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As I've said on the forums before, I'm not switching to 2e because I have enough APs and other Pathfinder adventures to DM into my early 90s. We were late to Pathfinder (stayed on 3.5 for something like 17 years), so all the 1e APs are still popular with my group.
I am an early riser (04:30 am) so on game nights, which run 7:30 - 10:30 pm, I am way past my bed time at end of game. So my transition is to proceed directly to bed. :-)
Does WotR allow Downtime? Not the way our DM is running it, but we've got 5 players and a cohort so he's amping up the encounters and generally working hard to keep things challenging. Our party has had zero time to craft anything and we're almost to the end of the second book.
My 8th level halfling ranger has the manyshot and rapid shot feats, which means during a full round action I can fire 4 arrows, or 5 if hasted. 5 arrows per round means I go through 20 arrows in just 4 rounds. In WotR, we just fought a battle with multiple demons and multiple summoned demons, which took us 4 game sessions (3 hours each) to resolve. At the end, I had remaining 3 cold iron arrows (started with 60), 10 bludgeoning arrows (started with 20), and 3 normal arrows (started with 30). If combat had lasted 3 rounds longer, I would have been out. I actually would have been out during that combat, but a demon used telekinesis to (just barely) succeed in wrenching my bow out of my hand a few times, so I had to spend time retrieving it, so not all of my rounds were a full-round attack.
X 1000 :-)
I get it since people usually can't play ap every single week and sometimes they have monthly schedules or such(aps take about 40-60 sessions depending on several factors), but I'm confused when some people apparently take multiple years to complete weekly ap campaign. Like does lot of time go to combat, do parties roleplay every single scene in extreme detail, out of character chatter and planning, homebrew scenes, etc? In my experience even when players roleplay a lot, aps take about a year. Maybe we're just slow with combat, but our combats sometimes take weeks to finish. We're in book two of WotR right now, and we're in our fourth game session of a single combat (granted, with bad guy reinforcements coming at us in waves). We play about 50 times per year but our sessions are only 3 hours in length...maybe that is the difference. Not sure how long everyone else plays for.
I'm amazed at people finishing an AP in 10-15 months. I've been running Jade Regent since 2012. Castle Whiterock (I know, not a Pathfinder AP) took us the longest of any campaign, from 2007 to 2012. Otherwise, we're about 2 years per campaign but we do play about 50 times per year.
We're trying to wrap up Book 2 of Wrath of the Righteous by December (I'm a player), then we're going to finish Rappan Athuk aka tpk (I'm DM), then we'll start Curse of the Crimson Throne (I'm DM). After 1-2 books of CotCT we'll start alternating WotR and CotCT book by book. Or at least that is the current plan.
For finding an on-line group, one option is the FantasyGrounds (virtual tabletop) discord and/or web forums, as their discord has a channel for people looking to play as well as a PF1-specific channel. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/ (Scroll to the bottom for links to find games, join discord, etc).
We are currently doing Wrath of the Righteous, and we don't have a rogue. No one wanted to play one. So I (the halfling ranger) have been taking points in disable device, but of course that doesn't help with magical traps. What our DM did was decide to add a feature to Trapspringer’s Gloves that permits the wearer to detect/disable magical traps. It still means I have to devote a lot of skill points in order to be effective, but it essentially got our group around the need for a rogue (I just hit 8th level and just found a pair of these gloves, so it isn't like I've had this ability since level 1). Also from what he's told us, WotR isn't a magical trap heavy AP (but there must be some or he wouldn't have given us a way around not having a rogue). :-)
I think about this every time I go on a hike. What I'd give for cantrips that 1) Keep the insects away; 2) Filter UV light so I don't burn; 3) Maintain a comfy 68 degrees and low humidity for my person; 4) shield me from the rain. And around the house, something that would pull all the weeds out of my flowerbeds, water everything automatically, repel bad insects animals that eat my plants, etc.
