LarsC's page

Hi!

I have done a few searches about this on the forum, and I'm not seeing this discussed elsewhere, so I thought it might make sense to start a new thread.

TLDR version: If a rogue with the Magical Trickster feat makes a spell attack while hidden, do they get to apply sneak attack damage?

RAW, it seems like the answer is no. The rules for hiding state "If you attempt to Strike a creature, the creature remains flat-footed against that attack, and you then become observed. If you do anything else, you become observed just before you act unless the GM determines otherwise."

The GM fiat element here muddies the waters a bit, but I can't see anything that suggests that a spell attack can go off before the spellcaster becomes observed.

My editorial opinion is that this makes Magical Trickster more situationally useful (and more to the point, the Eldritch Trickster racket weaker overall).

I can feel in my bones that this will be errata'd. Do you think this is right, or is there some unseen power in the Eldritch Trickster racket that I'm ignoring? Or is the GM fiat element in the Hidden rules meant to step in and take care of this situation.

What do you think? Thanks!

- Lars

The podcast is called Tabletop Gold.

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Hello! My friends and I have started a new actual play podcast where we are playing through Abomination Vaults.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tabletop-gold/id1574594922

I hope you enjoy the show! In-keeping with Abomination Vaults functioning as an "on-ramp" for new Pathfinder 2E players, our group has a mix of experienced and newer players. Our goal is to 1) put on a great show, 2) demystify the system for people who are more experienced with other games.

I love this system so much and I LOVE this Adventure Path. I hope some of that energy comes through to listeners in our show.

It's been a lot of fun to make! Please check it out!

Complex hazards are very badly written. You have to completely ignore any link to actions.

Roughly, they have:
- A trigger, that must be apply only once unless it says it's a free action and then it's as much as you want.
- A routine that you must apply every round.

That's it.
I think they should be completely rewritten by removing the notion of actions that are crazy misleading as they have nothing in common with character actions.

This is very helpful. Thank you! I agree with your opinion on this.

Hi! I am prepping an Adventure Path right now, and am running into a question that seems incredibly simple, but I can't find a clear answer for it.

I'm looking at the rules for a complex hazard. Its routine is listed as "1 action." That routine involves dealing damage to a PC and having them roll a basic save. Okay, fine. Got it.

The rules for complex hazards say: "The number of actions a hazard can take each round, as well as what they can be used for, depend on the hazard."

Does this mean that this hazard is only able to take one action per turn, and that action is its routine of dealing damage to a PC with a basic save?

Or does this mean that the hazard, like everything else, gets 3 actions per turn, and its routine only takes up one of those actions, so it gets to apply that damage three times within a given turn?

I realize I'm asking a sort of remedial, stupid question, but it seems slightly unclear to me, because it's not clear whether the "one action" on the hazard rules indicates how many actions it's allowed to take or how many of its three actions its routine uses up.

And somehow, I can't find anyone else asking this question, so I feel like a real dunce. But I thought maybe you could help!

Thanks for your help!

Hi, same for me. Cart broken.

LarsC wrote:

fryguy1013 wrote:

I feel like there's a bunch of XP missing from chapter 3 as well. ... Maybe I'll need to make a sidequest to make this level feel not short.

That's what I have wound up doing. I am adapting the PFS scenario "Grim Symphony" to slot in, shifting the location to an abandoned mansion in the Precipice Quarter. The scenario feels to me like a good change of tonal pace, so I think it might work nicely.

Did they enjoy it? I found from the first book that my group wasn't gaining enough xp, so I had the same idea -- side quests! I'm adapting The Dragon Who Stole Evoking Day, replacing Evoking Day with the Radiant Festial, before starting Sixty Feet Under, and I'm eager for any other suggestions about what PFS scenarios work well.

