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Hi! Alex here, coordinator of the Pittsburgh area. We do have a number of folks in the area, although the pandemic has made it a little more complicated like everything else. Want to drop us a line at pittpfs@gmail.com?
Thanks for this, John. I ended up picking this up late and running it (cold!) at a convention and it... ran weirdly smoothly, but I couldn't get any of the implied dates to line up, and I didn't have the time to figure it out. I'm glad I'm not crazy.
I just ran this for the first time yesterday, and I blundered into an unasked and unanswered question: how on earth are the PCs supposed to get into the reliquary in A7? There aren't any doors into it, let alone airlocks, and if you cut your way in the thing is going to flood. You're too low-level to (reliably?) have any of the flash teleport abilities. Am I missing something? (My party had the serpents crack the glass, which led to five or six rounds of me inventing mechanics as they attempted to drain the room of water, which let them eventually break their way in. Which I think is an acceptable outcome, but it's clearly not the intended path!)
Thanks for sharing your take on #2, makes me feel a little better about having run it that way. I definitely under-prepped; three cheers for convention schedules! Regarding your own Q: it's implied and not explicit, but: 1. My read is that the planetoid is hollow and there's at least one very large chamber inside it that is basically the entire adventure, which is reached via the stairs inside the pyramid, and 2. A9 is arrived at from the stairs exiting area A7 to the east. The stairs lead right up to A9. (See the box text for area A7.) It's the same complex, you don't need to head back outside to get there, etc.
This was not the Rasheen scenario I was expecting! (It's short on crocodilians, among other things.) Noting some things as I come across them. 1. Hey, a good use of in media res for the intro! Sort of. Maybe not technically. 2. DR/wound? I guess bypassed by a weapon with the wounding critical hit effect? Hrm. I'm not familiar with a rule as to whether it's any weapon with the wound property, or on an attack that creates a wound, which would usually be a crit. I'm thinking any weapon with the property? 3. The sphinx's makeshift haste circuit is "broken." By using up a swift action as normal, but forcing it to only last one round (as abnormal), it means that she really only benefits from the increased movement speed. She doesn't have a swift action to use for her full attack, so she can't move and full attack in the same round like you would expect as someone benefiting from haste. Smells intentional to me, but I'm not 100% sure. 4. Keystone's mentioned (a possible victim of the editorial process?), but it sounds like they're supposed to be lumped in with the four other AIs that are working in the background and go undescribed.
I have no explanation for the poor kobold, but I turned the alchemist into a recurring character who would set up shop with slightly overpriced consumables in dungeons throughout the adventure path. A little bit of a timeworn trope, especially if you've played too many JRPGs, but Mimips has turned out to be really popular anyway! I made Dagio quite a bit more powerful but didn't really play around with the immortality bit. It seemed way too difficult to really communicate to the players, and the circle bit was probably the more important bit for them to latch onto.
Correct. Boons and the like are going to be part of the rewards of the adventure, so just like Steven says: unless the sanctioning document (that doesn't really exist) tells you to cross something off, players get everything on the chronicle sheet. Money, prestige, fame, items, boons, everything.
I agree with John on that one. I suspect the Starstone Compass wouldn't work either, but I'd probably invent something about it spinning wildly before settling in a direction, and then spinning wildly before settling in a totally different direction. Unrelated: nobody at Paizo seems to have caught onto the whole "it's not a light particle beam, light particle beams don't exist in Starfinder, it's a light particle cannon" thing. I guess it's time to bring it up...
Hey, new authors! Woohoo! I'm excited to see what everyone put together. I was going to start with a question about page 5: PCs who rolled less than a 20 on their check feel an odd tingling around their heads as they recall these facts; this sensation is a manifestation of Myrrium’s assistance, as the orrery helps the PCs remember relevant information. It's very confusingly worded, but I think I just put two and two together: the "actual" DC is 20, and the orrery is giving the PCs a +2 bonus which is already reflected in the DC, so if the orrery is responsible for the PCs succeeding at the check, then and only then do the PCs' heads feel fuzzy. I don't think that whole head-fuzziness-thing is supposed to happen if the PCs fail, but that particular bit didn't make it into the text. I dunno, maybe that'll help someone else puzzle through it.
Just to let you all know: we are currently experiencing an unplanned, extended outage of organizedplayfoundation.org, which is the website for the Organized Play Foundation. It also hosts the Pathfinder Society Second Edition and Starfinder Society guides. We are actively communicating with the hosting service, who are working on restoring access. Unfortunately, we do not have an ETA on when the website will be available again. As part of restoring access, we have taken steps that may cause the guides to remain unavailable until Monday morning. We will provide more information as we receive it. We apologize for the disruption, and thank you for your patience!
