NielsenE's page

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.

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 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.

Congrats on the Order of the Wayfinder award, Lucas!

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:
"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)

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.

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.

And if none of those work, you should be able to reach out to your region's VC for further help.

You don't need to split a split level chronicle into multiples sheets. Just annotate something like
10 TB at Level 2, 20 TB at Level 3 = XXX in the notes section
8 days downtime at level 2, 16 days downtime at level 3, etc

You can't split reputation on an AP chronicle in the first place so that's not an issue.

In pre-remaster I'm pretty sure it was possible. Haven't looked deep into the remaster rules yet to know if that changed.

But given than the +1 run is about half the price of the striking rune, it tends to never come up.

For a single anecdote about an encounter using this more lethal interpretation of the rules:

Last night we had an encounter, that knocked my character to dying 2 in the first round. The party healed me, I retrieved my weapon, stood up, and stepped away. (Under the old rules I probably would have struck). I had a reach weapon so with the step I could still attack next round, while forcing the opponent to spend an action to come to me (or more, likely, attack my closer allies since it appeared to be mindless.

Next round it put a lot of damage on an ally, but didn't drop anyone and we got some healing out. I missed with a spellstrike, used a hero point (had one remaining after this), still missed.

Next round it dropped our second frontliner (only dying 1).

Our primary healer was now out of spells, our secondary in-combat healer was down. We knew were in trouble. We also knew the enemy was getting low and had a weakness I could trigger.

Next round, I tried another spellstrike, missed, committed to winning the fight or dying, used my last hero point (lower). Second front-liner made the recovery check, so safe, but unconscious. Boss knocked out a third character.

We tried kiting the boss, stole two of its actions for one of ours each, but it still crit me, so dying 3. At which point the bard managed to finish it off. But we have no stabilize, no healing, no consumables (miscommunication about what we could purchase in the first place/lack of loot), no one up who was trained in medicine.

So we had one dying 3, one dying 1, and one unconscious. The dying 1 stabilized on her own. I passed my first recovery roll (dying 2), before we had any ability to help. By the next round we were debating having the bard try to administer first aid, untrained (spent the previous round getting the healer's tools off one of the downed combatants). (So my DC 12 flat check, versus her DC 17 @ +2, IIRC) We decided on my flat check. I made it -- dying 1. Next round same idea, but I failed --- Dying 3. Next round we decided to risk her DC 18 check. Since I would need three passes in a row and if either of the first two failed it was death. Felt roughly equal odds and wouldn't drag things out. She succeeded.

It definitely felt higher stakes. It still felt fair (and I'm someone who didn't like the new interpretation ahead of time). it highlights some lack of healing redundancy in the party, which I think was the greater problem than this version of the rules.

Historically, PFS1->PFS2 did not unlock any additional options in PFS1. T

Races were more locked down in PFS1 -- mostly only available via GM boons or convention rewards. ACP was an designed to help make ancestries a bit more available for people who couldn't attend conventions as a reaction to that system.

We've only had one edition change in Paizo's organized play campaign to compare to, so its hard to make any concrete predictions.

But for PFS1 - PFS2 ->
-- no new scenarios, with a deadlier final multi-table special to encourage heroic send-offs.
-- PFS1 older scenarios can still be run/reported
-- conventions can still get PFS1 boons (since PFS1 never had ACP and it wasn't retrofitted to it)
-- Some minor unlockable backgrounds for use in PFS2 based on playing enough scenarios for different PFS1 seasons.
-- A number of season 10 scenarios had hinted at hooks/ (legacy) boons that might have some effect in PFS2. Not all of these have been followed-up on, or had as much impact as people maybe expected though.
-- The Season 10 PFS1 guide was the final version, not updated going forward.

If we had 3-4 edition changes it would be easier to see what patterns have emerged, but with only one edition change, we can't really tell. There's also been a fair bit of staff turnover at Organized Play at Paizo so there may be a lot of new/different opinions on what they want to try when its time for SFS2.

That already exists on the Boons page, with all the normal ACP boons:

"Pathfinder Society (second edition) Replay Gain 1 replay, usable on any Pathfinder Society (second edition) scenario by any character.
40.00
Achievement Points - PFS(2ed)"

I believe immediately, means upon street date of the books dropping, not today.

