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I doubt anyone will see this before I play, but I'm running this final battle for my group tomorrow. Why do players have to roll twice against the fireball and chain lightning spells? I can't figure this out - but knowing all the rules for this fight is HARD! Thanks!
Just want to add one more voice telling you thanks for this, and asking for past APs to be similarly updated if at all possible. I do screen captures from the PDF Interactive Maps files, so at least I can turn off the tags and grid using that, but the resolution is low enough that it can sometimes be headache-inducing (especially when zoomed in!) It works, but it's not great. Better resolution in APs would be awesome! Thank you!
Thanks guys. I didn't see the Drag ability and that's really what I was looking for.
If a PC or monster has another creature grabbed, where are the rules for moving that grabbed creature? I'm just not finding them I guess.
We just finished Mirrored Moon and had overall a really good time with it. I think it was probably the best balanced of all the adventures so far. Spoilers ahead, of course... My characters started off thinking that perhaps they would ally with the lake monster. Not sure what they were thinking... but after trying to "whale talk" to it, they quickly realized it was not going to respond to them and really just wanted to eat them. One character got swallowed whole and spent almost the entire fight trying to cut her way out. The others kited it and dragged it up on land, where they managed to finish it off and cut the swallowed character out. She was a little worse for the wear, but had a good time anyway. The characters then went searching for the gnome village, which they found. Spent the night there, impressed them with their skills and managed to earn the treasure points (I know they weren't supposed to get them until AFTER beating the rocs, but whatever). Then, using the cleric's locate spell and a bunch of days, managed to find and defeat the rocs. Following that, they stuck to the rivers for the most part, but missed a lot of Survival checks and burned a lot of time exploring. They wanted to go talk to the cyclops and perhaps ally with them, but they realized they didn't have enough time to go fight a dragon. Still, some good role playing earned them one youthful cyclops that decided to travel along with them to the final battle at Moonmere. Moonmere began with only two ally points and two research points - so enough to draw off the giants and trolls, and enough to remove two cultists - but I messed up and had them fight all the cultists (just read the entry wrong). It was a REALLY hard fight - we actually did not finish it as we got into the seventh hour of play, and a couple of folks needed to go home. We called it a draw. Overall, I thought it was very enjoyable. Those fights are taking us a very long time, however, and the final battle was quite complex, with multiple flying monsters, invisible cultists, cursed mummies, and so on. The players really enjoyed the exploration aspect of the game, with the hex map to explore and the treasure, ally, and research points adding a lot to the game. They also appreciated the opportunity to do a bit more roleplaying as well. Advice to fellow GMs - plan lots of time for that last fight. Even if I had removed two of the cultists, like I was supposed to, it would have been pretty tough to run. It's hard to keep track of what is going on, especially in a new system with everyone playing, essentially, new characters. I fear these last three sessions are going to take many hours each to run.
The biggest problem I saw was that “solving the mystery” didn’t matter at all. If the players figured out what was going on, they had no advantage against the bad guys. And if they didn’t figure out what was going on, the professor just tells them after the first fight anyway. So what’s the point? I’m trying really hard to run these as written so that the developers get good feedback, but the adventures really feel hastily thrown together and it’s not as fun as it could be.
Hi all! My group just finished Doomsday Dawn Part 3 today, and now I have this lovely full-size map of Sombrefell Hall and nothing to do with it. I’d be happy to fold it carefully up and send it to anyone who could use it. Better than throwing it out! It’s just an enlarged copy of the maps from the PDF, printed on my inkjet and taped together. It worked great! If you want it, it’s yours. I’ll even pay postage as long as it’s in the US and I can send it with normal first class mail. Just DM me a note and your address and I will get it out to you early this week.
Thank you for showing us a little of what goes on behind the curtain and how your team thinks about problems and how to solve them. I find these sorts of insights fascinating. Also, I think it's reassuring to know that you are listening to the voluminous feedback and taking it all into consideration as you tweak the game. I think most of us believe you are doing this, but it's always good to have confirmation. Keep up the great work!
Thank you!
