If it's noon in Egorian, what time is it in Oppara? Anyone want to take a crack at devising time zones for at least Avistan, or possibly the whole setting?
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On the armor table on page 275, the heavy armor says Split mail (level 1)
Do those levels mean anything?
In PF1, to join a hellknight order you had to kill a devil with at least as many hit dice as you, right? So in PF2, I assume that translates to a devil of your level or higher. How do you do that solo? Say you do it at 5th level, versus a Bearded Devil. If you're a level 5 fighter, hitting AC 22 isn't that hard (5 level, 6 mastery, 4 strength, 1 weapon), but can you reliably deal 60 damage to it before it does 68 or 73 damage to you? Hope you're not one of those rare good hellknights, because the devil's glaive does evil damage, so you're toast. But if you're a level 5 wizard . . . what the heck do you do to this thing? Cast levitate and float out of range? Do you think it's feasible for a devil to dimension door, then swipe at you in mid-air before it falls?
Is it supposed to be the size of a chakram (so about a foot in diameter) with full-length daggers sticking out in four directions, making the whole thing three feet across? Or is the ring part only slightly wider than your hand, with maybe 6-inch spikes, so the whole thing is a foot-and-a-half across? The former seems far too large to throw. Some examples: Small - https://paizo.com/image/content/Conventions/GenCon2008P1_500.jpeg Medium - https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/af/8c/fd/af8cfd6a6bdda30f0bf0753f 5f177b3d.jpg Large - https://i.warosu.org/data/tg/img/0341/38/1408098150735.jpg
I never ran War for the Crown, but I was fascinated by it because I started a campaign in Taldor right before the AP was announced, and in my own storyline the Grand Prince was loathed by the whole party, so I guess chronologically our game had to finish just before adventure 1 started. By the time we were done, we were burned out on Taldor. But I read the whole campaign and I'm curious how different groups liked it, how the climax came together, and what the style of Taldor's new monarch is.
I had a weird situation where a PC was fleeing a shark from around a corner. She moved 3 (at slower speed) times to hide behind the rest of the party. The fighter stowed a weapon, draw a hand ax, and then couldn't ready to throw (because ready take 2 actions). The wizard and bard each couldn't ready spells (because you can only ready 1-action things). So they all just delayed. The shark moved once (speed 50) and bit the PC twice, knocking her out. Even though the party all *wanted* to react to the monster coming into view, none of them could. It was frustrating.
In my playtest for PF2 last week, after I had three 'normal' encounters, I did one 'test' encounter to try out a Monster Hunter style custom critter. I sorta stitched together three monsters. It was a large bird - like an axebeak with a bladed peacock tail, wings that could function like shields, and the ability to spit fire. It was basically an ankheg as its 'head' (CR 3) plus a hobgoblin soldier as its 'wings' (CR 1) and a water mephit as its 'tail' (CR 1). The players scouted its lair, put their ranged attackers up on a ridge, and sent the fighter and bard to lure it into the optimal range. It put up a nice, scary fight, but they were ready for most of its tricks. They enjoyed breaking its wings, and everyone cringed when the fighter smashed its beak and it started to drool flaming oil, squawking and staggering away with only its tail attack left to fend people off. After it finally fell, everyone took a trophy. I saw it as a hit. I think this style monster works well given that PF2 already has 3 actions a turn as a default. I wonder if anyone would want to try this out with their party, and see if it might make for a more dynamic fight than current 'big monsters.' The Guardian Beast of Cemjan Isle
Perception +8; low-light vision
AC 19 (21 with wing shield), TAC 15 (17 with wing shield); Fort +8, Ref +6, Will +5
The creature still has one hit point total, and is only defeated once its overall HP is reduced to 0. When a given body part is reduced to 0, excess damage is wasted; it does not carry over. If an attack that affects an area would deal damage to the entire creature's space, it takes that damage to each of its body parts. If the attack doesn't affect the entire space, it only affects one body part of the attacker's choice. The dire creature gets a number of actions on its turn equal to 2 plus its Dire rating (so 5 for this Guardian Beast), and a number of reactions each round equal to its Dire rating. Each turn it can spend no more than three actions for any single body part. Move actions don’t count as any particular body part’s action, but the creature as a whole can’t move more than three times per turn. It only takes multiple attack penalties if it uses more than one attack action with a single body part. Whenever a body part is reduced to 0 hit points, that body part is crippled. The creature can no longer use that body part's various abilities, and the total number of actions and reactions it can take per turn are each reduced by 1. HEAD
WINGS
TAIL
TL;DR - Scroll down to if you want to get right to the meat. Thursday I made sure my friends had the rules, and I pitched my playtest game. Friday they made characters. Saturday I ran my first session of PF2, using a custom adventure. As context, I've been playing Pathfinder for four years, and for the past year I've been running an all-paladin-PC campaign called SMITE EVIL. I've been publishing third-party d20 products since 2002, including the Elements of Magic alternate spellcasting systems and two adventure paths - War of the Burning Sky and ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution. I've been eagerly looking forward to PF2, as I'm an itinerant tinkerer when it comes to game rules. In the past couple years I've played PF1, D&D 5e, Star Wars FFG, and the really nifty playtest rules for FFG's Legend of the Five Rings. I am hopeful for a system that keeps the character customization and tactical optionality of PF1 while streamlining the speed of play and reducing the cognitive load of handling lots of shifting modifiers. Most specifically, I want the game to play intuitively, so if you intend to build a character who can do Thing X effectively, it'll actually be effective.
