The party I ran this for had a pretty easy time with Krune to begin with as they disabled all the runes (the party had a wizard with enough knowledge to automatically know exactly how to), and got past the Lashmistress so fast that (combined with a high roll for Krune's resurrection time) they were able to buff up, fully heal and start right next to Krune's resurrection square. And they had figured out just the right things to do. First thing of all, they beat him in initiative and slapped him with a dimensional anchor that ate his contingency. He was able to teleport away with quickened dimension door, and got away a maximized empowered cloudkill to cover himself, but any later attempts to cast nasty offensive spells were defeated by readied attacks against spellcasting - probably the best defense against lone casters. In the end, his undoing was a readied fireball that fizzled his casting of maximized empowered horrid wilting. Lessons learned? You know you are up against an incredibly powerful conjurer in this scenario. That enables a lot of preparation (without any real metagaming), which my players did to good effect. Combine that with smart tactics against wizards, and it's not that difficult. The characters were reasonably optimized but mostly not really min-maxed, so I don't see that as necessary. Of course, it did help that three of these PCs played together already in their very first scenario nearly two years ago, and all six were at 32 XP before this one. Today, I'm going to start running Eyes of the Ten for five of them.
It looks like we can celebrate the independence day of Finland by announcing the winners of our little "race" to three GM stars. VC Jukka Särkijärvi and a GM known as Deussu on these boards, both PFS actives who have been around since Season 0, are the first in Finland to have reached 3-star status. Apparently, Jukka beat Deussu to it by the tiny margin of a single day. I, alas, am trailing them by some ten scenarios, so my runner-up's prize is to be able to congratulate them for the achievement. Keep it up - next stop: four stars! :)
Most alcoholic drinks, I believe, got started as a way to preserve drinking water. Stronger drinks like wine are just easier to store as you get more alcohol in the same volume. The wine would typically then be diluted with plenty of water to make stuff that was just strong enough to kill off the germs. In fact, I recall hearing of an ancient Greek text complaining about the terrible habits of the "barbarians" who drink wine undiluted in the harbor.
Not that I run many games for kids, but if this ever occurred to me, I'd explain the above and, if that doesn't work, give the players a strong hint that they might be in need of reevaluating their moral standards if they're offended about their characters receiving some alcohol while on the way to kill some people.
One of the players in my area routinely threatens to just quit the scenario before the last encounter, boasting that he will get all the same credit as everyone else. If there ever was a violation of the "don't be a jerk" rule, it's here. Tell him that if he quits for that reason, he's not welcome to play in your table ever again. Also inform your local Venture Officer and he will likely pass on the information to other GMs in the area.
That said, how about re-listing the unavailable resources from the Core Rulebook on the Additional Resources page, for the convenience of finding everything in the same place? This sounds like a one-time addition that doesn't require much maintenance later, so it wouldn't take too much work, either.
Greetings! VC Särkijärvi has, in his wisdom, designated me as the Venture Lieutenant for the Helsinki metropolitan area. If you live in or near, or plan to visit, the Helsinki area and are interested in playing or GMing Pathfinder Society, contact me at PFSHelsinki@gmail.com. I'm hardly the sort of PFS veteran as Jukka (with his Pathfinder number less than 2000 and all): I only started playing last August, but the great majority of my RPG gaming history has been 3.0, 3.5 and Pathfinder. Since last Fall, I've organized things together with the local veterans and some other enthusiastic newbies to revive the local Pathfinder Society scene around Helsinki. I'm happy to say we have found some success, and I plan to write something shortly on these boards about the experience we had on starting PFS here, because others trying to start their local Society might find it useful. I'm also one of the four head organizers for this year's Ropecon, the biggest Nordic gaming convention. More about this in a later thread, hopefully. In real life (if you can call it that), I'm working on a PhD in atmospheric science.
