Tim Schneider 908's page

I'm curious how many players out there have ever had their DM (or group) disallow on action they took because it wasn't in-character for their character or race?

Or not a allow a PC to move to flank because their INT was 6?

Haven't gone as far as disallow, but I have frequently seen players not take actions that may be more optimal because of character and as a GM I will remind a character if they're making a choice based on info not available to their character.

It's a role-playing game not just a tactical combat simulator & as a GM I work to try and create an environment where the role play continues even once a map is down without having to forcibly say "you can't do X".

That said I have played games like you describe, and they're fun in their own right so long as everyone's on the same page. Generally the GM sets the tone & I've found most players follow suit... but it's definitely true that first party adventures consider the actual creatures and their tactical inclinations when balancing the styles of combats for variety & a GM not following this may need to do more work to ensure varied combats if that matters to their group.

I agree with the presented logic that typically this tactic is not actually optimal at all & rarely in character for the enemy (which as mentioned, each to their own on how they play, but that's what they design around).

If the party has no ranged capability, no battlefield control options, no abilities that improve in a limited action environment (like flurry of blows), is versus an enemy who has those abilities, has no AoO's and is slower base movement than the enemy... then yes the tactic will wreck them.

And somewhere along that continuum is the point where it becomes an optimal tactic, but if it gets used every fight either it's not actually optimal most the time or your party is seriously limited in options to counter such a threat and if it's a problem for you then perhaps some party changes can counter the tactic.

Hello? You're automatically billing me a price I didn't agree to and not responding. Raised a week ago now...

Yep - but guide also says only remove if they don't get the associated treasure bundle (quoted at top - only text I could find in guide about it), not just for not getting the item. So you got the treasure bundle associated to the shields even if you didn't get the shield...

I suspect you're still right. This language is probably trying to say don't punish creative solutions more so than get high tier options, but given they changed gold to not care about tier and they added the level restriction to buy off chronicles it may be intentional that loot by tier isn't restricted?

Interesting interpretation to say its only associated to the bundle in high tier - that I could see as a reasonable way to interpret to get the logical outcome. I think it could probably use clearer language if that's the intent, as I think the only way you get there is already knowing what you think should happen... but I guess that's way down the list. Guess I'll just keep doing it that way and hope not to discover later that it's a 1E-ism.

I am experienced with how it works in 1E, and I'm 100% sure it's what most would assume in 2E, but in 1E the guide actually said to do it & in 2E it doesn't appear to (unless I missed it?).

It's probably still be right even if the guide doesn't say it, and it's what I'm doing currently, but it can be easy to assume an old rule still exists when it was intentionally left out since the rules can't explicitly list all the things that aren't true.

PS: Separate scenario very much has problems if it was a literal statement of rules. I'm quite sure that's not a valid guiding principle for interpreting the guide (e.g replays, multiple chronicles)

So... I started wondering how loot per tier on the chronicle sheet works in 2E and I found myself reaching a strange conclusion... there doesn't seem to be anything?

I had assumed you'd cross off the tier you didn't play, but the advice in the guide seems to only say:

GM Instructions: Cross off any items that the players did not earn during the scenario. Unless the GM Resources section says otherwise, players only lose access to an item if they did not earn the treasure bundle that corresponds to that item.

Which suggests if they get the treasure bundle you leave it... possibly irrespective of tier. Which given the new logic around tiers & just doing gold by level may be intentional. The new restriction that you can only buy them at level+2 reduces the impact as they can't buy it anyway...

So... should you cross out the tier that wasn't played on a chronicle in 2E? Is there something in the guide to say this, or was it omitted by mistake, or is this just me coming in with a 1E mindset and thinking it should be a rule?

The scenario's chronicle sheet explicitly overrules that restriction to allow you to apply it immediately.

Special: This adventure was designed for use with pregenerated characters. You can assign this Chronicle sheet to any character of levels 1–5 who does not already have a copy of this Chronicle sheet.

That tells you that you can assign it to 1-5, so you apply it immediately and get gold as per the level it's assigned at (e.g. If your char is level 1, get level 1 gold. If your char is level 2, get level 2 gold).

As far as the items go I think the restriction would be, from the guide:

Any equipment listed on your character’s Chronicle sheets with an item level equal to or less than your character’s level + 2. Some items found on Chronicle sheets are available for purchase only a limited number of times.

And now the order has been automatically charged to my account the undiscounted price + tax & currency conversion fees on the inflated price.

This isn't the price I agreed to...

