McaPhoo's page

I'm wondering about the exact location of Bhopan. LO Impossible Lands says it is very near the equator, even saying it is surrounded by doldrums. The doldrums are only within about 5 degrees of the equator for earth. Assuming this is true for Golarion as well, that would put Bhopan far to the south of the rest of the Impossible Lands. From playing around with the globe, it appears that the distance from the Impossible Lands to the equator and Bhopan is about the same as the distance from the Impossible Lands to Druma. This feels like the correct location for Bhopan, despite its huge isolation for the rest of the Impossible Lands making it hard to think of it as being part of the same region.

However, in PFS Scenario 1-16 The Perennial Crown Part 1, Opal of Bhopan, Bhopan is stated to be "east of Nex". That feels like a fairly inaccurate description of its location now that LOIL is out, so I initially thought this was just a simple inconsistency because Bhopan hasn't been fully fleshed out in the first year of PF2's life.

However, LOIL also says that Mechitar is near the equator on page 143, even though it's supposed to be much closer to the topic of cancer going through the Mana Wastes. On its own, that could simply be stating that Mechitar is closer to the equator than the rest of the Inner Sea region, which is obviously true, but paired with the descriptions that Bhopan is near the equator and that Bhopan is "east of Nex", I'm wondering if that means Bhopan is actually much closer to the Impossible Lands that it should be. Or is this just a minor inconsistency?

Nice work so far, I hope you keep making more!

By the way, you may or may not be aware that an Extinction Curse map remake Foundry module exists and has maps for books 1 through the beginning of book 5, but it doesn't have the rest of book 5 or book 6 yet.

It looks like it includes maps from 3 different creators at the moment, Lios, Robster, and Luebbi, while the module itself is managed by Ustin. If you want, maybe you can can contact them to see if you can get your maps included in that module, or to see if they need people to work on maps for the later books.

Awesome, I'm glad we have an answer about that! Interestingly, the Absalom book called Willowside "Willowsedge" on two different pages, so I almost missed it while searching for the term in the pdf.

Story based leveling works fine.

The Wellspring Tower is balanced to level 9.
Both the Liferoot Stone and the Old Forest Tower are balanced to level 10.
Thessekka fight is specifically balanced for level 11, as is the Skarja fight.

I recommend just leveling them up after each time the party finishes a tower, when they get their resonant reflections. It's not a big deal if they do the towers "out of order", since being underleveled by 1 level or overleveled by 1 level for one chapter won't change the fun of the campaign. Besides, Thessekka always appears in whichever tower the party does last, so they'll always be 11 for that fight.

Well, this sounds like arson, and it would endanger some innocent lives within the Celestial Menagerie. So perhaps you could have the constables come along and tell the party that they'd almost certainly go to prison for that.

If that seems too punishing of your players' RP choices, then you can instead create an escape tunnel or something for Dusklight and others to take while the place burns. That way, the party could defeat a few enemies by letting them burn, but a few or most could get away. Then your party would have to keep chasing Dusklight and company down later in the story, and you'd have total freedom to decide how that would happen.

Hi, I like the circus rules you've got! I just used it for my first session, and it worked great! I noticed a few contradictions that I want to point out for you in case you want to tidy it up.

1. Under the Terminology -> Prestige section, you say the circus starts with Prestige 1. But in the Payouts and Prestige -> Earning Prestige section, you say the circus starts with Prestige 0.

2. On the first page, under Running a Show -> Excitement, you say that "if a great amount of excess excitement is generated you will critically succeed in the performance". But in the Payouts and Prestige -> Degrees of Success section, you say "in order to put on a critically successful show, the PCs must generate exactly as much Excitement as Anticipation."

I have a few other comments about the the Preparing the Show activities.

1. For the Circus Parade Success reward, is the Anticipation generated equal to half the character's level rounded down (as most things are) or rounded up (which is the level of the trick being performed during the parade)?

2. For the Practice Trick activity, you use the word "skill". I assume this activity should also be allowed to be completed with a saving throw or attack though, so the wording should be changed to allow for that. You could just say the PC Performs a Trick, like you did in the Circus Parade activity.

3. For the Practice Routine activity, you do not say what roll to make. I assume it is the same roll as Performa a Trick. Furthermore, the description says that the costarring PC gets the bonus, but the effects of a success and critical success say that the recipient of the Costar gets the success. Furthermore, if the costarring PC gets the bonus, it is unclear if the circumstance bonus applies to the Costar reaction's Aid roll or if it applies to their personal trick checks that have nothing to do with the costarring. Also, does the critical failure mean that the Costarring PC is not allowed to be a performer in the show, or that they just cannot use the Costar reaction with the PC who rolled the Practice Routine activity? Or is the intent that this activity must be used by the person who will use the Costar reaction? This activity is very unclear to me the more I think about it.

4. I actually have no idea what the Group Rehearsal (misspelled) activity is for. I guess it has nothing to do with Costar, since Practice Routine is already related to Costar. So the activity is just with some other PC or NPC? But there doesn't seem to be any interaction with that other character. It seems identical to Practice Trick. Are the circumstance bonuses of Group Rehearsal supposed to apply to the chosen PC or NPC, as if the person using this activity is auto-critically succeeds an Aid check, possibly granting the bonus that a person with legendary proficiency would give (+4)?

5. Are the circumstance bonuses from these activities supposed to apply to all of those trick checks in the show, or do they only apply once at the PC's choosing? I'm still pretty new to PF2, so I don't have a lot of intuition for these numerical bonuses yet.

6. Back to the Practice Routine activity. Since this applies circumstance bonuses, it is competing with the circumstance bonus from the Costar (Aid) reaction. Since the bonus of Practice Routine is larger than the bonus from Costar, I think this makes the Costar reaction obsolete, since bonuses of the same type do not stack.

7. In the Putting on a Show -> Act Success sidebar, you clearly define what it means for an Act to be successful, but I think you missed The Big Number. Is the Big Number successful if there are at least two successful performances, just like the Opener?

8. How would you feel about a critical success on a trick check counting as two successes for the purposes of determining whether an Act is successful or not? Seems reasonable to me.

I love these! I'll be using and altering all of them for my own campaign! I think I'll make the Unjoined Twins the same as the Flamboni sisters, as others have done.

I have a vignette for the clowns: as a prank, the Dwarven throwers loosen the wheels on the clowns' tiny tricycles, causing them to break during practice. The Dwarves also poke tiny holes in balloons, causing them to deflate while the clowns try to inflate them. The clowns get frustrated and sad and refuse to offer their help in the next performance unless the PCs can get the Dwarves to apologize.

None of the circus weapons in The Show Must Go On have the Monk trait, but I feel like it would be reasonable for them to have it. Would it cause any balance issues if I made them monk weapons?

I'm about to start the AP, and one of my players is interested in the fire poi as a monk weapon. Another issue is that fire poi is an advanced weapon, which Monks don't get proficiency in. I'm still relatively new to the game, but I think that if he takes the Weapon Proficiency General feat at level 3 and 7, he can become trained in the fire poi. I'm not sure how he would get expert or master. The Monastic Weaponry Monk increases proficiencies to expert or master, but it's unclear to me if that applies to all weapons with the Monk trait, or if that only applies to simple and martial weapons with the monk trait. I guess all the weapons with the monk trait RAW are simple or martial so there is no discrepancy, unless I made fire poi a monk weapon.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Would it take too many feat choices to be worth it just for that weapon by the time level 7 rolls around? Would it be unbalanced for an advanced weapon to be a monk weapon?