RH's page

RH wrote:

Also, have you by chance watched any of the older fan films the HP Lovecraft Historical Society guys have done?

And this is a good example why it's best for folks to post only one question per post here. I don't mind at all if you post dozens of questions in a row. Keeping them each to their own post makes it easier for me to answer them, and lessens the chance of me getting super wordy on your first question and then not realizing you had a second question.

ANYway...

I have indeed watched them, and I wouldn't call them fan films. Indie films, yes, but they're for sure professional quality! Got to see "The Whisperer in Darkness" at a midnight screening in a theater during the Seattle International Film Festival in fact, which was the highpoint of that year's festival for me.

Ah, sorry about the 1 per! I got excited...

In the end, choosing between which one I want to use in a project I"m working on is just a plain old choice that I make between two similar flavors. It's the writing equivalent of choosing between a cookie or a candy bar for desert, I guess. Both are good, and both have sugar in them, but they offer different advantages...

Do you know off the top of your head if there are any Paizo adventures that feature both the Tapestry and the Mythos?

With ABP removing potency runes, and those runes (in core) governing how many property runes armor or weapons can have, any opinions on what might be the best way to handle keeping property runes in the game? The weapon potency is now bestowed by the wielder, not the item, so I'm curious.

Hi James (aka Mr. Patience himself). Have you by chance seen the work someone did converting Curse of Strahd to Call of Cthulhu (on Reddit I believe)? Ravenloft and Cthulhu are two of my favorite things and I'm very intrigued at the idea. What would you think of such an endeavor?

I forget it doesn't do that natively :D I align grids with one click and use arrow keys to stretch pixel by pixel. Takes a few seconds if you didn't use the importer.

May I ask what module you use to stretch the map in Foundry?

I actually really like the art style of the maps in the modules, but I'd like higher res/better maps for our vtt games.

Searching, I see several from book one and a handful for book two that are really nicely done fan works. I am not seeing much from book three onwards; has anyone seen any decent maps floating around by chance?

Thank you!

Does anyone know off the top of their head any modules (stand alone or Society) that are based around the Denizens of Leng? I know they've been featured in some adventure paths, but I'm more interested in any stand alone modules that might exist. Thanks!

James are/were you involved in the forthcoming Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder 2e conversion at all?

I have just started tinkering with Foundry. It seems it will do a lot of things, I just need to learn it! We have been using Arkenforge for a while, and just sharing the screen, but their remote player support is nonexistent and it can't currently do the automation that other VTTs can.

For those on Foundry, for hosting do you usually host locally or via their cloud? For the cloud-based hosting, players can use a browser to log in right? What about if you local host (with port forwarding etc), does each player need to install Foundry? How does the client side of that work?

I think they're looking for the rules on Heightened Spells.

There it is! Thanks guys!

Hey all. Can someone point me to a specific place in the book where it is explicitly stated that when casting a Signature Spell you can cast it using a higher level spell slot? I see where it says, "You don’t need to learn heightened versions of signature spells separately; instead, you can heighten these spells freely." This doesn't mention which slot the casting uses. This does not imply that they auto-heighten like a cantrip or focus spell using only their normal spell slot, correct? I'm trying to explain how this work to someone new to 2e, and I'd like to be able to better help them understand. Thanks!

Quick question regarding the Dragonslayer's Shield.

The description talks about it having Resistance 10 versus a specific damage type (based on the dragon color) that is in addition to its hardness, so it would take 18 points off the damage from that damage type. My issue is that it is listed as being covered in Dragonhide, which states that it is immune to that specific damage type.

Am I missing something, or aren't these contradictory statements?

If people have access to FG modules they make have MUCH higher resolution player maps.

I have ripped and printed them out many a time, it costs an extra 2-3$ if you already own the pdf :)

Do you screenshot those maps, or is there another way to extract them?

