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That premise honestly sounds a ton like the beginning of Rise of the Runelords. Why not just run Rise of the Runelords? O.o

Because I don't want to buy Rise of the Runelords and I don't really feel comfortable running modules/adventure paths. I never seem to know them as well as I know stuff I've put together myself (even if the stuff I put together myself relies on stuff from modules/adventure paths) and it's harder for me to be smooth and go with it if the players go "off track."

So... just a finance and comfort thing is all. :)

It went REALLY well, Llefser. We're only able to play about once a month, and I'd greatly overprepped... which isn't a bad thing. But at this rate, I've got the next 4 months worth of sessions just sitting there ready to go.

So there are 3 PCs - a Human Wizard (Illusionist), an Elvish Rogue, and an Elvish Fighter. I've tossed in a Dwarvish Cleric NPC for some healing. I ran the Deadly Mine adventure with all the little bits about the candle and the players took the bait hook, line, and sinker (although they did catch me up on one thing; if the mine had been abandoned for such a long time, why did the dwarf miner found by the elemental totally step over a burning candle to start looking at the gold flecks in the wall? Wouldn't a candle - obviously a sign of recent activity - give him pause? As a long shot I had the dwarf miner tell them that he saw it and was a bit concerned until he saw the gold flecks in the wall and then his greed took over.)

When they got back to town and reported to the mayor and sheriff, they started giving each other glances and talking about coincidences; finally they told them that a few nights ago a stock of candles had been taken from the cathedral, and that last night weird noises and candlelight had been seen from within a mausoleum.

That's as far as we got... next session (the 10th of next month) will find them looking into the mausoleum part of the Beginner Bash: Terrors adventure, and they'll find out that Shalelu spotted two thugs delivering a couple of boxes to some dude out by Raven's Watch; she'll have investigated and found a dropped candle (which matches that found in the mine and the mausoleum.)

Good fun!

Thanks, Don Walker, but it sounds like you didn't read my post. My group and I are very experienced so I'm not looking for assistance with the hook or how to handle players who don't take the bait. I'm looking for ideas to create a believable connection between two unrelated adventures.

OberonViking, I like the idea of Abstalar's stolen candles and Shalelu spotting Thelsikar out by the ruins. The party has a cleric and a rangeresque fighter, both of whom are acquainted with Abstalar and Shalelu, so that just might be what I need.

Thanks!

So this Saturday I'm starting a Beginner Box game. The players are all experienced players and were, at one point, part of the longest running gaming group with which I've been involved (although most of these players haven't gamed for a while).

I'm running the Beginner Box for two reasons: 1) its layout and presentation is GREAT, and 2) I hadn't received my copy of the Core Rulebook before we started making characters. We're going to transition to the Core Rulebook as the characters level.

To make it easier on me, I'm using mostly published Beginner Box adventures, twisting, modifying, and stringing them together into a longer campaign. Here's what I've got so far:

Thelsikar, the evil cleric of Lamashtu, is planning to destroy Sandpoint as a sacrifice to Lamashtu by unleashing summoned monsters on the town. He has two things in his favor: a ritual which binds an evil spirit to a specially prepared candle and summons it into a consecrated receptacle, and a deal with Black Fang for whom he promises to make a growth potion if Black Fang will attack Sandpoint.

Here's some detail on the ritual: the evil spirit summoned is bound to the candle yet exists in a body (the receptacle); this can be a corpse, a body-shaped collection of rocks, etc. As long as the receptacle is animate, the candle cannot be extinguished.

So here's what I've got so far: the game will start with the Deadly Mine adventure from the GM Kit. The elemental is Thelsikar's first attempt with the ritual, so the characters will find a burning candle which they can't extinguish until the elemental is dead. When they return to the mayor and sheriff with the miners, the sheriff will recall someone reporting to him flickering lights in the mausoleum, and the sounds of movement. He will ask the adventurers to investigate. This is the Beginner Box Bash: Terror adventure (at least the mausoleum part of it). Of course, the monsters will be zombies - not skeletons - and the characters should find more of the candles.

