Paul Zagieboylo's page

It would need to come with some pretty generous DM fiat. I love the idea, but it's one of those things where you need to expect the DM to go "no, sorry" and just roll with it.

And that is exactly what I tried to do, and he simply wouldn't accept it. Although I did let him dig a well in an afternoon, deep enough to keep himself confined for a night in case he turned into a werewolf. Which ended up not mattering because he aced his save, but the druid (who was locked in the town jail) blew his! Everyone took a trip to Restov after that to get both of them decursed, which led to even more whining.

Yes, one of the other players was already asking me why I hadn't kicked him out yet (after a particularly protracted bout of whining), and another one is a very experienced GM that was able to give me some good advice. I ended up writing him a private message reminiscent of the Performance Improvement Plan I got from my boss at work once, and he noped out rather than change.

I definitely agree with earlier commentors that the uselessness of -10 Strikes isn't called out in PC1 (or CR before it) as well as it should be, and the other 3rd-action options for martial characters definitely aren't emphasized enough at all. Personally I'm always a fan of Deception to Feint, since it can be done every turn (unlike Demoralize), it's not language-dependent (unlike Demoralize, again), and it's likely to do something useful if your flanking buddy is having a hard time getting into position (or if you're the lone melee combatant in a party with 3 casters!). But just moving is always an option too, especially against enemies that don't have Reactive Strike, or whose Reactive Strike you don't really fear.

Honestly, there's a reason it's quite hard for a barbarian to get a 2nd Reactive Strike per round: your first one was already a WILD amount of damage, because you get your Rage bonus on it (in addition to probably holding a greataxe). Which makes it far better than any fighter will ever get from a Reactive Strike. Having a 2nd one would be just absurd.

Remember, unlike in 1st edition, Reactive Strike is something you actually do expect to get to do once in a while. Combat can generally more mobile, because not everyone has Reactive Strike! A barbarian with one Reactive Strike is already hard enough to deal with for ranged combatants, casters, magi, basically anything that isn't another straight melee fighter. Having two would be just too miserable, as would the ability to (for example) No Escape and still be able to Reactive Strike the archer at the end of it.

But learning that you CANNOT "win" the game during character creation as you can in PF1 is a huge learning curve that is challenging for experienced players to understand, because they came from games where you could be so overpowered that you could handle an entire adventure nearly on your own. That does not exist in PF2.

I just had to finally kick a player out of my PbF Kingmaker game, because he was simply DETERMINED to "win" the game during character creation, and refused to pay attention to (or even read) anything that any of the other players were doing. (He also apparently had difficulties reading anything I posted, which was a whole separate issue.) I think he had some lingering PTSD from a previous Killer GM, because it was pretty much pulling teeth to get him to take any non-defensive option, ever. (Does one 4th-level character need Armor of Earth, Deflecting Wave, Ocean's Balm, and Winter Sleet all at once? No, he really doesn't. Plus he didn't have Safe Elements so Winter Sleet caused more trouble for allies than enemies!) But his main complaint was that encounters were typically over by the time he managed to get all his defensive options online (this was worse with his first character, a sparkling targe magus with Psychic Dedication to get amped shield, which really did have severe issues with a 3-round startup sequence, like many magus builds do. Arcane Cascade really is just a bad design). Plus, even when a boss enemy did live long enough for him to join the combat fully buffed up, his defensive nonsense didn't actually make him completely immune to a +3-level enemy the way he seemed to think it would. Because that's just simply not possible in this system, which I think is a strength!

We had kind of a non-standard party composition, also, that REALLY needed the players to pay attention to each other, and having one player not doing that crippled them quite unnecessarily in several situations: earth/water kineticist (the problem player), maestro bard, untamed/animal druid, and summoner wizard. When your main melee combatant isn't paying attention to tactics, you got problems, and Kundal was a difficult surprise for him! (You will also notice that this party contains zero members who use weapons of any kind, and therefore zero access to silver damage, which made Kundal probably a little harder than he needed to be. Yes, I've removed the needle darts spell due to the very early setting of Kingmaker.)

Plus he whined constantly when I wouldn't let his character win automatically, especially for the kingdom building stuff which EXPLICITLY excludes individual characters' abilities from having much impact (even with the fairly significant house rules changes I've made). No, even with Extended Kinesis, you cannot build an entire housing block or fifteen miles of road by yourself in a day, or even a month. You just can't, and even if you could, it would mean retiring from adventuring, permanently, which I don't think is what you wanted to do!

The new player replacing him has built a shield fighter, potentially with the Viking archetype (hasn't taken it yet but is clearly thinking that way), which is likely to be a somewhat different dynamic!

The real question about pure gold coins is the actual size of the coin itself. Paizo has previously stated that all types of coins weigh 1/50 of a pound, or slightly over 9 grams. (2e uses Bulk instead of actual measurements, but 1000 coins for 1 Bulk implies that coins are in the neighborhood of 50-200 per pound, which makes the following discussion even worse.)

