HedonisticAspie's page

Remember, in Skyrim the Dragonborn is caught in the beginning of the story and being carted away to be beheaded. Only a dragon's intervention saves the player character from death.

Sometimes stuff is just happening to set the stage and tone of a campaign.

Note that this cutscene sets up the entire adventure and is very clearly a session 0/first few sessions equivalent where it's all story setup for the campaign.

There is a big difference between 'hey, this is early story-establishing stuff, so you can't really engage with it that much' and 'we are multiple sessions in and I don't want you to win what is clearly a combat encounter because I have a story in mind and that requires you to lose here'.

Again, I encourage you to be more flexible and adjust your story a bit more to give more agency to your players in this specific outcome and build something from here rather than to just toss the encounter in the trash and force the outcome as originally planned, even if it comes with an apology.

One of the amazing advantages TTRPGs have as a story-telling medium is being able to work with your players to weave a narrative together. This isn't a movie where the characters aren't real people and the narrative is set, and this isn't a video game where player actions can be limited in impact on the story without issue based on genre.

As a GM, you magic powers are being able to change the ebb and flow of encounters and story on the fly based on what it seems would be dope to do at the time. Sometimes that is making an encounter winnable that wasn't planned to be that way and making adjustments based on if they win, and sometimes it's making every encounter in an area incredibly difficult to show how dangerous an area is or how underprepared the party currently is.

I believe this is easily salvageable to turn it into something the players could end up thinking is great instead of just just enforcing the same fate on them and hoping they all take it gracefully the entire way through.

It seems you've already come to a decision before I could respond to this, but I'll throw this out here anyway just because I feel called to do so.

I'm not sure if you are running something prebuilt or if this is all homebrew, but if this is homebrew than allow me to give you some advice.

I don't consider myself an expert on GMing or TTRPG even though it's literally been my job, but every since I started doing it in 2016/2017 and since it's been my job since 2023/2024, I've learned a lot about player agency specifically...and not via railroading, but rather by changing things on the fly to go in a different direction than I had planned, or by going in with less concrete plans to begin with and letting players fill in the gaps.

What has happened is that you wanted a guaranteed outcome within you control, but then you gave too much control to you players by underestimating the all-powerful will of players. The problem with continuing on the path of 'the players lose regardless' is the amount of investment put into this battle.

See, if your party is anything like most others, even though it's been a slog they may be rooting for them to win, and regardless the player still fighting DEFINITELY is trying to win that battle...else they would have given up a while ago.

So here is what happens if you continue with the route of 'you weren't supposed to win' or as I like to call it the 'win in gameplay, lose anyway in cutscene' trope video games often do: best case scenario is you admit you could have handled it better by not giving them agency in the fight at all and making it a complete loss from the start, and that they are all chill with it, but then they now recognize you may take agency away from them again in the future.

It can be a lot worse than that, especially for the one player who is still fighting to win, and nothing hurts worse than when you players start to feel like nothing matters because their actions have no impact.

My advice is actually the opposite of some of the advice here: I agree with those who say you should slug it out with the final standing player, and I also agree with trying to play with them alone to resolve the combat ahead of normal session time.

My actual advice is for you to try and be a bit more narratively flexible if you can: with this scenario for example, what if that player manages to actually win the fight? Or...what if their mighty display of vigor makes the last of the enemies run away in fear, reporting to those above them a vague description of the PC but in a more monstrous and fearsome way, which will cause their next encounter to maybe be more dangerous but with more opportunities for them to prepare beforehand. Or...maybe the PC earns the respect of his enemies, which leads to fun encounters later where those enemies also recognize him and are afraid to fight him, which starts to build a minor legacy for the character?

Just because your initial plan was 'party gets ganked and loses to further the plot' doesn't mean the *current* plan needs to be 'party gets ganked and loses to further the plot', and you can potentially reward your players even though they weren't supposed to win initially as a way to both make up for the hiccup as well as to reward the dedication of the particular player.

Every GM has a different style, but one I've learned that works for me is making a world that has multiple events currently happening that I think are cool and I'm personally interested in...and then after doing a 'the party gets together and fights some stuff as a team for the first time' introduction, I let them explore wherever they want to go, knowing they will bump into something cool to do or that I can come up with something on the fly if needed the incorporates what they are currently doing or talking about.

What do you mean by “manipulate gold”?