Now here's where I'm stuck. I want to flesh out Ruins of Raven's Watch from the GameMasters Guide and make that the next stop, which will lead to Black Fang's Dungeon as the "boss dungeon". What I'd like to have happen is for the candles to lead the characters to Thelsikar somehow, which leads them to the Ruins where they find him. I was thinking that maybe one of the shops could have sold Thelsikar the candles (which gets them the name), but then routing them to the Ruins is giving me a problem.

So. Anyone have an idea?

If he uses your work in something he releases publicly, he'll have to acknowledge your work... it's required by the OGL. :)

This may not be a strictly Beginner Box topic, but Paizo? What are the chances we could get - either as part of the Beginner Box download "collection" or as a teaser for some other product - a Sandpoint gazetteer?

I'd love to have a bit more information on this awesome little town and its hinterlands than what's in the Beginner Box. I'm just starting a Beginner Box campaign that - thanks to the new Transitions document - will become a Core game once the characters level a bit. Sandpoint is going to be the characters' home area, with most of their adventures for the foreseeable future taking place in Sandpoint or its hinterlands.

If something like this already exists, I'd be much obliged if someone could point it out to me. :)

Thanks!

This is... rad. I'm starting up a BB campaign which I plan to transition to the Core rules after 5th level. Thanks for this!

Well, this is totally pedantic, but I wouldn't call it "multiclassing" for the BB; I'd call it "class switching" and limit it to one class switch over the 5 levels the BB covers.

Then I'd make sure that not only does the character take on the strengths of both classes, but the weaknesses as well. BB wizards can't cast spells in armor, so characters who switch class to a wizard (or from a wizard) can't cast spells in armor either.

That's just my $.02. :)

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. There's also the seed for that Ruins of Raven's Watch adventure in the GM's book which is tied to Black Fang. I'm going to flesh that out, although I'm not sure if I'm going to run it before or after the actual Black Fang adventure. It could be a great lead-up to it, the characters find the evil priest and his plans which lead them to the dragon.

But yeah, definitely lots of dragon foreshadowing. :)

I'm starting a monthly-ish BB game for which we're doing character creation right now. To start us off, I'm going to run the basic BB adventures - the one in the GM's book, the GM's PDF, and some of the Bash's - first, tying them together in some way using the character's backgrounds.

I'm thinking I'm going to run the mine adventure from the GM's PDF first; these are all experienced players and if I throw a dragon at them - even a small one like that in the GM's book adventure - I'm going to get dice hucked at me. :)

So I figured I'd run the mine adventure, then a couple of Bash's, then the Black Fang adventure once they've got some XP and play-time underneath them.

Anyone see any issues with that approach?

In the Hero's Handbook, page 43, it is stated that Fighters automatically get the Toughness feat at 2nd level. On page 23, there is no mention of Fighters getting the Toughness feat.

Which is correct? I assume that the feat description is incorrect and Fighters do not automatically get Toughness, but *shrug*.

3rd: Before the game, take a d20, roll it 20-30 times and write down the results on a sheet of paper in order. Then, whenever an NPC needs to make a roll, like a Bluff for example, you can just look at the 1st number on the sheet and cross it off. This lets you prevents you from giving anything away by rolling dice.

That's... genius. I've been GMing for years and never once did I think of that. Super good idea.

As mentioned several times in many places, the BeginnerBox is a great system for E5/E6 games. Has anyone considered importing the "slow" advancement table from the full rules (on http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/classes.html in the PRD) for E5/E6 games?

Hey, did y'all know that Lone Wolf released a free "starter edition" of their Hero Labs software, which is for the BeginnerBox alone?

That's really sweet!

Why not just copy/paste what you want your players to have from the online SRD?

Oh, wow, I was going to ignore the pawns in favor of scouring the 'net for the D&D miniatures I wanted until I saw the mention of the Bestiary Box above. That's really cool, I must have one. :)

Yeah, I'm already selling a bunch of old games so I can get the full rulebook... and the bestiary... and a whole bunch of other PF stuff. Heh.