See this post

Check the guide for the order of operations when applying credit

When a chronicle is applied, the following things happen in order: earn adventure gold, complete Downtime, then earn XP. Downtime occurs before leveling up, which affects alternate Downtime options including crafting. Items may be purchased at any time when not playing an adventure, so characters can level up before making purchases, which affects what items are available.

I believe in 1e there was a special note taking/monster knowledge boon that allowed inter-scenario tracking of that nature.

In a home game, I wouldn't consider it metagaming, but in PFS2 without some tracking (or having it directly mentioned in the summary) I can see the controversy. We don't know if you successfully recalled knowledge, we don't know if the party saw the special ability/weakness.

I think mine was a bit under 3 hours, (close to 3.5 total, but significantly more issues getting characters ready to go in foundry than usual that ate up about 30 minutes)

I'm trying to prep this one and running into more things that are confusing to me than normal:

A) On the briefing and Maze itself:
1) The briefing mentions only "giving a guided tour of the maze", doesn't mention Galt/Woodsedge as points to see along the guided tour.

2) The question/answer portion implies that the Maze is physically in Galt, rather than the extra-dimensional space I think its usually presented as.

3) The Q&A then says you're going through the Maze to get to Galt to enter the Maze.... It feels like we're being warped to far end of the guided tour and then coming back, which seems a little odd. Had we simply been teleported to Woodsedge under the guise of having a "normal journey back to the Grand Lodge through the Maze" that would have felt more clear I think.

B) On the Familiar Faces/Making a A Getaway bit: It feels a little odd to call out predominantly high-level scenarios -- Revecka and Waterfall are all from scenarios that are too high for the characters to have encountered. I know the sidebar calls out player, not character, but this is awkward from a "ask about a ton of different scenarios, across all the player's chronicles, and then it might not matter at all". Usual heavy callback scenarios are limited to a smaller number of relevant scenarios that are often signaled by Metaplot tags.

C) Mechanics
1) Navigate the Maze of the Open Road: 1 PC, all PCs? I think I've seen scattered reports of 1 PC being the answer, but adding it for posterity.

2) Napsu-Sign: IIRC all PCs have access to it, but would still need to spend a language selection on it. Additionally all PCs are expected to know a small subset of the language even without knowing the whole language. Is Taiwalei's usage here expected to be within the "freely known signs" (more akin to squad tactics hand sign signals) or is this something that PCs might not understand?

3) Robber Novices: Combat Pickpocket: Which restrictions is it intending to relax on the underlying Steal ability? I'm assuming its intended to bypass the automatic failure for in combat. Does it also bypass the Negligible bulk only restriction? Does it bypass the -5 for in a pocket/closely guarded?

4) Treasure Bundle checkboxes, sum to 16 treasure bundles, not the usual 10. I'm assuming the second line-item with the three check boxes should be "1 TB each time..." not "3 TB each time"...

NielsenE wrote:

How does the Deluxe option handle the Chronicles that the GM would need to distribute to the players?

At present, the Deluxe Editions provide a Chronicle code and a link to a printable Chronicle Sheet PDF for each included scenario. We're also actively looking into ways we can improve and automate that process in the future with expanded support from various Paizo APIs!

It makes me very happy that the Front End/Tech team understood the question and had a good answer ready :)

Yeah, I could see something coming together late next year -- if the new Core Rulebook is a Divine focused supplement as some people expect, that could flesh out some outer plane mechanics, coupled with a LO book that is more about them in detail, and then an AP for the story. That tends to fit the way the lines self-reinforce each other. However there's lots of other ways a divine focused slant could go.

I think the reason why a book of bosses doesn't really exist is that a great boss fight is the union of three-four things:
a) interesting primary villain mechanics
b) interesting battlefield (hazards, minions, terrain features, exploitable terrain)
c) emotional motivation/history for the fight
d) (optional) fight evolution (multiple "phases" or cameos from allied NPCs, or ...)

If you "just" do a book of (a) the the fights will tend to fall flat. If you try to include all of a-d for each "boos" in a book, it becomes much harder to fit an arbitrary selection into an existing campaign.

Look at Lost Omen: Monsters of Myth, that's almost a Boss monster book, and is basically (a) + lore. It still leaves most of the work to the GM craft b-d to make the boss work for the campaign though. And while I enjoy the book, it's not one that I see people talking about a lot, so empirically it feels like it's not the most popular format.

