Spyro Tosh's page

Scheduled to run both new exclusives at an upcoming convention and I'd kind of like to maintain my record of a hundred plus tables without reporting a PC as dead while staying within the rules of PFS.

It seems reasonable to me. I will be assigning the chronicles to a character and for the purpose of record keeping my characters will be said to have taken part in the adventure. I hope it shouldn't be an issue to simply reduce the gold my characters receive to help out players at the table.

I've spent the better part of two months GMing Wardens of the Reborn Forge and it's been the most tedious PFS experience I've ever had. The main reason being I decided to run it as a seeker arc which requires running it as written. This is a module that should never be run as written both due to the tier and the mechanics involved. To be clear I don't blame the author. For a different party, even decently optimized, the module could be a tpk before the second chronicle is given out. I have a strong feeling that hostile NPCs were intentionally well beyond suboptimal simply due to the expectation that PCs would be performing below par for a good part of the module. Players have been very good about indulging me in altering tactics to try to give them a challenge but really it's been seven weeks of painfully grinding through encounters where for the most part NPCs are either killed before they move or fishing for 20s to hit.

I know this happens from time to time in PFS scenarios but the difference between the time investment for preparing and running a scenario and a three part module is huge and it's much more exhausting to run through a module like this.

I opted to run the module as written since due to the sanctioning requirements it's the only way that players qualify for the bonus chronicle and I felt it fair that if players are investing two months time to play through a module they should be able to qualify for the full reward possible for playing with characters at level 12. I'm not sure if I'll run Wardens of Reborn Forge again but if I do I will not be running it as written. It's a really fun module but the inability to modify encounters so they are an appropriate challenge for the PCs at the table is a deal breaker for me. Which is a shame because that means that future tables of players end up facing reduced rewards for playing through no fault of their own.

Which brings me to the main point of this long rambling post. I'm unsure what's being planned for the sanctioning of other high tier modules such as Feast of Dust and ones that may be published in the future but I hope that they will not be sanctioned with similar restrictions. Having read through Feast of Dust it's an excellent module and I'm really looking forward to running it for PFS once it's sanctioned. At the same time as long as campaign mode is offered there's little chance of me running encounters as written, regardless of what that might imply for chronicle sheets. There's just too much variation in the power level of PCs at that tier to waste time on prepackaged encounters.

So I recently picked up this module and looked over the sanctioning document which has left me scratching my head a little.

So if I properly understand the sanctioning for players to be able to qualify for the fourth chronicle they must play PFS characters at level 12 at a table of PFS characters. This implies that campaign mode is a no go if I want to offer players the full reward for the module and it seems considerate to make that option available to players who are going to commit their time to the module. This leaves me with a question of how much latitude I have as GM to run the sanctioned module as written in a manner that players can have access to the bonus chronicle sheet.

Mostly I'm concerned with being able to include chapter two of the module which wasn't sanctioned. A series of unique encounters as well as additional background as to what's going on seems like a fairly meaningful loss to the adventure.

I also wouldn't mind the freedom to slightly alter character builds. Four different high level gun wielders, none of whom have rapid reload, seems like a wasted opportunity to me. But I feel like this is a case where some encounters will have to be trivialized in order to meet the requirements of running as written, which is unfortunate.

Hi there everyone, was hoping to get some insight from people a little more experienced in PFS than myself.

The owner of the store where I coordinate events is looking to put together a pregen binder since as of late we have been a little haphazard with the availability of pregens.

I'm finding myself a little conflicted on how to manage offering them to new players. As much as I understand that pregens are supposed to be more of a sample of the game as opposed to an optimized choice it remains true that not all pregens are created equally.

The ninja pregen has no disable device, does paltry damage and has limited use out of combat.

The gunslinger at level one shoots every other round at a minus four penalty assuming that all enemies are in melee.

I have yet to talk to a player that understands what would viable tactics would be for the shaman pregen. It's possible this is a fairly powerful build but honestly nobody knows.

It feels overly negative to tell new players not to play a pregen because it's absolutely terrible but at the same given that there a number of extremely viable pregens it seems like players might have more fun with a character that's actually functional as opposed to one that is crippled by flavour or complexity.

Please cancel my current adventure path subscription. Unfortunately I'm in a situation where I can no longer keep up with payments. I managed to secure payment for a couple issues I fell behind on but if it could be ensured that no new orders are made beyond those just authorized it would be appreciated.

I'm just checking to make sure that there weren't any problems with the order. The order history says that the book was shipped August 18th but I have yet to receive it. I was hoping someone could tell me if the package actually shipped and if anyone knows how long it typically takes for orders sent to Toronto to arrive. It's entirely possibly that Canadian customs is taking their time with processing the package but since it's been nearly a month I thought it would be worth asking.

It's actually been bugging me since the Technology Guide was put up on PRD and probably annoys me more than it should but I would like an answer if there is one.

For context my understanding of why advanced technology exists in Golarion just in case my understanding is lacking. As far as I know advanced technology has two sources. First from alien spaceships crashing to Golarian, the most significant of which is possibly the Silver Mount but this is definitely not the only such incident.

And while not very common a secondary source of advanced technology would be mages and other scholars who studied these crash sites in enough depth that they actually managed develop the knowledge to reproduce and possibly innovate some of their own technology.

So this explains robots and ray guns are on Golarion but I can't really wrap my head around why aliens would have chainsaws on their ships or why mages or Technic League would have any interest in advanced arboriculture.

So is there actually a cool story to this or was it one of those things where the devs said "yeah it's kind of dumb but chainsaws are fun so we'll toss them in there".

Not sure how far the problem goes but from what I can tell it looks like when I check out the spell list index for Clerics on PRD the second level ACG spells show up in the first level list. If you click the link the entries are all accurate but it's a little confusing if you're simply trying to pick spells based on the list.

Okay, for the most part I love rules set out by Pathfinder as well as the incredibly detailed setting of Golorian. I wouldn't play the game otherwise. And I get that sometimes approximating things into a set of rules you're going to get things that aren't really accurate of the real world because otherwise the rules would just end up being way too complex. Nonetheless, I do think that there are rules out there so badly written that they end up having strange implications for the world they are supposed to represent. I'm fairly new the forums so I wouldn't be surprised if this has been done before but hopefully it entertains.

Entry 1, what's implied by the rules of feinting:

Active magical beasts, monstrous humanoids, extreme hunting and possibly even the presence of magic itself has led to animals with keen intuitive senses well beyond the animals of Earth. Pretending to throw a ball then hiding it behind your back will most likely lead your dog to knock you over to retrieve the ball instead of running off in the direction you feigned throwing.

More than this mindless creatures, constructs with high mobility and other such beings have intuition beyond measure. They will not attempt to dodge a feigned blow as they can tell it is no threat, yet be perfectly prepared to side step the next wayward punch that heads their way. How they make this distinction is completely unknown but it probably a ripe field of research for those who are more scientifically inclined.

Being primarily the purview of rogues and entertainers it's quite possible that every martial art on the face of Golorian has shunned feinting as a valid tactic in close single combat and the reality of the the combat manuever amounts to pointing in a direction and shouting, "Hey look over there," as emphatically as possible.