Just to let you all know: we are currently experiencing an unplanned, extended outage of organizedplayfoundation.org, which is the website for the Organized Play Foundation. It also hosts the Pathfinder Society Second Edition and Starfinder Society guides. We are actively communicating with the hosting service, who are working on restoring access. Unfortunately, we do not have an ETA on when the website will be available again. As part of restoring access, we have taken steps that may cause the guides to remain unavailable until Monday morning. We will provide more information as we receive it. We apologize for the disruption, and thank you for your patience!
I think your desire to make your point is twisting up your logic here. You're using two different definitions of the word "public," and only because you change the definition mid-stream is your argument coherent. If advertising to a small group is advertising to the public, why would the definition of public change to be broader when determining who is then allowed to sign up? It doesn't sound like it's the public part or the RSP part that sucks for you. Rather, it's a terrible experience using the Warhorn search and finding games you like that aren't open to you?
It's interesting how different folks have such different preferences. I like having one resource pool and multiple options. Giving each option its own resource pool, even if it's a 1/day style thing, sounds awful to me! 100% agree on full BAB. Giving up your EP progression just to have full BAB doesn't seem like a win. An evolutionist without their EP progression compares very poorly to a soldier. VERY poorly. At later levels it improves because you start with 2 EP/round, but it's still not good.
If we didn't need to punch someone to get EP, that might be more appealing. Starting with 2 and retaining the ability to convert RP to EP might be one way to address it. That would be a very different approach than what the class currently boasts. That said, any sort of out-of-combat utility would be a very different philosophy than what we're seeing so far. So that's not necessarily an obstacle.
I'm not a huge fan of putting it on the player to remember their drawback--that's the exact opposite of how I'd like the incentives to work. I'll be trying to keep them in mind, but with as many concussions as I've had, I know I'll be forgetting them! Having a plausible frontliner with 6 sp/hp per level and light armor and drawbacks that frequently result in them taking more damage is also a very weird decision to me. We'll see how it playtests, but I suspect that they're going to be pretty squishy.
Evolution point question--it looks as though evolution points just stick around until you spend them on something, or until you dump 2/4/6 of them as a move/standard/full-round action? I'm not able to find anything that says you lose them at the end of combat or after a ten-minute rest or at the end of a day or anything like that. Reading some of the other text makes me think that's PROBABLY intended, but we all seem to be reading it in a slightly different way. Help?!
Specifically, the policy reads:
Qualifying Event: Any public event at a qualifying location. To build on some of the things that have already been said, the word "public" in English is a very ambiguous one. When you say something is public you could mean: ...among other things. My current public library lets anyone get a library card, but my last public library limited library cards to local residents. They're both considered public libraries, though. We often think that "anyone can run for public office" because it's "public" but in truth there are usually restrictions on who can run, like minimum ages or residency requirements. Even if we let anyone play from anywhere, there are still restrictions--having a character of the right level, sometimes. Being able to connect to the services we use to play. Even knowing the language the game is being run in. We can argue about whether the restrictions we have in place are the right restrictions, it's true. But using the word "public" does not automatically mean restriction-free.
What, Mosquito Witch hate?? It's my favorite! Okay, so you have to run it very differently from most PFS scenarios. The ending's in a very different style. If you're expecting your typical PFS romp, it's not for you. But mystery! Horror! Laid out in a way that you can make it work well in PFS! (I might be a dork.)
I'm not hugely thrilled with the reduction in Starfinder scenarios, since I don't play much PFS2 - and with (seemingly) more of the One-Shots going Pathfinder 2's way, it doesn't seem like there'll be as much to make up for what looks to be a more drastic reduction. So, I'm disappointed. But constant crunch isn't crunch anymore, it's a workload management problem. We've all been able to see the problem for a long time, and it's not a good place to be. Something's gotta give. You either need to do less work or hire more people, and it looks like it's the former. Considering that and reacting to a long-standing problem is a really, really good thing, and I'm glad something's being done. I don't want to jump too far ahead, but maybe in time you'll all be able to hire someone new and bring the total scenario count back up to where it was--with less psychic damage this time.
Much less important, but maybe helpful for consistency for those who care--it looks like Paizo grabbed the art for the CR 12 paraforan, rather than the CR 6 paraforan fragment. The fragments are these cute little crystalline bird things. (Which, I guess, is not far from what the larger paraforan is supposed to look like!) The correct art for the fragment is on page 77 of the Alien Archive 3, hiding on the second page of the paraforan entry. (Yes, they got put in the opposite order of how they appear in text. It's no wonder someone grabbed the wrong one.)
