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.

Unless the specific option has been banned (which doesn't seem to be the case as per Archives of Nethys), it should still be available in PFS.

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?

Monkhound wrote:

A second inititation boon should suffice for access to the sawtooth saber, but it would be nice to have this confirmed. Otherwise the boons basically have no use case.

I'm sorry, I may be totslly missing something but how does secondary initiation give access to sawtooth sabers?

It doesn't as written, but I'm saying that it should, since you're then part of the only and exclusive organisation that makes use of the weapon. Unless the intent of OPM is to have you combine adventure boons to make viable use of them :)

A second inititation boon should suffice for access to the sawtooth saber, but it would be nice to have this confirmed. Otherwise the boons basically have no use case.

Factions used to be more of a thing to align your character with in first edition: There were somewhat impactful boons to get from them, they had an ongoing storyline that transcended seasons, and you couldn't just change faction. Unfortunately second edition doesn't do much with them: They mostly give access to some minor boons, and when the faction is tagged in the description of an adventure, it gives a vague indication as to the direction the story is going go be about. I still wish they'd do more with them.

Finding the Organized Play reporting sheets seems to be impossible. The link to extra resources on the beginner box is dead. Is that where it's meant to be?

The "free download" link on the product page works for me.

Welcome to Bridgerton Society, lovely

Ran this one today at 30 CP. Here are my observations:

- There are all these researchers from various prestigious institutions, and there is basically no interacting with them, and no exchange of knowledge: We don't get any info as to what the other delegating are presenting, which is a shame
- The first skill challenge is trivial for a larger party. After 3 rounds they had achieved the critical success condition. Smaller parties might need the forth round.
To be honest, I'm not sure that this really is a problem, as this is meant to be an upbeat moment: The culmination of a year of focused research by two of the Society's Masters, assisted by multiple teams of agents.
- The lack of information in the scenario means that players that have not played the Godsrain metaplot scenarios have no clue as to what the presentation is about, so the roleplaying may fall flat.
My solution to this was to give a quick summary of the findings from these scenarios (#6-02, #6-03, #6-07, #6-09, #6-11 and #6-17) after the initial briefing by Kreighton and Lolly. It resulted in the players who did play the metaplot scenarios recounting some of the investigations their character read about in the Pathfinder Chronicles as reported by their other characters
- The DC's for the investigation part are on the easy side, though that is mostly due to the benefits of doing well in the presentations. I think emphasising that the other researchers are somewhat distrustful but still very helpful thanks to a very successful presentation, helps convey the general positive and upbeat vibe of the symposium, despite the current situation.
- The combats felt somewhat boring with so many similar enemies having tanking abilities. Especially for the type of heist the Aspis agents did, I think there should have been more rogue like types in part C. Najid having these Exemplar abilities was really cool though, and I made a point of describing the silver flashing through his eyes when using his abilities, which kept the players on edge and wondering what was going on.
- It's good to hear from the Aspis Consortium again after all these years
- The number of typos and nonsensical sentences is an eyesore. Please, please, please do some additional proofreading

I do like the premise of this scenario, though I would recommend running this one only for a team that has seen most of the Godsrain metaplot scenarios, and only GM this if you're aware of said metaplot scenarios. Otherwise the whole story just falls flat, which would be a shame.

Just played this at the 7-8 tier (13 CP): While I enjoyed the story very much, there are a few issues, as has already been mentioned.

The lore and story elements you get from the hexploration part are really cool, though the fact that chasing those goes so hard against your main objective, chafes.

For me, there are just way too many combats against tank type enemies, which makes fights last forever, even if you can basically go all out on combats in the hexploration phase. And in the dungeon, with higher CP, the number of enemies just doesn't work in the cramped spaces, making the fights last even longer. Honestly, this could easily have been split over two scenarios: A lower level one to find the lair, and a second higher level one to do the dungeon crawl.
Second, with so many DC's that are at Level DC +5 (ie. Very Hard) that more than one person must succeed at, it comes over as if the scenario was retrofitted from a level 9-12 to a 7-10 without adjusting the DC's.

I'm now curious as to why Hesla needed to go to Absalom before doing this though.

Monkhound wrote:

Assassinations are still generally counter to the Pathfinder Society's tenets,

And yet the Assassin archetype is PFS standard. So, double standard then for the Red Mantis?

Even though I personally find the Assassin archetype iffy, it has no edicts/ anathema counter to the edicts and goals of the Pathfinder Society. And a Squark mentioned, Society agents are considered enemies of the Red Mantis. That there seems to be "positive" interaction at all in an upcoming scenario is exceptional.

Assassinations are still generally counter to the Pathfinder Society's tenets, so it's unlikely Red Mantis characters will be widely available for Society play.

