Hythlodeus's page

Sadly, it is painfully obvious that the main design goal of PF2 was to make it as hard as humanly possible to convert it back into a system that's actually fun to play. Yes you can swap out monsters with their PF counterparts, but that's about it. Wealth by level is vastly different, magic items and magic in general works vastly different, spells affect differently, feats are comparable in name only...
The best way to go about it: take the monsters and start from scratch with the rest.

I played the Sczarni and Jubrayl as follows: We know Jubrayl has his hands in multiple criminal endeavors, some of them not very subtle, and we know that Belor knows or at least very strongly suspects Jubrayl to be the leader of the Sczarni and the head of a vast criminal organization, but...he lacks prove. All that is established in the book itself and that leads to two options:
Either Jubrayl is very smart or Hemlock is incredibly incompetent. Since I dislike the trope of incompetent watchmen who just need the help of heroes to save the day and I needed my group to trust Hemlock insofar that they would be willing to share information with him, I chose option 1.
And then I took a deep dive into criminal organizations, their histories, their reasons for existence and how organizations like the Sczarni were able to operate for as long as the have.
And the conclusion I came to: The Sczarni see themselves not as a criminal organization per se. Their endeavors are merely a means to an end, or at least that's what they tell themselves. See, ever since the Chelaxian brought "civilization" to Varisia, the Varisians, not unlike the Shoanti, are sometimes treated as a second class people. Or opressed, as Jubrayl would put it. Someone has to look after the Varisians in Sandpoint. The ruling families in the town are from Chelish descent (with the one obvious exception), the sheriff is Shoanti. So no one in power in Sanpoint is Varisian and therefore has no incentive to look after other Varisians.
But the Sczarni are, the Sczarni do. Jubrayl sees himself not as a leader of a crime syndicate, but as a leader of his people. Not as the head of the Scarni, but the one who watches after the Varisians in Sandpoint. That's his narrative and reasoning.
If you play him charming enough with that reasoning and smart enough to use that as an advantage and to know when to use it...it doesn't matter if your fighter is "good", because so is Jubrayl from his own point of view. Jubrayl is the hero of his story (as all good antagonists should be, to be fair).
Use that as a starting point. The Pixie's Kitten takes money from hard working dock workers for dubious services and sends it to the Calistriae temple in Riddlepoint instead of reinvesting it locally. The Sczarni aren't just extorting the brothel. (They totally are) They just want a reasonable share to reinvest it in the community.

taking the latin word for octopus

that would be 'octopus'

haven't done any work yet, but would certainly appreciate it if someone beats me to it. while I plan to convert most of the APs Paizo has done so far in PF2 back to a good edition, I simply lack the time right now to do anything hobby-related

count me in as someone who'd love to see a sequel to Second Darkness, which to this day is still the most underrated AP Paizo put out. There's so much great stuff in there, even though the AP as a whole needs a lot of work, obviously.

But, sincerly, if you do a sequel to a PF1/3.5 AP, please include an option to actually play this AP in PF1 for all of us not interested in PF2. It's simply too much work to convert the PF2 APs back into a system that's actually fun to play.

glass wrote:

Hythlodeus wrote:

One thing my group was interested about was destroying the artefacts they got from looting Karzoug, so finding out what Jandelay is, how to get there and geting the Oliphaunt to destroy the items is a good start if you want to prepare stuff for after the AP.

Thanks Hythlodeus. Has the Oliphaunt ever been statted anywhere?

EDIT: Nevermind, it is on Archives of Nethys. I thought I'd already checked, but seemingly not.

_
glass.

If you go that route, you might want to include the Spindlehorn https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Spindlehorn at the shores of storval deep as a point of research or even as a gateway to the Maelstrom. And if your party hasn't defeated the Black Magga but only drove her away to return another day, that's a good place for an encounter with a now stronger version of her, that should give 18th level characters a good fight

sooooo, long story short, finally the time has come for me to prepare the RotRL epilogue. plotwise it's 'Go to Spindlehorn, find a way there to enter Jandelay and then get the Oliphaunt to destroy Karzoug's glaive', pretty simple stuff but it should be a one shot before my CotCT GM can breathe new live into her campaign after 1 1/2 years of the epidemic induced pause to our adventuring sessions.

