thejeff's page

It would be interesting to see him get resurrected somehow and find out how much the "post-knell clarity" actually changes him once alive again.

I'm also kind of surprised that she really does seem to care about him - even once he's dead and damned.

Reading through Volume 2 of the Micronauts original Marvel series, I can’t help but think how utterly stupid the powers that be at Disney were. They had a prime opportunity with that third Antman movie to introduce not only the Microverse and the Micronauts, but they could have had a villain probably vastly cooler than Kang - Baron Karza.

Instead, they gave us communist ants and probably one of the lamest versions of Modok ever. Sad.

Hey, though. The comics were awesome. Mantlo’s creativity impresses me even after all these years. It truly was a sad day for the entire comic book industry when we lost his genius.

Problem is that Marvel doesn't own the Micronauts - or at least most of the main toy-based characters.

Arkat wrote:

3rd level? Really?

The PCs can't be *that* dignified, then.

What an odd take. Why does level affect how important characters can be? It's primarily a measure of combat ability, not social standing.

It also affects all the diplomatic skills that might be useful for dignitaries. And most of the things that might qualify someone to be sent to a conference like this.

Obviously, someone could inherit a high social status from their parents or something, but even then you likely wouldn't send the noble's child to represent the nation diplomatically unless they'd proven themselves capable.
Or you'd send with advisors to do the real work.

I'm really disappointed that this game is turn-based, rather than real-time like those developed by Owlcat Games.

PF2e is so action economy based, I don't really see how you could do it justice RTwP.

Even the Owlcat games kind of broke with characters who needed more than basic "move and attack/cast".

Didn't know he'd written a modern Dr. Who book. Might have to track that down. Thanks.

I think Ben hit the nail on the head that the only thing which could really challenge D&D is a game so good and easy to get into that players flock to on their own.

From what I can tell, the only thing that's every really challenged D&D's dominance is a failure of D&D itself. The dropoff at the end of 2nd Edition and the problems with acceptance of 4th.

D&D is so dominant in the hobby that it's only dissatisfaction with D&D itself that drives players away in bulk. Many of them leave the hobby entirely, but some switch to other systems. Recruitment into the hobby drops off drastically.

It's possible some other game could be good enough to supplant a strong D&D, but there've been a lot of good games in the past that haven't been able to overcome the 900lb gorilla.

Just to emphasize this: Ben's quoted in that first post as saying "The rise of Paizo was very much people stopping playing D&D to play Pathfinder."
That's true, but misleading. The rise of Paizo was initially people wanting to keep playing 3.5 D&D rather than switch to 4e. That was the Paizo marketing point

Probably a more general GMing question, but I'm thinking specifically of the Abomination Vaults, since I'm running it at the moment.

Many of the factions running each level of the dungeon seem to be intended to be able to be reasoned with - allied with, turned against each other, bribed, etc. But generally it's only the leader who's willing to do so, while the minions attack on sight or at least raise the alarm. So by the time the PCs have a chance to talk to the leader, they've likely hacked their way through half the group, leaving piles of corpses in their waste and little mood for negotiations.
Even if they tried to negotiate with the first members they find, the best outcome there is probably being led to the leader and if talks go badly, now they're at least facing a few tough encounters merged together.

In my game, the mitflit leader lived long enough to surrender and was useful afterwards (and I had some of the downed mitflits only be unconscious and some others out hunting, so that he still had followers), but that can't be the only effective way to make it work.

How do people handle this? Have players managed to do any real negotiating? In AV or in similarly set up dungeons?

One thing I remember from discussions of that time, referenced in the letters pages I think, was that there had been a lot of fan push for a darker, more violent Batman and Az-Bats was intended as an "Okay, we'll run with that. Here's why it would be bad."

I saw an article about a new bit of idiocy from Disney Marvel. Apparently, some new books are putting the last page of issues (claiming it as bonus material) behind QR codes that people have to scan.