Pretty sure there is a boon from a scenario/ module that allows you to play a Red Mantis though.

Ninja would likely become a dedication if they went through with one, though since it wasn't in the Tian Xia Character Guide, I wouldn't hold my breath. To be fair, you can build a perfect ninja with a rogue.

As I'm reading through the low tier encounter, I'm noticing that the low tier damage for the Nahyndrian Focus blast is 4d12 +22 (DC31) compared to the high tier 4d12 +26 (DC35). :O

So as they roll for initiative a level 7 sorcerer (approx. 64 HP) likely has around 50% chance of crit failing and taking an average 96 dmg (between 52 and 124). At level 8 (approx. 72 HP) the likelihood drops to a mere 40% chance of crit failing. Since it's spirit damage, there's almost no way to prevent this damage.

I know this is Cheliax's prototype of a nuke-like weapon, but are these numbers really intended?

The megalodon only makes sense if it's in the black "void" below the platforms and can attack creatures that are on said platform. It that case it would represent a tank deep enough for it to be able to retreat as well.

There's no point in having multiple keys. There being multiple seems to be a failsafe in case they miss one.
The colour of the keys allows to explore the complex via different paths. I actually like that, even though they will end up in the same place eventually.

Traps and hazards tend to have ridiculous DCs because they're meant to be circumvented differently, but even the skill DC to do that is insane. Though to be fair, in this case players can just brute force this one from a distance: 120 damage with no hardness and a weakness to slashing is reasonable easy at that level.
The DC with the final boss encounter is brutal yeah: The DC is extreme, though it seems to be offset by 1- the hazard doesn't do any direct damage after the initial blast, and 2- Yollen doesn't do any offensive actions in round 1. It's still insane since a level 7 character in the high tier is likely to instantly drop to Dying 2.
I don't read the text as that it's possible to change the polarity of the hazard before combat no.

I'm reading the "exit is here" entry as a "free" pass too, though having to be stuck on an obstacle for a full round before a penalty triggers already is a penalty in and of itself.

I agree the lack of party size scaling for both the research and the chase scenes is insane. Having a smaller party really looks like a penalty, which I cannot imagine is the intention.

Running it this weekend for a 5-player low tier party, I'll write a post-mortem.

I ran this on Sunday for Ascalaphus (24 CP). I tried to keep the infiltration somewhat light and fast to try to get to the good parts of the scenario, but there are not really many ways around the poor information you get for it.

The bad
- The theme of the infiltration is clear, but the way it's presented in the scenario is completely crazy. As was mentioned previously, the party has to pass all the obstacles, but at the same time 10 infiltration points is enough? What is the idea here? I ended up doing all the obstacles to give a good impression of what is going on in the manor, and what types of defenses the manor has. Also the libary is somewhat of a mandatory location, since the story can otherwise not progress?
- The high numbers just don't add up: The requested DC and success requirements for the individual challenges are way too high: Having high DCs to achieve as a group is fine, but having them for individual challenges makes no sense. This means that as written, the infiltration is near guaranteed to fail, especially for larger parties for which there doesn't seem to be any modification.

- I really disliked the maps as they don't make sense and are utterly incoherent. I recommend just drawing the outline of the rooms that you need on a blank mat for it to be easier and prettier. As for the final fight, just use almost any cavern map that has a big room. This felt like having to use a map pack for the sake of using one.

The good
- The story itself is cool
- The descriptions of the manor are evocative of how huge it is
- The fights are nice: Especially the final battle had interesting set pieces. From my side it felt like the party was actually fighting soldiers, and that forced them to think a bit differently

Despite my opinion about the infiltration part, I cannot overstate that this is a good scenario, and I figure this is an important one with the Season 7 metaplot coming up. The amount of lore and callbacks in this one are excellent, even though I haven't read the Jagare novels.

That Planar Lore contradiction is a funny thing yeah :D.

It's kind of hard to interpret the exhaustibility of a list when some lists have been declared exhaustive but others have been declared incomplete. Also compared to the Society skill, the narrowness of a subject is up for debate if it covers a whole nation or continent. The way we've interpreted it so far here, is that without clarification the list described in the description of the Lore skill should be exhaustive. In the end the issue is similar to the Undead Lore skill discussion.

Rolling Untrained at high level is pointless, even for lore skills. As to Untrained Improvisation for Lore skills, that is a whole other unclear situation that has not been addressed (AFAIK, at least), so I'm not getting into that can of worms here.

Hi all,
I'm a bit confused about some of the Lore skill checks that have been requested in scenarios recently, specifically with regards to geographical indications. Player Core defines allows these lore skills as follows: "Lore about a specific settlement (Absalom Lore, Magnimar Lore)". Alternatively it allows Lore skills related to a specific Plane.

