NielsenE's page

Free Archetype as a quest reward is an interesting one actually. I'm thinking about that for my other AP

** spoiler omitted **

While that archetype can make sense for some characters at that moment, I don't think it'll make sense for all of the characters. But only giving it as a freebie to some characters would feel uneven, so I'm not sure what I might give the others.

You could consider something like Archeologist or Folklorist as semi-generally aligned with the researching history theme as a fallback. You might be able to fit in Crystal Keeper from Age of Ashes with some massaging of the fey city; or the Riverthun ones to lead into book 3.

Thank you. It does sound like you're also saying its OK if its on a near penultimate page, often combined with the ORC or OGL as being used, which does sound unusual for "on or before Title Page" as specified.

To me the intent sounds more like "on or before the first page of main text content" -- which again is wishy-washy if you have a map on the inside cover or art/handouts. I do wish the terminology was a bit more clear and well-defined, but I think the intent is clear.

I've been working on some final checklists, ensuring a product I'm working on is fully compliant with both ORC and the Paizo Inc. Compatibility License and am running into a bit of confusion around proper placement of the Compatibility text:

"Your Product must include the following text as its own paragraph and in a legible size and color on the title page or on any one page preceding the title page." [Emphasis Added]. Title Page is not defined in the https://paizo.com/licenses/compatibility document.

However from common usage I would expect this to be a non-artistic, fairly minimal page that has Title, Author &/or Company, maybe a publisher imprint. I'm not used to seeing any amount of extra legalese on a "Title Page" by that definition. But practically no Paizo product, or 3p product I've looked at has a Title Page under that more common-use/academic definition. So I assume Title Page must have some alternate definition that's assumed within the TTRPG industry that I can't find.

Paizo Products (which of course don't need a compatibility license), tend to follow a pattern of a title only (sometimes with art, sometimes not), no author, no extra legalese as the first inside-page on Hardcovers. And author/credit information as a small sidebar text to the Table of Contents/intro for hard or softcovers. There could be space on such a page for the compatibility notice, but that's sometimes after the title page, so it would feel in violation for a non-Paizo product. And from my limited 3p library, I see at least some putting the compatibility notice on the final ORC or OGL license pages. Of course those are older products, from large companies that might have their own agreements anyways or a different version of the license at that time. But if those ORC/OGL pages also typically have credits and copyright information, maybe those count as Title Pages? (which would seem a bit counter-intuitive to me, but....)

My current approach has a front cover (where I plan to put the compatibility logo), and then page 2(technically inside cover if printed, but PDF only at present) with the title, TOC, and intro text/how to use this adventure. I'm currently placing the compatibility statement at the bottom of this page. This is the first non-cover page, so I don't see a way to place it earlier, but am not sure if I have to separate out a simpler title page in order to comply.

If you're having fun with the non-combat, I think one of the solutions is to cut as much combat as you can. I find often there's about 1/3rd of the encounters that are fairly easy to cut.

You still lose something -- those are often interesting "show the unique things that live here" or "make the complex feel well populated" or even "throw in a super easy fight to let the heroes feel like heroes". But if combat is the source of the slow down, and the non-combat is working. Then the solution is to cut the combats you can. There will still be enough remaining, IMO, for most combat-fans to enjoy the game. Its not completely eliminating them.

I would also look into slapping the weak template on almost everything, so to help combats run a little faster, yes you're making things easier, but each round will tend to accomplish more. if you want to be fancy, apply a semi-weak template that only drops the defenses (AC/saves) by 2. The party will move the needle more often, while the out-going threat would remain the same.

I value the society scenarios, and I value the convivence of not having to manually add them to my cart and apply a gold discount to them.

I'm not currently running society scenarios, outside of random one-offs tied to a side story in an AP/homebrew. So if we lose the convivence aspect, I probably wouldn't deal with the monthly. I definitely wouldn't bother with the SFS scenarios. Maybe this means I get to spend my gold on more useful things to me, but it feels bad and like I need to micromanage. It feels like I might drop some of the hit-or-miss subscriptions for me to free up non-auto-purchased things so I have something left to spend gold on. But in reality that probably means I'm spending less and getting less. Unless there's a way to auto-apply a gold balance towards regular subscription payments.

This seems very awkward for people who typically get most of the subscriptions. What's left to spend gold on? I used to sometimes buy an extra copy of a book to donate to a convention give away. And I guess I can still do that, but this really feels like its actually discouraging the superscriber.

This really looks like a much worse system for me and will probably lead me to drop some subs.

I absolutely hate having to manually manage/apply the discount to the society scenarios.

Ahh thanks, I had forgotten that Article 3 (Mutual Defense) was only scoped to matters of the Whispering Tyrant. That solves that underlying probolem.

My group is 5/6ths of the way through the negotiation aspect of book 1, while they've been doing a very good job with all the delegates, the Nirmathas/Molthrune issue is causing me issues trying to figure out what makes sense.

Specifically, they've gotten Molthune maxed out on influence (including 3 non-Nirmathas to agree to articles 2-4). Nirmathas has not been excluded from the treaty as a whole, or article 1 specifically. (And I think all the clauses/conditional only refer to article 1).