Oh, wow, this is some great stuff. (Yeah, I know, late to the party. Sue me, heh.)

I've been running a near-monthly Swords & Wizardry game for the last year or so, but the players are all Pathfinder-heads. While they enjoyed S&W, it just didn't have enough "game" for them, so they convinced me to convert to Pathfinder.

I've been a D&D DM for a long time, but I was discouraged with 3.5 came out and started running older editions. I never got into Pathfinder, D&D 4.0 or any other new games until I got the BeginnerBox to help re-acquaint me with the 3.5-esque system.

Paizo, you've hit a winner with the BeginnerBox. It's... really good. The rules are good, the presentation is good, the playability is good... it actually makes me want to run, which is something I haven't felt since I picked up Swords & Wizardry a couple of years back.

So, kudos. Good job. Right on. And all those other congratulatory quips. :)

My gaming group is working on playing through the play test adventures and I have some feedback about the skill and proficiency system. I'm going to attempt to keep this concise and avoid some of the circular discussions I've read on other similar posts.

Background - I'm an experienced gamer on the min/max end of the spectrum with experience in 3.5, pathfinder 1.0, and D&D 5E. I have so far play tested PF 2.0 at levels 1, 4, 5, 7, and 9

Thesis - I don't know how to be good at things in this game. My impression so far is that the underlying math of this system places more variance in uncontrollable factors than in choices the players can make for their characters. This makes it difficult or impossible to make a character that feels like they are good at something.

Math - Dice rolling games are about probability and variance. All checks in PF 2.0 use a d20 which has a flat probability curve and and a variance of about 5. Checks are resolved either against an arbitrary DC set by the DM, author, or developer or against another character's statistics. Since an arbitrary DC can be adjusted at any time, it's more useful to talk about opposed checks.

The numbers feeding into a check include several components, all of which are sources of variance in the result of the check. These are Dice, Level, Proficiency, Stats, Items and Conditions (including buff spells).

explanation of the magnitude of the variance
Dice: about 5, because math
Level: 5 (from -1 for easy encounters to +4 for deadly ones)
Proficiency: 7, skewed a the bottom (from -4 for untrained to +3 for legendary)
Stats: 6 (from -1 for a penalty to +5 for an invested specialist)
Items: about 3 (from 0 for basic to +3 for legendary)
Conditions: about 3 (this one is tricky to count, but in play it seems hard to stack too many conditions at once)

In practice what I have observed is that Dice and Level are the biggest sources of meaningful variance. Generally proficiency, stats, items and conditions only vary by a point or two each since everyone is generally trying to use skills (including attacks and such) that they're good at. Simplified down that leaves us:
Dice: 5
Level: 5
Other: 6

That means that all of the choices players are making in builds, gear and tactics are only slightly more impactful to their success than the level of the challenge they're facing and the whims of chance.

Impressions from play - My experience playing this system, unsurprisingly, supports this analysis. Characters succeed more when they're dealing with low level challenges and fail more with high level ones. When dice are hot, a character rarely fails and when dice are cold they rarely succeed. In many cases it's not even worth adding the bonuses. If the dice show 4, the check fails and if the dice show 17, the check succeeds. To my perspective it makes the game feel more like roulette than chess, and that makes it a lot less fun for me to play. I enjoy RPGs the most when the choices of the players and the characters have a significant impact on game and such a heavy focus on chance takes that away.

Suggestions - I suggest augmenting the bonuses from proficiency ranks. -4/0/2/4/6 seems about right, though I wouldn't be sad to see -6/0/3/6/9. This would allow characters choices to start to outweigh the die rolls.

I suggest reducing or removing the level bonus to checks. Half or even one third character level would be good. I find it disappointing to look at challenges 5 levels above or below my character level and know that they are not worth engaging because one side will roll over the other.

I also suggest, and this is something of a tangent, reworking class abilities that are tied to level appropriate DCs. It's unsatisfying to have spent build choices and actions on abilities that might or might not activate, depending on the dice. I'm specifically looking at the bard's Inspire Heroics and Lingering Performance.