And while the plot is simple, Spindlehorn is giving me troubles. Since it's the first time we can play together since before SARS-CoV 2 stopped our group playing, I wamt to come back with a bang, but I'm completely lost atm when it comes to ideas how to utilize the poem in Spindlehorn in an epic way. A riddle? If so, what's the answer? A puzzle? Great, but it has to be one that's extremely hard to solve - the characters are lvl 18, their obstacles should reflect that.
If anyone has any good ideas - I have two weeks to prepare - any help would be welcome.

Fid suitable replacement monsters for spiders if I am playing with someone arachnophobic, and similar.

Is "change the names of any characters that could easily be mistaken for the names of my players" something anyone else has had to do here?

Nope. I just had to find a rich aristocratic family in Magnimar that fit the the PC's personal background and had a history with half-elf bastards

just out of interest: how does your party react to jubrail vhisky?

as I see it, you have two options: either lean into it and transform hemlock into an antagonistic force - in which case there are plenty of npcs that could fill the void of the questgiver. and making him an obstacle that needs to be solved might turn into a chance to give some party members huge responsibilities later on, as they would have to step up and take over law enforcement in sandpoint themselves.

the other option is to have a talk with your players and simply ask them, why they feel this way about hemlock

Have to admit I'm bit confused by notion of "once game starts, it instantly goes to offrail"

Like umm... How does that happen? Are lot of players type to attack civilians or just decide randomly "I know we agreed to play rise of the runelords, but how about we just leave varisia?"

Or am I missing a joke and people are exaggerating on purpose? ^_^;

it just means, no matter how good and/or detailed your preparation is, players tend to do things you didn't expect them to do. all the preparation is meaningless if you are not able to sponanously come up with ideas.

The first step for me is reading the whole AP from start to finish to get a good grasp of what will await my players, the themes and plot. Once I'm done with that I start planning. I reread the AP book by book, making notes of NPCs, background informations, do my research on Golarion lore on the wiki if necessary and try to find out where the beats in the plot are, where my players will turn it sideways or get hooked on seemingly irrelevant details. This is the phase when I will make excessives notes that come pretty handy later on.

Once it is time for the players to come up with characters, usually about 6 months or so before we start playing I sit down with them individually and try to get as much information as they can provide about their goals with that character and about their character's background. Then I cross reference with my notes, consult the wiki again if necessary and start building story arcs with twists and turns for each character within the frame of what the AP provides. Usually I have another round of talking with my players after that, gently fine tuning backgrounds, nothing drastic, but minor details if they are okay with it.

A month or so before we start our first session I go over my notes again, try to get a feel of what's still missing, connect a couple of dots and start prepping earnestly, which means rereading the first book, focussing on combat situations and encounters this time. I look up spells or abilities if necessary and copy/paste them into a master document for encounters. This is also the time when I start photoshop and create the handouts, translated to German, the battlemaps and a newspaper template which will serve as a lifeline throughout the campaign, providing mostly useless but fun information with tidbits of relevant info that they might have missed sprinkled through it.

A day or two before each session I reread that section of the AP that is in front of us, plan and modify the encounters for the evening and look for roleplay opportunities in every NPC description.

Once the session starts, all hell breaks loose, naturally but at least I tried.

I personally like that every damn guard in the dungeon has a page long backstory and motivation to be at the exact place they are at the moment the group encounters them. As a GM I rely much on that content. It helps tying loose threads together that sometimes happen while excessive roleplaying, it helps tying NPCs to the backstories of my PCs, which came in handy a couple of times already, and it also fleshed out the world the PCs were running around. Granted, 80% of the time, my group will never learn anything of that, but for the 20%? It certainly pays off.

I really would miss that content, if they stopped doing that.

cool. but for the sake of personal useabiltiy, I'd really appreciate a video of converting 2e items into pf1e. It would really help salvaging paizo's current output to use it in a system that's actually fun to play

Hythlodeus wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

likely lose customers who will get their RPG fix from a rival company

if that would concern Paizo, they shouldn't have ended PF1 then.