Yes! It worked out great. We just wrapped it up this past week. As part of the adaptation, I looped a PC's family member in to motivate the party to go to the mansion in question, which helped get everyone emotionally invested, but even without that, I think Grim Symphony is a REALLY good little adventure. The final set piece battle is loads of fun, and my players really enjoyed it.

I feel like there's a bunch of XP missing from chapter 3 as well. ... Maybe I'll need to make a sidequest to make this level feel not short.

That's what I have wound up doing. I am adapting the PFS scenario "Grim Symphony" to slot in, shifting the location to an abandoned mansion in the Precipice Quarter. The scenario feels to me like a good change of tonal pace, so I think it might work nicely.

First, the writer has made it very clear that the encounter with Fayati can be talked through, and if your players have a commitment to relatively peaceful lawkeeping, it is likely they won't fight her.

If they are going to, however... Do not do as I did when I realised standard XP tarcking wasn't right for my roleplay-centered, non-completionist group and give them an enormous amount of XP immediately so that they can tread onward as they should. You could give them more XP for each prior fight, and not tell them you are buffing them up for the encounter. You can make up objectives for them to complete and gain bonus XP with. And your idea to merely debuff the enemies and give them a sidequest in beteween is great too. You could take inspiration from the plot hooks at the end of Book 1, or from the "Gangs of Absalom" section at the end of Book 3 (I sure did for one of my sidequests).

This is great advice. Thanks for the help. I was just a little surprised that the AP suggested leveling up at a moment before Fayati, even though the XP given out up to this point was equal to slightly more than half a level, at most.

Am I missing some massive chunk of XP somewhere in Chapter 3? By my calculations, there are around 500 xp in the Copper Hand Hideout before hitting the boss...

C1 - 30
C3 - 40
C4 - 60
C5 - 30
C6 - 60
C7 - 80
C8 - 40
C9 - 80
C13 - 80
C14 - 10

...but there's commentary in the AP that the party might want to level up before the encounter in room C16 (which at level 6 is a very intense 155 XP).

I'm committed to sticking with XP leveling (for now, anyway) to help the random encounters in chapter 4 from feeling like a waste of time. What would you do in my situation, where the amount of XP in the hideout is seemingly insufficient to meet the scenario writer's expectations? Would you just gift 500 XP to the players? Would you downgrade the boss encounter, and then just hit a sidequest after the gang hideout? What do you think?

Honestly, I feel like the process of leveling up and adding feats to your build feels a whole lot like the desired inventor aesthetic the OP is describing.

The way I play games like this, I'm constantly trying to refine and adjust the quality of my build over the course of a campaign, and I think the way the feats add on and modify the Inventor class's innovation already captures the exact feel you're looking for, on a macro level.

Are there any restrictions on using Overdrive out of combat? I could see groups repeatedly overdriving before moving into new locations to try to guarantee the critical success effects (and to avoid the critical failure effects), which doesn’t seem like it’s quite in the spirit of the design, but I can’t see any reason NOT to do this.

My dumb brain has become obsessed with the idea of a "Quick Sheath" trait on guns. i.e., a gun with a spring-loaded weapon retractor that lets you wear the gun as a free action, so you can reload two weapons with four actions (free sheath, reload, free sheath, draw, reload, draw) without dropping your guns on the floor, instead of six (sheath, reload, sheath, draw, reload, draw).

In my mind, the main appeal of wielding two guns is to allow for more dynamic turns where you would use utility actions like Smoke Curtain, Deflecting Shot, Redirecting Shot, etc... without sacrificing the option to also deal some damage within the same turn. Maybe this sort of "Quick Sheath" idea would let gunslingers specialize in that direction in exchange for a slightly lower attack bonus / critical chance.

Maybe "quick sheath" weapons could be Advanced so only gunslingers and others who have spent feats to get proficiency could use them effectively. This could also balance these weapons to be less effective at hitting crits as regularly as the Simple and Martial guns do for Gunslingers.

