KenpoGMBrian's page

@Addrhman, the google sheet link is not working for me. Great idea, thanks either way.

Magic in the masks?
I would love to understand what the AP KM creator's intentions were with how powerful the masks were intended to be after creation at the Masking Ceremony in Tireless Hall Chapter 2 of SOT, KM. Was it the creative team's intention to allow adventurers to pick from the Magical masks in the Adventure toolbox on page 73, and if so what levels?

Was it the author's intention to have the masks remain unmagical unless students transferred stuff from other masks that were found, to leave it wide open to GMs to grow the masks in power as the students grow, or to use the relic system in the Gamemastery Guide?

As a new GM, I would be more comfortable with a little more guidance on intent.

Glad to help! One other class that might be interesting to consider is the Redeemer Champion. It's edicts might be of interest to your daughter. And I like to treat the Reaction as a barometer for whether an NPC is redeemable. Instead of the NPC choosing between whatever is more tactically advantageous between taking the penalty or dealing their damage, I have the NPC take the "no damage" option if they are capable of feeling guilt or remorse about it.

Edit: Also, as someone who has run into this problem himself I've found it really satisfying to take an NPC or monster statblock meant for a battle or a short conversation and turn it into a full blown Influence Encounter via the GMG. They are a great way to keep the whole party involved in negotiations. I let the final boss of Ironfang Invasion go this route which helped promote the "good/canon" ending at my own table.

Capt Morgan, I am not following what you mean by "turn it into a full blow influence encounter via the GMG", but I only have the GM guide that came with the beginner box, so maybe I am missing something. If the you are referring to something in: https://paizo.com/products/btq022c1?Pathfinder-Gamemastery-Guide andthat might help me to be a better GM, I am interested.

Is there a forum, channel, or other social group anyone is aware of for "GMs play with just kids" As a father with four children from young to teens (ages withheld) I would be interested in discussing with other GMs who play similar TRPGs with their kids.

Thank you, everyone, for the very thoughtful replies. My daughter is the oldest of my four children who TRPG together. The boys are all younger ranging from early teen, pre-teen, and very young. (I do not want to post their ages). A few thoughts on your awesome posts, and an update.

1. Thanks for the suggestions. Especially, the idea of nonlethal damage. You all also opened my eyes to the idea that not all fights that the authors say "fight to the death" have to fight to the death. The idea that I am not bound by the authors is freeing. I love it. Thanks for the idea of "a dimensional rift sends them back home", I think I am going to make a "Rune of dimensional teleportation" or "Rune of nonlethal mental damage" or something that does just that instead of the final kill.

2. I love the comment that this is not only a conflict between what the NPC wants and the Player wants, but also between the players. That is very good. I am kind of tired of hearing about the oldest boy's great axe. Yes, the oldest boy just wants to rage and kill everything.

3. Strength of Thousands is a great suggestion.

4. Update: We beat Ms. Prendergast, my daughter befriended her, as she was the only person to ever be kind to the NPC in the NPC's life. The NPC showed her the journal and explained some of its secrets to my daughter (which are skills the players would have had access to if they had studied the journal). The NPC gave my daughter a healing potion, a potion that turned the stone back into flesh (very useful if one of the players is calcified). They took her back to camp, pointed her in the direction of where she could get some mammoth tusk, and sent the NPC on her way. They proceeded to red cat cave and had fun fighting non-human and undead creatures. My daughter says she prefers PF2E over SF. The boys prefer SF, and I started some separate games with them.

5. Lastly, when the group levels up at the end of Red Cat Cave, I am going to work with her to maybe multiclass in a way that has her less likely to attack humanoids unless attacked first. The group desperately needs a spell caster, so I will look at Bard or Sorcerer with her.

Special thanks to @Captain Morgan, @trixieby, and @breithauptcian @sebelius

I am playing with four young players, one is my teenage daughter who is very compassionate. She brings her personal virtues into her role-playing. Last week when talking to an aggressive NPC human female

Later when NPC female surrendered, my daughter thought it was rude to read the conquered NPC's journal.

My daughter expressed with tears today, that maybe she should quit. I want to rather find ways to include and sometimes reward compassionate behavior.

I was thinking of the following ideas:
NPCs and creatures are less likely to attack her first if she is not being aggressive.

