p-sto's page

Mass combat in Pathfinder and the troop template are still utterly terrible. This hasn't change since Assault on the Wound was published. I really hope these won't be recurring themes in season 9.

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Eliandra Giltessan wrote:

My one hope for Starfinder Society is that Drendle Dreng is still around handing out missions with no explanation given.

That would definitely be a weird feeling for us who have Seeker characters.

Perhaps that's because he's a deity and he's forgotten he is one? And has so MUCH information crammed inside his head he's also forgotten everything pre-Gap?

I would certainly play a cleric of Drendle Drang.

And APs do include the continuing the campaign section in the final installment. Not that I've purchased a huge number of APs but from what I've seen these entries are thought out quite well. And really if you are playing a party up to level 20 you probably should be designing your own encounters at that point given the huge potential variation in power.

p-sto wrote:

MadScientistWorking wrote:

p-sto wrote:

Will the prestige class be opened just to the character with the chronicle or all characters that belong to that player? Are all the prestige classes eventually going to be given on chronicle sheets or just some? Will they all be this season or spread out over the next few years?

To answer your first question its typically opens up to all characters with the option to retrain into it with that character.

Which doesn't really help if the character you built for the PrC is now level 10 because you were waiting over a year for it and the chronicle is on another character.

Why did you build a character off of content that you had no clue as of the legality of? Especially when it's common enough knowledge that they do this all the time.

I realized a while ago that this isn't the campaign for me. Personally I would prefer something where the rules were less kafkaesque and more apparent. I have become rather attached to the local community however which is why I try to find reasons to stay involved.

It's entirely possible that the number of interesting improved familiars never landing on a character that could plausibly use them or spare the feats have left me distrustful.

It's a really interesting idea to have players actually earn access to prestige classes in PFS but I do wonder if the way PFS is typically executed might dampen some of the enjoyment.

Will the prestige class be opened just to the character with the chronicle or all characters that belong to that player? Are all the prestige classes eventually going to be given on chronicle sheets or just some? Will they all be this season or spread out over the next few years?

In my opinion the tendency for PFS to be tight lipped on such matters doesn't help the campaign. Nobody would play with a GM who upon hearing your proposed character build wouldn't confirm that you'd be able to enter the prestige class you desire only to grant access to another character that isn't even suited for the PrC well past the ideal level for entry.

Seems like a silly suggestion at first glance. However, the thought of a possible Starfinder organized play being set up and the additional work load finally pushing campaign management to the point where they can't keep up any more seems fairly plausible.

Sanctioning, VO appointments and event support PFS is already lagging on all fronts in my opinion and at least based on what I've seen on the forum I don't see signs of things getting any better.

I'm kinda curious, why some people lose their interest instantly upon hearing word "aboleth"? Were those over used back in D&D days? .-.

Aboleths are great in terms of the history and flavour of Golarion. My main objection to them is that with their abilities, quite over powered for their CR, they make terrible villains. Either the party expects the aboleth, prepares appropriately, and it becomes effectively useless in combat or they don't and PCs will probably end up dying with no chance to resist.

In terms of stat blocks I consider them one of the worst monsters in all the bestiaries. Can't say I want to go anywhere near an adventure where it looks like there's a good chance an aboleth will be a major if not the major villain of the adventure. Unless of course the authors are clever enough to find a way to have an aboleth themed adventure where PCs never actually meet an aboleth.

Can't say I've ever managed to bring myself to read how mesmerists work. Is the fez a class feature or something?

I think that a store incentive plan is a good idea. The Harder to Kill boon seems to be overpowered IMO. I like the thought that PC can be killed if they dance around the front lines with low hit points instead of strategically withdrawing. If the bonus was divided in half say 2/5 it would serve the same purpose without unbalancing the game.

I like harder to kill mostly because it helps lower level parties and is almost irrelevant once you get to higher level play. For a level one character it may mean the player is out of fight, not out of the scenario and building a new character for the next one.

But for a party that has access to breath of life it makes almost no difference to what happens.

It's almost never going to make the difference between winning or losing a scenario but it gives a nice fringe benefit for supporting the stores that host us which is right where it should be in my opinion.

Just thought that I'd report that tonight this new incentive program saved a character from death :-).

