Nullpunkt's page

FYI: Customer service confirmed that they are indeed out of stock! I was able to pick one up through another vendor, though.

It is,probably a result of GenCon. They’re unsure of the warehouse stock given a probably substantial proportion of their held stock is at the convention so rather than promise availability,they’ve made it unavailable until the donvnetion ends and they know how much stock they have to manage. Expect it to be available to order in the next few days as things get sorted again.

I hope so. I am really excited about the revamped Adventure line with the slower release schedule, longer hardcover adventures, and (most importantly to me) premium Foundry VTT support. I can't wait to resubscribe!

I love the Your First Adventure section!!

Of course, I totally understand that this is not something we can expect for future products. But hopefully it will inspire creative folks for Pathfinder Infinite offerings along these lines!

Nullpunkt wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

No, it means that if you are a subscriber and you preorder the hardcover before release, you will receive a free PDF of it.

Thanks for confirming that. Still doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. Other hardcovers in the past were compilations of multiple previously published softcovers, so it made some sense for subscribers to get the hardcover. With this one, you get both the softcover and the content-wise identical hardcover in the same month, plus the exact same PDF twice (technically).

I feel like an option to swap the hardcover with the softcover would make way more sense from a subscriber's perspective.

Emailing CS let's you switch to the hardcover.

Oh, wow, that's great to know! Thanks, I will do that.

No, it means that if you are a subscriber and you preorder the hardcover before release, you will receive a free PDF of it.

Thanks for confirming that. Still doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. Other hardcovers in the past were compilations of multiple previously published softcovers, so it made some sense for subscribers to get the hardcover. With this one, you get both the softcover and the content-wise identical hardcover in the same month, plus the exact same PDF twice (technically).

I feel like an option to swap the hardcover with the softcover would make way more sense from a subscriber's perspective.

I am confused by the Note about AP subscribers, which doesn't really make sense. AP subscribers would get the free PDF through the softcover version, anyway. Is this supposed to say that if I preorder this book I get a free PDF, even if I am not a subscriber?

The previous Adventure Path I developed (Season of Ghosts) and the current (unannounced) one I'm working on the last book for both make heavy use of Downtime. In some cases I'll specifically say how long a custom downtime activity in an adventure takes, but mostly the assumption I make is that a downtime task takes a day unless otherwise noted. By "Day" generally assume that this is all a PC really does that day, and that as a result there's not any time to do exploration or encounter mode stuff of note, but plenty of time to do roleplaying content to your heart's content. I generally think it's better, when in Downtime mode, to not get into the nitty-gritty of tracking time precisely by the hour.

Sometimes, there WILL be a transition from Downtime into encounter mode; for example, when the PCs get ambushed at their camp or have a wandering monster type thing show up, in which case that's fine and a single encounter (even if it's a complex one) isn't really likely to disrupt what's going on during the downtime activity, but you should try to avoid having that sort of thing happen too often otherwise you'll set up expectations that when you tell your group "Okay this happens in Downtime mode" that what they expect is instead a surprise attack.

I'm very excited to hear that! It's always kind of funny when you look at how much time has passed in a campaign and it turns out that the party was level 1 for 30-ish years of their life (pre-campaign) and then went up to level 20 over the course of a few weeks...

I really like the idea of a campaign that spans a long period of time, maybe even a human lifetime. Can't wait to hear more about the unannounced AP!

I love the idea of Downtime in general, but it hardly ever comes up at my tables. I mostly run published Adventure Paths, and my players usually are pretty focused on keeping the action going. Even when I try to encourage them to slow things down a bit, they almost seem to get nervous when their characters don't do any adventuring for more than a day.

Nullpunkt wrote:

Will this be accompanied by a Foundry module at launch, like all the other recent APs?

Yup!

Nullpunkt wrote:

If so, which PDF will give the discount? I assume you might not have an answer just yet, but it would be nice to know well in advance to avoid buying twice.

We're not sure yet whether there will actually be a "hardcover edition" version of the PDF, but regardless, the PDF discount for the Foundry module will be based off the price of the standard edition.

Worth noting also: like the print version, the Foundry module of Seven Dooms for Sandpoint will be released as a single mega-adventure rather then as two separate volumes. We just might be adding some cool surprise bonus goodies this time around to celebrate Big 200, too...

...and preordered :-)

We'll get to detailing more about how the Runelords (both the archetype and the powerful wizard tyrants) function in the Remastered rules some day, but not in this adventure, which does start to set up further Runelord-adjacent stories I've got planned for some time in the future.

I'm really excited to hear that!