...Wait, are you looking through 2e threads just to find posts you can comment about how much you like 1e more?

nah, I'm childish, but not THAT childish. I'm just saying, if losing customers to a rival company would be on their mind, a system change wouldn't have happened. It's obviously nothing they worry about that much

likely lose customers who will get their RPG fix from a rival company

if that would concern Paizo, they shouldn't have ended PF1 then.

from james l. sutter's twitter account

Evilgm wrote:

Just because a significant portion of American police are trained to murder innocent civilians doesn't automatically mean that anything with police in it is negative

This is an odd statement because the latter half does not jive with the former. I agree with the latter, but the former is a bit outrageous. No, American police are not trained to murder innocent civilians

so, they are untrained naturals?

I was thinking about this some more and realized that the amount of knowledge the players have about the plot does depend on the adventure.

For example, I played through the first 4 books (minus the last 2 or 3 rooms of the dungeon at the end of book 4) of Rise of the Runelords. We had NO IDEA what the end goal was.
A book would start, there would be a place to go and when we got there we'd learn what we were up against once we encountered the enemy, then we'd kill them and search for something that would point us to the next thing.
That was it. That was the AP as it was run for us.
It seems like it was supposed to be a mystery of sorts, but there was no foreshadowing, no clues, just a trail of crumbs to be followed without having any hints as to where it was leading us to.

And funny enough, my players began to ask the right questions halfway through book 1 and knew about Karzoug very early on. It's not the AP, but how it is presented and what the PCs do with the clues they are given

I think this is really the Gm's job to use the PC's personal backstory, and most importantly their interactions with people in the 1st book of the AP to set the stage for the rest of the AP. Recurring antagonist/allies adding tidbits of a PC's past and weaving it to the adventure storyline is the best way to integrate. Make sure you get a blurb on a PC backstory dont let them just materialize a bunch a numbers and add a name to make a PC.

Agreed. Make it personal for the PCs and the players will pay attention, since it's not just an adventure but it's about them. Diving deep into their backstories and making sure it stays relevant throughout the AP is one of the first things I do, when preparing an Adventure Path. And my players know, the more story give me to work with, the better the experience will be for them in the end. And if you have players that like to plan ahead with their characters and have various goals they want to achieve with them it usually doesn't hurt to know that before you start the campaign and plan accordingly to weave those threads into the existing narrative too.

I can't say I didn't see it coming, but I'm still bummed. Keeping everyone safe is more important, though.

Now to see if the airlines will refund my tickets...

wait...in the US airlines are still flying, the airports haven't been shut down yet?

they have gotten much better at managing it over the years

then why have gotten their APs so much worse over the last couple of years?

Rise, tbf, had the whole "tracking Sin Points" going on which was not a subgame itself, but like the caravan ruules in JR just a little bit of extra rules for the GM to look at.

And, to be honest, I naver tracked them. When the time came for the payoff, I knew the player's characters well enough to have the dungeons work appropriatley

Hythlodeus wrote:

One thing my group was interested about was destroying the artefacts they got from looting Karzoug, so finding out what Jandelay is, how to get there and geting the Oliphaunt to destroy the items is a good start if you want to prepare stuff for after the AP.

Thanks Hythlodeus. Has the Oliphaunt ever been statted anywhere?

EDIT: Nevermind, it is on Archives of Nethys. I thought I'd already checked, but seemingly not.

_
glass.

If you go that route, you might want to include the Spindlehorn https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Spindlehorn at the shores of storval deep as a point of research or even as a gateway to the Maelstrom. And if your party hasn't defeated the Black Magga but only drove her away to return another day, that's a good place for an encounter with a now stronger version of her, that should give 18th level characters a good fight

One thing my group was interested about was destroying the artefacts they got from looting Karzoug, so finding out what Jandelay is, how to get there and geting the Oliphaunt to destroy the items is a good start if you want to prepare stuff for after the AP.

Thirded that.

I seriously doubt second darkness would ever get an anniversary edition due to a certain thing thats a main plot point in it and I doubt Paizo would want to touch with a 100ft long barge poll these days.

I honestly don't think that's a huge problem. The sad fact that Paizo decided to abandon 3.x for whatever PF2 is supposed to be is probably a bigger hinderance.

any news on that front?

dotted

Dotting for later.

Since I've no interest in switching to 2E, I really feel a conversion guide would come handy sooner or later

sadly, I have to agree with the OP. The last AP that was up to the earlier standards was Strange Aeons. Every AP since then has been a little bit dissapointing. Return of the Runelords has potential and an interesting premise but it doesn't really live up to it.
I don't know what happened around the time the downward spiral began, maybe some crucial creative staff left, but yeah, undoubtly the quality is not what it once was.

