Phaedre's page

Really disappointing. Couldn't care less about multiplayer hack and slash. Glad we got the two Owlcat games at least.

Ksenia clambors onto the ship next to Alexandra. There's a sheen to her skin, a wild glint in her eyes. "Yes!" She bubbles. "A boat is just what we need! Vas-shoggoth is terrifying but despite appearing in the water initially, during the rectification of the Vuldrini, his slayer came as a large and moving Torg, which in the translation means 'ship of souls'. Some might contend it was a sentient ship, with a name like that. But in any case the subtext is clear and this ship will be our salvation!"

Ched Greyfell wrote:

You just click on it, and it appears inside your token circle. You just move it around. And you can save the token as png, jpg, webp, tiff, or whatever. It's fantastic.

You can also export all the images in a PDF to a folder with a single click - very handy stuff.

OMG, I have been using TokenTool for years and never realized it could do this. Thank you!

2E just came out, so no thank you please.

Was just typing these into my spreadsheet since they were missing from the description here. Quantity in parantheses.

Small Creatures:
Bantrid Vanguard (2)
Housekeeper Drone (2)
Mail Drone (2)
Skittermander Operative (2)
Space Goblin Technomancer (2)
Tech-Helper Drone (2)
Ysoki Battle Host (2)
Ysoki Mechanic (2)
Ysoki Technomancer (2)

Medium Creatures:
Android UPB Hobbyist (3)
Artillery Drone (4)
Drow Mechanic (3)
Human Living Plague (3)
Human Soldier (3)
Ijtikri Nanocyte (3)
Kasatha Micromedic (3)
Kasatha Passenger (3)
Lashunta Technomancer (3)
Nuar Mystic (3)
Pahtra Soldier (3)
Shirren Enigma (3)
Spatheniae Envoy (3)
Verthani Negotiator (3)
Vesk Security Guard (4)
Witchwyrd Witchwarper (3)

Large Creatures and Vehicles:
Civilian Hovercar (2)
Phentomite Autobridger (2)
Shobhad Musician (2)
Trox Biohacker (2)
Uplifted Bear Solarian (2)

Huge Mechs (note: same size as medium pawns):
Aeropa (4)
Fated Ossuary (4)
Flayer (4)
IAU "Tangler" (4)
Jungle Phantom (4)
Karzis Nox (4)
Ripclaw (4)
Skyfire Quickwing (4)
Xenowarden Seedling (4)
Zero Angel (4)

Gargantuan Mechs (note: same size as large pawns):
Aeon Striker (4)
Imperator Pinion (4)
Warmander (4)
Whip/Snap (4)
Xenowarden Canopy (4)

Colossal Mechs (note: same size as huge pawns):
Crypt Behemoth (3)
Hellhound (3)
IBU "Breacher" (3)
Ominous Thunder (3)
Skyfire Wyrm (3)
Valkor (3)

Alright, got an adventure idea inspired by a single PF1 monster that still haven't shown up in pathfinder 2e : the Bhole.

Bholes are giant worms. Actually, let me rephrase that : they are gigantic worms, hundreds of feet longs, bigger than even a conqueror worms, able to eat anything and everything, essentially immortal. Their entry describe how a handfull of them can reduce entire continent to rubles, and further lore explainned how bhole infestation have destroyed entire planet in the past. Actually, it goes so far that the entry then need to precise that no active bhole presently exist in golarion, altho doomsday cultist have been trying to bring them here.

Furthermore, the entry also describe how the GM can make the fight more memorable by including the whole body of the bhole into it making it around 30 feet large but hundreds of feet long, making for a great climatic end boss fight. Nothing is said of Bhole reproduction, so if it can reproduce asexualy, a single bhole could alone be an existencial threat for golarion if left unchecked.

All this to say, hunting a bhole would make for a pretty compelling 3 part AP that goes in the darklands (from level 5 to 15). First volume would be about strange seismic activities, along with the rumor of a doomsday cult growing in proeminence and causing havocs, and hunting down said doomsday cult before it can put it's plans in motion. It would end with the reveal that the doomsday cult have already succeeded before the begginning of the AP, that they summoned a bhole, which is responsible for the seismic activities. Then you would have to delve into the darklands searching for the beast, peraps even following the tunnels it made itself.

Also, having to directly hunt what's an existencial threat to golarion (and thus to rovagug's prison) would be the kind of things that would attract the support of the gods... all of them (exept rovagug itself and probably groetus). It would be a good excuse to have an AP that use the "boon" system from gods and magic, and...

