The Foundry premium module has soundtracks for the whole adventure path, including doing clever things like using the theme for a boss as part of the music for their minion's area, to help forshadow musically.
I agree that mobility is a big draw. My party once faced two NPC monks alongside a minor boss. In the first round, the monks used ki rush to close 80 feet in 1 action, did flurry of blows, and backed off 40 feet. The party's fighter was a dwarf, and even with sudden charge, it was hard to close the distance around the various bits of difficult terrain. If he did close and get an attack off, they could then flurry on their turn, and back off 80 feet.
Another grey area is what DC to use with multiple variants of the same creature that have very different levels. Technically speaking, it's easier to know that baby red dragons can breathe fire than to know the same thing about adult red dragons! I house rule using the DC of the lowest level version to get the "family" info.
The power of a caster multiclass is in the utility spells in my experience. No need to worry about spell DC there!
At low levels, I'd stick with low and moderate encounters, with maybe a single severe boss fight. After a session or two, I'd review how that was going - if my party are tactical geniuses, then you can step up the difficulty a bit; if they're really struggling, then you probably want to dial it down. When making these fights, avoid solo encounters, as they'll be overly difficult at low level. For your moderate fights (80XP budget) it's better to have one at-level monster (40XP) and two -2 monsters (20XP each) than one +2 monster (80XP by itself). In practise, this will tightly constrain your available monster range to level -1 to level 2 foes, with perhaps the level 3 monster being saved for a boss fight. As the party level up, you get access to a wider range of monsters as the lower part of the table comes into play (e.g. for a level 14 party, level 10 foes make good cannon fodder). I'd still stay away from level+4 monsters, but a higher level party will have a much easier time coping with these than the level 1 party.
There are also quite a few spells which tell you to ignore concealment (e.g. True Strike), which further makes it clear that this isn't the default state of affairs. If Magic Missile was meant to ignore concealment, the spell would have to say that.
I think if you use a cloud host, your internet quality won't matter? Or at least, no more so than with any other VTT.
Foundry can import from Pathbuilder or HeroLabs. Building a PC from scratch is pretty fast too - ancestry, class, and background are all 'drag and drop', and all the features, feats, spells and items can be added by dragging onto the PC. The only manual entry is setting your ability scores (type 16 into a box) and setting proficiencies (click on the 'untrained' button to make something 'trained' and keep on clicking to increase it further). The biggest pain with setting up a PC is for classes with specific weapon proficiencies, e.g. a rogue. You have to create a new type of weapon proficiency ("Rogue weapons") and then set the specific weapon in your inventory to use that instead of e.g. martial weapon. The system devs are looking into ways to fix this last issue. I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned this point yet, but another feature is that development is very quick. A month ago, spontaneous spells were a pain - you had to manually edit the spells to heighten them, and the UI for tracking spell slots consisted of tiny boxes you had to type in. Today, you can heighten spells by dragging them into the correct slot, and there's buttons to use up slots and restore them all at the end of the day. New content is also available ASAP. The Lost Omens Ancestry Guide should be in Foundry when the book goes on sale. In the interests of fairness, that will be without any automatically applied effects (e.g. if a feat gives a +1 bonus to Athletics rolls to swim, that won't be added automatically), but all of the features, feats and heritages will be there.
Prologue, Jamandi Manor
Our heroes gather at the manor of Jamandi Aldori, one of the most powerful Swordlords in Restov. She is one of the sponsors behind a series of expeditions from Brevoy into the Stolen Lands, and has invited Marcus, Fraxinus and Morgrym to form one of the groups. Marcus invited Voldea, and she in turn suggested that Tamlane join them. There are four expeditions headed south and southwest:
The group spend a few days in planning and provisioning, getting ready for heading off into the wilds. Jamandi outfits them with horses, tack and supplies, but no more. Both Drelev and Varn's expeditions will be accompanied by forces of mercenaries (either hired by Drelev, or Varn's own forces). The evening before they're due to depart, Jamandi hosts a feast to bid them farewell. The Lord Mayor of Restov (Ioseph Sellemius) and a representative of the regent (Rannek Surtova, a cousin of King Noleski Surtova) are there, as well as a Pitaxi bard (Tartuccio). A pleasant evening is had by all, and Marcus, Drelev and Varn are all presented with formal charters by Jamandi Aldori. Late that night, the group awake to the smell of smoke - the manor is on fire! They gather in the corridor outside their rooms, and Tamlane spots a fire mephit through a window, setting the great hall on fire. At that moment, a pair of armed intruders attack. They're swiftly defeated, and the group split up - Voldea, Fraxinus and Tamlane head upstairs to check on Varn and his allies, while Marcus and Morgrym head downstairs to check on Drelev. Voldea, Fraxinus and Tamlane arrive in the nick of time, as Maeger Varn and his allies are under attack from another group of intruders. Cephal Lorentus, Varn's wizard advisor, is down on the ground next to a burning rafter, while Varn and Haelen (commander of the Varnling Host) fight off attackers. Tamlane darts forward to help Cephal, while Voldea and Fraxinus take out an archer (who flees downstairs), before helping Varn to deal with the remaining attackers. Cephal pulls out a scroll of Hydraulic Push and quenches the worst of the fire, giving them time to retrieve their belongings from the burning building. Downstairs, Marcus and Morgrym realise the Drelev and his wife have already left their room, and that the ground floor is empty. The fleeing archer almost runs into them, and beats a rapid retreat before they can capture him. Fraxinus and Tamlane talk to Cephal about the mephit, and he confirms their suspicions that it has probably been summoned here. If they can capture the elemental, it may be persuaded to talk about the person who summoned it. The group head towards the Great Hall, where Jamandi is busy organising a bucket chain and dealing with other groups of attackers. She reveals that she slew the mephit herself, and that the body faded almost instantly - confirming the summoning hypothesis, but leaving no chance to talk to the creature. The fire is brought under control, and Voldea helps tend to the wounded. Thankfully, no-one has died - though the bard Tartuccio has vanished in the chaos. Rannek Surtova graciously extends an invitation to host everyone, as Jamandi's manor has been badly damaged. Jamandi is fuming over the whole affair, trying to work out who could have been behind this. The following morning, the group finally depart Restov. The Varnling Host travel with them, as the two groups are bound the same way for the first day or so of travel.