First, the new action economy is novel, but I wanted to see how it influenced tactical positioning and movement. I made sure to have some combats in open areas, others in close quarters, because having the ability to move twice and attack is really different than what we're used to. I tried to have some monsters that would focus on mobility, others that wanted to get right in the party's face and make three attacks. Second, I wanted to test out the dying rules, and since the game has hero points to stave off a TPK, I intentionally made the second encounter be against a CR 4 ghost, vs 1st level PCs. Third, I recall how D&D 4e focused heavily on balancing every encounter, which it was criticized for. So I wanted to see how PF2 played if we viewed combat as war where advance preparation could pay off. I set up a situation where they knew about a higher-CR monster that sounded ominous, which would lead to them planning how to defeat it instead of just fighting a monster when it popped out right in front of them. The idea was to go for more of the Monster Hunter vibe. Do the rules reward planning? Fourth and finally, like I said, I'm a tinkerer, and I wanted to try out some rules I proposed for PF2 after playing Horizon: Zero Dawn and Monster Hunter. So I designed a custom monster that encouraged you to target specific vulnerable parts, instead of having just a single HP total.
1. A human fighter with a flail (named Wright Dangerous)
All 1st level. ENCOUNTER ONE.
The second stopped 20 feet away and . . . I learned there's no 'dodge' action in this game. And readying requires two actions. So it stood still. Wright Dangerous moved up and attacked twice, killing it. The third moved to a bush and took cover. Then on its next turn it was able to move up and make two attacks, missed both attacks, and then died. After they handily smashed those, it was time to TPK the party. ENCOUNTER TWO.
Then the ghost knocked out the entire party one by one. This despite the bard using magic weapon to let Wright Dangerous get some good hits in, and the cleric using Heal while the wizard used Disrupt Undead. The ghost crit Wright, and he used a shield to block the incorporeal ghost. (That wouldn’t work in PF1. Should it work in PF2?) She still hit, and hit hard enough to somehow broke his shield, and nearly dropped him. Then she got a second attack and took him down. Everyone else went down about the same way. Then the ghost left since the sun was coming up, and one PC only survived due to spending a Hero Point. Everyone else stabilized and later woke up, but we weren't quite sure what the DC to stabilize was. The idea that it's harder to stabilize from a higher-level monster's attack is kinda weird, but they rolled well. The sunrise drove the ghost away, and the party met a local who gave them details about the archipelago and the monster that controlled the seas in the area and kept anyone from leaving. The players figured out from clues that it’s an aboleth, but the PCs were in the dark. The PCs of course resolved to build a raft, find any other castaways from their ship, and go kill that sea monster. Wright Dangerous got sucked into a giant clam, but the cleric summoned an animated broomstick to hold the thing open long enough for him to climb out. ENCOUNTER THREE.
Yes, these were special sharks that could float over land, but honestly it would have been worse if they’d been in the water because the PCs would move even slower. High-speed enemies in PF2 sorta end up getting more attacks, because they can close from a farther distance without having to spend two actions. This began the grumbling about how many things require actions that you used to be able to do for free. ENCOUNTER FOUR.
I’d expected this would be the encounter where I’d use a higher-level monster to hit and run, to create an emotion of dread over multiple rounds as the monster struck from the shadows and their attacks barely hurt it. I’d given the party some treasure earlier of arrowheads that lit up when you shot them – this could hurt the shadow, and I had this cool mental image of the party being worn down by light hits before finally getting a weapon that could kill the monster. Nope, instead what mattered were crits, and once again penalizing the first person to enter the fray. It used ‘slink in shadows,’ moved up, struck from cover, and peeled away a bit of Wright’s shadow, but it was close enough for everyone to gang up on it. They did 30 of its 42 HP in a single round of good rolls. I had it attack Wright, then ‘Step’ 5 feet to flee through the floor into a basement. Wright survived, moved and used sudden charge to sprint downstairs and kill it with . . . ding ding, a crit! They found silver dust and a few scrolls of circle of protection, which they figured would help them resist the powers of the aboleth. (So did I, except in PF2 apparently it doesn’t block mind control like magic circle vs. evil used to. I’ll have to do a deep dive of the spells to see what accomplishes what I wanted. I want them to be able to protect themselves with good planning.) ENCOUNTER FIVE.