First, we've been playing remotely since 2001, when I moved from Virginia to NYC (I'm the DM most of the time). We first used NetMeeting with a low-res camera pointed at an actual map and miniatures, then ScreenMonkey, and then settled on FantasyGrounds. We used Skype for voice for a while, but now we're using Discord. We've just started using Kanka to track all the campaign stuff, but we're in early days there. Also, we are a group of 6 - 1 DM and 5 players. We pick a "standard" game night that seems to (mostly) work for everyone, and I send out Google calendar invites that run through eternity for that night (we play 7:30 PM - 10:30 PM east coast time, where all but one of our players lives [we have one in Texas]). Then, at the end of each game, we review the next ~4 weeks to see if we need to move any particular game (I and my players are all in our 40s and 50s with kids, work, significant others, etc. and things come up). If someone has a conflict then we look for a different day that week where everyone can play and we'll move that week's game to a different night. (I'll change it in my Google calendar and revised invites go out to everyone). Our "rule" is that as long as we're going to only be 1 player down, we'll play with someone taking over that character for the game. If we're going to be 2 players down then we don't play. If, however, there is some significant role playing or combat where that specific person is key, then we'll skip (or pick a day that person can play, even if it means someone else can't attend). But generally, we try to minimize playing a player down if at all possible. Coordination during the week, for example if plans abruptly change and someone cannot make game night, is done over Discord. That is where we handle things that can be done between games as well, in order to maximize the 3 hours per week that we have together. This system works well for us, and we end up playing 45+ weeks per year, with most cancelations due to multiple people being on vacation simultaneously or holidays.
We are on hiatus until I transfer the game from actual table to Foundry VTT. We have missed soooo many game sessions that could have been if we had VTT instead, so I am taking the dive. We're now 21 years playing remotely. Although almost all of us were in one place in the 90s, we're now in TX, NJ, NoVA, VA, and Toronto.
We already had the cost of switching from 1ED&D to 2E, 3.0 and 3.5, plus the switch to PF1...(and the dabble into 4.0 and 5e) and quite frankly we're tired of the extra cost, so we're very happy for now and have no intention of spending that kind of money again. Exactly! But add Basic/Expert in front of 1e. :-)
For me, honestly, as we just switched from almost 20 years of 3.0/3.5 to Pathfinder ~5 years ago, and as it take us (playing pretty much once per week) about 2-3 calendar years to get through an entire AP, and the fact that I have 11 un-played APs on my shelves (plus another 3 or 4 in Fantasy Grounds), plus all the Dungeon magazines I own, I'm looking at a minimum of 40 years of material I already own...enough to last me into my mid-90s. And that is just for games I DM...I also swap out with another player the DM duties so I can play every few years. At this point, I've pretty much bought all the Pathfinder v1 material I'm going to buy. I just don't need any more. Maybe if I'd been playing v1 since it came out, and had already burned through all the v1 stuff I'd be looking for more material to stay with v1. But that just isn't my situation. Maybe I'm in the minority, but maybe not.
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Castles_of_the_Inner_Sea And also Curse of the Crimson Throne.
I don't know how people get through adventure paths so fast, do people not add entire sidequests and adventures tailored to their PCs throughout the AP? That tracks...we play weekly but only for 3 hours, and we get through an AP in 2-3 years.
We actually started a campaign in 3.5 and then switched to Pathfinder part-way through. That made things a little complicated because of already having characters built to 3.5, but we were able to make it work pretty easily. We had to do this because I was taking the party through a series of Adventure-A-Week modules, and after the first few (available in both 3.5 and Pathfinder for FantasyGrounds [we've been virtual since 2001]) they were suddenly only available for Pathfinder...so we decided to go ahead and make the switch.
And I also would talk to the players and let them know that when they agree to play a pre-written adventure, that they may have to sacrifice total freedom of their PCs in order to keep the story basically on track. If NPCs are giving them story hooks, they shouldn't fight against it. This. Exactly this. When we started Rappan Athuk one of the players joked, "What happens if we just don't decide to explore the dungeon?" MY answer was, "We decided as a group to play Rappan Athuk so you're going in that dungeon." When you've all agreed to play an AP, the players have to give up 100% total player agency.