Hello,

I and my two children are new to the Pathfinder system and roleplaying in general. We have played through one of the demo scenarios using the pre-generated characters. I would like to move onto the Plaguestone Adventure Path, but know that it was created with four players in mind. Does anyone know if it is possible to play with only two characters or should I have each of my children control two characters? If playing with only two characters is possible, are there any recommendations on modifying the difficulty level to work better for fewer players. Thank you for your help!

The fall of Plaguestone is a stand alone adventure, and the two long-form adventure paths are Age of Ashes and The Extinction Curse. I would say definitely try the stand alone Plaguestone first since you're new to the game, and Porridge wrote above some good advice, such as watching Jason Bulmahn's video and also being wary that the adventure itself has been called very difficult by some who have played it.

I can recommend the Gamemastery Guide. It has tips for running smaller groups of 2 or 3 players, and the Dual Classing option is a great way to allow two players to play stronger/more versatile characters while having to roleplay only one personality.

Add me as another to the list of wishing for high resolution AP maps. I've been disappointed for years that the often awesome looking maps weren't really usable for VTT.

Lady Wrath wrote:

Seems like dual classing might be something from a new book, anyone got any clarification?

Dual classing is one of the variant rules from the new Gamemastery Guide.

I am converting the first book of this AP as a fun introductory adventure to 2e, and so far everything is going great. The doppelgängers are brutal against 1st level characters but I wanted to highlight how much more fun solo creatures could be and it is working great. One question I have is: should I give these ex-doctors the medicine skill? So far I have been able to have them hit and run pretty well and I can’t decide if they should be able to heal themselves or not

I think Oathsday is the only one to have really been a doctor, so perhaps she'd be the only one for sure to have the Medicine skill. I'm slowly converting this as well, and am just getting to this area of critters. Scaen got away but I'm not having her quick heal, so she's laying low. Picking Oathsday's abilities was fun as there is no Mesmerist class in 2e so I felt free to pick and choose what felt interesting. She would definitely be trained in Medicine.

For a bleak ending, perhaps have the buried Bhole wake and wreck everything. Or they defeat the Tatterman and clear the remaining yellow fog from around the asylum only to find out the whole island is really located in Carcosa, and a certain King is waiting. Finally, possibly adding to either of the other ideas, have the PC's regain their memories only to remember being the ones to have caused the whole mess to begin with.

Great ideas for mood lighting and mapping; I've used Maptool and Arkenforge for the line of sight lighting and it has been effective.

There are no clear alternatives out there for iPad/MacOS. I'm also not sure why the financial model can't be more like D&D Beyond, which allows me to purchase data packages and then share that with my group at no additional cost to them. It just felt like a kick in the head to tell them they needed to start paying more to get the content when the experience has been so negative.

For what it's worth, I agree with you on Hero Lab Online (we have hundreds of dollars into Classic, and HLO hasn't gotten anyplace near making me want to invest in it). We are mainly iOS as well, but a couple guys have Android phones and use Pathbuilder 2. I tried it using Bluestacks emulator on Windows/MacoS and liked it so much I got a cheap Amazon Fire tablet to install it on. It's very good and gets updated regularly, so keeps getting better. Worth looking into if possible. It makes character creation MUCH easier and faster, and even if it doesn't have the functionality of Hero Lab, P2e is quite a bit simpler to play anyay with fewer of the seemingly endless +1/+2/-1/-2 and other effects that 1e had.

So is there a general consensus that Flaming Sphere can be Sustained only once a round? How are most of you handling this currently? It seems that's RAI, but difficult to tell sometimes.

And with new errata mentioning this, I do hope they are thorough and talk internally about revising how Sustain a Spell is worded, as well as the various spells that can be Sustained, rather than making us parse the descriptions and interpret their intentions on a per spell basis (like we're doing now).

I personally like what Unchained had. Keeps some of the flexibility of the new action system while keeping some limits.