It's an interesting idea, but a stupid one. What if, in the future, they decide change that material? Or what if it suddenly becomes unavailable for some reason or other? Or accidently gets erased? Or lost? They may claim it's "bonus" material, but the chances of it being relevant to a story would likely increase over time.

If they do it on any books I collect, I'll stop collecting that book right then and there.

Yeah, I saw a story about that too. If it's really a bonus, that's not too bad as a gimmick, but if it's an important part of the story or if it becomes too common, that's not cool.

Imagine picking these up as back issues decades from now. Are QR codes still a thing? Is Marvel still maintaining the sites to support this?

I've been basically going with the "updating monsters that have been remastered, but use the old stats for non-remastered monsters" route.

OTOH, at the pace we're going, you might have a replacement for the black dragon out before we get there. :)

But does that mean they should have picked up some new magical effect the first time they cast Detect Magic afterwards? Even in Stage One, with no symptoms?

I would think that the cravings for raw meat are sometime the GM would tell them about, too. Tell them nothing else they eat really tastes as good as it should. Tell them the smells wafting from the butcher shop smell amazing, but that any meat's flavor is bland and disappointing after being cooked.

I'll probably lean into that.

He only failed the save that got to Stage 2 at the end of last session. They know he's sickened and hungry, but regular rations just made him more nauseous. Have to decide if I want to hint that the dead enemies lying around look tasty or not.

I mean, "raw meat" is basically everywhere in an adventurer's life.

thejeff wrote:

Just to come back to the new ghouls since my players have run afoul of them and one got cursed: How do you run the actual curse? Figuring out what caused it? Should they know that raw meat will fix the sickened condition?

They probably know something is wrong as someone got damaged and sick. Then it goes the normal pf2 way: they Recall Knowledge and then probably Identify Magic as this is a curse. Successful IM definitely simply gives full information.

The fun part of "someone got damaged and sick" is that Stage 1 has no symptoms and they did a lot of stuff in the 24 hours since the fight with the ghouls. :) Several sessions, including messing with weird stuff in old shrines. So the ghouls aren't an obvious source.

I hadn't considered curses as detectable and thus identifiable magic. Cursed items certainly, but not curses like this.

Just to come back to the new ghouls since my players have run afoul of them and one got cursed: How do you run the actual curse? Figuring out what caused it? Should they know that raw meat will fix the sickened condition?

Quinn. Buddy. My Paladin Sophiriel is the epitome of useless lesbian and SHE could see the goo-goo eyes that Rhys was giving you!

It's always easier to see the goo-goo eyes when they're aimed at someone else.

That's where I like to use a little GM trick I call 'lying'.

Whatever the players do? Yes, that is what they were fated to do. The Fates (or whoever) already knew it in advance and therefore I as GM must have known it too.

One doesn't have to know what will happen in order to create the illusion that it was intentional and inevitable. It's all about information flow. Now yes, if a GM decides a timeline in advance of the players' actions and forces them to comply, that's (generally) not going to be much fun. But since none of us *know* the future, it's both (subjectively) undetermined and (potentially) completely determined.

This is why oracles throughout history have been so gosh-darned vague. The ones who get cocky and get too specific nearly always end up on the business end of an angry and disappointed overlord's stabbin' stick.

EDIT: I'm also a big fan of The Xanatos Gambit.

Sure, but time travel messes with that. One of the really cool things in Fixed Timeline stories is when unexplained weirdness early on in the story turns out to be stuff the character actually did later in their personal timeline. But the key that doesn't work in RPGs is that you have to have the stuff happen on screen and then later in the game have the PCs decide to do it. An author can make sure all the pieces tie together because he controls them all. A GM doesn't - and shouldn't - have the same kind of control.

The Fixed Timeline one is great in fiction, but would be hard to use in an RPG without really heavy railroading. Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates is one of my favorite examples of this. It brilliantly weaves what the main character knows of history and his own future actions on other jumps through time into a seamless web, but you couldn't do anything like that in a game, because you don't know what the players will do.