Because we switched from 3.5 to Pathfinder just a few years ago, we are new to all the adventure paths. We were doing a campaign I cobbled together from Adventure a Week when we transitioned to Pathfinder, and when that wrapped up we started Rappan Athuk. But one of the players is taking us through Wrath of the Righteous right now to provide me a chance to play (and a break from Rappan Athuk), and after a brief return to Rappan Athuk to finish up this December, I'm going to take the group through Curse of the Crimson Throne next. But I've got enough APs to last years and years, and as long as they are available under Fantasy Grounds to minimize my prep time, we'll keep working our way through them. We have zero plans to switch to Pathfinder 2.0...after all, we were on 3.5 for something like 17 years.
Hummmmmm...I downloaded the latest beta (or pre-release or whatever they call it) months ago for the PC and had no issues. It has probably been a year or more since I downloaded the current release. Not sure why it isn't working for you.
Hummmmmm...I downloaded the latest beta (or pre-release or whatever they call it) months ago for the PC and had no issues. It has probably been a year or more since I downloaded the current release. Not sure why it isn't working for you.
I use PCGen, which is free.
I made this sort of thing work once, and not work once. The time it worked (3.5e), the character's backstory was that he was a 20th level wizard who was part of a group of wizards of all alignments (the Circle of Magi). The evil wizards framed him for the murder of one of the wizards, magically stripped him of his powers, and turned him out into the wild as an old man (~60 years old). The character took all the age penalties and started over as a 1st level wizard, collected a group of adventures, and spent the campaign slowly (and secretly) building up power and influence so he could confront his accusers at the very end of the campaign in an epic battle that resulted in his death, along with the deaths of the conspirators. It was a cool concept that provided a story arc for the entire campaign. The time it didn't work one of my players wanted a character who for some backstory demigod-like reason stole a piece of the soul of every thing he killed, giving him access to some of their memories and the ability to speak with their voice. This was literally decades ago (2e), and I let him go forward with these abilities, but I was never able to really make it work in game as it really didn't fit well into the campaign (IIRC I was combining Against the Slave Lords and Against the Giants). Eventually he just dropped those abilities from the character and we just ignored that part of his backstory.
I have looked around (maybe in the wrong places) but cannot find a definitive answer to this question: Are All Undead Touch Attacks Negative Energy? The Wraith, for example, states Melee incorporeal touch +6 (1d6 negative energy plus 1d6 Con drain), which seems to indicate that the touch caused 1d6 negative energy damage, but leads to this question: Is the 1d6 Con drain also considered a negative energy attack? And what about an Allip, which has Melee incorporeal touch +4 (1d4 Wisdom damage). Is that touch that causes Wisdom damage a negative energy attack? This came up in our game last night when two characters with Death Ward, which makes the subject immune to energy drain and any negative energy effects. Essentially, they slaughtered a large group of Advanced Allips because the Allips were completely ineffective due to Death Ward (and high wisdom saves from the party members). I just want to make sure I followed RAW/RAI. There is an FAQ entry explaining the difference between energy drain and death effects (two separate things), and energy drain and ability damage are clearly two different things as well. So it seems to me, that if the touch of an undead is always negative energy then Death Ward protects you from that touch causing ability damage. But if the ability damage is a different type of damage and not negative energy, then Death Ward doesn't protect you. But I cannot find the basic answer to: Are All Undead Touch Attacks that result in ability damage a Negative Energy attack?
Not that anyone probably does this in an actual game, but red light would have an advantage in that deep red lights do not trigger the neutralization of rhodopsin, allowing night vision to continue. So if your (red) light spell gets neutralized (or expires), as long as there is some dim light the party wouldn't be temporarily blinded as their night vision would be intact. Otherwise, the party could experience several rounds of blindness if their (non-Red) light is suddenly extinguished (think of turning off the bathroom light in the middle of the night and then trying to get back to bed).
Arcane Eye is a spell my group uses all the time to scout ahead.
