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I, for one, kind of like this length. One of the things I used to love in pf1e was the sheer number of short adventures that I could fit together to create mini arcs for the heroes, kind of like seasons on a TV show. Having more module plus length adventures to fit together, especially in a sci-fi game where the players can get into their starship and fly anywhere they need to go, works great for the way I would run the game. Hopefully Paizo does a bit of both. Some longer adventures for those who want the longer APs, some shorter for 5-6 levels to act as story arcs.
I for one love Team+ classes and allow them in my home games, which my players really appreciate. I've found them to be well balanced, interesting options that keep roughly on the Paizo established power curve baseline. At the very least, my players haven't cracked them yet. I would also throw my lot in with Roll for Combat as well. I have their bestiaries and Eldamon content, with the bestiaries getting the heaviest use. There's nothing quite like the player's surprise when you pull out a monster they haven't seen before, and with the foundry modules they couldn't be easier to use. I bought the Eldamon content intending to use it for a one shot for a couple of younger players that got canceled, but I'm hoping to use it soon.
Problem is: the game changes drastically from low levels to mid levels. my point is that 1-5 pathfinder is a COMPLETELY different game than 7-20 pathfinder mathematically speaking I just want to highlight this one as one of my biggest problems with the system. I stepped my players through the beginner box, and though it did GREAT in explaining the very basics of the game such as attacking, combat, skill checks and etc I feel like it did not prepare them for any game beyond about 3rd level. One thing I would love to see is some higher level skill builder adventures, for lack of a better term, to help players learn some skills that don't come up in lower level play. Along with these, you'd need some higher level pregenerated characters that have a paragraph or two highlighting what they're good at, their common combos, and how they interact with their companions. That level 9 halfling gathered lore psychic? In addition to blasting the enemy with a cool ally ignoring AOE (Shatter Mind), once they activate unleashed psyche they can use occultism to give the magus a +4 aid bonus on their spell strike as an action and a reaction, likely triggering a crit, especially if the investigator used Shared Stratagem to make the enemy off-guard earlier in the round. And, because the investigator used strategic assessment as part of their devise a stratagem, the magus knew to use needle darts to trigger the creature's weakness to cold iron. The level 6 druid that just got fireball? They can't drop that damage as easily if the front line charges in, but if the party delays to stay in a cluster with the justice champion near the center there's a good likelihood that there will be enemies clustered on one side of the party for a juicy multi-hit. The rogue that just got gang up also has a good reason to stick with their buddy, as now the enemies are vulnerable to sneak attack damage. Conversely, if they're facing spellcasters or breath weapons that's probably a bad idea! For most experienced players thinking like this probably comes as second nature, but having it pointed out in a brief 'blurb about your character' in the beginning of the adventure would really help new players, I think. Once they see it in action they can hopefully go into the rulebooks proper to see WHY certain actions are good and start thinking of ways to synergize with their allies in ways that lower level adventures just don't cover very well.
I'm really excited for this new adventure format! I've run through the beginner box probably 5-6 times with various family members on family trips because it feels like a board game. Having alternatives that work the same way, with all the pawns and maps ready, seems like a big win! I will say that if this does well I hope you branch out to higher levels in future products...a 5th level adventure would be a great level for a lot of players that aren't absolute newbies. The pregens have their first ability score bumps, spellcasters get their 3rd rank spells (fireball, anyone?) and everyone should have their striking runes so they feel a lot more powerful.
I still use my old dungeon magazines for this on occasion, since it's so easy to build encounters for 2nd edition...use the maps, characters and ideas from the magazine and quickly build encounters that fit the theme. I spoke in this thread before but I would love to see more linked adventures in this theme, and I really hope this one is successful.
id prefer age of ashes or agents of edgewatch, SoG is really good as is Hear, hear! Season of Ghosts is already amazing. Age of Ashes was an incredible globe trotting adventure that was spoiled for a lot of people by lack of experience in the system and overtuned combats. Mellowing the combats out, tightening up the story beats a bit and releasing it all as a single book and foundry module would make it very well received I think. Agents of Edgewatch may be a little too hot to handle right now, considering everything, but I think Strength of Thousands and Outlaws of Alkenstar would benefit, also.