The Guide doesn't need to say that, because they don't clear themselves alone, as such. Those diseases that deal ability damage that is not life threatening (i.e. non-Con damage) are resolved at the end of the scenario, just like the life-threatening (Con damage) ones. The GM and the PCs take the in-game time to deal with the disease at the end of the scenario. The only difference is that the characters have some probability to die from the diseases that deal Con damage, so they have to be resolved roll by roll. In contrast, non-life-threatening diseases are cured with certainty, given enough saving throws. It could take many rolls and so a lot of time (a disease might require two consecutive rolls of 20, in which case the average recovery time is 400 days). But eventually, it must happen, and the recovery time has no game mechanical effect, so nothing is lost if the GM and the player just omit those (completely pointless) rolls and declare that the character recovered eventually. Of course, if there's time to roll a lot of dice, it could be fun RP to find out how long the PC took to recover. Help from a computer dice roller might be useful if a lot of rolls are needed. The conditions that should remain in the "Conditions gained" box are those that are not potentially fatal, do not cure with time, and that the PC doesn't remove for some reason. For example, it could happen that a killed PC has the gold/PP for raise dead, but not for getting rid of the permanent negative levels. In that case, those negative levels would carry over to the next scenario, where that PC would presumably try to earn the gold needed to remove them.
I ran this today, tier 4-5. Lots of fun and the players liked the setting and the mechanic. Unfortunately, it was too easy for the party of six. The PCs can get more defense points with a big party, which means that they will face smaller groups of enemies AND have a bigger party against them. This "double dip" mechanic probably played a big part in determining the difficulty. I'm looking forward to running this to a party of four. Also, they rolled over the owlbear by dropping it before it got off its first full attack. What a shame. Even with the problems mentioned above, it's a worthy conclusion to the Quest for Perfection series. More scenarios with interesting mechanics and a "special" feel like this, please!
I tend to run games as written. That said, I do allow creative solutions for players. It's just fun to succeed in an creative, interesting and/or epic way. I tend to be a bit stricter with faction missions, but I allow alternative solutions if that approach would clearly achieve the mission objective, or if the player gives a very good reasoning for using an alternative skill. I also adjust the NPC tactics with respect to the situation, especially if the PCs adopt unexpected tactics that need to be responded to. Generally, I try to form a picture of the motives and intentions of the NPC and figure out why they were given such tactics, then apply that. For example, if an NPC is not willing to fight to the death, I will not have him charge headlong into a group of PCs even if that would actually be tactically advantageous. I use NPC intelligence to some degree to determine how sophisticated their tactics are and how much they exploit the PCs (apparent) weaknesses. I'm generally against any GM adjustments to the difficulty level of encounters in organized play (in home games, anything goes). Parties should occasionally meet encounters that are easy because the PCs' abilities worked well against the encounter, and conversely to have a hard time with some NPCs that could counter those abilities. If the encounters are run as written instead of adjusting for party level, the players can genuinely affect their chances of success and survival with the choices they make when building their characters. Even if the GM is perfect and never misadjusts encounters, such adjustments make the effects of character-build decisions illusionary at best (and, as Jiggy said, they promote boring characters). And besides, perfect GMs cannot even exist as long as there are random factors in the game. Any GM increase of encounter difficulty inevitably increases the probability of PC loss of gold, resources, health or life (not necessarily in that order) through a combination of increased difficulty and unlucky rolls. It's one of the greatest advantages of organized play that a player can take his character to the table of any GM, anywhere. It's fun for the players as it allows them to adventure with different people and GMs and see different styles of play in action (thanks, Toronto Pathfinders, for letting me visit playing a character that has had all his other sessions on the other side of the Atlantic!). To encourage this, I think a player should have a right to expect a fair treatment regardless of the GM they're playing with. RAW (within reason) provides a groundwork for that. tl;dr: If a player has a dead character because of the written encounter mechanics, tough luck. If the PC ends up dead because the GM fudged the rules (even if bad luck and player ineptness are additional factors), the player has every right to be pissed about it. |