What you are missing is that Stunned isn't ONLY reducing your actions. It is also flat out stating that you cannot use actions you have.

STUNNED (p. 622) states: You’ve become senseless. You can’t act while stunned. Stunned usually includes a value, which indicates how many total actions you lose, possibly over multiple turns, from being stunned. Each time you regain actions (such as at the start of your turn), reduce the number you regain by your stunned value, then reduce your stunned value by the number of actions you lost. For example, if you were stunned 4, you would lose all 3 of your actions on your turn, reducing you to stunned 1; on your next turn, you would lose 1 more action, and then be able to use your remaining 2 actions normally. Stunned might also have a duration instead of a value, such as “stunned for 1 minute.” In this case, you lose all your actions for the listed duration.

Seems clear, you cannot act while stunned, but the DURATION of the stunned condition varies. If you are Stunned 1, then you only lose one action during which time you are indeed stunned and can't act; after you forfeit that action, however, you lose the Stunned condition and have two actions left to use.

There's a ton of amazing work you folks have done here, thank you!

For those who have made auto-calculating pdf's, what software did you use to do so? I am familiar with Acrobat, but that cost...

HeroLab Online was horrible when I started using it, but it's much better now. I kind of hope it succeeds, because although having to pay for it regularly kinda sucks, the benefit is that it means there's at least a small number of people working on improving it every day as their jobs.

Does Hero Lab online offer the customization options Classic has, such as adding our own new feats and ancestries or items? Or the GM options like Tactical Console or encounter builder?

I’d just make them normal Focus spells and remove the Not-Focus mechanics they’re currently burdened with.

Especially the “you’re not allowed to play anymore” for casting 1 too many.

Maybe their schtick can be they start with a full 3 focus pool and can refocus by increasing their curse level... without the whole fall unconscious part. Just increase penalties and negative (and possibly positive as well) effects so it’s a risk reward thing without being overly punitive.

Unlocking Curses from Mysteries means that many players will try to minimax. They'll either take "weak" curses, or ones that are patched by specific feats or spells. You can try to fix this by balancing the curses, but this is going to be really hard.

Locking Curses to Mysteries is a major change from 1e, and is restrictive and feels less fun.

It's a tough choice.

I’d rather they try the former; balance the curses with each other and keep them interesting. A big part of 2e is about rebalancing the system anyway. Seems like it keeps options open in the design space and lessens the restrictive nature of locking them to specific mysteries. I also think it would be better in the long run to patch curses that get too far out of line than to restrict variety and choice.

Not super interested in a character who kicks their own ass for minimal benefits. Reading through I figured that revelation spells would be very powerful as a balance, but they're not. Like someone said above-- too much stick, not enough carrot.

I’m also not a fan of having the curses and mysteries tethered together. Loses a ton of the flexibility the 1e version had. I get we only have a few choices here for testing purposes, but yikes they don’t seem all that player friendly or fun to play. Definitely disappointed.

Is there a chance of supplemental options (Mysteries etc) being added throughout the playtest, or are the Mysteries set for now? I ask (selfishly) as I was excited to convert a Haunted Oracle over :-)

Maybe have Devil's Sight, instead of adding the spell level notation (which I'm not sure how that would apply in 2e), just have it provide normal or Greater Darkvision? Normal can see though a Darkness spell but not a Heightened one. Not sure if Greater Darkvision is too good for a 1st level feat/invocation, so perhaps add Greater Devil's Sight as a higher level option (with the prerequisite of just having Darkvision already so as not to force those who already have Darkvision to waste a low level feat)?

Also, in 2e I don't think Darkvision has a range. Was this intentional?

Cole Deschain wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Atavar wrote:

If you have seen it, what did you think of the new movie Joker?

Haven't seen it, but I know that the movie I did see this weekend was better! :P

As a big Lovecraft fan one of my favorite stories is Colour out of Space. Die Farbe (2010) I found to be a great adaptation. Have you seen it and, if so, how do you think the Nic Cage movie compares?

