Shadrick Hawkins's page

I would strongly encourage you start with just the 1 hour quest (Sandstone Secret). I would encourage you to also consider most players utilizing the 1st level pregens instead of making your own PCs for that very first run through based on your current lack of experience.

Then play 1-01 (Absalom Initiation), which is really designed as the true introduction to society play. Do this with new custom characters that each of you create. This will also start everyone with a little bit of extra money (3.5gp) earned in the quest, to build those first characters with.

Jumping straight into playing 1-00 with the level 5 pregens, with out at least one experienced 2e player, will be a lot more challenging. Also, the level 5 pregens aren't actually well designed for some of the encounters in that scenario. So I would highly recommend saving it for a bit later.

When it comes to earned treasure, it is important to note that unlike home games, treasure in PFS2 is given to you at the end of the scenario in the form of just gold. Then each player is allowed to buy certain things based on access criteria as explained in the online organized play guide.

So, for example, if you find 2 potions and a magical sword in the scenario - your players can use those items in the scenario, but then it all goes away at the end and essentially turns into a pile of gold. Between each scenario your players can then buy items with the gold they have (again, based on certain access rules). These items may include early access to things based on what was earned in the scenario, as documented on the Chronicle Sheet.

The balance for Calisro is they're much, much more likely to have to fight the crowd. As the DCs to placate the leaders are 5 higher for her mission.

The idea being that the party will most likely fight the crowd for her, and has a strong chance of bypassing the crowd fight for the others, thus doing the goblin or demon fight as the only encounter there.

Also note the modifiers on the fight itself for Calisro's version. The leaders and crowd all get +2 to attack rolls, damage, and I believe saves.

Thanks! I just noticed those adjustments for her version of the mission on my most recent read through.

Thanks Rob! Is just not selecting 2nd level feats even an option? Essentially leaving them blank until the Character Options are updated?

Correct, not selecting one is not a legal option. Your best bet, if your concept requires a not-yet-legal option is to either play a pre-gen or select a legal option, and start reading up on the Downtime retrain rules.

This page should get updated when any of Lost Omens World Guide becomes legal for play.

I'm prepping this for Dragon*Con this weekend and wanted to double check one thing.

Am I reading this correctly that if you get the Westgate mission from Calisro Benarry to help the Naga, instead of from the others, you only face the crowd? However, if you get that mission from Eando Kline (goblins) or Fola Barun (deamons) there is a 2nd fight at this location? It appears that you are supposed to calm (or fight) the crowd in all 3 versions of this encounter. Is that correct?

Is it supposed to be balanced out in some way that I am missing? For example not running the optional if they go to the haunted house some time after Westgate, or just making sure that I pick Calisro's version of the mission if 4 pregens sit down to my table?

Also, assuming that I am reading it correctly, what is the timing of the second attack? I am currently planing to play it by ear depending on how much or how little the party has been challenged up to this point - but kind of plan it to happen just as they free the petrified person (who will then duck for cover as a non-combatant).

Yes, it is just poorly worded.

There should be a total of 10, including 2 for the 1st fight and 2 for the final fight.

At least one of the scenarios is a replayable. I'm trying to convince new players to make another PC so the replayable table happens in mid September.

Or you can get them to try out one of the pregens for a class they haven't played yet and bank the scenario credit for a future character they haven't built.

I recently saw this text in the 2e PFS scenario that I am prepping to run at a con on labor day weekend:

Skill Check: Occultism, Society, Fortune-Telling Lore,
Games Lore, or any Lore skill not covered by the Common
Lore Categories on page 248 of the Core Rulebook.

So I'm hoping the field is pretty wide open.

All we can ask of our organizers is to be a good steward of the game and give the community what they want.

Explore! Report! Cooperate!

Here, here! I 100% expect that our organizers will do what's best for the community. PFS (no version needed) has a great set of volunteers working on all of this.

As I mentioned, I am already all in on PFS2, so I don't personally care. I'm basing my prediction on what I've seen in my local area in both the recent history (a decline in PFS1 tables over the past 3 or 4 years) and the history I experienced with what happened with previous OP organizations I played with (3.5's LG & 4.0's LFR) when newer editions came out.

Perhaps I came on a bit too strong with my wording and stark predictions, but I still stand by the overall message that I was trying to convey:

Over the next 12 months, I would expect a significant decline in PFS1 tables at game days and conventions, leading to the likelihood that by this time next year PFS1 was not offered much, if at all, in most areas.