Canonically there's a bhole slumbering underneath Briarstone. Would make a cool starting point as a sequel to Strange Aeons.

I for one am partial to Gyloumari, eating fried devil tentacles has a certain revolutionary aspect for me.Yzalina breaks the 4th wall and informs the party of her nutritional "seafood" preferences.

I don't know what a Glue Mary is, Ksenia chirps into the Stool collective. But if they're anything like Nimbral calamari, the key is using rice flour mixed with the flour to get the crisp just right.

With Hue tossed away, the badly injured Kuo in front of Ksenia can bring its full attention to her and shifting back and forth on her toes she realizes that it will be difficult to bring down. Over its shoulder though, she sees Alexandra land a terrible blow on the hulking leader -- and takes Kalanzar's words to heart.

She feints right, and then rolls left, past the wounded Kuo to slash at the leader while it is paying attention to Alexandra, trying to finish it before it can do any more damage.

stabbing at leader: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (6) + 5 = 11

that probably misses, but...: 1d6 + 2d6 + 3 ⇒ (2) + (5, 5) + 3 = 15

Mechanically: Ksenia won't get sneak attack on the first Kuo since there is no one left adjacent to it, so she uses cunning action to disengage as a bonus action -- i.e. can move without provoking for the turn -- to move past it and stab at the leader instead since Alexandra being in melee flips on the ability to sneak attack. But, probably missed anyway.

No worries on the bag of stones! I was just doing it for color since I had the action available and thought in character annoying her enemy would be something Ksenia would do! I'll look forward to seeing if there's anything interesting about them.

Phaedre wrote:

John Mangrum wrote:

On the Starfinder side, the (semi-)monthly AP volumes are being replaced with single hardback releases. This AP happens to be a compilation/revision of Starfinder Society scenarios, but that's not the pattern going forward. The next, as-yet unannounced AP will be an original story dealing with mechs.

Where was it announced that they're cancelling the bimonthly APs in favor of hardcovers for Starfinder? I can't find anything about that anywhere on the blog, boards, etc.

I think we announced it at Gen Gen in a video, in Erik’s keynote.

Oh, hmm, not sure how I feel about that, but thank you for the quick official response!

Yeah, we came in peace looking for help and these guys ended up having a dwarf in chains and attacked us unprovoked. Ksenia will not be enslaved again, and will die or flee back into the Underdark to avoid it.

Neat. I have a soft spot for Lamasara since I was running a game that started as Mummy's Mask but after book one the party took a caravan to Lamasara to sell their goods. There wasn't much published about it so I'd made up a map and some NPCs and adventures for them to go through there.

[dice=Ksenia's madness]1d3

Ksenia started to laugh. It started as a giggle, but quickly turned into a big, dwarven belly-laugh. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she laughed and snorted and tried to speak. "Of course the moss killed him! Giant scorpions, drow poison, no problem! Melting demons, we can elude them! But the moss! Oh, we're all going to die down here." Slowly the laughter burbled itself out, and the dwarf became quiet, trying to catch her breath.

And just as Ksenia catches her breath and thinks she can think again, Alex unleashes hell on the moss. She falls over again, cackling, "And now we're fighting moss! And when we are victorious, we shall storm the algae and massacre the lichen! We are become death, destroyer of fungi!"

Or have them each run two characters. Maybe do some creative roleplay where each of the pairs is mystically joined or some such.

Would it be possible to get a version of this that's just the tokens (i.e. not the integrated stat blocks)? I'd pay this much just to have the tokens usable on Roll20, don't care about using the built in stat blocks though.

I could see neutral evil following those edicts in the sense of cyborgs who believe the future is the synthesis of the artificial and organic, equal parts of a whole. But evil in the sense of those who believe this should be mandatory and enforced. Think forced cyborgization against your will, etc...

"I'll take first watch, if no one else wants it." Ksenia says. "After eating I like to sit and ponder a while. Learned it from my grandpa. Helps settle the humors and such."

Ksenia furrows her brow and stares at the handfuls of larvae. "They may not look very tasty, but the trick is just cooking them the right way, get rid of that texture and ... " she gestures waggling her fingers and makes a grotesque face "Fundamental worminessitude."

