Skeld's page

You will retain your legacy discount if you are part of that small group of folks that have been subscribers since AP#1.

-Jim

I am, Jim. Thanks!

-Skeld

I'm a legacy charter AP subscriber; is anything going to change for me?

-Skeld

My question got lost in tbe churn. This is literally all I want to know.

Thanks.
-Skeld

I'm a legacy charter AP subscriber; is anything going to change for me?

-Skeld

Hands off off my legacy AP charter subscriber discount. I'll be ok if that stays the same.

-Skeld

As the "PFS AP," I was hoping for some information about the joining process for the Society.

Does anyone have any references for ceremonies, oaths, obligations, or anything similar that can be used to put together a scene for PCs joining the Society?

There's some light description of this kind of thing in the PF1 book "Seeker of Secrets." IIRC, it's more along the lines of general info about joining the society, training, etc., than about oaths and ceremonies and such.

-Skeld

This made me sad. Rest in peace, Gary. My prayers are with his family and friends.

-Skeld

Congrats! My group is halfway through Book 3. We'll be finished soon too!

Ugh. Ok. Thanks.

-Skeld

Did I miss some news about Starfinder? It's been a few months since there's been an AP release.

-Skeld

We're still doing the ol' "I'm still here" thing, eh?

I'm still here.

-Skeld

Hi! It's been a long time. Welcome back!

-Skeld

Congrats!

-Skeld

I expect we'll see a response from Paizo in the 13th, which is when I expect we'll see the final version release from WotC

I got my monthly AP authorization email a few minutes ago. Paizo might address it by not addressing it and continuing with business as usual.

-Skeld

Backlash might wreck the movie in a couple months. Lol.

-Skeld

WotC paid ~$150M for D&D Beyond... They're going to try and force everything they can to that platform and can monetize content for whether they "own" it or not.

-Skeld

I wonder if Paizo's recent about-face on errata has anything to do with this?

-Skeld

It wouldn't be a D&D edition change without a bunch of unnecessary OGL drama.

-Skeld

They could. That's a pretty boring option. You guys know your players just like I know mine. If they prefer to let the flies go and never to be bothered with them again, that's fine for you.

-Skeld

We just started Chapter 2 and my players have basically ignored the circles.

-Skeld

Skeld wrote:

Have them fly to town and begin harassing the citizens of Otari. This will give your PCs a reason to spend a bit more time in and around town (possibly picking up other leads that are useful later on) and giving them a good lesson in unintended consequences. Lol.

I wouldn't have them kill anyone in town, but an couple attacks on civilians and maybe a injury or two might give them a sense of urgency. And if they continue to ignore the flies, there might be a maggot or two inhabiting the corpse of a dead farm animal later on.

-Skeld

The lesson here is go full murder hobo though. This adventure is full of interesting monsters you don't necessarily need to kill. Doing something like this enforces the idea that players need to kill anything vaguely dangerous they encounter, which IMO is the least interesting way to approach Pathfinder.

Like, do you think your game will be enhanced of the players kill all devils on sight rather than negotiate?

Sorry, I just now saw this....

Flies, being monstrous creatures with animal intelligence, are gonna do what flies are going to do. They can't be negotiated with.

The Devils in your example, OTOH, can be negotiated with.

-Skeld

...Slurks, despite being frog-like creatures, don't swim.

I just ignored that fact.

-Skeld

Have them fly to town and begin harassing the citizens of Otari. This will give your PCs a reason to spend a bit more time in and around town (possibly picking up other leads that are useful later on) and giving them a good lesson in unintended consequences. Lol.

I wouldn't have them kill anyone in town, but an couple attacks on civilians and maybe a injury or two might give them a sense of urgency. And if they continue to ignore the flies, there might be a maggot or two inhabiting the corpse of a dead farm animal later on.

-Skeld

No, Captain!

But I completely understand and don't blame you one bit.

Let us know when you get your cancellation notice in a month or 2.

-Skeld

Ok.

