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So I love the new iconic, Korakai. Awesome background, can't wait to play him next time I need a pregen in PFS. But something struck me that's always a bit jarring about using most of the iconics as PFS pregens - even though he grows up in Absalom, there's no mention of any connection to the society. As far as I'm aware only Ezren and Fumbus specifically have anything connecting them to the society. Are there any other published bits of lore / background that explain how Kyra, Valeros, Amri and the others ended up as Pathfinders?
I'm still getting used to the rules for exploration mode. Looking for advice please. What official exploration mode actions are being done by the example characters below? What would they use for initiative if a fight did start here? -------------------------------------------------------------
Part 1 Anna, the rogue, attempts to sneak into the village to see if any goblins or other threats are obviously visible without drawing attention to the party. The rest of the party wait out of sight, watching from the treeline. Anna plans to either sneak back to the party to report back or if spotted, run like hell back to them. Part 2 Anna comes back reporting no obvious active enemies but did hear some sounds of movement so the party approach the village warily Balin the paladin takes the lead, weapons at the ready, looking out for goblins as he advances. Anna starts peeking into each house they pass, looking for signs of goblins, abandoned valuables or possible traps. Dwalin the druid examines tracks in the village and/or looks for anything that may have been dropped as clues of what happened Charlie the ranger is worried about ambushers, especially someone jumping on Dwallin while he's staring at the ground. Charlie takes out his crossbow and loads it. He wants to 'cover' Dwallin as he pokes about. If he was in an encounter he would like to ready to shoot anything attacking Dwallin but he's not sure how to do this in exploration mode.
With a lot of spells reduced in duration (presumably with the mindset that these are meant to be single encounter buffs), far fewer spells have much application outside of combat now. Given exploration and downtime are more formal modes now, I'd love to see more spells that are designed to use in those modes - e.g. travel, investigation, stealth or even crafting things that aren't intended for use in combat but have more interaction with the exploration rules. I've always enjoyed having the option to adjust my wizard or druid's focus to something other than combat.
Has anyone had experience running or playing in a campaign that had the commonplace firearms option? If so
- did you do anything for gunslingers and/or firearm based archetypes to balance the fact they have exotic weapon proficiency in weapons that are now considered martial? - did any advanced firearms show up? Thinking about a homebrew setting with a 17th century swashbuckling theme and looking to represent early firearms being pretty common (but no advanced firearms)
I see a fair number of comments that a) many characters will become very dependent on a single magical weapon because of how big an impact the extra damage dice have b) when it comes to attacking a monster with a weapon, there isn't a big enough difference between martial classes, classes like cleric/bard and classes like wizard and sorcerer I worry (a) will mean that fighters don't get the promised ability to be effective with a variety of weapons and swap them around based on situation. (b) leads to spells being painfully dialed down because everyone has a full BAB now. (a) also leads to the potential feeling that the hero is the magic sword, not the person wielding it Which gave me an idea - how would people feel if the effects of magic weapons and proficiency swapped? I.e. your weapon proficiency levels lead to extra damage and magical plusses add to the to hit? Obviously the levels you got them might need to be tinkered with for balance
A quite common situation in groups I've played and reffed. How does it work (or not) in PF2? Imagine one character - let's call him Pete the Pointman who is good at stealth and perception type skills. Pete loves to creep ahead of the party, look around for any obvious enemies or hazards and then creep back to report what he's found. He just loves it when he finds a bunch of monsters ahead and let the party choose between trying traveling another way to evade them or having plenty of warning to cast their buff spells before charging in. Pete's party are pretty patient with him, because he's good at his job - they are happy to wait for a few minutes while he does his thing, or let him travel a distance ahead of them when traveling through the wilderness. Now for 2nd Ed, I have some questions 1) How does Pete describe what he is trying to do in exploration mode? 2) How is that affected if the rest of the party genuinely are willing to wait while Pete does his thing 3) If we are looking at say 5th level - what's the best build for Pete to take? He doesn't mind building a rogue or a ranger or something else, so long as he can do his thing. 4) Based on 1,2 & 3 what are the odds him successfully reconnoitering CR5 encounters without being spotted? I must stress Pete's objective is just to make the party aware of the monsters before the monsters become aware of the party - he's not trying to get into perfect ambush position or go past them. PS It took about 5 goes to pick a title for this thread because so many relevant words have been tied up to have specific in game meanings...
