Strachan Fireblade's page

Lots of threads about APs in general, but what is your number 1 favourite issue?

Mine is issue #97 In Hell’s Bright Shadows

For me, everything about this issue is fantastic - great adventure, evocative setting, and strong back matter articles (particularly how Kintargo information was laid out, it really gave me a great vibe for the setting and it let my imagination run wild which made it easy to convey info to the players). As a bonus, I thought it tied in very well with the Player’s Guide.

So what’s yours?

I thought it was worth mentioning that I thought this was a very solid survey. It seemed to have the right balance/types of questions for the feedback I wanted to give. Kudos to the designer of this survey!

I’m not all that familiar with the Alchemist class as I usually DM so this ide may not fit into the scope of the class, but....

What if the Alchemist could temporarily change property runes on weapons to take advantage of weaknesses or enhance persistent damage (in conjunction with creature weaknesses). Changing a corrosive property to frost against a creature weak to cold damage might be an interesting option for the class.

By 9th level the Aid action becomes almost automatic to succeed at on a DC 15. We began section 4 last night and our group began exploring hexes using Perception. The module mentions that each character can perform Perception or Survival check to explore. My players asked if they could do an Aid action to help one player on his check and I deemed this reasonable. Not all DM's would follow this logic and that's fine, but that's what I went with. Since players have a level bonus of +9, and they have a bonus from their attribute, and possibly a small magical bonus, it is conceivable that some characters can only fail on a 1. Even characters who are as bad as they can be, still only need a 5. As you gain levels, say level 14, players can only fail on a 1. This simply becomes a dice rolling exercise.

I don't want this thread to derail into a "get rid of +1 per level" as this is not the intent. It's more to shed light on an Action that works on lower levels but doesn't feel right on higher levels.

I am beginning to prep for Part 4. In this section there is a Sea Serpent with the Swallow Whole ability.

I'm a little fuzzy on how Toughness works within the Swallow Whole ability. I don't want to make any assumptions on how this ability has worked in previous editions. For this situation, the Sea Serpent has Toughness 18. While in the stomach, if you do more than 18 damage with certain weapons you can get out. What if you do less than 18? Does toughness prevent you from doing any damage? Can you do 18 damage cumulatively over multiple attacks and still get out of the stomach?

As an example, if we assume a 9th level fighter gets swallowed, he will require damage from a light bulk weapon or unarmed attack to deal enough damage to overcome Toughness 18. The issue I see is that the magical weapons that a fighter will have will likely not be light bulk or unarmed. Since damage generally increases due to magic weapons, the fighter will have a hard time doing enough damage to get out of the stomach.

Also note that in this scenario the Sea Serpent is several levels higher and it won't be easy for anyone to escape the stomach any other way. This makes understanding Toughness very important to this encounter.

If anyone has any rules citations they can point to that would be great. Thanks!

For all spellcasting classes, I would really like to see Spell Attacks described under their respective Spellcasting section.

For example, the Cleric's Divine Spellcasting section on pg 69 - the last paragraph talks about spell rolls and spell DC's using your Wisdom modifier. This strongly suggests that Wisdom is something you use with EVERY spell. Which is simply not the case as spell attacks require Str or Dex modifiers instead of your Wisdom. I particularly believe that the use of spell rolls in this paragraph is strongly misleading.

Without any mention of Spell Attacks, I feel this is something that new players, as well as players familiar with other systems, will easily misinterpret or be completely unaware of. This leads to playing the game wrong or a "gotcha" moment where the DM says "that is a spell attack and you need to use your Str/Dex bonus" causing the player to either suffer the consequences of being unaware or holding the game up while they make a few quick adjustments. Neither of these are good for the end user experience.

Lastly, I will add that new players are not likely to pick up the significance of the Attack definition on pg 9 (or any other page it may exist) or even see it when making their first character. Spell Attacks really should be in the spellcasting section of the class.

If you cast a three action heal spell, can you trigger both the Healer's Blessing and Undead's Bane power on that one casting?

The triggers are different but they seem to trigger off the same caster.

I assume this works, but I'd like clarification on this Thanks!

Part three suggests that there are 2 clerics and two other classes capable of healing such as Bard, Druid, Paladin or Sorcerer.

I get the last three but I don't see how the bard is a healer. What am I missing? Or did the bard at one time have access to Heal but by the time the PF2 book was released, it lost access to it?

I'd like to see the general Fighter Feat list on pg 90-91 be altered to a Fighting Style feat list. Pg number of the feat and/or level of the feats could be displayed as well.