I've never required the kit to be used & the 2 hands for it when I've ran it (both in org play & outside). I don't think I've ever ran into a battle medic without having the kit cause they all want to heal outside combat, so I'm not worried by that, but the suggestion you need 2 hands free to use the kit doesn't seem right to me - neither from a what it says, what it suggests, or what is the most fun outcome perspective. It essentially prohibits anyone using weapons from doing it as the action economy to sheathe all your weapons to do it and redraw them is prohibitive.

My head-canon of battle medic is less bandaging someone, which to me makes no sense in that time, and more quickly jabbing them with a painkiller, a shot of adrenaline, a quick pre-made salve of dried plants over a cut, or in the case of my goblin in Age of Ashes applying a liberal coat of his specially prepared medicinal pickle juice to the wound. Manipulate trait works fine for my mental image.

If someone tried to say they did it through wiggly fingers rather than actually doing anything & tried to argue RAW at me I'd point out how it allows the GM to adjust DC by circumstances & that not touching the person you're healing is a very difficult circumstance to successfully heal them.

Nevermind the 15% part - it's just display on the catalog & that seems to sort itself out once they're in the cart.

The issue with my subscription order #8184593 not getting the 30% Legacy Paizo Advantage discount is still real though (Charging the full 24.99 rather than 17.49 previous subscription orders).

It'd be really good to get that sorted before it's automatically charged.

Latest subscription order has shown up at full price.

It still has the text:
"Legacy Paizo Advantage - Adventure Path Pathfinder Adventure Path subscribers who were subscribed at the end of the First Edition Adventure Path line get 30% off Second Edition Adventure Path products."

Last month's order had the discount, this month it's gone? I've also noticed the 15% discount on the store is gone too...

Is this a bug or a change? I thought the previous blog said that 15% was going to stick around if you were in before the cutover date?

Just looking to understand as if all the discounts are intentionally gone somehow I'd like to cancel my subscription.

The idea is that a goblin with +8 stealth has a 55% chance of succeeding against your +8 perception (a roll of 10 or higher) rather than a 50% chance (a roll of 11 or higher) which the OP feels is the more natural ideal.

I think it's more that in this scenario you have a 55% chance of succeeding to spot them, but they have a 55% chance of hiding from you if they're the one making the check. In essence the "Active Party" gets a very minor boost because the half-way point on a d20 is 11+ not 10+.

I think the minor mathematical quirk is one which is worth it for the simplicity of on-the-fly calculations (Adding 11 constantly instead of 10 is an increase in complexity). Always a subjective question whether a complexity is pulling it's weight. Obviously some think it's worth it here.

I don't think it ever ends up game-breaking or even visible to someone who's not analyzing the math - and the rules are always pretty clear on who rolls so it's not arbitrary who gets the rounding in their favor. I'm happy with the decision Paizo made, but I don't think it'd break the game at all if you house-ruled DC's were all 11+. Or even just say "Equal to DC is a failure" (same outcome, less math, more sacred cows).

I'm a big fan of the explicit scaling. Far less confusing than referring to it as 5 and 6 player adjustments but not having it based on the number of players. Also eliminates confusion as to whether a 5-player adjusted 4-player table should get non-encounter 5 player adjusts. I also assume this overrules any "level bumping" the scenario like the Org Play guide suggests.

Having the sidebars down in the encounters appendix area is a great idea to de-clutter the main adventure section.

Other than 1 adjustment that went walkabout in the quest (pg 13 stole pg 14's adjustment) they seem great. I also much prefer the scale up than the scale down - especially cause it cases like this it means it's too easy rather than the party dies if the GM doesn't find it on the other page.

It is something we are aware of, and are looking into solutions. In the mean time, as a (unpleasant) work around, the problem seems to resolve if you enlarge the page by 10%.

Seems like the font doesn't like 22px font size while bold - odd quirk, even 1px bigger works. If you have control of the CSS you can just swap the h3 font size to 1.4375rem (23px) rather than 1.375rem (22px) and it works - but I guess if you can't change the font you probably can't change that either yet.

It may have bothered me enough that I set up a local style-sheet to make that adjustment & it works :P

They crit failed every single section of the library? Wow... that's some seriously bad luck to crit fail every single section of the library - 9 critical failures before they got clues? Given they're often only crit-failing on a 1 if they used their best skills that's some seriously bad luck. Unless they just threw all their dice at each section & had barbarians trying arcana checks - in which case they earned the failures... but otherwise you've got an amazingly unlucky party.