It seemed that 2e was shifting to Absalom and the Starstone Isle as its new focus. I always greatly enjoyed Varisia, though, and this comment gives me hope that we'll get to see more of it in 2e!

I'd love to get this, but I am a normal AP line suscriber and wouldn't want to double the product. I guess there is no option to order this as an "instead of", rather than an "and"?

That has come up here before: Check the post three posts above yours.

I would also love to see Fists of the Ruby Phoenix! We are playing through the absolutely fantastic Abomination Vaults in Foundry and Goats of the Ruby Phoenix would be a great follow-up.

I would also love to see some of the Adventures get a module. Malevolence seems like a great fit. Properly set up lighting, sounds and music would make that an amazing experience. And Narchy already made some maps for it!

Honestly, the availability of a Foundry module is one of the top 3 criteria for me when I choose an adventure, so the more, the better!

Love this!! The range is perfect for my tastes and I love the hardcover treatment.

Two questions, though: will this be accompanied by a Foundry module at launch, like all the other recent APs? If so, which PDF will give the discount? I assume you might not have an answer just yet, but it would be nice to know well in advance to avoid buying twice.

Slightly off-topic, but what is the best place to keep track of what is in the works/announced in terms of premium Foundry modules?

I absolutely *love* these modules and would love to be able to plan my long-term campaign arcs around what's available.

If I am not mistaken, nobody is forcing you to use the most recent version of a module or system. You could just install the last pre-remaster version of of pf2e and your premium module and be happy.

By the way, pf2e has already started implementing some of the remaster changes. If you install the latest version, you can see how it's handled.

Thank you all for your input! Much appreciated.

The description for the Diabolic bloodline's blood magic states:

Hellfire scorches a target or fills your tongue with lies. Either a target takes 1 fire damage per spell level (if the spell already deals initial fire damage, combine this with the spell’s initial damage before determining weaknesses and resistances), or you gain a +1 status bonus to Deception checks for 1 round.

I think the bolded part refers to the target of the spell you are casting, while one of my players reads it as "pick a target". He thinks that you should be able to choose a target to receive the bonus damage separately of the actual spell's target, because otherwise the ability would not make sense for many Granted Spells or Bloodline Spells, like diabolic edict or charm. I think it should not be a separate target, because it just does not seem to make sense to me that you would tell a willing target to go do something and someone else goes "ouch" (in the case of diabolic edict).

I think the language is ambiguous here, so I wonder what other people's opinion on this is. What do you think? Same target or different target of choice? If different target, what range should be used? No save?

lex_dm wrote:

Mark Moreland wrote:

Opsylum wrote:

I was literally just bargain hunting for these. :p Still can't find Wormwood Mutiny for anything less than $100. Sigh...someday.

Seriously though, if Paizo did start doing this, they'd have another subscription out of me in a heartbeat. Probably not, because 1e's kind of done and conversions to 2e are complicated, if Kingmaker's anything to go by. Still, one can dream.

It sounds like you might be interested in a print-on-demand option. For those asking for reprints of collected material, would you be interested if they were just 1:1 reprints rather than changing form factor or contents of what was between two covers?

Always glad to see Paizo people involved with our comments.

One humble request would be to please, please take our money and do a deal to market your Adventures (both 1e and 2e if possible) to Foundry VTT.

They are a great VTT but I cant tell how many people would just rather buy modules and APs like they did in FG and Roll20, instead of investing HOURS to upload them.

D&D is bound to do this, just hope Paizo could sooner than later.

It's tricky because FG and Roll20 do it themselves with a license from Paizo, but foundry doesn't have content creators outside of the community, and Paizo cannot sell "volunteer work". So they need to do it. And maintain it.

They have made a test run with 5 bounties right now, and so we can only buy them and wait to see if the results are satisfying enough to be worth the investment.

I know that at least roll20 doesn't really produce the modules themselves either, they hire independent contractors to create them. Given that paizo has oodles of experience working with freelancers, I don't see why they couldn't do that, too. I would definitely be interested in both buying Foundry Modules and offering my services creating them.

My group is just starting out Book 5. We've been loving the campaign so far, and they're all really invested in the mystery. I am going to make some major changes to the Book 5 flow.

1) the Trachee lab is a bit to same-y coming right on the heels of GamutBio. I realize it is set up to be a stealthy infiltration vs a dungeon shoot, but I felt "another lab" was getting redundant.

2) The Laoe Araae/Zairx connection is just too much of a stretch. Grays appear suddenly and I think the reasoning just strains immersion; my party would really dislike it as a bit too on the rails.

