a lot of very useful things, compared to roll20 at least (not sure how many of these have been added to Foundry, I suspect some have and I know more will as time goes on)

* Secret rolls are easy -- the player still 'rolls' and can still add in any modifiers they need to before rolling, and only the GM sees it

* Persistent damage can be added as a condition, the game automatically rolls the damage and the recovery check.

* Regen and fast healing are likewise handled at start of turn, most spells have the correct tags to disable regen when appropraite, (but something I still double check)

* Resistance/weakness/vulnerability are all handled close to perfectly (alignment damage still appears broken)

* AoE damaging/condition giving spells are handled beautifully, player/gm selects the targets, the VTT rolls all saves/applies the damage/conditions

* The 'parcels' and 'party inventory' pages are amazing for distributing loot that you expect people to use during the adventure.

As far as what's in Foundry so far for this list:

-There's a module for "actually secret" rolls, otherwise you can roll and have only the GM see it, it just shows in chat as "Player 1 rolled something" with some ??? and it can be set to GM and Player rolling see it, or only the GM. The module hides that chat message so it's super secret.

-Persistent damage can be added as a condition as well, as far as automatically rolling it I believe there is also a module for it.

-Same for regen. Not quite base, a module.

-For resistances and stuff, you can shift+click the damage and modify it[+10, -15, etc etc] to automatically apply to the token, as well as having take half or take double buttons. Also a shield block and healing button as well. For automatically applying them, I don't believe that's in yet, or I just haven't found the module...

-AoE in Foundry you slap down the template for the spell and it targets the creatures in it for you. If it's a save spell, the GM just has the creatures relevant selected and hit the "DC ## Save" button on your spell card and it rolls their saves and says the level of success achieved.

-You can make an actor sheet for Loot, and players can drag items onto their sheet from it, put their items on it if they want, and automatically distribute coins evenly among the players.

I haven't tried Fantasy Grounds myself, it's mostly the crazy high cost that kept me from ever attempting it, though I wish I had. Kinda feel like I blew too much money on Roll20 now that I've moved to a nicer system. I feel like a lot of the module creators for Foundry must have tried FG as well cuz a lot of things I see about FG end up being a module eventually.

I actually draw the tokens for our players, and we use borders and images like that for all the NPCs. It makes the players look unique and fun(and maybe a little poorly drawn, but who cares) compared to the NPCS.

Like this Kitsune Witch for a campaign we start in March

demiurge108 wrote:

YES thank you and what is it this new class ?

Classes. Plural. And you have to wait. :)

What do we have to do to get a hint? :D

Man, I'm super excited regardless. This is great! ^-^

I'm mostly just annoyed when people who like 5e claim other systems are too repetitive <_<

Same...

I played a 5e campaign as a warlock. The amount of times I just Eldritch Blast'd something because I didn't have many other options was a bit silly.

I did have fun, though, so to each their own, but it WAS very repetitive to me.

GayBirdGM wrote:

Cliffscale has neat utility, but I fail to see how it's more useful for a stealth character.

*Shrug* To me, the question of how I use stealth is always "how can I get to places I shouldn't be, and how can I use it to prepare for combat". As you already noted, the second question is pretty straight forward, it can get me off the ground, so I don't have to worry about pesky melee, and it puts me in a good position to snipe someone in a surprise round. Obviously it isn't going to help when I'm indoors fighting a caster, but at that point, stealth is not really viable. As to the first question, well... its kinda like you said yourself, "that +2 you're trading away could cause you to fail on being stealthy at all". Climbing has always been closely tied to stealth for me, be it pulling off a heist, or infiltrating a castle wall, climbing is just something I always do when sneaky. But, it's also (in my experience) the part of a stealthy plan that can lead to a downward spiral, because if I'm caught climbing, I'm usually screwed, because now I'm stuck on this wall, with no quick way to flee or deal with my witness. But now suddenly, I can climb wherever I want without fear, because I could potentially just use a magic item or cast a spell to get out an uncomfortable situation. Personally, I'd rather have a plan in place that will save me if I am caught, than just adding 5 percent to my chance to not be caught. But, I guess part of it just might be how I am as a player, because I very rarely find myself in situations where I'm just stealthily walking around, I always try to get somewhere no one will find me and then work from there, that way I only have to really worry about stealth once, and it nearly always involves climbing.