Nevertheless, I got to enjoy my tweaked custom monster -- basically a CR 4 monster stitched together from three weaker monsters. The 38-hp, CR 3 head and beak could bite or spit fire (based on an ankheg/ankhrav), 30-hp, CR 2 wings functioned like a shield to tank a hit and could slice and buffet (based on a skeletal champion), and an 8-hp, CR 0 peacock tail had a reaction to swipe and shove whenever the monster was hit (based on a pig). It had three actions a turn and two reactions (one for wing shield, one for tail swipe), so it was less like fighting a CR 4 monster than fighting three weaker monsters consecutively. I’d learned my lesson about charging into melee with Wright, so when he tried to lure it into position for everyone else to blast it, it instead just spat fire and roared to intimidate him, which succeeded! I rather like being able to spend one action out of three for a monster to scare a PC, but I noticed that it took a penalty because it wasn’t using language, just roaring. Maybe I should have just ad-hoc given the monster expert training in Intimidation, or something. But anyway, it was just a big dumb monster so eventually it did close into melee, at which point the rest of the party pounded it with spells from high ground. It screeched and took to wing to get them. They really liked breaking its wing/shield, which caused it to lose its fly speed. Then everyone cringed when Wright cracked its beak and it drooled flaming oil. When they finally took it down, they all took trophies. ENCOUNTER SIX.
With the haunt dismissed (for now), they studied the tomb and learned the single scale had been knocked free from the aboleth’s body by a champion who died centuries ago. The aboleth had retaliated by cursing the island so its dead rose. Apparently the champion had some special weapon that harmed the monster, but everything the PCs tried to hit the scale with just bounced off the slime, which became rock hard whenever it was attacked. They figured they’d look for clues on how to hurt the aboleth, but for now they contented themselves with the clue, the trophies (and meat) from the bird, and an enchanted breastplate they found in the tomb. They returned to their base camp, finished their raft, and prepared to set sail at the start of next session.
1. Critical successes and failures feel swingy. It might just be because they're at 1st level. 2. The action economy is good in theory, but has some frustrating hitches where you can’t do things in six seconds that seem like it would be perfectly reasonable. 3. The spellcasters were more fun to play than the fighter. Crits happen a lot more than in PF1, and even with the extra 1st level HP compared to PF1, crits felt too dangerous. It's especially pronounced when fighting a higher-level monster. I mean, I didn't expect the party to win against the ghost, but it could crit on a 15-20 against Wright Dangerous. The bard didn’t have his armor because he failed a swim check and peeled it off to lessen his chance of drowning after the shipwreck, and so against him even level 0 monsters basically had a 17-20 crit range (and unlike PF1, had no need to roll to confirm). In this edition it'll be a lot harder to throw the party against a higher-CR monster because of how much more likely it is for damage to spike suddenly. Maybe that only happens at 1st level, though. We’ll playtest more and see how it goes. Also, this is a small thing, but when one PC was dying and another tried to 'stabilize' her with a Medicine check, we realized that since a critical failure would make things worse, and the character wasn't trained in Medicine, it was more effective to sit by and do nothing than to try to help a dying friend. Moreover, since the character trying to help didn't have a healer's kit, it seemed like he couldn't try at all. I let him improvise material by tearing cloth and such, but imposed a penalty, which would have caused him to kill his friend. Similarly, the critical failure penalties for Survival seem a bit harsh. They were hiking, camping, and looking for food, and could have succeeded the Survival check if they took 10, but you can’t do that now. So they rolled a natural 1, which turns a failure into a critical failure. I guess that means they failed to find food on a tropical island, and burned their tent down? Obviously I could have just said ‘no need to roll,’ but I felt like it was possible to fail to find enough food to feed the whole party; it didn’t seem believable for that sort of disaster to befall them. Action rules felt petty and stingy sometimes. A monster was chasing Shelly Scraps the goblin (who'd bravely gone alone to scout), and the party shouted for her to get back to them. They wanted to ready actions to attack the monster when it came into view. Wright Dangerous drew a handaxe and got into position to throw it at the monster when he had a clear view . . . and then didn't have the two actions needed to ready. Serpent Arms Jimothen couldn't ready to cast a spell, since the spell he wanted to cast required two actions to cast. The bard Fenthwick likewise couldn't ready a spell. So lots of people delayed. The monster was then able to move around the whole party and still attack Shelly and knock her out. We feel like you shouldn't need to spend an action to do these, or at least should be able to get one per turn free: Draw a weapon
