Jester David's page

Sharing this here too, since this forum is also about "converting Pathfinder Roleplaying Game content to other system"

I'm generally a forever GM but one of my players took over for a campaign so I've been a surprised player for almost a year. And with the pandemic and a four-month layoff I had ample time to plan what I wanted to run next.

As a Ravenloft fan and a lapsed PF player I always wanted to give Carrion Crown a go. Especially as I paid for the physical books. Converting it seemed like a worthwhile project. Clicky

PF1 to 5e is tricky, and a lot of stuff just doesn't translate.
It's still a work in progress and I'm still probably six months away from running it...

I'm generally a forever GM but one of my players took over for a campaign so I've been a surprised player for almost a year. And with the pandemic and a four-month layoff I had ample time to plan what I wanted to run next.

As a Ravenloft fan and a lapsed PF player I always wanted to give Carrion Crown a go. Especially as I paid for the physical books. Converting it seemed like a worthwhile project. Clicky

It's still a work in progress and I'm still probably six months away from running it...

Now that PF2 is out, are there any rules people will be moving from that edition to 5e.

I'm eyeing the Bulk rules personally, and how Initiative is determined is interesting.

The character sheet has a sizable amount of space left for listing the 30-odd feats your character will have. But there's not nearly enough room to write down what they actually do.

While I imagine feat cards are in the works, in the meantime I imagine most people will have loose-leaf notes. Either hand written or cut-and-pasted into a Word document.

In your notes, how are YOU going to list how many actions a feat takes?

• The [[A]] [[A]] of the previews?
  
• Maybe a simple "Action: 2"
  
• Are you going to draw a representation of the symbol?
  
• An emoji-stylized version? O)) or O>> ?
  

What's the easiest way?

One thing that makes Pathfinder is the iconics. We all know their names and some of their backstories. We know their personalities.
But none of that is in the books. That's all website content that 90% of players will miss.

An unrelated problem is how the class sections of the books tend to have a "wall of text" problem. You have the one picture of the iconic and then five or six more pages of just pure crunch.
The only book to try and fix this was Occult Adventures that added some shots of iconic gear to the mix.

I'd love it if the book featured some sidebars and asides ostensibly written by the iconics. A paragraph on who they are in the class section. Merisiel talking about the elf view of dwarves in the dwarf ancestry page. Valeros musing on weapons and different types of sword in the equipment section. Seoni comparing her spellcasting with wizardry.

Pulling from a 4th Edition idea here.

In that game, you used the higher of your Strength and Constitution for your Fortitude defence, the higher of your Dexterity and Intelligence for Reflex, and the higher of your Wisdom and Charisma for Will.

Not a fan of the static defences (attacks vs Fort opposed to a Fortitude save) but the idea of multiple Ability Scores being used for a Saving Throw's bonus is neat.

Currently, there's a lot of characters whose primary ability score aren't tied to a save. Anyone with Charisma (bards, sorcerers) or Intelligence (wizards) or Strength (barbarians). At best, their second highest ability score might be tied to a save (like bards who likely have a high Dex, and barbarians who generally have a high Con), but not always.
The poor wizard and sorcerers suffers the most as they're proficient in Will saves but have no reason to give Wisdom a high number, and might opt for Dexterity but don't have good Dex saves.

Should Pathfinder 2 take a page from 4e and allow different ability scores to work in a saving throw?

According to Paizo's Playtest FAQ the Community Use Policy will continue, being system neutral.
This means you can use Paizo's Intellectual Property (such as logos, the names of the gods, etc) so long as you don't make money:
http://paizo.com/community/communityuse

(And, as was found by d20pfsrd.com, this would include operating a webstore. Anyone wishing to make money is directed to the OGL and away from Golarion.)

However... in the years since it was last updated (Thursday, January 30, 2014) there has a revolution in how fans interact with the campaign settings and systems published by RPG companies. Specifically the Community Content Programs on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/community_content.php

There is the Dungeon Master's Guild (dmsguild.com/) that allows anyone to publish 5th Edition D&D content for the Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft, using WotC's characters and locations and proprietary monsters.