I'm cutting Trachee almost completely. The intel dump at the end of that is instead in the GamutBio server at the end of Book 4. This will lead them straight to Laoe Araae. They will still encounter the Shimmering Blade soon after entering Bretheda space.

Laoe Araae will welcome them and allow them to see Verifier Ki, who arrived earlier that day. Nevintsi arrived a few days before. Nevintsi sidesteps them and makes an escape with a captive Ki in tow. The PCs find the meditation room empty (recently vacated) and the alarms go off moments later -- they will have to negotiate their way back out past the guards.

This will lead to a space chase (using the rules from the SOM). During the chase, the PCs will have opportunities to notice they are being followed by a cloaked Gray vesesl. The chase ends with the Verifier's shuttle disabled and the party about to board (if they don't destroy it outright; I want to impress upon them to try and rescue the not-yet-infested Verifier).

The Gray ship (or 2) then appear and fire upon the shuttle, intent on destroying the dyskepsian threat for good. The PCs can defend the shuttle, but will have to fight off the Grays. If they win, they find a pointer to Obs Stn Zairx amid the wreckage.

Zairx is cloaked in some orbital debris (relatively) close to Laoe Araae. It will go pretty much as described, although obviously not attached to the hospice. I thought about using some environmental...

I also find two bio labs in a row a bit boring so I was also thinking about cutting it. I like your approach. Did you actually run your version yet? Any notes you might like to share?

I apologize if this has been discussed elsewhere, but I couldn't find a definitive answer, so I decided to ask here:

Is it okay to use the rebellion sheet from the Hell's Rebels players guide under the CUP?

More specifically, if I made an interactive version of the PDF, or similar, would that be okay to share with the community (free of charge, of course)?

Yeah, but I just find the whole mystery pointless of there's no revelation. Maybe it's just my personal taste. But I know my players are going to expect some kind of answer at the end and I find it very unsatisfying that the AP doesn't provide any.

I love the plot and the twist in theory. But I'm really struggling to make any meaningful connections for the players, though.

One of their clones' identities will get to actually matter in book 6, of course. But the rest won't, right? So I find it a bit unsatisfying to just throw in these random revelations that never go anywhere.

So far one of the characters was approached by his clone's former lover in Howell and I just had another one glimpse his clone on a canceled cooking show (an Ysoki chef).

But what to do with it? Just leave it at that? Unknowable plans of the Gray? If the players ask questions after the campaign, just grin knowingly and hum the X-Files theme?

That part is definitely a bit tricky and it strongly depends on your group and how much real world time you want that part to take.

My group meets for short sessions and I decided to keep things on a tight schedule. It helps tha players also often expect events to drive the story onward and usually don't seize the initiative, like breaking into the secure area of the station.

I mostly narrated the few days they spend in captivity, giving them several opportunities to take charge and "zoom in" or start acting on a smaller time scale. We roleplayed some conversations with the mercs to help motivate later events. I also followed the advice regarding the "montage" technique of the interrogations.

All in all, it worked pretty well for us that way. The whole bit took 2 sessions of about three hours, I believe.

But as I said, other groups might want to take more initiative, go through events at slower pace, explore more. Really depends on your players' preferred style.

That's true, a bard can use wands and with a decent UMD scrolls of divine spells, too.

The Deific Obedience looks awesome, especially Shelyn's. If the campaign leads me on a path to Milani instead, that one looks also very fitting. It can even involve singing.

So that's definitely something I'll pick up in some form or another.

Thank you all for these great suggestions, it's given me much to consider.

I am going to heed what seems to be the majority opinion here and drop the multiclass cleric levels.

I would like to keep the Chelish Diva archetype, though, because it just fits so nicely. Yes, she is famous at level 1, but only in a relatively small community of less than 1000 people, which could be the district that she comes from: "Everyone in Redroof knows Isabella is going to make it big one time!"

I really dig the rest of the archetype's abilities so I would like to keep all that.

I agree that the hidden worship and the turn towards the religious could be covered by roleplay, but I would like to back that up with mechanics somehow. It looks like the group (5 PCs) does not have any kind of healer, yet, which is why getting some healing ability (channel? spontaneous cure?) would be helpful, I think. Or is that just always going to end up half-baked?

Besides classes and archetypes, does anyone know any opera/diva-themed magic items that would be a good fit?

are you so afraid of being wrong that you don't even want to chance it? Or do you just not understand that in Pathfinder, there's always more than one way to fill out a character concept?