As far as the aid being the only option to gather information together, I'd call that a bit of a harsh restriction you're placing on them. In a crowded city people can stay relatively close together without literally only talking to the same people as each-other. If we were in a rural farming area where you'd probably only find 1 person in any given 100 ft radius I'd agree, but in this setting it seems needlessly restrictive - especially when your players are already having trouble.

Regarding retrying gather information in PF1 - it's actually explicitly allowed in the diplomacy rules. I'm sure there's probably a PF1 scenario out there that says you can't, and time very much is a limiting factor too, but in general you absolutely can if you have the time.

P2,3,4 - now have to pretend they didn't hear the conversation at all.

If P2,3,4 originally INTENDED to hit that exact square behind the barrels (just because it seemed a logical place), they now can't do it without being suspect of cheating/metagaming by the internetz.

And now we have landed on the problem with metagaming. If a person has meta-knowledge it colors their future actions. And it can be very hard, both for an observer and also for the player themselves, to know if they're acting on that information.

As a GM my response is typically to trust my players. If I think they might be acting on this information I assume it's not intentional and ask them "Are you sure? Remember your character doesn't know where he is...". Sometimes they'll say "Yeah but I think I'd have done that anyway", and on a one-off I'll take them at their word, but more often than not the response is "Oh yeah, good point. There's only really these 3 squares he could be in, so let's say I pick randomly from those? And I might just use a cantrip rather than the disintegrate I said cause my character knows he's blind firing" and I reply "Yeah, that makes sense, cool".

And that honesty from the players & trust from the GM is what makes the game work.

If your players are ones who go "Yeah but screw you I know where he is! Why would I ever waste an action when I can cheat?" then I pity you for your players & I think it's a problem best handled outside game mechanics.

For the record, my players actually reacted to this more closely to "Sweet, now we have a definitive answer of how pointing someone out works mechanically! We don't have to wonder how precisely we could describe it in 6 seconds of free action talking!".

The alternative solution would be to take P1 to the side and tell him in secret without anyone else knowing ("it is the 3rd square to the left of the barrels"), but that just seem tedious.

Sometimes that can be good. But I treat this less as hiding it from the players so they can't cheat & more to make it easier for them to work out how they'd act without the info (As "which square would I have picked if I didn't know?" can be a very hard question when you didn't decide beforehand)

I do actually sometimes only give a player enough info to make their choices, "It's over behind the barrels" is often enough info for them to act accordingly & I'll give the player the info they need (Essentially running the rest of their turn theater of mind then updating the grid).

I had a similar instinctive reaction to what you just outlined Bob (It's after the scenario, you don't currently have hero points), and combined with that rule referenced from rituals chapter I think it's pretty clear.

Would be nice to see that get into an official FAQ for PFS, as it is hard to work out the right answer, but I feel like this is enough to know it's correct.

That map seems to have a weird logic problem too where the cliff is shown as being about 50 ft horizontally in some areas but is only 25 ft high, making it more of a gentle slope than a cliff.

When I run this I'm very likely to draw a wavy line on a blank map and say "that's the cliff, that side is the bottom".

HLO has permanent adjustments that can be used for that kind of thing yeah. Unlike most areas of HLO though I find the UI to be a big step down for this piece (In most areas I prefer the new UI but wish it would run faster - part of that could be Australian latency to the US servers).

The only thing that stands between me and using HeroLab Online is that I really don't like the character sheets it generates. Given it's not 100% reliable to be online (Both from the HLO track record and also internet where I play), if it's going to be how I track my characters I have to be happy to play off it's offline sheet & currently it just has a bit too much clunk to it. I'd love an offline webpage option, and I'd love faster performance, but I can't go without an offline export I'm willing to play off & that's stopping me buying it atm (I tried, but I ended up resorting to rewriting it onto a real character sheet).

I mean it makes sense, adventurers are in a room. The wizard's spidey-sense tingles - there's magic nearby. The party searches.

I'd simply ask "How long would you search before giving up?", treating a basic perception as 10 minutes and "As long as it takes" to mean that even on a crit-fail they'll find it a few hours later. If there's no time pressure I can't see why they wouldn't turn over every stone, and luckily as GM's we can use failing forward to quickly tell the story of their boring hours of searching. Even better if you can think of things other than time. Maybe a patrol is alerted? Maybe an NPC is getting frustrated by waiting & will be harder to get on with?