Just bringing some attention to this. This conversion is in progress in the Wrath of the Righteous forum by KingTreyIII! Go and check it out, he does awesome work and he's releasing all the work he's doing as he completes it.
I would LOVE this as a foundry pack that I could upload and let my players explore.
I'm going to throw in for a new book covering mage hunters or bounty hunting in general. I feel like in a world like Golarion that is so infused with magic, rogue magic users could be a big problem, much less high level adventurers. Perhaps they could throw in a set of psychic or magical duels in general. I loved the idea of the rules for Magical Duels in 2nd edition D&D (old fart alert...), but the implementation left something to be desired. I would love to see a more robust system for that, especially. There's a fantasy that's really not able to be played out with the current rules about a couple of magic users squaring off behind the lines of their allies, engaging in an invisible magic duel while their allies attempt to hold off the enemy's minions...
Been beating the drum for this for a while. I'd love to have all the eras covered so I could do a time traveling Chrono Trigger style campaign...
I've joked before about turning this game more and more into Chrono Trigger over the years. Between PF2e and SF2e, I think a reasonable GM could cover all of the characters and technology needed, so I feel like the last piece of that puzzle would be combo actions like what we're describing here. The question becomes, how to balance the action economy? Assume a situation where you have a cleric with fire ray that wants to enhance the attack of a fighter. Does the cleric hold their initiative to match the fighter's so they can act at the same time, is it a reaction on the cleric's part, or is it a reaction plus slowed 1 on their turn? I think any of the above could work, though it just being a reaction is perhaps a bit strong. How do they learn how to do this? One solution I've been playing around with in homebrew is a 'party feat' track, which are gained at 1st and each even level after that, like class feats. These feats are used to perform combos and aid each other during battle and in exploration. One combo might be the fire ray/stike action I described above, another might be a nimble rogue dodging between a giant's legs, unbalancing him enough for his fighter friend to get a free or reaction trip. Not sure how to balance it, but it does seem like the missing piece to encourage more teamwork. Of course, this is all strictly in the realm of homebrew now, but I keep hoping the powers that be will try something like this.
After having misread a description of Gatewalkers as an escort quest AP, I now demand an escort AP. With the long-awaited attending LO book : Dancing Halls of Golarion. (The below is written with tongue firmly in cheek.) Could you fit a full AP out of that? Maybe you need to do a book of pub crawls first. Cayden Cailean would approve! Then you can do the Escort Book, then a Golem (the card game) book. I could certainly see my players having a good time.
I have to agree. Had I not been familiar with Psionics from 1e/3.5 and your work with Alluria I probably would have passed on this one. Beef up that main page for more casual traffic! I've already pledged and I would love for it to fund so we an get our books.
I understand and appreciate that, and I know they would as well. Game design can be a labor of love, and life and stress take their toll. While communication is limited, Alluria Publishing wants to honor the memory of those past contributions to the Psionics theme as much as possible, in a respectful and honorable way. Well, I for one am excited to see how this plays out. I was a big fan of DSP's work in the past, and I'm excited to see your take on adapting it to PF2e. More options are almost always a good thing!
So, I don't know if anyone has brought this up yet or not, but I want to say I REALLY appreciate the links in the front of the PDF in the table of contents. They really help when you're looking up a rule quickly. Now, if only we could get links on the right page ribbons to jump directly to where you're looking for, that would make the PDF much quicker to reference than the physical book at the table for me.