Honestly curious on this. One little detail we spotted was that rangers are not trained in shield use. Same goes for barbarians. Druids, clerics and bards all get shield use - surely these classes are less martially focused than rangers and barbarians (especially now bards are full casters and rangers don't have magic)? I know its a small thing and I'm not even a big ranger player but I would really love to know what the reasoning for this was please?
In amoung all the excitement about what's in the playtest rules I think there is something that needs to be said. Well done and thank-you to Paizo's IT folks for how smoothly this went technically. We were all itching to get our hands on the PDF the moment it was available, there was huge buzz around this, the downloads are available for free and are pretty chunky. I think they deserve a lot of respect for being able to handle a huge spike in demand to let us all get access to copies today!
I love that bastard swords are no longer exotic weapons, but noticed one weird thing in the weapons table already. Daggers, shortswords, longswords and greatswords are all versatile between slashing and piercing. Bastard swords can swap between 1 and 2 hands but only do piercing. Seems a bit odd when all the other swords of the same basic shape do both. If its a balance thing and they had to be only one, I would have thought they are more commonly slashing than piercing?
I was looking at the feat 'Escape Route' as a teamwork feat for my inquisitor and wondered how it actually worked with solo tactics. Escape route:
You have trained to watch your allies’ backs, covering them as they make tactical withdraws. Prerequisite: none Benefit: An ally who also has this feat provokes no attacks of opportunity for moving through squares adjacent to you or within your space. Solo Tactics:
At 3rd level, all of the inquisitor’s allies are treated as if they possessed the same teamwork feats as the inquisitor for the purpose of determining whether the inquisitor receives a bonus from her teamwork feats. Her allies do not receive any bonuses from these feats unless they actually possess the feats themselves. The allies’ positioning and actions must still meet the prerequisites listed in the teamwork feat for the inquisitor to receive the listed bonus. Assuming my allies don't have the feat, but I use solo tactics, does this mean ?
I'm scheduled to play Gallows of Madness at an upcoming con. Its in PFS mode but given it starts at 1st level I decided to create a new character that comes from the area it takes place (Isger). Will probably use a GM credit to give a little starting cash but still level 1. Looking at the Isger background, I loved the idea of the orphans of the Goblinblood Wars being raised by the Asomedean nuns - the Sisters of the Golden Erinyes (got to have loads of background angst in there about a basically good person being given a very dark religious upbringing) So young human orphan Lynette has the 'Isgeri Orphan' trait and has ended up worshipping Asomedeus & joining the Sisters by default. She is LN in alignment. She really hates goblins & hobgoblins because them killing her family and putting her in the orphanage to start with. At this point I realised I know nothing about how to build a decent monk. Especially with the many many archetypes out there. How would you go about building this character from here? I'm torn between monk / unchained monk / sacred fist warpriest but outside options are staff magus (lots of evil based spells) or inquisitor. Mainly looking to be a melee type. Any suggestions on how to build the stats much appreciated!