There is also the Storyteller's Vault for White Wolf (storytellersvault.com) that allows fans to produce material for any edition of Vampire (and slowly other genres), and even allows the fans to use the trade dress of official products!

There's now similar programs for Shadows of the Demon Lord, Cortex, 7th Sea, Cypher System, and more.

*

Why doesn't Pathfinder have a similar program?

They operate their own web store and can take PDFs from other 3rd Party publishers already. It wouldn't be a stretch to open that to the fans. That way, skilled fan authors can make money from their passion AND Paizo can also make a share.
Plus, it effortlessly replaces the now defunct RPG Superstar program, allowing Paizo to look at the best selling fan products and see if the author would be willing to try a PFS module or Player Companion.

I'm mentioning this now as pairing such a program with the launch of the new edition makes sense. Or even a year or two later with a new campaign setting.

Perhaps the program could be kept in mind when creating the campaign setting, with certain regions of Golarion being left alone to be explored by the community. So rather than open up all of Golarion for adventuring, the program could focus on the River Kingdoms, with adventures set there. Let the fans and community run wild there and share their own stories of the region.
River Kingdom Adventures.
It'd be cool.

*

Okay, the BIG problem with this kind of program would be people forgetting the OGL, which NEEDS to be included with every product.
The advantage of these programs over the OGL is really one of not having to *fully* understand the OGL, making it more accessible for common gamers to publish. (Becoming a 3rd Party Publisher is not easy.) But some knowledge is still required so you don't throw in a Mind Flayer or forget the OGL at the end. And the Paizo folks won't be able to personally check every single community created product like they could a 3rd Party Product. (A "report product" button would suddenly be essential.)

But just because it's trickier doesn't make it impossible. Or not worth doing.

Instead, there just needs to be simple but very firm and plain guidelines people need to know when posting to a community program. (And in plain text, not legalese.) Such as:
1) Products must use the pre-formatted OGL page needs to be included at the back of EVERY product.
2) Products must include the standard disclaimer about what is and is not open content.
3) Products cannot use any non-Paizo content.

(Paizo could even hedge their bets by including a separate OGL page with the ZIP file of every download.)

When the books are released it will be 4718 in Golarion. But not much has happened in the world since 4709.
They've announced in the PF2 FAQ that they're updating the world and several of the APs will have assumed to have happened, but several nations had looming events that they purposely avoided building an AP around in case GMs wanted to use those hooks. But it feels weird to have those powderkegs just sit and not change for a full decade.

What events and changes should occur across the Inner Sea? Or, more specifically, what would you LIKE to see.

For example, the Worldwound should probably be closed, reflecting the end of Wrath of the Righteous. But while new demons are not emerging, the region would likely still be tainted by Abyssal energies with stray demons wandering.

Razmiran was mortal so a decade would have been hard on him. Or would he have gotten that last level, hit 20, and gained immortality?
Or was he discovered? 10 years was a long time. Did he break a leg or get an illness and have to seek a real cleric?

Nirmathas should be either have been conquered by Molthune and is an occupied nation, or Molthune lost the war and Nirmathas has gained loose independence and is a burgeoning free nation.

Several small kingdoms should have emerged from the River Kingdoms.

Is Galt still French Revolution Land? By the current year, the land would have been undergoing revolution for fifty years, which is five times that of the real French Revolution. Or has the kingdom found its Napoleon?

Andoran is kinda boring as the good nation of good, who are really anti-slavery. It's a place people are from or work for but isn't a good place for adventure itself. Most Andoran adventures just happen to take place in Andoran and don't involve the nation proper.

Paizo probably shouldn't be *too* afraid to tweak or advance the timeline, so long as things don't change too much. So long as it still feels familiar and like Golarion. Campaign settings are largely system agnostic. Once you have the rules for Inner Sea factions and feats you can use the old campaign settings, setting campaigns in the previous era.
It's also be fun to give unnamed adventuring parties credit for certain historic events, like exposing and deposing Razmiran, and allow GMs to have a campaign set a year or two in the past and play through those events to let their PCs be those characters.

What would YOU like to see change and happen to the Inner Sea?