NPCs befriend her and gift her with treasure for her kindness after the battle. In this case a salve of anti paralysis and a brooch of shielding.

An encounter with a creature who encourages her to become a druid (multiclass to add to her ranger) with an oath never to attack humanoids unless attacked first.

Is it too much to give feats?

Thank you everyone for this excellent and well-reasoned discussion/debate. I appreciate everyone taking the time to explain their thoughts. The different perspectives really help. Based on what I have learned, the height of the dungeon ceilings, and the fact that the troll lives in a room with five-foot corridor exits, I have decided to go with difficult terrain.

GMs, how would you handle a troll moving through a 5-foot dungeon corridor during combat? Obviously the troll got in the room through the corridor. If you want more details I can provide spoilers by mentioning the P2e adventure, but I am surprised not to see this question not mentioned by a previous beginner GM like me.

What I have done with both of these is to display the flip-mats on a TV screen on my table for encounters, and print the pawns on paper/labels and adhere them to chipboard for homemade pawns.

Thanks

This is a great deal! Can someone explain to me what they would do with pdf versions of flip maps, and pdf versions of pawn collections? Thanks in advance.

KenpoGMBrian wrote:

Are there follow on continuing adventures after the free Threshold of Knowledge? I played this with my kids tonight and they were really jazzed about being students in a magic school. It would be good to go through all the years, kind of like Harry Potter books do. If not, are there other adventures like this that you would recommend for kids?

Hours of entertainment ahead!

There's a whole 6-part Adventure Path set in that same school

Strength Of Thousands

That is perfect! Exactly the wonderful recommendation I was hoping for Thank you. I love that it takes you from student to teacher! Awesome We are going to have so much fun with this!! This awesome online community continues to astound me with their generosity and hospitality.

Just a note though that Strength of Thousands covers PCs graduating from students to teachers to really important luminaries of the academy ;-)

Thanks for the Tip. I see that in the descriptions. Thank you

Are there follow on continuing adventures after the free Threshold of Knowledge? I played this with my kids tonight and they were really jazzed about being students in a magic school. It would be good to go through all the years, kind of like Harry Potter books do. If not, are there other adventures like this that you would recommend for kids?

Which edition, which Core rule book printing (1st printing, 2nd printing)?

Thank you.

Thanks for the awesome advice. I was not aware of the mindset that healing to full up between encounters is normal.

Here is my newbie interpretation. In the beginner box, it grants you two spell slots at level one (p.35) plus your school spell. At first, I assumed that the school spell was your 3rd spell. But something about that did not make sense to me. So, I am assuming they forgot to add that you "gain an extra spell slot (beginner guide does not even use the word "Slot") for each level of spell you can cast. You can prepare only spells of your chosen arcane school in these extra slots" to the Beginner Box Hero's Handbook.

I see the creature stats have ability modifiers. But what are some examples of what I might use a creature's ability modifiers for?

After you successfully treat wounds for one hour, can you treat wounds again even though the person is no longer wounded? Essentially, I had a group of new level 3 players, find safe shelter, successfully treat wounds 3 times for 3 hours in a row.
After the first hour they were no longer "Wounded", just sorely lacking in HP.
After that, I said no more and made them sleep for 8 hours.
(New DM)

KenpoGMBrian wrote:

Aaron Shanks wrote:

Varoxus wrote:

So I'm not sure if this was intended or not but in the new (2nd printing) version of the PDF almost all of the text in the 1st chapter has is set to be much darker than the text elsewhere in the book. This change is present in both the "single file" and "OneFilePerChapter" versions of the PDF, was wondering if anyone else was seeing the same issue that I am.

Thanks for the feedback. Shared internally.

Aaron, Can you look into whether and when Paizo intends to fix this issue? It is a make it break issue for me on my buying decisions.

Our descriptions probably make things sound worse than they are. I've posted a couple of screenshots from my phone so you can see what we're talking about. Chapter 1 does use a darker font, but it isn't as if it's illegible. The effects gets exacerbated when the phone shrinks the images to make the "thumbnails" for each page. That's where I noticed the difference.

Thank you for your reply and screen shot. It gave me exactly the info I needed to decide. As you said, it sounded worse than it was.

