TomParker's page

Over $500 for a bag of broken miniatures, if the dwarf is in 12 pieces, simple scaling tells us that some of the larger miniatures will be in 100s of pieces

That's generally not how it works. Miniature pieces are cast separately based on the needs of the mold and is dependent on the pose, not the size. I know it's little solace but you won't see anything with hundreds of pieces, or even dozens. Twelve seems on the high side; I've seen that only in the most complex miniatures, based on what I've gotten from Reaper.

Thanks, Adam! It's nice to have official clarification. I'm printing terrain for that bottom level now (and probably will be for a week).

I see the logic you're going with. But the grapple rules already say that maintaining the grapple continues to do damage with the attack that established the hold. So it seems like no matter what, if the bite attack hits you're in its mouth and getting chewed on until you break the grapple.

The -20 to me seems to be the difference between trying to eat an apple without your hands vs. eating it with your hands. In both cases, its in your mouth. It's just easier to do if you help with your hands.

So there's been a post somewhere that the module is wrong? I understand how the flip-mats are supposed to be sized, but I hadn't seen a correction of the module anywhere.

I've never seen anyone run swallow whole as requiring a -20 initial grapple check. Do you have a citation for that other than the rules section we're debating now? Is there an FAQ somewhere?

Is the 10' square scale for the second map stated in the adventure a typo? Or is the back half of this really supposed to be a half-scale map?

I've always read it as having to grapple with the bite. So I would have a grapple with the bite the following round. Since you have to start the round in the mouth for swallow whole, the creature could use that on the third round.

It only works on creatures that already are suffering from bleed damage.

I read it several times, but now that you explain it the description seems pretty clear. Thanks!

For one of the creatures

This ability isn’t clear to me at all. Any help would be appreciated.

Yes, if a feat just says 'you gain a focus pool' and you already have one, you instead get a focus point [up to 3]. sidebar page 302.

But the example in that sidebar uses a feat that explicitly grants a focus pool. I don't think that means that everything that uses focus automatically grants another focus point. The language in Devotion Spells implies that they don't:

Certain feats can give you more focus spells and increase the size of your focus pool, though your focus pool can never hold more than 3 Focus Points.

That would imply that some feats do not increase the size of your focus pool.

I thought all APs in 2nd edition will go to level 20, so 3 to 4 levels per chapter seems right. And actually only a little faster than in 1st edition. I'm running Shattered Star and the party will be level 5 by the end of the first book. Looking at a handful of other APs, most seem to have the party at level 4 when the first book ends.

Impressive. I have always just organized them alphabetically. But I really like this setup.

Is your set a pair of 29.5 frames at full depth? How many miniatures does your setup hold? I probably only have room for the shallow depth frames, one 29.5 and one 19.5. I'm wondering if that's enough space for what I have.

I placed a shelf liner on the bottom to keep the minis from sliding. I then cut some strips of wood from panel board, and also cut some 1", 2" and 3" spacers.

How much time do you spend organizing? Do you have them alphabetically, and make room as new stuff comes in, or do you organize them by case or something so you don’t have to adjust too much?

Signature Spell allows you to basically cast all possible versions of that spell as long as you have appropriate spell slot, going up or down. You might want to learn a Fireball as 4th level spell and signature it there because there is another lvl3 spell that you want to keep as Signature.

I find Signature Spell contradictory. It says you can heighten them freely, AND it says if you learn the highest level you can cast anything lower. Is there more clear language than this?

You don’t need to learn heightened versions of signature spells separately; instead, you can heighten these spells freely. If you’ve learned a signature spell at a higher level than its minimum, you can also cast all its lower-level versions without learning those separately.

Is the second sentence only there because someone might say you can’t learn 4th fireball as a signature spell and cast it at 3rd? I’d originally read it as an explicit statement of how signature spells should work, but now I’m wondering if it’s just additional text trying to head off a weird ruling by someone.

But can a sorcerer even cast a 3rd-level fireball in a 4th-level slot without signature spell and without knowing it as a 4th-level spell if they were desperate enough?

I don’t believe they could do that even with signature spell. I’m pretty sure signature spell allows you to cast all the lower versions without knowing each specifically. So you’d have to know it as 4th level, and could swap a different spell into the 3rd level slot if it was a signature spell.

As to whether you can burn a higher level slot to cast a lower level spell—I’m not sure. I haven’t seen anything that suggests you can, but I haven’t looked that closely.