I'm with you on the single town kind of adventures. One of my favorite adventures back in the dark ages was Gamemastery W1, Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale. Part of it, I'm sure, is nostalgia. That adventure was the start of a wonderful campaign I was in, but the thing I most enjoyed was the play after the module ended. Our GM played it that we were given a kind of split control of the vale, with the local lord that was there at the beginning (I forget his name, it's been 10 years since I played in that group) managing civilian affairs while we managed military defense. We got a monthly stipend from merchants traveling through, set up patrols of hirelings with a series of watchtowers we built, and commanded the armies of the vale when a marauding horde of hobgoblins invaded from the mountains to the north. We built a keep to defend against them using the rules from Stronghold Builder's Guidebook of the 3.5 era, and spent a lot of downtime there training, crafting and roleplaying. We were also local celebrities. We participated in archery tournaments with notables of the area, hosted parties to influence the local landowners, and dealt with the fallout of the miller's son falling in love with the pond nymph who lived in the millpond, though I think he might have stolen that last bit from another adventure. Kingmaker scratched a lot of the same itch for me, but it was too...grand a scale for what I remembered. We spent too much time worrying about the Kingdom as a whole to worry about a tiny corner of it like we did with the Bloodsworn Vale. In a smaller setting like that we were able to name the guardsmen we had working with us, or sit and smoke a pipe with our librarian some cold winter night. I'd love to see an adventure path like that, maybe spread over several years of in-game time. Something where you can just exist in the world and make it yours. Not sure how feasible it would be to write it all out, I'm sure a lot of it was strictly ad-libbed, but it would be fun to see it.
Given that the AP is (presumably) 1-10 and is called "Hellbreakers", I assume it is going to have something to do with the Hellbreaker's League in Isger that was mentioned on page 92 in War of Immortals. *Somewhere behind the scenes in Paizo* "Dangit, they weren't supposed to figure that out yet!"
In fact, my biggest hope is that Cheliax wins the war. Because I think, quite unironically, that would be a more interesting storyline than the standard victory of good in the form of Andoran. I agree. Cheliax has felt largely impotent recently, having them start to reconquer formerly independent nations would help a lot with their image, and make them a stronger threat on the world stage. With Tar-Baphon to the north and Cheliax to the West that starts to put some major strain on The Shining Kingdoms and the southern Kingdoms of The Eye of Dread. How will Andoran work as a group of 'Plucky Rebels' rather than a nation? Will the Eagle Knights make some uncomfortable choices if it means defeating Cheliax? Maybe Nirmanthas and Oprak are able to bury the hatchet after Ironfang Invasion to stand up against a resurgent Cheliax, or will they be ground between the Lich and the evil empire? If Andoran falls, can Eutropia's Taldor and Kyonin, ravaged from their fight against Treerazer, pull themselves together from their recent troubles in time to push back the literal legions of hell? All in all, a much more exciting turn of events than, "Oh, Cheliax is such a silly goose, don't they know everyone else has plot armor because they the good guys? Of course you're going to lose!"
Super excited for this one, and I'm interested to see the changes. I'm currently playing though the start of book 3 and our GM is doing a great job of pulling the adventure together, but going back and reading books 1 and 2 once we finished them shows just how many changes he's made to the books to make them flow a bit smoother. I'm looking forward to seeing what Paizo does with it.
I'll throw my hat in the ring to say this would help a lot for me also. Especially in influence sections, I'll spend some time making what I call an influence board for VTTs- a large scene setting image to one side and a series of frames to one side showing the NPCs the players can be talking to. The players move their tokens to who they're talking to for each round, and it enables me to track influence points and actions easily in a very visual format. The hardest part of making the board is finding good art for the scene setting.
I adore Strength of Thousands, so I'd be up for an organization AP. The only snag is that an AP centred around one of the bigger organizations should probably be a six-parter.I'm all for more six-part APs, but this just isn't true. Judging by their leaderships, any number of organizations "top out" at the mid- or mid-high levels; and extremely low-level content can be handwaved by saying the PCs were doing their organization's initiation/onboarding process, such that they start the AP at level 4 or 5. You could even do it as a hardcover module. To beat the drum again, perhaps a 1-3 module about joining the Eagle Knights of Andoran followed by a Cheliax vs Andoran AP from 4-14, similar to how Rusthenge and Seven Dooms fit together.