And maybe you should be able to ready 2-action activities by spending 3 actions on readying? Or maybe just make it 1-to-1. On the flip side of the action economy, even though you have a low chance of hitting with a third attack, low is better than nothing. There is a higher opportunity cost to be the first engage to engage with the enemy. If you think you can survive a hit, it can make sense to let them make the first move, so you can retaliate with three attacks. Caster-Martial Disparity Wright Dangerous lived up to his name (though he got a lot of help from the bard who kept inspiring him and casting magic weapon). He was strong in combat. However, he wasn’t interesting in combat. Every round, every combat, he just made melee attacks. The wizard could choose between a few spells. The bard could combine spells and bardic inspiration with making attacks. The cleric could heal and summon monsters who had options of their own. But the fighter was boring. And we don't think it'll get better at higher level, because every time the fighter gets one new feat, the casters gets more than one new spell. While the fighter could have a lot of cool options and tactics by switching weapons since the Mastery-level crits have some great variety, a) the actions it takes to swap weapons are too much of a cost, so you want to just stick with your main weapon, and
By contrast, Star Wars FFG had a ton of balance issues, but its weird dice did cool stuff, like let you succeed at a check but suffer a drawback for next turn, or fail but get some advantage you could capitalize on later. That was nifty. The FFG Legend of the Five Rings game had five different ways to try every skill, based on which ‘ring’ you were using – are you attacking brashly (Fire) or defensively (Earth) or trickily (Air) or probing for openings (Water) or letting intuition and fate guide you (Void)? That was something new I’d never seen before. PF2 has the three-action economy, and that intrigues us. What doesn’t do it for us is ‘turning everything into feats’ and ‘making every minor thing require the same action attacking does.’ At 1st level, spellcasters feel more interesting and useful than they were in PF1. The martial character didn’t get a similar upgrade. D&D 5e already has the ‘simple-to-play’ market. I think PF2 should give martial characters more options. I, of course, have a ton of opinions and options I want to tinker with, but I’m holding off until I get a better sense of the system. Considering how often crits happen, I wonder if critting shouldn’t double damage, but should instead give you some tactical perk. Make grant a free combat maneuver? Make the target flat-footed against the next attack? Again, maybe it’s just a problem at 1st level. We’re going to keep playing this playtest – after all, the party needs to explore the other islands, gather tools and allies, and then confront the aboleth (which, yay, I get to create myself since there’s not one in the bestiary) – but we’re only going to do it when our schedules are open. It’s not replacing our regular weekly paladin game. I hope these comments were useful.
https://img.fireden.net/tg/image/1451/71/1451713344448.jpg There's an image with some kobolds. I wanted to post it online and give proper artist credit but there's no attribution (btw, Paizo, it would be great if you put artist attribution on the sides or bottoms of pages). Even worse, I went through *every* artist listed in the table of contents, and checked their portfolios, and the style doesn't seem to match any of them. Was someone just using a different style than usual, or is it someone who wasn't listed? Thanks.
To my fellow gamers, may you have fun and offer good feedback for an edition that will be pleasurable, profitable, and preferably non-contentious. To Paizo peeps, may you have wisdom and wit in parsing our commentary and critique, may you not be discouraged by malcontents, and may you -- pretty please -- make whips, nets, bolas, and lassos be super useful as backup weapons? To the servers, may you stand firm, like the shields of Sparta.
I asked some friends to help me brainstorm a powerful leukodaemon servant of the Horseman of Pestilence. I wanted a flying archer who would deliver disease with his arrows, but wanted him to be more interesting than just sniping from extreme range, which would be pretty boring for the players, whose characters are 75% melee-focused. One player suggested that he have various trick shots that only work within 30 ft. Brilliant! For example, a barbed arrow that, if he attacks from 30 feet away or closer, embeds in the target and continues to force disease saves until the arrow is removed as a move action (which does some damage). Or a disarming arrow. Or an arrow that pierces cover. Or one that splinters and does splash damage. The key thing is, since the game (at least PF1) already has 'point blank shot' as a threshold, why not leverage that and have more ranged attacks do cool stuff at close range?
Kurgess, the god of strength and video games (well, competition, close enough) has his sacred animal listed as a horse. But Kurgess as a mortal died saving a bunch of people from being eaten by raptors during a chariot race. (Taldor has some weird sports.) I propose the most important thing PF2 can do is make Kurgess's sacred animal be a raptor, and then include a paladin-appropriate raptor mount. Do you have any setting/mechanic intersections you want to see tweaked?
I was hoping for tripwires, landmines, and stuff like that. Maybe it's my old like of 4e, where you could set up a hazard and have your buddy shove an enemy into it. Or maybe that's combining alchemy with Craft (traps) or something. Still, this is cool.