I had the same question, but my reading was as the others—transferring requires only the Craft skill and not the related crafting skill feat.

Unless your GM says otherwise. Personally I think 10 belts are silly. But during the playtest and since I’ve seen people argue that it makes perfect sense to wear 10 belts. If their GM agrees then they have the ability to override the rules.

That is literally possible for anything—the GM can always make any house rule they want. Since this is the rules forum, it’s worth being clear that the rules do not allow ten belts. Or even two.

Hoooray. A bit of common sense made it into the rules. Although if you want 10 belts ask your GM if they are willing to allow it.

Belts are “worn belt” items. You can only wear one.

And if one side is strictly bound by those rules (players) and the other side is allowed to blatantly disregard these rules (GM) the former side can easily feel cheated. This is not about exceptions or bending or occasionally even breaking the rules, because everybody understands that sometimes a GM really needs to do this for everybody to have fun, but about playing fair, at least as fair as it gets.

The problem I see here is believing the players and the GM are on different "sides."

My group left them where they fell. They really didn't care.

I don't think Bort would have let them bring that clearly weird creature along on his wagons. He's got appointments to keep, and this isn't the PCs show to run. And there's no telling how many more of those things might be out there. I think Bort would want to get moving as soon as possible.

That is sweet. Is that outfitted with the Komplement pull-out tray? Or something custom?

It is explicitly mentioned that "detaching" a shield is a 1-action Interact. CRB 274, Table 6-2.

Yes, I mentioned that rule in my OP, although I didn’t cite the page. But it says “detaching a shield or item strapped to you.” The question we were discussing was whether that applied to all shields, or just bucklers.

In 2e, shields other than bucklers no longer say they are “strapped” to you. I think it applies to all shields, but I would understand if someone felt the RAW made shields a held object that just required a release.

Got it. I figured there were probably abilities that might also recover focus. I just wanted to be sure how the refocus action worked. It’s pretty clear, but things can be pretty spread out in this rulebook.

I didn’t notice the change in language between PF1, where it explicitly said all shields are strapped to your arm. If the only contrary argument is that other shields aren’t strapped to your arm, I’ll probably continue to run it as an interact and not a release.

And I’d never let someone use the buckler free hand to unstrap the buckler. Hands just don’t bend like that.

Thanks. So without the feat, if you had 3 Focus Points and used them all, you would bounce between 0 and 1 until your next daily prep.

Another in the "did I miss something" series of questions.

1. You don't always get a focus point when you get a new focus ability, correct? I'm looking at a Champion who has 1 Focus Point from Lay on Hands, and took the Deity Domain which granted another focus spell. But it doesn't appear to grant another point. So it's expected that in some cases you might have more focus spells than points (not considering the 3 Focus Point limit, obviously).

2. The Refocus action has as one of the requirements that you spent at least one Focus Point since you last regained Focus Points. Since you only regain one Focus Point through Refocus, there is no way to fully refill Focus Points other than your daily preparations, right? I refocus for one, then have to spend at least one to refocus again. Are there any feats yet that allow you to gain more points while refocusing?

I'm assuming the answer is no, but wanted to confirm. A shield (other than a buckler) means that hand is occupied, and if you're holding a weapon that uses the other hand. Remove a shield strapped to you is a one-handed interact, so you couldn't do that while holding the weapon, correct? I wanted to make sure there isn't some text I missed somewhere that lets you wriggle out of your shield using the shield hand as the hand for the action.

Bar brawl - players might step in, might not, doesn't really matter.

Bort dies eating dessert - Investigation begins.

It is during the brawl that players can start becoming aware of suspects. I think it’s worthwhile to describe some of the blow by blow, like Phinick taking off, Delma leaving, Trin getting hit with a mug and running out, Sir Lawren bolting as soon as the fight starts. Without introducing them to the staff and locals—Edra as they arrive, Delma, Phinick and Amora when they enter the Feedmill (have Delma get them settled in rooms so they can freshen up, this will keep them busy while Bort takes off), and Trin, the other server, the bard, the farmer, and Lawren before and during the brawl—they’re not going to know where to start their investigation. After the brawl, you can have the sheriff scold some people and talk to Bort, and when they get back to the table the servers are trying to get service back on track and dessert is waiting for them.