And the Pathfinder Society pawn set has some absolutely lovely pieces to it. I'm glad I finally got around to getting it and that the timing of the purchase happened to be so fortuitous.

Check out the product page for In Hell's Bright Shadow. It's definitely there.

Also the boon for completing book six. Just wow. It's interesting to say the least.

Gypsy doesn't necessarily refer to the Roma. There's ample room for considering the word a slur (akin to Tramp or Bum or maybe even Hobo) and that is fair enough reason to avoid its use to describe the Varisians, but saying it's a racist slur is a step beyond objectively fair critique.

It's true that in some English speaking regions the meaning of the word has become watered down but I don't think that means that we ignore the racist history behind its usage.

I would call desecrating a corpse and preventing a soul from reaching the afterlife going beyond the evil descriptor of the spell.

I've never actually bothered to look at the faq on this topic until now. I'll note that it doesn't actually specify that a GM can't call out using spells such as animate dead as evil acts.

I know it's tradition to release the new Guide close to the start of the new season but I can't help but feel it was an error in judgement to release a document with controversial rules changes at time that campaign management knew they would be unavailable to respond to criticisms online.

Andrew, I appreciate the effort you're putting towards being cooperative, however I can't find much motivation to provide useful feedback on this topic. Outside of the vague sections of this change of policy many here have gone to great efforts to outline why this change will degrade the quality of play for everyone involved and discourage newcomers from staying with the game. Any experienced player that I've spoken to locally who has seen this has expressed that this will result in them simply not playing pregens when that is their only option.

Something that perhaps has not been as highlighted as it should be in this thread is the fact that as a player, a GM and an organizer I'm highly appreciated when a player is willing to play a pregen. More than once it's been a concession that makes the difference between people playing and sending two players and a GM home.

Steven Schopmeyer wrote:

AkosPrime wrote:

torrquan wrote:

...I realize the guide has a page count or word count limit...

I'd like to ask the PFS newbie pink elephant question: why is there a page/word count limit on an electronic only document?

Development time. It takes longer to put together a longer PDF than a shorter one.

Perhaps even more importantly, user attention span.

The previous iteration of the guide was much longer and as a result most new players did not read it. The new guide is much shorter, and the important parts are closer to the front.

Funny, I'm actually finding the season 8 guide much harder to read. It's pedantic at some parts and to create room for this it seems they reduced the word count for other sections making them so vague that it's hard to understand intention of the explanation without having outside knowledge. Looks like the amount of art included in the guide has also been reduced and I don't like that they pushed back the character creation guidelines so far back since it's easily the most valuable reference for new players who don't actually need to read through the GM relevant sections.

Realistically, since I GM most of the time, this doesn't affect me all that much. It just means I can't go to PFS for any session in which I'm not either GMing or playing a scenario that I'm 100% sure will fire. It also means I can't play in any pregen specials unless I don't care about not getting a Chronicle, but I can live with that. More time at home with Skyrim. ^_^

Really I'm more concerned about how this impacts me as a GM than how it affects my characters. I have characters in almost every subtier so the risk of me losing a character to pregen play is minimal. I just don't savour the idea of killing off the low level PCs of inexperienced players on a technicality. Giving the player the choice at the start of the adventure of whether they will assign the credit to a new character that they may not be ready to build or risking the only character they've invested in feels like bogging them down with minutia they shouldn't have to worry about.

Take away the ability for a familiar to cast this on you and the spell suddenly becomes much less attractive in combat. Really the thing I'd prefer to see removed from PFS is the ability for familiars to use wands. Way too much cheese comes from this.

Jeffrey Fox wrote:

Steven Lau wrote:

This has not been confirmed yet since this was a FAQ not something in the Guide and the FAQ still states you can.

The question has come up at Gen con and the answer from Tonya was that the change is intentional,

I'm sure after Gen Con the conflicting FAQ will be removed.

Sigh... If this is the case I am not a fan of this change. My personal experience with who actually uses PreGens most of the time, this only hurts new players and keeping them.

Agreed. There's a strong impression with the rules for PFS that the campaign is willing to make things harder on beginners for the sake of boxing out abusive corner cases that VOs and organizers should be using their discretion to keep out of the campaign anyway.

