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Only downside was that due to the nature of the scenario we could not get spellcrafting services so i had to buy the scroll for 1650gp.
Why not? You're given the mission by Ambrus Valsin, then have an hour trip to get to the Ruins. You totally have the time to stop off at a temple to get spellcasting services first. (Just like you have the opportunity to buy things before the scenario.)
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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Check out what I've been working on.
Oooh. Very nice, sir. Can't wait to see the final room. That'll be pretty sweet.
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I just played Bonekeep I and II back to back, a 10 hour marathon in LA at GAMEX. I have to say I was exhausted by the end. My experience was that if you focus on surviving rather than "completing" the adventures you have a better chance.
For Bonekeep I we had a full table but were playing up with an APL of 6. With 3 experienced players and 3 pretty inexperienced players we made it to the end but did not finish the final combat.
For Bonekeep II we were 3 of the same players (the experienced ones from the first game) plus a 4th. We were again APL 6 playing up. Apparently the mod does not take into account the amount of players so playing with only 4 at the high tier was incredibly difficult. We barely escaped TPK but managed to survive until time was up clearing most of the rooms but not making it to the end.
We were a thoughtful and experienced group that took a lot of precautions including buying some casting before going in to make up for party shortcomings. I could easily see a less prepared group meeting one of several horrible ends.
Bonekeep felt like the old days were every detail mattered and everything could kill you. It was fun but by the time I finished I was ready for a "regular scenario" where I wasn't fearing horrible death in every room.
I’m actually signed up for Bonekeep: Level 3 at GenCon. Looking forward to trying it out. Although if I die in a scenario before then (i.e. use my prestige) I will trade in my ticket.
I love the challenge, but going into Bonekeep without means to bring yourself back is just foolish. :)
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Made it through Bonekeep 1 without any deaths, had a great time tanking with my paladin and backed up by two clerics.
After looking over part 2, I'm glad I didn't get a table at Conline to run for, and probably won't ever play it. That malady is just too harsh.
Going to give part 3 a shot with my paladin at Aethercon and hope for as good a team as I had in part 1.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16
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Bonekeep is a favor that players do for GMs to help them earn a fifth star. Save yourself some grief and throw away a pregen on it, rather than a character you actually care about. Then, after the futility is over, you can go back to roleplaying.
That's actually a pretty good idea...
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The trick to scenarios like Bonekeep is being as prepared as you can. This includes talking strategy with other players before you start, but also applying the basic information you know about the scenario going in. You know Bonekeep is a traditional dungeon crawl kicked up to 11, and that traditional enemies in many dungeon crawls include undead, magical beasts, and constructs. Another example would be Waking Rune, where you know that the BBEG is a high evel caster, you know what school he specializes, and you know what he can't cast. This doesn't always give a player everything, but it gives them something to start with. Another essential piece to surviving scenarios like Bonekeep are consumables, be prepared to spend some money in consumables to give you and your party the edge needed to prevail. My self and two of my friends did this for Bonekeep, and we made it through five rooms and ran out of time in the sixth without too much pain. There were some tense moments, but some of that was due to the fact that persons five and six dropped out approximately twenty minutes or so before the slot started.
Full disclosure, my friends and I also had a really hit or miss tactic, that would either make any given encounter a walk or do absolutely noting at all for us. It happened to work for us, which let us continue after number four was killed due to a super unlucky bull rush by the things in the middle room. But the rest of the advice is sound.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16
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The trick to scenarios like Bonekeep is being as prepared as you can. This includes talking strategy with other players before you start, but also applying the basic information you know about the scenario going in. You know Bonekeep is a traditional dungeon crawl kicked up to 11, and that traditional enemies in many dungeon crawls include undead, magical beasts, and constructs. Another example would be Waking Rune, where you know that the BBEG is a high evel caster, you know what school he specializes, and you know what he can't cast. This doesn't always give a player everything, but it gives them something to start with. Another essential piece to surviving scenarios like Bonekeep are consumables, be prepared to spend some money in consumables to give you and your party the edge needed to prevail. My self and two of my friends did this for Bonekeep, and we made it through five rooms and ran out of time in the sixth without too much pain. There were some tense moments, but some of that was due to the fact that persons five and six dropped out approximately twenty minutes or so before the slot started.