Of course it does. I'm apparently an idiot for not even looking back to the original folder I'd extracted the whole thing into.

Thanks.

Is there any way to extract (or print) the map for the second level without the "to the Surface" and "to the Darklands" text appearing?

Or the green alternate position kobolds in Room 17?

Both when I try to do it myself and the version imported into Foundry have the same problem.

Thanks

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

David M Mallon wrote:

No game this weekend-- we lost a player due to his wife not letting him come to game nights anymore (don't ask), then another guy got called into work, and a third guy is totally unreachable.

Man, it's like watching a Jenga tower fall!

Nah, this kind of thing seems to happen in cycles. We're all a bunch of guys in our mid-30s, most with jobs, or families, or health problems, etc., so we're often missing a player or two per session. The general rule is that if half or more of the group (3 or more players) can't make it, then we'll cancel. Based on our track record, we'll be back next week.

Yeah, this stuff happens. People have commitments and other stuff comes first.

I don't have any problem with them bringing some of the old writers back, it just feels weird to me for them to be like "Just go write something set back during your run, don't try to do anything with new characters or even those characters as they are now."

Like, wouldn't it have been cool to have Claremont write a Krakoa mini-series?

Pretty sure that's another miniseries. Hickman's doing a few of them it looks like.

Actually kind of okay with me to have him just do some straightforward stories that aren't intended to introduce grand events or restructure everything.

I'm not really sure what I think of the Claremont Wolverine (or other similar project). On the one hand, they're kind of fun and cool, but on the other it kind of feels like just retro nostalgia. Old writers being dragged out to go through their old paces, without even trying to do anything new.

Doctor Strange - And things had been going fairly well. Without having wasted money on the other crossover stuff, I'm guessing Blade's body is possessed by Varnae. Or it's him in Blade's shape. Even still, it was awful convenient he was able to convert Stephen Strange so quickly. And one thing I've noticed is the just as conveniently seem to have retconned that Stephen Strange once did use the Montessi Formula to wipe out all vampires. So how are there so many old vampires running around? Or did they all once again conveniently have ways to either survive or be brought back? I thought Marvel used to care about continuity. Anyway, at least whoever's plot is actually somewhat creative, even if a bit stupid. And at least now we know what the plan was for human-turned-vampire-turned ghost Victor Strange.

I think that was retconned away a long time ago. I know Dracula came back and at least some of the others.

Thanks for the insight into the thought process. I'm now leaning towards leaving it as is and seeing how the players react to not being able to use it for a few levels.

Is it really necessary that all treasure found be immediately usable? Of course, if they don't want to keep it until they *can* use it, I suppose they could sell it. IAC, since they've already found it, I wouldn't change it out by GM fiat, just let them decide what they want to do with it.

Additional note: RAW, while trying to keep item levels in rough correspondence with PC levels is a good idea, it's not written in stone that it must be so. If they can find the gold to buy a +1 armor rune at level 2, they can put both runes on somebody's armor. I don't think that would break the game (although coming up with 160 gold at that point in this (or any) AP is pretty unlikely).

I don't think it's game breaking - it's just more of a tease. An annoyance more than anything.

GM fiat would be transparent, since they don't know what kind of rune it is yet.

Anyone else find it weird that there's a Slick Armor rune on the second level here? Long before the party would have fundamental armor rune that would let them use it.

Trying to figure out if I want to replace it and what with - though they've already found it and know it's a rune of some kind.

Well, I said "unless they really rush downstairs and survive the wrong direction".

Last session, they dealt with Volluk's workshop, found the secret stairs, went down and into the library. Still at 1st level. (5 of them, so they had a bit of an edge.)

Good thing I'd decided to change to the remaster ghouls because fighting 4 of the old version on level would have been a disaster. The normal ones went down easily, but the one Canker Cultist almost led to a TPK. They managed to flee back upstairs with 2 people wounded or dying with persistent damage.