I was really keen on everything about Starfinder in the run up to its launch, but somehow, whenever I try looking at the books and trying to come up with character concepts for Starfinder society, everything leaves me flat. It feels like the reverse of flicking through Pathfinder content - there just about every time I flick through a player companion or rulebook I end up with yet another character concept I'm keen to get a chance to play. I think its just been me getting the wrong idea about a few classes and then disappointed when I looked into them that I can't really do what I wanted. That's not the games fault, just me wrong assumptions and then feeling meh when it doesn't work. Examples:
1) Idea: prior to the game I really wanted to play an Android Solarian. The idea of a being with originally artificial intelligence being a supernatural warrior type really appealed. In Practice: Solarian really needs CHA along with many other stats. Android gets penalty to it, really doesn't seem viable. OK, lets try something else... 2) Idea: sneaky sniper type. Heard good things about the operative. Enjoyed how trick attack worked in the demo. Wanted to play someone good at infiltration and getting to a good vantage point to give his buddies covering fire whilst hidden. In Practice: While operatives get sniper weapons, and can get debilitating shot, there's no way to get trick attack damage on them. It seems operatives are meant to be up close with small arms or melee weapons. Not what I wanted, move on... 3) Dwarf Mechanic: Bit stereotypical but a dwarf that's really good with machinery could be fun in a setting with lots of tech stuff - maybe he gets really angry with people who start breaking it like an enraged armed tech support guy. In Practice: Nope - Dwarves not allowed in SFS. Sadly many of the new races either leave me entirely cold (Lashuntas - the deely boppers really put me off, Vesk - too stereotypically warlike) or I just not have enough of a feel for their roleplay yet to get into them (Kasathas, Shirren). Try something else... 4) Mystical Android attempt 2. Ok what could be more mystical than a mystic. Besides they are the only real healers and that always seems to be needed. I can get into being an android cleric type. In Practice: Well a healer mystic could be like a cleric but... you have 6th level casting not 9th. Lost the flexibility of prepared spells for instead knowing a very small list. You get less channeling and it comes off the same key resource you use to not die. I get it that this is not a cleric class, but I can't see what they've gained in return for these trade offs apart from some skill points. Leaves me feeling this would be very watered down. Running out of ideas...
Anyway - that all may seem a bit ranty. I know this is a different game and coming at it from a Pathfinder mindset is getting me disappointed, but I'm struggling to come up with something that both works and feels exciting to roleplay. So - can anyone share some ideas on Starfinder characters that they have enjoyed playing and what makes them fun - either or both in terms of flavour and how they work on the tabletop? I really want to love this game, I just haven't found anything that clicks yet
Looking at a ninja with throwing weapons, there are several ways to potentially get extra attacks in a full attack. Two weapon fighting (this does seem to allow a thrown weapon in each hand unless I misread it) Rapid shot The ninja's 2nd level power to spend 1 ki for an extra attack Flurry of stars ninja talent for 2 extra shuriken Now I realise you are racking up the penalties to hit at a great rate, but do these all stack? E.g 8th level ninja has BAB +6, so base attacks +6/+1. Lets assume +3 from dex -> +9/+9/+4 Add TWF to throw a shuriken with each hand -> +7/+7/+2 Add Rapid shot -> +5/+5/+5/+0 1 ki point for extra attack -> +5/+5/+5/+5/+0 1 ki point for flurry of stars -> +3/+3/+3/+3/+3/+3/-2 Now obviously this requires being 10 feet from an opponent with terrible AC to be any use, but does it actually work to stack up that many attacks?
The card building tool and service at http://www.drivethrucards.com/builder/pathfinder is a fantastic tool - really great thing for the game that you can do this and order cards, I love it. My challenge is - where to get the art to use making the cards? Can anyone recommend places to buy art under terms that would include legally using it in the card builder? (e.g. sites selling stock art and/or artists prepared to license their work for use in this way)
If you and your friends were planning to start a new group of PFS characters to play together and by some miracle you could persuade them all on what to play, what classes / builds would you put in your dream team of 4 - 6 characters? Alternatively, thinking about your current favourite character - who are they and what would you most like see sitting down to the table with them if you could pick all the other slots? I ask this because I've seen a fair amount of posts on what's considered sub-optimal or impractical for society play (or just boring to be at the table with) and was curious what players actually were keen to see instead.
