Tarot's page

I'd heard this as well, but I'm not a module player, so I wasn't sure if that was true or made sense. I know they changed the names of some demons or minor deities or something, but aside from that I haven't seen anything. Was there a huge psychological-horror element that got scrubbed or something?

Nope. Inclusiveness has always been a thing, too, many very well received APs going back to the beginning have had gay, trans, and non-binary characters, as well as the usual warnings about understanding your table and not pushing player boundaries (see WotR, with some potentially disturbing scenes taking place in the Abyss). None of this is new territory.

Plus the renaming really just affected some random monsters that WotC may have possibly had a copyright on (no idea what the motive was there), and Kytons, which was already supported by existing lore. So yeah, torture-loving pain monsters still exist and have no problems being their edge-lordy selves.

Tarot wrote:

Nicolas Paradise wrote:

I don't have much more to contribute other than Alchemist seems like the biggest flop of 2e.

Although I did have an idea for a bomber build that takes an alchemical familiar and gives it manual dexterity and lab assistant. You use one action a round to quick bomb. One to command the familiar and have one free for movement/skills. The familiar uses its two actuons to quick alchemy and throw a bomb, sure its to hit is only = to your level but it will still splash on a miss.

Hrm. A better idea here might be to keep the familiar in your pack, have it quick alchemy twice (dropping the bombs as free actions), then use Quick Bomb to draw and throw both bombs it makes. Then you at least have something resembling a decent action economy.

For some reason I thought quick bomb had a once per round clause but it doesn't.

However Quick alchemy is one action so using it and quick bomb twice is the same actions as ordering the familiar them using quick alchemy and placing the bombs in your pouch or whatever and than throwing twice. So it isn't really more efficient in fact it is one action less efficient.

You couldn't quick bomb twice, though, since Quick Alchemy only makes one bomb. Using the familiar lets you make the two bombs, then Quick Bomb them both at the enemy. Plus, you throw at your normal to hit, rather than your familiar's.

Watery Soup wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

you never actually need to calculate the bulk of that sofa the PCs are hauling up the stairs- it's enough to say that carrying the sofa makes you encumbered until you put down the sofa.

How Much Can You Carry Society Scenario #1-01

Fed up with the constant death and destruction caused by artifacts at the Blakros Museum, the Absalom City Council has ordered the museum condemned and its owners evicted. Pursuant to ACC Code 2.7.18(e), the council must solicit competitive bids for the hauling and disposal of Non-Qualified Mixed-Magic Artifacts. Can the PCs estimate the aggregate Bulk of the NQMMAs in 10 business days or less?

Primary success criterion: NQMMA bid cost ratio of less than 1.5 gp per standard human workhour using floating disk, or less than 2.5 gp per standard human workhour without floating disk.

Secondary success criteria: one or more of the following:

- NQMMA bulk estimation error does not exceed 20% of values listed in Table 1.

- No more than 10% inclusion of Qualified Mixed Magic Artifacts in bid.

I would play this scenario.

I would run this scenario solely to sit back and watch my players argue over spreadsheets for four hours while I work on my great american novel.

I don't have much more to contribute other than Alchemist seems like the biggest flop of 2e.

Although I did have an idea for a bomber build that takes an alchemical familiar and gives it manual dexterity and lab assistant. You use one action a round to quick bomb. One to command the familiar and have one free for movement/skills. The familiar uses its two actuons to quick alchemy and throw a bomb, sure its to hit is only = to your level but it will still splash on a miss.

Hrm. A better idea here might be to keep the familiar in your pack, have it quick alchemy twice (dropping the bombs as free actions), then use Quick Bomb to draw and throw both bombs it makes. Then you at least have something resembling a decent action economy.

You're not wrong about the low damage. I think what eventually can make it vaguely competetive is Sticky Bomb. Sure, your upfront still sucks, but when you're doing massive amounts of persistent damage (you did take Calculated Splash, right?), it starts to matter a lot less. Having 5 different types of Persistent Damage (6 if your GM allows peshpine) on a target can melt bosses surprisingly quickly (if they're so tough they live long enough to matter). Plus if you're using those aforementioned peshpine grenades, you can apply poison to them (They're weapons, and deal piercing damage. Fite me). They can also very easily target elemental weaknesses on enemies as well.