So my understanding is that Multhune would still not sign article 1, but would sign articles 2-4, at least as listed -- since the requirement is listed as 3 non-Nirmathas, not no Nirmathas and 3 at least three others). While I could plausibly understand Multhune looking the other way on Nirmathas being part of the mutual aid or being involved in the offensive efforts against Tar Baphon; I don't see why they would resist the non-aggression pack, but accept the mutual defense.

Ie I can imagine them not signing 1 & 3, while signing 2 & 4. But as written it sounds like no-1, yes-2,3,4 is a possible. Which gets us into the state that they've free to attack Nirmathas, but immediately trigger war with the rest (and are expected to fight themselves).

It didn't sound like you had to exclusively sign the articles in increasing order. Is the push to exclude Nirmathas meant to from the alliance as whole, not just in regards to Article 1? Is there some other interpretation on "No on one, yes on three?"

-----------------------------------------

And now some more general thoughts on this negotiation/influence mini game. Its definitely been complex, we've been at it for about 4 hours, with one more small council meeting to go. It hasn't dragged on though, and we're having fun. However, I think there's some aspects that I think are little awkward.

1) The number of influence rounds turns feels about right, but the batching into small councils I feel is a little problematic. We basically have to abstract away the going back and forth between factions that feels like the more natural approach to negotiation. People might not know to ask about other-faction's demands when they visit someone, and I don't think the intent is to make people waste a second small council with one faction just to seal a deal.

2) I think some opening statement, maybe its still non-public so its not part of the opening ceremony, of the Influence 0 position and key extra thing they want to negotiate. This helps the players form a mental picture of the landscape. And I think there would be an initial flurry of activity at an even like that, before settling down to the personal discussions.

3) I tend to feel that influence games work better when you can split the party and work on different NPCs in a given round. This tends to help keep players engaged since they can more easily find a NPC that matches their personality/interests/good skills. In this case it also would have helped with the flow of initially talking to everyone finding their demands, and then concentrating on places that feel like sticking points, and then the "will X accept Y" style conditionals emerge and evolve more naturally. However style of more free form (4 influence rounds per day, can swap freely between people (maybe still excluding Clavance until special evening slots), does have problems co-existing with some of the more scripted small council intros, that wouldn't feel as good when done solo or repeated on each character's first visit.

4) Now this idea might over complicate things, but I think possibly having 1-3 influence tracks for each delegate -- 1 for what articles they'll agree to, 1 for lessening their extra demands, 1 for what concessions they'll make to others. It would feel a little better when a players discussion/debate is more along the lines of accepting the higher markup from Druma, but instead the next tier has no change in that aspect.

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.

If the game is full, it can be worth signing up on the waitist, since that can help show the demand for more slots and/or help people realize the some people are being consistently left out.

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
When dealing with IWR, I often find its easier/more believable to flip an I/R <-> W. Ie, Fire immunity/ resistance <-> cold weakness. For me this at least is easier to present without triggering my 'I'm obviously lying voice'

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:
Blakrose Deception -- Each round of the influence minigame had descriptive text of a new room, or changes in attitude of the person to influence, along with something bonus to interact with. So while it was a multi-round, each round can feel different, and even if a character is relatively un-invested in the needed skills, often the bonus thing allowed to them engage some times.

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:
Battle For Star's Fate -- Here we have a multi-round influence system broken up across the entire scenario. With different characters coming and going, with obviously different scene setting and priorities. It should be ideal -- and I want to like the idea since it never feels like
"and now we play a minigame for a while". However, I found the context switching back and forth often annoyed players even more, and keeping track of who was around/what people had learned was harder, even with various table/online aids.

Radu the Wanderer wrote:

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.

Cold Iron is common, so its available, but remember you can't stockpile downtime days.

I try to always do:

at least one traversal/escape skill Athletics or Acrobatics
at least one knowledge skill (Arcane, Primal, Religion, Occult, Society)
at least one social skill (Deception, Diplomacy, Intimidate)
at least one puzzle solving skill (crafting, thievery, survival)

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.

Congrats on the Order of the Wayfinder award, Lucas!

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.

I think there was also one tied to Freedom for Wishes? or one of that arc.

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:
"There aren't default rules for a creature choosing to be hit (to avoid exploding from a gliminal's healing), but you can allow an ally to improve their outcome by one degree of success against a willing target or allow the target to worsen the result of their saving throw by one step"

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
a) higher exploitable
1) ... via a shared code (which would get published immediately)
2) ... or one-time use codes that have to be inserted in every book at extra processing cost, and requires shrink wrap -- and still exploitable via physical returns after using the code.

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.

I don't believe the boss gets to actually cast the spell; the spell is simply expended to empower their strikes. But the ability is written very oddly. A once a round quickened spell would be way out of scale for balance.

Only thing I can think of regarding infinite breath weapons

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)
Brief Role Play/Interaction: 3 (interacting with students, multiple rolls) (+1 from event)
Combat: 3 (+1 from event), many have non-combat quicker/resolutions.

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.

On the Organized Play FAQ page, on the Achievement Points and Boons tab.

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:
1) go to your Digital Content page (under My Account, here on Paizo) and copy the key for the product you purchased.
2) go to your account on Foundryvtt under Purchased Content, activate that key.
3) if you're using the Forge for hosting, wait 10-15 minutes and it should show up in the bazaar to install. If you're hosting yourself, you can grab the manifest URL to use from the Package Link page for the module on Foundryvtt after activating the key.