Grumpus's page

I think they were just "quoting" Tridus who posted before them as a summary of Tridus' position.

Arkat wrote:

Indeed. It still makes you wonder whether any of these scenarios were actually playtested or proofread.

Errors that slip through the cracks are not evidence that we don't playtest or proofread, which we do. They show that we're still human, and this is also why we have errata. We're sorry for errors that still get through, and we do our best, but we're not perfect!

Except you very rarely ever do errata for adventures. Once they are out of the door, Paizo never seems to devote any time to fixing any mistakes. I ran into a pretty big error this weekend running shattered Star book-6, very frustrating trying to reconcile inconsistencies that should have been caught by the writer or developer or editor, or had errata sometime in the past 12 years.

How can the playtest be only halfway through, when the blog says 6/10 (today) is when it ends?

But the hardcover versions were live earlier this morning, so someone forgot to push a button. Unless different employees are responsible for PDF vs Physical

Paizo's working to get everything before 2021 in the new library eventually.

Are you sure about that? it's been over 5 months and I have not heard anything that indicates this is a concern of theirs.

Is there a way to leave out-of-stock items on the Store (maybe with a 'sold out' tag or something), so we can see the reviews?

Or at least merge the reviews of physical and digital versions of the same product.

I was looking for reviews of the Tyrants Grasp AP and only 3 of the 6 books showed up in the store (presumably because the other 3 volumes are sold out). So there is no way to see reviews for those other 3 volumes that I can tell.

I wonder if the Author had those abilities in her statblock originally, and they got edited out. Or else it was just another minor nitpick for the AP where it seems like the writers/editors weren't paying attention.

When I ran it, my party had a cleric and needed no healing. And I just never bothered to look at her statblock to see if she can teleport, I just had it happen as the players won't know the details of her abilities anyway.

Yes I think because he saw the drawings that Ulver Zandulus made of the same trio of Stela, but in an ancient abandoned city. At that time he didn't know where they were.

Safe to say the Carcosa would have treated him as 'one of their own' by Book 6 as he was more Xhamen-Dor than Lowls by then. That to me explains why he went about unchallenged.

What is becoming unclear to me is why he even went to Neruzavin instead of going back to Thrushmoor when he yoinked the Necronomicon... the books say he warped the Mysterium due to Xhamen-Dor inhabiting him, so going to Neruzavin... was to achieve what? meet the Husk of XD? why?

The adventure Background in book-5 states :for the knowledge of how to find Neruzavin, which he believes contains untold historical lore that might cement his academic legacy.

So he is still bent on becoming a respected academic, and thinks neruzavin could be a fountain of forgotten knowledge.

Question in regards to the green idol:

Does the undead caster take damage when casting this spell?

I agree with you that since the priest is undead, they would not take any damage.

Or how about don't post point 5 at all and stop dogpiling someone you don't agree with and just ignore them?

Grumpus wrote:

But in book-6 it never explains how Lowls dealt with the challenges in each nexus, how he found the stela and dealt with the Kudimmu, how he dealt with the stasis field and dealt with the Mutate, how he avoided conflict with the bhole etc.

What did I Miss?

Didn't he activate those stelae on Thrushmoor's side before Book 1 even began? I know the Hastur cult he brought into Thrushmoor were sacrificing folks to empower them. I think it's up to the PCs to deactivate them on Carcosa's side, and that their activation was done long ago. I could be wrong though.

I don't recall it ever being noted that he activated any Stela on Golarion besides those in Neruzavin, which had to happen after book-1 started based on the timeline presented (but the timelines in the books was never satisfying to me).

And I recall that all the Thrushmoor stuff with the stela in book-2 was done after he left town and without his knowledge. That was just Melissen trying to use the Thrushmoor Stela for other purposes (which is why she wasn't using the same rituals as book-5) Sacrificing people on the Stela had different results than the rituals the PCs learned later on.

Also, the whole thing about activating them to provide links to Carcosa came from the Necronomicon, which he obtained in book-4, so he wouldn't have known most of the stuff he eventually learned before book-1 in the first place.

Anyway, I may not have all the facts straight, because the AP didn't do a great job of detailing what Lowls was doing when. For example, just the choice of the PCs taking a ship from Cassomir to the Mysterium or Teleporting can make a huge difference. If there was a hard timeline, then you'd lose the AP if you took a ship because you'd be too late, or if you teleported you would arrive before Lowls and there wouldn't be a problem to solve yet.

Overall it was a fun AP, but I heavily edited book-6 just to get it over with because it made little sense to me, the logistics of what was happening when.

On the bright side, the more they raise prices, the more "gold" you earn.