Having crap DCs without quick alchemy still sucks, though. I'll definitely agree that Powerful Alchemy should have been a baseline ability. How quickly their accuracy falls off is also problematic, thanks to never getting past Expert proficiency.

It's not as good as a martial, but it is still a full spellcaster. Even doing as well as an off-martial is perfectly reasonable, imo. Plus they're now the best class to make into a Signifer for a whole host of reasons, as it currently stands (which I very much appreciate, as there wasn't a great way to take that archetype yet). As a battlefield controller/tank frontliner, I think the Battle oracle will work very nicely.

I don't think it's even life and battle, so much as them not having a great reason to cast their first focus spell (life, especially). I love the mechanic, personally, I'm just unlikely to bother with it until higher level as a Life oracle, unless someone fails a save against a really nasty affliction that I happen to be able to diagnose. The rest of the Revelation is, to me, pretty awesome.

I have a question about Belmazog's stat block. Looking at her Divine Prepared Spells, she has "Summon Monster" prepared as a 4th level spell. I can't find a spell with that name anywhere, nor can I find a suitable replacement on the divine spell list for a 4th level summoning spell. In addition, she doesn't have any 3rd level or 1st level spells prepared at all; is that intentional?

Honestly, I just plan on giving her a level 4 version of summon fiend. It's appropriate, and works well enough still, despite technically not existing.

You could probably toss her a few 3rd and 1st level spells, but it's unlikely to be necessary. Between her other spells and her half-dragon and boggard abilities (and nasty bite), I doubt she's going to have any problem with running out of actions to take against my party.

I think the Big Heroes feeling is quite easy to implement, as you just need monsters that are 1 or 2 levels below PCs.

Obviously this does not work at 1st level but still PF2 can easily be tweaked in that direction in later levels.

It actually works reasonably well at first level, still. There's a rather lot of level 0 and -1 monsters available, not to mention the weak adjustment.

Sure, you can cast it. But it would immediately end, since you're in encounter mode, and it takes ten minutes to cast anyway, so good luck.

So to expand on this (and try to solicit more suggestions because that's how I roll apparently), I'll throw up the relevant blocks of text.

Ride the Wind Reaction (air, concentrate, primal, transmutation) Trigger The wendigo casts wind walk while it has Grabbed a foe. Effect The wendigo attempts to turn the grabbed creature into wind and carry it along as part of the action. If the target succeeds at a DC 38 Will save, it prevents itself from being transformed; in this case, the wendigo still transforms, automatically releasing the victim. A creature forced to Ride the Wind along with the wendigo is exposed to wendigo torment. The target can attempt a new Will save each round to return to normal, though it immediately becomes corporeal and begins falling if it succeeds.

Wind Walk...

Cast 10 minutes (material, somatic, verbal)
...
When you cast this spell, each target transforms into a vaguely cloud-like form and is picked up by a wind moving in the direction of your choice. You can change the wind's direction by using a single action, which has the concentrate trait. The wind carries the targets at a Speed of 20 miles per hour, but if any of the targets make an attack, Cast a Spell, come under attack, or otherwise enter encounter mode, the spell ends for all targets just after they roll initiative, and they drift gently to the ground.

Relevant parts are bolded.

Since you obviously aren't going to be able to cast a ten minute spell while you've grabbed someone, and the spell expires anyway when you enter encounter mode, and there's no suggestions for how to arbitrarily shorten cast times when RAI becomes more important than RAW, I'm not entirely sure of the best way to run this in the intended fashion. There's also no guidelines that I'm aware of for how to convert MPH into speed, or what general effects, such as defenses, you might gain for now being made of wind (I'd probably take an incorporeal monster of similar level as an example?).

I get where you're coming from, I think, but I managed to come to the opposite conclusions.

The Cornugon likely benefits from the small space, as it allows it to blast the party with it's spells before they're able to close the distance (by walking through the trap). The rest of the fiends seem to have plenty of room? Keep in mind that the fifteen foot ceilings allow them to fly and prevent flanks as well, and possibly avoid the trap in C6 (although that one is up to interpretation). Not to mention it can dimension door right out if it wants a better spot to fight from.