If this "quick sheath" trait is specific to certain guns built from the ground up for dual-wielding, it wouldn't really undermine the design idea behind the Dual-Weapon Reload feat (which I think is a really oppressive tax for Gunslingers since the prerequisite feats in that archetype are melee-focused).

Anyway, just thinking out loud.

EDIT: I've realized that I'm imagining you need to be holding a weapon to reload it. Is that correct, or can you reload a weapon that is currently being worn by you?

In seriousness, the only PF1 class that fits the name that we don't have in some form is the Arcanist, so it's that, something new, or something renamed.

Gun Doood?

The other issue really is that paizos adventures really need a difficulty select option. The base encounter design system assumes a competent, tactically minded party with some synergy in party composition and the system mastery to use it. Which is to say it's somewhere between Normal and Hard mode.

Really should have been tuned to a party of newbies who aren't really sure how to work together or Easy mode. With plenty of repeated suggestions to the GM on how to increase the difficulty once the players start to get the hang of the game.

In my game, I found that DUMPING hero points on the party has been a good fix for this. The math stays the same, so the monsters are just as scary, and there's a gameplay system that they get to engage with to feel like they're doing well because of their good choice to spend a hero point. And I give the points away when people do specific tactically beneficial things within the system that they might not otherwise think to do based on our years of playing 5e.

As they're getting more comfortable in the system, I'm pulling back the hero points, and they're almost not noticing that the difficulty is increasing, because they're naturally doing the things I previously incentivized them to do.

That being said, I am a bit confused on how "worn tools" would work. Does this require you to have an actual container for them? Do Bandoliers and Hip Pouches and other similar containers serve as receptacles for tools to be worn in?

According to the errata, bandoliers, hip pouches, etc... don't exist anymore. You don't mechanically need to call out HOW you're wearing the tools. You just get to wear up to 2 bulk of tools.

Some really exciting stuff in this book. I can't wait to crack into it with my group (although, that will be probably a year and a half from now at the pace we're playing through this content).

For the scene with the escape from the prison, there's a suggestion that the party should just barely make it to the portal before being eaten by hilariously scary shark / octopus hybrids.

Just wondering - how do you plan to run that particular combat encounter, given that there isn't a map for it? Would you literally make a new map with a portal and move the boat a certain number of feet per round? Would you abstract it into a set number of rounds to reach the portal? Or would you abstract it even further and just fudge everything and do a quasi "theater of the mind" around a boat?

This cover art is so phenomenal!

I'm a little new to the game and to Paizo overall - do you think we can expect any clarification from somebody on the team in this thread or in a blog post shortly, or are we going to be confused about these questions about finesse maneuvers, etc... until the next official round of errata?

Frames Janco wrote:

So Grapple not being an attack roll anymore means that it does not suffer MAP on the roll, but would increase it for the next action?

If that’s how it reads maneuvers just became god tier third actions and feats like combat grab were nerfed a lot by proxy so I have to assume that’s not the case.

I’m noticing that the side bar on page 447 still specifically mentions that the grapple action and things like it still have MAP affect their rolls.

In that sidebar specifically, the use of the terms “strike” and “attack roll” really seem inconsistent to me now. I’m not sure what was intended by the clarification about non-strike attack actions and attack rolls was, but I think where we are now is significantly less clear than where we were before this errata.

To help out those confused with the DEX athletics issue, I've figured it out and have a few helpful pointers:

-Athletics actions are attacks, they accrue MAP, but they're not Attack Rolls.
-Anything that specifies attack rolls only does not apply to athletics rolls. That includes things like inspire courage, Finesse, and bless.

So yes, as stated before, DEX athletics options are NOTABLY less appealing. Poor whip...

I think another big thing, and I apologize if others have already said this, is that +1/+2/+3 runes on weapons seem to not give you bonuses to non-strike attack actions (such as from shove / trip / grapple / disarm weapon traits), since those magic weapon bonuses only apply to attack rolls.

