Khelreddin's page

It won't change during the playtest.

Agreed, I was mostly voicing that thought because it would be cool to have Int to Perception as an option now, since it seems so vital, in order to evaluate more subtle aspects that might come up.

On a related note, and because it doesn't seem to merit its own thread:

Take the Case says "Whenever you attempt a check to investigate your subject, you gain a +1 circumstance bonus on the check" and that "checks to investigate are typically Perception checks or skill checks that use Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma."

Study Suspect says "Attempt a Perception check against the Will DC of one creature you can see. If the creature is the subject of your open case, you can use this ability as a free action."

Any chance the circumstance bonus from Take the Case is applicable to your Study Suspect roll? It doesn't seem so, since Study Suspect already gets a benefit if your target is the subject of your open case, but perhaps it was meant to overcome the lower value that Int offers with the current rules? I don't mean to argue for cheese, just wondering what others think.

Yeah, I'm just starting to build an investigator, and keep looking for the rule that they use Int for Perception and not finding it. I'm ending up spreading my stat bumps around more than I'd expected, because I need higher Wis for my class abilities and Int only really gives me another skill or two.

I won't be surprised if this changes, but I doubt it will change in the very short timeframe of the playtest.

Can't wait to play it! Go Kate!

Are other player’s campaigns typically considered private?

If you're asking if it's bad form to eavesdrop or follow along in someone else's game, I'd say the answer is a strong no - it's fine. I've had folks follow along in years-long games and pipe up every now and then in the discussion thread when they especially enjoy a particular part of the tale. And I often read other game threads to get a sense of posting rate, writing style, or something else about a particular player if I'm recruiting selectively. And sometimes I read other PFS game threads for a game I'm running, to see how another DM has handled a particular aspect of the scenario.

In short - I'd say read all the games you feel like reading! (That said, don't post in the gameplay thread unless you are part of the game.)

DM Khel wrote:

Bumble "Fidget" Rumbleberry wrote:

Is GM Poblano Pepper okay?

We haven't heard anything from him in a couple weeks, which seems uncharacteristic (unless it's not? I don't actually know).

I believe he is - I just pinged him on FB to let him know someone is asking.

Let me know if you hear anything back.

I heard back from him right away, and he said he'd check in. So I know he's okay, but don't know if he's been able to get back to his games. I do know he's got a small baby, so his time may not be his own.

Divine Lance bodes well for cantrip damage in general. 9d4+Casting Stat is respectable high level damage for something free, and I doubt Arcane cantrips are too much worse.

Agreed. I just wrapped up a PaizoCon PF2 session with Mark Seifter where I was casting telekinetic projectile and doing 4d6+casting stat at will. Was pretty cool to have it to fall back on.

My pleasure.... but that's not my last name ;-)

Yeah, I heard they chucked out the Chris Marsh rubric once they saw the one Chris Johnson put together. But thanks for the point of comparison!

A few of us have made a reservation at an escape room in Seattle for Friday afternoon, when there are fewer options for organized play, and we’re looking for folks to join us! We did a different escape room at the same place last year and it was very good - immersive, very high production values so it felt real, and clever puzzles to solve.

We’re planning to go to Seattle Escape Games , and have signed up for the Friday, 4:15 PM slot of The Bank Job. That leaves some time for lunch after morning games, and time to get back for the 7 PM evening slot. It’s about 20 minutes to the place, and we’ll take an Uber or taxi to get there.

Of the three of us, one is an escape room veteran and a good teacher of how to approach them, and the others have done a few escape rooms but still have much to learn. If you’re interested, or have questions about this plan or escape rooms in general, or have built an escape room in the maintenance tunnels at the Doubletree that you’d like to invite us to come check out, post here or shoot me a PM.

I don't know why you wouldn't be able to sell it, it's something you paid for that has value (distinct from selling boons and such in PFS, which you are supposed to earn or win). I have a friend who didn't manage to get one, if you're looking for someone to buy it. Post here or shoot me a PM.

Very glad to hear this is being looked at! The lottery by tier approach has introduced a few complications - the one that I’m most concerned about at this point is that my son and I are flying in to play Pathfinder with friends from other parts of the country and we were unable to get seats in the same tier, sure would be nice to play with my peeps!

Thanks for prompting a reply - or at least a suggestion that we’d get a reply, LeSigh. I first suggested more 10-11 tables a week ago. Since then, a lot of people seemed to have signed up for tables at other tiers, I wonder if they are folks who didn’t enter the lottery, or who signed up wherever there was a space. I’ll be curious to see if they come up with a fix and how it’s implemented.

Are the pre-gens the standard pathfinder pre-gens or specific/special. In case I need 1 as main and/or aids I would like to know the character some.

They will almost certainly be the standard pregens. They only do special pregens when it's something unusual, like the scenarios where the characters are all Aspis agents and everyone is playing a pregen.