The problem is that gold is heavy. Like, really heavy. Coincidentally, a pure gold coin 1.5mm thick and 20mm across weighs almost exactly 1/50 of a pound. This is the same thickness and just barely bigger than a US penny (considerably smaller than a nickel), which as we all know is an inconveniently small, easy-to-fumble coin. It would especially be much easier to fumble if it weighed 9.1 grams, instead of the roughly 2.5 grams of a modern copper/zinc penny. Imagine dealing with pennies, except that each one weighs three times as much as it should. How easy would it be for these coins to slip through your fingers? Pretty easy! You'd have a hard time even getting your fingernails under it to pick it up off a table. Platinum coins are in the same fix; the densities of gold and platinum are very similar.

Copper and silver coins are in better shape, because copper and silver are considerably lighter than gold. A 9.1g solid copper coin, 1.5mm thick, is a little over 29mm across (a little bigger than a US quarter), while a similar 9.1g silver coin is almost exactly 27mm. These are a lot more plausible, but gold and platinum coins would be very fiddly to actually work with.

In practice, what probably happens is what happened in real-world countries: in addition to the "one silver piece" coin, nations would mint some larger denominations (2 or 2.5 silver, a half-gold, even possibly a large "silver crown" worth as much as a gold piece, although at 91 grams this would be a pretty big chonker: 2 inches across at 4.5mm thick). The other real problem of a bi-metallic system is exactly what happened to the US in the late 19th century: inflation derived from the differential in value between gold and silver. But presumably the Church of Abadar has some way to keep that under control!

If anyone else wants to try this, spawn zombies faster, or use zombies tougher than standard shamblers, at least for 4th-level characters. Most of my fighters ran out of zombies to fight long before the ritualists managed to finish the ritual as described, because they could mince through them two or three at a time; plus the shamblers couldn't really hit the fighters at all (except for poor Regongar, who got hit a whole bunch just because of unlucky rolls). Maybe a failure should spawn one tougher zombie (a husk zombie or a weakened zombie brute?) on that side, and one wimpy shambler on each other side? In any case, I ended up cheating a tiny bit in the PCs' favor, because the encounter was getting boring.

Yeah, if I hadn't conveniently had casters of each tradition right here ready to hand, I would have set it up differently. But the fact that they've also named Tristian and Octavia as Secretaries of the Republic (of Magic and the Vault, respectively) made it too tempting to build the ritual this way.

I'm still trying to get my bard player, Wilkezag, to understand that his magic isn't just purely about music: music is merely a convenient direct conduit to the emotional and spiritual connections underlying the stories, legends, and beliefs that power occult magic. We'll get there eventually.

As the ritual builds, you can feel the curse building up against it. Moss starts creeping forward behind Dubh, while above Wilkezag the starlight seems to lance down like silver arrows. Tristian's torch burns higher and higher, far above his head now, while the diagrams and runes near Octavia start to glow with an otherworldly yellowish light. But the area within the circle grows progressively darker, in defiance of the torchlight, and the air grows heavier.

Finally, as the first rays of true sunlight peek over the horizon, Tristian calls out. Most of you are far enough away that you shouldn't be able to hear him clearly or at all, but his words vibrate through the ritual structure. "The long Night of this land is ended! The Sun rises on a new day of peace! Glory to Sarenrae, Who lights the flame! Glory to Cayden Cailean, Who breaks the chains! Glory to Pharasma, Who calls the fallen to rest! O Dawnflower, cleanse this land, that we may build anew! In Your name, let this stain be healed!"

Octavia replies from the far side of the site, less strident but even more unstoppable. "WHEREAS the misrule of Gyronna is ended, and Her cultists banished from this place; WHEREAS the bodies that now guard this place are centuries dead; WHEREAS the Laws of mortals, and gods, and the universe demand the end of the previous rule to make room for the new; THEREFORE let the dead now quit their claims, and let the Hag Queen release her grip and turn away Her sight, and let this land be released from all previous liens or restrictions, that Caydenlund might grow as its new rulers and take its place among the nations of the world. By my Will and my Skill, so mote it be!"

Wilkezag has been playing and singing steadily, a variation of a drinking song about Cayden Cailean, and possibly created by Him. The song counts His beers, and is designed to get louder and stronger on each round, each with a different heroic action. As he reaches 40, Will is bellowing at the limits of his voice, "Cayden strikes down the Hag Queen, never again will She be seen. Hi Ho! Dippity Doo! Cayden downs forty-two!"

As Dubh chants quietly, you hear behind his words the fluttering wings of bats, the happy buzz of bees, the chitter of the squirrel finding the nuts it stored for the long winter. These sounds get louder and louder, until with a shout, the druid somehow produces the battle cries of every animal in the forest all at once: the howl of the wolf, the bugling call of the elk, the roar of the forest lion, the eagle's screech, and more.

I've just added a little vignette for my players to undo Gyronna's curse around the Stag Lord's old fort. They've dealt with the big guy, no problem (they mostly pointed Beaky at him, it was great), but it didn't make sense to me that they could just move in after that without doing something permanent to get rid of the zombies. After all, even if they set it off (which they did because Beaky ran away; they just closed the gates and the druid and kineticist blasted away at them from the watchtower for a few minutes), it must have some way to replenish itself, or how do the bandits know to avoid it?