Not to sidetrack even further (but related to the Darklands) who wrote the adventure portion of the PF1 module Cradle of Night? It lists 4 authors in the credits. (Jacobs, Schneider, Spicer, Vaughan)

I wonder if the new store couldn't handle selling badges to the con, so they had to cancel it.

The basic process is:
search in the product discussion subforum for a specific product. In the results find a post from the product thread and note who the user is.

Next do a search for the user, and then look at their post history and find that same post from the previous search.

Then hit "reply" to that post which will bring you to the product thread, then you can scroll up and click add to downloads.

There is way for new people to get it added to the old My-Downloads page. It is an odd method that requires a few hoops, but it should work.

For example, I just added a different free product I didn't already have to my downloads , the Great Toy Heist. And i didn't have to go to the new store page at all.

I think you can still get the adventure into your downloads on the old website without interacting with the new store. I can explain how if anyone is interested and wants to test it out.

How will we know which one is the correct one? The links are not clearly labeled and the PDFs look near identical.

It says "Second Edition Remaster" in the upper right corner of the cover.

Just downloaded the single file and they gave it an interesting filename: 03c1624d-78b5-4655-9407-0081d46f2bd5-PZO12012e

My guess is that the person who wrote the blog and the person who sets prices on the store did not communicate.
OR I have heard that sometimes on the new store discounts don't appear until items are in your cart at checkout.

Sorting by "date-last-updated" doesn't work either.

I would expect to see all the entries that have a date at all be first in the list, and then a bunch of blanks. But my first entry has 1/5/26 and then there a bunch of blanks and a 1/16/26 which is clearly more recent than 1/5/26. And other entries with actual dates interspersed between a bunch of blanks.
I am curious why you didn't test with a User (most likely a long term employee) that had ALL the PDFs, as that could test the extremes of your new system. And then you could figure it all out before going live and frustrating customers.

Some Library Content issues -

In the New Store Library, I found some products that have improperly formatted PDFs for their 'single file' versions:

1. Pathfinder Adventure: Rusthenge
2. Starfinder Adventure: The Starfinder Four vs. The Hardlight Harlequin
Both of these titles have each page (except for the cover) taking up the left half of a landscape orientation with the right side completely blank.

I was able to download "Pathfinder Adventure: Rusthenge PDF" and it looked fine formatting-wise.

Pretty much every product they sell has a physical and digital version, so I wonder why they chose a solution that couldn't handle it.

IN your photo, it doesn't look like you are logged into the store. maybe thats the problem?

My question is if I never buy another thing from paizo, will i still be able to access my existing downloads on the "old" digital content page forever? Or will there come a day when the old downloads will disappear?

And will new purchases show up in old downloads? or will I have to get them from the new store downloads page? As it stands now, it seems like some titles just have a number on the new page, So I have no idea what those products are, and so the old page seems to be better than what they just spent a week on.

Also it seems so unintuitive to have 2 different passwords for different parts of the website

Is there an easy way to export a list of all my digital content, so that I will have something to double check against when the new store goes live?

There is a recent-ish hardcover book just on Absalom. I don't own it, but I have to imagine it has lots of maps.

Absalom book

How much will the PDFs cost?

Please stop flagging messages from our staff and the Order of the Amber Die team as in the wrong forum! The team did amazing, and we want to celebrate that!

Isn't "website feedback" subforum for issues with the website? Other Amber Die blogs in the past were elsewhere on your website.

I do remember reading that although a whole section of the city has an Anti-magic zone, the AP says there shouldn't be any feeling that a spellcaster would be at a disadvantage in the campaign, which just seems odd.

There is a little bit of info in the pf1 module Wardens of the reborn forge, which has a gazetteer of Alkenstar.

What about starship combat

The blurb says "everything a player needs" so I would hope Starship combat is included as that seems pretty integral to the genre.

This blog from july 2023 also speaks of the new store. So if they haven't figured it out in 2 years, who knows when it will be updated.
LINK

Can someone explain how the 3 Stela in Carcosa got attuned?

IN Book-5 on page 30 it says "Upon completing the ritual, Lowls planned to travel to the unholy domain of the King in Yellow, where he hoped to attune its Star Stelae and offer Golarion to his new master"

But in book-6 it never explains how Lowls dealt with the challenges in each nexus, how he found the stela and dealt with the Kudimmu, how he dealt with the stasis field and dealt with the Mutate, how he avoided conflict with the bhole etc.

What did I Miss?

You're not missing anything. As long as your party is handling the challenges fine and don't need the Xp, it would be fine just to skip ahead to the Neruzavin portion of the adventure. Otherwise, maybe have them notice points of interest along the way, and if they decide to land and investigate they can experience some of the stuff instead of zipping past.

One thing that is tripping me up is that in the stat block for the Husk on page 53 of book-5 it has a feature called Latent Great Old One The Husk of Xhamen-Dor is ALL that remains of the once-mighty Great Old One Xhamen-Dor.