Sounds like more reason to take the pregen suggestion above. A week ago, I'd have been much more anti-pregen. I hate playing a pregen in a game that I might have more fun with my own character in. However, I played a no credit pregen for a game at Conline to help a table make at 11:30pm at night. I had a good time. At the end, I wasn't as worried about not getting credit for my PC. Bone Keep sounds like a good one to play over and over with different mixes of pregens.
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Sounds like more reason to take the pregen suggestion above. A week ago, I'd have been much more anti-pregen. I hate playing a pregen in a game that I might have more fun with my own character in. However, I played a no credit pregen for a game at Conline to help a table make at 11:30pm at night. I had a good time. At the end, I wasn't as worried about not getting credit for my PC. Bone Keep sounds like a good one to play over and over with different mixes of pregens.The trick to scenarios like Bonekeep is being as prepared as you can. This includes talking strategy with other players before you start, but also applying the basic information you know about the scenario going in. You know Bonekeep is a traditional dungeon crawl kicked up to 11, and that traditional enemies in many dungeon crawls include undead, magical beasts, and constructs. Another example would be Waking Rune, where you know that the BBEG is a high evel caster, you know what school he specializes, and you know what he can't cast. This doesn't always give a player everything, but it gives them something to start with. Another essential piece to surviving scenarios like Bonekeep are consumables, be prepared to spend some money in consumables to give you and your party the edge needed to prevail. My self and two of my friends did this for Bonekeep, and we made it through five rooms and ran out of time in the sixth without too much pain. There were some tense moments, but some of that was due to the fact that persons five and six dropped out approximately twenty minutes or so before the slot started.
If I was a real character at that table, I honestly probably wouldn't have played. Two real PC's and two pregens sounds like a terrible idea for Bonekeep. If I'm playing a high-risk scenario, I want my fellow players to have a vested interest in surviving. If a mixed party wipes, the pregen players get to shrug and apply it to -99, while the actual PC's are left to pick up the tab.
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I wouldn't necessarily want them to be banned, but I think if a player has a character in tier they should be using that instead of a pregen. My only real problem is people playing a pregen to avoid risk for the pretty good payout that the scenario offers. If a pregen is someone's only way to be able to experience Bonekeep, then it's not as big of a deal to me.
Pregens were not allowed in LA for Bonekeep last weekend. So at least at some cons you must take a character of your own.
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I'm glad. I hope they turn away pregens at Gen Con. I want four other people ready and willing to die the most glorious death they can experience in the Keep of Bones.
It left a bad taste in my mouth at Winter Fantasy where Bonekeep 1 premiered that we had a pregen wizard who screwed us by doing nothing when he could have been magic missiling at the least.
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I found this:
As a Pathfinder Society GM, you have the right and responsibility to make whatever judgements, within the rules, that you feel are necessary at your table to ensure everyone has a fair and fun experience. This does not mean you can contradict rules or restrictions outlined in this document, a published Pathfinder Roleplaying Game source, errata document, or official FAQ on paizo.com. What it does mean is that only you can judge what is right for your table during cases not covered in these sources.And this:
While you are enjoying the game, be considerate of the others at the table and don’t let your actions keep them from having a good time too. In short, don’t be a jerk.
So, if one or more players playing a pregen would cause the group to not have fun, and/or to lose characters they have invested time and effort into, then show me where the GM is forced to accept the player of the pregen over the objections of his other players.
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Not to mention the people decrying pregens as having 'no skin in the game' are forgetting that such characters can be the rearguard that takes one for the team to allow the rest to survive.
