Having PFS games running alongside a home Abomination Vaults game, I appreciate a variety of encounters. One recent encounter in PFS I guarantee would have been sped up if we had another player smacking the enemies - 3 player group normally at most. We were against something with damage resistance, plus some high damage stuff. This was in a level 3-6 scenario. However, on the majority of level 1-4 scenarios? Players will stomp the enemies fairly easily aside from some of the Season 1 stories (for PFS2e) Vs the Abomination Vaults? Generally that's a consistant 5-6 person group, with unreliable difficulty scaling because either the group out damages the stuff pretty quick, or anything with damage resistance or immunity takes the whole session. It varies depending on the encounter and how easy a time I want to give the party. I personally find both satisfying in different ways. The PFS for the creativity that the players show, and the Abomination vaults partly because they show reasonable tactics in taking stuff down.
Depends on how much I can influence. Initial options would likely be to work on either an Iron Gods related book, or somewhere around Vudra. If I can do an AP, start with someone from a previously unknown dimension/wizard created demi plane starting to take various resources violently. Players in book 1 confront the thief, only to find that they're actually working to stop a worse event happening; a merging of the demi plane with its original plane, and Golarion has some of the resources needed to stop it. Book 2 is purloining these resources, and book 3 works on finding the person who started the merge
It was thanks to this thread I realised I was missing the "once per turn" restriction too. I still love the exemplar class for what it brings, but I'd sharply consider each ikon depending on concept. For example, both exemplars I have in PFS keep horn of plenty to heal allies, plus a single weapon ikon. The skeleton has the victor's wreath, and turned into a knock off cleric in part due to the PFS scenarios. Also, shenanigans junkie due to the players I have my end The minotaur is a front liner through and through. Self heals for days, plus the occasional potion transferance because we've had very few people who bring healing spells to our games. I've taken other options on other characters, mostly because they feel fun or thematic rather than because they're the best thing to bring such as a clan pistol on my gunslinger dwarf
Myself and a couple of the people we ran one adventure with joked that my level 5 was a great knock off cleric because of how I was using them. Potion box, heals when sparking transcendence and the Victor's wreath active effect to get rid of negative conditions did a damn good job faking a cleric for a time, and even managed to save a caster in another scenario by allowing a reroll of a negative condition which then gave the caster an action back (some form of action stealing spell that I don't recall now).
I've played two exemplars in PFS, one to level 5, one just got to level 3. The level 5 one is very much about causing havoc on enemies, while helping allies. I've build him to try and trip enemies, drop an ikon on their body let them struggle to get up. All while having extra mobility through ancestry passives, the noble branch ikon and potential other stuff. The level 3 one, I've build to be a HP and healing tank. Scar of the survivor, barrow's edge and horn of plenty. The horn of plenty has only been used on both characters to help heal allies (primarily the free elixir of life) but full potions as needed. The level 3 has been extremely solid, and able to hold enemies long enough for my allies to get the job done, even if the enemies take me down. In both cases, the exemplar has been the shenanigans class ready to buff allies, debuff enemies or dish out damage on a moment's notice
Ajaxius wrote:
I'm salty about elixir of life because with the overview, it looks like you can use it for healing undead because no vitality tag. The fact that flavour text and a buried in FAQ answer make it incompatible with undead healing will annoy any people wanting to use it, especially in Pathfinder Society where certain stuff is much more limited
Possibly not fully relevant here, but I'm thinking of taking the Wylderheart dedication for a character of mine. Background is that his family lived in the elven homeland, helped out during the Spore War and he got hit with the adventuring bug. Is there a boon for the Wylderheart Dedication I need to buy?
Agreed to 10 minutes can be tricky to find. For example, the local store we run Pathfinder Society in shuts at say 7PM one day, 10PM another. We've had occasions when we've been running against the clock to finish before store closure. And on other occasions we've breezed through stuff that could have taken longer in record time. Due to traffic etc we have to walk over to that store for at least a few minutes (I think closest parking is 5 minutes away). Do we start late because someone got caught in traffic, or power on with the introductions etc for scenarios and let them catch up is the name of the game. On average, we've finished earlier with smaller tables than larger tables, but that can be sometimes extended depending on optional encounters etc.