Wow, I had no idea my question was so poorly worded that it would cause this much frustration. I honestly have no idea how I've earned this much vitriol so quickly, but whatever. I'll try to give some more context.

What I mean by "not looking for build advice" is that I am not interested in fully planned roadmap from level 1 to 20. This character is for an AP, which in my group takes between 2 and 5 years to complete and I like to stay flexible with character development so I can react to what is happening in the story and what choices make sense from a roleplaying perspective.

What I do like to do when planning a new character is getting a good overview of all the options that are available to support the themes of the campaign in general and for my character specifically. But since it is difficult to search for "bard items" or "feats that are good when your divine caster level is lower than your character level" or "bardic performance enhancing drugs" I thought it might be a good idea to ask for advice here from people who may have a more encyclopedic knowledge of what is out there. I'm sorry if I'm in the wrong place for that here.

To answer your question regarding what I want:

The campaign touches on themes of rebellion in a city of art and culture (with a world-reknown opera house), where few religions are legal and many are explicitly suppressed. My concept involves a diva-in-training from the opera house, who gets swept up in the revolution and sees "the light" of either Shelyn or Milani by watching her followers do noble things, discovering her distant azata heritage in the process (she's a musetouched aasimar who never realized she was an elf). So those are the themes I would like to cover: Art, song, music, opera, hidden worship, rebellion, The People, the city, diva-ness, a celestial heritage.

From a mechanics perspective, I want her to be able to do act as the party's healer out of combat and a buffer/debuffer in combat. It's also important in this campaign to have a good amount of social skills, so the more abilities can be based off of Charisma, the better.

I honestly don't know if that is the kind of detail you needed and I apologize if I'm going the wrong way about again, but that's all I got.

My advice would probably be to ask the GM if you can try the Variant Multiclass rules.

Play a Hidden Priest Cleric with VMC Bard. It'll be less Bard-y than an Evanglist, but it doesn't conflict with Hidden Priest. I also think your bard abilities will end up stronger this way than they would with all that multiclassing, and your Cleric abilities certainly will.

That's a great idea, but I'm afraid VMC will not be allowed.

Usual question: What do you actually want? What part of Bard (or what part of Chelish Diva), what part of Cleric, and what part of Hidden Priest do you want? Without knowing that, we can't really help you.

Nullpunkt wrote:

I've been doing some research on how to pull off such a multiclass character and apparently conventional wisdom on bard/cleric builds usually involves the Evangelist archetype.

I don't think Evangelist is really a recommendation for a Bard/Cleric multiclass character, but rather for a character that combines Bard and Cleric aspects. Basically, the archetype removes the need for the multiclass in the first place.

Going by the Qinggong Monk FAQ, Hidden priest and Evangelist should actually be compatible, that's something you might want to look into and/or query the GM about.

Well, I'm not looking for build advice, in just trying to hear about more options that are specifically designed for bard/divine caster multiclass characters (like Divine Expression) or are in some other way helpful to multiclass bards or clerics (like the Dervish Silke).

Thanks for your insights on the mystic theurge, though. I'm hesitant with prestige classes in general because they often seem like traps and your misgivings confirm my suspicions.

Thanks for the response so far!

I'm thinking of her as a buffer, first and foremost. No melee, really.

Mystic Theurge does seem very cool.

I'm preparing for a Hell's Rebels campaign and planning to play an aasimar bard (Chelish Diva)/cleric (hidden priest).

I've been doing some research on how to pull off such a multiclass character and apparently conventional wisdom on bard/cleric builds usually involves the Evangelist archetype.

But for roleplaying reasons, I definitely want to go with hidden priest. So I'm not looking for optimal build advice, because I know that is not what I am getting with these kind of constraints.

What I am looking for are options that are well-suited for bard/cleric multiclass characters. I've stumbled across Divine Expression, but nothing else, really.

Is anyone here aware of some more thematically fitting options of any kind?

I don't have any advice for you, but I love this technique!

You're remembering correctly. It's in the article on reproofs and in the adventure text.

Don't have my book at hand so can't give page numbers, but it's in there.

Just be vague enough to let you dial it up and down as needed and concrete enough for prayers to feel threatened.

You'll want to avoid your players rushing into the deadly final encounter just because they think they have to run out the clock.

Looks like an AP package (6 books) is somewhere around 30 USD to ship to the US.

Are you able to ship them to North America? (If so, do you know the cost?)

And can you provide a link to your ebay items available for purchase?

I could theoretically ship them to North America, but have not worked out the cost to do so. I doubt that it will be economical, though.

This link should take you to my offered items on ebay.de

Skull & Shackles has sailed to a new harbor (sold!).

