Jared Thaler - Personal Opinion's page

Could not find it in the thread. Magical crafting as a feat is allowed, per Archives of Nethys, and you get four magical crafting formulas free. How does this work for Society? Are they only items you can use? Can you sell the items? I don’t see any rules about that in the Guide. Unless I’m missing it, I used the search feature and all it references is the base crafting rules.

For PFS specific rules for crafting, you want to check the "additional options" section of the guide. (Will post links when I am not on my phone. )

What does "The elemental creature is controlled" mean in game terms.

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Looking at the similarly worded Command Undead feat it says:

Failure: The undead creature becomes a minion under your control. The spell gains a duration of 1 minute, but it is dismissed if you or an ally attacks the minion undead.

Command Elemental just says:

Failure The elemental creature is controlled or slowed as long as you Sustain the impulse, up to 1 minute. This effect ends if you or an ally attacks the elemental.

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Minion is well defined in game terms. "Controlled" does not seem to be.

Ian Pegg wrote:

I had an organized play ID that was created and registered for Pathfinder 1e, but I started playing 2e, and the GM gave me a brand new ID number. How do I sign in with this new ID? I’m not seeing any of the organized play that I’ve completed with this new ID number.

Ahh...you didn't need a new ID number, you just needed to register your new PF2 characters under your original play ID. It is used for all the Organised Play programs.

As above, you may wish to reach out to either the GM/organiser of your games (if you know them), or the local VC (if you don't), and get your games reported against your old ID.

You can also contact Alex at orgplayreportingerrors@paizo.com and explain the situation and ask him to merge the two IDs.

Our lodge is currently playing Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Season 5 online on Tabletop simulator. We would love to have your player join us for a game with a "pregen" character(and would even be happy to set up the character for them.) Games typically start around 7:30 - 8:00 PST (depending on when the game before that ends), last 2 hours, and will probably end in about 5 weeks. (We are on the last book.)

Discord link

If you scroll up that page a bit, they define what each of the categories is:

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Categories
Accessories are divided into five categories, as described below. Any qualifying accessory must be either a) produced by Paizo, Inc and sold on its webstore, or b) produced by a licensed partner of Paizo, Inc and visibly promote Paizo, Pathfinder, Starfinder or any associated games or Paizo intellectual property.

Event organizers are permitted and encouraged to expand the definition to include merchandise that directly promotes particular conventions at said events; e.g. permitting a Gen Con t-shirt or pin to count for their respective categories while at Gen Con. Merchandise that exclusively promotes other companies or intellectual properties (e.g. a Roll20 t-shirt with no Paizo branding) never qualifies for these benefits.

Vestments: T-shirts, messenger bags/backpacks, jackets or hoodies, or similar apparel; permanent tattoos of Paizo-related iconography; or cosplay of a Paizo-related character, such as an iconic character, NPC or similar.

Worn Accessory: Lapel pin or button, hat or ballcap, lanyard, or similar small worn accessory.

Rules Reference: Character folio, reference or condition card deck, or similar published item with game reference material. Excludes published rulebooks or Adventures.

Other Item: Any other qualifying item such as officially produced dice, keychains, plush characters, or other merchandise brought to the table.

Campaign Service Coin: an award given out to exemplary volunteers; a Campaign Service Coin cannot qualify for any other category and instead offers its own benefits.

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Now if you will excuse me, I need to go squeeze a condition card deck into my Skittermander Plush, and attach my Pathfinder 2e Lanyard I got at PaizoCon... Must have all the things!

:)

How to pronounce Hshurha?

I would pronounce it as the sound of a wave crashing on a beach.

But that probably is less than helpful for what you are asking.

Minor Caveat:

Not every item in a given AP is made available by the chronicle sheet for that adventure.

For example the Throwing Knife from the first book of Extinction Curse is *never* available in PFS. (Though there is a reprinted variant of it in another book that is.)

What is the best way to handle it in the meantime?