Is it like a Metal Kineticist using Base/Extended Kinesis?

Depends on how you want to manipulate it and whether you want to manipulate a gold-looking substance or gold itself. Since gold's tied to wealth which is directly tied to PC power, the game doesn't toy around with gold so much. Downtime's primary emphasis is its effect on one's wealth, as measured in gold. As in, you won't be able to manipulate gold in any way that makes your PC wealthier than a PC who doesn't (with all else being equal).

There's Needle Darts where gold works fine as its metal, but most of the spells which create or alter metal exclude precious metals. But if you just want the semblance of gold, I think most GMs would let your metallic spells be golden. I'd go so far as to reflavor most any solid creation as gold-like, but not in any sense that would trick people (which is another common thing w/ created objects in PF2, people can tell they're worthless so PCs can't gain wealth that way).

If I were to build a gold-manipulator I'd go with a Metal Kineticist. It has abilities that let you manipulate and shape gold itself (and other metals of course) and maybe your GM will let your metallic creations look like gold (though again, not in any sense that increases wealth or tricks onlookers).

I'm making a dwarf that has gold jewelry in his beard and I want him to be able to have it become malleable and morph it into other shapes, perhaps even has weapons should he have enough gold on him to make something of the proper size. I'm fine if it isn't considered to be done with magic or spells since we can flavor things how we want, so Kineticist might be the right starting grounds but I'll still take other suggestions. Not sure what is means for me to have a gold plate, are we talking about armor with gold plating? Sorry, my brain defaulted to Pokémon with Arceus Held Items like Kineticists needed a Plate item like some other classes have items unique to them.

Currency isn't an issue: this is a homebrew world much heavier on trade than on a global currency with a dwarven culture that can easily obtain things crafted of gold.

I was trying to find an archetype or maybe some feats that would represent magic that allows you to manipulate gold, but so far I haven't found anything other than magic weapons that I guess make their own ammunition out of gold.

It's fine if I can find something that focuses on manipulating any type of metal as I can just change the flavor to be gold. It's also fine with there is no archetype or list of feats and I just have to find the spells, just so long as they exist for me to find.

It seems I've made some things messy unintentionally.

This race is Lizardfolk and is using their racial traits and stats, but in-world they are such a low intelligence that the other races can't really communicate with them, but are clearly intelligent enough to be a sentient species with their own society and communication.

Also this character is a GMPC, of which there are a few that I have but they aren't all always active with the party.

The setting is a magic academy in a world where even the naturally magical races find those who can cast spells to be rare, so said academy finds thsee people and provides them all the basics they need to survive as well as attempting to train them in their magic and other skills that can compliment them in exchange for them being sent out on quests by the academy as they come in. It's much like the typical guild hall in anime, but instead of just hosting quests and giving the rewards for completing them, you actually live there and are trained to handle various quests you are suited for.

Because of this, the party might be sent places with other mages, and for the world to be more realistic I have been working on making said mages. Current example is that they have a 'Squad Teacher' who is bringing them into field practice and with the four players there are 3 GMPC mages who have moved on from the very basic teachings with them while some others aren't ready to move on yet. After some time spent together, they won't always be with said 3 GMPC mages (or they might die/leave the academy/etc) but may only journey as the 4 of them or may go out with a larger crew.

I wanted those mages to be accurate to the level I'm implying them to be, and I figured actually making them as a PC would be the best way to do that.

I do appreciate the advice to not really worry about doing that, and I don't plan on ALL of my GMPCs to be built this way, but I do feel the need to do a couple this way so that they are of the proper power level.

I appreciate the suggestions so far, and doing my research it seems like I may want to use the Captivator archetype or a caster class that doesn't rely on intelligence as the character is from a race known for being barely above monster intelligence.

Making him some sort of martial class with Captivator and Performance-related feats would fit since the race is more known for being hunter-types.

If I were to pick a class tied to illusion spells that didn't require a familiar or Int, what would be the best choice?

For the record, I am the DM in this scenario, but I would like to try and build this character legitimately rather than just DM handwaving away in case my players end up liking the idea.

So I'm looking through spells and archetypes trying to build essentially a mage built are causing distractions and the various debuffs that could evoke, but not only am I coming up short in my search but currently having no glasses means I'm surely missing something.

The only limitation is that I don't want them to be based on having a familiar, outside of that I'm done fore anything, where do you all think I should start?