-Skeld

So my group is finally in the castle, working their way from top to bottom, bypassing an enhanced encounter with the False Ileosa in the throne room. One way or the other, they're likely to end up in the dungeon next session, and I'm a little concerned about the potential encounter with the shining children. Even if they can each use their blinding light aura once (since a successful save makes you immune to a particular aura) I can imagine a good chunk of the party is going to fail at least one of those four saves! (Not to mention the Hold Person trap that initiates the encounter). And, finally, is the 2d6 Burning Touch damage cumulative per hit?

Almost seems more deadly than the Zev Ravenka encounter if they don't get some sort of energy protection up!

Cut a shining child from the encounter. Or however many you deem appropriate. You don't even have to make the decision until they enter the area. I know the 4 shining children wrekt my party, but I wanted to wreck them a little. It's good for keeping the players humble. ;)

-Skeld

Good idea, to cheat. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to run the Harrow legitimately. It appears to not have been playtested at all. And how does it make sense to foreshadow the future if all the player characters might die and the future not happen? They copied the Harrow from Ravenloft but in Ravenloft it wasn’t meant to predict the future? Wasn’t it meant merely to give the location of some items?

I am running CotCC right now too, just got done with the fishery, and I am desperate for some help on how to make the Harrow playable at all. Ideally I don’t want to ditch it or rig it, I want to get it working as intended but I doubt that’s possible.

The pathfinder campaign setting is called "Lost Omems" because prophecy/fate/etc. has literally stopped functioning (since the death of the god, Aroden). A Harrowing (in world) doesn't really work any more as a result.

When I GM'd this, I decided the idea of conducting a harrowing is more important that what the cards actually mean. So you go through the act of shuffling cards, carefully laying them out... and then you make up some bullstuff based on what the players have done in previous chapters and whatever challenges you know are coming up in the next chapter. The fact that the harrowing doesn't, and can't, actually mean anything is inconsequential to the mystery of "what does this MEAN???" The harrowing is great at injecting some mysterious foreshadowing into the adventure and for giving the setting some feel.

That, and the fact that the harrowing is used to determine how many Harrow Points the PCs receive. BTW, this is a popular campaign and the harrow stuff has been used thousands of times over the last 15-ish years, so it's been playtested. You might simply be overthinking the whole thing. It's a GM gimmick.

-Skeld

I own all the original adventures in this book and I have no interest in a 2E conversion of this material...

BUT, I really would like the tighter storyline thread between adventures, some additional material, AND a greater emphasis on on breaking the seal since I'd like to run this before Tyrant's Grasp, so this might be something I pick up.

-Skeld

I don't blame them. This place has gotten extremely toxic. I don't think it's worth trying to salvage at this point.

-Skeld

The "buy a slave" option was debated as far back as Season 1 of PFS. It was in the players' guide as an option.

-Skeld

Paizo has turned every campaign I run into a compiled hardcover couple months after I start it. Lol.

No new content, so pass.

-Skeld

For years now, I've had a nice little side hustle reselling books and some other hobby-related stuff on Ebay and I cannot tell you how many times some jackhole has emailed me to tell me I shouldn't charge $3 for shipping because Amazon ships for free.

-Skeld

$20 + $5 shipping => "This is an outrage!"

$25 + free shipping => "Cool, free shipping!"

People forget that it actually costs actual money to ship a thing from one place to another.

-Skeld

Its been nearly three weeks since the last posting by UPW. I wonder what is going on?

If UPW also has a lawyer, they probably advised the to stop speaking publicly. That's usually the first thing lawyers do.

-Skeld

If you're involved in litigation and you don't go out and hire the best* law firm you can afford that will put up the most vigorous defense of your position they ethically can, then you are being stupid. Once there's litigation, it becomes a bitter knife fight to the end. The entire point is to secure the best possible outcome for your client. Don't think for a second that the union's representation will do any less for them. It is by definition an adversarial process.