My daring champion cavalier just leveled up in our skull & shackles game and got another free teamwork feat (& greater tactician) Looking down the list though I'm struggling to find one that is much use to our group, let alone fun to have. The rest of the party is a dwarf alchemist, a ratfolk gunslinger & a druid who loves the snowball spell (along with his sabertooth tiger companion). All of the other PCs are about as keen on entering melee as they are in poking themselves in the eye with a sharp stick. We all have the stealth synergy feat, which has proved awesome. However finding teamwork feats to give out with tactician is proving a challenge. The teamwork feats seem to fall into several buckets 1) Surprise round / initiative / flat footed related stuff - not much good with tactician.
I'm hoping I've missed some good teamwork feats - any suggestions please? Doesn't need to be powerful - just interesting or useful in more than just a corner case.
So I have 8 players for this AP. I know that's pretty crazy but after years of struggling to get 3 players at our table I was determined not to turn anyone away after PFS introduced us to a whole lot more local players. Anyway - any tips or thoughts on how to scale up the encounters appropriately? Adding more minions is probably the simple way for many encounters, guess I'm going to need a variety of things for the duration of the campaign They are currently halfway through part 2 of book 1 (so about to go into the basement of the plague house)
I often hear / see comments about how you really always should have A B or C - I'm curious how much of a consensus there is around what you would expect a pathfinder to be carrying around A) When keeping your PFS character equipped, what do you regard as essentials (or just most useful) in the way of consumable items, mundane equipment or even slotless items? B) What % of your money do you normally spend on consumable stuff as opposed to permanent items? C) How much does those change for a melee character vs a caster or ranged type?
I have several PFS character concepts I’d love to start with a clear idea of the character and their background but far less concept of what actual class they would be! How would you build these ideas? Any suggestions very welcome! 1) Boglor the Uncomplaining
Boglor found himself recently unemployed after some Pathfinders broke into his latest master’s lair and slew the master. To his surprise & thanks to their maxed out diplomacy skills he found himself helping them disarm the late master’s doomsday ritual. This was a massive blot on his resume as a henchman. Realising a career change was needed, he got recruited by the Pathfinders by talking to one more interested in ticking a box on his faction goal sheet than conducting a rigorous interview. He’s happy to take on all the messy, smelly jobs that many society members turn their nose up at. 2) Zagim, the Ifrit Chef
Zagim joined the Pathfinders to explore culinary opportunities – seeking out new animals and vegetables to cook, new herbs, recipes and most especially spices from all about the world. Wherever the Society sends him he frequently seeks out a day job as a cook to learn the local styles – sadly this has left behind a trail of burned out tavern kitchens and traumatised customers. However his ‘Home Cooked City of Brass style Curry’ briefly achieved a legendary status as a test of manhood in the Land of the Linnorm Kings. Zagim hopes to one day bring his skills to the Hold of Belkzen where he dreams the orcs might be more appreciative customers. The Society sometimes finds more direct applications for Zagim’s knack for burning and chopping things however. 3) Able-sea-orc Lincol
4) Little Xemestra
Valdir Casksplitter - dwarf inquisitor of Caiden Caylen, has a dilemma. (he's level 6, sanctified slayer archetype) Valdir is an archer and uses a heavy repeating crossbow as it fits with his dwarven heritage (and his inspiration being Varric from Dragon Age). His problem is that as he has risen in level, rapid shot, prevalence of haste and soon iterative attacks mean he’s taking 3-4 shots per round on a full attack & the 5 bolt clip doesn’t last very long at all any more. With a +1 str modifier, a composite longbow would do just as much damage and no reloading issues, so would be the obvious alternative. Trouble is it doesn’t feel very dwarven. Are there any feats, spells, magic item properties I can use to keep the rate of fire comparable to changing to a bow without the loss of flavour (& without being prohibitively expensive)?