Hythlodeus wrote:

But seriously, I might give the new CRB a chance if I stumble across a free copy of it

Ta-da! :D

As much as I love AoN, it's not as easy to read as a book ;p

Backgrounds are probably the one good thing in PF2, so backrounds earned by playing an AP is an awesome idea. I just hope those Backgrounds can easily be adapted into PF1 traits (and it also would be nice if you go down that path, that the old APs are not forgotten when it comes to those Backgrounds)

I get it that folks are eager to be able to play 1st edition still. If in the future the customer base decides that 1st edition Pathfinder is the better one, who can say what we might do.

^THIS might be the best thing I read on this boards for almost a year

But now is not that time.

well, PF2 is still young, I can accept that. Maybe in a month or two?

In the same way you can run a 1st edition D&D adventure in Pathfinder 1st edition. I know. I've done that a LOT. It's actually kind of fun revisiting older adventures and converting...

Yeah, I've done that too, back when I had way more time on my hands and were not forced by society to work. Maybe I'll do it again when I'm retired in a couple of decades. In the meantime, I'm happy about any short cut I get.

Please give the new rules a chance.

As I said, the Backgrounds look fun.

I'd prefer 1E conversions over D&D5E conversions.

I second that! (since PF1 is the game we're VERY invested (and proud) of, and it's the game we're going to be focusing on playing. It's the game we know, the game we love, and the game we want to spend most of our time supporting. at least when it comes to my gaming groups. other milages may vary)

So now that 1e hardcover version is definitely not happening, would you guys prefer 2e remake or no remake at all?

neither.

how easy will it be to convert it into PF1 rules?

If someone can figure out how to make a 1.5 that doesn't alienate half the target market, that would be great

It would be preferable to a 2E that alienates even more percent of the target market, I agree

Because each of those rolls is probably going to involve about 3-5 minute scenes of narration, improv, and roleplaying

yay! god forbid there's actual roleplaying in my roleplaying game

Groups from either side coming in shouting, "This is the end!" or "Give them an award for the best roleplaying game!"

I don't think anyone believes this will be the best roleplaying game ever. personally I'm just glad that at the moment the game doesn't look as bad as it looked a week ago

there's a special place in hell, as I strongly believe, for people who put anchovies on otherwise perfectly fine food.

*starting the big anchovies war of 2019*

Strangely a good portion of the people who were asking for the changes and have finally got them are silent.

Yeah, weird how after months of being bullied, they somehow decided to not longer show up

We’re attempting bold strides in this new edition of the game, but it’s far from finalized. This is where you come in—this book is only a playtest of the final version of the game, which we’ll release in August 2019. Over the next few months, we hope you’ll help us refine the game to make it even better.

refine /rɪˈfʌɪn/ verb make minor changes so as to improve or clarify

if what they were trying to say was "well, major stuff can change of course!", REFINE was a very poor choice of words.

that said, I'm glad major changes happened. Now all I have to do is get that good news that the playtest wasn't at all was the final product will be to my group somehow, so that we might give PF2 another chance

When I run games, every round (every. single. round.) the players do this, "Does a 17 hit?"

And another player spouts off, "Is that including your +2 for flanking?"
"No... does a 19 hit?"
"Did you include your +1 for bardic performance?"
It slows combat to a crawl.
I'd rather just have the GM track it.

How is

"Does a 17 hit?"
"No!"
"Even though the monster is flanked?"
"Ah, you're right, let's see...still, no."
"Did you account for the bardic performance?"

in any way faster?

It is very easy to not allow races into your setting. It is very difficult to create a race that a player wants if it's misisng.

Aside from the core races, all other races are only options at the GM's discretion. If you don't want that many, don't use them.

And even those that are core races, depending on the story the GM wants to tell, might not always be playable. I can certainly see not allowing Goblin characters for reasons just like I would not allow Elves if I ever GM Second Darkness

Gut reaction,

A lot of the loudest most toxic people here seem to have gotten what they want

Then why are the loudest and most toxic posters on this forum the ones that are complaining about the changes right now? the ones that made feedback during the playtest on these boards hell for everyone that disagreed with them; the very same people that whine in this very thread the loudest.

Actually, it wasn't possible in PF1 for a reason not related to exploration mode: the bard had limited rounds of bard song and five minutes would use them all up.

