| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Glad to hear!
Here's to open gaming for decades to come!
Search Posts
Sorry for my extended absence (that will likely continue). Life has gone from fine to turbulent real quick. Training two new guys at work mixed with surprised layoffs (I wasn't laid off, luckily, but the details behind the layoffs leave me sick to my stomach) has got me honestly hunting for another job at this point. It's not been a very good time and I'm not sure how long it's going to be before it gets better.
An update: Wonderful. Just great. The Runescape issue not only still persists, but the fix is merely entering beta soon. Stress levels are not happy, since it locked me out of OSRS, too. I've been trying to de-stress with other things, but there hasn't been anything on my computer that doesn't require constant focus, so it's been hard to get a post in. I'll see if I can get caught up and get a post today, but this week is looking like it will also be inconsistent at best. Sorry again. Silly thing to get hung up on, but it's there nonetheless.
I'm going to do my best to get consistently posting as of this week. Everything has settled down for the move, and today's the last day we have access to the old place, so the move MUST complete today. Been getting used to working from a new home office, too. Forgive the absence. It'll likely be a bit before I do get to this, but I'm hoping it's today. There's just a lot of stuff to read through since last I posted.
Actually pretty good! It's a shame that I'm an elemental sorcerer so I'm stuck with the primal list, though. Any help with that one?
I'm trying soooo very hard as a sorcerer to stay positive, but I'm level 5 in PFS and it's getting incredibly difficult to stay positive. I can literally feel that I'm getting weaker. Enemies are becoming hit-point bags that are best overcome with a fighter's crits, or a rogue's or barbarian's consistency. My puny little fireball, though good in fights with a bunch of little things, finds itself almost completely ineffective against anything of a higher level than me. Why is it that fighters get to fight well, but it feels like spellcasters don't get to spell well? I feel like I've got to be missing something. I don't want to play debuff. I don't want to play support. I want to be a blaster, and I'm feeling more and more like that position has been removed from the game in any way that can outclass the martials... It's not that I want to "Be the best". It's that I honestly feel, in comparison, that casters are now at the lower end of the spectrum. I just want to be halfway decent. My GM worries every time the fighter's turn comes around. Never worries for mine.
Sure will is the bad save, but I do agree that the mooks this will work on are best left to the fighter. Stunned 1, sure I took their action, but I'm using TWO of mine to Rarely take one of theirs? 4d6+7 damage isn't much when high level monsters have over 300 hit points? Am I missing something? If a spell is great 10 percent of the time and awful the other 90....why is it worth casting? Edit: also, on a successful save, now you're doing half the terrible damage...
I do think DC 20 is a bit much, but it really just moves the knee-jerk reaction to later instead of having it start as early as level 1. It didn't fix the issue, per se, but I do understand why they did it.
To add a few more words of advice: - Debuffs are absolutely necessary at this point, but particularly difficult to get off properly. Keep trying. We need to debuff him or we'll have trouble getting anything of ours to land. His AC and saves are likely somewhere between 4 and 7 higher than ours. That's just how the numbers work out, especially in the case of monsters that don't appear to have class levels. - DO NOT end your turn adjacent to this thing. That is literally asking for death. If he crits on a 10, that means his multiple attack penalty stacks to make 10 still a success on a third attack. Don't let him use it. If possible, don't let him use his second attack either. - Evasion is the name of the game here. A shield block will only do so much (mostly because this thing will likely demolish your shield in the hit you block it with). In that same vein, if we can somehow outrun him, we can guarantee he only gets one Strike a turn. Movement is the only ground we could possibly stand evenly on. - Stay together. Don't run off on your own. We can only take this thing down if we're all involved in trying to do so. Also when sticking together, monsters may spread their attacks out a bit, especially if their attacks have things like sweep and agile. If somebody moves, the rest of us need to follow. Singling yourself out as the lone target is a sure fire way to get killed. It's that horror movie trope of "that dude tripped so now he's dead". - Lastly: Expect the failure effect on everything you do against this thing. DO NOT expect to critically succeed. It will most certainly need to roll a 1 to critically fail a save, and you will almost certainly need to roll a 20 to critically hit (Urzok may be the exception here, but I doubt it).
If you’re before everyone else and all the enemies are after you but before your allies, don’t rush in. Personally, I wouldn’t waste a spell saving you (though I have a caster who will for me, but I’d change if the group dynamic changed).I know a few groups that would consider that metagaming, especially on the first round. Unfortunately, I have to agree with that. But it's stuff like that (and putting all the big strong monsters on the same initiative) that really screws over players into this lull of "guess I need a Cleric".