EDIT - this is incorrect, since those actions granted by weapon traits specifically call out item bonuses. Sorry for creating confusion, and thanks to TheWulfie for the correction.

Have you redownload it because I did and mine does.

Yep - I redownloaded the pdf. I'm looking at a pdf with "2nd printing" in its filename. I'm seeing on page 288 there is no mention of an item called "bandolier," which makes me believe I'm looking at the updated pdf. And then on pages 75 and 76, I'm seeing armor mastery / expertise class features that only name light armor and unarmored defense, with no mention of medium armor. The list of class features on page 72 also only mentions light armor proficiency increases at 13th and 19th levels.

Am I missing something or does the 2nd printing pdf NOT include medium armor proficiency upgrades for alchemists at 13th and 19th level? The new errata indicates that medium armor should go to expert / master at 13th / 19th level, but the PDF only mentions light armor and unarmed defense.

Observant Explorer specifically changes that by saying that now your Searching affects hidden creatures.

Got it. Thanks for the response. This is super helpful! I had misread Observant Explorer to mean that it lets you make checks to spot creatures even when you're not technically "Searching," not that it lets you make checks to spot creatures in the first place (and also has the bonus that you don't need to technically be Searching in order for these checks to trigger).

This has 2 steps:

Step 1: the creature actually needs to be Hidden. So it needs to have succeed on it's Avoid Notice activity vs you.

step 2: You are so good that "you've gained an intuitive sense about creatures. You sometimes notice them before they attack, or spot them nearby even if they weren't planning on attacking." So you get to Roll your Perception vs their Stealth DC.

Got it. This makes perfect sense. So, this is a pretty good feat, because it basically gives you two swings at noticing hidden creatures!

One more question, if anyone cares to answer -

As a GM, when a PC is Searching, I roll a perception check for each hazard / object of interest, even when they're not asking to make specific checks. If a PC had Observant Explorer, would you make these Secret perception checks for them without them asking for them, even if they're not Searching, or would you ask the player to specifically trigger this feat?

I realize this is may largely be a "GM style" question, but I'm wondering if anyone has strong feelings about this.

Thank you again for your help!

Hello!

I have searched through the Paizo forums to see if this question has been asked already, and I'm not seeing it, but if this is something that has been addressed elsewhere, I apologize.

I'm a little confused as to how exactly the Search activity works, due to some wording in the new "Observant Explorer" feat from the Lost Omens Pathfinder Society Guide.

My understanding of Search, based on the RAW, is that it allows characters to search for hidden things that are not creatures. They roll a Secret perception check against the listed DC of the hidden door, concealed hazard, and so on.

My understanding of Avoid Notice, based on RAW, is that if a creature is trying to not be seen, they roll a Secret stealth check against a potential observer's perception DC.

So, the way I had interpreted those two rules elements and applied them in my game is that a person who is Searching rolls to notice traps, doors, and inanimate hazards, but doesn't roll to notice creatures that are Hiding or trying to Avoid Notice. Instead, the hiding creature rolls a stealth check against any potential observer's perception DC, regardless of what exploration activities the opposed creatures are doing.

In my mind, the justification of that interpretation is that since there aren't (to my knowledge) opposed rolls in PF2E, the more "active" participant gets to make the roll against the more "passive" one's DC, and since hiding is more active than looking around, the hiding creature makes the roll.

In the rules for Observant Explorer (a level 4 feat for the Pathfinder Agent archetype in the new Lost Omens Pathfinder Society Guide), though, there's a reference to the idea that a character can make a perception check to find a Hidden creature.

...and now I'm confused. If a creature is searching for a creature who is hiding, should there be TWO rolls? One by the hiding creature to see if they're hidden, and then one by the searching creature to see if they spot the hidden creature? That seems wrong. But I'm not sure!

Can anyone provide any insights on this? Thanks!