They showcased the Regenerate spell in the most recent blog. Anyone else amused at the fact that you can bring a person back from the dead with a 5th level spell, but it still takes a 7th level spell to regrow a hand? On the flip side, I played in Skull & Shackles with a pirate who lost an arm and a leg to a shark, which led to some fun scenes that wouldn't have worked if he could have just paid a cleric a few hundred GP and gotten a fresh pair of limbs. Personally, I'd be thrilled if limb loss was better-covered in the rules, and if Regenerate was moved to maybe a 3rd level spell, with the effect of reconnecting or regrowing a limb, plus healing 15 damage one time. Then the higher level versions could work as shown in the blog. What do you think? I'll put my specific proposal in a follow-up post.
One of my ongoing frustrations with tabletop RPGs is that characters in melee combat almost never have meaningful tactical choices. You typically just make a roll and hope you hit for damage. Putting together a fighting style of various feats might get you a few more options, but you seldom have to respond to your opponent’s tactics by changing yours. You just do whatever you’re best at, because trying anything else is suboptimal. I played a Brawler to 17th level, and despite being able to grab tons of feats for all sorts of weird styles, the best option was almost always “Make a full attack.” Combat maneuvers were usually a waste of time. With PF2’s “three action” combat system, though, I think we can change that. I know many players just want a quick-to-run game, and don’t need play-and-counterplay options to have fun. But I’d like the option to be there, and in a low-complexity way. What the game lacks, I believe, is dilemmas.
Consider a variation on the Rend ability. Right now, if you hit with two attacks, you do rend damage right away. You can’t defend against it, or really respond to it. What if instead, if a creature hits with two attacks, it grabs you, and then it can spend an action on its next turn to rend, doing massive damage. Now we have a dilemma. Do you use your action to try to kill the monster, or to survive? Do your allies drop whatever they’re doing and rush to save you? This is why I wish more effects set people on fire. Sure, hitting a crowd of people with fireball for 5d6 is great and powerful, but if it did 3d6 up front and 1d6 fire each round thereafter unless the person spent an action to put out the fire, you suddenly pose a dilemma. Spend an action to put out the fire, or hope to win the fight and put out the fire afterward. (Of course, the dilemma becomes less meaningful as you gain more hit points. In Warhammer 40k’s roleplaying game, you have to make the equivalent of Will saves each round if you want to ignore the instinctual panic that fire poses. If you fail, you have to try to put the fire out.) So, how do we take this concept and move it into the combat system of PF2? I’d suggest three tweaks to the game’s philosophy. One with magic, one with monsters, one with melee. 1. Magic. Save-or-suck effects always take at least one round to take full effect. You see a medusa, and you’re stunned in horror. If you can still see that medusa at the start of your next turn, you’re petrified. Between then, your allies can block your view, or kill the medusa. Or hold person slows you at first, and at the end of your next turn you’re paralyzed, so you have a round to perhaps quaff a . . . I dunno, maybe have something like potion of dispel magic. Stuff like that.
Various combat feats could make you better at these. The Fighter gets the ability to Engage everyone without spending an action. Maybe a feat could let you use Bind as a free action against any enemy you attack. Perhaps some swashbuckling feat lets you Drive one person for free, and then follow them if they move, to get that lovely Princess Bride-style duel full of movement. Then various fighting techniques could pose their own dilemmas. Tiger Style might give you rend. Crane Style lets you counterattack if someone misses you. Maybe Jujitsu lets you spend an action to choose an enemy, and then if they attack you get can trip and throw them as a reaction, with a bonus on your roll.
With spears and other hafted weapons, if someone’s adjacent to you, you get a bonus to bull rush and reposition maneuvers. Whips can bind anyone within reach, and penalize their attacks even if it’s not against you, which makes them a useful off-hand weapon. Flails might get a damage bonus if you Drive, because they’re hard to aim, but if your foe stays put you can wallop them good. What do you think of this idea? Do you like the idea of posing dilemmas in combat?