Heading back to town to rethink their life choices.

thejeff wrote:

Gobhaggo wrote:

https://twitter.com/MichaelJSayre1/status/1784827119518064654

2A Ready, Aim, Fire
[Commander] [tTactic]

Squadmates in commander banner can; draw ranged weapon as Free Action, Reload as free action, and strike an enemy within you and your squadmate's view as a reaction. Casters can cast cantrip targeting that enemy instead of the other action.

"Swap to ranged weapon" as a free action is very nice, but it's kind of a trap for a Melee focused martial, since on your turn you'll have to use 2 actions to swap back. Or drop the ranged weapon.

Swap is one action on their turn. Yay, Remaster!

Ah, that is better.

So many minor updates I haven't internalized yet.

Given I can only see a screenshot and there’s no level indicated, I’m not sure how tight I think it is yet.

I like the Tactic rider. And a banner is a nice group-nominative.

I hope it's not limited to high level. It seems at first glance that it would scale nicely and be roughly as effective at any level.

Limited on how often you could do it makes sense.

https://twitter.com/MichaelJSayre1/status/1784827119518064654

2A Ready, Aim, Fire
[Commander] [tTactic]

Squadmates in commander banner can; draw ranged weapon as Free Action, Reload as free action, and strike an enemy within you and your squadmate's view as a reaction. Casters can cast cantrip targeting that enemy instead of the other action.

"Swap to ranged weapon" as a free action is very nice, but it's kind of a trap for a Melee focused martial, since on your turn you'll have to use 2 actions to swap back. Or drop the ranged weapon.

Also what about Drow? Are they now just elves that live underground? Or would you recommend changing the Ancestry of some NPCs like Volluk Azrinae to something different entirely (I thought Hobgoblin might be fun)?

So far I've only described Volluk as "an elf", so no commitment. I'll have to decide what to do with the drow in the lower levels eventually.

You might consider replacing the Barbazus with Vordines. Barbazus were one of the first monsters released, in Age of Ashes, before the game balance really settled, and they're known for punching far above their weight. I personally think they're fun to play as a GM, but some players find them less fun to play against.

Vordines have the same level and vibe as Barbazus, but seem a little more in line with level 5 creatures.

I'll take a look at those. We're not near that yet - unless they really rush downstairs and survive the wrong direction.

I usually play Tanks in MMORPGs and stuff, and while Guardian is on the positive side of my "oh this'll be cool" meter, the Commander is what I'm really stoked for, I WANT TO WIELD A GIANT BARBARIAN ONE-HANDED.

(Man, these guides take me back, they were my constant companion in navigating that system, and I loved all the little witticisms and such.)

Agreed. Warlord was one of the few things I really liked about 4E.

And I would much prefer to be able to use my action (probably 2 actions?) to order another PC to take an action on my turn, rather than just give them a Quickness effect letting them have more actions on their turn. Feels more like a direct response to something I'm doing than just a regular buff.

Just sayin'... "1d6 investigators are swept up into his flabby claws and perish" are rules mechanics.

Hmm, I remember that joke originating from the CoC Starspawn mechanics, not tied to the big guy himself.

At least in older editions, they got d6 tentacle attacks per round with some ridiculous amount of damage.

Mitigated, as our old Keeper used to say, because "it's only a 90% chance to hit".

Ghoul whispers is also just much creepier, which I like.

Overall I think they're just better balanced. I don't think incapacitation works well for monsters.

Practically though, it's largely a question of whether I want to change the adventure up that much - especially for the unique monsters.

I'm currently running this, but still on the first couple levels. Wondering what people think about replacing monsters with new remastered versions.

Specifically thinking about the ghouls down on level 3, since they got pretty big changes and my players are getting close to exploring down there.

I was always a bit concerned with the Incapacitation weirdness of paralyze - basically irrelevant with the regular ghouls, but then surprisingly deadly when they hit a boss on level with them.