In a recent interview, when asked about Theater of the Mind play, Paizo's Logan Bonner commented:

I'd say it's about on par with PF1E in that regard. We haven't playtested TotM style because that tends to be less common among our fanbase. I should give it a shot so we can know what to expect for that style of game. My guess is that it would be easier for me personally to visualize what was happening when using three-action turns, but I'm not entirely sure! If you end up playtesting in this style, I'd be really interested to hear how your experience goes.

That's a very problematic answer because it's essentially—to paraphrase—"TotM players are less common in the fanbase so it isn't a priority." Which is equivalent to saying "<Group/ demographic of players> are less common in the fanbase so they aren't a priority."

Isn't a better response to find out why TotM is a minority of the fanbase, what could be done to make the game accessible to them and how to make the changes without impacting the game negatively fans of minis.

The largest fan survey of the d20 industry available to the public was done a couple years ago, by Mike "Sly Flourish" Shea, and found here.
Based on the results of that survey, 19% of fans prefer abstract maps (no grids) and 18% prefer theater of the mind. That's a full fifth of the potential audience that doesn't like using minis.

Miniatures are problematic. They place imits where you can play to places where you can reach minis. And they're a barrier to entry: you can play with PDFs and the PDSRD, but you still need to get tokens of some kind. (And it's not like there's a PC/ Heroes pawn set. The best alternative literally has "nonplayer" in its name.)

Plus, mini-less games make for easier listening, enabling streaming of games. Pathfinder has fallen far behind in that regard, as streaming is an amazing tool for learning how to play an RPG as well as free advertising for game systems.

According to the FAQ "Pathfinder Playtest products will be released on August 2, 2018. "

It takes a long time for Paizo to make its physical books.
Layout takes time. Shipping the printer's proof and evaluating that takes more time. Evaluating the proof and making changes also makes time. And getting the actual print copies takes, you guessed it, time.

April tends to be "GenCon Crunch", which is when the books need to be done. So the PDF for the playest will actually be finished then, three full months prior to being released. That's three months they're effectively just sitting on the PDF.
Normally, that's not a big deal. But, this isn't a normal release situation.

Paizo cuts off its playtest eight or so months before the books are released, based on the the playtests for the Advanced Race Guide and the Advanced Class Guide. Mythic Adventures ran a little longer, being 7 1/2 months prior, while the shortest was Ultimate Combat whose playtest ran until mid-February.

This means that when the playtest book and documents are released in August, the fans might have as few as four full months to playtest the entire game!

Even for groups that manage to play weekly (lucky bastards) that's probably five levels of play. Even gaining a level every session-and-a-half (barely enough time to *really* test an entire level's worth of abilities) you're unlikely to test beyond level 10. And the game REALLY needs to be tested beyond level 10. Seriously.
(And tested by characters the players know how to play and are able to use effectively rather than pregens they might have spent 30 minutes with prior.)

If Paizo were to release the playtest PDF early—such as early May—they could significantly increase the playtest time. Possibly by as much as 75%.

It doesn't even have to be the full document. A plain formatted PDF with no art and backgrounds would almost be preferably, being easier to print and use at the table. It could even be purposely limited, with pregenerated characters and notes of how to level them up.

After all, the point of this process is to test the game and get as much useful feedback as possible, and the longer people can actually test the rules in actual play situations, the more problems that will be caught and the better the final product will be.

(This is not me selfishly wanting the PDF right now. It's unlikely I'll even be able to seriously look at the PDF until September, let alone play. Just the realistic concern that more playtesting = better.)

This order was split into two packages.
The first arrived a little over a week ago: the 15th, which was 11 buisness days after the order shipped.

The second package has not arrived yet. It has now been 17 buisness days.
Did it actually ship? Could it have been missed?

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/38360/starfinder-expands-pact-worlds

The central worlds for Paizo’s new science fiction role playing game Starfinder will be revealed in the new Pact Worlds book, releasing in March.

MSRP is $44.99.

I'm watching Titan AE at the moment. It's on Netflix.ca. If you're unfamiliar, the Earth got blown up, and humanity becomes refugees in floating scrap colonies.
There's some shades of Battlestar Gakactica at play.

With Golarion gone the home of humanity (plus that of dwarves, halflings, orcs, etc) is gone. There's just a space station the size of either a city or island. Not much left. Shouldn't 99.9% of humanity be gone as well?

