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Isn't the DC of the trick always based off the level of the performer? From what I can tell, the level 15 NPCs have just about as much of a chance of success as the level 1 NPCs. So you should be free to use whatever performers are most interesting to you and your players. I like this, but it makes me wonder why they bothered giving them levels at all. Or why they're all not level 1.
Just started prepping for my first game of EC, and I wanted to give some feedback to Paizo on the NPC subject. The whole point of buying an AP is that it makes things easier for a GM, right? So what do you think happens when you give the players a murder mystery, and ask them to investigate it? That's right, they look for clues and suspects. Naturally they are going to start asking about all the colorful characters everywhere. Circuses are full of crazy people, everyone knows that. Sure the AP gave some good reasons why the snake lady isn't a suspect... but what about everybody else? OK, nobody can control rats; how do they know that? Aren't there some animal trainers here? Do druids not exist in circuses? Oops, one of my PCs is one, so there goes that theory. Also, there are TWO crucial skills checks during the short investigation to gain clues. (Already decided those will be freebies.) A medicine check to know it was a snake, and another check to find the rat tracks. If they fail one or both of these, they have no reason to jump to the conclusion that it "must be someone that can control snakes and rats". Or maybe they just don't connect the dots. Either way, they're almost guaranteed to ask about the NPCs, And I have nothing but a couple pictures of some tricks to draw from. So that leaves me with two choices- spend a ton of time fleshing out characters just to show the PCs they're all saints, or railroad the hell out of them. I don't like doing either of those. I understand that you can't fit everything into a book. You need to keep costs down, etc. I get it. But give me something. A sentence like "Mordaine: Irriatable. Diva, wants to be the main star" is enough for me to build from. All of that could fit into the space one, maybe two monster stat blocks take up. Do you really need a giant flea? Just use something from the Bestiary. Sorry that this comes across as ranty, but I'm disappointed in the amount of prep work I need to do after buying this AP. In short- don't give my players a murder mystery, and then not provide the GM with any info to give them.
If it could be useful to your group, I'm more than happy to send you a link to add it to your server. Hmmm. I'm new to these forums; is there no way to PM other users? I'd rather keep the bot in a closed beta state for the moment until I learn how it's going to scale. (Wouldn't want a million channels (lol) to start pounding it and bring it down for everyone.) Or an invite could work too I suppose. I'm mostly interested in pbp though. While I can spare many small slices of time throughout the day, it's hard for me to be completely devoted to something for hours due to work/wife/kids. Although I do have periods at night where I'm free of such responsibilities so if the timing worked out, that would be awesome. You can find me on Discord at TheCraiggers#4907
Oops, just noticed I forgot to mention timezone. I'm in EST.
I've spent the last few weeks making a new Discord bot to help my play-by-post group play PF2e. It started as a simple command to look up any term (using the awesome PF Easy Tools website) directly in chat, and then progressed to a full blown Conditions/Time/Init Order/HP/Dice Roller/Partial Char Sheet Replacement. The lookup part has been done for some time, but all that new stuff I just finished alpha testing for last night, and was looking forward to testing in a live setting with my group. Problem is, that GM/group just switched to 5e today. I'm looking for some other play-by-post game to join that is interested in trying this bot out. I'm a strong role-player who isn't a jerk and is on pretty much 7am-11pm Mon-Fri. I could even provide references if you're into that. The bot's code is horrid, it's probably still got some bugs, but goddamnit I'm proud of it and I don't want to watch it die on the vine. Also, I'd really like to keep playing in a game. I'd be lying if I said this wasn't a little bit self-serving as well. |