Stats blocks not being in the scenario came up for my group today - the intro to the Year of Battle's Spark. It was annoying but we dealt with because we had wifi plus the player core for a couple spells one of the enemies had. It was still enjoyable despite the minor interruptions. However, I wouldn't necessarily expect every GM to have everything to hand such as printouts, spare power banks and core books. People forget stuff or don't have access to content for other reasons.
Two of the entertaining to me ways I've been looking into making a healer? Divine witch with a cauldron multiclassed into the exemplar horn of plenty and alchemical sciences investigator with alchemist archetype just to see how powerful they could be. They're not necessarily powerful but they work with Pathfinder Society which probably has the majority of my experimental builds in due to me running a campaign. One of the other things I want to try eventually because aesthetics? Runelord wizard. In part because I've mostly played damage dealers of some kind, and I want to actually restrict myself to whatever anathemas each sin has.
Personal opinion? If they have the space to put appendices with monster stats in, they absolutely have the space to put spells in, at least for PDFs. At this point, if there was some kind of spell core that had all spells that were current with effects in, I would be tempted to buy partly so if we lose access to the internet for whatever reason, we can look them up like the pre internet days
In a sense, my local PFS lodge is lucky in that a fair few of us managed to snag a wide range of PFS adventures to start with, then got enough Paizo support to keep it running afterwards. Without people being generous and the store having wifi, we would have struggled without the stats line being in the scenario. We even struggle sometimes if there's a spell caster enemy because we need to know what X rank cantrip or spell does. To a point, I think if enemy stats are included, the spells that enemy uses should be included as well because it helps GMs have this kind of stuff to hand. Even if say people can look up a spell on pathbuilder, actually having the enemy stats/spell to hand in a book can save time
One of the quests for 2e (Green Gold dilemma) I've run says "talk to up to 4 people from this list." I've run it twice and pointed out "you won't be able to tall to everyone and fully convince them". First group focussed hard and got 2/3 of the advisors in the fully agree category. The second group I ran it for were a bit more chilled out about it and wanted to make sure everyone was at least friendly, if not fully convinced. I wasn't going to say no if they wanted to interact with everyone, although I did modify the checks a little to make sure they used appropriate skills.
Most entertaining one so far? Settrus the exemplar. Using a scythe, horn of plenty and viktor's wreath to burn enemies while buffing allies and transferring healing. Currently level 4, can heal when sparking transcendence and if facing enemies tripped next to him, can place his scythe on enemies to hold them there
I always justify the Thaumaturgist as that fricking guy down at the drinking hole who knows a bit about everything and is so charismatic he can get everyone talking. It's not a class I would run by default, as I kinda like classes where I can have a bit more free choice of weapon, not just 1h stuff. Or spellcasters, because there's always a use for a spellcaster somewhere
Hi all I'm double checking rules because the description for the transcendance ability for the Exemplar Horn of Plenty is confusing me, and my local GM slightly. If I used "feed the masses", would it be a single action, or a pair of actions? Both myself and the GM agree it's a max of two, and we would both like to figure out whether we're reading it wrong. Single Action - Feed the Masses Quote: The horn of plenty allows you to transfer the effects of potions and elixirs to your allies. You Interact to draw a consumable from the horn and then Interact to drink it. Rather than nourishing yourself, the item’s effects are transferred to a willing ally within 60 feet, as if they had consumed it themself. If the consumable restores Hit Points, you can choose to divide the amount it restores between you and the ally freely (after rolling dice to determine the amount). from AoN
Worth mentioning: If you're using the gauntlet bow, the description says that they also work like gauntlets in that you can use them as a melee weapon. The melee part of the gauntlet can get damage increases due to the exemplar getting an ability called "humble strikes" which ups the damage by one size. While this is a minor difference, the gauntlet bow is superior in one respect. The gauntlet bow can share applicable runes between melee and ranged attacks. So a +1 potency rune and a striking rune will be shared as far as I can tell
Claxon wrote:
True. Idea behind this build was group buff and debuff enemies. Scythe for trips, "Only the worthy" for pins. Plus upgrading athletics where I can. I'm trying to aim for a character build that can do some reasonable damage while minimising enemy actions and making sure the group he's with has buffs. Also so if I get a good initiative roll, this build can start making enemies feel the heat right from the start
Sir Belmont the Valiant, II wrote:
Pathfinder Society Character Options - sources - Starfinder Player Core. However, I do want to figure out if I can run one of the Starfinder Playtests and qualify to get the skittermander
Finoan wrote:
I think I know the kind of GM you describe - first PF1e GM made some questionable choices about RAW classes such as not believing that a magus could spell strike. However, thanks for the confirmation everyone
Hi all. Would a gauntlet and a gauntlet bow share a +1 potency and striking rune?