Have the reporters report with no GM for the players, and have them report my table with no players?

That seems like a good way to handle it, personally.

Honestly, I would think theey would have just used the existing rules in the book (the less common the item, there’s a markup in cost) rather than nope’ing it out if existence.

Actually, the rule in the book is that Uncommon and Rare items are flat out unavailable unless the GM specifically adds them individually to the game.

I mean they are not full spell "slots" but wands and staves are a way to at least offload specific spells and free up spell slots for other things. (Wand of Mage Armor, for example.)

EDIT: Feats on survival (finding food or shelter) or things that mitigate temperature extremes have less use in organized play scenarios.

That said, there are several scenarios where having Forager completely trivializes certain encounters, and may save the party money.

I am 50% sure that the updated No PVP rule was result of the Additional Resources team's excellent Theory Crafters.

I know that the XP thing was pointed out to us by a VO as a potential problem.

So neither one was *actually* ever fractured.

But I admit I did intentionally phrase them to imply that for humor sake. So I am glad people appreciated the humor.

Posting this as personal opinion, cause it is:

Everyone should check out the Player Rewards page! The new promo boons are amazing. I will definitely be bringing my Pathfinder Lanyard and Skittermander plush to games in future!

And, worth noting...

SFS 3.11 Spoiler: ** spoiler omitted **

willfromamerica wrote:

Eat the rich! (I loved this)

Before they eat US!!!

No, that would be the alternate villain Mios, one where the cure *didn't* work.

This Mios seems more like "Bury the rich at the crossroads with holy symbols of Serenrae, Iomedae, and Pharasma, with a cold iron nail and a copper coin in their pocket, a wicker bundle tied in this obscure fashion driven into their heart with a stake made half dark wood and half of wynwood, their mouth suffed with garlic before beheading them and burying the head elsewhere in a cask of a mixture of beer and holy water, their feet cut off and sewn back on backwards, exactly 137 grains of rice scattered in the coffin..."

If you check the boon store, you can see if any of those scenarios has a boon associated with it.

No extra points for me either :( Hopefully will get updated tomorrow with the game i am playing

There may be some bugs working their way through the system.

But the solution doesn't have to be on the wiki, does it?

For reasons I am not currently free to discuss on the public forum, yes, it does.

In other words, it may be worth asking the larger community what they need to better understand the issue before determining what the solution is, who owns it, where it lives.
.

These discussions occur regularly. So far I haven't been able to find anyone else internally willing to take this on.

Those are questions that go to how the website functions, and it would not be appropriate for me to discuss them on a public forum.

Basically anything complex that involves the wiki engine (as opposed to the web front end) typically winds up with the guide team because the guide team has the personnel with wiki knowledge.

As for why the other OPF teams don't post often on this forum, you would have to ask them.

It isn't. The only reason I am posting here is that this *is* something that the guide team (not the web team) has looked at, so I am sharing what we found when we looked at it.

Any of the other teams are welcome to weigh in. And as I said some of this can only be answered by Alex. (It is now two weeks before PaizoCon, so I would be very surprised if anyone from paizo sees this before then. I strongly recommend revisiting the thread after PaizoCon if you want a response.)

Also, since I have no idea why boons came *off* the Chronicle sheets, I have no idea what it would take to get them back *on* the Chronicle sheets. (Or at least included as (for example) handouts in the scenario / sanctioning document.

But that would certainly be the fastest, least manpower intensive solution.

I can't speak to why Paizo took the boons of chronicles (in part because no one has come out and told me. In part because if they did it would probably be under NDA. So you will have to get Alex to talk about that. I have my own personal theories...)

One issue with the whole minimum working product thing is that spoiler tags (and white text) are not respected by search engines. So someone searching the documents for their boon is quite likely to spoilers themselves on other boons that perhaps have the same words in the text. (Or in the case of search engines, might spoiler boons just by searching the text.)

Also, without a secure, close to complete, project, I am not reasonably able to just go to Alex and ask for a data file of all the boons. Nor would I know when boons change.

