MagFire's page

The baseline 08-09/16-18 is a PL+5 creature, so its _harder_ than Extreme.

This is not correct. The baseline at 08-09 and 16-18 is a PL+3 creature as the Debilitated Bulette is Creature 6 (APL 3) and the Bulette is Creature 8 (APL 5)

Gary Bush wrote:

MagFire wrote:

The scaling for Encounter B in the 5-6 Subtier looks off.

"23–27 Challenge Points: The PCs fight two debilitated
bulettes with the weak adjustment."

This is the same as the adjustment in the 3-4 Subtier at 12-13 Challenge Points.

I suspect it was meant to be:

"23-27 Challenge Points: The PCs fight two bulettes with the weak adjustment."

Does anyone else have any thoughts?

yeah, I think you are right.

I ran this in this CP and it is correct. Think about the party that would make up this CP. Mine was 2 6th, 3 4th levels, and a 3rd level. I realized that I was hitting way to hard (took a 4th level to dying 2 on first round with crit) because I using just weak bulettes, not weak debilitated bulettes.

Teaches me to think I know better. Fortunately I realized it and was able to change it to the way it was intended.

Overall a fun adventure and had the party thinking all sorts of stuff during their investigation.

I still don't think it's correct as written. The encounter is listed as Severe. If you run the numbers using XP Budget then it is Severe at all points except for Challenge Points 23-27, where it is Low or Moderate depending on the number of characters. The party's average level at CP 23-27 should be either 5 or 6 depending on the number of characters. Clearly an at-level or below-level encounter was not the intention and this is the ONLY adjustment where it is anything other than Severe.

I agree wholeheartedly that a level 3 or 4 going into a Severe encounter in the high Subtier is going to get demolished. That 100% tracks with my expectation of playing a low level character in high Subtier.

For what it is worth, I also ran this for CP 23-27 and used two Weak Bulettes (not Weak Debilitated Bulettes) and the party was nervous/took some damage but emerged without anyone being knocked unconscious. Anecdotes aside, the math of the encounter is pretty clear and I still believe that this was an editing mistake.

The scaling for Encounter B in the 5-6 Subtier looks off.

"23–27 Challenge Points: The PCs fight two debilitated
bulettes with the weak adjustment."

This is the same as the adjustment in the 3-4 Subtier at 12-13 Challenge Points.

I suspect it was meant to be:

"23-27 Challenge Points: The PCs fight two bulettes with the weak adjustment."

Does anyone else have any thoughts?

I had the same issue with the Puddles section. I played Valeros and it asked me about character creation. I also was not reduced to 0 hit points and it asked me about dying.

Congrats to all of the new 5-star GMs! And special thanks to Joe Kirner, who is a huge reason why I came to love PFS.

If I could take back all of my other "FAQ" clicks and put them all on this topic, I would. It needs addressed for a wide variety of classes and reasons.

I'm not sure how we got to the "two types of GMs" discussion where you either love GMing and would do it for nothing or you hate GMing and are only doing it because of peer pressure.

I love to GM. It is more fun for me than playing. I think that I'm pretty good at it, and I invest a LOT of time into knowing the scenario backwards and forwards. I have also not yet run a scenario a second time for no credit, nor do I intend to in the future. Why?

Right off the bat, I pay $4 every time that I run a new scenario. I also buy the flip-mats, print out the scenario, highlight relevant text in multiple colors, draw or print any additional maps in advance, select appropriate pawns/minis for the scenario, read the product discussion and GM threads, and print out extra materials that I may need (hat-tip to those that contribute to pfsprep). All told, I probably spend 4-6 hours in preparation. I think that being prepared is the best way to let everyone (including myself) focus on the game, and I take that responsibility seriously.

I do all of this because I love to GM. However, it is also important to me that I feel like I am getting some small return on my time and money. For me, the GM chronicle sheet is the reward for my effort. It is a small thing and it doesn't cost anyone anything. But it makes a big difference whether I am willing to spend the time and energy to GM a game when I have a dozen other competing priorities for those resources.