I think people are banning pregens when they should be banning players. Of course, it's much easier to detect pregens than crappy players, so I can understand why they would do it.
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Bonekeep part 2 was quite fun for my table. Though the time limit was about 5 hours, my group was rushing through the floor like a SWAT team rushing a building. I think we only had like 10 minutes of in-game time to clear everything but the last room. Each player had their own unique character, and some had enjoyed it better than their first one. Fun times.
And apparently I was named Mr. Moneybags....
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I agree with Tri. I ran Bonekeep 1 last year with my Druid, and though we were cut short due to time during the final fight, the entire party survived. Immediately after finishing part 1 I played in part 2, but used a pregen,Kyra, because there were only 4 players at the table and we needed more healing available to us than my Druid could provide. Played intelligently that pregen Cleric saved the entire party on two separate encounters allowing us to survive. The pregen characters can be very effective as long as they are played well, and work to balance the groups needs. Bonekeep, no matter which chapter you play, is about smart play as much as what's on your sheet so saying that pregens can't hack it is just a way of placing blame when things go wrong.
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You may not apply a Chronicle sheet earned with a pregenerated character to a character that was already at the level of the pregenerated character or higher, as you should have used this character for the scenario instead
True, and I didn't apply the chronicle sheet for Bonekeep 2 to my Druid. I ran the pregen Cleric because there was a table who needed a 4th player, they had no healing, and my Druid wouldn't have been able to provide enough healing for a dungeon of this difficulty. The three players registered for the table were asking for someone to play a healer, and handed me the pregen.
I am also planning on playing Bonekeep 3, although unfortunately I can't make it out to Gencon, and will be playing my actual character for the event. However, I still maintain that its the players themselves that make the difference in Bonekeep not the pregen characters.|
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When I was playing Bonekeep, I would have appreciated any assistance pregens would have provided. They might have less to lose, but it isn't like the scenario gets harder with more players except under the rarer cases.
This is a pretty old thread and I already posted a bit about my bad experience, but with the series going strong, I thought I might post this experience to give some GMs some pause for this event to consider how this is going to challenge PCs without just driving people away from the event type all together.
I remember seeing a good number of tables full the first night, but we were already busy with other events at that time. Still we were told it was a fun challenging event and me and my two friends registered for the following night.
There was only one other player interested bringing our party to four characters.
A 4th level life oracle (me), a 3rd level strength based rogue with a falchion, a 3rd level two-weapon fighting rogue, and a 3rd level mysterious stranger gunslinger.
The GM read what he was told and nothing more. I was definitely worried about the lower number of players, but this is the first special I had played in a while, so I operated on the bad assumption it scaled to provide challenge to smaller parties as well as larger ones and that the biggest problem we would face was a limited number of answers to problems as well as it being much worse if with lost a character middle of battle.
So, first room. The Caryatid Columns. I can keep this pretty short. GM said they were immune to sneak attacks and critical hits. With the party build you might understand why we came out of this fight with almost every primary weapon on every character broken. Except mine, since I only threw acid and alchemist's fire in between healing 100 points of damage to myself and quite a bit more to other party members. Also gunslinger gun jammed, didn't have quick clear, so just tried firing again second turn, which resulted in explosion.
I wanted to leave about right here. I was irritated because it was very clear that we were never going to get through this adventure. It was very clear that we weren't going to get through half of the rooms. I was outvoted so we continued forward. I gave strength rogue my weapon to mitigate some of her accuracy loss.
Given the options we had, we went left into what we would find out was the ooze room. It has been a long time so details are muddled, but I want to recall the oozes coming out of well were no one could see them until it was too late. An ooze grabbed the gunslinger, but he was able to escape on his turn and get away without being hit by an AoO. The party still was set on fighting it out, so I placed myself in the choke point and declared full defense for the next twenty minutes to a half an hour. I just hoped that they didn't do well enough on any attack to hit me and that they didn't start using any more advanced tactics because I didn't really have any other answers to the battle. They didn't and they didn't so I watched as the rest of the party fired everything they had over my character to eat through the blobs of hit points.
