eardianm's page

Going to be playing in a not sanctioned level 7 PFS scenario with a Slayer next week, so went ahead and built one out. Will update this after session with full feedback. Not going to touch on the Mark Quarry issues others have already raised and it's lack of compatibility with most PFS scenarios to ever grow your trophy list. The most consistent use of Mark Quarry I see in PFS is to find a party member your level or higher, mark them as quarry, and trigger blood rush at the start of every fight (there is no language limiting who/what your target can be).

As others have mentioned, not taking Bloodseeking Blade (or maybe Warded Mail) seems like purposefully choosing a niche option for what should be your big class piece, so the plan was weapon, take something fun from the advanced weapon list, and mix up the two handed trait feats with the built in spellcasting feats. The latter specifically though started looking questionable after initial inspection.

Slayer's Tricks (2) -> Spell Slates (6) -> Expanded Spell Slates (12)

Benefits:
- Not a dedication, so I spose in a FA game you could double dip for additional casting. Non-relevant in PFS
- +1 spell slot of highest level with the 2nd feat in the chain, meaning an extra 6th by level 16, when reinforced. No spellcasting dedication options get you this
- Cast a spell for these spells gets relentless tag

Downsides:
- Innate casting DC improvement, not your 1/9/17 class DC like a monk/ranger/champ gish, so after early levels it's probably buff or utility focus only
- WIS focus actually hampers any other innate casting from ancestries, and no way to have ancestry/other innate spells tagged as Slayer spells
- Gain no access to any item casting. All spells are innate, you do not get the normal dedication item rider
- Gain spells at the exact same rate as paying for dedication feats. This is admittedly neutral in a vacuum but combines with the other concerns
- Occult list only, unless you take a pretty bad looking panolpy signature tool to open up divine list as well. More realistic at lvl 11 with second tool to grab for the saving throw bump
- For casting + strikes, almost all meta strikes in the Slayer feat tree already get relentless, meaning you can still take two 2 action activities without needing the tag on spells

After reviewing it, I just dumped both planned spellcaster feats and would go cleric/druid for spellcasting if I wanted to keep the gish angle. Losing item access alone sounds like a horrible trade off for +1 max level spell with bad DCs, and in play I'm not anticipating many situations where the only relentless option would be to cast one of these spells vs a meta strike or other class action with the relentless tag.

The end text states that the PCs earn 1 Reputation, but this should be 2 Reputation, as for all Series 2 quests.

In B2, I think the intent of "Skill Actions" is combat maneuvers, i.e. grapple/shove/trip/reposition. The vulkariki (a.k.a. squox) has no Strikes and would only be doing Acrobatics in place of Athletics to grapple/shove/etc. The existence of the tentacle Strike of the sharktopus and that being a requirement to do its faceglomph does indeed contradict the text, but whatever. If you're running B2, it would be a crime not to use that ability.

I think the sharktopus also gets attacks because it's included in the final scene.

I decided to do some DC17 (high tier) checks for both the party and the eidolons trying to push off/keep crates on. 2x with either or a clean push off/on with a crit success. This allowed the eidolons to push one crate off before the party crit their athletics to get the crate back up. Since the cart is supposed to be moving I explained they had 1 round to get it back up before the cart moved too far away. No idea if I was over complicating but wanted something that seemed to make sense for some tiny slow moving creatures to run away with crates.

Players called out the starting point for the cart in B2 is weird considering the constant movement, as it's headed directly for a tent. I will probably adjust starting spot to an area with a relatively clear path and add in a 10'x5' cart NPC that can be moved each round to add some dynamic to the scene.

Overall everyone at the table still enjoyed this but hoping it can have a quick improvement pass before running it regularly.

Only other question/concern is with Encounter B, as it is very unclear to me what stealing the crates entails for B1 or B2. I guess a successful roll/interact and they melt into the crowd since the wagon is still supposed to be moving? I was expecting to see some sort of counter/skill check here, while B3 is very clear since they are trying to burn the books instead.

Hi! Love quest series 2, enough that I like to run them immediately and do the manual data entry into Foundry. For quest 17 though, I saw a bunch of weirdness in the stat blocks that I'm unclear if was planned or editing error, or just normal things I miss by using premade VTT or PDF importers.

Called out on store page elsewhere - Page 3 states The Swordlord's Challenge instead of Escorting a Mirage. Also the updated pdf from 2/29 lacks a table of contents

NPC quirks
- All elite and weak tags appear to have creature level +2/-2 (Foundry implementation is +1/-1)

- Foolhardy Merc - low tier have shortswords in their inventory but only use dagger attack. This appears to be the only merc statblock that has shortsword in the inventory

- Elite Foolhardy Merc - all stats change as if elite tag was applied except for AC (stays static vs gaining 2) and HP (gains 15 instead of 10 from the tag, level -1 base)

- Angry Foolhardy Merc - uses shortsword attack but only has daggers in inventory

- Elite Trained Vulkariki Eidolon - all elite stats appears to be applied except AC only gains +2 vs expected +3 with elite tag

- Weak "Enlightned" Div Worshipper - weak tag reduces hp by 10 instead of 15 (base create is level 3)

- Angry Merc Squad - Get'em ability damage scaling goes from base d6 to d8. But standard/low tier version one action version is 1d6+2, while Angry/high tier is 1d8, which seems like a weird damage loss. Two and three action versions scale higher than low tier version.

- Empowered Shadow of Sezruth - HP is the exact same as low tier version while the rest of stats have scaled appropriately. This seems like the biggest oddity and could make this encounter much easier than planned.

Also seeing what look like a bunch of minor errors/discrepancies in scaling for NPC blocks for this quest. Admittedly I'm normally running pre-made VTT packages or pdf imports in Foundry for these things so I may just not normally notice, but it had me questioning intent on multiple items.