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I had one of my characters die in Lions of Katapesh, where the party made the hard roll, that makes things harder. I've think I've killed two characters in about 200-ish PFS sessions. In all PFS cases people had ACP to undo the death. I've had three character deaths in my AP groups. (slightly higher rate compared to PFS, my players often play more aggressive in APs with pushing their luck than they do in PFS tables). All there AP deaths were "solved" via reincarnate.
Outside of combat, I tend to let them roll whatever skill they want, even if on a success they wouldn't get anything. (They also don't tend to get critical fail information either, its just a result of its outside their expertise, so an auto fail). I wouldn't consider this a gotacha since there's typically no action/time/resource cost. In combat, I often let them suggest a skill first, (most of my players are experienced and will tend to get it down to 2-3 skills before more is said) -- most often when its wrong its because it is one of the hard to tell apart things (bone devil, skeleton, or bone construct). A non-relevant skill might give something like "while it looks a lot like a bone devil, you're pretty sure this a crafted construct and you know this typically means it doesn't have a spirit/soul" on a success, (while giving you an easy thing to use on a crit-fail). So still trying to give something useful, but its not going to be directly on point, and I might replace the usual Q&A formulation when its an off-topic skill.
To me, my reason for preferring artwork to maps is I prefer the non-top down view when using artwork for scene setting. Non-map illustrations are often more evocative of emotions than maps that are often more neutral. But I tend to limit myself to Paizo products, flipping through all of old setting books, or past APs. Looking for useful chapter intro illustrations or PFS cover art.
When we have a very long influence/negotiation game, I really would love to see useful scene setting art and aids for running it including in the Foundry mod. Now they haven't been doing that, because its not in published book to start with, at least that's what I've seen mentioned in the past. So while I think in-person games might not need the aid as much and that makes it a harder sell to include in the book for all thee reasons James lists. I typically like to create a scene that has artwork for each of the individuals that can be influenced along with the discovery skills listed, and then fog-of-war to reveal the influence/weakness/resistance/etc that could be discovered. Sure it might make it a bit more worker-placement style game, but I've found in APs and PFS scenario on VTTs these kind of aids help ensure you're not repeating yourself a ton of times when trying to run these scenes. I feel like a 1/2 size map, that's this type of aid, and then a 1/2 size map that was a chapter intro artwork that's close enough for the scene would typically fit. Of course its not quite right, since the chapter intro is normally an action scene with the iconics, rather than the influence scene, but it might still be close enough without adding extra art. So its more about finding an approach that the Foundry module creators think makes sense for them.
I'm helping one of my friends run the idea I posted in the OP -- Rusthenge for levels 1-4, followed by the Season 2 PFS Meta plot to skip level (two levels every single Society adventure), into Spore War. Possibly heavily tweaking the 4-99 special as their introduction to Kyonin. But the 4-99 events might be too on-point and overshadow the undead/Whispering tyrant kick off, so I'll need to think through that some more. I still need 1-2 backup plans for how to get the party from Rusthenge to Ioboria (main plan would be seeking help from the society to figure out how to seal away the horn, and being sent (Maze of the Open Road) to some place closer to Iobaria to meet with Eando, and then get stuck helping with the events there. Also playing with an idea for creating a similar horn-artifact (fingernail) from the PFS sequence and seeing if there is an interesting way to tie in the two mcguffins to the book three finale once I see it.
I'm very excited for this AP and trying to begin strategic planning for the AP. I don't love starting at high levels without a couple of shorter adventures to help establish the characters/help the players know how to drive the more complex starting build. I think Rusthenge can be a good (but full-length three levels) starting hook that shares some themes. I think the season 2 PFS metaplot, could likewise be used in an accelerated level up fashion. The PFS 4-99 multi-table special could maybe be homebrewed into something as well. Other thoughts on other existing Paizo adventures that would work well for a prologue/accelerated vingettes for checking in on the characters as the got from 1-10 in a couple of adventures? Ie I'm not really looking for a normal 1-10 AP to run first, but between 3 and 15 sessions worth of content.
Its a little harder in the remaster with the more player-facing question/answer, since they may ask for something that's harder to adlib. However your list is still a good starting point. A couple of points: For creatures
Having a reaction to say a creatures has (even if its just Reactive Strike) when they don't have one is another thing that's worth having in your backpocket.