I understand the issue about boons and limited-availability items on the chronicle sheets. I would advocate for receiving a "blank" chronicle sheet with only the Gold/XP/PP. Indeed, I think that is the only way we could allow GMs to receive an additional chronicle sheet for a second running of a scenario. The "checkbox" idea really isn't enough for me. I want to develop more characters into a wider range of levels so that I can try out new concepts and be able to play any tier that happens to be running on a given week. Having more characters with different mechanics will only make me a better GM.

As seems to commonly be the case, I agreed with Alex Augunas before and I still agree with him now. Running the same scenario multiple times is likely to give your players a better experience as you become more familiar with the material and have seen a wider variety of approaches to obstacles. Nobody is hurt by the fact that you would get an additional chronicle sheet in this situation (particularly if you don't get any of the special "goodies" a second time) and it would get more GMs in the mix, particularly those GMs in the 0-3 star range for whom GM credit seems to be an important incentive.

I'm going to go with everybody else and say that this doesn't look tat bad. In fact, I wouldn't put it in the Top 20 of most broken characters I have encountered in PFS. Sometimes your build will be amazing and cause an encounter or scenario to be a cake walk. That happens all the time. This feat also only shines in a particular kind of party that is fairly uncommon, namely one where nobody else wants to get into melee. Otherwise, you just flank with another melee character and the feat is literally adding nothing to your effectiveness.

The other thing that I would remind the player is that just because you CAN solo an encounter doesn't mean that you SHOULD. There are many ways to make a character that will win an encounter without party assistance. But is that fun for the player, the rest of the table, or the GM? Probably not. There is nothing wrong with keeping something in reserve and letting someone else shine for a little while.

These boons are some of my favorites in the game. Not because of the power level; I think that they could be just as fun while being less powerful in general or having greater downsides for using them. I like them so much because they encourage the characters to make meaningful choices and serve to distinguish them from each other.

For my part, my neutral wayang investigator is determined to bring about The Dissolution en masse to all wayangs on Golarion. He chose to use these tainted sources of power in the belief that making himself personally more capable would allow him to achieve what he sees as a heroic goal. Watching him slowly slide into more and more questionable tactics (associating with Zarta probably hasn't helped) has been the highlight of my PFS career so far.

I don't like the idea of turning off a boon after an atonement for one simple reason: it makes it so only Good characters can use the boon in play. In retrospect, I think that a little change in fluff for the Season 4 boons could have made everything a lot happier for everyone. I'm no writer, but something like this for example:

----

Your character receives the Evil Mark of Evil boon. If your character spends 8PP, you instead receive the Mark of the Redeemer Boon.

Evil Stone of Evil: This evil of this super evil stone grants you a +2 profane bonus to an attribute of your choice. Your alignment moves one step towards Evil unless you pay for an atonement spell.

Stone of the Redeemer: Through prayer, magical research, or sheer force of will you have overcome the evil of the stone. You receive a +2 sacred bonus to an attribute of your choice.

----

Now good guys (or moral neutrals) can pay 8PP and feel like they did something cool triumphing over evil while still getting the powerful boon (at a higher cost). Good guys of questionable morals can make a choice to move to neutral and get a great boon for free. Neutrals that were already a little questionable have to pay a (smaller) cost to make sure that they don't slide all the way to evil. Everybody wins.

Fromper: After reading a few of the other threads asking the same general question, I agree with you.

My thought process was that on subsequent rounds of Glitterdust, you are neither targeted by the spell nor within its area. However, I think that Avoron is correct that the word "whenever" paints a clearer picture of what is intended.

Rules dispute cheerfully withdrawn :-)

I really like this idea as well. It won't change anything about how often I GM, but it will allow my characters to have a little more connectedness to their factions before I have completed all of the GM checkboxes. It would also give some incentive to apply high-level GM chronicles to a couple of characters that I wouldn't right now because they are almost to Seeker level and don't currently have any GM chronicles.

Salafax wrote:

Congrats to all the new 5-star GMs! And special congrats to Chris Rathunde -- not only a great GM but a super nice guy. Hope to game with you at CodCon next month!

I second that!

I third that on both counts!

Out of all of the characters I have played, my Investigator has most often been the MVP of a scenario. He doesn't dish out the most damage but it is far from being a liability. Having virtually every skill covered along with some great buffing extracts brings a level of utility to the party that is hard to beat unless you are a bard.