So I decided to write them a little ritual scene to get rid of it for good. My cast of PCs, all 4th level:
Dubh: untamed/animal druid (also playing Valerie for this scene)
Sophia: 1H/wrestler fighter
Telric: earth/water kineticist
Wilkezag: maestro/polymath bard (also playing Regongar for this scene)

Here's the intro.

Tristian walks you over toward the Stag Lord's old hill fort, to point out the huge diagram laid out around it, almost two hundred yards from the walls in all directions. "Octavia and I have been working on this since you left last week. Personally, I don't think the precisely-drawn circles and mystic runes and whatnot are really necessary, but they made her happy, and they certainly won't do any harm. My Lady sees us no matter what conceits or illusions we may cloak ourselves in." He points out the closest of the major nodes in Octavia's diagram. "My plan is to have four primary ritualists, one on each side of the structure. I'll be in the east, to greet my Lady as she rises and channel Her light to cleanse Gyronna's darkness and spite, renewing this land and granting it a new beginning. Dubh, your place is here in the south, representing daytime and the relentless growth of nature, to rebuke the undead with the vigor of the living world. Octavia will take the western node herself. Her arcane magic stems directly from the laws of the multiverse, as the boundless potential of day solidifies into the unforgiving certainty of evening: in particular, the law that the dead should remain dead, and a goddess that abuses Her followers should fade into obscurity."

He turns to Wilkezag, uncharacteristically uncertain. "Wilkezag, your part will be perhaps the trickiest, symbolically. Your place in the north represents the mystery of midnight and the unknown; and as you know, your power channels the stories we tell ourselves to believe that the bumps and howls we hear in the night have no power over us. Ordinarily this would be the curse's domain of strength, especially as Gyronna, goddess of hags, is closely associated with stories and the occult Herself. But that's why we waited for the full moon to try this. (ed. note: 29th Desnus, 4710 AR; I've already established that the zombies from the curse regenerate at the new moon.) It should still be barely visible in the western sky tomorrow morning, which will help suppress the influence of true darkness. Your duty will be to hold open the door of spirits, to invite the undead to rest and pass on into the River of Souls and the embrace of the Lady of Graves. But take care not to let any power come the other way! I would have taken this role myself if I could, but my Lady Sarenrae is hardly a goddess of mystery or the night! Personally I would recommend calling on Her Lover, Desna of the stars, to aid you, but it's up to you."

"Now, I don't expect the curse to just lie down and let us get on with this! Its spite has incarnated itself as the walking dead before, and that's what I expect to see tomorrow as well. We've avoided discharging it, because it's dangerous and I don't think it would help; the struggle against our cleansing ritual would have granted the curse the strength of desperation no matter what. At least this way we know what to expect! However, what to expect is zombies, and the four primary ritualists will be too busy to fight for themselves. While having additional people inside the ritual bounds is a slight risk, I think it's one we have to take. We've left space for one guard defending each of the performers. Telric, your elemental magic is primal in nature, as you know, and it will be best if you support Dubh. Regongar will of course protect Octavia; it's the best choice anyway, and I wouldn't have looked forward to trying to convince him not to! Valerie admitted, with some reluctance she didn't explain, that she has experience supporting divine rituals, so she has agreed to stand at my side. Which leaves you, Sophia, to guard Wilkezag with cold steel and skill at arms. As long as the ritual stays mostly balanced, the curse's defenses should split equally as well; I wouldn't expect more than three or four shamblers on each side, which should not be too much trouble for any of you. Just keep your head, and cut them down as they rise."

Tristian turns to look at each of you in turn, and seems satisfied with what he sees. "Any questions? Get a good night's sleep; I don't want to miss the dawn tomorrow. I'll be spending the day in prayer and meditation, to prepare. Any of you are of course welcome to join me, or to prepare in whatever other way you find appropriate. Sarenrae teaches that the paths to enlightenment and wisdom are many and varied, just as the paths to corruption are. I'll admit I was skeptical when I heard about a curse that's lasted without weakening for over a century, but Octavia pointed out that it's lasted because it's relatively weak to begin with, and designed mostly to renew itself. A stronger curse would probably burn out faster. So we should have a solid chance at this." The morning sun flashes in his eyes as he nods to the group.

30th Desnus: Two hours before dawn, Tristian wakes everyone up, carrying a bundle of six-foot ritual torches. He guides you in a circuit around the ruined monastery, starting in the east, planting a lit torch in the ground in front of each main node in the diagram. When he returns to his own position, he gathers the other three casters together and touches the back of your hands, leaving a golden sunburst sigil which flares slightly before fading. "The sigil will flare again exactly an hour before sunrise. That will be the signal to begin channeling your magic into the torch, and from there into the ritual. It's designed to build for an hour, and fully release just as Her sun crests the horizon. Remember, we need to keep the ritual balanced: any side which is too strong will either attract more attention to itself, or force too much of the curse toward the others, I'm really not sure which. It depends on how the curse is structured, and obviously there was only so much we could to do investigate that. When the sun rises, that's when to apply the final push."