Re: the kobold situation

Would it make sense for the workers held hostage/killed be 'scabs' and that the current situation was an escalation from protest by Rekarek?

This is a great idea. I really wish I had thought to do this in my game.

How are people running the Summoning Rune in room E16? I'm having a little trouble planning for this one, because the Hazard entry for Summoning Runes includes a Stealth bonus rather than a DC.

Should I be rolling stealth for the rune when the party gets into the room as if the rune were a creature that was actively hiding from the party?

Or should I convert the bonus into a DC and let party members who are taking the Search activity make a secret Perception roll against it?

Do people typically play these sorts of Summoning Runes as though they're visible once they've summoned their payload? That doesn't totally make sense to me, since the Rune is described as invisible. Should I just prevent people who can't see invisible things from being allowed to even try to see it?

Sorry if this is a remedial question, I'm just struck by how different the listing for this Hazard is, compared to others.

I played up the schism between Rekarek and Skerix.

Yeah, me too, but I still ran into a problem where Skerix is literally holding hostages, and the most humane reaction to not just paint the laborers as evil was to have the hostages all sort of say “no big deal! Being taken hostage was fine! I’m happy to work alongside these people who restrained me and held weapons to my head, no problem!”

So, distracting the players with Rekarek helped from a narrative / movie-logic sort of place, but the overall story sort of landed with a thud. Now that we are in the Back Door map, the adventure is really firing on all cylinders, though. I’ve read through book 4, and am not seeing anything after the Kobolds that I anticipate being an issue at all. Once this AP chooses a genre and sticks with it, I think it’s sort of all gravy.

Edit : thinking about this more, what I mean by “picks a genre and sticks with it” is that the beginning of this AP demonstrates day-to-day cop stuff by having the players intersect with groups that aren’t really evil. The goblins, the adventurers, and the Kobolds all feel like they’re there to establish “normal” and ground the story in a world in which the PC’s do normal cop stuff. Then, later, the adventure transitions into a clear “fight against evil” thing, pulling from higher-octane cop fiction tropes. Once that happens, I think the AP becomes a little less unique, but also gets significantly less worrisome. It gets cartoony in a way that lets the gameplay and the narrative point more firmly in the same direction.

For me, anyway - just my two cents.

(And a whole other argument of Making the Kobolds protesting being underpaid unreasonable and extremely homicidal at the flip of a switch is a perverse mockery, especially given what’s going on now in real life.)

This was the single biggest problem I had with this whole book. I can ask my players to suspend disbelief about the treasure stuff and it's not a big deal, but the labor stuff in the second chapter nearly punted us out of this AP. I tried to move us through this section as quickly as possible, relying on a lame sort of "both sides are bad" resolution that I'm sort of ashamed of, honestly.

Sometimes, you know exactly who did it, but you can't arrest them because there's no evidence for it.

This, to me, is at the heart of this campaign. I've been fine letting my players guess eventual outcomes, and then using all of the bureaucracy of the city guard to stop them from being able to get where they want. It's the heart of the cop movie genre that this whole AP feels like it's built around - how many movies are there where the good cop knows exactly who the bad guy is, but they're stopped from being able to do the right thing?

If your players aren't into this sort of genre play, I don't know how to convince them to buy into it, but I think it works to have the players one step ahead of the story because it makes them feel smart and lets them play out the "frustrated hero cop" archetype.

Quick XP question for chapter 2. I'm new to Pathfinder and the whole Adventure Path format, so this may be too remedial question, in which case I apologize.

For room C7, the Hall of Faces, the room is listed as "Low 2" (suggesting a reward of 60 xp), but the only challenge in the room is a simple hazard of level 2 (suggesting a reward of 8 xp, AKA a "trivial" difficulty).

I'm trying to stick with awarding XP, rather than using milestones (like I've done in past D&D campaigns I've run), just to try to run as much of the game RAW as possible. My thinking is that I want to capture for my players the design choices of this system (which I really enjoy) as cleanly as I can. Maybe that's foolish? Is that foolish? Is XP in APs for suckers? Should I just fudge numbers to create the steady-dopamine-trickle feeling of XP while sneakily implementing a de facto milestone system?