As a result of this, if you want to play more Pathfinder 1 content, including re-running PFS1 scenarios, I would highly recommend doing this in a home game setting, instead of as part of Organzied Play.

To be clear, I was talking about next summer (August 2020) - not what Cons are scheduling for later this year. And you're right, it is very early to speculate about next summer, but that's kind of the point of this thread, right? "PFS1 going forward from here?"

I am tangentially involved in the scheduling of 2 fairly large conventions (one that annually had over 150 PFS tables back in it's heyday 4 or 5 years ago), so I've seen the inner workings. And sure, I may be wrong, but I think it overly optimistic to assume that with no new content PF Society 1 will see enough of a player and GM pool to support it. I've seen enough of the player base slide over to DDAL over the past few years (when PF1 DID have new content), that I can't really imagine stale content holding enough interest - at least at the conventions that I attend each year.

And no, I am NOT saying that PF1 is dead (yet), just Society. I agree that there can/will be non-Paizo supported PF1 content. But that just goes back to my initial point; play "home games and abandon the 'organized' part of it."

If you want Organized Play, PF2 is your way "going forward from here" - and my bet is that will be the state of affairs roughly a year from now (When all of PFS2 Season 1 content is available, and Paizo is launching PFS2 Season 2 along with whatever new source books 2020 has to offer).

Having no stake in this conversation at all (I am just some random dude, who is already all-in on PFS2) my advice to you would actually be just replay the PFS1 scenarios you really like as home games and abandon the "organized" part of it.

I'm not going to sugar coat it - PFS 1 is dead. This happens with every edition change, it happened with D&D 3.5(LG); D&D 4.0(LFR) and it's happening here. It may linger on for months, sure, but by the time GenCon 2020 roles around - I would bet good $ PFS1 will have 0 tables officially scheduled at any major events.

Paizo needs to sell the next new things, not the things from last year let alone 5-10 years ago. That's not a path to staying in business. PFS (and organized play in general) is all about pushing new product, new stories, and in this case the new Edition. It may be an ugly transition. We will lose good players, but this is already a done deal - anyone thinking otherwise is deluding themselves.

P.S. The revenue from selling any old PF1 PDFs at this point is negligible. There isn't enough money left to come from that particular avenue to waste anyone at Paizo's time on it.

Thanks. It didn't occur to me to look in the Faction section for that. Is there a way to actually get one and print it out yet? Or do we just assume we have one at this point?

... it's more codified, but no less straight-forward. In PFS1, you had one homeland that determined your access to nation-locked options. That was usually recorded one one of those description lines on the chronicle sheet people hardly ever looked at.

In PFS2, you have one Home Region that is recorded with the Home Region boon. The benefit is now your nationality is less squishy and there is an explicit method to change your Home Region if your character's allegiance changes.

Where is "Home Region boon" defined? I haven't been able to find anything in the new "Boon" section of the Organized Play section on the Paizo site, nor in the OPF's PFS(2e) Guide to Play. Referencing how to declare your home region, and what benefits that entails (aside from Human languages).

+1

Thank you so much - this is great! I've downloaded it on 3 different devices at this point.

It took me a little while to realize that the 6/8/10/12 drop downs next to race and class were for the Hit Point calculations. Even though you have tool tips, for some reason I just never saw them. (User Error, I'm sure!).

So...

Elves can now start with Darkvision
Gnomes can now start with Darkvision
Half orcs... get low light vision and weaker.

Really? *sigh*

THIS...

At a minimum Orc Sight needs to be dropped down to a level 1 feat (now that half-orcs can take an ancestry feat at 1st level), if it isn't rolled into Half-Orc heritage like I feel it should be.

Also, why is "GOBLIN SCUTTLE" a level 9 ability? Are we saying that all of the goblins in the bestiary are inherently level 9, since they all have this ability?

I really like the direction they are going by adding more racial options at level one via the Heritages. Paizo listened to our requests to add more flavor to races from the start, but I find some of the content is still lacking.

I ran into this problem last night, running for the first time. As mentioned the biggest challenge is reassigning things that used to use Dungeoneering or Planes in PF1. It caused a stoppage in play as we tried to figure it out.

Yeah, I ran into the same problem last night. I went with the modified 10-2 DC table from Update 1.3 and used "High/Hard" for common items based on the following phrases in the rulebook "Many tasks use the high-difficulty DC for their level" and "This is the default difficulty in Pathfinder." But it certainly caused a stop in play as we tried to nail that down.

The Spell table (4-2) has no official way to convert an Item Level to a Spell Level - and as written there is no way to identify a level 11 or higher item using that table.

