Jed Roach's page

Another factor to consider here is how much your mount's charge attack will contribute to your DPR. You and your mount charge together, stopping in the closest square in which to make your attack, and then attack. If you don't both have the same reach, then one of you can't make your attack.

If you have ride-by-attack, then a generous GM might let you both attack since you both could be at the appropriate reach at some point during the ride-by.

I was thinking that I would need to change it up based on whether I thought the creature had a higher fort or reflex save and that the mix of creatures was more or less evenly split between the 2. However, it looks like there is a tendency for higher fort saves in general. So, grab-trip-throw is the safer combo in general.

Oh wow! Whirling throw really should have the attack trait because athletics checks do not have the attack trait inherently.

My plan is to trip and punch with flurry of maneuvers, grab with assurance, and throw. Now they are 30ft away and prone.

I would rule that you shouldn't strictly apply real life physics to a game that allows alchemists to make an elixir in 2 seconds.

The entire game is a collection of mechanics that have been abstracted and simplified from real world physics plus magic. The limitations on bludgeoning and slashing weapons probably derives from the idea that those weapons and attack motions have high drag ratios and are therefore slowed down by water drag. I think applying a similar level of abstraction to situations in which the rules are silent is appropriate. Whatever rules I come up with wouldn't be kept secret from the players. I think the characters would have enough experience with their standard actions to know how an extreme environmental challenge might affect their results.

As to Quick Alchemy, yes, that is clearly not a thing that is possible in real life. The game says that alchemy is not magic, but magic is the best way of explaining what a person's "alchemical essence" is and how it can be turned into other items in 2 seconds. Though now that I'm thinking about it, I might rule that mixing chemicals underwater is extremely difficult with tools designed for use on land and attempts at Quick Alchemy are disrupted by the water. Be on the lookout for Underwater Alchemist's Tools in a future splat book. Or, I might rule that it's basically magic so it just works if I think the player is really going to struggle without having access to core class features. I will then remind them that alchemists are proficient with crossbows which are still effective at 60 ft(because we don't apply real life physics).

How do alchemical bombs work underwater?

The rules appear to be silent on the subject.

Here are some possible rulings I might use at my discretion:

1. The water interferes with and/or dilutes the chemicals to the point of being ineffective even if you do hit and the flask breaks. Basically, treat it like a bludgeoning ranged attack. Auto miss and no splash.

2. They can only be used to attack creatures within your reach and they don't splash. (Ever try to throw a baseball under water? Even a bullet is slowed to non lethal speeds in 3-8 feet) It's almost a melee attack, but you release just before impact so your hand doesn't get caught in the effect.

3. They take the halved range increment of piercing ranged weapons, but otherwise work as normal.

4. Water breathing creatures are also sickened 1 because they are breathing the water full of hazardous chemicals.

5. They work as though on land with no penalties or modifications.

6. Due to mentioning "exposure to air" in the description, alchemist's fire, bottled lighting, and frost vials do not work underwater. Tanglefoot bags explicitly do not work underwater.

7. Thunderstones do double damage, do splash damage, and deafen within 30 feet. Water conducts pressure waves (i.e. sonic damage) much better than air. Try googling "hydraulic abdominal concussion", unless you're the squeamish type.

The rules say I have the discretion to say that some things don't work, not that they work different. So, for PFS 2,4, and 7 are probably not defensible.

How would you rule?

That doesn't answer my question. The effect is clearly non-magical and, yes, all of my scientific analysis as well as the reference to colloidal suspension is all fluff text.

The crunch of the issue stated another way is this:
Can a creature with murksight or a similar ability ignore the concealed condition created by this item?

For the purposes of vision, is the cloud effect created by metalmist spheres considered non-magical mist or something else?

This sphere contains small fragments of thunderstones within a colloidal suspension of a precious metal. When you twist the sphere, it creates an opaque mist in a burst centered on one corner of your space. Creatures within that area are concealed, and all other creatures are concealed to them....

In the real world the vision obscuring effects of mist and smoke are essentially the same. Small particles suspended in the air scatter light between the object and the observer. In the case of mist those particles are tiny droplets of liquid water and in the case of smoke those particles are solids. However, the pathfinder world makes a distinction between smoke and mist allowing some creatures to see through one or the other. Smoke worker hobgoblins can see through smoke and witches with murksight can see through mist.

The description of these (colloidal suspension of a precious metal) suggests to me that the mist is made up of both the liquid of the suspension medium and the solid particles of the metal. In which case the effect is both mist and smoke. Though one might argue that it's not mist because the suspension medium isn't water. Or one might argue that it's not smoke because it wasn't caused by fire. Or one might argue that it is mist and only mist because it says mist.