She begins pacing, talking aloud. "Once in the bar we had a shipload of traders stay for a month, in from the Shaar lands off in the Shining South. They'd pay street kids a bent copper to scamper outside the city to dig up certain types of grubs." She laughs brightly. "Old Bejelik tried cooking them himself and everyone about threw up their livers it was so horrible. Like eating toes marinated in sewer water. So the Shaar had to show him how to make them right: sear them hot and fast, but stab them as you do, and they squirt oil that fries up like olive oil. And you needed spice, so much spice!"

Ksenia pulls out her carefully reserved packet of orangish spicy lichen. "Smoke this and grind it fine, it'll be Underdark paprika. I'll have to import it when I get home, the Shaar will pay top coin for it!"

"Give me a moment to scrounge for a bit more of this lichen. I've seen it growing here and there as we have traveled. And anything that resembles an onion. Can never go wrong with a bit of onion."

knw:nature for poking around for more ingredients: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (20) + 5 = 25

Whoa!

Ksenia happily returns with some forage and goes to work with the scavenged dented pan and other makeshift utensils.

David knott 242 - How did you get your PDF? I didn't get my pdf as a backer. Got the physical though.

Not David, but here's my experience as a backer: I received an email from "Paizo Goblins" on 8/31 with the subject line "Get Your Kingmaker PDFs today!". It contained a link to the redemptions page and the redemption code I should enter into the site. Then all of them were added to my Paizo digital content here.

Ziyad, thank you but I do have an inspiration point. I declined to use it because failure seemed interesting at this juncture.

Got my email about it shipping on 8/30 (like others, the UPS-MI tracking never works). Package arrived today (9/8), everything looks to be in good shape at first glance!

(I live in Boston, about as far in the US as you can get from Paizo, so not bad time really; might help others estimate time of arrival in their neck of the woods).

Phaedre wrote:

I have once again received my "pending" email. I have not received any subscriptions since May because the credit card is expired. I put a new one in, but there's no way to delete the old one. And month after month they try to charge the old one, it fails, and I get an auto-message from customer service to that effect.

I have opened multiple tickets. None have ever received a response.

*exasperated shrug*

Don't know why I'm bothering to even complain at this point.

I just worked this out. Go to My Account. Scroll down and find the Manage Subscriptions button. Scroll down and find the Select Another Payment Method button. Select the appropriate payment card you previously entered. You will probably receive a warning about how much it is about to authorize for current subscriptions and make you agree.

Once all that is done you can go back to Manage Payment Methods. Now there is no pending payment on the expired card, you should be able to delete it.

Good luck.

THANK YOU!

I still need customer service to reinstate the missing two months of subscription orders because they're not in there at all anymore, but at least it's fixed going forward...

I have once again received my "pending" email. I have not received any subscriptions since May because the credit card is expired. I put a new one in, but there's no way to delete the old one. And month after month they try to charge the old one, it fails, and I get an auto-message from customer service to that effect.

I have opened multiple tickets. None have ever received a response.

*exasperated shrug*

Don't know why I'm bothering to even complain at this point.

"Poetry won't."

At that, Ksenia steps out from behind the goblins, short sword casually leaning on her shoulder. "Poetry's the only thing that keeps you sane down in the dark, friends. The seers say that when the dwarves spent a thousand years diggin' and fightin' their way up to reach the sky, that dwarven prose died. No ink in the darkness, no paper carried in the retreat, so all we could write was poetry, because we could write it on our souls, and pass it down until there was place and time to set words down again."

Ksenia seems somber for a moment and then brightens and chirps "As for trade, how would you feel about the best home cooked meal you've had in a minute? I've got an idea for making some calamari and mushroom kebab out of a beastie we skewered a ways back."

Only for subscriptions. They sell print and pdf as separate products.

Ksenia remains in the shadows where she was hiding undetected behind the goblins, and scans the darkness all around just in case they aren't what they seem. She smiles at their antics, but better safe than sorry.

Since I haven't gotten my subscriptions since May and have multiple tickets no one from customer service replies to, I thought the email saying "new download available" from Paizo might finally be something ... but no it's apparently a random page from a book. Fantastic. Thanks. Bang up job.

It is the Humble Bundle. Tough crowd. I think making $400 of material more accessible is something to love. Fans seem to agree. But I am confident the toughest crowd will like what we have planned in the months and years to come. Adventures Ahead.

Don't be too disheartened Aaron, I think it's mostly that people on these boards tend to be ongoing customers and subscribers, so they tend to already own the existing publications that they're interested in.

They just cancelled the pawn line for Pathfinder, so there's no chance they'll start making them for a different game.