I could kinda see the tailwind issue if its something like 1/2 the party has a high speed (from ancestry/feat/items/etc) and are further boosting it with spells, while the 1/2 are slower with no speed investment. And there's no tension due to plot timers where the fast folks think the slow people are jeopardizing the mission if they don't invest in the wands/etc. I can easily see how it both a) doesn't fit some characters build/fantasy and b) actively makes the adventure harder. But that's a table culture issue to me, rather than a cause for a ban. The party should be more flexible on expectations; the GM might need to rein in the use of timers, especially in regards to overland travel; while still allowing the speed investment to be tactically useful at encounter scale. Same with high speed and kiting. If its making combat boring/long/trivial/repetitive, that's a problem to solve. If you're running an AP and don't want to change up the encounters too much, talk to your players. "OK you found a hard counter, but its getting boring. Please avoid overusing it outside of dire situations and explore some new strategies." If you're homebrewing it up, look for more fast monsters for a bit drakes, quicklings, wolves. Anything than than try to out kite them, to use pack tactics to separate characters and surround one. I tend to dislike arms races like this, so might still just try the appeal to the players to tone down the kiting if its feeling like its sapping the fun.
When trying to optimize crafting on PFS2 characters in particular, the important thing to keep in mind is what items do you want, but are willing trade time for money. This is almost never your primary weapons/armor/runes -- you typically want those immediately upon having access/level requirements. Its often an entire level of downtime time to craft one of those for the full discount, and you won't want to be -1 behind for that time. So the character fantasy of crafting all your own gear is a bad fit, But if you craft all your skill items, or consumables, or things like the rings of energy resistance can work.
My critique of skill challenges typically comes down to when its a multi-round iterated challenge that doesn't change much between rounds. I feel scenarios often don't give enough hooks to the beginner/intermediate GMs to bring the extended skill checks to life, and that's why it just degrades to mechanical rolling of dice. Chases or the other "everyone rolls to overcome an obstacle" versions tend to work, and also often have a sense of urgency that keeps them flowing. its the Research/Influence that often fall victim to becoming too mechanical. As examples of ones that I think gave enough help to the GM:
Echoes of Desparation -- Again each round was given narrative description that would help people approach it differently and role play, rather than only mechanically playing an virtual worker placement board game. (However this one was very poorly scaled/balanced IMO, which probably negatively affects most people's memory/experience/perception of its fairness). For an example of a borderline experiment, IMO:
What am I missing?Consider Radu the Wanderer's investigator, Professor Bartholomew Digby. He fell into the water and faced three-crocodile-like monsters. Let me assume those monsters were Crocodiles with Elite template, a 3rd-level creature. Three elite crocodiles would be 30 xp, a trivial encounter against a 7th-level 4-member party. But against a single 7th-level investigator, they would be the equivalent of a 120-xp Severe-Threat encounter. And PF2 crocodiles are designed to grab and cripple a single target, based on the hunting style of real crocodiles. A single 3rd-level crocodile will have difficulty grabbing a 7th-level character, but with 3 of them, one is going to roll lucky. The weakness of a... Pretty sure those are Krooth's so it was 3 level 8 characters, not level 3-creatures. So yes, they will tear apart a level 7 who falls into their environment.
The last update or two really exploded the size of the module. Can you check if some optimization was left out? I think it was clocking in at 1.2GB, while most full APs are significantly smaller. Causes problems when using the module on hosting services like the Forge.
I try to always do: at least one traversal/escape skill Athletics or Acrobatics
Medicine, Performance, Stealth don't fit as well into those buckets and tend to be much more based on the character concept making it an auto-pick if relevant. All three don't quite fill their respective bucket, but are often more about enabling a particular ability/playstyle. I do lean into intelligent/crafting characters more often than not, even if its not natural for that class. That means I tend to have extra skills so its easy to cover all those categories, and often add an extra knowledge/puzzle skill. I tend to lean away from social characters -- Intimidate has probably become a little over-represented in my social skills bucket just because demoralize is something I think to use more often than the other skill actions.