Web Trap: A creature hit by the web lurker’s web attack is immobilized and stuck to the nearest surface until it succeeds at DC 20 Acrobatics check to Escape.

Is this overriding the standard Escape action or could you also use unarmed attack or athletics?

(This is an example of why all of my characters are trained in athletics and acrobatics.)

Does anyone want to take a guess as to what Barralbus's counteract modifier should be for his Counterspell ability?

In low tier he is level 3, INT +4, spell DC 20, spell attack +12.

It's either +9(level 3, trained, +4 INT), +10(spell DC20), or +12(spell attack +12).

Here is my suggestion to the Organized Play team:

The Grand Archive has a library containing all of the common alchemical formulas and makes them available to all pathfinders to check out at no cost. The Society doesn't think it is a good idea to charge it's own agents money for access to common tactically useful information.

However, having the formula for an item and knowing that formula well enough to make one in 2 seconds are not the same thing. So, add a rule for alchemists that in order to be able to create an alchemical item using their infused reagents they must Craft the item using normal crafting rules first. The process of crafting the item from scratch is what gives the alchemist the experience and insight necessary to be able to create items in ridiculously short periods of time using their infused reagents. The formulas you gain from leveling are exempt from this requirement.

This is actually more expensive than learning a spell, but you end up with the item at the end. If you sell the item, then it will probably cost less.

Now an alchemist needs at least 4 days to learn a formula unless they have enough reputation with the Envoy's Alliance to get the Crafter's Workshop. So add a rule to the Crafter's workshop specifying a minimum amount of crafting time before starting a new item. Also consider moving the Crafter's Workshop to the All-Factions list so that Envoy's Alliance isn't a de facto requirement for alchemists.

What do you folks think?

When you do the Flip-Tiles please trim off the bleed edge beyond the last full size squares so that we can drop them into the VTT edge to edge without overlap and still have the grid line up. Preferably, all maps would be trimmed to the grid because it makes aligning to the VTT grid so much faster.

What also speeds up the process of aligning the grid is knowing how many squares are on the map, so it would be convenient if that were noted in the file name or in the corner of the map. Then I can just set the size of the map to that size, drop the map file, then resize it to fill the whole map area and it's instantly aligned.

Something like: Flip-Map - Fancy Dungeon - 24x30.jpg

I don't see anything about separate instances increasing the level of fire, only elapsed rounds increase the fire level.

The fifth range increment is a -8 penalty with maybe one more for lesser cover if there is a creature in the way. The high tier kobold scouts will only crit fail on a 1.

In the ambush I don't see an AC for the wagons. I'll just use the wagon listed in the Game Mastery Guide which has an AC of 11 unless someone says otherwise.

Is the splash damage from the Alchemist's Fires enough to catch a wagon on fire? If so, those bandits or kobolds are going to start chucking as soon as they are within 100 ft.

I have dozens of 1E tables set up for gmes across all seasons as well as most of the PF2E games set up as well. If you would like a copy let me know and I can make one available.

Is there any way this material could be shared more broadly? Perhaps posting links on pfsprep.com?

Or would that be a violation of copyright and we just have to wait for Paizo to start monetizing their scenarios in Roll20 format?

I can think of a couple flavorful ways of phrasing it.

The process of engraving a rune onto a weapon or set of armor actually removes a significant amount of material and in the end the item is held together as much by its base material as it is by the magic of the rune. If the final Fundamental rune is removed from an item, it crumbles into worthless dust.

Or

If you request to transfer a +1 Fundamental rune, the specialist won't bother doing the actual crafting work but will instead trade you an item from the vast armory of the Pathfinder Society.

I was that player. This PFS rule may have another interesting consequence.

The wording of the rule makes me wonder if the intent is to allow players to "slot" runes like they slot boons. It says you can do it before you slot your boons, which typically happens after the mission briefing.

"Oh, you mentioned a haunting? Hang on while I pop down to Absalom to get my ghost touch and disrupting runes transferred to my weapon."

If that wasn't the intent, then they could have simply said the service is only available between adventures.

In the Pathfinder Society Guide to Play you can find the Purchasing Guidelines which say this:

Creating and Transferring Runes

The Society has a specialist at the Grand Lodge who can apply or swap out runes for agents of the Pathfinder Society in good standing. This service is free, and requires no check, but is generally only available before boons are slotted or once the adventure is complete, not during the middle of an adventure.

So, 10% or free?

FYI: Elf Atavism officially does not work with Ancient Elf as of today.

This doesn't effect me, but I'm curious. How do we handle a character that has an illegal build due to a rules change?

Scenario and quest boon cards have been posted on pfsprep.com

Those boon cards (and any others I make) can also be found here: bit.ly/booncards

FYI, while admittedly helpful, this does make Chronicle fishing easier/more tempting.

