Monkhound's page

Archives of Nethys is VERY VERY slow. And when I asked about the non-stat block when prepping for Gencon, I was told by one of the organizers that I shouldn't rely on Archives of Nethys because it might be accurate.

Assuming you meant 'inaccurate': Honestly, it's the officially sanctioned reference document, so that specific remark from the organiser is irrelevant. The related issues though, are that 1- Archives of Nethys is slow, especially at peak times, and 2- that many people in one place will be a connection sinkhole, be it WiFi or network. Which is one of the reasons why statblocks should be included.

One of the things that has really changed in the past 10-15 years (since PFS1 included them) is the availability of high quality cell phone data service, and the availability of AON as an official source.

That's not necessarily the issue/ solution for us dinosaurs who prefer to run from paper because juggling PDFs and tens of tabs for spells on a tablet means we lose a lot of time finding whatever we need; Add prepping a tab for every creature to that, and the nightmare worsens. And many of the standard websites that offer monster statblocks are not printer-friendly.

Quote:

Stuff about assuming 4 vs assuming 6 PCs

I don't think this is as big of a deal as people are making it to be, especially given the narrow level ranges. CP was more useful when scenarios could have had four Level 1s or six Level 4s. If it's four Level 3s or six Level 4s, I can see the case for less granularity.

I don't know if you played during the PFS1 days, but TBH the 4-player adjustment was one of the things that I experienced as bad, due to more often than not being problematic.

I wonder whether Paizo considered balancing around 5 players instead. The impact of only 1 fewer or additional player compared to base assumption should be pretty minor while not having to change much about the originally intended encounter design.

First off, I'm happy with the 3-hour format! Our lives are busy as it is, and if this means "scenarios that run long" take 4 hours instead of 5-6, that's great.

Less so about the triple change: "level band", "basing scenario's on 6 player characters" and "CP replaced by a difficulty band".

The level band is ideal for conventions and lodges with a bigger player pool. For smaller lodges it mostly means we're forced to play a new character as soon as a new society player joins, or if a player is bored with their character. It was already hard to schedule high level content, and I now fear mid-level content is at risk as well. Letting us start characters at level 1, 3 or 5 might partly solve this, but it's still not an ideal situation.

Basing scenarios on 6 players was done in PFS1 from season 4 to 10 and it performed poorly when you applied the 4-player adjustment, and 5-player parties were always playing in hard mode. It often resulted in players wasting actions applying conditions that were already applied because of the adjustment. In other cases encounters became utterly uninteresting, and in rare cases monsters benefited from the "nerf" (looking at you Sanos Abduction). I'm therefore a bit skeptical about replacing the CP system by an easy/hard system to cover smaller parties.

I get that difficulty is harder to predict and to write for with the 4-level band, and the CP system isn't perfect, but from my perspective, the combination of all three of these changes overtunes it too much, while at the same time putting a strain on smaller lodges.

Finally, if it means we don't have monster stat blocks in the appendix anymore, that's putting a lot more work in the hands of the GM gathering stats. Why? Or did I misunderstand this?

Quentin Coldwater wrote:

Ran this yesterday, I have a few comments:

Make sure to leave a review on the product page if you and your players liked it - authors love that sort of thing!

I agree with you, though I have a caveat: I've written many reviews over the years in order to help and encourage fellow GM's and players. I noticed a while back that Paizo is hiding many reviews and not necessarily due to spoilers or foul language, which I understand. This includes my review on this one. This bothers me, as I invest time and effort trying to write mine in as positive a way as possible while remaining critical of glaring issues. The consequence is that I currently feel censured and actively discouraged to write any future reviews.

To answer your questions and a bit more:
- For any single scenario you can have one chronicle as a player and one as a GM
- You get a chronicle only for the first time that you GM a scenario, unless the scenario is an evergreen/ repeatable
- You can never have multiple chronicles of the same adventure on the same character regardless of how you received the chronicle
- You can use Replays to replay and get a chronicle for a scenario multiple times as a player but not as a GM

Spell: Stifling Stillness
Source: Rage of Elements

Multiple points of attention:
1- The spell is at the same spell rank (and in the same spell lists) as Solid Fog and does the same with additional effects. This suggests the spell should at least have a higher spell rank than Solid Fog.
2- The spell combines the effects of Solid Fog and either a heightened Suffocate spell (Uncommon, base rank 6, heightened to 9) or a Vacuum spell that in addition deals some damage (Common, rank 7).
3- Can a target hold its breath when it starts its turn in the area of effect?
4- What happens when a character doesn't hold its breath and doesn't spend the action to breathe? Does it immediately fall unconscious and start suffocating?
5- What happens to Unconscious and Dying creatures in the area?
6- Is spellcasting still possible in the cloud at the cost of spending an action to breathe (and take damage)?