He thinks for a moment, then shrugs. "I don't think there's anything more to say. Go with the Gods. Together we will forge a new dawn for this land." Valerie follows him to his position, standing in front of the torch as he kneels before it, meditating or praying one last time for guidance.

They're about to roll initiative at the climax of the ritual, at which point they'll get three zombies spawned on each side, similar to the way the trap worked originally. At the end of each round, the casters will have to make an appropriate skill check (Arcana, Nature, Occultism, or Religion respectively). I haven't decided the exact DC but it will start out fairly difficult, gradually getting easier as more sides succeed.

Critical Success: As success, and other casters' failures or critical failures do not spawn additional zombies this round.
Success: The DC for all casters (including you) decreases by 2 in future rounds. This can happen only once per caster.
Failure: Spawn an additional zombie on your side of the ritual.
Critical Failure: Spawn two additional zombies on your side of the ritual. If you have previously succeeded, increase the DC for all casters (including you) by 1 in future rounds; you must succeed again to remove this increase.

The ritual continues until all four casters succeed on the same round (which will be quite easy once most of them have the credit for succeeding at least once), at which point the casters can join in on the fun mopping up any remaining zombies, if they want to.

What do you think?

Losing a Progress Point on a normal failure is not typical for these kinds of Progress Point-based situations. I'm not sure why this one is written this way. Maybe just remove that? It should work much better that way, at least for people who get a success on a 14. I'm definitely going to do that when my players get to this scene (in September, probably).

Also, +8 to +10 in social skills probably means that none of your players took on the "party face" role, because a party face should be a bit higher than this at their preferred skill at 4th level. My 4th level bard is going to have +13 Diplomacy to Make an Impression, assuming he gets to use his maestro's lyre with Versatile Performance. Yes, this is completely ridiculous. But even a more normal sorcerer or rogue party face should have +11 or +12, as long as they remembered to put on their high-fashion fine clothing and/or ventriloquist's ring!

DC 24 is still Very Hard for 4th-level characters, though; even very focused characters are going to have a tough time with it. I would consider bumping this down to 23, which is a Standard DC for Grigori's level. But I think just not reducing progress on a standard failure is probably enough.

The highest level for any of the magic immunity wisps is 9th level. It is very reasonable for any character to still have a weapon to use at this point, probably with at least a striking rune on it. All of the wisps of this type have very low AC.

No they don't? The specific creature we started talking about, the will o' wisp, has AC 27, which is "extreme" for a 6th-level creature. Even fighters are going to have a tough time hitting it reliably, and anyone else is looking at a 30% hit chance at best, if they can even find the thing in the first place. It has incredibly low, trash-tier HP, but... that doesn't matter if you can't deal any damage at all.

Extract Elements is still an Impulse, so it would presumably be covered under the rule I quoted above, making the will o' wisp immune to the entire effect in the first place. The resistance-ignoring effect it provides pretty clearly applies specifically to immunities or resistances to particular damage types, which is not what the will o' wisp has. It's not that the will o' wisp is immune to the damage from your spells by virtue of being an Air creature (which is the kind of immunity common to elementals that Extract Element is supposed to beat); it's just immune to the entire effect right from the word "go."

(It wouldn't help anyway because my kineticist won't have Air until 5th level, and they'll be finding this guy well before that, probably. But the bard is taking Esoteric Polymath at 4th, so maybe I can convince him to prepare revealing light temporarily as well!)

How much of a disadvantage you see Large size as depends mostly on how cramped your typical adventure location is. Paizo, at least for the last several seasons, has written very, very cramped adventures, presumably to weaken archers (which were historically overpowered in PF1). The number of times I've tried to set up a sensible battle with 4 PCs, the druid's pet, a boss, and 5 mooks in a 20'x20' room...

So it makes sense that an ancestry which is typically Large would have other advantages to make up for what Paizo sees as the serious shortcoming of "being too big to fit in published adventures". That said, I'm not sure it's quite as much of a disadvantage as Paizo seems to think, especially if you're playing anything other than the absurdly cramped adventures they produce. If there's enough space that the wizard can cast spells without being up in the boss's face all the time, there's enough space for the minotaur. So I agree that the minotaur, as printed, seems more than a little overtuned. But pretending that Large size is always an advantage, rather than a disadvantage, is a bit disingenuous too, unless your adventurers never go cave crawling (and a lot of the minotaur's power comes to its strength in enclosed stone spaces i.e. exactly the places minotaurs don't really fit).

I know this was mentioned earlier but it's still true. Archetype-based multiclassing is the way it always should have been done, and it works so, so well. Every class has its "core kit" that you can't change, and then class feats are how you make your bard different from every other bard in the universe.

"My bard can play two songs at once, on a single instrument."
"My bard knows everything that has ever happened, every story ever told around a campfire or to a child in her cradle."
"My bard channels Sarenrae's holy sunlight to redeem the repentant and punish the guilty."
"My bard has a spellbook to hold all of the goofy, special-purpose stuff that I don't need very often."

You see how neatly the multiclass archetype fits in with the others? Making your "uniquifier" be "a weakened version of another class" just works.