We have 2 Pathfinder v1 campaigns currently underway. I'm DMing Rappan Athuk, and we are about to hit our 100th session. This is our first pure Pathfinder campaign, as the one prior was a hybrid of 3.5/Pathfinder. RA characters are 17th level and rapidly approaching the end. We've all grown a bit tired of that campaign, so we're skipping lots of levels / side-quests and focused on the levels that are needed to get to the end. The same group is also playing Wrath of the Righteous, but I'm playing and one of the Rappan Athuk players is DM. We're at 4th level, having just finished "book 1" of the AP. We took a break from Rappan Athuk back in November 2020 to start WotR and then picked back up with Rappan Athuk in May 2021. Haven't decided how far we'll go in RA before switching back to WotR. Once RA is over, I'm planning to DM Curse of the Crimson Throne. We'll probably rotate between WotR and CofCT every 6 months or so. We play over Fantasygrounds, with Discord for voice and out-of-game communication. We've been playing virtually essentially since the start of 2002, which is shortly after I moved away from the group. Now only 2 of us remain from that original group, and the current players are more spread out geographically (New Jersey, Virginia, Texas, and Ontario) so we'll be virtual forever.
Not sure I an add anything new, but as we're 5 players (plus me, the current DM) in our 40s and 50s we are pretty organized about blocking the same night weekly for game time and reporting to the group weeks in advance if a conflict has come up or is likely to come up. When that happens we collectively look at the calendar and either pick a new night that week when everyone is available, cancel (if 2 or more can't make it), or we press on with the remaining folks (or the DM) running the character(s) of the missing player. Other times we'll hold what we call an "administrative session" to catch up on selling items or other things we've put off that don't require the full group, or work with setting up some complex effects in FantasyGrounds that have been giving us problems in combat. It is extremely rare that a player just doesn't show up without some form of notice, and pretty rare that we have a last minute "I can no longer make it" from anyone. When that has happened, we've usually known in advance that it was an iffy game, due to trying to play on a national holiday (or similar) for example.
It seems the last couple of weeks have been very dead on this site. Here in the US, we've started vacation season. I know we play every week pretty regularly, but we've had to skip 2 weeks in the past month due to players being away on vacation. That situation may be why the forums have been a bit quieter over the past few weeks.
I think the forums slowed down a lot, because lots of games slowed down with the birth of Corona. For some of us, COVID had zero impact because we haven't played in person in years (in my case, not for decades). We've been virtual (with a variety of tools) since 2001. :-)
I suspect it's less that 2E killed it, and more that most questions have been answered and much advice given, so there's a bit less to talk about. Obviously there are no new Paizo 1e products and no 1e APs, so that's reduced it. As someone who moved from 3.5 to Pathfinder only in the past few years, this statement seems very likely. All of it is pretty new to me, so I see posts all the time where I'm interested in the discussion and then see that the original post was from 2012 or some other way back time. But my question is already answered in the discussion so there is no need for me to pile on. Another example...I'm going to run my players through Curse of the Crimson Throne once we wrap up Rappan Athuk, and I've been reading the AP material here. But I haven't posted anything because most questions are asked and already answered.
It's not logic. It's how pathfinder writes the rules. You asked the question, 3 out of 4 responses say RAW mean no penalty.
Shooting is a ranged attach, not a melee attack. Even if you are right next to a target, you are making a ranged attack, not a melee attack. Therefore, if there are no other friendlies engaged with the enemy you are next to and shooting at, there is no -4 penalty because there are no friendlies engaged in melee with the target.
For me, it is a time thing. I used to knit together a series of adventure from Dungeon, writing some filler or side quests to tie everything together into a story arc, But these days between kids, house maintenance, work, boat maintenance, and life in general (and playing virtually) I just don’t have the time. If I couldn’t get ready-to-play APs for FantasyGrounds I might not be playing at all.