So what heritage you pick is going to be based on how you want to do your stealthy things. If climbing is what you want, then yes you want cliffscale. If you want to more frequently succeed in stealth checks, then you likely want unseen and get that +2.

Climbing for stealth only works for me in the situations where there is somewhere to climb, and where failing the stealth check to not be seen would not come with getting peppered with arrows and spells until you fall. The +2 gives a nice bonus to stealthing in a variety of areas and situations. But climbing stealth is going to be more useful if you want a more high-up sniper type character. The +2 is going to help more if you want a more low-to-the-ground, stalking in the bushes and blending in type ambusher. Which is great, both options have uses where they are better than the other, and it only depends on what you want to do.

I, personally, would not want to do the climber, but that's because last time I tried a stealth mission, one of my party members decided to start a fight while I tried to sneakily assassinate a guard to steal their armor and ruined the whole thing, so I just don't do stealth at all with that particular group. >_>

Sniper lizard sounds cool, though!

1. It seems like (especially in the ancestries) that a lot of the options look objectively worse...? I totally agree that there aren't many things that read as "Dang that is ridiculously good" but I kept turning things up options where the concept of the bonus seemed really exciting, but the actual results seemed like a let down. One that stood out to me was the Unseen Lizardfolk, I got super pumped when I saw we could have literal chameleons, but then just having +2 stealth... and flavor text that seems to limit this ability further? Is it just me or is that pretty weak? Especially when the Cliff ancestry right next to it seems to have way better utility for ranged stealth characters (martial and caster alike). My initial reaction to the idea of ancestries was that it would make building a character much more personal, but now I'm feeling like some of the choices are just no brainers, tailored for certain builds... and others I can't picture myself ever picking, is this just me?

Cliffscale has neat utility, but I fail to see how it's more useful for a stealth character. Yes, getting up high would be good for ranged characters to snipe, but with how tight the math is here, that +2 you're trading away could cause you to fail on being stealthy at all. It's very often I see things like "+1 from bless makes that a crit", or even changing it to a regular success instead of a miss because the bonuses, as small as they seem, matter a lot more now.

As far as the flavor text, yeah it's kinda dumb and restrictive. Considering chameleons are actually garbage at stealth since they change color based on temperature and mood, and can only blend in on the wall of a modern art museum, I would disregard the flavor there personally.

Only tip I can give is try your best to separate your Pathfinder 1 knowledge from Pathfinder 2. I know it is tough since they use same words but have completely different effects.

Overall I feel there is a lot of content as a player, looks like someone else went more into detail what is released. With the current books there are a lot of options imo. Mechanically and thematically you can make such versatile characters.

I am pretty sure I could play it 7 games a week and not run out of ideas for characters, also there are lots of variant rules to spice up gameplay.

Also I wanted to mention that the beginner box just came out and pretty much everyone has nothing but good things to say about it. I haven't quite pulled the trigger on buying it yet since we started, but really probably by it for when I introduce other players to the game.

My table tends to do 4 different campaigns at a time[alternating weekends of play Saturday and Sunday], and I still have a backlog of characters that I want to play and need more campaigns for!

Of course, I had the same problem in PF1, so nothing has changed for me.

I've found combat goes significantly faster, and there's less of a disparity between people that put thought into their feat choices and people that just pick what looks fun or funny. Everyone is equally useful to the party, in my experience.

GayBirdGM wrote:

I do have a question about chapter 2.

When researching Kharnas, the library options they have seem to max out at 30 points. Forae Logos at 15, Arcanamirium at 10, and College of Mysteries at 5 maximum RP. Am I missing where the final 10 is supposed to be, because they only earn the handout at 40 RP?

The research skill use and the locations were actually a really cool bit that was added during development from a less structured set of suggestions I wrote to get the PCs information on Kharnas, his tower, and ways to get in. They did a really awesome job with it!