Made it out pretty well of this battle, I was able to heal everyone for the damage they took without spending too much resources (which was good, I didn't have much). The one player I didn't know was still pretty insistent that we had to rush forward to continue through the dungeon, but I still wanted to leave since I knew how close I came to death there.
Next room. Simple double trap. Rogue disarmed one, not the other, but had evasion and managed to dodge without instantly dying everyone else was standing pretty far back to avoid trouble.
Next room was against the rat demon. First thing that happened was the fog dropped and rats were on the party. Rat swarm came in and the demon followed soon after. I'm not sure why we didn't retreat immediately since the sneak attack couldn't work here along with ranged attacks. The strength based rogue was able to take out the individual rats. When the demon appeared a round or so passed before we hit it with enough damage to realize that we couldn't hurt it. No one had ability to identify the creature in the first place, but it didn't especially matter as no one was carrying special materials on their weapons.
We were falling back when the player who had been pushing us forward went down. With his character down there wasn't anyone making the party stay in the dungeon. I barely escaped, but the rest of the party was able to get away cleanly.
Following that the GM told is about the encounter with negative energy field, specifically that the creature there would have used his frightening ability to force PCs to run into the energy field and take the 20d6 damage.
We had taken up little more than two hours at the table and I ended up walking away with the thought that this is worst adventure I had played in that didn't involve Silver Crusade and Andoran faction members consuming the souls of the poor.
To this day though the adventure still irritates me, maybe because I feel like I lost my one play at it because of a bad convention set up more than anything else. I could certainly use my GM Star to replay it, but I lose a lot of the challenge now that I know what lies inside. Also, I'm not even sure why I would want to play this adventure as opposed to anything else, especially since it was one of my worst convention experiences. Not because I felt overly challenged, but since I felt like I had been tricked into wasting my time on this adventure as soon as the first encounter played out. Again, I was told it was hard and death was possible, that understated what was actually bound to happen.
So I would appeal to GMs who are going to run this and other Bonekeep scenarios. If you are looking at a party that isn't going to have a good time within Bonekeep just let them know that and don't leave it to the read aloud text to try to convey how hard it is going to be for a small party when the six person table is going to have the exact same text.
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GROND SMASH BONY KEEP.
GROND GOT RASH AFTER. WON'T GO AWAY.
-G
(Grond is an optimized barbarian oracle who really is only good at two things: destroying whatever is in front of him with a giant hammer, and not dying. Party managed to complete both levels, barely. No deaths but many close calls.
Bonekeep is definately a dungeon crawl in the classic vein. GMs will want to suggest the party stock up on supplies before heading in, and try to move things along as it's easy to take too long in some rooms and run out of time. Not a roleplaying mod by by any means.)
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When I was playing Bonekeep, I would have appreciated any assistance pregens would have provided. They might have less to lose, but it isn't like the scenario gets harder with more players except under the rarer cases.
This is a pretty old thread and I already posted a bit about my bad experience, but with the series going strong, I thought I might post this experience to give some GMs some pause for this event to consider how this is going to challenge PCs without just driving people away from the event type all together.
** spoiler omitted **...
It sounds lke you're GM ran some things... questionably. First off, I think he should have told you guys that encounters didn't scale before you even started. The things from the first room shouldn't have been immune to crits or sneak, constructs aren't naturally immune like in 3.5, and I think the special versions of those are reserved for the high tier. The other rooms seemed like they were run okay,though his plan with the frightening creature seems like it wouldn't work the way he wants it to work. Leeroy Jenkins thre with your party shoud have cooled down, there was no reason to rush.