Yet I've seen various scenarios asking for country wide, or even continent wide lore skills, which players would not be allowed to have as they are not specific enough.

Is there a point to adding these disallowed lore skills in scenarios? For starters nobody would be allowed to roll these, and secondly it gives the impression these lore skills are allowed. And maybe only relevant to writers, it's kind of a waste of word count space.

You can do the reporting without his entry, regardless.

As to him: Normally he should either not be getting the chronicle, or getting a chronicle without gold, xp, item & boon access and reputation. But you might want to contact your local VO (or if that's not possible, Alex via the organized play coordinator email) for a solution.

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.

Fair, though in most cases people will likely do the first time they run :)

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

With regards to the Hero points, having now run the scenario, a next time that I run it, I'd only give out the hero points related to Glyphs (so max 1 per player if there are enough Glyphs at the table).
My reasoning behind it is as follows:
- The Mythic Points are really strong and cover nearly everything Hero Points do and then some. I think the only thing not covered by Mythic Points, is that you can't stabilize while dying.
- Players can regain Mythic Points via the Mythic Calling they chose.
- I now agree that having full Hero Points on top of Mythic Points is indeed OP, and is clearly not intended.
- Since Hero Points tied to GM Glyphs are specific to the PFS campaign, I don't think it's the intention of the campaign team to deprive players from their campaign rewards unless there is an alternative solution. An additional Mythic Point does not seem possible as the max pool is 3.

--
Regardless, running this was a blast! The challenges are spicy and the combats unforgiving but fair. Sure Strike + Disintegrate is mean, though fortunately Penumbra can only use that combination once due to the 10min cooldown on Sure Strike.

Correct, I had the same issue: Clearing the cache should indeed solve it.

Question about the wording of mythic ferocity on the statues.

"The shadowpact statue avoids being knocked out and remains at half its maximum HP, but its wounded value increases by 1."

Does that mean they regen back to 50 HP? What effect does making them Wounded 1 have? Aren't they dead when they hit 0 HP for realsies?

That's how I read it: When they reach 0, they fill back to 50 HP without the damage instance overflowing into the "new" hit points. They basically have 150+ additional HP. When the statue regenerates, I would describe how the statue repairs itself, but with a lot of the chipped off stone remaining on the ground. That should illustrate what is going on without giving everything away.

Normally, GMs are free to apply the Dying rules to significant NPCs and opponents: This is an example of a creature where this has to happen, otherwise the encounter doesn't make sense.

As to Hero Points: There's no mention in neither the scenario nor the handout not to hand them out, so I'm going to hand them out as normal.

I think the last line of the secondary objective is missing: The entry only states the objectives but not the rewards, so it should be 2 reputation for that one as well.

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.

Wait for i-i-i-t... :)

Those number sound wrong, but I think you may also not understand how magic weapons are priced. Magic Weapon

Magic Weapon wrote:

The Prices here are for all types of weapons. You don't need to adjust the Price from a club to a greataxe or the like.

Yeah, I was thrown off by Pathbuilder; I found that rule again after looking into it further: So the prices on the chronicle are completely wrong.

Another remark about the chronicle:
- The +1 Chain Sword correctly mentions a price of 41gp (base cost of 6gp + 35gp rune)
- The +1 Striking Chain Sword mentions a price of 71gp (should be 106gp: base cost of 6gp + 35gp Potency rune + 65gp Striking rune), so that doesn't seem to include the price of the +1 rune. Intentional discounts usually mention a "discounted price" and a limit, so is this intentional or a misprint? As written, this would be treated as a discount.

1) I can't answer for Paizo, but this isn't the first time I've seen them add a rarity tag to a creature for minor changes.

Most of the adjustments are the equivalent of an Elite template, so that shouldn't additionally increase the RK DC with a rarity tag: The DC is already higher due to the higher creature level.

There's actually another error- The Sparking Zombie Brute seems to be intended to be Large like its base variant (and that's apparently what Foundry went with), but is listed as medium. I'd reccomend making it large so its reach doesn't catch your players off guard. Either that, or emphasize it's incredibly long arms when you describe it.

Good catch, based on the situation and the map, I think they should indeed be Large. This is before the 5ft corridor hell, so there's not really any reason to make them medium.

3) The Ulna projectile explodes around the player it was fired at. The Brain Guzzler should only need to make a save if it took a shot at an adjacent creature (which it's smart enough not to do unless it has a really, really tempting cluster). The Bow itself does not explode, it just breaks.

Ooh right, I misread that. I thought it fired a projectile and then the ulna shattered in smaller bits around the brain guzzler. This makes much more sense.

