Laddeus's page

This is a tangential anecdote at best, but I got into a quarrel with a TikTok GM creator who insisted that it was impossible for an encounter to end with the PCs convincing the enemies to surrender (by talking during combat), because there were no rules to do that.

It blew me away. No matter how many times I gave some variation of, "It's a roleplaying game, and the GM can decide your roleplaying is effective," he would pretend to acknowledge that, but come right back with, "But BY THE RULES it's impossible." I.e., because there was no encounter action to do it. (I eventually gave up trying to convince him.)

The reason I post this here, I suppose, is just as a reminder to not assume that everybody has the same baseline assumptions about TTRPGs, EVEN THOSE who seem to have quite a bit of experience.

We also don't have rules on how much food you need to eat, or how often you need to use the bathroom, or dental hygiene . Some things are just silly to argue "But BY THE RULES"...

Hi!

I have some questions

How much of all this did you plan beforehand?

I'm prepping to run this AP (in Pathfinder 2e), its my first Adventure Path, and really my first officially written campaign ever.

Did you go book by book?

I feel that this AP requires you to plan a head a lot, to leave trails and clues for books to come.

Which book to you think is the most important to prep well?

At my first glance, book 1 and 2 seems to have most impact on the characters no?

Cheers!

Have you tried to make combat in stages?

Maybe they encounter a very powerful creature and it's just 2-3 rounds max, and then it flees/retreat etc. and shows up later.

Between stages you can still have the threat of the encounter still there, so they don't feel safe.

When my group started out, testing Pf2e. I made a caravan encounter, the PC had to fight their way towards the front of the caravan, each cart was a stage. Every stage was pretty easy, except the last one (the boss), and adding up the attrition it got pretty exciting.

They also knew, and could see, what was ahead of them so they could plan and reserve spells etc.

It was the only encounter we had that session - it was long, but with a nice pace, thanks to some RP in-between stages, so it never felt like a 3 hour combat.

Hi

I have a player in my group that has another interpretation of the rules than I do.

He says that if a creature is hidden or undetected behind a solid wall and uses the Stride action to the corner (where he has Line of Sight to enemies) won't make him lose the hidden condition, since he is still behind cover.

He means that the Sneak action only is there to increase Hidden to Undetected, and that if you start hidden you remain so as long as you have cover where you end your move.

Any clarification using rules would be nice. We discussed this for almost 3 hours last game, and we want to use the rules as intended.

Cheers.