Yeah, I wondered about both of those points, the desire to have all players at the table get a chance to weigh in on characters they'd like, as well as the PF2 spoiler question - but I'm eager to get thinking about it all, and to see the new rules, so I thought I'd ask!

It's always interesting to me that people go to the trouble of buying tickets, signing up for the lottery and ranking all those events, and then don't get involved in the conversations about the events they won - but I've definitely found it to be the case, as borne out by the fact that you never managed to contact the whole group in the past. I guess I get excited enough about the unique events the lottery provides that I want more info and discussion - and I appreciate that you and the others in the thread are providing it!

Heck, in that spirit, I'll share a bit about me for the rest of the folks who will be at the table. My name is Chris, I live in Berkeley, California (across the bay from San Francisco), and this will be my sixth PaizoCon, I think. I've been coming every year with my son since he was 12 - we started as a gift to him, since he had embarked on playing Pathfinder, and now it's a gift to both of us.

You in this one with your son? Or anyone else in here playing with a buddy? Playing really morally-disparate outsiders with a buddy might be funny now that I think of it.

Nope, Simon won't be in this game. He and I have done our own separate lottery selections the last couple of years, so he's got some other stuff going on in this time slot. But I won't be surprised if he drops by at the end to see what he can learn about PF2. He also found the scenario concept very entertaining, so he'll want to catch a bit of that.

As for the buddying up, I expect there will be some of that amongst the characters in this game, based on their roles in the multiverse - but it will be fun to see if there are unexpected connections (and maybe you've built this in to their backstories), like the aeon appreciating the demon's destructive tendencies in a setting that is overcrowded or overly ordered, as a means of restoring balance.

As we sort out the roles we'll be playing, is there a chance to see the pregens beforehand?

Hey all - happy to have made it into this game!

Mark - I got to play in one of your PF2 games at PaizoCon last year, getting a first taste of the initial draft of the rules. Now I'm excited to be trying out the rules in final form, seeing what's changed and what hasn't, as well as just enjoying your, um, somewhat goofy style of GM'ing.

I've got some fun ideas for roleplaying an aeon, so I'd probably put that at the top of my list. Not as eager to go the angel route, but I'd take anything else off the list also. Looking forward to playing with you all!

But dammit, TOZ, I'm a father complaining about something completely different! That complaint is so last year.

That said, I'm sure you're right, they have difficult choices to make. I just struggle with the outcome of some of the choices they've made this year.

I still don't understand why they couldn't set aside tables for walk-in players, rather than so many slots at multiple tables. This is the approach taken at many cons I have been to. I've just tried to sign up for games, with my son and a friend, and found almost everything to be full already. The fact that many of the scenarios are being run at only a single table in a given slot and are limited to four players made it almost impossible to find games where three of us could all play together.

Out of eight slots I was looking to fill, I was unable to find sufficient seats for four of them. That is an indicator of a flawed system, methinks.

And it's true, I can assign a value to all the tiers - it just complicates a few things, like trying to play at a table with my son (who wants to play a particular character, and thus a particular tier)...

So, just as I feared, my son and I, and a friend flying in to play with us, are all at different tiers for the special, and only one of us in the tier we had hoped to play. I know I can attempt to trade, and will try to do so, but I do wonder if Paizo can rearrange the table distribution given what the demand seems to be. It looks like there are empty seats at higher and lower tiers, that could be assigned to the more popular tiers - which definitely looks like 10-11. As I write this, there 42 empty seats at the 5-6 tier, and 47 at the 12+ tiers. I expect that a handful of those are being saved for walk-ins (which is a whole 'nother issue, and a separate thread), but that is still a lot of empty seats.

I still don't get why the lottery for the special was done by tier, and am pretty frustrated with the way it has played out.

Please reserve two for me and my son - names are Chris Reiner and Simon Grundy-Reiner. Such a fun PaizoCon tradition, thanks for keeping it happening!

Hey Khel - the special has been lottery for about three years now.

Wow, I have no recollection of that at all, but that doesn't mean it isn't so. As you say, the lottery selection was not broken into tiers before.

And it's true, I can assign a value to all the tiers - it just complicates a few things, like trying to play at a table with my son (who wants to play a particular character, and thus a particular tier), and trying to organize a table of players in advance, as I've done in previous years, without knowing what tier any of us will get in the lottery. I usually reach out to folks to organize a table and we decide on a tier to play at, as I do at many cons, particularly for the special.

Ah, well. I'll figure something out. I wonder if they'll release a list of who won at what tier, so there's some chance of organizing before we all arrive at PaizoCon. And I wonder when the announcement of more info will happen, since we're only a few days from the lottery run at this point.

We'll be announcing this more through other channels very soon.