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It sounds lke you're GM ran some things... questionably. First off, I think he should have told you guys that encounters didn't scale before you even started. The things from the first room shouldn't have been immune to crits or sneak, constructs aren't naturally immune like in 3.5, and I think the special versions of those are reserved for the high tier. The other rooms seemed like they were run okay,though his plan with the frightening creature seems like it wouldn't work the way he wants it to work. Leeroy Jenkins thre with your party shoud have cooled down, there was no reason to rush.When I was playing Bonekeep, I would have appreciated any assistance pregens would have provided. They might have less to lose, but it isn't like the scenario gets harder with more players except under the rarer cases.
This is a pretty old thread and I already posted a bit about my bad experience, but with the series going strong, I thought I might post this experience to give some GMs some pause for this event to consider how this is going to challenge PCs without just driving people away from the event type all together.
** spoiler omitted **...
To the aggressive player's credit, I was casually chatting with the GM at point between combats. He didn't rush into the room, but he felt like the time limit we had was issue we would have to deal with in the dungeon rather than lack of remaining resources or harder challenges that would force us to retreat early.
I do believe the GM was on error in the first room, but as a player I do my best to not question the calls a GM makes.
This is nothing new to me though since, in the PFS games I have been in, the most experienced people in PFS are those that make the absolute worst rulings in their attempts to challenge the party.
One GM spent the a combat running Will-o'-Wisps as if they had permanent greater invisibility. Another GM spent about ten to fifteen minutes in an argument with the players over whether protection from evil protects against vampire domination. There are a few more games I have been in that have had obvious encounters like this (and probably more that were less obvious) but none were exciting for being challenging, but frustrating, long, and boring. These aren't new GMs, but these are the average GMs I play with both locally and at PaizoCon.
The new GMs tend to make their own mistakes, but these more experienced GMs tend to mistakes that ramp up the difficulty of the scenario a lot more often and it is just more obvious on already hard scenarios like Bonekeep.
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I will only play Bonekeeps with GMs I know and trust.Bonekeep goes out for all GM's to GM soon after gencon I believe. That'll revive this thread but more importantly bonekeep will probably claim more victims.
It should remain the 4/5 star exclusive until at least Feb. '15. Who knows what they'll do with the scenario before it's released for general run though.
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It should remain the 4/5 star exclusive until at least Feb. '15. Who knows what they'll do with the scenario before it's released for general run though.I will only play Bonekeeps with GMs I know and trust.Bonekeep goes out for all GM's to GM soon after gencon I believe. That'll revive this thread but more importantly bonekeep will probably claim more victims.
4/5 star exclusive doesn't help at all. In fact, my worst experiences are with 4/5 star GMs. From my anecdotal experience, they are, as a group, no better at GMing than 1/2/3 stars.
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4/5 star exclusive doesn't help at all. In fact, my worst experiences are with 4/5 star GMs. From my anecdotal experience, they are, as a group, no better at GMing than 1/2/3 stars.It should remain the 4/5 star exclusive until at least Feb. '15. Who knows what they'll do with the scenario before it's released for general run though.I will only play Bonekeeps with GMs I know and trust.Bonekeep goes out for all GM's to GM soon after gencon I believe. That'll revive this thread but more importantly bonekeep will probably claim more victims.
They're no different than 1/2/3 star GM's other than they have more tables ran. They're still humans and make mistakes, but they're putting forth the effort to try and give more players a chance to play.
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It was released in august 2014 at gencon. The 1 year rule applies I thought to specials like bonekeep sometime around the end of this month bonekeep should be playable.It should remain the 4/5 star exclusive until at least Feb. '15. Who knows what they'll do with the scenario before it's released for general run though.I will only play Bonekeeps with GMs I know and trust.Bonekeep goes out for all GM's to GM soon after gencon I believe. That'll revive this thread but more importantly bonekeep will probably claim more victims.
Bonekeep 1 was originally released in January '13 at Winter Fantasy. Bonekeep 2 came out that same year at GenCon.
Bonekeep 1 was relegated as the season 5 exclusive scenario in February '14 for 4/5 star GM's and VO's. This means (if they don't change their normal guidelines) that it will stay as such for 1 year from this time.