Hello, This is for an Adventure Path Subscription start. I would like for my subscription to start with Return of the Runelords Volume 1, not The Six-Legend Soul. The website would not let me choose a start with Runelords - and I tried! Sorry, and thanks.
I kinda like the shield rules that a lot of people seem to hate. The main point of a shield is the addition to AC, like it always has been. But, now you can throw your shield up to block a particularly vicious blow. Your shield might get destroyed into splinters, but it might save your life. This happens in movies all the time and I love the imagery. I agree the rules still need clarifying (they have said some things on Twitch but it’s still hard to follow) but in general I dig it.
I’m not sure how many people watched the Twitch stream on Friday, but they said that death and dying is getting a major revision. They didn’t go into all of it, but they revealed that you immediately lose the Dying condition when you regain consciousness. And, I couldn’t tell from what they said, but it sounded like you might also automatically regain consciousness when healed also. The official errata releases on Monday so we will see at that point.
Yeah, I was gonna argue with this but I think you’re right. So in a room with a hidden ooze where the ooze attacks if a PC gets within ten feet - you’d have the characters roll perception immediately on entering the room, and then when combat is triggered you would use those initial results? Even if a bunch of other stuff happened in the meantime? It seems a little weird that initiative rolls could be saved for later. I still think some clarity would be good and I hope this is addressed in a FAQ document soon.
That's what I think too, and I'm not disagreeing with you, but do you know if there's a rules reference that states that explicitly?
I think this needs some clarification from Paizo as it appears that it's causing a lot of confusion - to me and to a lot of you as well! Here's how I'm running it right now. If Party A is hiding and Party B is walking around, and Party B is not explicitly looking for Party A, then at the point of where Party A would do its thing, initiative is rolled. Party A rolls Stealth and Party B rolls Perception. If Party A wins, then Party A jumps out of the shadows and does its thing. This probably results in a flat-footed attack and maybe some extra effects. If Party B wins, then Party A jumps out but Party B sees them just in the nick of time and does its thing first, possibly damaging Party A first. This, to me, is basically the same thing as rolling Stealth Vs. Perception and if Stealth wins, an Ambush occurs, and if not, then it does not. The ambusher does lose the benefit of an extra action in the form of a surprise round. I'm okay with that, though. I actually like this mechanic quite a bit. One thing I DON'T like is that in this scenario, Party A is now flat-footed. That seems a little weird to me - the guy doing the ambushing is somehow taken by surprise? (I mean, you could say that the ambusher is just taken aback by the quick reflexes of the seeker and so is essentially flat-footed... I dunno... seems weird.) On the other hand, if Party A is hiding and Party B is actually looking for something unusual, then Party B rolls Perception against Party A's Stealth DC. If Party B wins, then they notice Party A and then initiative is rolled at that moment. If Party A wins, then Party B notices nothing, and you proceed as above. So it's possible for Party B to miss their perception roll, but still win initiative by noticing at the last second. I don't really love this. It makes hiders potentially have to win two rolls to stay hidden. Of course, the seekers have to remember to seek, and in my experience players don't always roam around doing this. I suppose that this is one reason that the team added Exploration tactics?
The question is in the subject line really, but to be clear:
Page 323 lists the rule for Persistent Damage, and states you take it at the end of your turn. So do you also take it when you are first hit by something? So if I crit with a flaming sword, does the bad guy take 1d8 slashing plus 1d10 fire right then, or only when their turn comes around? Someone else asked the same question but used an acid flask as an example. It does ONLY persistent damage - so does it do nothing until the end of its target's turn? Seems a little odd.
No adjustments. For three reasons: 1. I just ran out of time to prep.2. I had read some posts here about how hard this module could be, and I really didn’t want a TPK as the first session. 3. I looked at the adjustments and they just seemed very minor. Like, 10xp extra at first level? It didn’t seem it would make a huge difference. As for the trap - yes, I did remember they were blessed and knew it wouldn’t hurt them, but when the alchemist disarmed the trap he was excited and I wasn’t going to spoil his feeling of accomplishment. Plus it’s not like they would’ve actually known anyway!