Cool, thanks folks!

I see a few references to Greater Darkvision, such as on page 465 and under the Darkness spell description on page 327. Is it actually defined anywhere? And is there a way for a PC to gain this ability other than via Goggles of Night?

Since a lot of people seem to be interested in this, I decided to give it a shot myself. This is just version 1.0 right now, I only have the basic Class features down right now. I still need to make Feats as he levels up, but I welcome thoughts, feedback, and ideas!

Samurai's Warlock for Pathfinder 2e version 1.0

Gotta admit I do love the Warlock. More a fan of the original 3.5 version than 5th ed., but there must be a reason so many people are giving this a go.

RH wrote:

No Touch AC.

Magic Missile can be foiled by Concealment.

Undead can be affected by mental magic.

Unless they have the Mindless trait, which many of them do.

Yeah, true. Skeletons and Zombies are mindless, all the others so far are fair game.

No Touch AC.

Magic Missile can be foiled by Concealment.

Undead can be affected by mental magic.

Have we heard anything from Drop Dead Studios on this topic?

I always was a fan of SoP, sad I never got to play it more. Hope they do something for 2e!

Fumarole wrote:

You can copy the files from the PDFs, but I wouldn't call them high resolution. For that matter I wouldn't call the maps for Fantasy Ground high resolution either, at least not for the Rise of the Runelords maps. For me high resolution is sufficient to play at miniatures scale and not be blurry.

Well i use a virtual tabletop and ive infact been using your maps for Age of Ashes so thanks for the save!

When i rip the image and blow it up on the vtt, it just looks horrible but when i played in a starfinder game on Fantasy grounds using the dead suns module, the images looked far sharper than anything i can produce. Rise of the runelords is a pretty old module so i would assume there not up to todays standards.

Yeah the PDF maps are decidedly not high resolution. Some can still be usable for vtt or printing, though they'll be blurry. The 1" = 10' scale maps, however, are just painful to even try. We've been asking for years for Paizo to release the high res maps for sale (I get not for free, but obviously the high res maps exist... I see little reason not to sell them). There was a thread or two back a few years with someone from Paizo commenting, if I recall correctly. I can't recall what their answer was, just that I wasn't satisfied and that we never have been given the chance to buy the maps.

The downside of trying to use a wand more than once per day is that you may waste the spell casting actions in combat and deactivate the wand. A nuisance, but not as negative and extreme as total destruction. The upside is that you may get 1 or more extra uses from the wand before it is deactivated. I thought about making it broken, but that can be fixed in 10 minutes and I figured that was too many potential uses.

I like this idea a lot. I’m not a fan of where they went with wands. I was also under the impression that they were trying to move away from “spells in a stick”, but they kept that and also made it essentially a once a day item. I agree the broken and destroyed ideas seem rather unfun.

So, I'm in a pickle!

I started this campaign out in 5th edition, swapped over to the PF playtest....and now we are in PF2e...which is amazing, and my players are having so much fun.

One problem.

The Big Bad is gonna take the form of a 5-headed dragon. Aaaaand, well. 5-headed dragons do not seem to be in Pathfinder. So, I need some help starting out a 5-headed dragon. It's gonna be taken on by 4 20th level players. I'm still very new to PF having never played its first edition so I'm not sure how to even start. Any advice would be super, super awesome!

Thanks!

You can start with the Ancient Red Dragon (level 19) and add some abilities from the Hydra (only a level 6 creature but it has five heads). That should get you pretty far. Take a peek at some other level 20 creatures to make sure it's numbers are relatively close.

Thanks for this! If nothing else, having the errata in one place until Paizo makes a real errata file is very useful.

I like some of what you've done with the other items so far as well.

A couple questions:

First, your spontaneous casters; they would not have to learn the same spell at a higher level in order to heighten it (signature spell notwithstanding)? That solution for them never sat well with me.