Pathfinder is a complicated rules set to begin with but almost universally when a new player looks at me as if I'm speaking gibberish it's not because I'm explaining the game rules it's the minutia of the campaign rules that trips them up.

Between the campaign rules and scenario design for season seven I'm getting the impression that PFS is not a beginner friendly atmosphere. It's a campaign that's designed for players who enjoy bending complicated rules systems as far as they can.

I organize two weekly game days and it appears that I'm now taking responsibility for a third biweekly one that cropping up. I'm strongly considering taking at least one of these events out of PFS for the sake of players who just want to play Pathfinder as opposed to gaming a set of increasingly punitive rules.

Some tips for running this based on the experience I've had

I've spent the better part of two months GMing Wardens of the Reborn Forge and it's been the most tedious PFS experience I've ever had. The main reason being I decided to run it as a seeker arc which requires running it as written. This is a module that should never be run as written both due to the tier and the mechanics involved. To be clear I don't blame the author. For a different party, even decently optimized, the module could be a tpk before the second chronicle is given out. I have a strong feeling that hostile NPCs were intentionally well beyond suboptimal simply due to the expectation that PCs would be performing below par for a good part of the module. Players have been very good about indulging me in altering tactics to try to give them a challenge but really it's been seven weeks of painfully grinding through encounters where for the most part NPCs are either killed before they move or fishing for 20s to hit.

I know this happens from time to time in PFS scenarios but the difference between the time investment for preparing and running a scenario and a three part module is huge and it's much more exhausting to run through a module like this.

I opted to run the module as written since due to the sanctioning requirements it's the only way that players qualify for the bonus chronicle and I felt it fair that if players are investing two months time to play through a module they should be able to qualify for the full reward possible for playing with characters at level 12. I'm not sure if I'll run Wardens of Reborn Forge again but if I do I will not be running it as written. It's a really fun module but the inability to modify encounters so they are an appropriate challenge for the PCs at the table is a deal breaker for me. Which is a shame because that means that future tables of players end up facing reduced rewards for playing through no fault of their own.

Which brings me to the main point of this long rambling post. I'm unsure what's being planned for the sanctioning of other high tier modules such as Feast of Dust and ones that may be published in the future but I hope that they will not be sanctioned with similar restrictions. Having read through Feast of Dust it's an excellent module and I'm really looking forward to running it for PFS once it's sanctioned. At the same time as long as campaign mode is offered there's little chance of me running encounters as written, regardless of what that might imply for chronicle sheets. There's just too much variation in the power level of PCs at that tier to waste time on prepackaged encounters.

TOZ wrote:

Chris Mortika wrote:

But then, they get the reputations they earn.

Not necessarily. Osprey was bad-mouthed up and down to me, and I bought into it until my characters actually encountered him. Public opinion is not always based in fact.

Osprey is fine except for that one scenario where he sends you on the mission to find the macguffin, then shows up at the end, takes it from you, and flies off in bird form, leaving you a LONG way from home. -_-

There's also Encounter at the Drowning Stones where

He's still one of my favourites for some reason.

I thought 1-5 scenarios were supposed to be beginner accessible. I could see defending a 7-11 that pregens can`t succeed at but a 1-5 where they struggle should be a rare event.

Michael Hallet wrote:

Another thing I've heard people talk about in this thread is tier-appropriate DCs. That doesn't exist in Pathfinder.

It most certainly DOES exist in PFS adventures. It is now utterly routine for a scenario to list something like "Diplomacy check 16. 21 in high tier".

Heck, the 4 player adjustment often changes DCs.

I know that isn't Pathfinder as written but it certainly is PFS as written.

And I (mostly) think it a good thing. My diplomancers are silly good as it is, they need the artificial DCs.

Once in a while I'd love to see characters punished for being broken at a skill. Something to the effect of at DC 30 the mad emperor is swayed by the words of the PC and changes his ways but exceeding the DC by 10 or more he is so enthralled that he losses all reason and feels the need to enslave the PC. Encounter CR = APL + 4 begins.

The official stance on ninjas is frustrating to say the least. They can't get access to any of the new options for rogues, can't multiclass with rogue and get almost no new unique character options to speak of. It's very much a case of speak to your GM about house rules because for the moment at least it's strongly implied that Paizo will do nothing to make this very restrictive archetype any deeper.