Obviously spoilers here, so don’t read on unless you’ve either played or are planning to run it. First, some background: I’m an experienced GM, been running games for 25 years, with a nice mix of players that are anywhere from old 1ed D&D veterans to people who literally just got their first set of dice. It makes for a nice dynamic. I tend to play the rules pretty loose and go for fun - but warned everyone in this play test I was going to try and stick to RAW as much as possible so that we could provide good feedback. Party composition:
Generally speaking, we had a blast! Everyone had a great time with the new rules and their characters. Very little complaining about this or that being different. Lots of excitement to try out some new things. Here are the things everyone liked the best:
Here are a few things that were not so exciting:
Interestingly, nobody grumbled at ALL about resonance points or about the level flattening proficiency thing. Interesting that what seems to be most popular to discuss on these boards isn’t something my players even cared about. The conversation about resonance went like this: “Oh yeah, that makes sense, so you don’t have fifty magical items hanging all over you to get every possible advantage, I like it.” Okay, so how was the actual play test? Pre game - two goblins in the party! And of course they were cousins, and of course they had been the only two “heroes” in the whole Mudchewer tribe and tried to get their bullying cousins to overthrow the rule of Drakus. These two PC goblins had shown great promise and were obviously the smartest goblins in the tribe, and as such were mercilessly bullied and mocked. So it was a simple decision to throw in with a longshanks and ask for help in killing the creature who had overtaken their tribe. How I handled goblin knowledge of PCs that might have spoiled some surprises in the adventure - well, that mind fungus has some side effects, right? Like, a hazy memory, can’t recall precisely what was where... were the skeletons in there or over there? Were there skeletons at all? You’ve been having some weird dreams lately... maybe it was all some sort of figment of your imagination? I mean, walking skeletons, really, is that even a thing? Ok, so room one. The use of stealth to roll initiative was fun. The party didn’t explicitly declare that they were searching the puddles or paying much attention to them. So, I had them adjust their minis as they walked into the room, and at an appropriate time asked them to freeze, and rolled initiative. The ooze came up out of the puddle. One of the characters beat the ooze on initiative, so I just described how the ooze kind of rippled in the puddle and that character just got the jump on it as it rose up, while the others were a bit surprised to see it form. If they had been searching, I would’ve allowed a perception roll against the ooze’s Stealth DC, and if they were successful, we’d roll for initiative but they would have started in better positions. Seemed pretty easy to me - though like a lot of modules you sort of have to assume some of these things on your own. Anyway, the ooze only has an AC of 5, which the group found hilarious, and they chopped it to bits in no time flat. It got one disgusting oozy wave off and did some damage and knocked a character flat, and everyone was suitably grossed out, and then they moved on. Room two. The goblins were positioned so that two of them were in the light radius of the torch, and two were in the dark with bows. When the arrows started flying, the sorcerer grabbed one of her sling bullets, tossed a light cantrip on it, and chucked it deeper into the room. Once revealed, the goblins went down pretty quickly. Some damage was taken so the cleric popped off his first healing burst. The other characters: “Wait, you can do what?” Seriously, after this session, another of my players is asking if she can be the cleric next time because it seemed SO FUN. That NEVER happens. At this point the goblin PCs started asking what was in those nooks off to the side. I made secret Lore rolls and one made it and one critically failed. “Some kind of bugs in that one (true), walking skeletons in that one (lie).” The cleric wanted to go destroy the skeletons and nearly fired off a positive energy burst from the hallway without going all the way inside, but decided in the end to peek inside. Seeing only inanimate bones inside, the party went on their way. Comment from a player: “She critically failed her Lore roll and didn’t know it. Awesome.” They skipped the centipede room and the fungus room entirely, deciding they were ON A MISSION and not there to just look in every room (see, smart players!) Room three. The fountain was identified as holy to Pharasma by the cleric using Religion Recall Knowledge. Suspicious of the murky water, the alchemist searched and found the idol. Just as he got so excited to find “the coolest treasure of my young goblin life,” it hatched open and out came the quasits. This fight took a bit but the quasits didn’t do much damage. Poison did its thing, but saving throws were made, and the cleric stood ready with a Healing Kit just in case. When the first quasit went down, the second popped invisible, healed a little, and then popped in better positioning and did a sneak attack. The paladin promptly walked up, hit twice, and did 20 points of damage in two rolls. Poor quasit never had a chance. After this fight was over I realized I had accidentally given them