I'll try to answer but the why (what you asked) and how to deal with it (what might be more useful). Why: Often its newer people to the community; they may still have some anxiety about attending a new event and just bail. And then feel too embarrassed to reach out. People double book by accident and forget to deal with it; either because they don't realized there's a waiting list and its polite to cancel or because they forgot, or they just don't event think about it. A real life emergency happens. More for on-line games than in-person: people book the same scenario multiple times at different events/lodges, maybe trying to find a game that runs sooner, and forget to drop their original one/backup one they kept in case something fell through. A person just forgets about it. Especially if they don't have a semi-regular schedule and only plays sporadically. There are times when you have to book so-far ahead, that if you only play once a month, they time between booking and playing can get quite long. There's probably more reasons but those are the main ones I've seen. How to deal with it? 1) If you have any form of broadcast announcements (emails, discord announcement channels, blogs, etc) that your community uses. Just include a reminder about the sign-up etiquette expected. Include this on a join event Warhorn signup page. 2) Try to reach out to last-minute no shows, avoid blaming, avoid too much criticizing, just remind them of the expectation. Let them know its costing other people the chance to play and/or possibly causes the table to fail to fire for everyone. If its online, and these are random drive-by (no-show) attendees, maybe reach out to some of the online VOs to document persistent issues who don't really have a home lodge to build cultural norms. 3) If you're having trouble with tables failing to fire as a result of no-shows, see if you can have any "standby" players. Either a perennial online person, or someone who lives close to the venue who can just come over last-minute to make sure the table fires, to avoid alienating the people who did show up.
The Cold Iron trait from Slag May can be extremely impactful at low levels, before cold-iron weapons are relatively cheap. Build a Slag May Monk, lean into ki-powers (or stances that don't require a specific strike), and just blender all the things if you in a fey or demon themed adventure. Sure 9th level Monk class feature will mostly obsolete it, but in the game I've been playing, its felt totally worth it.
I agree than for trivial/low I'd expect a single 10 minute exploration round, for healing, refocusing, looting, follow-up on investigating the location unless the party is on a known ticking clock, in which case they'd might push their luck. ( Or use consumables/ranked spells) For a moderate than went a little against them. Three 10- minutes rounds usually can get a party ready to again,but might require spending some resources. Probably 20 minutes for a more average outcome For anything harder than moderate, probably closer to an hour before the party will feel ready to move on When trying to design encounters, keeping these time periods in mind can be useful for how to plan ticking clocks. Or planning how much other investigation/identification time makes sense to put in the after combat resolution portion. Give the non healers something to engage with in the room
The one comment I'd give on the OPs original estimate, is, in general, I expect the refocusing and the healing time tracks to run in parallel most of the the time. In the vast majority of my games, the heavy in-combat focus-spells users have not been the healers (via medicine or focus point healing). So that would cut 1-3 10-minute rests out of your estimates for the different severity fights.
We've had this conversation before regarding fascinate and slapping people out of that. I felt those older threads were generally more OK with slapping people out of fascinate, then they are for slapping out of calm. Is there a difference beyond it seeming like fascinate is more often inflicted on PCs, while calm is more often used by PCs against the enemy?
The way I like to try to thread the needle on these types of party comp/optimization discussions, especially when pulling together a group of strangers is to ask the following two situations: 1) Describe to me how your party could set up your perfect turn for you 2) Describe to me how you can setup your party members for a perfect turn, if your go-to isn't viable in an encounter. I've been finding that this framing avoids pre-supposing any particular roles/classes, but does highlight the importance of teamwork and of the give-and-take. It also highlights the need to be flexible and not locked in to only one strategy.
Yes its a _good_ thing that the developers of the Foundry modules have a channel to get corrections in a timely manner, as forced by the release schedule. All too often these types of questions just kinda pile up in the GM thread and only sometimes get Paizo developer attention. Yes, its also bad that they are either not always posted, or not posted in a manner that's consistent with the Guide on what posts can be viewed as official. This means that Foundry-produced scenarios are different from pdf-based scenarios, which isn't a good state. It feels like all this takes is some process tweak -- whenever Paizo is responding to the foundry dev's with these clarification to cut & paste the Q&A portion of the email into a specific thread -- ie make it easy just have a "Season 5 Correction Thread" not tied to each particular scenario. If keeping it Paizo side is unworkable from some reason, then add one of the Foundry dev's to the list of approved people to post corrections, and probably require an alt "Official Foundry Scenario Correction' voice (like the Guide Voice) for them to post as.