Just want to highlight this for visibility. I've been doing organized play as a way to meet new people with similar interests and I'm willing to put up with the rules because of it, but it's exhausting to track everything down. Especially now that I'm starting to play around with running games and reporting them, bringing new players in can be a little rough. I'm a bit of an old grognard in my way and I really miss the collected PDF guide. I wish we could get a PDF guide to organized play including options and a PDF errata guide that so I can hand it out and say 'Here you go, read this and you're set!'
Oh the Gladiator one sounds like fun! Don't think Paizo would do that now that they have abolished slavery across the inner sea and and are not mentioning it elsewhere, but I may have to homebrew it.
I tend to follow the rarity guidelines. Common is allowed, uncommon and rare with permission. Uncommon is generally good to go unless there's a compelling reason for it not to be allowed, and rare is generally not allowed unless there is a compelling reason for it to be allowed.
Very true, but I'm sure the monks would not appreciate that distinction. One of those instances where there are certainly different definitions of honor.
A Runelord striking north into the Linnorm Kings would be a fun Viking-based AP. Oh I like that. A Viking AP would be a fun redux to Skulls and Shackles... instead of being a morally gray pirate AP run a morally gray Viking AP, striking south at Varisia or even further south into Ravounel or Cheliax. Scratches a very similar itch in my mind.
Seems like your gripe is less what was said and more how it was said, which I'd argue is equally unhelpful. I suspect that's wasn't the priority here. +1 to this. Politeness is the grease that keeps society moving smoothly. There are times to break that social contract but whomever does so must appreciate that doing so will bring the proverbial gears grinding to a halt.
The last time I played a magus was in a 1-20 Free Archetype conversion of the Hell's Rebels 1e AP. Herod was an Aiuvarin sparkling targe magus, but that was not 100% the core of his identity. I leaned heavily on the Champion Archetype with the Paladin (at that time, Justice today) cause, follower of Ragathiel. That gave me heavy armor, an awesome spammable focus spell (deity's domain, fire), spot healing (lay on hands), and a great reaction by level 8, after sacrificing a few class feats to get extra champion abilities. At 8, I picked up the Psychic Archetype and took the message cantrip. I also specced into the Investigator archetype (via Multitalented at 9), and picked up devise a stratagem as a bootleg true strike before making those big hits. (Free Action DaS for the win!) Later on I wound up spending most of his class feats boosting spellcasting through psychic, and the Champion line to pick up handy things to go with his reactions. He was all about big fiery hits and wound up playing more like a champion than a magus, with the ability for a really big smite. Herod was a lot of fun to play and really struck fear into the hearts of Thrune loyalists, but he really didn't play like a typical magus in a lot of ways. I always spent a round or two at the beginning of combat getting ready before making my first spell strike, and may only make one or two per combat. I would agree that there are some limitations on the current magus, but where I felt it the most was arcane cascade. I had left Intelligence at 10 and focused on Charisma instead, but that meant I really didn't cast any spells directly at enemies anymore, and buff spells for arcane are few and far between. I wound up using either an amped message cantrip (allowing one of my allies to move or attack) or lay on hands as a way to leave an action for myself to activate it. I would prefer to see the wording required for activation to be either 'You are in combat' or 'You have cast a spell or used spell strike this combat'. Another issue, as you can see from the number of archetypes I had, was there were a lot of levels where I just didn't feel there were any feats good enough to justify their use. Swapping out class feats for more archetype feats should feel like a big decision, but the magus made it easy a lot of the time, and not just for flavor reasons. I'm not a designer, but if I were changing things I'd look at doubling the arcane cascade damage bonus, to +2, +4, and +6 damage respectively, without majorly impacting the power of the class, but making it more worth it to spend a turn triggering the cascade instead of doing something else useful. I would also be tempted to improve the class feats a bit, to make them more of a must-take. Some action compression with feats, blending skills with spell strike recharge like Magus' Analysis or adding riders based on the Hybrid Study would help. For example, a nice feat that I often wished existed was something to raise a shield and recharge a spell strike or enter arcane cascade at the same time. All in all, I would say that the class is a great chassis to work with. High level spells give you a lot of versatility and spell strikes can be BIG damage boosts, especially if you know you're going to roll a Nat 20 on the boss. Hopefully the pain points can be smoothed over in another pass.