I agree with the earlier assessment that Inspired Blade Swashbuckler is one of the best single-level dips in the game. I've found it particularly useful on the Investigator as it allows you to take Fencing Grace at Level 1 and have more respectable damage until Studied Combat comes online.

I just wanted to peek in here and say thanks for adding some additional love for the Wayang. I find them tremendously interesting and it felt like they had been kind of forgotten. The new stuff is great and I love that Alex got to contribute since he is the one that got me into the awesome little shadow monsters in the first place!

I run it as:

I number all useful info in stat block. Player rolls or picks a number for ea. bit of useful info they recall.pcs dont know game mechanics like how much of dr, sr they have

As one of Joe's players, I just want to say that I prefer this method over any of the others than I have played. Everybody attempts their Knowledge check, maybe there is some overlap in what they remember about the creature and maybe not. It has added some fun drama at the table when one player knew a pivotal piece of information that nobody else did and that info made a huge impact on the battle. It doesn't take long to do and it is more fun and flavorful as different adventurers remember different things and work together to build a profile of the creature's abilities.

Congrats to James!

In my opinion, Snowball is the problem here rather than Shaman. Snowball has been breaking games since it was introduced. I'm not sure if this is what Imbicatus meant, but I think that it should target normal AC rather than touch AC. If you are looking for a House Rule, that seems to be the easiest thing to try for a start.

Wow, way to go VC Karim & crew! That's an amazing story.

I can't speak highly enough of the job that Jesse Davis does as VC of Online Play. Once again this year, AetherCon gave players a chance to play in a variety of scenarios that they may have missed earlier in the year (including the amazing Specials). Playing in online games really helped me get into PFS and introduced me to lots of great players outside of my own local area. I highly recommend it to everyone.

We had two successful runs of Siege of Serpents in the last six weeks, one at What-Khan and another at our local weekly game day. The post-Gencon influx of players has been great and opened up opportunities for new GMs (myself included) to run scenarios that the veterans have already played.

Thanks for the blog post, Tonya. It is great hearing about your experiences as you begin this new role.

Played this today, my low tier group went through the combat encounters like a hot knife through butter. Cetenna and both arcanists went down with one shot, and we accidentally killed the Razmiran priest as well.

Best moment? Spur of the moment purchase of bachelor's stuff from the drug-dealing apothecary, and promptly charming the trouper twins into bed the next scene.

That was my favorite moment as well.

Poor Cetenna, she was still cracking her knuckles when the Bloodrager cut her from neck to navel. At least her badger got some revenge.

Sign me up for testing as well!

I've been going over this prepping for a con next weekend that I'm overseer GMing. Like others have posted, why the big HPs for the acts? It is literally impossible to get any of the districts in Act 3 green and unlikely that many will get green in Act 2. Wouldn't it make more sense to make the HP's the Number of Tables for Act 3? For the Waves in Act 4 it would make more sense to have it 2x tables since that would allow all the tables an average of 2 waves.

I'll give my own con as an example.

We've got 5 tables scheduled. Meaning each of three districts has 20 hp.
There are 7 encounters possible between the 3 districts. Meaning if all tables do all 7 encounters they'll only do 35 hp's of damage to the districts. That's not even clearing 2 districts let alone all 3 for an early transition. Why even have that in the scenario since it's impossible to do?

Act 3 has 10 hps, but as stated earlier only 5 damage is possible. While Act 4 will have 6-7 hps with a possibility of 15 damage. That's just messed up math!

I would also really appreciate a clarification on this issue.

Congratulations and welcome, Tonya! Now John will have time to recover a few sanity points.

I just played this scenario at Conception in Illinois and wanted to give a huge shout out to John, Linda, and Jim. This was an amazing experience from start to finish and is easily my favorite scenario. The pregens in particular were fun and interesting. I feel more attached to The Professional than some of my own characters. I think it is telling that nobody at our table wanted to give up their character because they really wanted to see the personal stories play out. I do feel a little sorry for Zey in the 4 player adjustment. He was really hit hard by the loss of some of those spells.

Thanks again and please consider 6-97 and 6-98 to be a tremendous success. There is a lot of buzz in our area about these scenarios and it is all positive.