How much of humanity remains?
Is humanity in Starfinder an endangered species?

One of the selling points of Pathfinder Battles over the D&D minis by Wizkids is the dungeon dressings and other items that are not creatures. The the Book of the Damned, Rope Trick, and Hellgate.
I imagine the Paizo staff have a good idea what creatures have not been done, but neat ideas for noncreatures might be less obvious.

I'm wondering what objects, magic items, or spell effects other posters here might want to see as miniatures.

Flying carpet. Bonus points if the whorls and folds of the carpet of flying can hold a medium sized base.

Apparatus of the crab. This might be fun. And double as a Large crab, or a clockwork crab.

Spiritual weapon. This comes up in every game with a cleric: which square is the spiritual weapon in? Really, a flying sword would be handy to represent an animated object or dancing sword as well. Or the location of a sword, after a creature was disarmed.

Flaming sphere. Like the above, a miniature for the flaming sphere spell effect would be handy for tracking. Especially if it's smaller than the D&D variant from a decade ago.

Any other ideas?

Please cancel order #4049801

This order was placed on November 23rd. It has been roughly TEN business days since then (assuming the 24th and 25th were holidays).

While I am accustomed to a few days delay in shipping from Paizo, I have experienced multiple orders with unusually long delays (at least three off the top of my head); times where items have not shipped within the 1-7 business days window. This is also the second time in a row I have waited for physical items to ship with no notification of delay, where I am left wondering if my order was lost or forgotten.

It is doubtful I will order goods from Paizo.com again.
While I may continue to purchase Paizo and Pathfinder products, I will likely choose to order from businesses that can ship goods in a timely fashion.

I was looking at buying a book and some odds-and-ends during the summer sale and at check out the shipping cost took me by surprise.
Has Paizo changed shipping lately? I don't recall it being nearly as high in the past.

Checking my last order, I was charged less for a couple books and some minis than I'm being asked to pay now just for Horror Adventures.

The idea of Starfinder Society organized play has come up, well, every time James Sutter has spoken about Starfinder in public. But, it's hard because doing a full OP program requires doubling the efforts of the current OP timea, as they're hard at work on Pathfinder Society play.

So, the question is: how to allow and enable people to publicly play Starfinder and play characters shared between regions and tables.

I think the answer is the Adventure Path line.

PFS already partially sanctions AP volumes. Instead of just sanctioning single chapters of APS, sanction the entire line.
Design the adventures so the chapters are smaller, and can be condensed into five-hour play slots. So larger dungeons have breaks, there are fewer filler encounters, and the like.
Which also helps play outside of organized play, since the adventure is easily broken into sessions.
And could allow an AP volume to be written by 2-3 people, each handling separate chunks.

That way the organized play staff just need to get a player's guide to the campaign written, with character generation rules.

If there's interest, more staff can be added and original modules commissioned. Or, at the least, convention exclusives. But in the meantime, people can play and the game gets visibility.

Thoughts?

Golarion is missing and the universe has forgotten everything that occurred during that period of time! And the Starfinder Society has dedicated themselves to tracking down lost lore from the Gap, deducing what happened during the missing years, and discovering what happened to Golarion.

Except they never will.

If the Starfinders ever succeed, the campaign hook will be over. So they're doomed to fail. Predestined. Their mission is impossible and plot and reality will always prevent the Starfinders from actually succeeding at their purpose. Instead, the best they can hope for is minor mysteries and local lore.

It's an endless quest. A little like Star Trek Voyager. Whenever an alien or anomaly or technology is introduced that can conceivably get them home sooner, you know for a fact the attempt will fail. Because if they succeed the show is over. There's less drama as there's no real chance of success.
The One Armed Mn won't be caught, Bruce Banner won't find a cure, the Professor won't get them rescued from the island, the couple will remain "won't they", etc.

The idea of a central mystery works. As does disassociating Starfinder from Golarion so the setting doesn't just focus on the world we already know rather than the new. And it's reminiscent of the death of Aroden in Golarion. But unlike the Starfinders, the primary purpose of the Pathfinder Society isn't to find out how Aroden died. The Pathfinders can succeed and advance their goal meaningfully. But by tying the Starfinders to the unsolvable central mystery, the group is rendered ineffectual. They can only have lesser successes at best, and at worst are presented as ineffectual failures who accomplish nothing.