@SuperBidi: The party isn't set. It's PFS, so the unfortunate side effect of organized play comes in here. We can't guarantee the table has anybody capable of healing at it, which is definitely the first problem. Though, I do have to say the "just have two healers" solution is actually a pretty dang good solution I hadn't managed to come up with. Two people capable of healing definitely reduces the strain of "Hey, I want to do something else please, can you stop getting hit!" and turns it into a more "My turn or your turn to heal him?" approach. Definitely makes bosses a bit less scary if two people can help revive the Rogue who wanted to flank.
Striding away is only so possible when the ooze grapples you and you just go down because of that. Hi. I'm the player Trey mentioned. Let me bring up my points. 1. It's true. I've never really played above 5th level, but considering my experience has been at these levels since release, it's a valid issue for low level play. How does one get through these early levels without the Cleric healing? Is the 2e slog just going to be that much worse? 2. Striding away isn't always a possibility. Many, many times have I had to stride up to the monster so I can actually do something. Sure, this may be a bit of leftover from 1e, but sometimes you just have to spend your turn adjacent to a creature so somebody else can live to see another day. I shouldn't be punished unfairly, and the Cleric shouldn't have to use two actions, just because I didn't have an extra action and I dropped to a crit, even with all the proper precautions. 3. Boss fights are designed to drop people. I understand that. I embrace that. This is actually the main reason I feel like a Cleric is needed, and the main reason I don't want to play the Cleric. When crap hits the fan, somebody has to be on heal duty, or combat has to drag on. 1e managed to avoid this, for the most part, simply due to how short the battles were, but now that the battles are longer, dropping out of combat on round one feels like $#!7! I'll just go walk away for 45 minutes and come back later because the sorcerer's slots are better spent on (as you've all mentioned) debuffs and damage so that the other party members can survive. I really don't like the feeling of being taken out of combat simply because I decided I wanted to do something in round 1 with my good initiative roll, and it happens all the damn time. 4. Out of combat, healing isn't a problem, it's actually typically trivial, assuming there isn't a time crunch. But point 3 still is my main concern. It may just be the group I'm with, or how I WANT to play a game like this, but in combat healing just seems so lackluster and boring.
The humanoid within the vault pokes its head out, sees everybody, and hides.
Player Name: Xavier
What are the levels allowed? I've got a few characters in need of a level, but I'm not sure how high up the totem pole I'm allowed to go.
Sometimes I just have to wonder what in the hell Paizo was thinking when writing tactics. Like, why was that supposed to make things difficult? We're level 13, and they still want poison? From a WITCH? And she's supposed to command zombies from the other side of the room? SMH.
Hooray for Rocket Tag I'm beginning to feel the whole "initiative wins battles" thing.
Yeah, after what happened to start the scenario, I want to be sure these encounters come one at a time. Two too close knocked most of us out. True that's what they were supposed to do, but, I vote no to "hard mode".
That's true. 10 minutes in a sphere. That's definitely enough to heal on up and be ready. Just gotta get awake. Fights where we aren't supposed to win should really be better telegraphed than what this author did. Goodness. I'm okay with the plan of waking up Arnaut, putting up the temp HP, slapping some people awake, and getting ready to bust some heads. The sphere is literally the only reason we can do that.
EDIT: The whole post. Yeah. Like, if those beads get us, that's (pretty much) the scenario. I drop, Arnaut drops, Zhu Li drops, and we're left with the bloodrager/DD. With some lucky rolls we can MAYBE get everybody up again, but, like, we are definitely lacking in the quick healing department. @Josh, I'm assuming it was a Splash weapon, so he only needed to target somebody in the front. Which, sadly, he totally could.
So what you're saying is that the dice love the GM and hate the players? Oh goodie. That's a GREAT combination of things! Leads to DEATH!
Darn. I knew it seemed odd. Something got reported wrong. Character is still level 1.
Oh sweet! I actually have a character I haven't played at level 2 yet. I'll have him join instead. I'll be retooling him into the barbarian/alchemist I mentioned before. That work?
Let's go with the barbarian, then! I'll have the character ready by tonight!
Oh, hello! I'll be creating a fresh level 1 for this. So, specifically not looking at gameplay, I hear you need a frontliner. I can bring my Dual-Personality barbarian (going though alchemist to master chymist eventually), or if needed I can quickly stat up a battle cleric. I'd prefer to do the barbarian, but battle cleric works just as easily for me. Let me know!
Hello joeyxl, I will send you a PM and help you get started. If you still have room, I've got a level 2 monk/bloodrager I'd like to get into the game, but I saw that some of the players for the September 1st game got pulled into another. I'd PM you, but I"m new to the forums and don't quite know how.
Player - Xavier Humberg
If you'll have me:
|