Jester David wrote:

It's an endless quest. A little like Star Trek Voyager. Whenever an alien or anomaly or technology is introduced that can conceivably get them home sooner, you know for a fact the attempt will fail. Because if they succeed the show is over. There's less drama as there's no real chance of success.

The One Armed Mn won't be caught, Bruce Banner won't find a cure, the Professor won't get them rescued from the island, the couple will remain "won't they", etc.

I have no comment on the contextualization of this within Starfinder, but I'll just point out that there are plenty of people who like Star Trek: Voyager, The Fugitive, The Hulk, Gilligan's Island, and "will they/won't they" romance.

Except that in almost all cases these stories end up reaching a point where contriving new ways to keep the central plot alive eventually makes the story tedious. There are very few cases like Lost where after resolving the primary plot point a new way to keep the mystery alive was found.

Not that I'm terribly concerned on that front. While I admit that I'd like to see some aspects of Golarion take their natural course and grow, I think on the whole Paizo does a fine job of moving the campaign setting forward while keeping certain things constant.

The 100 GP needed to cast restoration is fairly small by the level that the spell can be cast but the cost of a scroll of restoration is a little more meaningful. Perhaps I shouldn't admit this but I don't feel any guilt over ignoring rules that interfere with good manners.

I feel like the franchise has been in decline for a bit of time now, at least from the perspective of film and television. I suppose it could be seen as a service that they're committing to stamping out any remaining hope I may have for GitS.

Jessica, thanks for taking the time to reply to my comment. As I said in my initial comment I do think that there's a literary elegance behind the idea of Naderi but I don't think the format of this book was particularly kind for presenting such a weighty topic.

I was pretty disappointed about Naderi, also. I just recently started a Pathfinder Society who worships her, so I was hoping for more from this book.

I regret to a certain degree bringing up Naderi, I feel as if I should know by now that this isn't something I can bring up without getting emotional and it wouldn't be satisfying to tangentially attempt to dispassionately comment on her. But now that I've gone there's this.

I'm aware that Paizo content can often enough be mature in nature. Nonetheless, I feel that most of the time such content is handled rather well. I'm disappointed by the lack of sensitivity in the presentation of romantic suicide. Also it's entirely possible that I've read too deeply into Naderi's darker side but it's hard not to see her as the burgeoning patron of murder suicide. I'm fairly tolerant in the scope of PFS but a PC worshiper of Naderi is one of the few cases that will cause me leave a table without comment. I have no interest in seeing what interpretations players may try to put on this goddess to make a playable character around her.

Shelyn is one of my favourites from the Golarion pantheon and I suppose I could be considered somewhat Shelynite in my real world perspective. On the whole I found the article on Naderi tiresome to read.

Read through a good part of the book now and thus far I've enjoyed most of it. The articles on Alseta, Hanspur, Kurgess and Milani gave compelling portrayals of these gods making me want to make characters dedicated to them. Brigh, Groetus and Sivanah were more vague but probably fitting with deities that supposed to be on the more mysterious side of thing. And despite this I do feel that the article on Groetus did give a bit of clarification on his position in Golarion (plus his followers ended up getting some of the best mechanics offered in the book).

The only two articles I've found disappointing so far have been Besmara and Naderi. Besmara was interesting but reading through the article I found myself consistently asking how she isn't evil. Besmara is apparently the goddess of Disney pirates. Yes she and her followers pillage and kill but the pillaging is simply an alternate form of employment and the people who are killed probably deserved it anyway because they fail to follow the code of the pirates.

I was really looking forward to the article on Naderi after seeing so many people posting their anticipation on this thread and wondering if I may have missed a hidden gem in the campaign setting. After reading the article I was left thinking that this is one of those aspects of the campaign setting that just isn't for me. For my tastes Naderi feels like she would be a more interesting goddess in a less static setting. I felt myself getting frustrated after reading for the fourth time how miraculous it how she has resisted corrupting influences. Just about every time this is mentioned there's usually a statement within three lines back or forth that dramatically mentions a darkening trend in her nature. The tale of how Naderi falls or defies those trying to influence to darkness would a great evolution to read but knowing that she will forever be portrayed in a state of uncertain fate she's reduced to a petty goddess of melodrama both in her nature and portfolio.