I don't know, I think having to take hours and hours to fail makes perfect sense. Just think of it, a wizard slaving over their spellbook for hours on something that they can normally dash off in a few minutes: "This doesn't make sense! Why does it not work? Ugh, maybe I dropped a comma or negative sign or something in this section, let me do it out the long boring way... ... ... What in the Abyss, it still doesn't work!?" &c for several hours until they step away from it to clear their head.

(Yes, I am a mathematician and programmer, why do you ask?)

An addendum: Training DCs for Army Tactics are mentioned in the Train Army activity, but are completely undefined. This isn't your fault; it's this way in the printed version as well. I assume it's supposed to be a Standard DC based on the tactic's level. You also forgot to include anything about attaching special units to the Train Army activity.

The Skirmisher and Siege basic units don't actually have an amount of ammo listed for their ranged attacks; it should presumably be 5 shots in both cases.

The skirmisher example in Record Statistics under Recruiting an Army seems to be referring to a level 5 army, not level 1.

Time to necro this thread! I transferred this into a more accessible format for my players, and encountered a handful of typos, questions, and so forth while doing so.

• Does Irrigation have any purpose? It doesn't seem like it, if the rivers created are normally considered non-navigable (which I assume is true because of the Boating feat Canal Aptitude, which makes them navigable). I added a bonus 1/2 Food production for any farmland that shares a hex with a river (including an Irrigation canal) or freshwater lake.
  
• Wooden Walls have no skill entry for construction; it should be Defense DC 15.
  
• Planning Bureau has no description.
  
• The descriptions and effects for Thieves' Den and Thieves' Guild seem to be pretty much copied from one another.
  
• I regularized the "improved shopping" effect of buildings, because it was just too confusing. All "improved shopping" effects stack to a limit of three levels above the settlement's real level. If my players want to build multiple temples in one city, I don't care enough to stop them.
  
• I regularized the "upgrade multiple structures" effect too, just for Temples, Castles, and Universities. This also has the effect of being able to upgrade two identical small structures into a single big structure; I'm fine with this.
  
• Trade Commodities was incompletely renamed to Sell Commodities throughout. I recommend a big search.
  
• A few missing entries in the big table at the top of Skills, most notably Build Structure (but there were a few others, I didn't take notes, sorry!)

On the whole: thank you so much for putting this all together so concisely!

The druid feat Reactive Transformation allows a druid with Dragon Shape to use it automatically if he takes acid, cold, electricity, fire, or poison damage to transform in to a shape from dragon form that resists the incoming damage. However, the sidebar for the new types of dragons available doesn't include any that resist acid, cold, or electricity: only fire and poison are present, as well as some other goofier things like force or bludgeoning. It seems like neither this feat nor Dragon Shape were really updated with the new menagerie of tradition-based dragons in mind; they're still focused on the old chromatic/metallic system of dragons. The dragon form spell itself is in great shape, though!

The druid feat Form Control no longer requires Strength +2. I guess that's nice! But Perfect Form Control still requires Strength +4, which was always kind of a tough lift for druids who were planning to spend most of their time in battle form anyway. This just seems kind of inconsistent.

(One of my PCs is a druid, can you tell?)

I don't know if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I didn't see it: frostbite still has the Attack trait from ray of frost despite now being purely save-based.

Without the party's interference, Tartuccio will EVENTUALLY lead the Sootscales to victory over the mitflits. After all, he can almost mince through the whole hive with his own sickle, if he ever gets off his duff and starts actually helping. After this, under his leadership the Sootscales will quickly become a serious problem for the newborn nation. I would have Tartuccio build his own kingdom starting from the Sootscale Mine hex (probably RIGHT NEXT to the PCs), attracting any remnants of the Stag Lord bandits, other kobold and goblinoid tribes, and possibly even the Lizard King's followers, and opening diplomatic relations with M'botuu. No one says he needs a charter, if he's charismatic enough to attract followers all on his own. (Well, the King-Regent would probably say that he needs a charter, but... too bad for him.) This would set up quite some diplomatic tensions as the two realms race to grab land, possibly from each other. It might even give you an excuse to introduce the warfare rules early!

I don't think you'll ever see Svetlana's wedding ring again, though!

On page 55, it says Bokken currently has a handful of assorted potions in inventory to sell to the PCs. This really doesn't make any sense? He's an alchemist, he ought to have elixirs and other alchemical items. It seems like this probably didn't get updated correctly from 1st edition.

I'm planning to change it to a small assortment of minor and lesser elixirs of life, some lesser mutagens (especially cognitive and serene), maybe a couple of bombs or other tools like silversheen. Any particular recommendations?

A lot of the early encounters are full of -1-level mooks, who really will just perish if any PC even glares sternly at them. Any PC party is just going to mince their way through these guys. Once they level out of the -1-level mooks (I think the fight with Kressle is their final scripted appearance) things should get a bit less one-sided. Even the 0-level mooks hanging out with the Stag Lord are considerably sturdier, although Amiri can still wipe them out three at a time if she rolls well.