Pathfinder is a miniature based system. It's tricky to play without miniatures of tokens.
I doubt we'll see miniatures any times soon. Regular Pathfinder minis will work for many of the monsters and a few PCs, but not everything. Like robots, powered armour, the new races. Let alone ships.

So how about pawns? A Heroes & Monsters set and a Ships set.

Be easy to market not just to Starfinder players but anyone who wants to play a Science Fantasy game.

I recently got it in my head to compare the amount of content released by Paizo for Pathfinder (both PFRPG and 3.5e) and the content released by Wizards of the Coast for 3.0 and 3.5.

By my count (including Forgotten Realms material, but not adventures or the 3.5 reprints of the core rulebooks) WotC released 14,770 pages of material for 3e. Meanwhile, Paizo has released 13,665 pages (also not including adventures, or the reprint of the campaign setting).
This means that by the end of this year, there will be more Pathfinder RPG content than D&D 3e content!

While WotC produced content faster (seven years, from 2000 to 2007) Paizo is not that far behind in rate of release (nine years, from 2007 to 2016).

While WotC produced other content including the Eberron campaign setting and related products, Paizo has produced far more adventures. If we start including adventures, Pathfinder might have already well passed 3e...

I placed this order on October 8th, and it was meant to ship after 4-18 business days.
It's now been 24 business days.

It now says "Originally expected to ship in an unknown time frame Product(s) not in stock".

What happened? Why the delay?
Other than Occult Adventures, all the products appear to be in stock and are still purchasable on the store.

Did you sell my non-mint copy of Occult Adventures twice? Am I really being expected to wait until someone drops a copy of that book for my order to be fulfilled?
Given my order has been delayed indefinitely, should I not have been contacted?

The author and former Pathfinder Society agent Ailson Kindler is the Ustalavic Van Hellsing/ Bram Stoker/ Van Richten figure.

It's said she became an adventurer to avenge the death of her sister. Do we know how her sister died or when?

She's an interesting figure and there doesn't seem to be much lore on her...

I just ordered some maps and minis and found a cardboard flyer advertising a Paizo Kickstarter for metal dice.

Picture 1
Picture 2

http://ks.q-workshop.com/

Has anyone else seen this?

I've never had an easy time getting a grip on Nidal. The concept is funky and there's not much there to give an impression of what life is like in that nation. How the common person lives or what society is like.
But something else always bugged me about that, which I never realized until today.

The people of Nidal turned to Zon-Kuthon following the 1000 years of darkness caused by Earthfall.
Earthfall was –5293. The current year is 4715. Let's say Nidal made their pact as far after Earthfall as possible. That's still -4294.

The people of Nidal have been under the sway of the Umbral Court for over 9 thousand years.
In comparison, the oldest cities on Earth date to the 5300s BCE in Mesopotamia. That's 7000 years ago.

Nidal has been under the rule of the Midnight Lord for a hair under two millennium longer than all of recorded human history.
9000 years with no art or music under the rule the theocratic rule of a sadist god's clergy...

I've noticed the text in this PDF is a little funky, with invisible spaces in the middle of words.
It doesn't affect reading, but copying text results in funkiness (like a poor OCR scan of a book). And searching for certain phrases doesn't work because the PDF thinks there's a space included. And being able to quickly Ctrl-F and look for a key word or phrase is very handy.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Spoilers, obviously.

3/4 of the way through the Island of Empty Eyes.

A couple sessions ago they started the assault on Sumitha and the captain of the ship wandered into the room with the trapper alone and invisible, trusting on his stealth to save him.
He was killed. Kinda.
I totally wussed out since I felt bad effectively killing him off camera without any save. So instead he was suffocated to near death and saved. But the player agreed that this lacked sting so the captain fell into a vegetative state for an indeterminate amount of time.