This example list does not show the pg number or the feat level as I want to focus on how the list would look. I have shown all Fighter feats for the first two levels.

Agile Fighting
**Furious Focus
Dueling
**Combat Grab
**Dueling Parry
**Improved Combat Grab
Two Weapon Fighting
**Double Slice
Ranged Fighting
**Point Blank Shot
**Assisting Shot
Shield Fighting
**Reactive Shield
**Aggressive Shield
Two Handed Fighting
**Brutish Shove
General Fighter Feats (that can apply to any style)
**Power Attack
**Sudden Charge
**Intimidating Strike

I think the presentation of this list has many benefits.

1. It's quicker for new players to compare options and choose available paths for fighter creation and leveling.
2. It's quicker for existing players to compare options and choose available paths for fighter creation and leveling.
3. The benefits of fighting styles are more transparent at a glance.
4. It's easy for future splatbooks to reprint the list showing new options (and perhaps displaying the sourcebook) so the list maintains usefullness over the full edition.
5. The benefits of the end result of choosing a specific fighting style are more transparent. This further ensures you are making the character you envision playing.
6. I feel the presentation of this list will appeal to people who are used to looking at generic feat lists from 3.x (those people who like to look at the bow feats and say I want to be awesome with the bow in PF1 for example).
7. I feel a list like this helps to further the design intent of feats to the player/consumer. Right now there are many mistakes made by players not noticing prerequisites of the feat or the circumstances the feat can be used in. Any time new or existing players play the game wrong, it generally leads to some form of unfun play experience. Reducing this improves the game and game play experience.

Without this list there is no transparent way of seeing the end result of your fighting style without reading a large portion of the fighter feats in order to understand what works with what and what you become good at in the end. I suspect this is one reason player creation time for the first part of Doomsday Dawn took a long time (among other factors). By looking at a list as I am suggesting, a player can hone in and read about a specific play style that interests him. And this is a HUGE benefit.

I would further argue that such a list should exist for ALL classes. It takes space to produce such a list but the benefits are well worth it. But at the very least, I think the fighter should have such a list.

I have come back to Pathfinder after playing some other systems for the past few years. Now that I have DM'd the first playtest adventure, I am beginning to remember some of the things I was hoping might be changed by PF2, particularly in regards to movement on the grid and AoE effects.

PF2 continues to treat diagonal movment as 5 foot for the first square, 10 feet for the second square. In other systems, I've seen diagonal just simply be 5 foot for each square. Some would argue that "the other system" is less realistic which may or may not be true.

I susepct one of the reasons PF2 keeps this system is to make area of effects work on a grid. PF2's bursts and cones (and even aura's to some extent) rely on diagonals working the way they do. If the current system is not used, it creates some weird AoE templates.

However, in the system where diagonal movement is always 5 feet, AoEs have been altered, and I think work just fine (though it may lack some of the visuals we imagine). For example, a 15 foot cone in PF2 is converted to a 3x3 square (or cube). A 30 foot cone breath weapon becomes a 6x6 square (or cube).

My question is this: Does the simplicity of square or cube AoEs, and by extention, changing diagonal movement to only 5 feet per square, an improvment in the game or this is something that players want to keep as is.

I'm hoping this thread can serve as a feedback to the devs for consideration.

The concepts of Spell attacks and Spell rolls in PF2 creates a complex system that may or may not be necessary.

Depending upon the spell you cast, you need to use Spell attacks or Spell rolls.

Spell attacks make use of either your Str or Dex attribute when rolling to hit for many spells. Further, spell attacks (sometimes) tie in with Touch AC and this system helps to differentiate the types of armor in the game arguably giving each type of armor its own design space.

Spell rolls are sometimes used (see Black Tentacles) which make use of your key ability.

These mechanics for spellcasters have a lot of moving parts.

Contrary to this, other systems, have casters use their key ability for all spell attacks. It's a single unified mechanic regardless of spell. Some would argue that it makes martial classes and spellcasters too similar.

Each system has pros and cons and there is an argument for using either system.

I'm curious what players think about the route that PF2 has gone (spell attacks and spell rolls). Does the added complexity improve the game, or make it overly complex? I'm hoping this thread can serve as feedback to the devs.

Wow! Whispering Cairn and The Champions Belt are my top two favorite adventures I have run from Dungeon in a long time!

Speaking specifically about the Champions Belt, it was written masterfully from a DM's perspective and in play it really shines! The adventure has appealed to me as the DM and my players and it is very rare to find an adventure that both sides can say they absolutely enjoyed. From my perspective, there were some great roleplaying moments and some awesome battles! The module also kept me in suspense quite a bit as I was unsure how the characters were going to take the bait on certain things (like the pc's overhearing that the froghemoth was in a cage encased in ice, etc).