Okay, so my group had a special session for the Ruby Massacre over the weekend. Turned into an eight hour session split evenly between roleplay and combat. Here's how I organized it and how things managed to shake out.

Party of six appropriately leveled for the occasion with possibly slightly higher wealth by level than they should have. Five of the six PCs decided to bring guests which ended up being Octavio, Elia, Hetamon, an Order of the Torrent Signfier because I decided that Octavio shouldn't be the only competent person in the order and a level 18 expert which was a custom NPC that ended up with the party through a random series of events.

I also decided that it would make sense for Thrune to invite some people to the party that might actually try to defend themselves. NPC guests ended up being Belcara Jarvis, Urora Sarini with Contract Devil servant, Canton Jhaltero with urban barbarian bodyguard, Geoff Tanessen, Lady Docur with witch bodyguard and Captain Sargaeta with Marquel.

Roleplay, the party had a fairly easy time meeting notable NPCs and making a decent impression on them with the exception of Baroness Sarini. One of my players opted for Sarini family scion and had his character avoid his mother for the duration of the party while the remainder of the party antagonized her with subtle barbs. The party quickly ceased exploration when the second room they stumbled upon was the lounge where "Thrune" was relaxing with a trio of bearded devils. There was a short scuffle with four Skinsaw Cultists after they excused themselves from the room which made things even more awkward.

On to the Massacre.
Enemies
Three Bearded Devils
Six Hell Hounds (someone decided to venture into the orchestra pit in the midst of combat)
Two Bone Devils disguised as Lilends
Two Erinyes disguised as Bralanis
One Handmaiden Devil disguised as a Ghaele
Cizmekris

Aftermath. The first round of combat took forty minutes. The Bearded Devils and Hell Hounds turned out to completely irrelevant to a ninth level party. The party all gathered on the main floor for Thrune's announcement and decided to focus their attentions on immediate threats. One Erinyes and Bone Devil harried NPCs on the second floor while the Handmaiden dropped a black tentacles on the main floor then joined the second floor to slaughter NPCs. Following his tactics Cizmekris turned invisible the first round positioned himself the second, then full attacked the third, immediately dying afterwards when a flying rogue was surprising charged into a flank above him. As the party had done a fair effort at being friendly towards the local Dottari the Dottari broke ranks at the start of combat with a third of them joining the side of the Silver Ravens. They spent the majority of the combat fighting each other. The party immediately considered Baroness Sarini an enemy engaging almost immediately and killing her in the first round of combat.

Final numbers
PC deaths 0
Named NPC deaths Marquel, Belcara Jarvis and Urora Sarini
Close calls, Lady Docur
Unnamed NPC deaths 21

A well written encounter even though I decided to overhaul a fair bit. All in all it was incredibly fun to run though possibly a little too ambitious.

No you're not missing anything. It can be done. I think the reason it's not done so much is because turn about is fair play. From a player side of things you're destroying your loot and baiting the GM to destroy your weapons, spell component pouches and other similar objects. From the GM side, it's just antagonizing your players. Really sundering or similar tactics are something to be used sparingly in my opinion.

Granted I don't have the book so I'm only gleaning what I can from the commentary in this thread but I am feeling that for the most part common sense will prevail over overly rigid interpretations of these feats, even in PFS. It does seem that it will make the feats rather unattractive character options. Spending multiple feats for niche advantages on things that most reasonable GMs would let you anyway seems like a waste to me.

This scenario is what happens when players constantly complain that traps are just charges off of a cure wand. Don't get me wrong the scenario is awesome, I had a great time running it but I'll admit I'm more than a little scared to play it. Great job putting it together!

This has done more to sell me on Ultimate Intrigue than anything Paizo has put out about it.

Agreed, I had pretty much zero interest in this book until I stumbled onto this thread.

Out $4 and left to scramble for a new scenario to accommodate players on game day. And it's not that they're introducing new classes that's the problem, it's way it's being done.

In previous rule books new classes that were introduced were similar enough in mechanics that it wasn't much of an effort to learn a new class to run a scenario. And looking at earlier seasons it looks like these classes were introduced with a much softer touch. Low level side encounters where it was easy enough to pick up what was supposed to happen and minor enough that it didn't matter much if GM fudged the mechanics on the off chance something missed his grasp.