All in all, this spells seems stronger than Toxic Cloud (Spell rank 5), so in its current state it seems way too powerful for a 4th rank spell.

Yeah, it goes the same at our tables. In most cases people have only one Lore (plus PFS Lore), so they ask whether theirs is applicable. If a character has multiple Lore skills, as a player I'd offer the different Lores and modifiers and let the GM decide what to roll (out to decline all). As a GM I'd ask for the various modifiers.

UI is weird here: I'm all for players attempting RK rolls: It leads to more interesting combats with players trying to target oravoid specific things, and it helps boost casters (target weakest save). I also don't mind high Intelligence characters being able to RK on a Lore skill rather than a Wisdom skill. But I'd like to know what the design teams view behind this is.

To be fair, I've always imagined a character with UI as one that has read most of Wikipedia without fully understanding everything. In a universe where magic is a thing, it wouldn't be an unreasonable thing to be able to do.

Source: Player Core
Feat: Untrained Improvisation

Could you please have a look and clarify how this feat interacts with Lore skills?

The current way the feat is written gives a character with this feat a variation on a Class Feat (Bardic Lore) in addition to boosting all the other Untrained skills a character may have. This feels inappropriately strong for any character to have for the price of a level 3 General Feat, let alone for high Intelligence characters.

Thank you for the replies everyone.

Yea. Official clarifications usually only happen in the next errata if the designers want write about this.

My reasoning behind the post is that, since they have scheduled specific errata moments, I might as well put out a request for this to be looked at: If we get an answer, great. If we don't, well then the Lore part of the feat will remain unclear.

My interpretation? You don't get the right to roll any lore skill with that feat. You use the generic skill most fitting for the situation. If you wanna RK about a dog, you can't roll dog lore, you just make a nature check. Any other interpretation would just lead to problematic player behavior.

As written, even witout the feat you can do any check Untrained, including Lore skills. In general this is not going to be very relevant beyond level 1 since your modifier stagnates if you're not at least Trained.

The idea behind the rework of the concept of Schools is amazing; The execution not so much. The focus spells are the same as before (somewhat weak), and the choice of bonus spells is just weak. With the old schools, the list per spell rank consisted of tens of spells; Now only 2 (beyond rank 1), with usually 1 good or medium spell and one situational spell. In my opinion this is the main issue that needs to be addressed: Expand the spell lists for each school.

What bothers me most about the class though, is that the wizard is (traditonally at least) the "learned" caster; The guy who spends his time reading books. In my opinion this is not something that is properly reflected in the class chassis: Give the wizard some additional skill increases (and/or skill feats) exclusively to be spent on Intelligence and Wisdom related skills. This would give the wizard the edge on mental skills that he needs without causing any balance issues.

Ran it today at 19 CP, for a party of 6.
I had the drake, the boat launch, pit trap and the constructs.

The investigator had a "bad crit roll" where he accidentally finished the poracha, costing them the bin from the kami. He was also the one whose Devise Stratagem actions regularly got interrupted by the Tengu's Eat Fortune abilities.

My party spent a lot of time trying to get the mail destined for the nephews from the squirrly creature, which led to a cartoonish scene with various attempts to coax the creature.

The Animated Wine Dispenser with drunk Tengu, that I placed in C1b got a laugh from the whole table.

The pit trap was in the entrance squares to C6, with the halflings successfully baiting a melee character by throwing their eggs and forks. That trap is mean and iconic, but very fair.

I ran the drake in C6 as well, after the party had dealt with the room that I assume was C8. That one appropriately got obliterated by the ranger with a drake rifle crit: It was a relatively short combat.