The closest thing to auto-miss is the guidance from the gliminals: Violent Healing:
So the rough guidance is to still require a roll, but allow the character to worsen the result one step (either on a to-hit, or for a save)
For instance there's an AP that gives you 10 1-hour chunks to research. That's 40 rolls. With a tiny bit of lore added in small chunks. The first complication comes at around 20-24 successes, I don't recall exactly. That's too many rolls without anything of interest happening. I feel you need "something" interesting happens on average every two rounds -- whether that's a complication (fight/hazard), or a new discovery that unlocks different skills, or possibly a higher pay-off/risk-reward investment, etc. For a campaign long research project, I think you can have a succession of libraries, with increasing DCs as you find the more obscure/yet relevant ones. If you're tracking RP points globally, some of the higher tier libraries probably should give a bonus if you're below some total to help catch up.
One of my campaigns (an AP, but I won't name which one) had the party bring the "Bloody Angel Sack" with them from book 2 to book 6, and it kept getting referenced.
I think the issue of a discount on various digital products, with proof of purchase of a physical product, is something that is always much harder to actually implement that people think. its either
b) or only works for physical purchases made on Paizo.com (which is probably a non-starter for keeping LFGS happy), and causes ill-will for people who bought their books elsewhere before learning about this option c) some "register" your product feature, that's cumbersome for the customer, required more technical implementation, and still vulnerable to the same exploits as a2.
If your players have existing PFS2 characters and want to play those characters, yes, sticking to Scenarios, Quests, and Bounties would make the most sense. Adventure Mode for sanctioned content (see: Additional Adventures -- Modes of Play) is designed for letting a group play through an AP with a separate set of characters, that can break normal PFS2 rules, while rewarding GM/player chronicles to be applied to normal PFS2 characters. Often allowing access to more limited archetypes/etc to flow into PFS in small quantities. Sometimes people will make a "clone" of their PFS character to play in the AP, this clone will progress through the levels more quickly than the character receiving the chronicle (10 levels in the AP, versus 3 levels of chronicles). But there is no requirement to have the AP character be tied to the chronicle character. just that some people want to, or use the AP to test drive the character's build at higher levels.
When playing sanctioned adventures/adventure paths like AV, the character playing the adventure is NOT the character receiving credit. The character playing the adventure gains XP at the usual rate (commonly using the built in milestones to the AP), and then after every chunk you award a chronicle that gets applied to a normal society character (who didn't play the adventure).
There's 13 numbered rooms: Nothing: 7 (Brief description, at most one roll involved)
Plus Final Location/combat PCs are expected to get through all of it. I see most groups doing it in under 4 hours. This does require at least trying to some level of disabling/diplomacy rather than brute forcing everything.
I don't consider it a badly written scenario. It can be a bit more non-linear than some, as most of the investigation is open ended and the party can go on in different directions, along with a bit of different escalations/interactions based on how people resolve things. It also requires a bit more time management, since as you mention the number of quirky rooms can consume a lot of time. Ideally you know how much time to allow, since it can be some of the best role play moments. However it sounds like the GM was either trying to run in cold (which could be difficult) or decided ahead of time that they didn't like it/want to understand it and just gave up.
I tend to agree that Champion + Bard are the current cornerstones of an optimized party. I'm hoping the final form of Guardian/Commander can help diversify that. You typically want a damage focused specialist as the front-line companion of the champion -- but basically any martial/magus/warpriest/etc can probably slot in without too much difference. As stated upthread, you probably want them able to trip or grapple, but also able to be one of the main hammers for the party. The fourth is probably going to be dictated a bit by the sub-class/build choices of the other three. What skills are you missing as a party? Is the Bard going to know Soothe or not; has someone gone battle medicine? A ranged martial, a divine/primal caster, an investigator/rogue all feel like they could be the fourth piece very easily.
To me that does sound like a completely bogus and careless ruling. Despite the chain of best-effort evidence you say the GM did, I have to think some details were left out along the way. There should be no gotchas, no "oops you had a permanent condition you didn't know about, sorry your character is dead". Something doesn't add up.
No, the shield is not lowered after blocking -- unless the shield is broken/destroyed by the damage. I think there was on iteration during the PF2 Playtest where the shield was lowered (or misinterpreted as lowered) back before launch that might be sticking in some people's minds.
Its a feature to hide events that you no longer plan to report new sessions to. Ie if you were hosting a convention, after all sessions have been reported, and a couple weeks have gone by for any quickly noticed errors, you can hide it so you don't get confused/report against it by accident for next year's version of the event. Same if you have one event per venue you run at; or if you cycle event codes every year for larger lodges. A lot of time if your running a single event "So and So's Home Games" you might never need to use that feature. Its purely a QoL feature for managing the default list of events you see.