Just make sure it's logical and if the time really shouldn't matter or there's really nothing in the room to make the search difficult just let them find it. 90% of the time really there isn't any repercussion to a thorough search & there's no reason not to let that hour pass in a single roll.

You don't necessarily lose fame/prestige - as far as I recall there was no fixed time limit.

You can spend as long as you need there, you just make the later encounters harder if you take too long. Which if a series of bad rolls makes a later area harder... yeah seems fair.

I wonder if it is RAI rather than RAW. It clearly does say you are blocked from Treat Wounds for an hour. But is there somewhere else in the rules that says encounter timers reset? It seems to me the intent is adventures are assuming a 10m break between fights.

I don't recall reading timers reset in the rulebook. If the idea is supported by rules that'd be great as given most my players also play PFS I have to be very careful not to overdo the house rules as people have trouble keeping it straight if I have too many.

I certainly agree treating wounds once per fight feels necessary at moderate or above threats.

I was actually reading treat wounds to mean the hour was for that exploration phase. Going into encounter mode resets your exploration timer. The intent is to make healing to full take a lot of exploration time, but doing 10m between every encounter is likely not going to keep up with their dmg so I think it is OK. Not being able to take care of their wounds because they did 3 encounters and it has only been half an hour? Your party is going to start dying with those stacked wounds.

Interesting interpretation. I dont think I'd interpret it that way but it is a house rule I considered. I was worried it opened a messy area around trying to trigger encounter mode to allow healing (Though obviously just saying "lets be fair and I'll rule 0 stupidity" works :p )

But yeah, the other part about rapidly building death was the problem that inspired the thread.

Yeah CR is a terrible tool in extremes but a useful yardstick while you're stumbling to grasp the threat yourself. And the happy-stick of 1E basically means if you're not doing a protracted combined combat them they can normally recover as much as they could without an overnight rest.

I'm currently trying to get that grasp of threat in 2E so I can plan things that are challenging yet fair. I feel like I can toy with an encounter to get it "right" for the party, but I've yet to fully grasp the timing between encounters and I figured if someone had a better feel for it than me maybe it'd help me find it.

I know Paizo's yet to weigh in, but I'm curious what other GM's are finding seems "fair". My current feeling in minimal experience is:
- A Low needs about 10 mins to recover.
- A Medium needs about 30 mins to recover.
- A Severe needs about 2 hrs to recover.
- Failed medicine checks can easily throw an extra hour into the party's recovery time on a Medium/Severe.
- If you throw something at them before that time, it's probably about 40XP harder.
- A Severe will probably kill someone if encountered before the party has the recovery time above.
- Continual recovery likely reduces these timings at higher levels.
(Warning: This is top-of-head and probably wrong - I made this thread cause I'm not sure, not to claim expertise :P )

Part of the thing I was hitting was that people weren't treatable after 1 fight cause it was less than an hour since the last where they got treated. A house-rule I'm considering adding to reduce the time delays needed is to say that the 1 per hour limit on Treat Wounds ends if your wounded condition increases (Mechanically if you go down in a fight you probably need to treat wounds so lets save an hour, thematically there is fresh wounds to treat).

While it's interesting to read ideas on how to run random encounters, and likely great advice for newer GM's, it's more the 2E specific element around how long people think the core game assumes is a reasonable time I was looking at here (Both in terms of the first-party adventures and also in terms of the standard difficulty calculations). Tension pool seems cool to me as it gives an option of "You risked a random encounter, but I don't have fun one I want to do so I'll bump up the tension instead", but as useful as it is it's basically just kicked the question down the road to "When is it reasonable to add tension dice".

I feel like it's fairly clear they don't assume a 4 hour delay to fully treat wounds every encounter any more than 1E expected you to go back to town & sleep after each encounter. In 1E a GM has to adapt things if the party starts doing that, I don't know what the line is for "need to adapt for balance" in 2E first-party adventures & the mechanically impacting delays are far more granular at 10 minute intervals. Judging purely off the sheer difficulty they are seem to be assuming at least 10 minutes after each fight.