True, but there are other ways already available to get the same information and, in general, it is not hard to cheat in PFS if you want to. Society play is entirely dependent on the honor system.

The hard part is balancing my own desire to make boons available for others with not spoiling the boons I haven't gotten to play or GM yet.

I just love these! I see you have the Envoy's Alliance faction boons done. Will you be doing the other factions as well?

Thanks!

Boon cards for scenarios #1-00 through #1-13 and quests 1-7 are complete. You can find them here:

bit.ly/booncards.

I will also upload them to pfsprep.com in their respective forums.

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback. I welcome more.

Should the Diggen the Liar boon be slotless like other "This boon will have a special effect in a future scenario" boons from 1-09 or general like those from 1-07?

I figured this was a solved problem for starfinder, but since I'm not playing it yet, I didn't search the forums too deeply. I'm glad to see other people have had similar ideas and might actually use anything I produce. Since Kevin has the faction boons covered for now, I'll focus my initial efforts on making scenario boons.

Now the question is where do I put them? Share them from my google drive like Nefreet has done or post them to pfsprep, or both? Where is the best place to post this sort of resource for players who aren't GMs?

Maybe I'll shorten a url and put it on the cards so people know where to get more once they get one.

In an attempt to do a better job of slotting my boons I thought it would be a good idea to print them out on trading card sized cards and then keep them in a 9-pocket trading card page. I GM some games and I thought my players might appreciate getting boon cards along with their chronicle sheet. My first draft was built using google sheets and attempts to emulate the style of stat blocks from the core rule book while still being easy to share and modify as more boons are released. See the links below for the early results of that process.

Envoys' Alliance Boon Cards.

Boon Cards Template.

But then I stumbled across the card templates for the Adventure Card Game in the community use resources. So I figured out the basics of how to use Inkscape and made this:

Envoys' Alliance Boon Cards (ACG Style)

It takes a lot more work making them in the ACG style, but I think they are way cooler. At this point I'd like to get some feedback from the community and once I settle on a style I'll start uploading the completed boons and templates to pfsprep

So, please let me know what you think. Would you appreciate receiving these as a player? As a DM would you bother downloading, printing, cutting, and handing them out? Should the text be as literal as space allows or be paraphrased for brevity? Anything else?

With regards to rune transferring, the recently updated Society Guide to Play has this to say:

Creating and Transferring Runes

The Society has a specialist at the Grand Lodge who can apply or swap out runes for agents of the Pathfinder Society in good standing. This service is free, and requires no check, but is generally only available before boons are slotted or once the adventure is complete, not during the middle of an adventure.

Recently updated Purchasing Guidlines

Creating and Transferring Runes

The Society has a specialist at the Grand Lodge who can apply or swap out runes for agents of the Pathfinder Society in good standing. This service is free, and requires no check, but is generally only available before boons are slotted or once the adventure is complete, not during the middle of an adventure.

I suspect there will be some adjustments or additions to this in the near future.

A 1st level character can not afford a +1 armor rune and the armor rune is a level 5 item so they don't have access to it.

Nope, this doesn't solve the 1st level can't have plate problem. But at some point in their career (as early as 3rd) they do get access. When that time comes, they can use this cheese to get a discount. Even if they bought full plate at 8 or 12 xp they could still buy +1 full plate at level 3 or 5 and sell their non-magical set rather than buying a +1 rune for 160 gp to upgrade their existing set.

How about some home game cheese? It says the runes must be physically engraved onto the item (though it also says clothing can be engraved?). Presumably, if you were transferring a rune you would transfer the magic but not bother with buffing out the engraving. So then you con an NPC into believing it's still magically enhanced and sell it for a higher price. If people believe copper bracelets improve their balance, then this should be an easy con.

This makes me wonder what old weapons or armor might look like after undergoing dozens of rune changes.

The cheesy option here is to use the level 1 rebuild/full resale rules.

How's this for a cheesy option? All +1 magic armor is 160 gp regardless of base armor. In PFS play we can transfer runes for free.

How I know +1 full plate costs 160 gp:

Though, it seems this option should flood the market with full plate which might make it cheap enough for a 1st level PC to afford? Oh, right, for the sake of simplicity, the laws of supply and demand do not apply.

I know there is a list of changes which is why I asked for a more detailed list of changes. I'm hoping for an errata style list. For example, "Clarified a number of rules." could be expanded to specify which rules changed and how they changed.

I noticed the guide got a version bump last night. Is there or will there be a more detailed list of changes? I want to make sure I didn't miss something.

You got my hopes up that there was another con coming to Sacramento. Alas, I'm pretty sure CogCon is in Rolla, MO. You might want to check your plane tickets?

I feel like there should be a hazard stat block for the web traps.

What is the stealth DC for the web traps already on the ground? Are they just plainly obvious?