When and where is this announcement expected to happen? The roll-out of the special being a lottery event has not been very clear, and I'm not sure what to expect. In the past, I could be sure of playing the special - I would just sign up and pick the tier I wanted to play at, and table assignments would be based on how many characters of each tier were signed up. With the number of seats for each tier pre-assigned to lottery slots, I'm not sure how this is going to work.

Given that it's a lottery event, it seems possible I won't get to play in the special, which is a big change from other years, and other cons. And it seems I now face the choice of playing the character (and associated Aid characters) I most want to play for the last special of PF1, or trying to game the system and pick a tier where I have the greatest chance of winning the lottery. It may well be that there are enough slots assigned (upwards of 200 counting the >level 11 tables) and this isn't an issue - but it sure would be nice to have this system explained a bit so folks can sign up appropriately.

And if it already got posted and explained somewhere, forgive me - and point me to the post, please!

As of circa this December or early next year, I will be (at least for a year or two) Hiding In Your Down Underwear-Drawer! - Perth area, sounds like.

Sounds like great fun, IHYC! I spent a couple of weeks in Perth in October for work and really enjoyed it. Fun city, found lots of good food and friends, really nice people. I didn't get to explore up the coast to the north, but it looked pretty glorious.

I didn't have time to play any Pathfinder while I was there, but I did find a great sci-fi/fantasy bookstore near the central train station - White Dwarf Books - that had a whole bunch of Pathfinder books displayed front and center.

My players want to know which season we're playing tonight, and "Season Six" answers that question. "Year of the whatever" does not answer the question they're asking.

I read the post to mean that they'll use 'Year' for both, so for the first iteration of PFS under PF2, it'll be 'Year 1' (instead of Season 1) and 'Year of the Scheming Stirge'. (Though they may pick a different theme for that year, we'll see.)

Also, I could be wrong.

Header hider is very slick! Looks like it's a native part of the site, thanks for reclaiming that screen real estate for us!

And PCT (Paizo Campaign Tools extension) is a bit borked with the most recent changes to the site (e.g., auto alias select isn't working). Oladon is working on a new feature and plans to fix the issues with PCT and the new site when that feature rolls out.

I'm still getting the strange bold font also. Definitely uncomfortable to read.

I don't see it in Chrome, but I use Firefox more and this font issue looks awful. Like blahpers, I see it in anything bolded, like the Subforum titles on the main forums page, or bolded text in my PbP games.

Im away at a con this weekend so it might take until Monday to pick. Feel free to decide earlier if needs be.

I had forgotten we had a con not too far away this weekend, don't quite have time to make it to that. I'll look through the list and narrow it down based on reviews and whimsy and shoot you a message.

Still trying to decide what you want to GM for GD VII?

Want to help a Pirate on his quest to not leave any PF1 Scenarios behind?

Rob - I am in fact still trying to decide what to run for GD VII. I'd run any of these for you:

7-01 Between the Lines (1-5)
7-24 Dead Man's Debt (1-5)
7-27 Beyond Azlant Ridge (3-7)
8-03 Captives of Toil (5-9)
8-05 Ungrounded but Unbroken (1-5)
8-22 Wrath of the Fleshwarped Queen (1-5)
9-14 Down the Verdant Path (1-5)

Your choice! Or if you'd rather not be faced with such choice, you sit back and I'll pick one.

I use the ExtractPDF site that RePete linked to, as I find that I often end up with map markings I don't want if I just copy it using Adobe. Extract the image also has the advantage of letting me create a file on my computer with everything in it - maps (without creatures, secrets doors and stuff marked), illustrations, etc. That way I can also upload and link to the images of NPCs and such, so that the party gets the visual aid.

Wow, that's a HUGE amount of content coming this month! Thanks, everyone, for all the hard work. I won't be at GenCon, but I'm looking forward to running the new stuff at our Convocation event in late August!

Now that's a modest post, given that you're the author of #10-03, Death on the Ice! Congrats! I'm signed up to play it at our local end of summer con, can't wait!

I for one like engaging maps...

Those are engaging maps, some cool ideas there! I do a lot of linking to images I find online, but haven't thought to plug them into the map the way you do, even color-coding the borders of images to show where they are on the map.

One thing I like about Slides is that I can prep the whole map set, handouts, etc. for a given scenario in one sitting, when I've got time, and then I'm ready to keep the flow of things going as the players move along. I find it very easy to keep the relevant map as slide 1 (it only takes a second to move it) so the link goes where I want it. I just keep future maps on other pages covered, just as I do portions of the current map that the PC's haven't explored yet.

I am excited to finally be able to talk about The Hao Jin Cataclysm! Well, at the very least, I can say the phrase "Hao Jin Cataclysm" in public.

Mike - great to get to play with you in the PaizoCon special this past weekend! (I played Vahnt, the investigator with the noodly arms.) I may make it to my first GenCon this year and will be so excited to play Hao Jin Cataclysm knowing the author.