-Skeld

*No representation is made that the legal services provided are greater to the legal services provided by any other firm.

Leg o' Lamb wrote:

Humor can be a lot like food; not everybody gets it.

Also like food it can do serious harm if not approached with care.

Live ordnance is the only thing I approach with care. It is, and will continue to be, "reckless abandon" for everything else.

-Skeld

Removed a baiting post regarding posting policies, posts equating like behaviour to stalking, personally harassing posts, and a few other posts that were spam.

You say "baiting," I say "snarky humor." Then again, I'm not the one with banning powers.

-Skeld

My group finished CotCT a couple weekends ago. Everyone had a good time playing it. We took about 4 years to play through the whole ting, although we did take off for a year to play another adventure between Chapters 3 & 4.

My only criticism is that the plot and Ileosa's plan is a little convoluted and it takes a while for all the pieces to come together. That was exacerbated by running the campaign over several years and taking a break in the middle, so some of that criticism was a self-inflicted wound.

I had fun running it and my players had fun playing it, so good times all around. Abomination Vaults (a 1e conversion) is next!

-Skeld

My group finished CotCT a couple weekends ago. Everyone had a good time playing it. We took about 4 years to play through the whole ting, although we did take off for a year to play another adventure between Chapters 3 & 4.

My only criticism is that the plot and Ileosa's plan is a little convoluted and it takes a while for all the pieces to come together. That was exacerbated by running the campaign over several years and taking a break in the middle, so some of that criticism was a self-inflicted wound.

I had fun running it and my players had fun playing it, so good times all around. Abomination Vaults (a 1e conversion) is next!

-Skeld

Here are the maps I copied from the interactive maps PDF, without map tags, with the grid, and converted to png files for my personal VTT use. Hopefully they can be of some use to you.

Since those are copywrited or whatever, you probably don't want to share that link....

-Skeld

Yes.

-Skeld

I mean, yeah. But paizo still owns all the setting stuff that's IP and not part of an OGL. The game mechanics are nothing special; it's all about the setting.

-Skeld

Paizo's position as a progressive social-justice minded company is smoke and mirrors.

Any company, selling you any product, that tells you how deeply, deeply concerned and committed they are to progressive social justice is lying. They are companies concerned with making money and those statements are a tactic to make you feel better about giving them your dollars.

-Skeld

Sara Marie is terrific. Barring some sort of undisclosed malfeasance on her part — which I find very unlikely — firing her was *astonishingly* stupid.

I agree. Outside of anything egregious, this looks really bad.

-Skeld

Hmmm, ok. Looks like I need to be a pathfinder on this conversion.

I've started putting maps in Roll20. I'll soon start building up the bad guy library (I usually rebuild all of the NPCs anyway). I'll take a look at treasure and DCs as well.

My group is about to wrap up CotCT, so I've got about a month before we'd start AV.

-Skeld

Would it not be easier to just play it in 2e? Sorry if that's a silly question!

Of course! Why didn't I think of that?!

Here are some reasons:
*I don't really like 2e.
*Most of my group doesn't really like 2e.
*Me and most of my group aren't interested in buying all new books/PDFs/etc. or getting back on the supplement treadmill.
*I don't want to.

Your question wasn't silly, but your comment wasn't helpful.

-Skeld

As the title suggests, I plan to run this in 1e. Has anyone done leg work on converting the AP?

-Skeld

I'm still here for some reason.

-Skeld

What if.....

Any given portal sent a user to a random portal on the level above or below on a roll of 1 on a 1d6 (or whatever amount of randomization you're willing to tolerate)?

I mean they are old; they could be malfunctiony.

-Skeld

Stuff like this is a reason I don't use XP at all.

-Skeld

Skeld wrote:

$10.74 for shipping is about twice what it should be. Please fix.

Thanks.
-Skeld

Hi!

Our apologies! We noticed this happening with some orders so our team is working to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience :)

Ok. This happens almost every month now. I'm used to it.

-Skeld