From there, the party did well and I was just doing some filler stuff before getting to the party preparations. I'd planned on skipping the Sunken Shrine but had 30 minutes to kill before the end of the game, so plenty of time for a quick giant jellyfish.
Buuuuut... half the party failed their save against the symbol of insanity trap and went permanently insane. 45 minutes of PvP ensued and much craziness before the mad pirates were tied up and baleful polymorphed into quippers.
And the party is at least two levels from having the spellcasting to deal with it.

Not wanting to just send them to Port Peril to let some NPC spellcaster restore them, I threw out the legendary "Spring of Rejuvenation" that restores people to their youthful prime and removes ailments.

Now I just need a location for said spring. Ideas?

Dual Identity is the signature bit of the vigilante. It's the first real thing that Jason Bulmahn talks about in the Know Direction interview. It's what makes the class necessary, otherwise a single scrying spell would reveal the character's identity.

But how does it actually work?
Not the mechanics. The why behind the mechanics.

It's not a supernatural ability, but it can automatically defeat a spell. How does that work? What's the in-world justification for the mechanic?

The evangelist is in Inner Sea Gods starting on page 198. It's interesting because it's a 10 level prestige class but from level 2 onward you get all the class features of your existing class. It just adds power overtop in exchange for one weak level (and a so-so feat).

The vigilante really wants to be an everything class. It's a rogue with sneak attack (that deals less damage), an inquisitor (without judgement), a fighter (with lighter armour), and a magus (without spell strike). So much of the class is just not remarkable and just copies what other classes have to offer.
The only things unique to the vigilante are it's dual identity, some weak reputation features, and it's ability to surprise people pretty much once an encounter. Everything else feels like it's borrowed from another class.

The vigilante is trying hard to make itself fit into every role in the game, because the theme of the character is so broad. But this makes me wonder: is the vigilante *really* a class? Or just a really flexible prestige class?
I really feel the vigilante is being presented as a class because it's expected, because the other Ultimate books had a class.

The vigilante really wants to be the superhero type character. But what's a first level superhero? First level is the stuff that takes place before they don the costume, when they're just getting started. It's the first hour of Batman Begins, the first dozen episodes of Daredevil, when Spider-man is still trying to be a wrestler, and the like. They have to *earn* the costume.
This really makes the vigilante seem better suited to being a prestige class. The first 5-ish levels is training to become the hero.

I known prestige classes were awkward in 3.5e with their endless requirements. But Paizo has shown they can do better. This could have light pre-reqs - such as a vigilante themed feat - so anyone can get in. (Heck, Dual Identity could even be the feat.) It could even be 15 levels to really allow someone to be a vigilante for most of their career.

Thoughts?

Just a request/idea thread.

Invisible adventurers.
We've seen WizKids do "invisible" figures as variants for the D&D miniature line, which seems awesome. Invisible versions of few key inconics would be be super hand, even for people not playing those characters. They're a great visual reminder that a character is invisible but also where they are on the battlemap.

I'd also love to see large variants.
Similar or identical sculpts but sized up to large size, for use with enlarge person and such. After all, anyone who has played an enlarging creature knows the dissatisfaction of tacking a large base on a medium creature (almost as teeny tiny looking as the Heroes and Monsters troll) or swapping out their adventurer with a convenient ogre or giant.

There's always talk of suggestions for new APs but this forum doesn't get the same. Throwing some ideas out there and just curious what other people want.

A Test of the Starstone seems to be a popular favourite. It's so steeped in Golarion lore and it'd be a nice excuse to have a mythic adventure, getting more use out of that hardcover. And enough time has passed since Wrath of the Righteous to be able to do high level mythic well.
It'd be interesting to have someone "cheating" at the test, leading to a race through the cathedral. Or some divine intervention to prevent another Norgorber.

Lords of the Castle
A Kingmaker lite adventure. But instead of managing a kingdom and city they're just looking after a single castle.
One of the stories I've always enjoyed playing and running was adventurers taking control of a keep or fortress and making it their own. Where they have to fix the structure, defending the surrounding lands, get supplies, hire workers and support staff, and the like. It's a trope that's popped up in lots of video games (Might and Magic IV, Neverwinter Nights 2, DragonAge Origins: Awakenings, DragonAge Inquisition, etc), and I've seen it done well in TT RPGs.
Plus, it's a nice modular module. If the party gets hold of a castle the GM can just buy this module and drop it into their game.