I created pages I could cut into cards that had their picture on front, their blurb on back. The most important thing is to introduce them to all the NPCs. After that, they’ll find one of them that seems most suspicious, and start wherever they want. It doesn’t matter where.

You may find they don’t find certain leads enticing. My group wanted to talk to the sheriff, Delma, the cook and the people who ran off, except Lawren. They also did the tour at Delma’s request. They were very interested in finding Phinick. So whenever you think they’re winding down on the leads, introduce the chase with Phinick. My group skipped a couple encounters because it was clear they weren’t interested in talking to certain NPCs; once they catch Phinick, the cat is out of the bag and they’ll be on the way to Hallod’s.

Part 1 took about 6.5 hours.

If ND is si insolvent, how did they end up with a booth in the Exhibit Hall at Gencon this year? Those booths are not cheap, not to mention the expense of travel and lodging.

Sorry, that was probably hyperbolic. They haven’t filed bankruptcy as far as I know. But based on the numbers they posted previously, each of their projects had expended most of their funds and needed quite a bit more to complete all of them. They seem to be investing whatever they have in trying to generate revenue. Since they haven’t been very transparent, there is no way to know how successful they’re being and how much progress they might be making toward the other projects they’re still trying to fulfill.

Seriously would have rather been peeved at ND than be peeved at ND and also have Archon else come in and offer something totally different and unusable (by me) and call it help.

I suspect a lot of people are happy that this wasn’t a total write-off after ND basically became insolvent. If you prefer to just be mad at ND for not delivering, you can throw all the stuff you receive in the trash and pretend it never got fulfilled.

Because that was the only option. ND was probably never going to fulfill these. Archon took over the license. We’ll likely never be privy to the terms of that deal, but I would imagine it was a condition of their license that they fulfill these in some way.

ND has spent all the money you paid and didn’t produce all the miniatures, and judging by the wrangling at the start of the year they didn’t even pay for what was produced. Archon will never see any money from what they send you. I can understand why they’re trying to save on assembly labor for the ND fulfillment.

It’s definitely not reasonable to expect Archon to issue refunds, as some seem to be suggesting. Even Paizo, who may have received their licensing upfront, would only be able to refund pennies on the dollar. No one would have been happy with that, either. Most of the money went to ND, and it’s been squandered.

I understand that it sucks to have a Kickstarter not fulfill. I’ve backed around 130, and I’ve had half a dozen just swallow my money. But someone basically took your money, and someone else said they’d give you at least some of that money back, and people want to punch that person in the nose. The rage isn’t unreasonable but should be directed at Ninja Division.

If you really can’t use these, offer them for sale. Someone will take them. I’m definitely going to be buying these, so let me know if you sell them.

TomParker wrote:

I think at some point we’ll see a feat that adds reactions.

There are already several feats that grant extra reactions. 3 for Fighter, 1 for Champion.

Sweet! I’ve only played a Champion so far, and not beyond first level. Going to look for feats now!

It's all fun and games until you realize that your fighter can not shield block and make attacks of opportunity in the same turn...

As in PF1, unless you had a feat.

I really do consider the 1 reaction/round limit a huge factor when it comes to action economy, especially as the list of possible / additional reactions for each character will probably increase over time.

I think at some point we’ll see a feat that adds reactions. Probably not to the extent that Combat Reflexes did. But the limitation to reactions really doesn’t bother me. I’ve played lots of characters that had a lot of choices for their one swift action, so this doesn’t feel any more restrictive to me.

Did you count the exp from stuff like chasing the goblin encounter?

Also, it’s possible to overlook these:

I think any side quests would easily put them over. My group was within 40 xp at the end of part one, and they skipped two or three encounters. Assuming they are the expected level, it’s a pretty simple task to look up the XP award for an encounter difficulty level.

There are multiple severe encounters in Part 3; it looks like it is intended to be hard.

Yes, it’s an Intimidate check against the target’s Will DC, which is 10 + Will bonus. I rolled once for the check and compared it to each player’s DC.

I had to go to the forums where some NON employee pointed me at a FAQ that had no apparent link to it.

It is linked from the company’s home page under the support menu.

I would share it for allied NPCs, yes. Most opponents just die at zero hit points. If an enemy NPC is important enough not to have them die at zero, I wouldn't share the dying condition status. And I might not even track it, since there was probably a plot reason that he's not dead.