(Started this post but fumbled on the keyboard and I think I erased it). I started with Basic in 1980 or so, and gradually moved on until 2003 when we went to 3.5. We stayed in Forgotten Realms/3.5 until around 2017, when we were on an Adventure-a-Week "adventure path" and suddenly the modules were only available for Pathfinder on FantasyGrounds (we've been playing virtually since 2001). So we did a bit of a hybrid until 2018 when we went full-pathfinder. I thought for a while about trying to use the Forgotten Realms setting with Pathfinder (we'd been on FR since 1990), but we were trying to minimize DM prep time in FantasyGrounds by buying ready-made APs. So starting late last year when we started Wrath of the Righteous we went full-Pathfinder, including the Pathfinder setting. Because we were on 3.5 for SO many years, and because we'd just started using Pathfinder 1 when 2 was announced, we're not moving to Pathfinder 2 anytime soon (if ever). I believe I have enough 1.0 material to run campaigns until...well, until the end. ;-)
Back in 3.5, before we started using all the features of FantasyGrounds to handle all the math and we were just rolling dice and manually adding modifiers, I used to have a rule for attack rolls that a "1" was not an automatic miss, but was rather a "-10". And a "20" was not an automatic hit, but was rather a "30". Then modifiers were applied. To me, a 1 in 20 chance for a peasant with a hoe to damage a dragon is nonsense. Same with a 1 in 20 chance for a 20th level, highly trained fighter to miss hitting a peasant. But I never put the time in to see if FantasyGrounds could be modded to use those rules.
Personally I think trying to read paladin codes as pure black & white is what leads to the ludicrous and ridiculous ideas such as killing innocent people is somehow justified for a lawful good character. Someone one said, "There are Paladins who are somewhat flexible, and there are dead Paladins." Or something very similar. :-)
As someone who grew up in a rural area and did a lot of camping as a kid, I find this hilarious! Although for you, at the time, I can see where it would not be.
I was gonna be snarky, but yeah, you need the table's buy in or risk hard feelings. I confess, I'm a little surprised at the reaction to my story. Maybe it is because at that point the players had all known each other for 10+ years, or maybe it was the trust they had in me as a DM not to railroad their characters, or maybe the twist was too good for them to be mad, or for whatever reason while their characters were mad at that character, the players were not mad at that player (or at me!). And again, nothing was done to the other characters apart from losing a portion of the treasure that, if the alignment had never been discovered, would have gone to that character regardless as his fair portion of the party treasure. Everything past that point was just another NPC working against the party, albeit one with more details on the party members than a typical antagonist.
In games I've played, familiars who are common for the climate / location don't usually attract negative attention / attacks from the bad guys. An owl scouting ahead outside, a rat scouting inside a dungeon, a cat scouting inside a barn...these are unlikely to get attacked/killed. It can get a little trickier if the Owl is in the dungeon, the rat is in someone's home, the cat is in a temple. Even in those cases, I don't think they would automatically result in an attack...it might depend on the intelligence of what spots them. A wizard in a dungeon might see an owl and think "familiar / animal companion" and attack, but I'm not sure the average Orc / Goblin / etc. would...they might be confused but that confusion wouldn't necessarily lead to an immediate attack. In summary, at low levels, (pre-Invisibility), the party is likely to be facing low-level and/or low-intelligence enemies that wouldn't necessarily see all familiars as an immediate threat.
I am going to disagree slightly with ShroudedInLight, in that if the GM and the player handle it well I'm not sure you need to coordinate with the rest of the players. Here is a typically really long example from me: I had a player once who was joining a party/campaign in progress and asked me (as GM) if he could play Lawful Evil. We had a discussion around if that would mean doing anything negative / traitorous to the party, which I was firmly against. As the character's intro to the group was going to involve them rescuing him, he said he'd play the Lawful component strongly - he'd be in their debt, he'd agree to work with them, and therefore he'd not have any reason to work against the group. So I permitted it. At some point, one of the party members got suspicious due to some of his comments (like what to do with captured prisoners) and without permission or discussion cast detect alignment on him, which was noticed. So the evil character pulled the mage aside and essentially told him to mind his own business and not say anything to anyone else in the party. Of course, the mage told a couple of party members. To make a long story even longer, the evil character decided this violated the oral contract the party made with him, and while on watch one night he stole what he felt was his fair portion of the current party treasure and abandoned the group (and to his credit, it was a fair portion of the treasure). The other players were pissed at the character (but not the player or me...they thought it was an interesting and unexpected twist). The player had to leave the group at this point (returned to university for the fall), so I had his evil character join the bad guys working against the party. As an NPC he made for a terrific re-occurring foil to the group, and in the end he was defeated in the final, difficult battle. In summary, after the initial shock of the "reveal" that he was evil, the group had a fantastic reaction to trying to beat him throughout the rest of the campaign and it made the final battle even more cool for them. If we'd pre-cleared this with the players, I don't think it would have had the same effect, nor would have been such a cool reveal.
