Optic_TH's page

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

The way I square the circle, of her motivation is that Nyrissa is trying to kickstart kingdoms that will be easier to take when they ripen. Her original plan was to take Pitax, before Irovetti rebelled by hiding Briar and using it as leverage to protect his pet tyrrany.

So she moves onto the Stag Lord, a bandit Kingdom should be easy enough to take, but she underestimated the Stag Lord's sloth. When the PCs destroy that she doesn't have enough information to know if they'll succeed at building a kingdom. So she inspires Hargulka to build a kingdom of monsters, she figures it could grow big enough to be her final apology, but be too chaotic to organise against her.

When the PCs defeat the monster kingdom she sets her sights on taking the PC's kingdom. She figures Vordekai and Irovetti will soften it up enough for her to deal the killing stroke.

That's a cool idea. How is this information conveyed to the players?

I feel from my experience as a DM this is the most elegant solution. Other suggestions risk being ham fisted or too opaque and not achieving what people are setting out to fix.

As cool as this is, I really would have preferred some clarity on Aroden instead. It feels like the biggest unresolved thread in the entirety of the lore - like Paizo had a plan for it and at some point completely abandoned the idea.

Probably way too late, but they didn't give us a playtest or earlier preview, sooo...
Suggested Variant Rule : Key ability scores are added to cantrip damage.

Honestly, simple rule that would solve most of the discontent about caster changes. Without it being in the book, it won't get into the Foundry rules, which is how I imagine most people play online.

Optic_TH wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

This is the one that I was most excited for folks to get to, to tell the truth. There's a LOT in this one that reveals things that I've had in my head about the mythology that haven't seen print or even really been hinted at. (The original plot/draft of the "Strange Aeons" adventure path had the PCs learning some of this during the course of the adventure, but that went a different direction when I was moved off that project to instead re-do Curse of the Crimson Throne, alas.)

Super late to the party, I know, but I’m running Strange Aeons in 2e and I can’t help but wonder at what kind stuff you originally planned. Was it relating to Yog-Sothoth and the info you shared here?

Some of it, yes. Since I shelved those plans, though, they could potentially show up later in a different context. (Originally, one of the things I wanted the PCs to discover in Strange Aeons was a pre-mortal object of some sort that would reveal the "original gods of this cycle of reality" to the PCs, but also start to explore what happens when reality resets, what came before, and what exists Beyond the Great Beyond.)

Thanks for the insight. I’m going to take that idea and run with it. The lore is really awesome and your work is stellar.

My group decided to head to Caliphas before taking the Sellen River to Cassomir. They went to the Maiden’s Choir and I seeded some stuff about blasphemous claims by the Old Cults that vaguely hinted at the cycle.

This is the one that I was most excited for folks to get to, to tell the truth. There's a LOT in this one that reveals things that I've had in my head about the mythology that haven't seen print or even really been hinted at. (The original plot/draft of the "Strange Aeons" adventure path had the PCs learning some of this during the course of the adventure, but that went a different direction when I was moved off that project to instead re-do Curse of the Crimson Throne, alas.)

Super late to the party, I know, but I’m running Strange Aeons in 2e and I can’t help but wonder at what kind stuff you originally planned. Was it relating to Yog-Sothoth and the info you shared here?

I can't help but feel this won't sit well with potential new players; having to buy two books just to get access to the core classes seems kinda skeezy, especially for Paizo who are often praised for being less greedy than competitors.
Yeh, we all know the rules are on AoN blahblahblah. That's apples and oranges.

So, with Fake Out you need a loaded gun to use the reaction. How does that work with capacity weapons like the slide pistol? Do you need to have switched to an active/loaded barrel to use Fake Out or can you just always use it assuming your slide pistol has at least one loaded barrel?

Porridge wrote:

EvilAardvark wrote:

Chaosium do their own work for roll20 and the Call of Cthulhu support is great.

Cubicle 7 do their own work for roll20 and WFRP support is pretty good.

Evil Hat do their own work for roll20 and their support is great.

Can you say a bit more about this? What work are you referring to? (And where did you read about them providing this support?)

Roll20 have a marketplace where anyone can sell content. All those companies make RPGs, they then make their own matching content for Roll20 and sell it in the store. They're not alone there, lots of companies do it - like Pinnacle and Son of Oak. Lots of indy developers do it too, selling 5E supplements and add-ons.