Beyond the Grave
The post-TPK adventure.
The party has died and travels to Pharasma's Boneyard for judging when they are tasked by the Lady of Graves to investigate lost or stolen souls. An adventure through the planes with the greatest of rewards at the end: a second chance at life.
Another modular adventure because recovering from a TPK sucks, and it's neat to instead turn that into a story.

Those are my thoughts. What would you like to see?

I all over the Flip-Mat Classics line. Those cannot come out fast enough.

Is the special not included in this volume?

Creating a new character for PFS and I love the idea of the shield brawler. The Captain American fan in me, I guess.
But upon reading the shield brawler I have some question. I'm hoping there's some official clarifications that haven't made it to the FAQ.

1) Is the shield champion proficient with shields as weapons?
Normal brawlers are proficient with the close weapon group, so brawlers are proficient with shields as weapons but not as shields.
The shield champion changes proficiencies to:
A shield champion is proficient with all simple weapons. She is also proficient with light armor, and with bucklers, light shields, and heavy shields. This replaces the brawler's weapon and armor proficiencies.
It doesn't specify the shield proficiency as a weapon, so it would just be the armour proficiency. That means by RAW the brawler archetype that fights with a shield takes a non-proficiency penalty on attack rolls with shields. That doesn't seem right.

2) Are brawlers considered to have the Two-Weapon Fighting feat?
At 11th level the shield champion gains Shield Master as a bonus feat. However, they must meet the prerequisites. And one is a Two-Weapon Fighting.
However the class feature brawler's flurry says:
Starting at 2nd level, a brawler can make a brawler's flurry as a full-attack action. When doing so, a brawler has the Two-Weapon Fighting feat when attacking with any combination of unarmed strikes, weapons from the close fighter weapon group, or weapons with the “monk” special feature.
A brawler would get no benefit from a Two-Weapon Fighting as any time they attack with two weapons they gain the feat. But it doesn't say they gain the feat for meeting pre-requisites and they don't have it when not attacking or just making a single attack.

3) Does the brawler get its AC bonus when using a shield as a weapon?
The ability reads:
At 4th level, when a brawler wears light or no armor, she gains a +1 dodge bonus to AC and CMD. This bonus increases by 1 at 9th, 13th, and 18th levels. These bonuses to AC apply against touch attacks.
She loses these bonuses while immobilized or helpless, wearing medium or heavy armor, using a shield, or carrying a medium or heavy load.
It looks that by using a shield in any way causes them to lose the bonus, even if not gaining AC from it.

4) Does a thrown throwing shield with spikes apply its spike damage?
A throwing shield says:
Neither a shield's enhancement bonus to AC nor its shield spikes apply on your attack or damage rolls.
But the throw shield ability says:
The thrown shield deals the same damage as a shield bash, and any damage increases from shield spikes apply to this attack.
Which is the specific in this case?

A local convention is planning on running Legacy of the Stonelords in a few months, but the local PFS crew haven't played much of Season 5.

What are the "Must Play" modules of season 5 related to the Sky Citadel?

Thoughts from the community?

Things look pretty comparable to me on a glance.
The bloodrager seems to be a little bad-A at level 1 but that levels off. And the warpriest doesn't seem as bad as the playtest.

A miniature set I wouldn't mind seeing an "Iconics revisited" with the iconics of later sets repainted and re-released.

People love the iconics, and they often quickly sell out in the singles store.
Many are now unavailable online, and no one is going to buy a case just for an Amiri or Lini. (Plus, a couple of the paint jobs on a few were shakey, so it's be a chance for WizKids to show off their stuff. )
The sculpts are already done. The molds have been made. And the paint masters exist, and just need tweaking: it should be fairly cheap compares to new figures.

This comes up again and again. The refrain that boxed sets are too prices is repeated every time someone discusses the fall of TSR or asks about a follow-up to the Beginner Box.
But why? Board games seem to have no problem doing boxes. Where does the high price come from?

Fort Inevitable is listed as a LE small town with a population of 960.
Thornkeep is listed as a CN small town with a population of 630.