I've had conversations with players who struggle with working out how long is reasonable even thinking thematically, cause they can see the mechanical obvious need for 10 minutes and start going "wait... but if I can take 10 minutes here surely 20 is safe? 10 minutes is a lot of time... maybe 2E's just balanced around spending a few hours between fights bandaging, cause we don't have our CLW stick anymore...". And to some extent I kinda felt where their pain came from in the balance - the front liners were getting hit for more than they could reasonably bandage at a 10 minute pause per fight by a decent margin, and wounded conditions added up when medicine checks failed. And back-to-back fails, which at 30%+ failure aren't that unexpected - the players started investing in assurance with medicine to auto-pass at level 3 which I think worked nicely but the 2d8 heal per hour started falling further behind the damage output too. It's obviously supplemented by magical healing but my initial assumption of 10 minutes per fight being "reasonable" seemed to be hitting a difficulty curve that was demanding more. And the players, who to their credit didn't want to meta by resting 4-5 hours per fight, were turning to me for what seemed reasonable. & I was at a loss to balance the thematic with the mechanical - hence making this thread.

Answers that talk in vague terms around thematics aren't really helpful to me personally - I'm looking at mechanics here, the part I lack is a "feel" for 2E mechanical difficulty. I've got enough GM experience across other game systems to handle making the thematics match what I need the mechanics to do. As a possible way to cut through the thematic aspect, let's try this rephrasing:
If I was setting up an adventure that had the party in an arena facing 3 Moderate threat encounters followed by 1 Severe threat boss, totally railroaded, how much downtime between encounters do you believe the system assumes when calling them Moderate and Severe? If they take on each with a 4hour break it'll be fairly easy, if they take on all of them with no rest they'd get massacred. What level of rest is implicitly there in calling the next fights "moderate" and "severe" rather than needing further difficulty scaling for the wounded party?

I think at it's core it comes down to the fact they tried a new design & feedback in the playtest was "OMG YES!"... so it stayed into the release.

I for one love the new multi-classing, it's much more beginner-friendly than the old one & still lets me build my non-standard character concepts in ways that feel both mechanically and thematically correct. It actually does a much better job in my view of making that transition gradual and less mechanically spikey than 1E multiclass dips.

Little more detail than I'd put outside spoilers Krazmuze but yeah, the first chapter I didn't find the BBEG too tough to work with in that one as:

I would not worry about them being fully healed, monsters are designed to take out all your HP (unlike 5e). They have however expended some consumables and spells, so that is where the challenge will be.

Well that's the thing, they failed the medicine checks 3 times running & the reply is just "Well let's spend another hour". If the system is designed around being fully healed, treat wounds could be DC 0 and heal your full HP. This is where I'm wondering just how much leeway the system assumes you should give - do you think it's designed around always 100%? (Based on adventures built to the suggested difficulties & using the modules/AP's as examples)

I honestly could believe it is - they are definitely feeling brutal enough, but I do also think a lack of system mastery is making it harder than it necessarily is once we all get more experience.

Thanks for the suggestions rainzax & John. I think I prefer the more loose base mechanic than the "DC X and it happens" thing. My favorite aspect was that it essentially banked the tension for when the GM actually had a meaningful way to have an encounter, and saying "It happens at X" kinda removes that.

You may be right that the idea of just giving all the time in the world while learning - but with no sign the world reacts it kinda guarantees they'll bandage up and refocus everyone to 100% before each encounter. The phrase from a player of "Well if 20 minutes didn't do anything we may as well spend another 4 hours and get to full health before we do the next room" made me flinch and feel like it was very much a meta choice as a read that the GM didn't want to run a random event here.

I felt simultaneously like I didn't want to encourage this behavior but also I didn't have a fun way for the world to react so I didn't. I use random encounters sometimes, but never the "3 bears arrive, they're cranky" ones & there was no "fun" way to do something here. If I do a random encounter I want it to contribute to the story - and essentially banking the tension for when something can add meaningfully to the story sounds like it could work well.

It seems like the general consensus lies somewhere between 30-60 minutes as a "worthy of some response" levels (And adding a dice is an interesting approach to a response :) )

I hadn't heard of that idea & did a bit of googling, seems interesting. Essentially amounts to building up a "risk of bad things" to build tension and give spending time weight, but not unleashing them until a time where the GM actually has an interesting downside available rather than just "Um... the chart says d3 bears... roll initiative".

It's a little gamey but I might give it a try as it seems like it could be positive way to handle it.

I feel like 30 minutes might be about my mark for adding a dice, I think allowing a 10 minute breather after a fight is definitely what the system is designed assuming (Not that you couldn't run that style, but you'd probably have to make the average encounter easier to make the party not need any recovery time).

Most adventures are written with a little room-by-room fighting clear without the enemies getting much chance to react. I ran Fall of Plaguestone over the weekend, which had a few dungeon-like areas, and I hit a few points where the party's delays due to the new healing left me a little unsure of how I should handle it.

