Search Posts
I think the mention of 15 Awareness Points in the initial 'D Gathering Blackmail' section of the scenario is a typo. Seems like it should be 20 AP. The Awareness Points section specifies that the infiltration fails at 20 AP rather than 15. At 15 you get another complication and obstacle DCs increase by 2.
Oh, totally, I'd think a combination of increases in DCs and number of successes, at different challenge point totals. But maybe they thought that was too complex for GMs and/or editing/developing staff. Ah well. Just my personal rant I guess. I just cringe every time I see a scaling based purely on number of players.
I'm talking about, for example, a party of 6 in a 1-4 with levels 2,2,2,2,2,3. That's 19 challenge points and high tier. Compare to a part of 6 level 4s. 36 challenge points and of course high tier. These 2 parties face the exact same challenge on any scaling based on number of players. Those are the 2 extreme ends of the spectrum of course, but that's the point, it's a spectrum, and a fairly wide one at that. That's exactly what the challenge point system is meant for. Just seems like we're seeing more skill encounters scaling by number of players rather than challenge points. I'd prefer to see more scaling by challenge points. However, as I'm typing this, my thoughts go to how bad the editing has been lately, I don't think I want any more burden on them. So yeah, guess it's fine compared to what could happen with more on their shoulders.
Chases are particularly bad lately, but other challenges as well. Isn’t this exactly why we have a challenge point system? Two parties in the same subtier with the same number of players may have drastically different power levels. Having them face the same difficulty of challenge is a completely avoidable situation.
Holy moly, batman, talk about disrespectful. PFS is built on the honor system, with the assumption you are adding the gold, xp, and reputation earned on your valid chronicle sheets to progress your character. That takes paperwork. I don't know what to tell you if you don't want to do that small bit of work. I hope you don't get audited. Actually, I kind of do.
So today, over 3 weeks after the PF society subscription order was generated on 2/27, the order was finally charged and fulfilled. This after I already purchased the same product manually. And also after I requested the subscription be cancelled last month. I know you folks are trying...but it's trying my patience too! Yes, I've submitted a CS ticket. Hopefully they can cancel the 2nd charge quickly.
The ability says "Omertius sends himself into his target’s blood", so I would say he doesn't leave a body, similar to the invidiaks, even though it doesn't say so.
Any idea when 5-11 will be added? The product description promises updates the day the pdf is released. We’re at 5 days with no update.I think you got answers to this on Discord, but my best guess is that it will Monday, Mar 11. We had a confluence of very late delivery of the scenario materials, vacations and COVID. We apologize for the delay, and will continue to strive for date of publication delivery in the coming months. Thanks Timingila. I did indeed get answers there, but also wanted to bring the issue here. As the seller of the product, I think Paizo has a responsibility to notify users what's going on. Given JAF0's post, I'm not the only one wondering about the delay.
It CAN work that way in general. But depending on circumstances it may be different for a specific situation. Let’s say your home game party is in a smaller town that doesn’t have a magical crafter, but the town does have a shop that has a runestone with a rune of striking. You’d have to buy the runestone and pay the cost to transfer it to your weapon. Though I think that takes crafting too? Anyway, the point is there might be all sorts of variability and GM discretion around a real campaign, but PFS boils it down to the simplest situation. Because there are society crafters always available to do the work in between scenarios.
Is it just me, or does the description of Valashinaz's temple on pg 8 not mesh at all with the image of a pyramid on the map being used? There are walls and a 30' tall roof described. I think I'll use some separate tiles to make more of a flat temple with walls and wide, open entrances on the 4 sides.
I think the void zombies are particularly interesting in light of the remaster changes. I'm prepping this now, and I plan to have them NOT be unholy (if that even ends up mattering). Since they're part of the akata's parasitic life cycle, they aren't attached to the cosmic battle of good vs evil. The bestiary entry goes into a lot of detail about that aspect. I'll also play up their parasitic nature in the first fight, noting the contrast between the dead husk of the host body with the living feeding tendril which is actually part of the parasitic akata inside. If they cut one open after the fight that could be fun.
So, that faq is all about “For the purpose of abilities that require successfully identifying a creature using Recall Knowledge”. Would you say then that “for the purposes of learning new information” you would use the increasing DC and stop after a failure or the incr hard DC? I think that’s my conclusion, but willing to hear otherwise. So a RK check might fail to learn new info about Wolf #2 because it didn’t beat the higher DC, but still beat the standard DC and so trigger abilities like mastermind?
I'm not clear on why having a little extra gold is considered "jail." For one, it’s annoying to some to have a few extraneous xp hanging around all the time. For second, if for some reason you correct it at a later level (e.g. a Dark archive adventure on slow mode) to even out your xp, then you actually have less gold than another pc who played only scenarios (at 4xp apiece). Tomppa explains this in the spoilered portion of their post.
Here’s the guide from July 2023.
So unfortunately the initial retraining was not legal in the first place.
The description for area B1 doesn't match the map at all. Judging by the description, area B1 should be an area to the north of B2 and is not drawn on the map. The area of the map labelled B1 appears to be absent entirely from the overall description of the abandoned temple. For example, the description for area B2 does not describe the double doors to the south into the area labelled as B1, only the south door to B4.
After running this scenario, doing normal interactions/RP plus investigation and still having to do 4 higher level combats for a 7 - 10 is ludacris and certainly will never fit into a 4 hour time block, and took us over 6 hours to complete. It has been the trend that I've noted to have 4 combats in most scenarios this season and so everything runs long. That really needs to get fixed as many of these could never be run in a live instore game environment given our usual timing restraints. Agreed. And none of the combats are even marked optional.