As such I didn't set the maximum RP numbers for the three sites. But I'd either add another location that could add 10, or adjust the three sites such that the 40 total could be achieved. Or be mean and make your PCs parse together the clues to the prismatic wall puzzle from the murals and other things buried under Fort Tempest. :)

All good solutions, personally I'll probably just add another location! Thank you. ^-^

GayBirdGM wrote:

Harles wrote:

Yeah, we ended up flipping through our Core Rulebooks, using the search features on Archives of Nethys (because we couldn't navigate the book too well), using character creation on Pathbuilder, trying to plug everything into Roll20, while I was running the adventure from a PDF (because the adventure also isn't on Roll20).
Being able to cut down on just a few of those resources would've improved play so much!

I'd say hit up one of the Foundry dev streams when it happens, and you might win the giveaway for a Foundry key! Also check out their discord and see what cool stuff they offer.

One of the modules I use is an adventure PDF importer and it just lets you upload your AP PDF and automatically sets the maps, sheets, journal entries, and all that. Granted, it's a freely made module so it doesn't follow an update schedule, but it has all of Age of Ashes, most of Extinction curse[some PDFs dont have the dynamic lighting set for it, but you can get the rest], and half of Agents of Edgewatch in it so far, as well as a good amount of PFS scenarios.

The most important module for me, though, is the sound effects on doors. Very important and fun.

That certainly beats what I was doing on Roll20, when I had to add all maps, NPCs, monsters, and dynamic lighting for Age of Ashes.

Yeah, PF adventures aren't really as big a sell as 5e stuff for them, I think. Their numbers were like...70+% of people use r20 for 5e, so a lot of focus goes onto that. Which is fine, but leaves the PF people in the dust. I remember the Return of the Runelords annoyance, I was running that and they just didnt release half the AP after releasing the first half until months after I was already done doing it myself and running it. Blegh

If you go into the Foundry discord and hang out in the Pf2e section, maybe I'll see ya there!

Yeah, we ended up flipping through our Core Rulebooks, using the search features on Archives of Nethys (because we couldn't navigate the book too well), using character creation on Pathbuilder, trying to plug everything into Roll20, while I was running the adventure from a PDF (because the adventure also isn't on Roll20).
Being able to cut down on just a few of those resources would've improved play so much!

I'd say hit up one of the Foundry dev streams when it happens, and you might win the giveaway for a Foundry key! Also check out their discord and see what cool stuff they offer.

One of the modules I use is an adventure PDF importer and it just lets you upload your AP PDF and automatically sets the maps, sheets, journal entries, and all that. Granted, it's a freely made module so it doesn't follow an update schedule, but it has all of Age of Ashes, most of Extinction curse[some PDFs dont have the dynamic lighting set for it, but you can get the rest], and half of Agents of Edgewatch in it so far, as well as a good amount of PFS scenarios.

The most important module for me, though, is the sound effects on doors. Very important and fun.

Harles wrote:

I have purchased for Roll20, but its implementation on there is pretty bad. The character sheets don't work, spells and feats can't be dropped in, and there isn't a lot of content.

That is not correct, the character sheets for PF2 work fine in Roll20. Maybe whoever set up your games did not specify that it should use the PF2 custom sheets.

Spells and feats can be dropped in only if you pay for the compendium, which I have not done. But some GMs have that enabled and it is easy enough to add things manually, IMO.

I pay for the lowest-cost level of subscription at Roll20 only for the character vault import/export functionality. But that is really not necessary to get started with it and get used to it.

Roll20's drag and drop functionality for PF2e rulebooks was a pretty big issue. People paid full price for books and that function was always "coming soon, not yet here guys!"

Which is ridiculous. I cannot imagine anyone paying for the roll20 version of the rulebooks just to have them and not have that functionality. Might as well just buy the PDF from Paizo, support Paizo and get the same level of use.

Add onto that, the constant API crashes and extremely laggy update to dynamic lighting that barely worked at first, my group left to find something better. So we found Foundry. I highly suggest it, 60 dollars, one and done.