If anyone from my Smite Evil campaign reads this, please leave. . . . I've got a campaign with four paladins - archer of Erastil, charging lancer of Ra*, bodyguard glaive-wielder of Shelyn, and reckless sword-wielder of Ragathiel. *Honestly, I'm not the hugest fan of Egyptian gods on Golarion, but the player wanted it, so I'm working it in. Next week the party will be confronting an antipaladin (last of four the PCs were combating) who's trying to reach a portal to the Dimension of Dreams. The four antipaladins' gods (Lamashtu, Ghlaunder, Dahak, and Set) have lured Desna into a trap in the Dimension of Dreams, and hope to steal her divinity. I expect the party to slay the antipaladin right outside the portal, before he's able to finish the ritual to empower the evil gods. But this encounter is meant to set the stage for a dream-heavy arc of the campaign, so when the antipaladin falls, the leaking energy of the portal will manifest as an umbral dragon. I could have gone for an esoteric dragon, like a nightmare dragon, but with a Ra paladin, I wanted to go for the strong light-vs.-shadow dichotomy. Also, I just played Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and the Fenrir battle is amazing. I'm looking for ways to make this encounter a bit more operatic. First, I'd like the villain to monologue a bit, fly overhead and taunt. He's an entity from the dimension of dreams who are going to be causing trouble in the future, and the PCs honestly aren't big at figuring out secrets, so I'm going to spell out the metaplot a bit. Second, from a tactical standpoint, only one PC is any good at ranged attacks, and the location is the bottom of a grotto, with a storm roiling overhead. I'd prefer to set up dilemmas and give the players a challenge to solve how to beat him, instead of it just being a "surround and full attack" scene. Third, I want a sort of staged battle, even if it means making up some new rules. Perhaps the first act of the battle is the dragon circling overhead and occasionally dropping a breath weapon. (I'm thinking a lingering cloud of darkness that does damage over time, instead of a single shot.) Once he's hurt enough, he bathes the whole area in shadow and sweeps past in melee, using awesome blow to try to force the party apart. Then at the climax, his physical form dissolves and he somehow attacks them psychically in a nightmare dreamscape. Any thoughts on how to do this? The party is 7th level, and I know from experience that four paladins all smiting can punch above their weight pretty well, so I'm honestly shooting for a roughly CR 13 encounter. Thanks in advance.
I'm planning a joust for my all-paladin party this coming Sunday. To set the seeding for the tourney, there will first be a race. I wanted something dramatic and complex, to let the various mounted PCs (all 4th level paladins of different gods) test their skills. Here's my starting idea for the race. I'll post my plans for the joust afterward. This one-mile run (5280 ft.) weaves around the Germande Listing Grounds, with mixtures of straightaways, obstacles, and hairpin turns. Riders will compete in groups of eight at a time. Obstacles include creeks with muddy banks, hedges to leap or maneuver around, and a tunnel through the base of a spinning windmill. Unless otherwise noted, the race path is 40-ft. wide. (Technically this squeezes the horses as they start, but they’re all going the same direction and not fighting, so just ignore that.)
Of course, this is going to take a while to play through, but I'm going to have a soundtrack to keep the intensity up. And I'm planning to just have rough notes of how fast the 12 other NPCs who are competing go. Only 3 NPCs are going to be particularly tough challengers:
What do you think?
I pledged in their Kickstarter for the $50 soundtrack option - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1675907842/pathfinder-online-a-fantasy -sandbox-mmo I don't recall ever getting that reward. Does anyone know if it was available?
My group is playing Iron Gods, and we've made it all the way to the 5th module and 14th level. Holy smokes, high-level PF gets complicated. My current suite of combat feats is Improved Unarmed Strike, Power Attack, Combat Expertise, Dodge, Mobility, Improved Grapple, Improved Critical, and . . . Snake Style. So my unarmed strikes do piercing damage. I'm thinking of picking up Hamatula Strike: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/hamatula-strike-combat/ Now, clearly that feat is kinda badly written. (Technically you could shoot someone with a crossbow and grapple them, which while awesome, is probably not intended.) But help me out, please. Would I be able to: 1. Make a flurry of blows, which at this level gives me 5 attacks.
What out of that list works, by your understanding of the rules? (Also, because we're fighting robots [which have hardness], I chose the steelbreaker archetype of brawler. It lets me attempt to find weak points in enemies to bypass hardness and DR. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/hybrid-classes/brawler/archetypes/paizo-bra wler-archetypes/steel-breaker/ ... This has nothing to do with my question, but I really like the idea of punching into robots and ripping them apart from the inside out.)