So is this a lie? Or a mistake in the stat block? If it is "all that remains", then there should be no other place that X-D exists, right? even if people think about it, it wouldn't just magically be alive on a different planet?

I am confused about Xhamen-Dor. Can someone explain what is going on?

From my understanding it crashed on Golarion during earthfall thousand of years ago, and Lowls' shenanigans are causing it to slowly awaken. Lowls activates the Stela and goes to Carcosa. And weeks later, the Pcs can kill it in its weakened state at the end of book-5.

So what exactly is happening in book-6?
It says on pages 5-6 "The nexus of Thrushmoor is haunted by the dead Xhamen-Dor, which has now almost completely subsumed the PCs’ former employer, Count Lowls. Xhamen-Dor struggles to restore itself to life even as it tears the real Thrushmoor away from Golarion. The dead husk of the Great Old One is protected by the Briarstone Witch"

So how did the husk in Neruzavin get to Carcosa? How is it dead and doing stuff in Carcosa at a time before the PCs even kill it?

I feel like I am missing something important to make it make sense.

As a GM, if my party wanted to lure and fight this thing at level-1, I would just have it off hunting somewhere else in the swamp until the party was level-2.

Ugh, this book caused the Glass Cannon to cancel their Gatewalkers Podcast. No one was having any fun playing this adventure.

I have Gm-ed PF1 games where the players can blitz through a multi-encounter dungeon and still have time remaining on their minutes/level buff spells. There's no way to tell those stories in PF2 unless the dungeon is stocked with level-4 and below enemies.

I am trying to adjust to the remaster, and did not purchase the new books, so I'm going off of Nethys and find it hard to search for rules there.

So my main question is since they seemed to do away with material components, is there anything stopping you from casting most spells without a free hand? Such as holding a 2-handed weapon and not having to free-action release, then spend an action to re-grip.

Question on F3 and the Side Quest for the Ritual to “unbind.”

Is this the Ritual Spell Rank 6 Binding Circle or a differnet not listed Ritual to unbind? Naturally if it’s the SR6 one the PC is using to reverse that would require a level 11 primary caster for level 5 PCs at the time if I am understanding correctly?

Or perhaps this it’s possible because it a different SR3 ritual? My Players are interested in unbinding and learning the spell/ritual so trying to figure that out

There is no F3 in this book? What room are you talking about? Perhaps you are using the book with all 3 adventures in it, and the re-numbered the rooms.

How many levels does each adventure encompass?

I saw that before it disappeared. Probably because it dealt with Politics which I think they try to avoid.

Emailing customer service is the best way to maybe get an answer.

Finoan wrote:

JiCi wrote:

BTW, we did get ship combat rules in the first core rulebook, no? If you're gonna have spaceships, you might as well offer the basics ^^;

I'm just repeating what has been announced.

Starfinder Playtest wrote:

Will there be starship combat?

Our focus right now is on the core gameplay experience: player characters exploring alien worlds and overcoming science-fantasy threats. We know that starship combat (as well as mechs and vehicles) are integral to the Starfinder experience, and we want to make sure we get these rules right. We’ll announce more about our plans for these rules in future updates.

Huh... interesting...

Then again, it's not a bad idea to refine ground combat first :)

They do kinda confirm mechs too XD

kaid wrote:

While I agree with this with alkenstar getting more attention + arcadia having the whole mad max type area and numeria I could see them having some more steam punk areas of the world if not a full setting change. So if you are interested in that sort of thing or in that area you could hav it but keep it uncommon/rare so for GM's that don't want to deal with it they have a good lever to ignore it.

I could see Golarion going on the same route as JRPGs and "having a technologically-advanced people being discovered" :p

Even then, we have Automatons... They can get bigger XD

Keep in mind that this is from the PLAYTEST FAQ, so starship combat may not be in the playtest, but hopefully it is integral enough to make it in the core rulebook.

So you could get hit twice in a row by the poison if you got poisoned by a monster as a reactive strike on your turn, then again when your turn ends?

I think it's reasonable to assume there was at least one large portrait of an adult Lowls somewhere in Iris Hill. Or someone in Thrushmoor could have described him.
But I think you may be right in that the book may not have explicitly had any depictions.

I know Starship combat isn't in the playtest, but will it be in the Core rulebook whenever that comes out?

I always thought that getting a subscription PDF prior to the street date was something that usually happened but not a guarantee nor an official benefit from Paizo.

But I just filled out the AP survey they sent out, and one of the questions was:

"How important are the benefits for Adventure Path subscriptions to you?"

And one of the options for me to rank was:

"Free PDF before street date"

Which made me wonder if they changed their policy or was the survey option not to be taken as a literal benefit?