RESIST 3 to everything instead of WEAKNESS 3. Oops. Oh well, we will just call that encounter scaling due to party size. They spent a while messing around in that room, identifying a healing potion they found back in Room 1, doing some repairs, and so on, and noticed that the water was clearing up. Once clear they all drank from it and healed like 2 hit points each, burning its use for the day, which I found hilarious. They left the room, missed the alarm, and so alerted the goblins that they were coming. Room four. The goblin commandos, pyro, and warriors were waiting in position when the party showed up. They lured the party in and then pulled the rope to set off the trap. Boulders fell but saving throws were made and the party wasn’t too used up. This fight was tough, but the goblin PCs especially found it very amusing. I decided every goblin in the whole place had a rhyming name, but these six were the best, so they were rewarded with two syllable rhyming names. This meant my PCs (Click and Pick) got to fight Hardnick, Chadnick, Beatnick, Pyronick, and so on. At one point the goblin alchemist threw a flaming bomb at the Pyro, hoping to blow him up, and while it didn’t work, it did set the Pyro on fire. The Pyro was so excited by this that he didn’t bother to extinguish himself and instead went into a kind of frenzy. Everyone enjoyed watching him shoot fire at the party while on fire himself, and when he went down there was a little smattering of applause. This was the first room where the characters started going down, also. The paladin went down and had to be healed, and the cleric realized right then the limitation of the healing burst - heal the goblins along with your friends or not? In the end he did a two action heal and healed from a distance. The paladin was up a couple of turns later and back in the fray. Oh, one more cool moment here - the paladin had positioned himself next to the sorcerer, and when a goblin aimed a solid hit at the sorcerer, the paladin used retributive strike to stop the goblin and attack it instead. The paladin’s weapons caught the goblin’s dogslicer in a parry, and then neatly counterattacked to slice the goblin’s head clean off. Room five. Not really a room but a hallway. There was a statue there with an hourglass. Must be a trap, right? The goblin alchemist happened to have taken Thievery as a trained skill, so tried to disarm the trap, and rolled an 18! Easy. Room six - a slight detour to go check out the actual skeleton room. The cleric was so excited to rush in, positive energy blast the whole room, and destroy every skeleton. The other characters had to clear him a path first. The ranger finally scored a hit after shooting like a storm trooper for the previous six rooms, and it was a doozy - a critical doing 24 points of damage with a heavy crossbow! The skeleton blew up into shards, clearing a little space for the cleric to rush in and blow the rest of them up with his positive energy wave. Again, everyone was mightily impressed at the little cleric halting. And finally room seven - Drakus. Drakus knew they were coming and so was hiding behind the altar. The party crept in carefully, but of course had no idea that this was the “boss room” since it wasn’t the last one (which I really appreciated).The paladin wandered up to the altar, and Drakus leapt out from behind it. He rolled a 24 on initiative and easily beat everyone. He was able to swing three times at the paladin, but missed on all three! After a couple of rounds of back and forth, the cleric cast Command and told Drakus “Lay down!” He failed his save and did so. The paladin then got to attack Drakus flat footed and rolled - a 20! I kid you not, a crit on the boss fight to end the adventure. He did some stupid amount of damage and Drakus was no more. From there it was just some exploring and cleanup. The party returned the Star to Keleri and heard the backstory that sets up the rest of the adventure. I did throw out the god’s name “Nyarlothoteph” and some of my more experienced players nodded sagely and chuckled before declaring, “We’re screwed.” Final comments: Boy did I have a good time! I really liked the new rules. Combat was clean and flowed well. I did not have some of the problems others are having and would advise those who are still going to run the adventure to relax, trust your GM instincts, and roll with the punches. I did not find the adventure terribly difficult, nor did my players, even though several of them were knocked out a time or two (I think I glossed over some of the hairy details above - in the end I think we had 3-4 KOs total.) I’m one of the few people who really enjoyed 4th edition, and this reminded me of some of the best features of that system. The only real problem I had with 4e was that it didn’t feel like you could easily role play very well in the system - virtually everything was made exclusively for combat. PF 2e seems to be going that direction a little bit as well, but with the chassis of 3.5, it means that there are still plenty of skills and powers that provide lots of opportunities for role playing. We’re all looking forward to our next session and already today I’ve gotten texts from last night’s players asking about rules for character creation for part 2 of the play test. That’s a very, very good sign. I think even though there are still some warts, Paizo is doing what it needs to do to update and advance the system and guarantee another decade of loyal players.