Varoxus wrote:

So I'm not sure if this was intended or not but in the new (2nd printing) version of the PDF almost all of the text in the 1st chapter has is set to be much darker than the text elsewhere in the book. This change is present in both the "single file" and "OneFilePerChapter" versions of the PDF, was wondering if anyone else was seeing the same issue that I am.

Thanks for the feedback. Shared internally.

Aaron, Can you look into whether and when Paizo intends to fix this issue? It is a make it break issue for me on my buying decisions.

If I buy the .pdf, can I download updated pdfs in the future? Has the bolding issue mentioned on page 10 of this thread been resolved?

Wish I had known there was a second printing of CRB 2e. I would have paid the extra $20 instead of buying it on eBay.

Vestofholding, how and who do I thank to whoever put that CRG diff doc together? I don't know how I could have found that without your help, but would be interested in learning.

Thank you vestofholding. That is exactly what I needed.

As a new player and GM, it seems i me that PF2e CRB eratta1 appears to have errors in it. Has someone posted an eratta to the eratta that is respected and helpful?

Oops, you're right. Editing now.

Clarification edit for those reading this in the future:

The Beginner Box contains an adventure titled "Menace Under Otari" that takes the group from character level 1 to character level 2.

The stand-alone adventure "Troubles In Otari" takes the characters from level 2 through level 4, so that they are ready to level up to level 5 at the end of the adventure.

"Ruins Of Gauntlight" (the first adventure in the Abomination Vaults series) is written for level 1 characters. The second adventure in that series, "Hands Of The Devil" is for level 5 characters.

You can easily scale up the encounters in the first book if your group is finding them too easy with their current characters.

Thank you

The Abomination Vaults adventure path centers on a megadungeon that is near Otari, and assumes the town will be their home base. I would check the dedicated forum for Abomination Vaults to see if there's any tips for welding the two together.

Thank you.

Is there anything similar to the PF Transitions Guide for those of us who started with the PF2e Beginner Box set and have finished Troubles in Otari? What would you recommend next for me as a new player and new GM?

I am working through the Transitions Guide (TG) and comparing the Ghoul in TG page 8 - 9 to the PF2e Beginner Box Game Master Guide (GMG) p. 70 to see how the Beginner Box and the Bestiary are similar and how they differ.

Can you please help me to understand Ghoul's XP 400 in the TG p.9? Is this the Ghoul's experience or how much experience I award to the players? If it is Ghoul's experience, how is that information used by GMs? If the XP award, then 400 seems very high to me given that the TG stat block says that it is a CR1, which I presume is a level 1 creature. Not knowing any better, I would have awarded 40 XP based on the fact that the GMG says it is a Creature 1?

Ghoul weapons stat comparisons:
Can you please help me to understand the math for the Melee Bite in the TG compared to BB? How does Melee Bite +3 convert to +9 in the Beginner Box?

Thanks in advance. I am grateful for the help as I am new to Pathfinder and new to GMing. We got the PF2e beginner box for Christmas and are progressing through Troubles in Otari. I just got my core rule book and I am already looking forward to our next adventure.

this is what you're looking for. Sounds like you used it correctly although unintentionally.

You can "ready" any single action by spending 2 actions and then specifying a trigger.

Thank you. Ready was exactly what I was looking for. Great answer!

Thank Aobst128 and Dancing Wind. Both of your answers were helpful and appreciated. You are right, I was unaware of both the "Ready" https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=82 and the Delay action.

Hi, I am new to PF2e and just got the beginner box set for Christmas and immediately purchased Troubles in Otari for my son's birthday.

Situation: My adventures (children ages 6 - 14) were battling two crocodiles on the beach. They were close enough to the water, so the crocs could use the cover of the water to conceal and then use an aquatic ambush. One of the warriors asked if they could react with an attack of opportunity with her short bow during the ambush, and I ruled no. Then, on their next turn, they asked if they could knock an arrow draw and hold two actions to wait for the crocodile to come out of the water. I thought it showed original thinking, and so I decided to allow it. Then the non-warriors asked if they could do the same thing, on their turn. Already out on a limb I decided to allow it too. Eventually, they were smart enough to get out of range for the aquatic charge.

Question: Basically, I am wondering how experienced GMs would have ruled? I am guessing that knocking and arrow and holding action are not really allowed under P2e rules. Also, is holding an action for another player allowed in PF2e, or is that just allowed in that other oldest RPG 5e?