Season seven it's Occult almost every other scenario. The kineticist is completely different from any other class previously published. High level mesmermists have a ton of special abilities to keep track of. I can't see much justification for putting either in high tier combat when there are a variety of other choices that could be made and these classes to be held to 1-5 scenarios.

I've played through about half of the existing scenarios Paizo has published so far and never fought a alchemist over level seven or ninja over level nine and again these classes a lot more straight forward than some of the offerings that Occult leaves us.

Agreed, Mudfoot. A good example would be the concept of Erastil the misogynist. Fact is that locally that's pretty much accepted as the prevailing lore. I've heard it repeated multiple times by players more experienced than myself and never contested. When new publications don't go to any effort to refute what was written in the old ones it's pretty much assumed that what's written is supposed to compliment the previous lore not replace it.

Thanks for the insight, Kalindlara. Going back to your previous point I have to admit I'm not fond of Paizo's habitual errata by omission. It makes it somewhat difficult to discern when something has been excluded for brevity and when Paizo is trying to bury an idea that devs felt didn't work.

Wait, does Groetus not eat souls at all now? My cleric of Groetus has suddenly become that much crazier as it seems his mission to delay the apocalypse is ill informed.

If I might ask, which text specially made that change to his mythos?

A lot of great options have been pointed out thus far. I might add to the list one of Paizo's older publications. I found Pathfinder Chronicles: The Great Beyond to be really interesting. It gives a fair amount of insight to the various planes of existence and the afterlife in Golarion.

Jessex wrote:

Some of this is a good idea.

2 that aren't.

Unlocking races. It can be very difficult to get GM's for every table needed for a con. Every incentive available is needed. Race boons is one of the few that PFS offers.

It can be very difficult to get DM's period. If thats the reason for doing it at cons the same reasoning holds for gamedays.

I won't deny that GMing conventions is a time consuming and tiring process but in my opinion unless a location has a very stable group game days easily take more effort and bear more stress than an average convention.

Every time I come to these forums and see someone claiming that something can't be done because we need special things for conventions my desire to GM dies a little bit. It seems that nobody has even stopped to consider that current method of promoting conventions might actually be alienating some GMs.

I volunteered for four local conventions in 2015 but I continue to be on the fence on if I wish to continue the same level of support next year.

I like the general idea of this, though I will say if organized play ever opens up any Drow or Drow heritage options I may just stop GMing.

And the replacement GM reward is what?

Yes it would be quite a shame to see all those people who volunteer the bare minimum for conventions just to get a boon stop showing up leaving all the tables to those who volunteer out of desire to grow the community.

What?!? I don't see this as a good thing at all! We just lost a good Venture Captain in Ontario, and she's left me with just Glen as a VC. This isn't good at all!

Well, I guess what is best for the larger community is better than what is best for me.

Congratulations, Tonya!

Angus
(BTW: We still want to see you now and then in Ottawa.)

The scarcity of venture officers in Ontario is troubling but on the up side our new organized play coordinator is well aware it.

Congratulations, Tonya, it was great having you here in Ontario and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do as head of the campaign.

See for me it's not so much the aspect of playing an evil PC that turns me off. It's the idea of actually helping the Chelish Empire succeed that makes want to avoid this AP.

In my opinion the question has been left hanging for a year and the effort it would have taken to clear up matter would have been minimal. In my mind it is an adamantine crowbar and would be treated as such when used as a weapon by one of my characters. However, if I was GMing in a situation where a player told me that they believed the weapon bypasses all DR I would allow it since it's a reasonable interpretation of the text and I have no interest in penalizing players on a matter that Paizo has refused to clarify.

You can totally rage and do non-lethal damage. The bigger question is should you do this in a low tier scenario. I've seen it happen more than once that a raging barbarian in a 1-5 scenario ended up killing with non-lethal damage.

The instigator being flat footed isn't unrealistic in my eyes at all. Jerk was looking to sucker punch someone and is surprised because he didn't expect his target to sucker punch him first. I'm actually surprised so many people are opposed to this idea (not my first time seeing this argument on the forum).