There are 330 more people in Fort Inevitable than Thornkeep.
But here are maps of the two towns:
Fort Inevitable
Thornkeep

Are there just a heck of a lot of extra buildings in Thornkeep?

I'll be at GenCon this summer and play some PFS at home, so I have a couple characters of higher levels.
I'll be playing with a friend who doesn't play much Pathfinder Society, save at conventions, and likely only has a level 1 character.

Could he use one of the provided higher level pregens to play at a higher level table of the special, such as the level 7 pregen?
Or are the higher level pregens just for when you show up at a games and the only slot is higher level?

I'm running an adventure where there'll be a scroll case designed like a combination bicycle lock or a cryptix from Da Vinci Code.
I'd like to expand this element of the adventure into a full blown puzzle for my players.

The setting is some Thassilonian ruins, so the puzzle should use elements of that. I was thinking about printing the Thassilonian runes from Community Use pack on thin strips of paper and calling that a 22-character alphabet (only 22 characters, so maybe no "C" or "X"). Maybe wrapping the strips around a poster tube to make a fun physical prop. So the party has to “solve” the scroll tube. But…

a) I need a “word”
b) I need a riddle that might relate to Thassilon.

Any ideas?

I'm dissatisfied with the scroll case “puzzle” for the Black Monk. It’s basically just a series of skill checks or some spells/smashing for a party without a rogue. I have some players that enjoy a good puzzle and I’d like to engage them somehow.

It’s designed like a combination bicycle lock/ cryptix from Da Vinci Code. I was thinking about printing the Thassilonian runes from Community Use pack on thin strips of paper and calling that a 22-character alphabet. Maybe wrapping the strips around a poster tube to make a fun physical prop. So the party has to “solve” the scroll tube. But…

a) I need a “word”
b) I need a riddle that might relate to Thassilon.

Any ideas?

The goddess features heavily in parts 1-5, culminating with the Scribbler. She's the primary goddess worshiped by most of the bad guys so far: Elyrium, Nualia, the Kreegs, and more. In the Scribbler section it even implies she has plans for the Varisian coast.

Then she just kinda goes away.

Was she just a big red herring for the Runelords? Does she have ties with Thassilon I've missed?

As per the title: if I want to, can I have my RPG Superstar entry published elsewhere?

The rules of the contest say: All entries become the property of Paizo Publishing, LLC.
The above seems pretty clear cut, but often appears in Terms & Conditions and exists for places such as message boards, so companies are not sued for incorporating ideas posting on forums (or releasing content very similar to ideas posted on forums).
So it seems like the standard protection for Paizo, in the event they publish an item similar to a submission in six months.

Does that mean they own it now and forever even if they never look twice at it again?
Is there a policy or precedent for people using their submissions elsewhere?
Is there a way to circumvent this and site RPG Superstar/ Paizo.com as an OGL source?

I ask because a do a webcomic/ blog (obligatory link) and post occasional RPG content. I was considering posting some magic items in the future, and would like to use my RPG Superstar item - which I like even if no one else did. ;)
But I'd rather not break contest rules.

I had a friend make a mini for Black Magga and my party skipped that fight.
clicky

I described the situation, the flooding and overflowing river. And my party shrugged and said "let's go to the dam and kill those ogres before they weaken the dam any more."
They neared the dam and so I had Black Magga knocked out of Storval before their eyes and rush downriver towards the town. They shrugged and said "We'll never reach the town in time. They're on their own."

Crud.

The session ended and we scheduled the next game. And one of my players was called away for work and had to cancel on me. No problem, rule of the table is that we run with three and the fourth is ghosted and run by myself or someone else. Or they vanish.

But then another idea hit. The Black Arrows. There were two left and Shalelu. The players had even suggested the Black Arrows should head to town.
So I levelled up the NPCs (and gave them classes from the Advanced Class Guide because... why not?) and ran the encounters with them. Everyone took a random PC and tried something different.
It even allowed me an opportunity to add the nymph ghost encounter. Because, let's face it, that's in the opposite direction of the story.

The players got to make their choice and I still got to railroad them to the story. Everyone wins!

I'm staring at the exact same combination I just had. The only difference is they flipped sides.
It seems unfair to up vote an item twice in a row because it's paired against the same SKR-advice-ignoring item twice.