I guess I'm in the minority. I appreciated the baseball references, though I could see where it would be confusing out of the US. I'm playing a 6th level Silent Whisper Psychic in a Gatewalkers campaign and I certainly don't feel underpowered, even though I'm playing against the caster meta. One spell you might bring up for the psychic in particular and occult in general is 'Biting Words'. It doesn't benefit from Unleash Psyche but it is a wonderful 3rd action spell. My typical start of combat is move away from danger and cast Biting Words on the first round of combat, unleash psyche at the start of the second round and cast Shatter Mind, hopefully catching all the enemies in the area, then use the single action activation of biting words as a third action. Great for picking off low HP enemies or trying to whittle down some HP on the boss, though generally I find I do more good on 'boss' monsters (PL +3-4) using gathered lore to aid our fighter in his first attack.
I mean... there's a LOT of big-picture data that, as an employee of Paizo, I can see that isn't public. We don't normally make this information (such as sales figures or subscription numbers) public, but we did recently do a more in-depth targeted survey that I hope to see the results of soon. Whether or not those results are also made public is, I think, the call of the publisher and the marketing team, not me, but in any event that information will hopefully help guide our way further into the future. I for one am hoping that data becomes public, at least in broad strokes. Makes my inner data scientist happy. I do understand, though, that it's not your decision. Here's to hoping!
So, I would agree with other comments here that a direct sequel sounds like the 6 part AP under another name. Not a bad thing, but books in the same AP can already be a bit disjointed, so I can only imagine what it would look like with two separate teams working possibly years apart. Indirect sequels can be a lot of fun, but they strike me as hard to do well. The characters in the APs could have done any one of a half dozen or more different things and having to account for all of that...it leads to a bit of dilution. Curtain Call worked well from a readthrough perspective because it is all about the previous AP, but I don't think I would like that as a regular thing. My personal preference would be to see APs set in specific regions, or around specific themes, without having to be a direct sequel. For instance, let's take a hypothetical AP around a group of PCs being a group of Eagle Knights in service of Andoran, who go around the inner sea poking Cheliax in the eye before finally defeating a corrupt governor and ending their adventure at tenth level. This one could be a bit campy, a bit Saturday Morning Cartoon with a small group and slightly comical villains. The next AP set in Andoran starts with a war between Cheliax and Andoran, and in the beginning of the AP mention is made that one of the reasons might be the actions of the PCs in the previous AP, but it might be any one of a half dozen reasons as well. So, the players could pick up the second AP as a group of 10th level patriots or mercenaries who come to join Andoran's plight, or they might be the same group of Eagle Knights from before. Tone is darker here, and the stakes are certainly higher. Both stories have a beginning and an ending that could link together, or could be separate. I'll edit to say that I think this might also be a good place to look at the adventure line, especially with the new anthologies. A short 'bridge' adventure to bring the heroes to Absalom and then a second short bridge adventure to take the heroes from Absalom to a new AP may be a good way to mesh disparate APs. The key there I think would be to have a way to move the heroes to and from a common location, so it all meshes together.
So, I'm pretty hyped for this one. One of the things I really liked for 3.5e/1e was the sheer number of short adventures available in Dungeon Magazine and the short modules produced by WotC and Paizo. It allowed me to easily built a sandbox by dropping leads/rumors/wanted posters to half a dozen short adventures as rumors in the local tavern/guildhall and letting my players decide which way they wanted to go. I've been using Society scenarios, but they're typically a little short for what I'm looking for. Here's to hoping many more of these are made.
I'm running Skull and Shackles right now, and a Skull and Shackles 2e Remaster Remaster with Plunder and Peril bonus content would be significantly fun. I had forgotten about Skull and Shackles. There are so many great storylines I didn't get a chance to play back on release, and as much fondness as I have for first edition the thought of bringing in a group of players to the system or running a game in it is not something I'd consider now, especially as I'd have to manually upload them all to Foundry. Now, if they were already converted to second edition and already set up in Foundry...