David knott 242 wrote:

I am not sure which would be worse -- If Paizo had a vodka shot glass subscription, or if anyone actually signed up for that subscription.

Create a pint glass subscription, then we'll talk.

Every size glass is a shot glass if you are determined enough.

Ksenia doesn't notice anything occurring until a giant octopus looking creature seems to drop from the ceiling, smoking and diced half to pieces by her companions. As Ziyad butchers it to extract the bladder, Ksenia cocks her head at the general shape of the creature, listens to her stomach rumble, and declares "Looks like we're having underdark calamari for dinner tonight!"

She gets a knife out and begins to carve off some of the thing's meat.

chef's tools with advantage cancels out skill check disadvantage to collect and carve out as much meat as possible: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (15) + 5 = 20

@Alexandra: at the mention of using stonecunning to tell whether the cave could be collapsed, Ksenia bristles slightly. "Stonecunning is the art of knowing all there is to know about worked stone, not what nature leaves in piles. Asking a dwarf about caves is like asking a chef to diagnose a cow's bunions instead of turning it into steak."

Ksenia pulls up short and blinks. "I'm sorry if I snapped at you. And I don't even care about stonework to the colossal disappointment of my granddad!"

Ksenia listens to the options of where to go with little instinct as to what makes the best decision. She's inclined to try to make for the first surface as this subterranean world seems cruel and too alien to even try to survive in. But she doesn't know the way, and from the ideas being parlayed around the fire, doesn't seem anyone else has much of an idea of how to get back to the surface either. And her new friends need help to get home ...

"If we can't rightfully figure out where we are with any accuracy, I think we should just move as fast as we can away from where we were imprisoned, and perhaps we'll stumbled across lands more familiar to some of us."

Hearing Stool talk about the ripplebark, Ksenia immediately sets to making it as palatable as possible. With a bit of experimentation, she slices it paper thin, and rubs the last of her spicy orange lichen into each of the sheets of fungus before searing them quickly over the fire and hands them out to any who want to eat them.

cooking roll: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (6) + 7 = 13

"Not bad. A bit rubbery, but the flame broiling really brings out the layers of flavor in the lichen. Though I'm out of that, and I've really got to see about building out a seasoning kit if we're to be foraging down here for long."

With food in her belly, the adrenaline of the day finally drops out entirely and Ksenia collapses into a troubled but deep sleep, head propped comfortably on a rock as only dwarves seem to manage.

constitution check: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (3) + 2 = 5

"GLABRAZU! GLABRAZU!" Ksenia screams pointing at the terrifying visage in the air. She had no idea what that is, but the name is a terrifying match to the sight. A couple drow glance over to her, she sees over their shoulders the arrival of the enormous flies and assorted terrors. Her eyes widen further, she points at them and screams again: "MORE GLABRAZU!"

Ksenia stares in awe at the tableau in front of her. Demons! Drow! Spiders! Quaggoth! More demons! She realizes that she has been screaming out loud and clamps her hand over her mouth. And once she does so, she finally hears peeps of the Stool collective filtering through the noise of her screeching mind.

"I'm here! I'm sorry! Mind blanked for a bit while the apocalypse arrived."

Ksenia grimly stares at the swarm of various blades, teeth, and stingers between her and her friends and realizes that running that gauntlet would likely result in her insides being on her outsides. She looks over at the ledge, licks her lips, and hurtles herself over with a shout, plummeting down to the webbing below.

"I'm taking the low road over to y'all." she declared, hoping that the webs connected enough that she could manage.

Apologies, this last week spiraled -- last week of the semester and then some bad dental work. I'll be better now!

"Keep running to the Abyss, you spindeljävel and tell all the devils that Ksenia Frostforge is right behind you!" Ksenia screamed at the fleeing drow.

She grabbed the bag with the drow's weapons and armor, and then gives the room a quick glance for any other weapons or useful items.

perception: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (8) + 2 = 10

if she sees something, she grabs it

Ksenia then takes off running, and yells into the Stool collective: "So can y'all hear me? Because I've got some weapons, and I'm coming back now, but um there seems to be a ruckus, and it's only mostly my fault, I'm sorry."

######

Eldeth stabs the quaggoth in front of her at Kalanzar's urging:

attack with dagger: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (18) + 6 = 241d4 + 4 ⇒ (1) + 4 = 5

To the Stool collective: "Ksenia, are you there? Has anyone heard from Ksenia? We cannot leave without her!"