For PFS play, when playing a character that doesn't have a vast amount of skill points to spend, is it generally more fun to a) Spread the points around - still have a reasonable number of skills but with a lower number of ranks in each OR b) Concentrate - accept you can only get a decent bonus in 2-3 skills and just ignore the others. My instinct as a player and in terms of what makes in-character sense would be to go for (a) as that seems to represent a more rounded character. However I'm concious that as tiers / levels rise, DCs go up seemingly quite rapidly, especially when it comes to the various subsystems. Does that mean that a low skill becomes much the same as no skill and its better off concentrating on a tiny number to at least stay involved with those?
Are all bloodline powers only active when bloodraging? E.g. Angelic Attacks for someone with celestial bloodline? The descriptions at the start of each bloodline generally imply all the abilities are only gained when in bloodrage but that text varies a bit from bloodline to bloodline & the way some of the individual abilities say 'while blood raging gain x' or 'x happens' implies maybe that isn't always the case. My assumption is the answer is yes, but the way herolab* summarised it made me wonder if I was reading it right Julian *before a several people jump in to explain to me that herolab isn't an official rules source - I know, that's why I'm asking here - it just highlighted that maybe there might be a different interpretation*
I'm planning to GM some PFS sessions for a small local group of players, probably something like monthly. Looking for some advice on how a module like Daughters of Fury that has three sections of sanctioned content works in terms of chronicle sheets and especially how the rules on characters being tied to the 'event' work. A full day session could probably complete one of the three sanctioned content parts of the module, but there's no way we'll finish the whole book in one sitting. Hopefully we'd achieve part 1 in the first session and come back next month to do part 2. The rules on 'multi-session adventures' could be read in a couple of ways so wanted to check I had this right. As I read it, the characters are tied into the sanctioned content section and can't play other characters until they have finished that chapter & receive the chronicle sheet for that part. They could play other PFS scenarios in between say part 1 & part 2 or between part 2 & part 3, just not while they are in the middle of a chapter. Is that interpretation correct? How does that change if different players join for part 2 / 3 ? How does that change if you are letting the players play non-PFS characters and applying the credit as if playing a pregen? All advice gratefully received.
Recent adventure path experience has seemed to involve a lot of incidents the party finding various cool & interesting magical weapons from the villains they defeat, that in the grand tradition of fantasy literature and heroic sagas, generally end up being stuffed in a bag of holding until the next visit to the 'pre-owned' magic weapons dealer. example:
Such as when Gandalf sells Glamdring to a shifty dwarf merchant because a +Int headband would be much more use to him. I'm sure that happens in somewhere in The Two Towers... Now in some cases, this could be attributed to the weapons often being unusual sizes, being exotic weapons or the like that very few characters are likely to be able to use without penalty. spoiler:
(looking at you, Rise of the Runelords) But even when the module hands out perfectly reasonable stuff (e.g. a +1 cutlass) our party ended up turning it down because variously;
Even a vanilla human fighter is likely to end up with weapon specialization. So I was wondering - what would be the best class/archetype/multi-class for a melee character who wanted to have the most chance of being able to use whatever weapon turned up in the treasure? So not having any feats or abilities tied to a specific weapon or weapon group, able to use the widest possible range of weapons (e.g. marital & monk weapons). Are there any ways to get flexible access to exotic weapon proficiency and swap it around depending on what you find? Suggestions greatly welcomed.