Man, I for one would love a remaster of some of the old APs into Pathfinder 2nd edition. I think I'd buy every one that was released, especially if they came with a foundry release also. I have really fond memories of playing them in first edition and I'd love to introduce them to new groups with the updated rule system. With that being said, I think my top three would be: 1: Curse of the Crimson Throne
I really want to like Demiplane/Nexus, but I keep bouncing off because of a lack of mobile/tablet app, lack of foundry integration, and cost. I've bought a couple of Lost Omens books on there and I enjoy them for reading on my phone and iPad mini over a pdf, but my mobile connection can be spotty with my phone and I'm not always sitting somewhere with wifi when I read on the tablet. Part of the reason I picked up a mini vs. a full size is the ability to sit in a park somewhere and read. There's also the fact that my LFGS doesn't have wifi in the shop, meaning everything has to be done locally. My players and I all play in foundry these days, so lack of integration there makes it difficult to justify paying for rulebooks again, for a service that doesn't allow them to be used easily. I could see paying for it if these issues are fixed, but for now I guess I'm sticking to .pdfs.
I am VERY EAGER to get a chance to look through that research soon, and the fact that we've actually been able to get that out there is potentially a huge step in the right direction. Message board posts are great and all that, but they're not really a great place to get big picture data. One of the best things we did in our business was investing in more market research. I got training to be a data scientist in college, even if I'm not using it now, and always find there's so much to mine out of the data. I hope you all share some of the data with those of us who are curious. Y'all are the best in the business, and I'm interested in seeing where the research leads you next.
I'll throw my lot in with Errant above. When I run APs I'll often wait till the entire AP is out and take a chance to read it before I run it. Inevitably, I wind up spending some time pruning lost plot threads, foreshadowing villains early, or giving a payoff scene later in the book for something that was set up earlier. There's always some work needed and the disconnect between books can be especially jarring. THAT BEING SAID: Paizo still puts out the nicest adventures in the industry. Everyone has an off day, including companies, and while I probably won't run WoW I'm glad to have a copies in my library to mine for ideas, NPCs and monsters to drop into a home brew game. I will say, in the recent market research we were asked about how we would prefer APs- single volumes in hardcover or softcover, or continuing with a monthly subscription. One of the reasons I chose to vote for a single volume hardcover book was, hopefully, to help with the cohesiveness of the books and stories. Having them all in a single book gives a person a chance to read from beginning to end and spot issues before they get to print.
Do most encounter with criminal in the same manner as theif and mugger end with them dead? I think it depends on what serves the story. If you're including this, why are your characters fighting thieves? Is it a simple random combat encounter? The introduction of a group the heroes will have to deal with? A chance to drop a heart-wrenching item in front of the players, like the classic 'one more mark and I'll be able to buy the medicine for my daughter' note? Most muggers and robbers would far rather talk their way out of having to fight, unless they have the upper hand. You see this in animals as well...most predators either attack from ambush, prey on things that cannot fight back, use overwhelming numbers, or all of the above. So, how will the bandits manage this? Will one person stand in the road and demand money while the others wait in ambush? Will they try to sneak up when the characters are asleep on the road? Surround and fire down at the heroes from the rooftops? Are they skilled thieves? Mercenaries? Peasants that are desperate? There are so many factors that might affect things, and if they choose to stay or not. Keep in mind too that combat is fast from the perspective of the characters, even if it takes a while for us to adjudicate it. Most of the combats I run are over in 3-5 rounds, or about 30 seconds. Do the bandits have time to look around and realize 'oh crap, all my buddies are dead?' before they take an arrow to the eye? Are they experienced enough to recognize a losing fight? In short, there's no one right answer. Let the needs of the story decide if they run or not, and relevant factors around the specific scenario. I will say that I tend not to run suicidal bandits in my games, but they have certainly been surprised before.
I would -love- to see a Cheliax vs. Andoran AP, particularly if we're able to get into some of the weeds of governance in Andoran and the intrigue that is inherent there. Heck, could combine this with what I was talking about in my post, joining a knightly order, and have the player characters as members of the Eagle Knights.
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