In 1E a GM mostly had to worry about this if the party decided to rest the night before proceeding. 2E has introduced a lot of 10-minute activities post-fight activities... and I've started wondering just how long a party should be able to stall mid-dungeon before as a GM you should realistically start going "Ok, things may be getting harder because this place is on alert & you've given them a ton of time to be ready"?

It seems pretty clear to me that taking 10 minutes to catch your breath after your average fight is at a minimum what the game's designed around, but what about when a failed medicine check stretches this out to 1-2 hours? And what if, like happened in my game, really bad luck stretches that to 4 hours downtime inside the enemy base while they can't pass a medicine check to save their lives...

To clear a bit of the "it depends", let's look at this as a typical group of bandits in a hideout. If the party kills the lookouts in a combat that's not especially noisy or quiet, and hence likely was overheard inside, how much downtime would you allow while still running the next fight as planned? And if more extreme downtime was in play what kind of advantages would you give the enemies?

If I didn't have a more obvious ticking clock I've kinda been working on a 30 minute mark for your average human-level intelligence enemy who might have been alerted as the "Ok, they've stopped being worried and starting being very prepared" line, with my go to impact of delays being bonuses to initiative for the enemy & letting them use things like stealth for initiative & be in more advantageous spots (to reflect preparing an ambush) unless there's some obvious actions they could take.

What kind of guidance can we expect on building enemies and determining enemy levels in here - and also in terms of the "cost" for special powers/abilities and how to balance?

How are the new NPC's going to be? Are they bestiary-style stat creatures as NPC's or are they class-based builds? What's the level/class(or role if no class) spread like on these?

Chase rules are one which evolved & changed over 1E in adventures, from the original split-the-party chases, to group collective chases, to fail-forward style chases, to chases reframed to pursue the players... which of these styles has the GMG aimed for in 2E, or is the system made to handle multiple of these or something new entirely?

Also a second on the kingdom building discussions, and is the upcoming Kingmaker expansion intended to leverage or expand these or go it's own way (Obviously may be too early to promise, as you may change course depending on feedback once you release it, but current plans)?

Have to present the possible checks? No - it's entirely fair to let it roleplay out and then go "Well it sounds to me like you're trying to trick him, that'd be a bluff check?"

In this case, I think it's unreasonable to think a player would know they could do it in advance - as they're never given any indication agents of torch carry ID documents to forge a copy of... so I'd offer the option to anyone with linguistics.

When I ran this, I noticed this in advance and instead of allowing on-the-spot linguistics I instead gave the players with linguistics the hint that the paperwork Ambrus gave them would be enough to forge something if they were so inclined. As such they did forge some paperwork as part of their disguise & I let them use it there. If I'd missed it til the check & not clarified their disguises I'd have allowed it in a "We didn't really discuss your disguise. Did you perhaps use your linguistics to make some papers? Maybe you could show those..." sense.

I wouldn't say a GM is obligated to do this, but I personally see it as the fair way to run it. If a character has the skill to do something the player probably thinks isn't possible, the GM has a responsibility in my mind to let the player know what their character knows.

Regardless of my views on how a good GM could handle it and advice for future scenarios though, my view on the ruling is it's up to the GM at the table to make the call. If a GM made that call at an event I was overseeing I would not intervene.

The gold from scenarios does aim substantially over the target WBL currently, and I think the pathfinder training is going to mean consumables don't add up to that much, which means this is basically 48g under, or about 60% of the gold a leveled char would get.

That said, 48g will quickly stop being a big amount as you level, and nothing says the boon should be an optimal amount of gold. Between that, not getting faction rep & just wanting to stay the same level as other players at launch I haven't spent any playtest points yet.

I'm thinking I'll likely buy a pile of the 4 point boons rather than the big "get a higher level character" ones.

Gary Bush wrote:

The amount of silver we are talking about is not huge. It only happens at 1st level.

You're rolling a Level 0 task at Level 1 and Level 2, aren't you?

Yes you are, but the math of a crit is the same at level 2, as 2-2+1 is still 1 no matter when you apply the "minimum 0" rule - so the potential difference from this interpretation is only at level 1.

I track claimed bundles, mostly cause I find it makes the players feel rewarded when you tell them that the thing they found "is roughly equivalent to 2 treasure bundles". At least while treasure bundles are new cool ideas players seem excited by this which is a good enough reason for me to do it.