PFS2 is almost always significantly ahead of the expected wealth by level. You'll most likely be able to afford all your fundamental runes as soon as you ding their level. In general non-PFS pacing you'd typically only see at most 50% getting their runes immediately (or before) at the minimum level, with the other 50% trickling in over the full level range -- so PFS characters tend to have runes about 2-4 scenarios earlier than the baseline expectation.

It might be hard to stretch to buy things early, though, even with chronicle access. I know I had a champion who got his +1 armor potency rune early thanks to a chronicle, but had to delay his striking rune to make that work. For him, I felt it was the correct trade off.

The treasure bundle mechanism for giving treasure/abstracting liquidating found loot also means people don't "tend to experiment" as much with random stuff they find and just stay focused on the "optimal" gear they want.

I think its some people were confused that cantrips had casting mod while non-cantrips typically didn't. so people were either forgetting to add on cantrips, or adding on regular spells.

I'd like a replay boon that works for sanctioned Adventures, rather than only scenario-length options like the current boon. I feel GM styles, party approach, etc are more likely to make Adventures feel more significantly different than scenarios on a replay, and while I'm generally unlikely to replay either format, I would be much more likely to want to replay (or re-GM for a chronicle if that ever gets worked out) an Adventure than a Scenario.

I'd expect the cost to be at least 3x the Scenario cost (ie scaling by relative XP), wouldn't be surprised if there's a slight surcharge on top of it. However it shouldn't have a scaling cost (since that would make a full AP nearly impossible).

Even if nothing changes, I think helping raise the issue that spider/spider adjacent creatures have become rather prevalent for surprise encounter/ surprise artwork is useful feedback. An awareness of unintentional patterns, especially when those patterns align poorly with some of the more common phobias, can help revisit future decisions.

Certain creature types often feel over utilized in adventures, Golems are an example. The author needs something that makes sense in an abandoned complex and decides undead aren't a good fit. Suddenly every dungeon has golems.

Warm-up or setting establishing encounters likewise often reach for mundane animals ( and spiders can fit in that category) so they often get over represented especially as the first encounter/artwork in a chapter.

These things always feel like they make sense in the adventure you're looking at, but when viewed across the entire collection of adventures, it starts to feel a bit off. So a reminder, like this thread, to think a bit more about " does this need to be a spider, again" is a good thing

I acknowledge this might get too close to things best kept as charity boons, but I really liked the Planetoid, Congregation, Ramlock's Tower style boons -- things that are a cross between a Vanity and a mechanical use for downtime/delayed pay-off. I know there's a lot of PCs with backstories about running some form of business between missions and having something that feels a little different than just "earn income" would be nice.

I'd like to see a "start at level 2" boon like we had from the playtest points. This can be particularly useful if you have a character concept that really needs a dedication to feel complete and doesn't make sense to be an ancient elf, etc.

Yeah I'm a fan of the "no-multiclass, no medic/sentinel/marshall/beastmaster" for the free archetype.

I do allow players to pick those up with their class feats, effectively saying that the "class feat" track and the "free archetype" tracks don't see each other for the purpose of "can I start another archetype". Within each track, they must obey the usual rules about not tacking another archetype until they've taken enough feats.

Standard only means that PFS is not changing the requirements from the published version. It does not mean there is a way to get it.

Refer to the character options page for a more in-depth review of how to interpret Availability labels.

In this particular case, as its a rare option, the "You need a boon to gain access to this option." disclaimer applies. And there is not a boon at present. Nor does standard imply there will be a boon.

Where's the best place to check for when its safe to upgrade to V11? I know Paizo has said that the Paizo branded AP modules are ready, but not sure if that covers the Sigil ones?

Yes, until we have an official correction, we run as written.

Thank you all for being here. Thank you for all the wonder you create.

The Slithering is level 5-7. When my group played it we were level 6 at the start, and we used milestone leveling to just hang out at level 6 for the first two chapters and I think the GM adjusted a couple encounters in the first part. Though our pre-existing party was a fairly bad fit for the first chapter, so I think the GM didn't adjust everything as much as he could have.

NielsenE wrote:

I'm allowing limited FA in my Kingmaker campaign (no multi-class, no "multi-class-lite" (ie Medic, Sentinel, Marshall)). Everyone has taken an archetype I haven't seen taken before and all felt flavorful.

Would it be a bother to ask what your "multi-class-lite" list is? I really like the concept of free archetype and personally tend to trend towards things like Dandy but realised later that a lot of people just go for things like what you mentioned, which is not what I hope for if I allow the system so I just didn't allow FA for now. I'm not as versed in the game as others so I'd appreciate the experience others have to know what to shorten my allowed list to for my players in future games.