I know, but being a nice GM, that I usually am, if my bard wants to sing and the effect doesn't matter in that situation anyway, I let him sing. I'd probably rule it like "Well, you have used up 3 rounds of your performance in the last fight, so in case another fight begins, you will have x rounds left. in the meantime you continue singing with no effect but the effect will start immediatly with a new encounter."

It's not strictly a by-the-rules approach, but if the player decides to continue to shred the same accords on his ukulele for the whole time Roguey McRogueface does his thing the time for going straight into his magic song again would be reduced. It is not a complete illogical train of thought and for me, outside of combat, story and fun trumps a strict ruleset anyway.

[...]Now there is actual good options other than just searching around. Bards can spend their exploration time continuing a performance so that combat starts with the performance active. [...]

GM:Now that the fight is over, you have time to notice the unusual interior of that room. You see a delicately ornated mantlepiece in the east (continues to describe the room in detail)

Are you trying to tell me that scenario wasn't possible in PF1?

Can exploration mode rules apply when my players loved to describe how they explore in loving detail?

I actually don't think that exploration mode will make it into the final product. it adds nothing to the game, takes most of the RP elements out of it and I highly doubt most groups that finished DD used that mode till the end of the playtest. I suspect most of them ditched it after chapter 2 if not earlier. Luckily, even if it would make it into the final product it is so easy to be simply ignored

Hythlodeus wrote:

Unicore wrote:

This is a secondary concern I have about these changes. That the people complaining loudest about + level to proficiency system and wanting to be able to be bad 1 skill, were actually upset about enough other changes to the game

Well, to be fair, the Paladin not working like a Paladin or the Dwarf not being nearly dwarfy enough to be considered a Dwarf or some spells being nerfed into uselessness are very, very minor things compared to the +level mechanic that was the broken backbone of the PFPlaytest system. Those things can easily be rewritten or adapted or houseruled if necessary (although I'd prefer to not have to do that extra work myself of course).

getting rid of +lvl was important. homogenize building rules for PCs and NPCs still is. The rest of my complaints are relativley minor, compared to the important stuff.

Though I love to perform lengthy mathematical analyses on +1 per level and other core topics about Pathfinder 2nd Edition, the little details are what bothered my playtest players. Can exploration mode rules apply when my players loved to describe how they explore in loving detail? Why does the smooth three-action economy feel so clunky? What is up with the 42 different basic conditions and how can I tell them apart? Why doesn't my dwarf feel dwarfy? Thus, my one complaint in Hear our Plea(s) was about action economy taxes.

For example, when the 7th-level monk barkeep dwarf was fighting against 3rd-level ghasts, she had to roll saves against their Stench ability, their paralysis ability, and their ghast fever. Every hit by a ghast meant two saving throws (the stench thankfully was once and done), which she could fail on only a 1 or 2. Eventually she failed the ghast fever and that was more a relief than a dismay, because it meant that she could stop rolling against it. Ghast fever takes a day to...

while I agree, the thing is: I KNOW why the Dwarves don't feel dwarfy and therefore it is easier for me to come up with my tables own version of Dwarves and Dwarf-related feats within an otherwise working system than changing a system that doesn't work but get the Dwarves right. Or, as presented in the playtest, a system that doesn't work AND sucks at getting Dwarves right.

I wonder how people will feel about Untrained proficiency the first time they attempt to use a weapon they are Untrained in.

At moderate levels the gap is much bigger than the difference in PF1 between fighter and wizard weapon proficiency.

probably exactly the same I felt in PF1 whenever I used a waepon I hadn't invested in the proficiency for it. maybe even better, because I don't have a -4 malus and in PF2 it is still ridiculously easy to roll a crit

Hythlodeus wrote:

getting rid of +lvl was important. homogenize building rules for PCs and NPCs still is. The rest of my complaints are relativley minor, compared to the important stuff.

Is this getting rid of + level to proficiency? It sounds like it is just making it possible to be completely incompetent in most skills. It isn't touching +level for anything that should effect combat, since all of that stuff is trained minimum.

as long as you can be untrained, it effectivly is. and I'm pretty sure not every character starts being trained in every weapon group.

trumping strategic play at the table.

Good. If I want to play chess, then I play chess and don't have to invite 4 to 6 people for that