Second, What's your thought (if any) on Magic Missile? There is a thread debating if it is subject to the miss chance from Concealed, since it specifically avoids mentioning it in the spell description.

I started looking into Strange Aeons. 2e dopplegangers are no joke.

We’re early in book two right now, and I’m considering converting. I’d already brought in Unchained revised action economy and Automatic Bonus Progression, so the feel of action won’t be a sudden change. Classes and items are pretty different though...

On a related note, 1e had a bunch of improvised weapon feats (such as Catch off Guard and Throw Anything); I haven’t found anything in the crb that might offer a way to make an improvised weapon fighter, or something to negate the -2 penalty for using improvised weapons. Am I missing anything or has this basically been simplified out of the game (subject of this thread notwithstanding)?

I tried to post this last week, but the forum ate it.

I ran a session last week (level 1 oneshot, 4 players), and it went well. The biggest problem I noticed is that everyone, including me, found the diagonal movement rules to be cumbersome. I like that it's more realistic, but how much does it really matter in practice? Has anyone tried houseruling 5e-style movement in? Alternatively, what about hexes?

Our group has always ignored the diagonal=extra movement stuff. One square = 5 feet, regardless. I isn't spatially accurate but we've never had it be an issue; all participants in a combat, heroes and villains alike, use the same movement rules so we just don't see a reason to use it. For spell effects we use curved templates, or vtt software, and eyeball the things, so even there have not had a problem making a ruling as to area of effect. We have terrain and maps with grids so hexes (which I do personally like) aren't a good option. To each their own.

Nice work! Darn thorough. I'll definitely take a more in depth look at what you did here. I'm currently toying with the idea to try converting Strange Aeons over to 2e; the traits are one of the first things I need to tackle, it just seems overwhelming!

Haven't had time to really use the pdf just yet or go deep on the various feats and such. From my general read, I'm pretty satisfied with it, even if only as a stop-gap until the official Paizo versions (and even then, good to have options).

I'm curious about this book as well. Let us know how it plays! When I looked at drivethrurpg there were was a review that was concerned about some of the heritage feats being too powerful.

Do Dr. Henri Meirtmane play a roll in the AP?

No real role in the ap. He's mentioned several times in the first book mainly for background flavor and as author of some of the tomes the characters can find in the asylum and a couple found later in the ap.

RH wrote:

Hey gamers! I redid the first page of the 2E character sheet for my own use. It's not perfect, but the main goal was to be utilitarian while also being easier on my (not great) eyes. Figured I'd post it for anyone who might want to use it.

My attempt

I like it! Any chance you'll redo the other pages to match?

Thank you! Not any time soon for a full redo of the other pages, it took me a while on my spare time to do this. I actually don't mind the other sheets as much (well, the B&W ones), they don't hurt my eyes like the original main sheet! Looking at them, I may just edit the pdf to change shading from black to gray or something.

For other options check out what Uchuujin and Viemexis made, I like theirs as well. They're also in this thread, not hard to find.

I like it! very clean. my only negative feedback is that melee strikes can use dex or str.

Thanks! I was not aware of that! I just purchased the rule book pdf so haven't had a chance to dig in yet, but I was going by what Paizo had listed on their sheets.

Hey gamers! I redid the first page of the 2E character sheet for my own use. It's not perfect, but the main goal was to be utilitarian while also being easier on my (not great) eyes. Figured I'd post it for anyone who might want to use it.

My attempt

Thanks for those links VestOfHolding! Very interesting. And, I'm afraid, applicable to these sheets, especially the color one. Very busy, hard to follow, unflattering colors; it made my eyes very unhappy.

I gotta say that, while they weren't perfect, I kind of liked the playtest sheets better. Landscape should also be an option for those who like them as well.

Oh, and the B&W character sheet I just downloaded still has Pathfinder misspelled in the footers.