Why not take a different level 8 class feat if this one doesn't do anything? There's several level 8 feats that seem thematically appropriate for a bear barbarian, e.g. instinctive strike or thrash. Sudden leap and Renewed Vigor also look like good feats. It's a bit odd that the animal-specific feat doesn't do anything for your particular barbarian, but it's not the end of the world.
One per hour is actually the recommended rate in the book.This has been unclear to me. Is this per person or per group? One per group. I hand mine out with a more-or-less hourly timer, and let the players decide who gets it - they normally pick whoever's spent their starting one!
I'm running a Kingmaker game using PF2E, and have just about reached the half-way point. Conversion has been pretty straightforward - there's a lot of monsters already converted, and the GMG covers the rest. I started off being fussy about trying to convert loot 1:1, but got over that. Now I just use the expected loot by level and scatter it around where seems narratively appropriate (e.g. defeating a powerful spellcaster will give them items that a wizard might want, a dragon's horde will be full of gems and gold, etc). If you do run KM, check out the specific forum on this site. There's some fantastic advice on how to run the game, and how to adapt and change it to overcome some of the weaknesses in the original. My campaign is also very influence by the cRPG, as I really like how they adjust the overarching villain's role. If you have more specific questions, I'm happy to answer. You can also see the session log for my game here .
Why are you tolerating that person's behaviour? Whether it's related to gaming or not, that's a completely unacceptable way to behave, especially to someone who's meant to be a friend. Lots of people are stressed right now, but most of us can refrain from profanity-laden rants at our alleged friends over mechanics in roleplaying games. Life's too short to tolerate this kind of nonsense.
My party prioritise Haste for the casters, especially the Angelic Sorcerer. Being able to move twice *and* cast is incredibly useful if you're squishy, as well as other options like "move, sustain, 2 action spell", or "1 action heal, move, 2 action heal".
Ah, I found the links for where I got the basis of my kingdom building mechanics: Hassy, kingdom building rules and mass combat rules, plus a revision by Vlad, includes rules for armies and mass combat. I made some fairly minor editorial changes, plus a few tweaks to adjust to PF2 scales for character skills/attributes.
My party has a wizard with a raven familiar, who's used mostly as a scout. A raven flapping around in the wilderness is pretty unobtrusive, and it's been pretty handy.
I really like the idea of restricting their spell slots vs. the 'real' casters. Whether 4 spells per day is too few is another question, but I think the basic idea is a great way to reduce their power to compensate for better proficiencies.
This looks super cool! A few questions:
* Are the effects of the specialised infusions in addition to doing damage, or instead of? I assume your intent is that e.g. bowling infusion gives you a free Trip attempt as part of rock toss, but it's not worded very well. Does MAP apply, for example? My suggestion would be to use the wording of the fighter feat knockdown: "Make a basic Blast. If it hits and deals damage, you can attempt an Athletics check to Trip/Shove the creature you hit. Both attacks count toward your multiple attack penalty, but the penalty doesn’t increase until after you’ve made both of them." If you want to keep it as a separate action to the basic Blast, maybe saying: "The next time a blast spell you cast hits and deals damage, you can attempt an Athletics check to Trip/Shove/blah the creature you hit. Both attacks count toward your multiple attack penalty, but the penalty doesn’t increase until after you’ve made both of them." * For the infusion, form and substance traits, is the intent that the most recent form infusion and most recent substance infusion both apply to your next blast, or just the most recent infusion (of either type)? * If I'm attuned to multiple elements, can I use the specialised infusion to boost the blast of a different element? e.g. can I use Bowling Infusion with Firebolt, or do I have to use Bowling Infusion with Rock Toss? * If you can apply a substance and a form infusion to the same blast, and if you can apply different elements infusions to other blasts, then electricity is really good. It's the only element with a form infusion, which means you can stack it with the substance infusion for any other element for a super-powerful 3 action blast. Is this intended?