Thanks I was wondering if someone had done this yet. My playgroup has 6 players. I like what you have here, and will be using it to help guide my own adjustments.

For the 4 goblin fight in A2 I am probably going to add a total of 2 Goblin Warriors for 6 players instead of adding the 1 Warchanter. It seems to be designed as a low level X-on-X fight against some scrubs to get the Players used to using the new rules.

For the Centipedes, given how cramped that room already is - and how much more cramped it will get with 2 more PC's I was thinking of going with the elite template on some of them - but wasn't 100% sure how many to modify for a "Severe" encounter vs. 6 PC's. If I am understanding the chart and the template correctly, I think 3 elite and 3 normal matches the XP budget (3*40+3*20=180XP).

Assuming I do that with the Centipedes, I'd probably use the Zombie Brute you mention as the 6 PC adjustment to the Skeleton Guards fight instead. Probably starting him prone, to fit the description of the room. Either that, or the classic Skeletal Champion, to play around with the shield Actions.

As for the fight with Drakus, I am thinking of adding 2 giant rats (instead of an elite) to give him more flanking options. This seems to fit since he has sneak attack and is the final boss.

This are the official ones? Is there a paizo link?

Sort of, and not yet.

These are some of the ones from Gen-Con, but it has been mentioned (I don't have a link) that some errors have been found. Paizo is refining them and will have them posted officially "soon".

I agree with much of what has been posted here. At first level my Gnome, Goblin and Halfling are pretty hard to tell apart, outside of the obvious role playing.

I would make a few changes:

• Grant any race without Darkvision a 2nd Ancestry feat at 1st level.
  
• An alternative to that is to give every race 2 Ancestry feats at 1st level but also limit all races to a maximum default of low light vision, and offer a feat similar to Orc Sight to upgrade Dwarves or Goblins to Darkvision.
  
• In addition, Orc Sight should be a level 1 feat.
  
• Any Feats that are particularly strong (General Training/Natural Ambition…) could have mutually exclusive limitations placed on them to balance out the fact that a 2nd Ancestry feat is allowed.
  
• To continue with the early separation of Ancestry flavor, add one more Ancestry Feat at 2nd level.
  

As planned, the PFS Scenerios are up this morning, YAY!

Personally, I am still hopefully that the Pregens will be up later today as well.

As far as I can tell, the six 1st level PreGen's that are on ENWorld (Alchemist, Cleric, Fighter, Paladin, Rogue, Wizard) are from the Demo they ran at PaizoCon back in May. Are they 100% compliant with the final Playtest Ruleset that they published yesterday?

I am hopeful that we get the level 1 and level 5 versions for all 12 classes by the 7th when the PFS scenarios drop. But preferably sooner.

For one of my home groups (made up of about half seasoned PFS players and half newer players), we are going to start with playing the first 2 quests from PFSPT #1 with the pregens one night after work. Then see if we want to complete that, or dive into rolling up our own PC's and running through DD.

I think one of our group will have played all 3 PFSPT scenarios at GenCon, so we may make him GM them.

I recommend unchained monk wielding a 9 ring broad sword. Going with the feat chain already mentioned that is unlocked at 8th level with abundant step. (You can also use the retraining rules then to pick up the whole feat chain) And remember to select Tiefling as easily the best race for Nightcrawler.

The best low level fantasy RPG Nightcrawler I've seen is the 4e D&D swordmage.

I haven't played, read or run this yet - but when two 4-star and a 5-star GM give such poor reviews - I have to wonder what went wrong.

Just yesterday, one of our venture-officers had this removed from the schedule of a local venue that was planning on running it next week in a some-what time-constrained slot.

A dayfinder, if no one in your area is running a stock Aasimar, can be useful...

What source has the rules and cost for a Dayfinder?

I'm trying out a negative channeling cleric in PFS. He's only level 3, so my experience with this so far is very limited.

One thing I am happy I did early on was to take Command Undead at level 1 along with the required Selective Channel and then taking Improved Channel at level 3. I found Command Undead to be necessary right form the beginning, otherwise you would find yourself completely useless in those early fights against skeletons and zombies.

I plan on taking Quick Channel at level 5, and only then grabbing Extra Channel at 7th. So far, I haven’t had any issue with running out of Channels (in a standard PFS scenario) as long as I am cautious with when and how I use them. I may change my mind before I reach 5th level however.

I chose Dispater (from Inner Sea World Guide) for my deity to utilize his Rulership portfolio to add a 1 round daze via Alternate Channeling.

So, how did this turn out for the first game?