I think it's just a side-effect of authors getting used to earning bundles rather than losing gold being the new default. Given it adds up to the full 10 I think it's pretty clear that the correct interpretation for "lose 2 if this did happen" is "gain 2 if this didn't happen" - at least in this case.

It'd be good if they worked on making that consistent just in case they ever do actually have spots where you can lose treasure later.

Less pessimistic way of seeing it: Success 1/9th more likely than failure!

There's 1 number that's a special case - exactly equal to the DC. You have 9 successes after followed by crit success & 9 failures before followed by crit fail. And in their magnanimity they deemed to give us 11% more chance to succeed!

The intent is incredibly clear here, this isn't really a rules question so much as a complaint about the lack of mathematical symmetry. Personally I think throwing off the symmetrical balance of your number line was a small price to pay to make the math of working out crits use simple round numbers & I'm glad the designers agreed.

Hopefully it'll be fast. Only part that seems like it'll need much thought to sanction is the living monolith. Hoping we see some of the "new guide" agility & get this through soon. I know I've got a few new ideas that the world guide made me interested.

6 months is on the pessimistic side though, even for 1E (I'm sure some stuff took that, but it wasn't the average lately). I'm really hoping they've got the bandwidth to capitalize on the momentum 2E is currently building - I know everyone locally has been shocked and amazed by how fast Paizo's release plan is & there's certainly hype, would be a shame if PFS sanctioning lagged behind.

I've noticed my GM'd scenarios are only showing 1 AcP per session on the Sessions list in the My Organised Play page.

Other AcP values all look to match the guide - 4 for played, 1 for played quest & 2 for GM'd quest. But for GM'd scenarios it's giving 1 where guide says it should be 8.

Not really a big deal when there's no way to spend them yet, but figured I'd mention it to make sure it's on someone's radar.

Yeah I had the same interpretation as others here for the crits at level 1. You work out the task level as level-2 (min 0), after which you're doing a level 0 check (not a level -1 check). As such the crit giving level+1 is a level 1.

I can't see a reason you'd hold onto the -1 to subtract it from a crit, as level-2 (min 0) is about determining what check you do. It's not about what outcome you get.

Yeah, I wasn't sure how to proceed there too - as if they stop at that heavy-handed GM "You're done here" they lose their primary success condition as the permit comes after it.

I read what it said to read, cause I felt like I should... but added "But you're seasoned pathfinders, and surely are aware it's worth double checking before you move on right?" (In my most 'this is the actual GM hint' voice I could muster). The party thought that info came from a crit-fail not the scenario until I admitted it after :P

I'd say yes - as it says any level 0 item except armor. Shields aren't armor.

It has the extra clarification to say weapons are allowed, but I don't think that should be taken to exclude Shields any more so than it excludes Adventuring Gear.

Had a question come up in a game I was running around whether the additional effect on a Strike action (e.g. Poison/Disease/Grab) can apply if the attack deals 0 damage... I found in the core rulebook that if they're immune to the damage any other effects won't apply, but what if it's 0 damage another way? Such as:

1) The attacker just does 0, like a viper at d8-3 can easily do 0 damage.
2) The target has a Resistance that reduces the damage to 0.
3) The target raises their shield, and the hardness absorbs all the damage.

In these cases, is the target affected by a poison (Like a viper), a disease (Like ghoul fever), or other abilities associated with the Strike (Like ghoul paralysis)?

In researching this I found that for an Alchemical Poison of type Injury you have to be actually damaged by a Slashing or Piercing weapon to deliver it, but no such text occurs in the Bestiary Poison ability. Couldn't find anything useful to define "exposure" for a disease. Grab & the like seemed pretty clear in that it just needed a successful strike.

I'm currently assuming they apply regardless... but it does seem weird if you block the whole attack with a shield to still get poisoned.

My group almost died on the black pudding splitting it 6 times, but right before the 6 puddings obliterated them Ezren fireballed the whole party to kill them! We got to try out all the dying rules haha.

Whole party walked in stark naked into the final encounter (ooze dissolving gear) where I had them scream that they'd never stop their research and was about to call initiative when a player shou1ted "Wait! We dont want to! We just want the open road book, you can keep the ooze books!"... the players actually thought the ooze research was cool & didn't want to stop them. Plus they did enough research earlier to know they were having no luck selling the open road stuff. After the initial more confusing than threatening entry of the naked party, a few diplomacy checks and a promise to help with the research matters calmed down... and when fumbus and Ezren both crit craft checks to help with their research they made such good friends I decided they were ok with the party making a copy of the ooze research so long as they kept the original.