Someone would need to do something on the order of make a fake account, report having GMed *everything * Download all the boons, And then do that periodically to see if any changed.

Besides being a gross violation of the paizo terms and conditions and an abuse of the reporting system, it would also be highly time intensive...

We have a theoretical model of "this should work, with minimal coding." but to be honest, we don't even have the volunteer man hours to *test* whether our theoretical model does what we think it does, let alone fix it if it doesn't, let alone upload all the boons that would need to be uploaded...

and that isn't even thinking about what would be needed to keep it up to date...

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Just note that the chronicle you get is the official record, so you still have credit and can level your character/spend credits/gold even if the game isn't reported.

While that is true, if it isn’t reported, the player doesn’t earn the ACPs, either.

Also the player won't have access to boons if the game is not reported.

In any case, I am glad it is fixed.

My (personal) understanding is that the Tengu / Aldori Dueling Sword / Tengu Weapon Familiarity was one of the 'Strange (and unintended) interactions' that Alex mentioned in the blog announcing this.

It just kind of looked silly to have "By default, you get 1 lesser healing potion. Or you can chose to take 2 lesser healing potions."

It also opened up the annoying possibility of a GM saying "You didn't *say* you took the 2 healing potion option, so you only get 1."

It also made the list 8 lines shorter. :)

I'm not sure if this is too off topic for the thread, but what/where is the process for becoming a VA and does an area actually need one?

Last month ours got into a shouting match with a player who both pulled from all events and aren't responding to emails. I was the only other regular GM so I've just been putting up events on my own for the area. If just doing that locally is fine as far as the org is concerned, I don't feel the need to fill up their queue with more applications. But if someone is "supposed to be in charge" officially, then I probably should start rolling that ball.

Doing that locally is fine, there is no requirement that a location have a VA. That said, if you are acting as a VA, it would be nice to get you the privileges of being a VA, and depending on the area may also open up additional perks for your players as well.

You should contact your local VL or VC and see about becoming a VA.

At this point, the entire approval pipeline is clearing as fast as it fills, so there should be no issue of "clogging up the pipeline."

As far as the process, you contact your VL or VC, they decide if they want you to be a VA, if so, they fill out a form, submitting your name and contact info. From there, you should receive an email within a month or two (they tend to get processed in batches something like once a month) and then you receive an email with further instructions (which are all very simple.)

Nominal VO duties and responsibilities and rewards can be found at the OPF website but speak to your VO, as they can vary by region. (Also due to Covid, some duties are currently suspended.)

Thank you all for the responses. It's making more sense now on why it could be taking longer. All understandable. Definitely a busy time right now.

That said, your VC should easily be able to contact the people who initiate that process, and insure that there has not been an issue. There is an email that you need to respond to to start the process, and they can check if that email has been sent out yet, so that you can make sure you didn't miss it.

It should not take more than a month or two now that the system has been improved.

I agree, the GM reward mechanics are way too OP and need to be reigned in. I mean adding...

Oh...

That kind of broken.

That's problematic from the standpoint that it's a legal magic item and you can't just ban it completely. On the other hand, just turning it into an "automatically gives me 2 size reduction, kinda permanently" isn't what it does, either.

There should be a middle ground where the player can use it but not abuse it, while also keeping in mind not to rob the rest of the table of their game time.

And things like this are why I love the PF2 Rarity system (Rod of Wonder is now rare *and* has a 1-4 hour cool down to boot) and have very little desire to GM PF1 ever again.

Given that there is a 4/100 chance of shrinking, a 3/100 of a nearby object (possibly one of their pieces of equipment) turning permanently ethereal, I am not sure how they can simply ignore any other effects, as eventually they are going to lose gear, possibly very expensive gear. (Actually, given that it doesn't say "target nonliving item" it says "any nonliving item" I am not sure that doesn't mean all their gear turns ethereal. Including potentially the wand.)