I wanted to show off a picture that I thought existed in a Pathfinder book, but I can't recall where, and my various attempts at Google aren't paying off. In my recollection, it's a Wayne Reynolds drawing, with a truly immense giant crouched on a snowy slope, on the left side of the image. Downslope to him on the right side of the image is some schmuck he's about to kill. It's not this image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/2a/07/15/2a0715b48a64fef26fe26030 9df4c265.jpg It's a bigger giant than that one. Like Gargantuan size. Did I just imagine this? Maybe it's not by Wayne Reynolds. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
E.N. Publishing has been putting out adventures in the ZEITGEIST adventure path for the past 6 months. We offer the first adventure for free at http://www.enworld.org/ap/intro.html, but if you're curious to read how well it runs for actual gaming groups, or if you're interested in the campaign but won't be able to run it yourself, turn your eyes to some of these story hours. So far eight DMs have posted about their experiences running the adventure path, in varying levels of detail. I think it's kinda cool, having so many versions of the same basic plot, like watching 8 different directors' takes on the same Shakespeare play. And if you're running ZEITGEIST it's a great resource to see how other groups are handling the adventures. Ajar: A game using Google Hangouts, currently in the middle of adventure two. Colmarr: I believe the first poster to talk about his ZEITGEIST game. Also on the second adventure, he helped convince some people to pick up the series. gideonpepys: The Adventures of Korrigan's Company, probably farthest along of all the storyhours, and running almost faster than we can publish the adventures. Isklexi: A 4e campaign, with fairly short updates. Noodle: Short, and hasn't been updated in a while, but handily pointed out some flaws in our design so we could fix them. OnlineDM: This one is actually being run by one of the original playtesters. ridingsloth: The players in this group actually set up a bulletin board to track clues in a murder investigation. Siberys: Alas, this thread only has one entry. Also, bonus, here are a few storyhours about War of the Burning Sky. Eccles: http://www.enworld.org/forum/en-publishing/299876-campaign-writeup-2-update s-september-7th.html Kmdietri: http://www.enworld.org/forum/en-publishing/315230-war-burning-sky-campaign- saga-3-5-adventure-log.html Ormazd: http://www.enworld.org/forum/en-publishing/298894-ormazds-campaign-log.html
Hey all. EN World has begun publishing my novel, War of the Burning Sky, serialized with 2 or 3 chapters a month. We just released the third installment. In War of the Burning Sky, rakish con artist Rantle takes up arms to defend his home city during an invasion by the Ragesian Empire, whose inquisitors are capturing and torturing magic-users in search of the assassins who slew their late emperor. But when his sorceress sister flees the oncoming armies, Rantle must abandon his homeland to follow her to a distant safe haven for refugee mages, where they find themselves embroiled in the broader conflict between nations. With the scourge of the Ragesian Empire closing in and deceptive allies on all sides, a thief and a liar like Rantle is just the hero this war needs. * WotBS, Pt. 1 - The Scouring of Gate Pass
EN World also has regular blogs from game designers Ari Marmell and Monte Cook, as well another serialized novel, Game Night, by Jonny Nexus. I hope you take the opportunity to read some of these. I'm biased about my own stuff, but the rest is also dang fine quality.
I noticed that entangle says it creates the entangled condition, which seems to match up with the grappled condition in the glossary.
I was interested in finding a way to take the best of 4th editions streamlining and apply it to the 3rd edition-derived Pathfinder, without requiring much changing in monsters. This is a little long. :-D Also, I edited this because I just realized I hadn't looked in the Pathfinder Alpha glossary to see that my thoughts on 'cascading ability score changes' had already been implemented. Well, the rest still apply. The biggest challenge of the Pathfinder RPG is to offer backwards compatibility while reducing the head-aches of running some of rougher rules elements of 3e. I have a lot of experience reworking complex game elements into a streamlined system -- I wrote E.N. Publishing's Elements of Magic - Revised and its sequels, and was one of the main designers of our early point-buy superhero system Four-Color to Fantasy -- so I offer these suggestions on how to resolve the dilemma.
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Or worse, you're entangled, and you're an archer. You take a -2 penalty to attack rolls and a -4 penalty to Dexterity. So you take a -2 to attack with a sword, but a -4 with a crossbow. And you might lose your Rapid Shot and Dodge feats. Oh, and your Reflex save goes down. And AC, unless you were wearing certain types of armor. I suggest that for Pathfinder, ability score modifiers affect all rolls modified by that stat, and if it affects any static numbers (like AC or hit points), we just state a specific number, instead of requiring calculation. The stat itself, however, never changes. In this system, a 10-point ray of enfeeblement just grants a -5 penalty to all Strength-based effects. This means you take a -5 penalty to melee attack rolls, a -5 penalty to melee damage rolls, and a -5 penalty on Str-based skills. (We'd also make some sort of rule that explains that when your Strength has a penalty of X, your lifting capacity is affected by Y, but that's a minor issue.) If you would take a -4 Dex penalty, instead you take a -2 penalty to ranged attacks, Reflex saves, AC, and Dex skills. (I personally would simplify 'entangled' a bit more, so that it just gives a -2 penalty to attack rolls, Reflex saves, and AC, no penalty to skills; the only Dex skill you use when entangled is Escape Artist anyway, and we want people to do that). .
Enhancement (which can apply to ability scores, skill checks, attack, damage, armor bonus, shield bonus, and natural armor bonus)
And then you have penalties from different sources. At low level you seldom have all of them in play, but at high level you often have multiple different bonus types applying for different durations. As just a quick example of how ridiculous this can get, a pit fiend attacks the party. First we have the devil's fear aura which applies a penalty to a few stats. The devil uses unholy aura to grant itself a resistance and a deflection bonus. The PCs attack and cast a few spells. The devil dispels a whole suite of spell effects on one PC, and then in its next round it uses blasphemy, which (assuming it doesn't just end the encounter right there) reduces the PCs' Strengths by a random amount for a random number of rounds. Terribly complicated. The problem is that these types are defined by how they're created, not how they affect play. We need to consolidate these bonus types and divide effects based on how often they crop up and how long they last. I suggest we break it down to four main groups -- Character bonus, Circumstance bonus, Enhancement bonuses, and Morale bonuses. Enhancement and Morale bonuses each have the subcategories of Enduring bonuses, Standard bonuses, and Brief bonuses. Bonuses and penalties use the same categories of definitions. Bonuses of the same type don't stack, and if you have both a bonus and a penalty, you apply the largest penalty to the largest bonus to see the final result.