I'll quickly run down the hightlights!

The first big moment of the adventure came at the Games opening ceremony. My PC's had kept the carcass of Xyrzog in a bag of holding and were planning on "sending a message" to Raknian that they knew what he was up to in front of a large crowd. Altough the crowd would not understand the connotation (sp?) of Xyrzog, Raknian would. However, as the ceremony proceeded they got concerned that it would tip their hand too early so they decided not to let the illithid out of the bag yet. Instead they used great roleplaying to get digs into Raknian and at one point Raknians guards had to subtly discourage this behaviour or they would be disqualified. The PC's greatly enjoyed this encounter.

Once the Games started, the players enjoyed the differing tactics of their opponents and from a DM's perspective it was nice to know that NPC's had an array of magic items that the PC's could not loot after each battle. If I was the writer I would have gone one step further and included some really wacky stuff that you don't normally see. One of my players was great with a bow and Pitch Blade came so close to sundering the bow that he had nightmare for days to come.

As the fights progressed, and the party began searching the underground areas at night I played up the fact that time was limited if they wanted to get a good rest and get fresh spells for the next round. Essentially, the PC's had to manage time and resources to do the extra carricular activies at night and it made this portion of the adventure exciting. The PC's constantly evaluated, do we go on or do we go back? My group was extremely lucky and they found the secret door down to the Zahol level pretty quick but they were stopped cold when there was an almost TPK against the Mohrg. The lone survivor made excuses that the party members were ill the next morning and thus did not come out to eat breakfast until everyone was raised. The next night they continued on, found and fought the ulgurstasta and killed it. No one died in this fight but it was damn close. They recovered Zahol's chest but chose not to open it yet. The same night they ran into the Alkalith demon after choosing to do "just one more room" and it scared the crap out of the party - In fact by the end of module they still chose not to fight it!

Meanwhile, my group fell hook, line and sinker for the ruse that Raknians gaurds set and they prepared spells that were mostly useless against the Froghemoth. I know others enjoyed the Froghemoth encounter but from my perspective, big beasts with low intelligence are not a threat at this point and my group EASILY handed it it's @ss. The party makeup and their tactics made this a rediculous fight. It was not a challenge for my group although I can see how it could be for other groups. The fact that I had a cleric with the Travel domain, a druid who summoned monsters to soak up the grapples and everyone had airwalk on them made this pretty easy. A cool encounter that happened at the end of this though was the PC's threw Zyrxog's body on the ground at the end as they were choked that they were tricked in the first place. Obviously they got a glare from Raknian at this point and the next day would likely see all the stops pulled!

As the final fight came, they were expecting Auric and his crew to be working with Raknian so they figured that if any of them tried to surrender they would be killed. Again, this was fun as the PC's were worrying about a phantom menace here. In fact the entire adventure kept the PC's off guard and that was one of the major reasons it was so fun to DM. Anyway, I could tell the fight was heavily slanted in the PC's favor so I played up a big roleplaying scene throughout the fight. Right from the beginning I described the crowd in a frenzy, half cheering Auric, half the PC's. I described that Raknians seat was empty and I updated them on a round by round basis of this to give them a feeling that something was going to happen at some point. In reality, I decided that Raknian skipped town the night before as all was lost for him. Several crits were scored on each side in the fight and for the first few rounds each side lost two members (the 4 dropouts had surrenderred). Finally the PC's came out victorious with the crowd going wild. Talabir presented them as the champions and the PC's were on edge still expecting Aurics Band to pounce on them at any time along with Raknian. One of the PC's addressed the crowd presenting some circumstantial evidence that Raknian was guilty and associated with Kyuss, including announcing they had a chest found down below that cleary indicated Kyuss's involvement. At this point I should note that the PC's did spend a few minutes with the box the night before this scene. They summoned an unseen servant and used it to open the box. I described the box lid being opened and then suddenly slamming shut and that the caster had lost connection with the unseen servant. They took this to mean that the box sucked people in and was either imprisoning people or keeping a dangerous beast inside. Either way they were very reluctant to continue experimenting with the box. Of course, what really happened was the unseen servant would have appeared on the box but they couldn't see him. Anyways, back to the arena scene - The player who made the speech to the crowd did a great job and I asked for a diplomacy check which he failed badly. I had the crowd go quiet and then someone yelled out that they needed more proof. Since the PC's presented the box as evidence the crowd demanded to see its contents. The PC's squirmed and tried to convince the crowd that it may cause their doom but they were having none of that. Reluctantly, the druid summoned an elemental and had it open the chest. Again, the same thing happened but the PC's could clearly see the elemental on the box. They showed the crowd and now they began to believe them. To make a long story short no one ever found where Raknian went (as he will return in a future module) but they found lots of evidence of his guilt.