All in all great fun.

Still trying to work out how downtime checks work for this though... for now I didn't give the players the downtime as giving it at level 5 to a level 1 char seemed broken and anything else seemed house rule. I've promised to fix it up once I know the rules, if anyone can help me here it'd be great.

Purchasing equipment:

As you complete adventures, you will gain more wealth that can be used to buy any common item that is no more than 2 levels higher than

your current level. Uncommon items may be granted by Chronicle sheets or through other special boons. Characters with the appropriate
crafting feats may also be able to obtain formulas for equipment that they can create during Downtime.

- Unclear wording on if the max level + 2 and no uncommon restriction apply to puchasing formulas - I'm assuming yes? (It's worded as "may also be able" which kinda puts it separate)

- Formulas themselves don't seem to have their own rarity, unless I missed it in the rulebook. If it's the intent might be worth clarifying for this purpose it'd be based on the rarity of the item they create?

32s for a crit? I think you've messed up your math. I only get 16s.

A crit on a level 0 task gives you level 1 task success earnings. So instead of 5c/day you get 2s/day. 8 days at 2s/day is 16s. How'd you get to 32? To get that you'd need to earn 4s per day.

Are you doubling for a crit? Cause the crit success doesn't say to do that. "Critical Success You do outstanding work. Gain the amount of
currency listed for the task level + 1 and your proficiency rank."

How does one do downtime work for this one?

Guide suggests that pregens can do a dayjob, which is fine, but combined with the special allowing you to put it on a level 1... the amount of gold that a level 5 pregen can get on a dayjob is somewhat inappropriate for a level 1 character.

Is this an oversight that shouldn't be allowed, or just a windfall for those who put the special chronicle on a level 1?

There should be one - a checkbox "Print on both sides of paper" right above the page orientation. I use it all the time. I think it depends on if your printer supports it - it hides when I'm printing to PDF.

I always print my PDF's with Adobe Reader like Vic suggested & it worked fine for all the 2E printing I've done - mostly the iconics & PFS handouts/chronicles.

I use FoxIt for viewing & I GM off it frequently (It's ability to split-screen a PDF and view 2 separate pages at once is invaluable when the statblocks are put at the end of the scenarios & I've found my battery lasts longer than with Adobe's). Seems to handle on-screen ok but it's always struggled to print Paizo PDF's for some reason. Even trying to print a chronicle off the end of a PFS scenario seems to generate a few hundred meg of data into the printer spooling job until the printer just starts crying in the corner. But printing with adobe's always been an easy workaround.

New version has just gone out fixing up some of the feedback I've gotten so far:
- Fixed a bug where Basic saving throws weren't showing
- Fixed an issue where cantrips are getting mixed in with level 1 spells when sorted by level.
- Added Earn Income quick reference - seems like it'll come up at the end of every PFS game.
- Allowed searching by duration of spell
- Allowed sorting by number of actions
- Improved the formatting of polymorph and morph spells to more closely reflect the formatting in the rulebook.

Also I've published on a website URL which supports offline mode to allow iPhone/iPad & desktop users to use the app too: https://fyjham-ts.github.io/Pathfinder-2E-Spell-DB/

Thanks all for the very positive & useful feedback that helped me find the above issues to fix :D

Known data issue to fix next release: Spells with afflictions haven't got full detail recorded- Abyssal Plague, Goblin Pox, Purple Worm Sting & Ghoulish Cravings. Will be fixing those next update.

I assumed the intent was to say you did 1 check per 8 days (or fraction thereof) & this was the result that applied for those days. I had also assumed the DC was based on the task level via the DC charts, not literally the task level (e.g. If you have 3 days downtime you're using to to earn income, 1 check - covers 3 days, 8 days 1 check - covers 8 days, 14 days 2 checks - first one 8 days next one 6 days).

This is the interpretation I used for the Quest I ran - given only 2 days of downtime we were scratching our heads if we were even allowed to do an Earn Income check. As we only had 2 days to earn income I only gave 2 x the daily result from the chart (3x for those who were field-commissioned and got an extra day's downtime).

My biggest question was whether GM's get downtime or not. I had a lot of trouble even finding confirmation that GM's get any credit in the new guide, only found it noted as a side-note on filling in a chronicle and it was quite vague on what a GM got.

I also took the implication that if you were declaring your downtime usage you had to specify # of days earning income in advance to prevent "Oh I fumbled? I'll only use 1 day on earning income".