In order to play into the Golden League NPC's going crazy, I had Bloodmoon whisper in the PC's mind during the first round of combat, playing to their envies and ambitions.

The balancing seems fine, though I have a few remarks:
- Using a Hero Point for a reroll is a Fortune effect. I think a GM should consider carefully whether they want to cancel out one with the Eat Fortune ability that the Tengu have
- How should one handle cantrips such as Know the Way, or spells that show you the way / prevent you from getting lost?
- My party handled all combats trying to knock out the opponents instead of killing them (although they failed with the poracha). They decided that it was maybe best to avoid bloodshed, being unsure how that would impact the "miasma" that the Kami described. I couldn't find if that was necessary, but I wasn't going to stop them from doing that, as it felt in line with what the Kami explained.

All in all, great fun was had! I'll write a review soon.

Heya,

Loving the scenario, and looking forward to running it! Below are two questions I have about it.

There seems to be an editing issue with regards to the Boat Launch map: Where is C8 (the shrine)? Is it the room that is mostly hidden by the compass?

Second: With regards to Bloodmoon (both tiers), in relation to Reactive Strike: The high tier Empowered Bloodmoon mentions that the weapon is Tiny but has reach. I'm assuming that the regular Bloodmoon (and the low tier Empowered Bloodmoon) do not have reach?

** spoiler omitted **...

I get what you're saying about the subsystems, but just to check an assumption: Quests are supposed to last 1 hour (Quests 1-13) or 2 hours (from Quest 14 onwards); Not 5. You don't have to flesh out a whole background for barely relevant NPC's unless you want to.

As for me, I do absolutely love skill challenges, but I dislike most implementations of the subsystems. Some are just too complex to introduce as a segment within an adventure (such as infiltration/ heist), and some are often just poor and overused implementations (influence). In most cases, the subsystem becomes a mini-game that gets in the way of roleplaying: Like, what the heck are you supposed to discuss with your fourth or fifth attempt to Influence an NPC?

Reskinning for gm preference is one of those things which can be a good thing or could be like "I hate non human ancestries in my fantasy, so everyone is human" kind of dealio. Ye kinda have to trust gm to not abuse it.

To be fair, the whole Organized Play concept is based on that trust: We kind of have to, otherwise the system collapses.

In reply to the original post: I appreciate the declaration of intent in the post, and I approve of the clarifications as the intent is good. Yet I feel like it's a lot of words and work for barely any practical change. RAW-literalists will always go by the exact words of what is written, rather than what is intended (see any political, theological, legal or game rules discussion ever), so maybe it would help to explain the intentions rather than to lock it down in short key phrases that have no context. I know it doesn't help for any form of word count, but I think that without, the proposed alterations will have very little effect.

Alright, here's my post-mortem: All in all I enjoyed running this, and my players had fun.

Experience:
- My party quickly understood how to triangulate; That was nice
- There was some grumbling with regards to the foraging system. Only halfway through did it become clear that you forage either for food or for water; It doesn't seem to be possible to do both at the same time. Understandable, but it makes the foraging feel useless since you need both to account for a ration. Additionally it makes tracking the resources tedious
- Somehow my party decided on the 'disable' approach in the first location they came across, but at the second they changed to 'destroy' because they were afraid due to being low on rations. This meant they could complete neither the GA nor the VS faction goal. Somehow it has to be clear to the party that they need to do either one or the other
- There was some disappointment as to the somewhat low treasure the party got. They didn't go to the oasis or location D (-1). In addition they went for E, F and G, accidentally avoiding all Arid Desert hexes after having had their first fixed location, which made them miss out on encounter B (-2). This totaled for 7 treasure bundles

Confusion on my side:
- It's mentioned on page 10 that an hour after reactivation, Star sends a pulse that scrambles all remaining signals. By that logic, if the PC's have not completed their goal on day 16, they wouldn't be able to locate the remaining ruins anymore because on day 17 has activated Star. It feels like this is not intended; Am I missing something? Or is this simply an abstraction to have team PC and team NPC arrive nearly at the same time counting only the time the party took to get there?
- The reporting screen displayed that this scenario was re-playable, but I didn't see that tag anywhere. Bug?