Lady Aldori's reward for saving the manor is huge, more than enough for everyone to buy their own horses before they leave. I strongly recommended to my players that they do so, although I changed the date of the party so that if they decided not to, they would still get to Oleg's just in time if they force-marched on the last day.

Yeah... these are pretty much the same changes I ended up making. It really seems like whoever was writing the camping system cared more about campfire cuisine than, like, math. Because the math doesn't work, at all. It virtually guarantees an encounter every single night, often two, sometimes three. That's just not playable.

My changes were slightly less sweeping than yours, but I definitely ended up with a lot of the same things you did, particularly "everyone has time for one activity before dinner and bedtime." I kept the increased chance of encounters for doing camping activities (although I reduced it a little), but I improved the Camouflage Campsite activity a lot, and I changed the roll to only once per night (unless you critically fail at Preparing a Campsite, which is still an immediate bonus encounter check).

I haven't had the companions show up yet, so I haven't yet had to make any decisions there, but your changes seem reasonable. I'm not going to let my PCs adventure with more than two companions at a time, so I won't have to worry about too many of them doing things at once.

I also granted an extra 2 influence points for saving each of the NPCs during the next scene. My players did a GREAT job at the feast though, so this was enough to max them out with a few of the NPCs, and I had them ride with Maegar Varn on the way to Nivakta's Crossing so they could get the last point they needed with him. For the others, they'll show up here and there. Having them meet up at Oleg's or out among the Stolen Lands is the best idea. Having an adventuring party with all five of the feast companions strains belief a little (I just can't see any way that Linzi and Jaethal will get along), but I'm going to have Amiri, Harrim, and Linzi show up at Oleg's the next time my players get back there, while Valerie and Jaethal will show up at some point later.

Just wrote this for one of my PCs, who was trying to gather rumors in Nivakta's Crossing early in Chapter 3.

Although most of what you hear is just more burbling about the Varnlings' passage, an old fisherman tells a spine-chilling tale. "A bridge old Davik once had made, down south on the Shrike below the cascade. He charged the toll for shepherd or knave, but the bandits said they wouldn't pay. They burned his house and killed his hounds, they cut the bridge and left Davik to drown. But no thief could build the bridge once more: for in the dark of night, old Davik crawls back on the shore. From the bandits that him they slew, old Davik now demands his due. Of old Davik's bridge, just one rope yet stands. But the toll is no coin struck by mortal hands. Heed my tale and listen well, or Davik's spear shall be your knell." As the fisherman finishes his story, the shadows that have gathered around him fall back, and the torches seem to light him properly once more.

All the other GMs out there, any fun experiences to share?

NPCs don't follow PC building rules, as a 11th level "Barbarian" NPC 31 is accurate.

Rules link

These companions are called out as being specifically built using the PC rules, because it's expected that the actual PCs may want to adventure with them from time to time.

I was just doing some quick auditing of the companions in the Companion Guide, more to confirm my own understanding than anything else. I can't figure out how the 11th-level version of Amiri has AC 31, unless she's benefitting from her full +4 Dex bonus instead of only the +2 allowed by her hide armor: 10 + 13 (Trained) + 4 (Item) + 2 (Dex) = 29. Am I missing something here? Barbarians don't get Armor Expertise until 13th, so that's not it.

Valerie at 9th-level seems to be correct at AC 28, having been denied her +1 Dex by her plate armor. Only Amiri seems off.

Honestly I'm not sure there's any way to redesign the Test of the Axe so Villamor doesn't win it automatically, without changing the event beyond recognition. He's 2 levels higher than the PCs, he's an axe specialist, barbarians have pretty good single-target DPR anyway, and this event is a test of who can wield a greataxe to do the most DPR to a small number of relatively tough targets. If he didn't have Giant's Lunge he would probably have Whirlwind Strike instead and could murder all the logs in a single round (especially if he found a way to Rage beforehand!).

Any ideas about Villamor's Jousting strategy? It just doesn't make any sense as written. I would definitely allow a cavalier with Unseat to use that action in place of the jousting described in the AP (the main difference is that it doesn't allow a defensive Reflex save on a successful hit, which seems like a good advantage to give someone who actually knows what they're doing).

As far as I can tell, every instance of the words "west" and "east" in chapter 9 is backwards. Every... single... one. Did the maps for this area get mirrored from 1e, so that the spiral would be the opposite of Pharasma's holy symbol, as mentioned in room A9? (I checked and the map on p. 414 has this correct, but every single room description on both floors is the opposite of the map.) The descriptions in Chapter 2 Part 7 of the top part of the Candlemere structure are correct.

It sounds like what you're worried about is an unwinnable event working its way into your game.

Having read through this thread, that's not what I'm worried about. There are other ways to deal with events (even direct adventuring!), and they mostly aren't make-or-break anyway. What I'm worried about is particular skills that seem to be total gotchas: if you don't have them at least Trained, eventually you simply can't do anything with your kingdom anymore, and there is no escape hatch.

• Agriculture has been mentioned: if you don't have Agriculture, you can't build farms, and everyone starves to death.
  
• Engineering: without Engineering, you can't Clear Hexes in order to build settlements. (The actual settlement doesn't absolutely require Engineering, but Clearing the Hex first does, and it's required.) Also required for work sites and roads.
  