The Astradaemons I read as less not knowing the pyramid is under attack, and more not actually caring and seeing if they can still get something out of the deal. I might also play them up as opportunistically having already stolen the souls of a few Triad members who were unlucky enough to get caught alone. Daemons seem like the type to be bemused by the whole idea more than anything else, being nihilistic bastards.

With the demilich, I feel like opening the door, looking in, and noping the hell out is probably the best option for the Triad. And let's be honest, as long as you don't go in the room, it isn't precisely dangerous (not that this will stop the players, but it seems like a perfectly reasonable response from the Triad to me).

As for the golem, keep in mind that you can always cast Dispel Magic to kill it, too. And I feel like that would probably be the most important thing you could learn from a Recall Knowledge check, which if you don't try to make after it starts rebuilding yourself if not at the start of the encounter, you probably have bigger issues.

Finally, for the thematics of summoning, my general thought is that half of them were summoned by the demilich in the first place; and despite being Lawful, the Triad is a bunch of opportunistic slavers who would happily sell to the highest bidder (in the case of the daemons), or summon disposable thralls to use in battle (in the case of, well, just about anything else).

As I said, I get where you're coming from, I just feel like we had an alternate reading of the same material. :) And hooray for another wall of text because I'm bored while waiting for a meeting!

One last thing I love is the several encounters against rather powerful good aligned creatures, that are none the less as likely to end in fights as not. The simurgh I plan on playing as cranky, contrary, and adverse to the idea of anyone taming his beloved camel. The phoenix is admittedly bound, but still a great opportunity to fight something the players would normally have as an ally.

A couple things that can spice up the pyramid is adding any Triad (or allied) NPCs who escaped the party, back for revenge. Voz from book 1, the gnoll from book 3, etc, all leveled up appropriately and with a grudge to settle. Bonus points if you put them all in the same room.

Finally, as I keep looking back over the book while reflecting on above comments and apparently can't stop adding new notes here, are we looking at the same pyramid encounters? Sure, there's a lot of extremely powerful humans to fight, but there's also a ton of fiends, an angry phoenix, a demilich... There's some really nasty and very level appropriate and epic encounters that outnumber the 'here's a couple more Triad mages/bosses, have fun' fights.

Yeah, the section of politics and activities is... crunchy. I actually look forward to running that entire chapter (the arena, the camel, and the heist are standouts), but it's going to take some serious prep to get there.

I think one thing to keep in mind with the 'horde of humans' point of view is that this is an extremely entrenched merchants guild headed by the product of three generations of eugenic experimentation backed by the power of years of massive mercantile and criminal success, as well as the tacit support of an ancient gold dragon in control of an entire nation state (not that he actually knows what they're up to).

The challenge here is going to be communicating the scale of the conspiracy, and connecting the dots of all the previous events that the PCs have had to deal with, to the players. Hopefully they'll feel like they're finally unraveling this awful scheme as they go along, but if the GM isn't careful or your players aren't invested enough at this point I could easily see it falling flat. Hopefully the plethora of roleplaying heavy segments of previous adventures help anchor this, as well as all the previously seeded encounters with the Triads agents.

One thing I'll try to do with the final encounter is try to sell it more of as a final stand/rearguard on the part of the Triad leader. Sure, he's stuck and can't escape, but at least he's bought time for some skeleton of his organization to escape (slightly more in character due to his sister being the other leader still in Promise, and if you add a now-empty wing behind the library that has been cleared out by whatever agents escaped).

It's not so much that it's poorly worded, it's that it cannot possibly do what it's supposed to. Adding upon that, there's no framework in the actions that the ability builds upon that support exactly how it's supposed to work (number of actions required, speed, resistance if any in wind form).

After reading a certain 2e book and being excited about having the included Wendigo swoop down and steal away with my players (as described in its tactics), I read through their entry to get more information. Unfortunately, their Ride the Wind ability appears to be unusable as written.

Ride the Wind triggers when a Wendigo casts Wind Walk while having a victim Grabbed. The problem arises due to Wind Walk having a ten minute cast time, and ending immediately upon entering Encounter Mode. Seeing as grabbing a target certainly qualifies as being in Encounter Mode, and that even a terribly under-leveled opponent can wriggle free of a Grab given ten minutes of opportunity, this ability definitely does not seem to function as intended.