The products that these companies put out are what you need to play their games on roll20.

Roll20 doesn't do this work for them. There's lots of documentation in how to do it, and in fact, if you go onto the roll20 forums you'll find that there are people there who do work for hire creating and converting content. Paizo and WotC **seem** to be unique in that they rely on Roll20 to do it for them. Roll20 do a great job for WotC and a poor job for Paizo.

I have no insights into sales, contracts, agreements or if these companies make any money out of this. Maybe it doesn't make sense for Paizo to do this. They're experts in their business, not me. But, it doesn't make sense for me to give them $3000 per year for books, figures, maps and cards I'll never use. When they're calculating the cost of doing this work, I'd hope they'd include the cost of not doing it. Maybe that's why these other companies invested time and money in making their games available online. I honestly don't know.

Due to a lot more interest in Paizo and specifically 2e, old threads are getting attention, especially ones like this.

One of my players shared this to me asking about VTT's and using it as an argument against Paizo/Pathfinder. Even early 2021, FG and Foundry were both good ways to play Pathfinder 1e & 2e, and Starfinder.
I played a full campaign with FG using Starfinder and the level of automation and access to character creation tools was leaps beyond roll20's outdated and basic features. FG is clunky though and I switched to Foundry and never looked back.

Roll20 is better than Foundry only in its ability to sell official 5e products.

Saying there are not good options for Pathfinder/Starfinder in VTT, even in early 2021, is a flat out lie. FG and Foundry for for Starfinder/Pathfinder were, and still are, both better than roll20's 5e support.

(I used roll20 for years, then FG, and now Foundry. The only purchases I regret are the roll20 ones. Broken PHB features that were promised when it launched are STILL missing or not working as advertised, several years later. They even refused to refund me within a week of purchase despite the product not having even 50% of the features they promised; top guys!)

Seems like the zip archive is corrupted. I can't open it. I've re-downloaded other products from my Digital Content and they all open without an issue.

Seems the discount issue is resolved. Can we expect a fix to the PDF not being available to purchasers of the module, as advertised?

OK, I'm perhaps Paizo website impaired XD Just realized I can "purchase" the PDF for $0 because of the Foundry module purchase I made. TY again team, this product is great.

Seems the discount issue is resolved. Can we expect a fix to the PDF not being available to purchasers of the module, as advertised?

The iconics are part of base PF2E system. You should have no trouble importing them from the compendium named 'Iconics' and giving them to one of your players. You may want to adjust the encounters by adding 1-2 NPCs if you want to keep the difficulty the same.

/

Guess my brain was in slowpoke mode. Thanks for the info, there are so many compendiums in the Foundry module it is a little overwhelming tbh.

My year plus 5e game doesn't even come close XD

Well worth the price. The quality of the module is great, the little touches to make it more user friendly and better intergrated for Foundry usage are superb. The moduel does a very good job of guiding the DM by providing information that teaches them how to run the game without resorting to dumbing down the rules, a problem a lot of begginer sets from other systems have.
I can also see it being a good way for new Foundry users to get to grips with how it all works, as the beginner box has been updated to include Foundry tutorial tips and information. (That's a step above and beyond imho)

Honestly, Foundry should have this advertised on the front page of their website. Unfortunately, their PR game is terrible, and it is difficult to even find the module on their site. If I didn't have an interest in Pathfinder 2e already, I doubt I would know this was even released. That's a crying shame.

I'll be running this for my 5e group in a couple of weeks, once they have dealt with a pirate king in their current campaign! We plan to switch to 2e once we've wrapped up our current campaign in a couple months.

The only real complaints I could make is that it isn't well suited to larger groups, and the purchase and activation is a little convoluted[it would be nice if I could just buy it through Forge/Foundry and have it activated on my account automatically].
As for the group size, it would be cool to include an extra two iconics to accomodate more players, alchemist and ranger seem popular. I supposed you'd also need to add options to scale it for bigger groups too.

Very pleased with the product. I already had high hopes for it after seeing the trailer, and I was not disappointed. In fact, my expectations were exceeded in every way!

Great work to all those involved in making this happen.