Hmmm, something to keep in mind is that the fancy high-res map that's included in the .zip file is actually slightly different from the map included in the scenario itself. It looks like someone got a tile flipped around in the wrong direction and didn't notice! Shame it's the tile with the elevator on it, that might be important.
I was hoping they'd open up some of the options that were reserved for chronicle sheets, myself, but I think we're out of luck. We might be anticipating "No" answers on those, based on: We anticipate that this will be the final version of these documents, barring any major issues So, aim to play them for a home game, I guess!
Hey Wei Ji! We got this figured out in Discord, but now that I see you asking here, I'm posting my response here, too, for posterity. At least as of this writing (the Season 4 guide, in 2021), it's in Player Basics, right near the top: https://www.organizedplayfoundation.org/Lorespire/sfsguide._.Player-Basics# Purchasing_Guidelines The rules haven't changed, though, so all of the above is still true.
I would just like to take a moment to appreciate the MC Escher work that is the ground floor of Waterhill Manor. Very fitting for an immortal madman's occasional abode! Would have been nice if I didn't have to photoshop some steps in between the dining room and the kitchen in order to avoid a random 6-foot drop somewhere, though.
Most of these Special will require the approval of the RVC that oversees your area.Not anymore... Sent you a link on Discord, just in case you were looking for something more official than the Pittsburgh PFS page.
It's worth specifically noting for posterity (and future thread necros) that the VO corps recently received some updated information, and the post linked to above is currently out of date. Maybe it will be updated or included on another page soon! In the meantime, Alex gave us permission to share the updates publicly. I've been keeping the Pittsburgh region's "stars and table requirements" reference up to date, and for the moment it seems to be the only updated public resource. For Pathfinder 1e, the changes in the most recent batch are:
Well, I can share my schedule, I suppose. Maybe that'll be helpful? Lots of WftC spoilers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfEUwCKmMaOZEM6FYV4OK3yuXZyKgyi8iWv GYgLQJOM/edit?usp=sharing Here's a copy of my milestone chart. I think most of that is pretty self-explanatory, with one possible exception. I was not a fan of the Agents of Change system, not at all, and wrote a replacement system I'm calling the spymaster system. In the case of the book 2 reference, I relied on the updated system to help guide the party through the wide-open sandbox section of Part 2. Those changes don't really play into milestone leveling, though, so long as you know what it translates to, you should be okay.
I also would love a subscription! Regarding frequency, somewhere between 1 every two years and 2 every month is probably reasonable for me. If the adventures/modules drop below one every two years I'll keep the subscription and be a little sad there isn't much happening with it, basically what happened to me with PF1's modules subscription. If there's more than two adventures/modules a month then I need to talk to my higher-ups (i.e. lovely spouse) and confirm that we have the shelf space to expand our collection that fast. We don't want a containment breach! I'm fine with any and all map options so long as the traps and secret doors aren't flattened onto the custom maps again. :P
Holy crap, I just tried to get an image out of this for something unrelated and it is a complete disaster. Almost entirely unusable for a VTT, still. We were thinking of running this, but I don't think we'll be able to if this is what the image extraction experience ends up as. We were thinking VTT, but hell, we can't even do in-person gaming well with this. That makes me very, very sad. :( Are we expecting this to be fixed at some point?
We had a conversation about this for another scenario. (And I hear it also appears in a third scenario?) Spoiler:
SFS 3-00, where I calculated that--if run as written--it would likely cost a high-level character somewhere in the mid-two-digits of fame to remove. Alex Speidel, the house GM, ruled that it only affected one item, not all, unless the character got rid of the item in a timely manner. An implicit part of that ruling was nerfing the transfer on the curse so the transfer wasn't immediate but you had time to react to it. This is, of course, non-binding and non-official. I'm adding it here to provide some perspective on approaches to addressing it. I agree the trap is amazingly inappropriate for this level range. I also think the trap, at the correct level range as put in the CRB (!), is amazingly poorly written and absolutely bonkers. Not everyone's going to have reserves of Fame they can use to remove curses! It could probably stand an erratum. Or two. (Heck, even Starfinders will be Fame-less sometime in the possibly near future! If announcements happen as originally announced.) Dexterity drain? I'd be tempted to rule that the save is, at least, a save negates if nothing else. Dex drain at this level is also nuts, but not quite as nuts as the trap.
Thanks for all the help--this thread was invaluable when I was prepping and running 2-24. On another note...
3-00 spoiler: I'm not so sure, based on a certain ex-Starfinder, that the Azlanti thread is over and done with! I'm all aboard the Azlant train...
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