So I'm trying to get my FLGS on board for letting me run some games there - since there has been no RPG opportunities since COVID. We're debating D&D vs PF2 (and Adventurers League vs PFS). I know these boards will have a strong preference for PF2 (and I would also prefer running that system), but I have some considerations maybe you can help me talk through...

1) Likely we won't be able to have 4-5 hour sessions due to the hours of operation of the shop. Most of the content available for PFS would be too long for me to run there. (I know there are Bounties/Quests, but I would run out of those in a couple months.)

2) Would it be preferable to try to run "drop in" AP campaigns like Abomination Vaults as opposed to PFS scenarios - considering I probably wouldn't be able to complete them in the allotted time?

3) Can you "shorten" scenarios to fit in your allotted time?

4) Would it be better to just not use any type of Organized Play if I can't do it "properly?" (For instance, a few years ago when I attempted PFS games there with PF1, I don't think anyone registered their characters. They just wanted to play a game.)

5) In general, have any of you had similar experiences and suggestions?

1. If you were running a game every other week, at 30+ quests and bounties, you have over a year of content. Even running every week, that is still 6 months to get people settled in. (while bounties are *nominally* an hour, 2 bounties in 2 hours always seems to be a super tight fit. You might be better off running each bounty at 2 hours and just throwing in extra roleplay to fill.)

2. It might make a good segue after you run out of bounties. You might also look at the various one shots.

3. You cannot shorten scenarios (at least not consistently. Some scenarios, with the right party, can take under 3 hours.) You can adjust run time on APs and stand alone adventures. (Provided the whole story gets told. I often cut "filler" encounters from APs.

4. That is certainly an option. It all depends what you and your players want.

MadScientistWorking wrote:

thaX wrote:

Saying nothing is an option, and that was something I was seriously considering before posting, though it is difficult to keep silent sometimes. I just see some of these situations and begin to wonder if I can keep playing the game without causing some offense to someone without knowing it.

Just a disappointing situation overall.

But everyone was annoyed at you for being transphobic. It's not like you weren't told you were being transphobic but you kept on digging a hole for yourself.

And I'm not calling for you to be banned. I'm not calling you a horrible person. All I'm saying is maybe just stop when people tell you are doing something hurtful.

Hold on - did ThaX say something transphobic? That’s how I’m reading your message but I think I missed something.

I think this was a reference to another thread.

I may be missing something here but at several points in the scenario it talks about reducing each pc's gold by x amount if they do not defeat specific encounters, but apart from the items and a necklace worth 24k I cant see any mention of getting any other money ?

Usually in those cases they are getting paid by the society or other sponsors. The reduction indicates that they got paid less by the society.

I thought I answered this earlier.

We ran both parts across 3 slots, and the first part took all of the first, and the better part of the second as well.

For those who have run this, it seems like it should be relatively easy to get all the tale fragments? Has that been people's experience? (5 rounds w/ 4 players to get 10 successes?)

I'm looking into it. It's not necessarily a question about this specific scenario, or even PFS in general, as "whether PCs are aware of which checks they can make in a subsystem" should be covered by the CRB/GMG. I know what I would do as a GM, but that's hardly an official "how the rules work" response.

I'll see what I can learn, and post here once I've learned it.

Did we ever get an answer on this?

But Jared Thaler is the chair of the Guide Task Force (the people, including me, who maintain the Guides on the OPF website) and the person who can tell you more. I will ask him to stop by this thread.

Again, sorry for the lack of response previously.

To add a little more, we need a team that can cross check each others work. Preferably a team of professional translators.

Anyone, *is* of course welcome to make their own translation, and post it.

I'm excited about the story justification we came up with for skeletons (eventually) becoming an option in Pathfinder Society, and the author of the adventure in question did an excellent job making our idea come to life (pun intended).

Wish I could say more, as I'm just as excited as everyone else for Year 4... but I can't!