Given that, how exactly should this ability be handled? Allow the Wendigo to cast Wind Walk in combat, at one or two actions (it does need to make a Grab, after all)? Exactly how fast does 20 mph translate to encounter speed? And how does being in wind form interact with being attacked/damaged? Seems like a simple oversight, but I'm interested in seeing what the consensus is barring errata. And if I overlooked a previous discussion, please point me to the right place!

Reading the entire encounter further, it's worth noting that the party may well have to fight two Dust Wendigos rather than one, if they take too long and Eloisil transforms, especially if they aren't able to make the DC 41 check to diagnose what's wrong with him.

I asked this in the other thread, but has anyone come up with a non-ruined map of Altaerein their players can reference after Hellknight Hill? Just trying to give them a reference to what will be their awesome home base once they remove all the debris and giant holes in the wall and stuff.

I'll probably end up hand-drawing it and that's their loss, haha.

I imagine there will be one in book 6, as apparently there will be something of a siege taking place. Going to have to wait another month for that to see the light of day, though.

So the Weathered Wail fight looks incredibly fun and terrifying for the PCs except for one thing: as written, Ride the Wind doesn't work. Air Walk is a ten minute cast time spell, and doesn't work at all in encounter mode. For anyone running the fight (or any fight with a Wendigo, because they all have the same problem), I recommend changing the Wendigos spells to one or two actions rather than the ten minutes they normally take to cast, along with letting its Wind Walk work fine in encounter mode (maybe give it resistance to physical if anyone wants to attack it).

I wanted this guy for a six player adjustment to Fires of the Haunted City (I'm doing adjustments for the entirety of Age of Ashes, if anyone wants to see those, too), so I statted him up and might as well share. I based his stats off of a Leukodaemon and Gashadokuro, adjusted upwards and downwards appropriately. Let me know if anything seems too far off.

Meladaemon - Level 11
Fiend Daemon Uncommon Large
Perception +22, Darkvision, Faminesense 60' (can sense anyone who hasn't eaten in the past day, or affected by its aura), See Invisiblity
Languages Common, Daemonic; telepathy 100 feet
Skills Acrobatics +22, Intimidation +22, Medicine +24, Religion +24, Stealt h +22, Survival +20
Str +7, Dex +5, Con +1, Int +3, Wis +5, Cha +3
Faminesense A Meladaemon senses any creature that hasn't eaten within 24 hours or suffering from its aura and knows the type and severity of any conditions affecting them.

AC 30, Fort +18, Ref +25, Will +23; +1 status to all saves vs. magic
HP 200; Immunities death effects, disease; Weaknesses good 10
Starvation Aura (aura, divine, mental, necromancy) 60 feet. Any creature that ends its turn in the aura feels the intense pain of starvation and must attempt a DC 28 Fortitude save. On a failure, the creature becomes fatigued and takes 4d6 damage. Damage and fatigue a creature takes from this aura can’t be healed until the affected creature has eaten a full meal.
Attack of Opportunity

Speed 30 feet

Melee 
 jaws +24(disease, evil, magical, reach 10 feet), Damage 2d12+13 piercing plus 1d6 evil and daemonic wasting
Melee 

 claw +24(agile, disease, evil, magical, reach 10 feet), Damage 2d8+13 slashing plus 1d6 evil and daemonic wasting

Ranged

Plague Missiles+25(disease, evil, magical) Damage 3d6 force plus 1d6 evil and daemonic wasting

Divine Innate Spells DC 28;  5th dimension door; 4th dimension door (at will),  Darkness (at will); 3rd  Fear(at will) 1st detect alignment (at will; good only)

Divine Rituals DC28 Blight

Hunger Pangs DC 28
2 actions

The daemon intensifies the hunger in all targets within its Starvation Aura currently affected by the Fatigued condition. The targets must make a fortitude save or be sickened 2 and enfeebled 2. These conditions expire when the Fatigued condition does if they are not removed before hand.

Daemonic Wasting(disease) The affected creature cannot regain hit points from rest while affected by this disease. Saving Throw DC 28Fortitude; Stage 1 Fatigued (1 day); Stage 2 drained 1 (1 day); Stage 3 drained 2 (1 day); Stage 4 drained 2 (1 day); Stage 5 drained 3 (1 week); Stage 6 dead