Kere - Is this the same guy you discussed in a thread back in October last year? Or is this a different person? I ask because there seems to be some commonalities between those two but there also seem to be differences in what you are describing.
tl;dr - As others have recommended, I'm doing away with XP and the party is going to level-up as a group when they reach certain points in the campaign. As a hold-over from 3.5, I used to do all sorts of XP awards...you got bonus points for attendance, for keeping a journal, for coming up with a unique idea that benefited the party, etc. It was a huge pain, because while some items were objective (attendance) other were subjective (was that idea truly unique?). And as others pointed out, even objective measures could be unfair (someone missed a game because they were on-call, or an EMT, or caring for a sick relative vs. just not feeling it that day). As a result, the more involved/active players were always a level (or sometimes 2) higher than the rest of the party. I also had a rule where if a new member joined they were a level behind the lowest member of the party, to discourage suicidal actions if someone just wanted to make a new character (by intentionally killing off the old...a story for another time). ANYWAY, it seemed to create some strong feelings on both sides...the hyper-involved wanted to know why they didn't have MORE bonus XP, the low-involved got mad they were falling behind, and the middle group kept wanting to argue over how much their actions helped the party to get those subjective points. I'm running Curse of the Crimson Throne next, and I've decided I'm doing away with XP. The whole party will just level up at the points in the AP when they are supposed to be at a certain level. I'm going to use hero points or some other method (still to be fleshed out) to reward party members, and I am going to keep it as objective and fair as possible.
In one of my games decades ago (2e) the rogue was at the back of the party and while they were occupied with a small battle he snuck down a hallway they had not explored yet, found a secret door, and without telling anyone snuck inside and closed it with the goal of keeping any treasure he found for himself (essentially stealing from the party). He picked THE WORST room to enter alone. It had continuous darkness and continuous silence on it and a specter "living" there. The rogue was killed and the party characters never knew what happened to him as they never found that door. The group found it hilarious.
One way to "fix" this perceived problem is to apply the same rule that affects Dimension Door: "After using this spell, you can’t take any other actions until your next turn." So they can pop into the middle of a party, but the party has a chance to react (e.g. readied actions go off) before the baddie can act. That lets them keep their "get out of jail free" card, but makes popping into the middle of an adventuring party a bit more risky.
The author is very responsive if you email him directly through the email address on the generator web page.
We've been playing virtually since 2001 when I moved out of Virginia (without video...just a VTT and audio). It is easier to get distracted when you are just in front of a computer, waiting for your initiative to come up (for example). It is frustrating to get to a player and have them either want to do something that was already tried and failed, want to do something that was possible when they took their last action but is no longer possible, or ask the same question that the previous player just asked and had answered. Essentially, not paying attention is a faux pas...and it is super-easy when playing virtually to not pay attention. Harder when everyone is looking at you.
tl;dr - make sure everyone knows the level of "in character" speaking AND acting that is going to happen. I've played with groups that do a minimum amount of speaking "in character" and with groups on the other end of the spectrum. For my main group it remains a challenge to get people to say, "What is the current threat to the town?" instead of, "Meelos asks the mayor what the current threat is to the town." And so I'm used to that style, where maybe 25% is really spoken in character and 75% is saying what the character is doing. (Not saying it is wrong or right, just that it is the mix I am used to). I was in one group, however, that was pretty much the other mix. And the first time one of the players seemed to get visibly angry and started to shake and raise his voice at something my character did, I had to say, "Whoa, whoa! Are you pissed at me or at Relaton?!?". Knowing up front what the mix was going to be and that this group threw in some acting would have prevented a very awkward moment early in that campaign.
Dude, I'm over 50. I use books, PDFs of books, and Internet. We old-timers like to keep our options open. ;-) Technically, Gen-X. ;-)
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