When a PC steps on one does the trap make an attack roll using the spider's ranged attack modifier, does the PC make a reflex saving throw vs the spider's "class DC", or something else?

The Hunting Spider web trap says "until it Escapes" with a capital E. So, that must mean use the basic Escape action which allows the use of acrobatics, athletics, or unarmed attack. However, the Web Lurker entry says "DC 20 Acrobatics check to Escape." If this is a case of specific overriding general, then anyone untrained in acrobatics might not escape except on a natural 20.

Okay, these are group checks. Thank you for this clarification. I still find it odd, but acceptable, that the DC was set in the normal to hard range instead of very hard or incredibly hard as the CRB suggests. Running the checks this way still means that even the smallest and weakest parties will get at least 2 successes >90% of the time.

0 Success: -4 Init in Encounter A

1 Success: Nothing
2 Successes: Village Charm, 2 items/treasure bundles
3 Successes: Village Charm, 3 items/treasure bundles

I can see how if you only read the last sentence of the rewards paragraph on page 8 that you might come to this conclusion. However, please allow me to direct your attention to the second sentence of that paragraph where it says:

They provide the PCs with two alchemical items (three if the PCs succeeded at two or three skill checks during their investigation)...

So, I believe the full condition table, assuming they succeed in encounter A, is:

"Each PC may attempt each skill check once, including any efforts to Aid." I don't understand why this is confusing? Each pc may attempt each skill check once.

My confusion comes from the author's decision to use the phrase "two or three" instead of phrases like "at least one" or "two or more". This leads me to question whether the author wrote this from the perspective that no more than 3 successes were possible. The RAW interpretation of how to execute the skill checks means that it is possible to get as many as 21 successes. I was further confused by the +2 DC increase for the 3rd check attempted. Which of those 21 checks count at 3rd checks?

And now that I've read that section a dozen times I've realized that the most pedantically RAW interpretation of the rewards is that the condition for exactly 0, exactly 1, exactly 2, and exactly 3 successes is defined. It doesn't say that if you get the charm you also get the information. It also doesn't specify what happens if you get 4 or more successes. Which means that if the party gets 4 or more successes, they don't get the 3rd treasure bundle, the charm, or the info, but at least they don't get the initiative penalty.

I wouldn't, and haven't, run the scenario this way. I ran it probably the same way most people did. I let them attempt checks until they got at least 2 successes.(There is no difference between 2 and 3 successes.) Both times it took less than 6 checks and only that many because the goblins were trying to use acrobatics instead of one of the listed skills.

Has anyone given any reward for this section other than 3 treasure bundles + village charm + caravan info and if so, how did you run it?

Up to 12 rolls, and the party uses the highest roll for each check to determine if the party as a whole succeeded at that check.

I think this an unlikely interpretation because of the principal that rolls should be consequential. Under this accounting and assuming a party of 4 with an average chance of success per roll of 40% there is only a 0.2% chance of them failing all 3 checks, a 4.4% chance of getting only one success, and a 95.4% chance of getting 2 or more successes. (I got to learn about binomial distributions today!)

The difference between 2 and 3 successful checks for the party is the number of alchemical items (and corresponding treasure bundles) they get after the encounter (pg. 8).

They provide the PCs with two alchemical items (three if the PCs succeeded at two OR three skill checks during their investigation)...

So, there is no difference between 2 or 3 successes.

If the consequences were supposed to be tracked per PC, then aiding another would not be allowed. The consequences apply to the party as a whole. Likewise, the number of alchemical items received is for the entire party, not per PC.

Yes, I had forgotten about the successes being tied to the treasure, so it must be tracked for the whole party. For this reason and for my probability analysis above, I believe the best way to run this section is to let each player choose which skill to roll and each player only rolls once. That would give a more consequential distribution of outcomes. (4 players, 45% chance of success: 0:~10%, 1:~30%, 2+:60%)

In the Border Village section it says

Each PC may attempt each skill check once, including any efforts to Aid.

For a table of 4 players does this mean up to 4 rolls or up to 12 rolls?

Whatever the third skill check the PCs attempt is, the DC increases by 2 to account for fewer locals knowing the information

But wait, they already had one success and know about the caravan, so the subsequent rolls are just about impressing them and earning their trust to earn the charm. So how does this mechanic apply?

If the PCs succeed at two or three checks, they win over the locals and earn their respect, gaining the benefit of the village’s charm for the remainder of the scenario.

If each PC may attempt 3 rolls, does that mean the charm is earned per PC or does the entire party get the charm with at least 2 successes amongst all of the rolls? If the former, then this must mean the initiative penalty for failing all three is tracked per PC. If this was the intent, then I think it would have been clearer if it had said "a PC" instead of "the PCs".