kogarou's page

Given the importance of selling PDFs to keep Paizo employees safe in COVID times, can the company send a DMCA request to the simplest source of piracy I've seen? I'm going to avoid sharing information publicly here but they're very visible and 120% breaking Community Use Policy.

I am so dang happy you're releasing extra content like this. Thank you!

Vallarthis, thanks, that makes a lot more sense than having to calculate the literal speed players move and think about how much arriving early or late in the day causes an impact on an event at the destination. Because that's usually beyond player knowledge. I'll use this trick sparingly but when I think it's needed.

Perhaps there will even be guidelines in the GMG about how travel speed interacts with random encounters. Though hey, right off the bat, it makes sense if players can estimate how many times they need to make camp (given miles to destination), that could lead to some interesting thinking. Fast characters like elves laden with Speed feats might be able to take the 1/2 Speed penalty from an exploration activity without slowing their group, allowing them to avoid an extra encounter roll. For short trips that should take well less than a day even moving slowly, characters should all just pick a slow activity.

Suddenly I love this.

I think this is up to GM fiat. I'd like to say yes (at 50% of the item value, as per items that have been disassembled in hopes of obtaining its formula, and no longer simply Repaired), and allow my players to reforge a destroyed beloved item into something new, within reason - metal to metal. Perhaps sometimes they'd even like to upgrade an unbroken item, (though I'd still force it to be disassembled to 50% value first). This could increase the value of crafting as opposed to just buying new items in the store.

Any thoughts or conflicting rules? Maybe when an item is destroyed as opposed to intentionally disassembled, I could apply the -10% raw material value penalty for critically failing a reverse engineer attempt.

I dislike when players say "assume I'm always detecting magic, and my weapon's drawn, and I have a readied attack". Are there any relevant rules about this? It seems like the exploration mode rules could apply (you're slow if you're so cautious), but then my players will probably just slow walk everywhere. I don't want to embarrass them in-game either, just give them a sense of baseline normal behavior.

AKA, given this quote: "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game" - what new tools does this edition give me to limit that opportunity?

If the GM even makes The Dryad Queen take a check (the GM certainly doesn't have to say they're making a roll to deceive the players, and generally lets players control the PCs' opinions), she will still fail to deceive any player trained in Perception (aka everybody) on a Nat 1. Every class is at least Expert Perception by level 13, leading to a minimum Perception DC of 10 + (modifier: -1) + (proficiency: 17) = 26. Her roll of 31 = success would reduce to failure (the worst possible outcome for Deception(Lie)).

Your min-maxed high perception character has a DC 34, meaning they disbelieve lies 15% of the time. True, that's not much payoff in this case, but it works better against the rest of the bestiary. And after the first lie detected, you'd get +4(circumstance) vs future Lie attempts in the same conversation!

Edit: My bad, just realized players would request a Sense Motive check rather than the GM rolling Deception(Lie). Checking the rules on page 471 now...

Just checked all other level 13 monsters - the only others with Deception are the Gelugon (Devil) at +25, Adult Blue Dragon at +26, and Glabrezu (Demon) at +28, and generally skill modifiers float around 22-24 unless they're just a simple fighter with only Athletics +30. Looks like the Dryad Queen is intentionally very strong at skills. Most monsters don't have that skill trained at all, meaning their deception is utter garbage (raw charisma).

So it's very valuable to use abilities that reveal such information. Monsters feel really good in their specialties but not everything. Only monsters with thematic reasons to deceive seem to have the skill available.

Players use skills to hit 1 known DC of interest.

This monster needs to use Deception to have a chance (but not guarantee) of fooling a party of 4.

There must also be spells that have a decent-but-not-absolute protection against deception.

Not enough evidence that anything is wrong here. Sounds more like something is right.

Hoping for each monster skill with an override modifier to be specifically fluffed up in the flavor text! This helps DMs describe things for their players, so the group can develop an intuition for its capabilities outside of observing the results of rolls.

So for Redcaps, I'd love to see lore describing lithe, springy (Acrobatics), but freakishly strong (Athletics) creatures, with specific examples of how they trick their victims (Deception), terrify the good and bully their minions (Intimidation), utilizing the features of their environment (Nature) to silently ambush lone travelers (Stealth). No need for the heavy-handed parentheticals - they're just to make my point.

Though I wouldn't call this fluff anymore, I'd call it integral. And perhaps it's already part of your development process! -- Thanks for creating a specific Exploration Mode to highlight roleplay; please give us many tools. Looking forward to consuming the playtest materials. :)