GayBirdGM wrote:

There are several LFG channels on websites like Reddit, the forums here, some discord servers, and things like that.

As far as VTTs for Pf2, FoundryVTT has been AMAZING. A single purchase, and constantly updating. I absolutely love the system and the support it has for PF2.

Personally, my group came to be when our MMO guild decided to try PF and absolutely loved it. Been playing ever since.

I have Fantasy Grounds (Classic) but haven't purchased the PF2 rules yet - and I think only the Playtest is available for free.

I have purchased for Roll20, but its implementation on there is pretty bad. The character sheets don't work, spells and feats can't be dropped in, and there isn't a lot of content.

I'm looking into Foundry VTT, but I can't find out much. Will I have to put in every detail of the encounters? Are there adventure modules? Can it populate character sheets with the rulebooks?

FoundryVTT has drag and drop functionality for character sheets, and a compendium for PF2 that is constantly updated. There are also modules[much like the APIs in roll20] that people make that can make it easier to use. One of my favorite modules is the PF2e monster import tool. You just copy the sheet from the PDF, paste it in, and it generates the sheet. A little fixing on spacing of text is needed but it's easier than remaking it yourself, and half the time I dont even need it. Unique monsters are added to the compendium pretty quickly! I just have to put the token images in. I also find the dynamic lighting easier to deal with than roll20. Doors are actually DOORS the players can interact with, or I can lock to stop them and all that.

The creator does development streams semi regularly, which are always fun to watch.

Foundry does have a discord, here, and you can get a lot more answers about it's functionality there if you're interested.

There are several LFG channels on websites like Reddit, the forums here, some discord servers, and things like that.

As far as VTTs for Pf2, FoundryVTT has been AMAZING. A single purchase, and constantly updating. I absolutely love the system and the support it has for PF2.

Personally, my group came to be when our MMO guild decided to try PF and absolutely loved it. Been playing ever since.

I feel people are underestimating just how thick dungeon walls and doors are. Aren't most rooms closed off too? Wouldn't that greatly limit how far sound carries?

I for one don't mege encounters unless they are in the same open space. Even monsters in an adjacent room are unlikely to easily hear a battle unless something especially loud happens, or someone is thrown against the closed door.

Typically, I've noticed, Paizo will have a section of the "dungeon features" at the start of the area. Things like ceiling height, wall thickness and material, as well as doors.

Probably to cover the "players try to break the walls/doors" tactic, but handy information for being able to tell how well the sound is traveling. Even with the door to the room they're fighting in open, unless the door where the next group is happens to also be open, a lot of "dungeons" tend to have pretty thick doors and walls to limit the ability to hear things nearby.

I do have a question about chapter 2.

When researching Kharnas, the library options they have seem to max out at 30 points. Forae Logos at 15, Arcanamirium at 10, and College of Mysteries at 5 maximum RP. Am I missing where the final 10 is supposed to be, because they only earn the handout at 40 RP?

Now that copies are slowly getting into subscribers' hands, I'm beyond excited to hear any comments and opinions from folks who run their PCs through this module, my first AP entry.

I'll also field any questions about it here so as to avoid filling my Ask Me Anything thread with spoilers.

I will say, so far, the second chapter is incredibly interesting as a read. Everything about Kharnas and his history was very interesting and I can't wait for my players to learn about it in play. It's taking a lot of my willpower to not show them the lore and all that about him and say "Man, look at how cool this part is!" ^-^

To me, this is a valuable feature of a published adventure, not a flaw. The more an adventure makes assumptions about PC choices or scripts complex events or tactics based on guesswork about how a group might react, the more that published adventure runs the risk of being less usable for a larger number of GMs whose players might go in drastically different directions.

It's that style of writing that has me continue my subscription to the APs, even during ones I don't care for the premise of. They're written so well and I enjoy the base story, but they're also loose enough that it's easy for me to make changes for my group to cater the experience to them. If they were more rigid in their writing, I'd consider them too railroad-y and the amount of rewriting or changes I'd have to do wouldn't make them worth it. The APs provide a large toolbox and framework story, and our table adds their own flavor to it all.