I'm a bit unclear on exactly what changes constitute adopting errata and what goes further than that and requires using the free rebuild. Do changes to class features whose names remain unchanged fall under errata, or does that require changing to the new PC Core class chassis and thereby requires use of the rebuild? For instance, the Ranger has 3 class features whose descriptions changed. Would that be errata, and so adoptable without a rebuild? Or is that the "new class chassis"? There are also several renamed features which are otherwise unchanged, so for those it really doesn't matter whether we're under the new or old chassis, the effect is the same either way. But for those features which are changed it does matter.
Where is the list of the new Pathfinder Provisions? Has it been published yet?Now with unbroken links I was fixing it and got the dreaded “backed up too far” message! :)
When purchasing a 2nd (or more) copy of he same boon on the same character, is there any way to see the purchase? When I purchased a 2nd copy of Treasure Bundle Insurance on one of my characters, there was still only the 1 download of the boon for that character. I actually bought a 3rd copy just to be sure the purchase went through (noting my AcP total before and after). I mean, it's fine, but felt kind of squeezy downloading the boon a 2nd time, knowing that only *I* knew it was truly valid 2nd copy and not just downloading another copy of the same single purchase boon. But then PFS has always been about honor system.
…and every 50 games played (or 200 exp, in case you play bounties or APs) gives you another. Was something changed? The bonus replays beyond the 2 that every PFS2 player will have was stated as “The formula for additional replays is 2 replays for every 50 games played or GMed in the program prior to February 18, 2023”. Posted here in the March monthly update.
Looks like this was done recently?
They only need to get to the three sites within the 26 days, which is doable. Except that after day 16 you can't find the secondary sites, as Sounrel activates Star on day 17. From page 10: "About an hour after Star is reactivated (see area G), they
This year's special (Blessings of the Forest) is a standalone adventure, and to my knowledge we haven't done anything with any of the story elements in second edition, so I think you're fine to go in cold! If you have any interest in first edition play, you might check out PFS1 5-05 The Elven Entanglement. …unless you have an aversion to COUS’s Spoiler: Centipedes of unusual size
It's not an easy thing to design an adventure that is appropriate for 4 level 1 PCs through 6 level 4 PCs. While there may be multiple ways of organizing the changes needed across that disparate range, dividing it into 2 basic sub-tiers as a start seems reasonable, with adjustments from those 2 base lines for more powerful parties. I can tell you that in practice it works very well. Also, remember that for parties of 16-18 challenge points, the number of PCs makes a difference. Parties of 5 or more will play the low subtier (with the most adjustments), while 4 PCs will play the higher subtier (with no adjustments). This is because the higher level enemies appropriate for the higher subtier may be very difficult for lower level PCs, even if there are more of them.
Seconding everything ninthwatcher said. To say it more generally, the character's levels are only used to calculate the challenge points. Once you have the challenge point total you then go entirely off the Determine the Level Range section in the Org Play Guide. This would mean, for instance, that a party of 5 level 2s and a level 3 would play in the 3-4 subtier, despite being nearly all level 1-2. Which scenario was it? Some can be deadlier than others.
2 other issues:
The standard DC for a level 5 creature seems reasonable, so until we get an answer I'll use DC 20. For shaken, frightened 1 perhaps is a good stand-in. But some more official feedback would be appreciated.
My initial reading of the Fastening Leap ability is that it does allow grabbing automatically (no action), but that it doesn't make the target flat footed. I've always played bloodseeker's attach as not making the target flat-footed, and the dig-widget uses the same language. But it makes more sense for a tiny creature not to bog someone down than it does for a small one.
I have not allowed it; I mentioned my reasoning above. Wow, completely missed that post. Anyway, before they left Absalom I had some veteran Pathfinders recommend the slower party members get mounts in Aspenthar.As anticipated I had a low tier party, and two of the four had 25’ movement. As it was they found Star on day 15 without visiting a third ruin site or the western oasis (which cost them a treasure bundle). I was not going to spring this “gotcha” on my players without giving them the chance to buy a mount.
I've seen mention of encouraging the PCs to purchase mounts for this...but seeing how the Society doesn't even have spare food to sell the PCs and if you mention that you have your own mount they foist the supplies onto it and take back the dromedary they're providing, seems pretty unlikely they'd have mounts to sell them. Both of these things I'm pulling from the question and answer portion of the briefing. Have other GMs been allowing the purchase of mounts? As written, it doesn't make sense to me they would be available. But as written, this scenario is already quite punishing, especially for low tier where most PCs will still have a speed of 25.
I'm going to be running this next week. When I played it, the GM didn't have us affected by the Scale at all (no downgrading the success level of first roll each encounter, and no winds that suddenly abate when you head south). I'd like to play up this aspect more, so that the PCs might be more inclined to dig into the cargo and find the scale, maybe have someone wear it. For any GMs who have done something similar, how obvious did you make the shifting of the winds during the player's journey? Any winding east-west coastal road is going to have portions where it travels south, did you have the wind just stop every time the wagon turns south along the road? Or did you take into account the intent? That is, if the players are taking the scale to Absalom, the winds still oppose them even if they're coincidentally heading south at some points in the journey? Edit: Also, how might a PC carrying the scale change how the wild animals react? Kind of doesn't make much sense for them to be diving into the wagon if the scale isn't there.
|