• Arts or Trade: is there any other way to get Luxury Commodities?
  
• All of the skills used to Repair Reputation: Arts, Trade, Engineering, Intrigue. These really aren't optional; sometimes Ruin is unavoidable.
  
• Warfare, unless you're all right with pyrrhic victories at best in every mass combat ever.
  
• Some way to recover each of the persistent army conditions, especially Defeated, Damaged, Lost, and Pinned. There are no real overlaps here; you absolutely need one of Defense or Folklore, one of Exploration or Wilderness, and one of Engineering or Magic (but you likely had both of those anyway). Defeated armies are probably easier to deal with by disbanding and reforming them.

I second the being careful with fire sentiment. Last time I played an alchemist, I burned down two ships I was traveling on.

Eh. As well all know, a ship in an adventure game is nothing more than a device which is designed to burn, sink, break apart, explode, or otherwise suffer some form of ill-explained existence failure within a day after the last hero steps aboard. So I wouldn't worry about burning your ship down around you, because at worst you're only hastening its inevitable doom.

(Seriously, when's the last time you ever heard of heroes actually getting where they wanted to be on the first try by sailing there? Yeah, me neither. Shipwrecks are dramatic, and therefore mandatory.)

My point was, you can use the CRB as an Expert Beginner Box (if that's not a contradiction). It's about 95% compatible with the BB, where they overlap, and the very few discrepancies might not even be noticed the first time through. If you're not happy with the amount of rules made available by the CRB, throw them out! Don't understand combat maneuvers? Gone! Can't figure out what a particular spell is supposed to do? Strike it from the list! Can't get your head around the intricacies of two-weapon fighting? Don't do that, then! The game is surprisingly robust to home modifications of this nature. Even fairly major (but complicated) systems like ability damage can be removed: if you just ignore all mentions of it, and avoid using spells that deal it or monsters for whom it's a primary mechanic, the game lurches along just fine, at least through 10th level or so.

As you gain more familiarity with the game, you can (and probably should) consider reinstating some of the systems you threw out during your transition from the Beginner Box. Regardless, Paizo is absolutely never, ever going to make an "extension" for the beginner box, because doing so would very obviously split their customer base, which is automatic death for any niche industry.

Paizo already makes an "expert rules" version of the Beginner Box. It's called the Core Rulebook. No one said you have to use all the complicated rules in the book; as a GM you can slim it down as much as you like without really breaking the system too badly at low levels.

Spoiler:

Oops! Looks like that little inconsistency slipped through dev/editing. Yes, you're correct. The map and the description in D4 are accurate, while the text of D10 should read "He bears the glowing red sigil of Daegros on his left hand, which can be used to open the door to area D13." The text of D13 should read "The door to this room is locked with an arcane lock effect that can be dispelled by a creature wearing Daegros's red sigil."

Ok, I'm officially in love. I especially like the various sorts of dungeons. I have a few questions:

It says dungeons are "randomly generated"; is this just that their location in the overworld is randomly generated, or is the dungeon interior also random? That is, are these like traditional instances except that their entrance wanders about, or are they more like Nethack levels or Diablo 2 lairs, which are generally "themed" but slightly (or significantly) different every time you find them? Random generation is tough but it could be pretty cool if it's done well, much better than "oh look, time for yet another week clearing Blackwing Lair."

I would assume that quest dungeons are considerably less random than the basic ones, because it has to tie into your quest properly. How precise are dungeon quests about telling you where to go?

As a followup question, how are dungeons found? Similar to bandit hideouts? Especially for those that generate monsters on the overworld to hassle my town, I would want to be able to let some of the monsters "escape" so I could follow them back to their lair.

How exactly are type 3 dungeons different from just separate parts of the overworld? If other, unaffiliated parties can end up crashing into my adventure, that would seem very confusing to me.

Are type 2 and 3 dungeons common enough that a mid-size corporation could have a regularly scheduled "weekly countryside pacification night", with a reasonable assurance that something worth the effort of clearing out will turn up each week in the territory the corporation considers "theirs"? In the same vein, if I find a dungeon entrance while I'm out exploring, but I know I'm not going to be able to get to PvE night this week, can I claim it and (later) hand it to someone who will be there? Or as gruffling suggests, sell it on the open market? ("Cheap loot! First come, first served! Bring friends! Delivery not included. Loot not guaranteed: some pacification may be required. ExploreCo is not responsible for customer satisfaction.") I admit, I'm approaching this from the perspective of a WoW raiding guild leader fed up with the excessive theme-park-osity, so I probably have preconceived notions that don't translate cleanly to PFO. If so, please set me straight.