A decent example of why I have a like/hate relationship with Morrison.

Writer Grant Morrison Defends Batman’s No-Kill Rule In Wake of Zack Snyder’s Comments

One of the problems with Snyder's take on it, is that it's hard to do in a movie. Or even a movie series.

You can challenge Batman's (or Superman's) commitment to not killing in comics, because it's been established over decades of previous stories. If you do it in Superman's first movie, you haven't set up an extraordinary situation where even Superman breaks his moral code, you've just made a Superman who kills.

Almost missed this until someone pointed it out. Absolutely love the new 'ghoul fever'. So flavourful and horrifying to be consumed by. I know I won't miss rolling paralysis checks ad infinitum when a bunch of lower level ghouls swarm the party to see if one of them happens to crit fail (and won't really be upset that an higher-level ghoul doesn't randomly turn lethal when a party member is hard-locked for a round).

Yeah, I'll kind of miss the paralysis, since it's been so iconic for D&D ghouls for so long, but mechanically it didn't work too well in PF2e.

The incapacitation made it annoying to roll constantly, but ineffective for lower level ghouls, but then suddenly devastatingly effective when the ghoul boss shows up. It's far more of a shift in difficulty than you'd expect for the level difference.

Wraith wrote:

Sunlight Powerlessness A dread wraith caught in sunlight is stunned 2 and clumsy 2.

Wraiths stun lacks the While remaining in light part, so it looks like they only are stunned when they first enter sunlight, witch is abit wierd that they would rather stay in the light then move out and in again.

To be fair, they stay clumsy 2 in sunlight, since that doesn't naturally expire like stunned does, so there is motivation to get out of the sun.

It also makes it weird to put the "for as long as it remains in the sunlight" for the spectre. It seems unnecessary verbiage.

Being stunned when caught in sunlight is still different than slowed, because a PC's action (say, ripping off a curtain) can immediately make the wraith unable to act or react.

The lack of reactions would be a bonus to stunned, but otherwise it would be the same I think.

And I'd really hate thematically for the players to exploit the rules and remove and replace the curtain repeated to trigger the weakness more often.

<Goes and digs through the "stunned during your turn" argument> Yeah, house ruling that.

Still not sure how I'm going to run the sunlight thing.

Spectres are slowed 2 when caught in sunlight. Wraiths are stunned 2 instead. Does this mean that after the first round in sunlight, wraiths can act normally? They'd still be clumsy, of course.

It seems weird, especially if the fight winds up moving from sunlight to shadow and back, such that they'd be better off staying in the light than moving out of it temporarily.

Or are they stunned 2 every round they being in sunlight. Which seems indistinguishable from being slowed, like spectres are.

Ravingdork wrote:

A comfortable rural house costs 2,000gp.

A holy avenger won't get you that far with helping the poor. A few families at best. Better to use it during a full career of saving multitudes.

Throwing money at a problem alone is rarely enough to actually fix it. At best you end up treating the symptoms and not the problem itself, and at worst it makes things worse. You really need hard work, community cooperation, and good planning (and yes, also money) in order to really solve such problems at their root.

You misread what your link stated. 2000 is for a quality stone home. It's only 300 gp for a comfortable wooden house. A holy avenger is 2500 gp, that's fifteen families set up in comfortable homes for life. (Or half that if you are selling it, I suppose, but 7.5 is still more than a few.)

That also assumes you are taking the easy way out, of course. If the paladin put in the hard work you mentioned with their legendary diplomacy, connections, and reputations, they could instead rent a bunch of homes for even more families while working towards getting them sustainably employed. Get their druid friend to cast Plant Growth to boost their crop yield and what not. The whole "don't just treat the symptoms" narrative feels misleading because symptoms still kill people and get treated by doctors to prevent it, but there no particular reason a high level paladin needs to settle for that.