Anyway, my question is, if you do use XP, do you award the XP listed for the room or for the challenges within? Getting XP perfectly correct seems essential in this system, since being a level behind can turn a balanced encounter into a TPK.

And my secondary question is, do you think this discrepancy I'm seeing in room C7 is a mistake in the adventure, or am I missing something about the room that justifies its categorization as a "low" difficulty challenge?

Thank you for your help / insights on this crisis that is striking me on this beautiful, pandemic-afflicted, unemployed fall morning.

We ended up playing about 7 sessions that ranged from 3-6 hours each.

Got it! Thanks, everyone, for all of the insights on this. It's really interesting to get a sense of how different groups run though this sort of content.

- Lars

My players have finished the first book and we're eagerly getting ready to start running book 2.

Just wondering - how much play time did you take to go through book 1? I'm working through this with my group right now, and I'm trying to get a sense of what to expect. I'm new to Pathfinder, so I don't have a great frame of reference.

@LarsC, that does make it slightly less than extreme (150 xp, not counting the trap), assuming they're level 2 (track says still level 1 at this point). Still a good chance at a TPK, maybe. Depends how the trap goes, I'd say. Maybe they spot it while Doopa is away.

(To provide some context, this is regarding the encounter at C2 if Doopa goes to fetch Rekarek from area C10. I had suggested (if Doopa leaves to get Rekarek as the text suggests) leaving Doopa at C10 and swapping the Kobolds in C3 and C11 in order to avoid the lethal encounter as written.)

Reacting to what you're saying, I think 150xp plus a trap still seems really intense. I believe I will also prepare some very strong hinting that if Rekarek drops the pick, the kobolds will start engaging in some extremely sub-optimal play to recover it.

My group and I are recent transplants from 5e, so I don't know the feel of this system terribly well yet, so I don't really understand how it is that I saw this issue on my first reading of the AP, but there's no commentary in the AP's text to account for a lethal encounter (200-some xp as written) during such a story-inessential moment so early in the PCs' careers.

I guess I'm just venting general frustration - I don't think this is a Paizo thing - I see it constantly in all sorts of published adventures, but I wish I, as a GM, didn't need to constantly be on my toes like this. When I'm preparing professionally written material, I wish I didn't need to scour for encounters that would smoke my entire party and turn my friends off from the system at the beginning of a huge campaign.

So, ran game three last night, and the players went to the Pagoda. Unfortunately for them, they tried to negotiate with Doopa, who, as the book says, "asks the agents to wait here while she goes to fetch Rekarek (who brings her cadre of guards, as well as Cheel and Josk from area C3, and attacks the Edgewatch agents, claiming they are imposters regardless of any evidence to the contrary)."

It was a pretty bad fight, with several crits from the great pick, including when it was picked up by Tiktal, after Rekarek fell (as per page 27).

...

It just felt unfair to the players. They were trying to play good guards, who make an effort to de-escalate the situation, and the reward was a beyond extreme encounter (40 + 4*20 + 3*30 = 210 xp, ignoring the trap). There were mutinous grumblings from the players after that would-be TPK (I don't normally pull punches, but this fight was too unfair).

I'm prepping this now for my group and seeing that this is a potential TPK. The way that I'm planning to resolve this if it comes up (i.e, if Doopa goes to get Rekarek) is to leave Doopa in C10 (because Rekarek told her to stay and watch while she and her guards went to the front door at C2). And then to keep things balanced, I'm just going to swap the kobolds at C3 with the kobolds at C11, I think. To make it so the encounter is of similar difficulty as the encounter described in the AP as taking place at room C10. I think it's something that my players won't notice has happened, and it will keep the challenge consistent without breaking the party.