And similarly, if you're writing an adventure, campaign, etc try to avoid AoO/RS on enemies in your first couple of encounters. After telling people it's not universal, so many intro type things put an AoO on an early opponent and make players think they can't trust that advice or that the GM was playing gotcha.
It keeps the manipulate trait. Nothing says it loses it. Its part of the trade off for getting the increased damage -- either you already know the creature doesn't have reactive strike, or you've had someone else soak it for you, or you're risking it.
They don't easily show up in quick navigation in the store, but if you do a search for Foundry, you should end up with on option being the list of all Paizo's Foundry products. If you already have the PDF, you sometimes want to click over to the "unavailable" tab, since you can get the [CODE only] version. Normal Paizo-store/inconsistent log-in state issues I think is why it forgets you qualify for the CODE version. Once you purchase one there's typically three steps to using it:
Personally I'm most interested in them taking one of the "neutral"-ish deities out. But that starts out as considering it the "compromise" solution killing an evil god is safe -- less impactful to as many player characters (probably), but more boring from an author/creative side in a lot of ways. Flip those pros/cons around for the Good side of things. Gorum, Gozreh, Irori, Nethys sit in the middle and probably impact fewer characters than the Good deities, but still more than the evil ones. I feel they've been a little less developed over the years, so there's not as much for fans to latch onto. Which feels like it could be a great opportunity to shake things up. Gorum, Gozreh, and Nethys in particular feel like their death could open up a vacuum/space for something interesting to explore/replace. Irori feels more insular, so less impactful. While I would have considered Pharasma in this clump, I always figured she'd be safe just due to her role in the cosmology.
Basically what I've learned from lots of PFS2 is that you need to be particularly careful when you have characters on opposite sides of the level 4 boundary -- but the same is true even in a non-mixed level party when you're designing fights. The jump from martials w/ and w/o striking runes is extremely noticeable. Monsters for above that tier have more HP as a result. So if the party is punching up, across that tier before they get their striking runes, the fights go longer than expected (and are already tough fights). if you have a mixed level party, the one-two combo of lower to hit, and 1/2 damage when you do hit, can be extremely disheartening. And the PFS level bump system doesn't help a lot -- but runic weapon can be a huge help -- especially if you're a 3rd/4th level caster whose 1st rank slots are less useful -- using that to help the lower level people catch up is extremely useful. Most of the other damage increases (property runes, weapon specialization static boosts, bonus precision damage) phase in in ways that don't feel like an almost pure doubling and the jump in opponent HP feels more "diluted" as a result.
I've noticed the rune problem in Kingmaker and QofFF. I haven't noticed it in AoA, EC, AV, SoT, or GW. I have heard of cases of GMs not letting people take the runes off bosses/enemies if it wasn't explicitly listed in the treasure section of the encounter, I'm positive that's a GM just not understanding things. In those cases, yup you will be behind on runes. Often the bosses are the source of the "early" runes -- ie getting one a level early.
Thank you for that information. What level can one get to with AP's or modules? 20 with AP/Adventure credits, since they aren't level locked. (6 AoA, 6 EC, 1 FoP, 1 Slither, 3 AV, 3 QofFF ....) But there's not much point from leveling using AP/Adventure credit to go past the level range that scenarios exist for.
In general, if the party has indicated a desire to keep people alive/save them, while combat is still ongoing, I will use death/dying rules. I won't spend too much time figuring out exactly how many rounds its been, and would just guesstimate a dying value for people. Ie, everything uses Death and Dying rules by default, but we can hand wave it most of the time and do so. However, if they've indicated they want to take people alive (even if somewhat retroactively), I also expect them to at least start considering non-lethal options, or at least show they they acknowledge their actions are at odds with their intentions. I'd expect to see stabilize used, or other approaches once someone reaches dying rather than just hoping they stabilize on their own, or the combat ends in time to save them. If they get in the habit of beating people to near-death (ie using lethal force), but then saving them while dying/taking them prisoner, that's the type of reputation that will get around. Brutal thugs, merciless bounty hunters, etc this might be what they want, this might not. Christovich has not created a profile. |
Pathfinder Society GM. Starfinder Society GM. 2,160 posts (2,718 including aliases). 5 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 28 Organized Play characters. 9 aliases. 