General feedback:
- I did enjoy the flavor of the scenario. The locations came across scary and unique, and I got the impressions my players seemed to agree
- I loved the additional pieces of lore included in the scenario (setting up a tent, the weird locations in the desert, etc.)
- I enjoyed running the combats, although fighting earth elementals in sand can take forever. Secondly, the mooks in the final battle were utterly useless: Credit to my players, because tactically they did it right, but at 14 CP the automatons needed to roll a 15+ to hit the lower AC PC's with their first attack (lvl4-5 party)
- I'm a fan of haunts, because the players can experience the story of what happened. I would have enjoyed a little bit more description about what happened. It was a bit bare bones for that
- As commented by others: Create Water and Create Food simply break the supplies mini-game. This kind of survival journey really only works for level 1-4 scenario's, because that is the only level range where a party will feel the cost in spell slots. As soon as you have a level 5 spell caster in the party, this is not really an issue anymore
- Either the map is too big, or the speed vs activities per day ratio is way too steep. Higher level characters are slightly more likely to have reliable access to a level 2 Longstrider or a similar benefit, resulting in a higher chance to have a speed of 30+. But for level 3-4 characters this very unlikely, since 25ft seems to be the norm. You need to know almost exactly where you're going and to have the right party composition to achieve the VS goal

I had the same response from my party yesterday (4 lvl1 characters): They immediately wanted to split up. In the end they saw Alec move towards the library on his own and decided to pursue him as a group, because they sensed what was going to happen. After the encounter with the gremlins, they decided to stick together. Weall thought the gremlins that gave lice were a very nice touch for a school trip.

I loved the titles of the romance novels in the library :D

Kudos, this one was a breeze to run!

Me too, I'm impressed by the setup, so far... though I find it's a shame to have a swamp without the swamp flip-mat ;)

I'm impressed by the DC's in the chase scene. I understand players get a big speed boost from the Wolf form, but still, I recently encountered DC's like this in a 10-11 subtier. Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of higher DC's in "group" chase scenes, as they always appear to easy.
I'm also intrigued by the use of both a 4- and a 5-player adjustment for that.

As to the "convince the wolves" part... I'm not entirely convinced that allowing Diplomacy at the same DC as the alternate skill is a good move...

For the final encounter: What are the Mist squares that are being referred to?

MO-BO-GO!... TA-BOO!!... WHY?!?!

Many solutions for that. Remember that this is a 5-9 adventure, and making use of terrain should be normal tactics by now:
Fireball is one.
Fly and hurl things from the distance is another.
Haste makes it possible to outrun and kite them.

My players had the monk and conjurer wizard (suddenly remembering Kyra had one of his MM rods) defeat them, while the paladin was cowering in a corner of the circular room (and laughing his a** off IRL).
Kyra was rusted out of her gear and started distracting the monsters with coins.

Anyway: My players had a blast when I ran it a few months ago.

I ran it this afternoon at 4-player high tier.

After a moment of "Oh cr*p, do we have to do a heist on a massively well protected caravan where everybody can kill us on sight?!", the investigation part went on swimmingly.
As the first successes of the investigation came in, the party got the hang of what the clues were meant for and were confronted with "failure" on the first check. I don't think there was any negative reaction at that point: Generally, the idea seems to have been well received.
Interestingly, they did not notice the increasing DC for repeated use of the same skill in a location because they decided to go wide with the vast amount of skills they were good, decent, or even bad at, trying to follow the theme of the location on the day, even if it was not necessarily their best choice (based on skill bonus).
I think the party only had 3 complications, one of which was the having to undergo the Modify Memory spell and subsequently botching the Bluff check to pass a secret message. The secret message being "I have hidden a note in the bathroom", having been distorted to "Don't go to the toilet: Someone went nuclear in there."

The creating and printing of small hand-outs with all the possible modifiers players could receive, was a good idea.
Their reminder factor was very useful also as a GM.
Tip for others who would do that: Color-code them. That'll avoid a lot of searching.