How much thought has been given to having multiple ways to defeat a dungeon? My dream in a game like this has always been the "captured by ogres" adventure: a dungeon full of optional mini-quests and side areas to make the final battle easier. Sure, you could skip straight to your trial (and execution), but if you do that you get to fight the ogre king, his grand vizier, their four best friends, and about three dozen guards, while you're chained up and disarmed, and they pretty much curb-stomp your whole party (unless you're way overleveled). Or you could break out of jail early, sneak around the castle a bit, get your stuff from the prison lockup, bribe one of the lieutenants, lock one of them in a closet, assassinate another one, poison some of the guards, "dispose" of most of the rest in out-of-the-way locations, and sabotage the vizier's magic staff. Then when you get to the big trial scene, you're only left with the king, the vizier (who can't cast his good spells), their two remaining best friends (one of whom works for you), and maybe 4 or 5 guards (two of whom are still suffering aftereffects from your poison); still not a trivial fight, but at least a level-appropriate one. Would scenarios like this be possible?

Everyone here has some great advice. I'll add my own two cents. Rule 0: There will not be a quiz. The system is surprisingly resilient to GMs screwing up the occasional corner case or whatever. So you should read through the books you have, but don't worry about the niggling little details, just make sure you have the major rules solid: how to hit things and keep from being hit yourself, how to sling spells, how to use skills. You're already ahead of the game; you know enough to find the forum and ask questions!

The Hero's Handbook intro solo adventure is really good. Work your way all the way through it. Take it slow; set aside a couple hours for yourself at least. Don't just read it and say to yourself "ok, I get it", because you don't. Pull out your dice, your pawns, and your map, and do whatever it says to do. If you're not actually doing it, you won't remember it; nothing against your memory, this is just how people work. This should give you the basics of how most encounters work, and how the system deals with most situations.

Pretty much anything you do in Pathfinder works as follows: roll a d20 (that's the big round one that goes up to 20), add some "bonuses" mostly dependent on character features, and compare the result to some specific number listed in the adventure. If you tied or beat the target, you succeeded and something good happens, or something bad doesn't happen. If your result is lower than the target, something good doesn't happen, or something bad happens. Ties always go to whichever character was rolling the die. Examples:

• To hit someone with your sword, roll a d20, add your "attack bonus", and compare it to your target's "armor class". If your roll is at least the target's AC, you hit him; roll whatever the damage is for your weapon. If not, you missed, or the target's armor protected him, or whatever; in any case, no damage.
  
• When someone throws a spell at you (usually), roll a d20, add your appropriate "saving throw modifier", and compare it to the spell's "save Difficulty Class". If you rolled at least the DC, you "resist" the spell, which causes most spells to have reduced or no effect; otherwise, the spell hits you full force. Not all spells permit a saving throw (but most do); check the individual spell for details.
  
• To pick a lock or disarm a trap, roll a d20, add your "Disable Device skill modifier", and compare it to the lock's "Difficulty Class". If you rolled high enough, the lock's open, or the trap's safe; otherwise, try again. Assuming something doesn't show up to distract you in the meantime, of course. If you blew it bad enough (more than 5 under the DC) trying to disarm a trap, you set it off on yourself instead.
  

Once you've gone through the HH solo adventure, read through Black Fang. The encounters should look pretty similar to the stuff you saw in the HH. Grab Valeros's character sheet, which came with the box, and send him through a couple of the Black Fang encounters, to see how he handles it. Sit down in your dining room (or whatever), set up the map and such, get some pawns for the Valeros and the bad guys, and go to town. Valeros is a fighter, so he's pretty tough. He should be able to take most encounters up to CR1 on his own, although he might be pretty beat up afterwards. If he really gets into trouble, have Kyra show up and you can learn how to get her to throw spells (she's not a terrible melee fighter either, if it comes to that).

After that, if you actually want to play a game for real, Pathfinder isn't a solo game. That's just the way it is. You need some more people to help you play. Find 3 or 4 friends who want to play also (you really want to have at least 3 players, plus you the GM), and get them all together for 4-5 hours of fun on a Saturday afternoon or something. Lay in some beer and pizza to stave off starvation. Have them pick from the premade characters (make sure someone picks Kyra or they might be in trouble). Then read the intro for Black Fang out loud (dramatic narrator voice recommended), and set up the map for room 1. Good luck! And tell us how it goes!

To meta game a bit in a previous encounter with some natives you should have gotten a talisman that can be used to defeat it. I recall this encounter somewhat.

Yes, this dispel evil MacGuffin has been mentioned several times. We do have it, and it doesn't actually help as much as you'd think. It's an auto-win, IF you beat the demon's SR17 (CL9, 60% success) AND it fails its will save (CR17, the demon needs a 10, so 45% failure), for a total of a 27% chance of this thing actually working. And if it doesn't work... nothing happens. NOTHING.

Magic jar, is the shadow demon in the barbarian? What exactly is going on there because dominated or possessed barbarians is a bad, bad situation.

You are not kidding here. Our GM is being nice and saying that the other use of dispel evil will auto-dispel the magic jar, even though it's only supposed to work on enchantments. Because otherwise, well, we don't exactly have any other way to get the demon out of the barbarian, since we don't have access to dispel magic. I suppose with protection from evil and a lucky re-save we could pacify our barbarian long enough to tie him up and/or find and smash the magic jar soul gem, if we can find it in time. But of course, we don't have protection from evil either; neither the bard nor sorcerer took it, and we didn't buy a scroll or something (this, here, is something we should have done).