Ksenia momentarily surges in excitement as her blow connects, and then squeaks as she realizes first that the invisibility shimmered away as she attacked and then as the drow guard lurched towards her.

She danced backwards, just out of reach of his lunging fists, and reflexively pulled back the chain and whipped it forward again right towards his unmentionables.

"If I fight fair I'm dead!"

chain to the jibblies: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (1) + 5 = 6

But the chain found naught but air, and she squeaked again as the drow came on again.

At the other location, seeing Maddy wrestling with the guard, Eldeth scrambles forward and throws her considerable muscle into Maddy's back, helping her try to push the guard off the bridge.

Eldeth's using the help action, which if is allowed given the physical reality of the situation, will give Maddy advantage on her next roll to try.

Wow, I did not see Ksenia's attack coming, I thought she'd hide. This is fun!!

I'd been about trying to work out a convoluted thing about tossing the only throwable thing she had -- the gemstone she found -- to create a diversion, and then the alarm went up. So my out of character hesitation mapped onto her in character hesitation and we were both forced to simply fight!

Ksenia stares in awe at Maddy's rage and chains snapping like saplings. Unblinking and not looking away from Maddy, she leans over to Alex: "Remind me never to make Maddy mad."

Leng-sized.

Just the length though. It's wid-sized the other way.

Continuing to worship redeemed Nocticula for her murder portfolio because you believe that redemption is just a phase and you truly believe despite all evidence that she can return to what's really important - assassination - well, that's just a matter of having faith :-)

I'm happy with playing with the house rules, they look interesting. My general inclination is to be down with whatever house rules tweaks the DM prefers. And since I've only played a bit of 5e so far, I'll not remember what is houseruled vs RAW anyway :-)

I especially like Smarty Pants because I really like having characters learning lots of things.

What I don't understand is...How is it that I have gotten 4 products that released after this was suppose to and another product that is on the way? If there is a shipping problem, then why are we getting things that released AFTER this? Is it a writer problem? An artist problem? A PUBLISHER PROBLEM? It makes no sense.

I believe they have said elsewhere that the shipping container containing those books was held up in import somewhere along the way. Other subsequent ones have not been.

Thanks for the generosity with your time James! I hope you find some peace and can recharge away from the messageboards.

Shackleton.

Ernest to their friends though.

Gorgon is a REALLY good story. It felt very reminiscent of Old World Blues.

And I took Parvati and Ellie with me on pretty much every mission. Really liked their interplay, and the contrast of optimism and cynicism.

I really liked the writing in this one. The story gets better and better as you go, I thought, with a lot of cutting nuance right underneath the garish over the topness that worked really well. Like, the top level is absurdist, and then the layer under that is really dark and tragic. The combo makes it such that instead of the usual "everything is shades of gray" nihilism it wraps back around to an optimism. I.e. at first glance you're laughing at the naive characters around you buying into this crap until you realize that their naive optimism is what makes hope possible. They genuinely believe the world can be a better place and most people are doing the best they can to do that inside the absurd and dysfunctional world.

That said, I found the combat really boring after a while. It lacked the Obsidian tactical depth of other games and seemed at any difficulty it didn't really matter what you did or what weapons you used, it all felt the same.

Kelseus wrote:

Have you finished the Wrath of the Righteous video game?

What did you think of it in general? No spoilers, I just finished the first part (had to buy a new computer to run it).

I have, and I liked it a lot.

What mythic path did you choose? (I really like the way they made them very plot/character driven roleplay choices and not just mechanical things)

I like using it as a plot hook. It's like the old rule for writers: if you make a mistake, use it, don't fix it.

My idea would be that your tiefling was actually native to this other plane unbeknownst to them. But that the big bad of your campaign knew and made sure this spell was deployed against them. Mystery to be solved.

Yep same for me. But then when I did get tracking, it always seemed to immediately get to Fife, WA and then sit there for a week before suddenly showing up at my house and having the tracking info backfilled after the fact. *shrug*

Mine regenerated and now my 1 lb package is ~$5 instead of ~$14, which is reasonable and in line with usual. Thanks Team Paizo!

Perilous Vistas?

It was a four book set from Frog God that each was centered on a type of terrain/environment, and had a bunch of rules, feats, spells, etc. in addition to three or four adventures featuring the same.

Marshes of Malice (swamps/marshes), Mountains of Madness (mountains), Dunes of Desolation (deserts), and Fields of Blood (plains/grasslands).

They were pretty good! I've used some of the adventures.