Context: I have an exemplar who's running the "Only the Worthy" feat, which allows the exemplar to pin a single enemy until the enemy makes an athletics check against the exemplar's class DC. I'm using a scythe as a main weapon and would like to have a free hand to catch the scythe if it ever gets removed.
NorrKnekten wrote:
Sweet, and thanks for double checking my reading of how this works. I'm kinda tempted to stack this with a bit of thaumaturge feats for a bit extra nasty damage
Hi all Just to check I'm interpreting the rules correctly, could I use a double barrelled pistol with the twin star class feat? If so, would the twin star effect end when I sparked transcendence with the pistols? I'm thinking of making a double barrelled pistol build using exemplar as a base class. Then have something else to back up the pistols while reloading
The only times I've seen snares or traps work even close to how they're intended have been premade ones. Or when the GM has been kind and let us modify stuff to work as a trap. For example, one scenario that GM ran recently was in Osirian clearing out a society lodge from a horde of undead. We dropped a couple of grease traps in likely charge lanes while using ranged stuff to bring the undead through the traps. If we had a single more body or a bit more prep time/gold, the final fight would have gone so much easier due to troop rules. The fighter was the only one who could reasonably damage it due to the GM ruling he could use a cone attack to hurt it, after I ran out of bombs.
zeonsghost wrote:
Hopefully yes. Thankfully recently they haven't run anything in the runup to Christmas/New Year. Sometimes logistics are a bit off due to room size (one room we regularly use is so cramped that we have to play a variation of musical chairs if the wrong person wants to go to the toilet. If I get there early enough I tend to get a seat basically next to the GM but at a 90 degree angle to them. I've always offered to share rolls as required. Only big rolls I've seen that aren't covered by Pathbuilder 2e are death saves and the 2d8 health recovery rolls for treat wound checks. And I could easily enough figure something out if I was desperate.
Sebastian Hirsch wrote:
Unfortunately the local VO is one of the two who started calling for it...... and is also a friend of the store owner. Main reason I went to said store owner first is to ask "how do I approach this?" To which the response was that the store owner would have a word and ask. Otherwise, I may just try going online for a few games more
Minor update for this: I spoke to the store owner, pointed out it was kinda taking me out of the zone because disabled brain is weird. Owner said they'd have a word. Not sure if that happened yet, but it only seems to be maybe 2 GMs, one of which ran today. Second roll in, I got "please can you use physical dice" which brought me out of my zone. I'm going to ask if that conversation did happen before doing anything else because I really don't feel comfortable playing with those GMs now if they're going to pull this stuff 10 minutes into session. Especially when the room we're in barely fits 7 people+GM screen.
Finoan wrote:
This absolutely makes sense. I had a reread of the rules and ikons. If we allow that you can stack "Skin Hard as Horn" on skin and "Scar of the Survivor" on skin level scars, this would imply you can stack ikons into the same item.
Reasonable. I think the wording needs cleaning up ever so slightly to clarify whether item ikons can hold multiple ikons.
Finoan wrote:
The idea isn't for Sparking Transcendence. I'm trying to find out if the Immenance stacks
Tomppa wrote:
Thanks. I feel a bit silly now |