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For instance, if you have a magic sword (enduring +1 attack and damage) and you use the cleric Strength domain 'feat of strength' power (brief +4 melee damage, +4 Str skills), you end up with +1 attack, +4 damage, and +4 Str skills. Now, since we've consolidated a lot of bonus types, there's no need for decking out every character with the same set of ring of protection, amulet of natural armor, and that ioun stone that give a luck bonus to AC. I personally think that these items really lack interesting flavor, and could be done away with. Since monsters never use them, we don't have to worry about changing any monster stats; all we have to do is change character stats, which Pathfinder is already doing in spades. It's an easy change to give PCs a small boost to AC every few levels to make up for them not having these items. This still leaves room for .
(As with any guideline, exceptions can be made for specific important items, but you don't want a fight with a half-dozen monsters each with 10 powers it can use.) The same guideline can work for classes. Sure, spellcasters get tons of spells, but even at high level, I think a good mix might be four different attack spells, two helpful spells, and one useful thing to do other than casting spells. When designing Elements of Magic (a build-your-own-spells system), I found a great balancing effect by letting casters get a modest number of signature spells (pre-designed spells that they could cast as standard actions), while requiring all other spells take two full rounds to cast. That way the game wouldn't slow down if he wanted to build a new spell in the middle of combat. He had to take two rounds, so that he'd be busy designing the specifics of his spell while everyone else took their turn. I think 4th edition went too far by simplifying creature and monster powers. They wanted to make combat easier to run, but they didn't have to completely excise non-combat powers. They just needed to make them take a bit longer, so you could usually ignore them in combat. And if you find a way to use them in combat, you feel extra clever, because you take a risk devoting a lot of time to do something different. . . How does all this work with 'grandfathering' existing rules into this more streamlined design? Well, my hope is that the full Pathfinder rules will rewrite monsters and spells so that they don't use tons of modifiers anymore, and so that they have their powers streamlined. Also, if we adopt this system for core terms like "shaken" and "entangled" -- terms that a lot of monsters mention in their abilities -- it will be easy for someone to grab, say, a Caller in Darkness from the XPH, and figure out that ego whip grants an enduring enhancement penalty to Charisma-based skills and Charisma-based spellcasting save DCs. What do you think?
On behalf of the judges and the Board of Directors, please allow me to congratulate Paizo Publishing for their Gen Con EN World RPG Award-nominated products:
The Gen Con EN World RPG Awards (the “ENnies”) are an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming. The ENnies give game designers, writers, and artists the recognition they deserve. It is a people’s-choice award, and the final winners are voted upon by the gaming public at EN World. Since they were originally conceived in 2001, the ENnies have expanded from an internet-based awards selection to an annual award ceremony at Gen Con Indy. The ENnies have also branched out from their roots as an award ceremony focused upon d20 system publishers and products to celebrate the achievements of other systems and the publishers and products that support them. The 2005 ENnies voting booth is now open, and will be until August 8th. Every vote counts – in some categories, the first and second place are separated by under ten votes. Please make sure you drop by and vote! The winners will be announced at a live ceremony Friday, August 19th at Gen Con Indy. Fans at Gen Con are encouraged to attend and cheer on their favorite publisher(s). If you have any questions about the awards, feel free to ask. See you in Indy! Rock the vote! Ryan “RangerWickett” Nock
On behalf of the judges and the Board of Directors, please allow me to congratulate Paizo Publishing for their Gen Con EN World RPG Award-nominated products:
The Gen Con EN World RPG Awards (the “ENnies”) are an annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming. The ENnies give game designers, writers, and artists the recognition they deserve. It is a people’s-choice award, and the final winners are voted upon by the gaming public at EN World. Since they were originally conceived in 2001, the ENnies have expanded from an internet-based awards selection to an annual award ceremony at Gen Con Indy. The ENnies have also branched out from their roots as an award ceremony focused upon d20 system publishers and products to celebrate the achievements of other systems and the publishers and products that support them. The 2005 ENnies voting booth is now open, and will be until August 8th. Every vote counts – in some categories, the first and second place are separated by under ten votes. Please make sure you drop by and vote! The winners will be announced at a live ceremony Friday, August 19th at Gen Con Indy. Fans at Gen Con are encouraged to attend and cheer on their favorite publisher(s). If you have any questions about the awards, feel free to ask. See you in Indy! Rock the vote! Ryan “RangerWickett” Nock
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