Thanks for the insight, everyone. It sounds like the rules may give us a lot more flexibility in what NPCs end up like. I worry that, for those of us that use Hero Lab, it will be a long time before we seeing the monster/NPC building rules implemented. Character building isn't even fully implemented, yet.

It does seem to be a GM's call. Personally, dying doesn't seem fun, having to sit silently while allies who don't know you're about to die ignore you doesn't seem fun. Heroically trying to save your dying comrade seems fun.

In the games I've run so far, this is not information I keep secret. And in PF1, I didn't mind if characters said, um, hey, I'm only 1 point away from negative CON.

It's probably also worth pointing out that the XP budget is for a 4-person party. So in your example, if the party was 4 players, each person earns 80 XP.

If you had 5 players, you would add 20 XP worth of opponents (based on the character adjustment column from the table on page 489) but each party member would still get only 80 XP. The extra XP is only for adding monsters and increasing the difficulty to keep it a moderate encounter for more than 4 players.

I know some people in other threads have found this new method confusing, but I find it a lot easier to adjust difficulty on the fly when I have a larger number of players.

That encounter went terribly slow for my group, but we had a bunch of people who didn't really understand there characters and we were working through a lot of the rules. There was a lot of looking things up.

One of the things that I think boosts overall engagement and keeps people from getting bored is the number of abilities that are reactions. Things like retributive strike encourage people to keep paying attention and possibly have something to do even when it's not their turn.

We've made it to the end of Part 1 and everyone really enjoyed it. I think the system was a hit.

In the published adventures so far I'm seeing a lot of opponents with the Unique trait, with no class levels listed. In PF1, I made extensive use of Hero Lab and their tactical console. Lone Wolf says that someday they'll get the tactical console implemented in HeroLab Online, but I'm wondering how difficult it's going to be to create some of these encounters in the future.

In PF1, I could almost always back into the character from the stat block and recreate the NPC in Hero Lab. In PF2, I'm not certain where I'd even start with a creature that's listed as unique with no class or level. (This is sort of moot right now, as NPC creation in HLO also isn't working yet.)

Maybe there will be rules for this sort of NPC creation in the GM Guide. I hope we don't have to rely on Lone Wolf publishing all these adventures and building each of these Unique NPCs—I don't mind paying for that content and it's been very helpful in running APs in PF1, but I am concerned that Lone Wolf is way behind on implementing even basic Core Rulebook functions and may be very slow to create AP or module content.

Has anyone seen any rules for how these Unique NPCs get built?

There was a sympathetic goblin character at least as far back as Season 4. She wasn't killed in the session I played or the couple times I GM'd the scenario.

And the *first* example of a consumable item is ammunition. I realize text is left to interpretation, but honestly, how much clearer can you ask for?

And then the ammunition section immediately after literally defines ammunition in this context as magic items.

These magic items are ammunition for ranged weapons.

I understand how you concluded what you did, but the more I read it the more I think this section has nothing to do with ammo in general. The same section even says that launching the ammunition consumes its magic, which implies that the ammo isn’t consumed and you’re left with mundane ammo with no magical properties.

I think that's a little condescending. It's not about anyone deeming anything acceptable. It's about trying to understand the rules as written.

The first sentence indicates that it applies to that section. Ammunition is then specified to begin on that page, which tells me that it isn't referring to mundane ammo a couple hundred pages prior.

Given that everything else in the Core Rulebook makes use of traits, it would be more convincing if they'd put the consumable trait in the traits column for the mundane ammo.

Just like arrows in the real world? I don’t think real world analogues hold up so well in the game world. Sure, I can go pull an arrow out of a hay bale after I shoot it. A non-carbon fiber arrow shot into a guy’s chest, who then falls on it and has his corpse trampled by Valeros in the fight? And other ammo, like sling bullets that fly wherever? Who knows.

But I agree this probably isn’t absolute proof than ammunition is intended to be consumable.

Yes, there are a number of first level spells that are not common. If your GM allowed you access, you could include those in your spell repertoire.

Me, too. I don't see any reason why they couldn't recover those.

They got it, and I played "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" as we packed up for the night.

Nice. I played The Ecstasy of Gold from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly when they first saw Xin-Shalast.

Thanks. So all ammunition is included in the definition of consumables. I wish they'd mentioned that in the equipment section on page 280, or at least included the consumable trait in table 6-8.