It was also said in the past that the campaign setting skills change (gradually or radically) over the lifetime of an edition. That way you can jump in anytime without having to read up on an extensive Previously on... in addition to the main world guide. And you avoid making setting books partially or completely obsolete.

Since the APs were mostly about preserving the status quo, you could simply assume the respective PCs were successful and still progress the timeline without updating the books. I think that may be part of it.

(I am not entirely sure if this is A-OK to post here and I apologize if I am breaking any rules but I didn't find anything along those lines in the Community Guidelines, so here it goes...)

Greetings, Pathfinders! I am saddened to announce that I am selling my collection of Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes. I have a complete and mint to near-mint collection of all the Adventure Paths starting with Jade Regent plus Serpent's Skull:

List of Adventure Paths at PathfinderWiki.

The kicker: I live in Germany so this may be a great opportunity to get some cheap EU shipping rates.

I have started to put my collection on eBay.de (only Serpent's Skull and Jade Regent so far). Feel free to join the auctions there or shoot me a message here if you are interested in any of the books.

After ten years of collecting your wonderful products, an upcoming move overseas means I have to make the following two requests:

Please cancel my adventure path subscription after Abomination Vaults part 3 has shipped. Please cancel my Adventure subscription immediately.

I'd like to mention that if there was a digital-only option, i would subscribe to that instead.

That's also s great idea. Or have them show up at just the right time.

One of the fun things about the scenario is that you can have these deus ex machina and plot armor moments. Even better when the players roll their eyes and say something like "How convenient". Just roll with it and agree: "I know, right? Isn't that a huuige coincidence. Tsk." And then when the finale happens, the perspective totally flips. and your party will, too.

it's a brutal encounter. my party would have definitely tpk'd.

It sure is. There are a few more down the line, especially with the lack of hit point healing options.

At the same time, you really don't want your PCs to die in this campaign because it's pretty difficult to bring in a new character without missing out on some cool moments down the road.

What I did was to have the Gray observers swoop in to save a PC on the brink of dying. You could also insert moments of weird behavior, like an enemy all of a sudden just skipping their turn, or getting the confused condition.

My players thought I was pulling my punches when these things happened. But when the truth was revealed, it all became clear.

No, unfortunately not. You could post a link to some cloud storage like Google Drive or Dropbox, though.

Congratulations! Hope you get to play the final chapter soon!

So how did your players react to the revelation? Were they already suspecting something like that? Or what was their theory?

We are now through part 1 of book 3 and my group suspects that everything is still a simulation. The Chimera revelation really did a number on them...

Anyway, would you care to share the PDF you mentioned? If you don't want to share it publicly due to copyright concerns, I'd be happy to give you my email address.

So what was the announcement? Could anyone share for us Europeans who were sound asleep when the stream was on?

Wow, I think you're a natural, babyGM! Took me years to get to that level of flexibility. Sounds like you did a fantastic job! By all means, tell us how the grand finale went!

"Regardless of its type" is not in the spell's description, but your interpretation. I think you could easily argue both ways and when in doubt, I personally go with the ruling that enables the story I want to tell. If all it took to blow up a reptoid cell was a level 6 spell, I'd have a hard time telling this kind of story. So in my game, true seeing does not counter their supernatural shapeshifting.

I'm not sure if I like this idea. Sure, it solves the problem of unarmed PCs in the first encounter. But I was going for a "just another long-haul commercial flight"-vibe. So I tried to let everything play out similar to the proceedings on board of an airplane: boarding, stowing your stuff, seating, flipping through the entertainment, watching a boring safety and crew introduction video, then finally takeoff, then a little later the first meal. Let everything feel as normal as possible to your players.

Getting on board and straight to the galley seems oddly rushed to me.

Yeah, my party also had no good melee fighters and the players had for roleplaying reasons explicitly said they'd leave their guns in their rooms. The encounter wasn't as much lethal as comical, though, with lots and lots and lots of misses. And then some more.

The section about investigating the Steward agents mentions that dispel magic does not work because their shapeshifting is supernatural, not magical. By extension, I'd say true seeing and thus glimpse of truth doesn't work for the same reason.

Given that the spell also doesn't reveal mundane disguises, it makes a lot of sense to me.

Finally, Ephecta's resistance to accept Vorsen's suspicions may actually be very much because of her (misplaced) trust in her ability.

Also, I just found this in The Insidious Reptoids in the Backmatter:

"[...] when Kluss's features changed to become reptilian upon death".

Who knew information on reptoids could be found in the article in reptoids.