So, I'm playing a rogue in skull and shackles, the captain of the fearsome ship Nightstorm. I'm looking for advice to keep him fun to play stat wise. We're towards the end of module 2. Our party are as follows
The party's big plus is that all members have low light or dark vision and we all took stealth synergy teamwork feat at 3rd. This has proved great fun in play if driving the ref to despair that the least stealthy member of the party is the tiger - many encounters have been murdered in their beds or just walked straight past in the night. The other party oddity is no one can use a medium size martial weapon - based on previous APs I think we all assumed anything that turned up would be dog slicers or khopeshes or large sized or similarly flavorful but exotic stuff. Seeing a +1 cutlass was a mystifying event. Anyway, it was all going great for module 1 & I was able to have fun doing loads. Wormwood mutiny spoilers:
Sneaking around the boat, doing the various chores, seducing Sandara Quinn, winning over the crew, climbing all over the place thanks to my ninja talent, even decking Plugg single handed at level 2 by sneaking out at night, climbing around the back of the ship, breaking the window and fighting him in an unlit cabin. All fantastic fun and really pulling my weight for the party. For the second module things haven't been going so well, not unrelated to going up in level I'm sure. Naval combat doesn't really suit a mainly melee rogue - not having the highest profession sailor, long range spells or exotic weapon proficiency in siege engines means there's not a lot to do as ships close. When it does come to boarding, the rest of the party understandably generally want to stay at range. The gunslinger and alchemist will occasionally join melee if asked nicely but are really only doing it as a favour to me. The druid's tiger gets sent in occasionally but he understandably doesn't want to send him into the middle of aoe spells and bombs or onto another ship almost alone. Jumping into the enemy ship's rigging alone often lets me get the drop on one enemy but then become target #1 for the opposition simply because they can reach me. Sea monsters are an even bigger headache - my only way to get meaningfully involved is to jump into the sea with them which is hardly ideal. I have taken a couple of stat choices to allow sniping with a crossbow, but 1 shot every other round isn't that hot and more importantly hardly fits the image of a daring pirate captain (at least not in front of the crew) Fever Sea spoilers:
So after a series of close calls, repeatedly ending a fight unconscious and close to death, often due to a single crit, we come to the canopy creeper. I manage to hack out of the tendrils and get to the middle of it, flanking with the tiger - finally a chance to shine again! It crits and one shot kills me before I strike a blow... The party retreat from the fight and drag my corpse back to the ship, with the intent of sailing off in search of raise dead. Seeing all the problems above I consider saying that for whatever IC reason the dead spirit isn't willing to accept a restore life as a good break to change to a new character. My beloved Sandara guilt trips me with speak with dead questions into to saying yes, alright, I'll come back. We return in search of revenge, the druid loading up on snowball spells and the alchemist stocks up on defoliant and liquid ice that he mixes together with an item. Fight number two goes much better and the horror is frozen to death. In it I've cut someone out of creepers once and thrown a dagger for a mighty 1 point of damage. The gunslinger & look at each sympathetically (he got to do about 10 pts) on the plus side, we just got almost enough xp to take us to level 7
So... I'm looking for advice please - on what that might get me back in the game and able to get involved more without being squished all the time - what to take for the next few levels as (multiclasses, feats?), items to spend my plunder on, tactics to try. I do ask though
My current stats:
Finn - level 6 dhamphir unchained rogue Str 11 Dex 19 Con 10 Int 10 Wis 10 Cha 17 Feats/Traits - Expert Sniper (trying to do something at range), Natural Charmer (oddly seems to negate itself 'I roll a 10 and get diplomacy check of 25 seems to get better response from friendly NPCs than 'I take time to apply my charm and get 35 automatically' - the fact I'm not making a roll may be having a subconscious effect on the GM, Stealth Synergy, Two Weapon Fighting, Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus (shortsword), Wall Climber, Fangs (useless, never bitten anyone) Skills - Stealth, Perception, Disable Device, Diplomacy, UMD maxed out, broad spread of other skills. Stealth skill unlock for sniping. AC 20, Hp 33 (I know), normal attacks - two shortswords at +8/+8 D6 +5 (2 offhand) + 3d6 sneak or light crossbow at +9 / D8 + 3d6 sneak
Any advice and pointers much appreciated Thanks for reading all this Julian TLDR - level 6 unchained rogue seeks stat advice that isn't 'play another character' |