Spoilers for scenario

More thread necro…

I am a bit confused (still) on uncommon item purchases. If you don’t have the item on a chronicle, you can NEVER purchase it? Even if it’s a crappy uncommon item? What about special materials? If I want a suit if mithril chain, but never come across mithril in my entire adventuring career, I can never buy it? Or so there some limit, like a 9th level wizard could theoretically buy a ring of wizardry 1 while shopping in Absalom if he had the cash. If it’s the former, that makes no sense lore or mechanically. If the latter is it level -2, or just of PC level?

Also, are scenarios going to have items available again on the chronicles, or was that only the season 1 stuff?

A lot of uncommon options grant abilities (teleportation, detection, etc) that have a tendency to "end run" scenarios. You cannot buy them unless you have opened up access to them.

Also, 8 TB is the "base success rate" (TB 9 and 10 are bonuses), so only getting 7 stings, but will quickly get made up in future adventures. (If you are *often* getting only 7, then you need to worry!)

The poor Barbarian had basically no mental skills and couldn't participate in half the checks.

If I recall, you can chose what order you go in each turn, so when we played this, we had the low skill characters go first any time there was an obstacle they *could* effect, and delay any time there wasn't (which often got us past the obstacle to one they could.)

But also, early chases just didn't have great balance, because the writers were still learning the system...

Worth noting that the Daikyu was just errataed:

the daikyu should have reload 0 (not --) and should be propulsive.

I'm running this in two days. One thing in particular has me worried. The way I read it, there's no chance for the PCs to heal themselves between encounter B (Jinkins/Redcaps) and the chase. There's a 10-minute window after the chase to heal up. So that's basically two back-to-back fights with a chase in between, with only one round of healing for everyone? That seems pretty harsh, especially considering the boss hits like a truck.

Yup. This is intentional. Fortunately the boss difficulty is somewhat offset by the cannons.

If you want to find out what PFS Scenarios of happened in any given country just type https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Category:Pathfinder_Society_scenarios_set_i n_Rahadoum, and just substitute the name of the nation you're interested in for 'Rahadoum'.

There is actually a list of locations with Pathfinder scenarios:

Pathfinder Society scenarios by location

Adamantine is uncommon, so you will also need access. I do recall a formula for an adamantine shield on a chronicle, so I suspect you need a seperate formula.

It isn't incorrect. Just incomplete, I think, for what you are asking. When you gain Access to something Uncommon, you treat that thing as Common. So in an example like JTT talked about, where a boon grants Access to a spell, you can go right ahead and prepare it, add it to your repertoire (via level up or retraining), etc.

When the Uncommon thing on a chronicle is a scroll, that means you treat that scroll as Common. There isn't any "once the scroll is Common, automatically treat the spell on it as Common and don't bother Learning the Spell" rule.

This. I am 99% sure I know the answer. I am waiting to get that last 1% nailed down before I post definitively in my guide persona.

Can we just BURN DOWN the Museum already 'on accident' and 'save the materials inside just in time' so we never have to go back there, please?

The entire building is carved from a single block of black stone IIRC. You are going to need to blow it up.

Uncommon items are frequently given via a separate boon earned by playing the scenario.

They did notice the other guards, but they failed their Crafting and Warfare checks, sadly enough. And yeah, while the Diplomacy checks were supposed to happen, the one guy jumped into action immediately. He wanted to just speak their language, but after getting the guns trained at him, he went into panic.

At our lodge, we've always treated casting magic as not done in polite society, and I think I portrayed these guys as clearly on edge. Casting spells without explaining what you're doing is rude, if not outright dangerous, especially when you're being interrogated.

Attacking the Russians (or alarming them into attacking) doesn't fail the mission.

*Killing* them is what fails the mission. Non-lethal is an option that exists. (GMs even have the option to let NPCs go to dying at 0 HPO instead of straight to dead. I might have considered that here.)

But yeah, magic is flashy and visible. Casting magic while trying to convince a guard that you are not allied with witches is likely to be counterproductive.