I had a great time as always! Highlights for me:

The Flaxseed Lodge luncheon, getting to attach faces and real names to the board names of some of the folks in that big group pf play-by-posters.

The PF2 playtest with Mark Seifter - cool insights into the system (though it was a social scenario, where things are not so different from 1.0) and the chance to ask lots of questions.

Winning the trivia contest! I have to admit I added very little to my team - but my son kicked butt, as did James Anderson (thistledown) and the Starfinder guru whose name I have forgotten, and the quiet couple who spoke up occasionally with vital answers. We've done the trivia contest every year for five years, and we were in second to last place after the first round of questions - it was awesome to come back and win it with a tiebreaker question!

As always, lots of fun PFS games (I really enjoyed House of Harmonious Wisdom), great people and not quite enough sleep.

But it's so nice to have the button!

There are now eight lottery events on the schedule! I'm guessing more are coming, or it's going to be a pretty limited list of winners. I'm not thinking the lottery selection will begin in 30 minutes as planned, though.

I don't know exactly when the lottery selection opened but - shows what I know, eh?

I'm not 100% sure, but I usually get in Friday night and I believe I've always been able to check in and pick up my swag bag when I get there.

There are now eight lottery events on the schedule! I'm guessing more are coming, or it's going to be a pretty limited list of winners. I'm not thinking the lottery selection will begin in 30 minutes as planned, though.

I wouldn't miss 'em! Can I reserve two, as in the past, for me and my son?

Badge names are Chris Reiner and Simon Grundy-Reiner.

Yay! Looking forward to it!

Funny to hear the description of the "popular Delve tables" - I remember 3 or 4 years ago, when the Delve was making its first or second appearance, it was stuck off in a side hallway and so un-visited that my son (who was 13 or so at the time) ended up DM'ing a bunch of the sessions. Now it's front and center, and a prime place to try out Paizo's hottest new stuff!

Thanks! I'm hoping someone has a set of Google Slides to share, but if not this is a much better starting point for me than what I would have had before.

Yeah, I put that folder together before the big shift to Google Slides, glad Dennis could set you up.

Getting ready to run The Confirmation for some friends in a few weeks. Can anyone point me to a good set of Slides I could duplicate? Preferably one including maps, tokens, the cave drawings, etc.?

My Confirmation folder is here. It's got maps, tokens, some images of characters in the scenario and a document with images for the cave drawings (the latter I borrowed from somewhere). It should be all you need, though looking at the maps I notice I didn't extract them from the PDF, just copied them, so they still have the markings for the DM and such.

This is such a great idea, Hmm!

Paizo Alias: Khelreddin / DM Khel
Real Name, if desired: Chris Reiner
Any Dietary Restrictions? None
Where do you Play-by-Post? Flaxseed!

I love slow track and would miss it very much if it went away. I tend to use GM credits to get to level 2 (sometimes 3) and then I play slow track for the rest of that character's career. I really enjoy having a long time over which to get to know and enjoy a character I've made and I'd hate to lose that.

There is one in my area, actively played.

This is my son's fleshwarped goblin alchemist, who I'd like to think he plays very responsibly - and entertainingly. He won the boon in a charity auction as a fundraiser to support someone's cancer treatment, and he wants to respect its origins.

While I agree that adding goblin PC's into the final season makes sense from a story perspective, to help smooth the transition to PF 2.0, I strongly agree with the idea of keeping 1.0 a goblin-free zone. So far, I think the story of how goblins have changed and are now suitable as player characters is a pretty flimsy one, and it won't get any stronger if they have less time to craft it.

Here is the Boon Trading Thread for PFS.

I just have to give mad props to Eleanor Jenner, the GM who ran this for us at DundraCon this past weekend. There's a part of the scenario where you read a bunch of information off a data terminal, and it reveals some key plot points. Rather than just reading us the info, or giving us handouts, Eleanor programmed a mock terminal. At the relevant moment in the scenario, she handed over her laptop and a tablet, and we were able to navigate through the menus to read the log entries and gradually come to an understanding of what happened - and she made it look like a screen from Fallout, which just added to the coolness.

It was easily the best interactive visual aids, as well as one of the coolest moments, I've had in five years of PFS.

Glad to hear this, Hmm! Thanks!

I thought that might be the case, since I knew that was how the older ones were written, but wasn't sure, since when those older scenarios are on the schedule at cons or FLGS's, they usually seat six players.

Sorry if this has already been answered, but I didn't see it.

In looking at the games spreadsheet and the new column to indicate whether there are empty seats at a table, I noticed that scenarios from seasons 0 to 3 are limited to five players. Can someone explain why that is?

I know we're not short on spots or anything, so I'm not worried about it, just curious to understand it.