Loris Raknian, for all the things he did to Greyhawk and in particular the PC's, has become one of the most hated villains of any campaign I have ever done. It was a true battle of wills as each side tried to off the other. I can only attribute their hatred to the design of the module for constantly keeping the PC's off guard. Even right to the end, when they thought they were done with him, they discovered that Raknian had killed Eligos, it left a final bitter taste in their mouth! Even though the PC's were successful it was a costly victory!

What amazes me is that even at the end, they never did fight Raknian, yet they interacted with him the entire adventure. The got to know his public history, a shady side of him for what he did to Ekaym's sister and for the direct fools he made the group feel like. I have always tried to portray similar things in the past but this was the most successful I have ever been with a villain (short of one other villain, but even he never gained this noteriety this quickly).

Thanks Tito!

What a treat it was to see stats for Bargle in the latest Critical Threat. I started playing D&D in the days of the "Red Box Set" and was immediately enamored by this dastardly villain!

Over the years, as players came and gone and as DM's changed Bargle almost always appeared in each and every campaign. Sometimes he was a major NPC, other times he was a bit player but every time he left his mark on the players.

As a player, I have learned to hate Bargle more than any other NPC to date. He has stolen our glory, defeated us in combat, stolen precious magic items and treasure from us, ridiculed us, and has always managed to stay one step ahead of us.

As a DM, I have used Bargle as the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy) in many a campaign and my players hate him just as much. On rare occasions the players have gotten the better of Bargle but it seems that Bargle never stays down for long. He always returns, someway, somehow in this campaign or the next.

And now, as I game with a group of mostly newer players, they too are learning who Bargle is and how vast his evil can be. And they too can't wait for the day that Bargle the Infamous is defeated.

Who know, maybe one of these days I'll eventually explain how this madman always manages to return. I sense a new campaign idea brewing here....

Anyways, thanks Dungeon, and thanks James for the trip down memory lane!

As I sit preparing the last half of Lords of Oblivion, which in reality is the first half (my party discovered what Vhalantru was before finishing Secrets of the Soul Pillars and decided to take him out first...) I was inspired with several ideas that might improve the hardcover version.

1) It would be great if the criminals that are at House Rhiavadi were introduced or at least mentioned earlier on in the campaign. One great example would be Zarn Kyass the "Blue Duke". The fact that he is a dealer in ogres and half orcs makes it very easy to bring him up earlier in the campaign.

Adrick could easily be affiliated with Kazmojen.

In my campaign I had my group travel to a temple of Vecna (dealers in knowledge and information) and they had a to strike a deal with them to find the location of the Ebon Triad (the Temple of Vecna had only recently discovered the location and were making plans for destroying the Triad when the PC's offered to do the dirty work for them). This would be great time to offer Khyron Bonesworn's name either as the supplier of info or as a 'rogue' who has pissed off someone in the clergy.

Vervil could also be affiliated with Kazmojen since he is a slave trader.

Rumors of Mhad could easily persist throughout the campaign.

The remaining members could also easily be added.

2) Make use of some of these guys as hooks or suggested side adventures in which they tackle some of these guys henchmen and thus make enemies of them. When the battle comes, some of the bad guys have a bone to pick with them.

My point is, if the PC's are aware of the 'major criminals' in the Cauldron area it would be much more intoxicating, exciting, scary and meaningful to be in a room that contains ALL these villains. What a true environment to make heroes (or mincemeat) of the characters.

While I think the encounter is certainly neat as written, some of these suggestions could enhance it even further IMHO.

Hope you like the ideas James. Use as desired. ;)

Gau the Minotaur in 13 Cages is listed as having a Flat Footed AC 1 less than normal. This is not applicable as Minotaurs are never flat footed as per the Natural Cunning ability.

James,

Vitriss Bale (Dracolich) has two initiative listings. One is at +0 and the other is +1. In addition he is listed as only having DR5/bludgeoning and magic and if I am correct in the Draconimicon it should be DR15/magic and DR5/bludgeoning.

In addition to that, the phylactery should be listed in the aura section of room K18 Tomb of the Bone Dragon as the last lines states that phylactery is magical (exact wording is - If the phylactery is destroyed or RENDERED NONMAGIC).

Hope these help.