It started out as no Mulit-class, no multiclass lite. Generally from Profession or Faction on AoN's categories. I was then bored and did a quick scan to pre-authorize the following list:

"Acrobat, Archaeologist, Bounty Hunter, Celebrity, Dandy, Familiar Master, Fireworks Technician, Flexible, Folklorist, Game Hunter, Geomancer, Gladiator, Hellknight Arminger, Herbalist, Horizon Walker, Lastwall Sentry , Linguist , Loremaster, Magaambyan Attendant, Pathfinder Agent, Pirate , Poisoner , Ritualist, Scout, Student of Perfection , Talisman Dabbler, Viking, Zephyr Guard"

I did end up allowing Assassin as well, even if it feels a bit multi-class lite. Likewise for Horizon Walker (which is kinda the non-combat portion of ranger)

But really all multi-class lite really is, to me, "Sentinel, Marshall, Medic" -- those three coupled with standard multiclass are the main ones that feel like the increase raw power rather than encouraging breadth.

I would have liked to have seen something about the seemingly infinite growth of the attribution section. I feel like that's going to be a bit problematic as time goes on.

you could have had a "no changes in this category" option to avoid that problem. But yes a post process step were you set the denominator to the number of respondents, is probably needed whenever you decide to close the poll.

First be sure you've read the the guides stance on Edicts and Anathema.

In general, you can assume you're not breaking your Anathema by completing the assigned mission; the society has done whatever pre-clearance is needed with your religion to make it ok. This doesn't mean to completely ignore your anathema, and if you go out of your way to break it in ways above/beyond the minimal requirements of the scenario it can be a problem.

Look for Edicts and Anathema to give you RP hooks, but be ready to back off a hardline stance if its the will of the party, secure in the guide's ruling that you can be an unwilling participant in some plans.

D = Don't Forget Your 4 Boosts

At least that's the most common error I see when reviewing characters from newcomers.

You can run any of the scenarios/adventures/etc privately, for credit as long as you follow the sanctioning requirements and event requirements for the event number you're reporting under.

The only time, to my knowledge, that sanctioning requirements could enter into the private/public aspect are the FreeRPG Days Adventures during their embargo period.

If you're reporting to your own personal event code, there won't be any restrictions there. If you're reporting under an online lodge's code, then you need to follow whatever their rules are. For instance conventions can have higher ACP multipliers, but have to follow the conventions rules for who can sign up. Likewise, in meatspace, there's been a notion of an RSP event (Retail Support Program) which can also give bonus ACP multipliers, but have to be open to the public.

You not finding an answer because, in general there is no such rule in the first place requiring anything to be public.

I think Jason had a post somewhere saying there was no new playtest planned.

And feels like the list of books and the rough division of content is already set.

Honestly, I think the expectation should be "the books are mostly done" Sure PC2 is further out and that might still have some time, but that's because those are the classes that need the most rework to fit (champions w/o alignment, all the classes with stronger draconic ties, heavier focus point mechanics). Its best viewed as larger already-decided errata pass, coupled with a re-arrangement of content between books.

I generally stopped SF when PF2 came out.

I've always preferred fantasy to science fiction/science fantasy. However I arrived to PF rather late in its life cycle, and SF when it launched felt more approachable to me, especially in organized play. I could know the whole story and not always feel like I was missing references/callbacks. PF2 let me hit those stories from ground zero which solved that major problem for me.

My general feeling is (with the possible exception of the Alignment changes and those ripple through effects), if we had seen most/all of these changes over the course of a couple years of regular errata it would have been seen as extremely positive developments and not a major change in the landscape. Which is why I generally trust the "forward/backward" compatibility claims and view this as a 2.0.5 style update rather than a 2.5 style edition.

This feels like a good policy for now. People can still publish independently their own work using AI tools, if they wish, they just can't use Paizo's marketplace (or Paizo's IP that's granted under Infinite terms, etc). It doesn't say that OGL based content can't use those tools. (And I'd be surprised if the future ORC takes any such stance either -- as that feels like a publisher specific policy rather than a top-level license based one).

I also agree that the march of technology probably means it will need to be revisited, once more of the ethics/legalities are worked out. The time to revisit will come faster than some would liked, and slower than others; that's just the way of messy life.