What favored class bonus options do the hybrid classes have? Will they be able to take a favored class option from either of the classes that they combine? Will there be a list in the final book of favored class options for each race? Are they stuck with +1 hp/+1 skill?

I think allowing them to take options from either class makes the most sense and requires the least work from the developers.

I have a Hellknight wizard who has one level in the Hellknight Signifier PrC. I'm having some trouble figuring out the PFS legal way to handle upgrading my bonded item. As part of the PrC I get a Signifier Mask that, as far as I can tell, is a non-magical head slot item. After I perform the ritual to make it my bonded item, can I then upgrade it so that it functions as a specific head slot item, say a hat of disguise?

If I can I'm assuming that I need to:
1. Choose an item with a base price allowed by my Fame score
2. Spend the gold to pay the crafting costs
3. Make an appropriate spellcraft check to craft the item

I looked through the forums but didn't see anything that addressed upgrading a specific item as opposed to bonding a new item.

As a follow up question, assuming that I can upgrade my mask in this way, is this a one time decision? Or can I later scrap the enchantment that makes it act as a Hat of Disguise and pay the costs again to make it function as a Helm of Underwater Action?

I'm curious what other GMs have done with the sin points mechanic in the AE. I'm thinking about scattering a number of encounters throughout the AP that specifically give the PCs a chance to be sinful or virtuous. While these might be combat encounters, I'm really looking for situations more like the Shayliss/Venn Vindner encounter to really tweak my players and give them chances to explore their character's sins.

So what have you done, or what ideas do you have for encounters that give characters the chance to be Envious, Gluttonous, Greedy, Lustful, Proud, Slothful and Wrathful?

Here's the situation:
Round 1:
Monk: grapples Baddy
Baddy: Attempts to break grapple, Monk giggles

Round 2:
Monk: Makes his grapple check against Baddy, chooses to 'move'. The path of movement takes Baddy through squares threatened by Fighter who is an ally of Monk.
Baddy: Attempts his escape check with +4 bonus for being moved through a dangerous situation, Monk giggles again

Here's the question:
Does Fighter get an attack of opportunity?

The Argument for an AoO: Baddy has moved through Fighter's threatened square and so provokes an AoO. It is fair since Monk spent two round setting up this little dance and Baddy got two opportunities to resist.

The Argument against an AoO: Baddy has taken no actions that provoke AoOs. He was moved through threatened squares but took no actions of his own and cannot provoke AoOs unless the rules say otherwise (greater trip etc). It is unfair since it makes greater reposition somewhat redundant.

The grapple rules are decidedly vague on this point

Move:
You can move both yourself and your target up to half your speed. At the end of your movement, you can place your target in any square adjacent to you. If you attempt to place your foe in a hazardous location, such as in a wall of fire or over a pit, the target receives a free attempt to break your grapple with a +4 bonus.

I was just curious if I'm missing something about this item. It's listed in the campaign setting as a purchasable magic item yet that book doesn't say what happens when an ioun stone is inserted. Is there more coming out about this cool item?

One of my players is playing a halfling druid who is a very caring soul. When the party explored thistletop they found two goblin children in cages. She stopped the other characters from killing them and brought them home with her. She talked Madame M'vashti into keeping the goblins secret in the basement and is hoping to work out something with the master of turnadarok academy about an education. In the end, she wants to help the goblins to become something more than petty thieves and pawns for larger powers. She wants to give them something to be proud of.

My question is, What legitimate enterprise could the goblins undertake? I love the idea of at least some goblins rising above their bickering tribes but I have no good idea where to take this.

I was reading through PF6 last night and came across something that I couldn't make sense of. The description of the dwarves cabin is great, but at several points it references a storm brought up by the Wendigo yet there's no description about when the storm starts. My assumption is that it starts about the time they find the cabin and gets heavier as the story unfolds but some clarification would be nice. I was definitely caught off guard when I read about the haunt that sends the PCs stumbling out into the previously unmentioned blizzard.