Yep, which is why multiclassing into rogue/investigator/swashbuckler gives you a worse version that the base class gets For example, getting sneak attack by multiclassing into rogue costs a feat and gives 1d4 damage, which improves to 1d6 at 6th level, and never gets any better. A real rogue has 2d6 by level 5, and eventually maxes out at 4d6. There's no way to get strategic strike via multiclassing, and finishers are capped in a similar way to sneak attack.
It's odd that people say incap spells are awful trap options. My party have made really good use of incap spells, with colour spray in particular standing out as a very solid spell. Upgrading the degree of success by 1 is definitely annoying, but hardly makes the spell an 'awful trap'; I don't think I've seen anything in PF2 that qualifies as an awful trap full stop. Incap is basically the same for debuff spells as increasing monster HP is for damage spells - why does no-one complain about increasing monster HP making 1st level damage spells into 'awful traps'?
I've got 1 champion (redeemer) in my party. The thought of four of them is frankly terrifying. My poor monsters will feel so useless! My suggestion for a party is the Scary Gang:
I've got an illusionist wizard in my party (just about to hit level 6), and he's been excellent. Color Spray has turned the outcome of multiple encounters, and Magic Missile has stopped several badly wounded enemies from fleeing (& calling reinforcements). Preparing nothing but invisibility in his 2nd level spell slots one day was the key to getting the party inside the bandit fort easily. Illusion spells are really good in this edition; sometimes he uses them for a bit of crowd control (e.g. trapping two little boars in a 'cage' for a round or two, so the party can focus on the boss boar), and sometimes for more plot-based effects (e.g. impressing kobolds by having an illusory black dragon fly down next to him). He doesn't do the damage of the martial PCs (though lightning bolt sometimes come close!), but they also can't heavily debuff multiple enemies with a single pair of actions either. The player is slightly annoyed by being the only prepared caster in the game who has to pay gold to access his full spell list, and also has some reservations about spell attack rolls. Illusory terrain hasn't been great, but that's in part because the fights are mostly outdoors, and so any terrain-modifying spell is weaker as you can step around them. But apart from that, it's all going really well.
I've made maps of several locations in dungeondraft for my game, which you can find here.
And some go in the opposite direction - all zombies are Slowed 1 permanently.
Coming up with the contents of a NPC wizard's spellbook can be a pain as a GM. To help out, this thread a place to enter in wizard spellbooks from actual play. What are the spellbooks like for wizards in your campaigns? Fraxinus, Level 4 Illusionist Wizard
1st level spells:
2nd level spells:
easy tool has pages sorted by spell type and level, with all the monster stats.
Isn't Bravery just as specific as Dirge of Doom though? It's interesting to contrast Bravery's wording with Aura of Courage. Bravery says: "Anytime you gain the frightened condition, reduce its value by 1." The relevant part of Aura of Courage says: "Whenever you become frightened, reduce the condition value by 1 (to a minimum of 0)." It's odd that Bravery doesn't specify a minimum value, but I think that's an editing issue; you can't have a negative Frightened condition! Both abilties pretty directly contradicts Dirge of Doom, which says: "Foes within the area are frightened 1. They can’t reduce their frightened value below 1 while they remain in the area". It's also interesting to wonder how Shatter Defenses works with Bravery/Aura of Courage. Shatter Defenses says: "If the target was already flat-footed to you when you damaged it with this Strike, it can’t reduce its frightened value below 1 until the start of your next turn." So you have two abilities that automatically reduce Frightened by 1 (one specifies to a minimum of 0), and two abilities that prevent you reducing Frightened to less than 1. Which ones takes precedence? I think I'd rule that these abilities are all contradictory, and are all equally specific, so the higher level character takes precedence. If both sides are equal level, either defer to the PC's ability, or flip a coin (DC 11 Flat Check) to see which one wins.
Assurance is very good if you have lots of penalties. For example, if you Trip after making two attacks, you've got 26 with Assurance or (13 plus 1d20) without, i.e. Assurance is giving you a guaranteed 13. Obviously it's still only good if you're facing low level low/medium Reflex creatures regularly.
Polar Ray is also missing the Attack keyword, which makes me think the absence of 'double damage on critical hit' is an editorial oversight. I checked the spells which do have Attack as a keyword. They all do something on a critical hit, and generally they do double damage if they do damage at all.
I plan on tying them to roleplay, rather than spending HP or similar. I'm currently preparing for running Kingmaker, and will probably have a Champion of Sarenrae. If the Champion succeeds in redeeming one of NPCs like Akiros, then Sarenrae will reward them with a boon. If one of the other PCs helps out significantly, they might also get a boon, even if they're not worshippers of Sarenrae. I plan on checking out the anathema and edicts of the PC's gods and other significant campaign deities to see what king of actions might trigger boons or curses. I think they'll be a really nice way of making the religion of the world feel real and impactful, rather than choice of god being only relevant for cleric types.
I ran the Mosquito Witch (a PFS adventure), which worked really well. The reviews on the product page go into more detail about the adventure, but it's got a reasonable amount of investigation/roleplay, and a few fights. |