You can defend it, but its really just the "Reed Richards is useless" trope. We want to tell stories of fantastical heroes that can solve problems far beyond our own to make ourselves feel better about all the problems we can't solve. But because we want to keep telling those stories and we want the world to be recognizable and relatable, the heroes can't solve those problems for us. Pathfinder, much like Marvel comics,,has a vested interest in maintaining a status quo so these stories can keep getting told. Both also have geographies bot...

It's more the Batman problem, where we assume the billionaire could do more by spending his money on social improvements than on expensive tools to help fight crime dressed as a bat.

In Golarion, paladins are paladins to fight great evils in a world full of great evils. If you fail because your equipment is up to par, things can get far worse, even for the poor.
Which doesn't mean that paladins, when not facing a crisis, wouldn't help in other ways, just that selling off their gear wouldn't be the best approach.

The other question is who would you sell the holy avenger to? By this argument, other paladins shouldn't buy it. Anyone who would can't be trusted with it.

I haven't read Goodkind, but I think some of the popularity is from various libertarians hyping it up because of his Objectivist takes.

I've also heard some claim that the writing gets better after the first couple books - until later on the political preaching gets even more dominant.

I would actually love to see mini-players guides for the stand alone adventures. Especially the 1st level ones, where a couple of backgrounds tied to the module would be cool, but even for the higher level ones a few pages of what to expect would be nice.

Updates to older adventures for the remaster don't really seem necessary. Changes are generally minor enough to not be a big deal, so it would be a lot of work for little benefit.

Okay I'm impressed with the payoff.

Still think the Devil Dragon MIGHT be able to win if our guys don't get Sunny back on track.

Yeah, wouldn't expect Bloodfeast to do much more than give the team a chance to regroup.

thejeff wrote:

AceofMoxen wrote:

Aberzombie wrote:

I also picked up my Rom Omnibus Volume 1. It’s…..GLORIOUS! I look forward to reading through it. Though, in hindsight, it did come out last week, so maybe that and Thor would have been worthy of the gas and time….

Is there significant X-men content? I remember some X-men/Rom crossover being in a legal hold, but I don't know how many issues that was.

IIRC there was a two issue crossover with the X-Men and then a later related two issue appearance of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants that shortly preceded Rogue joining the X-Men.

It looks like this volume only has iron fist and power man 73. Ideally, Marvel will produce a paperback of just those four issues. I'm not sure I'm buying a whole omnibus for a few issues.

I did enjoy the Rom stuff in the recent Cable (2020) series. It had me laughing.

Looking a little deeper, it wasn't a crossover, but just an appearance. No X-Men issues involved. This should have the two issues of Rom that the X-Men appeared in (17-18, I think).

Aberzombie wrote:

I also picked up my Rom Omnibus Volume 1. It’s…..GLORIOUS! I look forward to reading through it. Though, in hindsight, it did come out last week, so maybe that and Thor would have been worthy of the gas and time….

Is there significant X-men content? I remember some X-men/Rom crossover being in a legal hold, but I don't know how many issues that was.

IIRC there was a two issue crossover with the X-Men and then a later related two issue appearance of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants that shortly preceded Rogue joining the X-Men.

Velveeta Golem wrote:

Duh. Cheese is serious business. Well, at least real cheese (yes, American "cheese" I am looking at you).

Oh, you did NOT just put those quotation marks in...

"American cheese" as a pasteurized cheese product sucks.

Trip.H wrote:

That link was also a 404 for me Rene,

This is the page link that's active for me:

edited link

I think GadgetPhreak just had an extra space in there for some reason, almost got it.

Edit: Yup, yours had it too, so did mine. It's the forum formatting that's adding the space, no clue why.

Seriously, why convert "bundle-paizo-" --> "bundle- paizo-"

The forum software automagically changes any url into a non valid link unless you use proper url formatting. I don't remember the reason for that but I think it had to do with security or something.

I think it just throws a space in at line breaks. But not like real line breaks, some internal line break after so many characters.

Short URLs should work.

www.paizo.com