Hello Paizo, I got an email stating that I have a problem with my payment method. I recently moved and changed my address. I suspect that my billing address now needs to be changed. I attempted to change my billing address but I cannot make it stick. Every time I put in my credit card info and then my billing address, the site tells me to enter a billing address. I have tried both my old and my new address but get the same result either way. Please help! Thanks.
I would say we are at about your rate. We have been playing pathfinder for about a year now, and when playing through adventure paths it is usually two sessions per level. We probably get four solid hours of gaming in per session. This feels about right for this system, though it is certainly faster than we leveled with 3.5 or especially 2e.
This is a great thread, I agree. A lot of these bits of advice assume that the DM is creating and statting his/her own encounters. I don't have time to do this - we play the Adventure Paths (which are fantastic by the way) and I run the encounters mostly as written. The default encounters in the APs seem too easy for appropriately-leveled characters. I know it's hard unless I call out specific encounters, but any general advice from you seasoned folks for running pre-gen encounters against optimized parties?
What kind of encounters is the Summoner seeming the most overpowered? Well, the summoner loads up on battlefield control spells - aqueous orb and create pit among others. And the eidolon hits the front lines and tears up the opposition. So the summoner is great at fights involving hordes as well as fights involving heavy hitters. I'm reading the "My players are kicking my butt" thread (or whatever it's called) and it's got lots of good ideas in it - I might be able to mitigate some of this with the thoughts in that thread. Again, thanks for the replies!
Thanks for the replies. First, a clarification - everyone still gets a move action, and their normal free/swift/immediate actions; the pet and controller just have to share a single standard action. So if they both want to run away, they can. Second, I'm pretty sure it's not the eidolon build that's the problem. It's more of a party balance issue. The player who knows the most rules and is best at optimizing plays the summoner. Plus, there isn't a true front-line fighter (summoner, witch, cleric, alchemist, ninja). The eidolon just tends to outshine everyone else in most fights, so the player and I are just looking for simple ways to nerf him down a little bit and let the other players have their time in the sun. Luckily, my summoner player is a great guy and more than willing to make sure that the whole group has a good time. It would be easy for him to make life miserable for the other players, but he's too nice for that.
This is not a bash the summoner thread... But... My buddy who plays the summoner and I think the eidolon is outclassing the rest of the party (in a game that I dm by the way). I don't mean to suggest that the summoner is innately imbalanced, but in our game he is far and away the best build. One thing I like about 4e is how the animal companion rules are balanced. If your panther attacks in a round, that's basically your whole turn. We are thinking of emulating this with a simple house rule. Everybody gets one standard action per round, period. If you are a summoner with an eidolon or a Druid with a companion, you have to choose who gets the standard. This seems on the surface like it would balance the party internally a bit. Thoughts on this?
Well, I'm the DM, so I think... no! So you can have both a familiar and an animal companion. But can you have more than one animal companion at a time (if you are a 4th level ranger and you pick up a druid level for example, do you get a second animal companion?) I think not because there are feats that specifically say that they allow multiple animal companions - but I can't find this limitation in the rules.
If I am a 3rd level wizard with a familiar who then picks up a 1st level of druid, and I get an animal companion, does my animal companion start at 1st level or 4th level? The rules say that any class that allows an animal companion counts toward the druid's animal companion advancement. If the familiar is an animal companion, then the druid starts at 4th level (3 levels of wizard and 1 of druid) but if it's not an animal companion, then the animal companion starts at 1st level. I think it starts at 1st level but I want to be sure. Also, I know this has been asked, kinda, but you can have a familiar and an animal companion at the same time, right? But you cannot have both a ranger animal companion and a druid animal companion at the same time, right? Thanks! |