The assault itself was nice and felt like an original heist movie because the party was prepared for what was to come. Since it was not clear (I may have skipped it, over the multiple read-throughs) while running the scenario whether the investigation part was playing in Aspenthar or in Pashow, I ruled it took place in Pashow, since that is way closer to the Citadel of the Alchemist. Since Pashow does not have over 5000 inhabitants, the players spent the 3500gp on an interesting and effective array of items, instead of 1 very expensive item: Mainly Feather Tokens (Tree), various potions of healing, Pass without a Trace, Invisibility, which were actually all used during the heist. It was fun to give players that kind of money and see them buy and use everything during the whole heist.
If part 1 was supposed to be played in Aspenthar, please disregard this comment, although this ad hoc decision ended in a lot of fun for everyone.

They knew of the location of the secret door, of the secret compartment and they ended up not fighting the Altar due to it failing a saving throw against a Tanglefoot Bag.
After that, one of the rogues used a potion of Invisibility to retreive the "real" dummy elixir.

The Aspis encounter was fun as well. I did not know exactly what to do when the Medium started spamming Create Water on the tent. In the end I ruled the spell drenched a square, and reduced the damage to the tent by 1 during every round in which the spell was cast to delay the flames. After successfully saving against the Blue Whinnis poison, the rogue ended up storming into the tent to find out (and save) whatever was so important to have it torched as soon as strangers approached the camp.

All in all, I really enjoyed running this. The scenario is fun, and does not punish failure.
I therefore stand by my first remark in this thread: Well done, Sir!

--

A few further questions/remarks, that I couldn't find the answer to in the scenario:
* Where does the information gathering part happen? Since the original meeting with Ziralia and Gloriana Morilla happens in Aspenthar, it was unclear whether this happened there or in Pashow.
This is relevant, since Pashow does not have 5000 or more inhabitants, meaning you cannot acquire any item you need.

* I immensely enjoyed the freedom that was given to each player to come up with what skill to use for his chosen method. The first inclination of some of the players was "Yeah, we're going to sneak up and snatch what information we can get". After that, they became more creative when I drew the attention to the various themes at the locations on the various days.

* I was lucky to have a very skilled party, but I have to concur with James's remark above: What to do if you have a cleric? A fighter? A sorcerer? Or any other of the non-Int based 2 SP/Level classes? I agree you can be extensively lenient in the checks that are required, but without skills, you'll quickly be repeating checks (which would result in an increased difficulty).
I know that it is possible to do the heist without all the available information, but those characters may be having a bad time.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, I think the DC's are spot on. But still, it's a lót of skill checks in a part that is bound to run for 1-1.5 hour.

I'm glad you enjoyed the scenario, and thanks to you and Lau for your feedback! I'm favoriting all of the reviews and breakdowns to look back on and inform my crunch work for future projects, which will hopefully maintain the flavor while moving closer to that sweet spot for challenge. As my first scenario, which was also a Tier 1–5, I definitely erred on the side of lowballing the challenge rather than clobbering beginning players. I think it's easier to forgive an overly easy scenario than an overly difficult one, especially if it has decent flavor.

And a review is up. I hope others will enjoy it as much!

They didn't ask many questions; I was a bit disappointed that nobody even asked about Tamrin's Aspis ties.

This information may have gotten lost due background noise. I was sitting next to you twice while you gave the briefing and totally missed it.

The player who played the infiltrator inquisitor was very happy that in this scenario, playing an infiltration build really paid off. He ruled the Bluff checks and the Sleigh of Hand to spice up the soup. It's nice to see that while the scenario is probably playable for PCs that aren't that savvy, it's not dumbed down so savvy people feel redundant.

I was the inquisitor in the game, and I would like to emphasize this quote. It's nice to have a scenario where an infiltraton specialist can show off (for lack of a better word) without overshadowing the rest of the players. Quote from the party: "With that kind of Take 10 Disguise, you ARE an Aspis agent".

One player grumbled a bit that the +4 DC hike for high tier was harsh on ability checks; I disagreed. At high tier PCs have had more opportunities to access class skills so the balance swings towards relying on skills instead.

Yes, that was also me. I understand Lau's argument, but still:

The final combat indeed felt like a bit like push over, even though it was entertaining.

What was the deal of the Elixir of Love in the care package, by the way? I can imagine a few things, but did it tie into the scenario in any way?

--
I would like to give compliments to Christopher for writing this scenario. I enjoyed playing it very much.

Not to go into technicalities, but "Coup de Grace" literally means "Mercy kill". No reason why a paladin would not be allowed to do this.