For the purpose of Recall Knowledge: What's so different about the Festering Plague and Aged Zombies (subtier 7-8) that they deserve an Uncommon and Rare tag respectively? All of their stats and abilities are the same as the stock creatures (or have only been increased to match the stats of a creature of that level).

Th Cackling Skulls are mentioned as being Medium sized (or potentially Large in the boss fight) and having a reach of 0ft. This makes no sense, especially with the cramped halls and boss room. I'm assuming it will either be Tiny, or have a Reach of 5ft. In case the creature is supposed to be Tiny, why the Rare tag? It's just a stock Cackling Skull with stats matching a creature of a higher level.

The Ulna Bow: When it explodes, I'm assuming the Brain Guzzler has to make a save against the damage as well?

I Actually why did they even print Undead Lore to begin with, its one of the broadest creature types in the game. Was it just to let Int characters replace religion entirely in undead campaigns?

That's a whole other issue on which they haven't come back to, and which they complicated further with the Necromancer playtest .

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.

Critical Success The Technic League were a group of arcanists focused on uncovering the mysteries of the Silver Mount, the spaceship that crashed near Starfall a little over 200 years ago.

This seems like a bit of an understatement to describe over 8000 years ago. Did I miss a lore update?

So I recommend that you put it in the Spring Errata 2025 suggestions topic in PF2e general forum. It's there that we are concentrating all errata questions, asks for clarification and pointing errors.

Thanks for pointing this out, I missed that thread.

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.

Hi all,
I would like to request a clarification from the Paizo team about the General Feat Untrained Improvisation. I've seen a few threads about it, but no answer from Paizo.

In general it's a decent feat allowing you to attempt Untrained skills with a better modifier due to the character being a jack-of-all-trades. Where the clarification request comes in, is how this interacts with Lore skills. In general, compared to the broad knowledge skills (Arcana, Religion, etc.) Lore DCs are usually against a -2 DC for an unspecific lore (such as Fiend Lore) and -5 against a specific lore (such as Demon Lore). As written, there seems to be nothing preventing a high Intelligence character with Untrained Improvisation from attempting all the Recall Knowledge skills against the DC of specific lores.

Is this intentional? How should we handle this?

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.

I guess we could also use minimum expert proficiency in the specific skill could unlock the alternate option?

Actually I think that's even better. I'm going for Expert in the skill for tier 7-8 and Master for the 9-10.

As to the missing Survival check DC, I'm going for a level based DC of 24 (low tier) or 27 (high tier).

The class calls in the gauntlet challenges seem very arbitrary and not necessarily in theme with the challenge. I don't know if these are supposed to be pop culture references or something?
As per the recent changes in the GM guidelines, I guess we are allowed to be lenient with regards to those (it won't increase the difficulty!) to make it more reasonable: Replacing Ranger by "Wilderness themed character" for example, Bard by "Performance themed character", etc. I suppose I'd make the choice based on a Background or a Class/ sub-class/ Dedication.

Any feedback from the Organized Play team would be appreciated.

Probably because there is time manipulation in the form of fitting 6 Recall Knowledge actions in the space (and cost) of 1 action. Very thematic.

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?

Is it supposed to be dark? I'm not sure, the scenario doesn't mention it, but it seems reasonable. I'd say maybe.

The complaint is valid, and there should be a clarification. But I'd say if the scenario doesn't mention to apply a condition, it's not reasonable: Gimping a barbarian (but not any other classes in a 1-4 scenario) for the final fight doesn't seem to be the intent of this challenge.

My post-mortem for a 5-person party at CP18:

Every Pure Legion enemy having Retributive Strike (with 15ft aura) really turned the fights into slog-fests. The first fight alone took almost an hour and a half, which seems too long.
Maybe a reminder to the players that only the hit that knocks the enemy out needs to be non-lethal is a good thing. My party went for 1-2 lethal hits (or spells) before switching to non-lethal and that helped. Also giving a reminder about the availability of saps is not a bad recommendation.
Also the mooks doing +2d6 damage against divine classes is really harsh, which becomes egregious with the boost they get from the captain in the final combat.

IMO, GMs should be using death and dying rules if the PCs want to not kill them.

Yeah, this was a good and necessary recommedation.

Escape through the city: I'm not that worried about the DC's, but I am going to mention how hard the DC's are, as I do with most DC's in minigames (no numbers of course: Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard), otherwise this is'nt going to work

I ran it like this and it worked rather well, even though they ended up failing quite a few of the obstacles.

I was a bit confused about this quote in Part 2:

Repeat the choice, removing options the

PCs have already overcome, until you’ve run a path of
four total obstacles, then continue on to Part 2.

There are:

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.

I was sceptical about them using champion abilities at first, but it kind of makes sense in a weird way, since they're basically "champions of the godless". But the start blocks do need clarification.