GenCon specials come out in August. 4/5 star exclusives come out in February. Two different types of special events with different release times and table requirements.
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I played at an exceptionally balanced table who talked for a week beforehand via e-mail groups about all the things we needed to be prepared for.
After all that, we still struggled to get through it but had enormous amounts of fun. Shirt re-rolls kept my girlfriend and I from being dropped for below what breath-of-life could bring us back from on the last BBEBG. Thank goodness for a certain pair of gloves that come with 10 gems!
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They're no different than 1/2/3 star GM's other than they have more tables ran. They're still humans and make mistakes, but they're putting forth the effort to try and give more players a chance to play.
And I'm sure that more experience couldn't possibly improve someone's ability to GM specifically for PFS (on average).
/s
Trying to say someone is a better GM because of the number of scenarios they've run is just play stupid. Everyone enjoys the game differently, so no matter how good or reputable a GM is, they still may not be enjoyable for a given individual. Of course there are 5-star GMs who are not as enjoyable (to some) as some 1-star GMs. But taken on a whole, I'd rather have someone with more experience than less.
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I feel it may also be a good time to mention that the GM stars that someone has or doesn't have isn't the end all be all for their experience level.
Sure a 5 star GM has 150 pfs games gm'ed. But what does that actually mean, they could have run (not likely but possible) We Be Goblins 101 times (you could add in any replayable and increase this number) and another 49 scenarios including 10 specials and have 5 stars. They needn't by the rules actually have ever played a character in PFS or played another RPG.
While on the other end of the spectrum, I recently came to playing PFS, I have 5 games of PFS that I have gm'd. But I have been gm'ing since AD&D. I've run campaigns in at least 3 different d20 systems, played in another couple. I've also played games in a couple of d10 systems, and helped adapt a d10 system for a campaign my friends and I created. All in all I've probably ran more than 150 games just not in society.
Also, gm'ing is a personal style. Some GM's wanna be murderhobo's just like players, some gm's are there for the roll-play, others are there for the role-play. Some are there to show off their comprehensive rule knowledge. One of the nice things about society is being exposed to all these GM's and more, and if you find a style you like applying it to your own. (Also finding that GM you really like for your home game.)
All that being said if you just give me the choice of playing a game with a 0 star gm or a 5 star gm, with no other information I'm gonna choose the experienced GM as things are likely to go more smoothly.
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They're no different than 1/2/3 star GM's other than they have more tables ran. They're still humans and make mistakes, but they're putting forth the effort to try and give more players a chance to play.And I'm sure that more experience couldn't possibly improve someone's ability to GM specifically for PFS (on average).
/s
Trying to say someone is a better GM because of the number of scenarios they've run is just play stupid. Everyone enjoys the game differently, so no matter how good or reputable a GM is, they still may not be enjoyable for a given individual. Of course there are 5-star GMs who are not as enjoyable (to some) as some 1-star GMs. But taken on a whole, I'd rather have someone with more experience than less.
I'll mostly agree with that. My one concern are the "I don't hold back" GMs that, in some situations, grow less enjoyable for me with more experience because it seems to at times refine their focus such that they appeal more and more to a specific group of society players (good builds, lots of player experience) while excluding other players (less optimal builds, less experience).
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Just played this last night (level 2) with 6 players, all level 7, with one of our VLs running, and to say that we completely stomped it is an understatement. No one was knocked unconscious, no one got caught by traps, and the final fight got marginalized quickly by a well timed spell on our summoner's part.
This is not on the GM, who was pretty well prepared for this and stated from the get go that he was going to try and murder us because that's what's supposed to happen. What made the difference, outside of well built (but not optimized) characters, was strong strategy on our part and a very well balanced party with a significant amount of synergy with our varying abilities (we knew weeks in advance that this was happening so we brought all the right characters).
While it was an exciting game, I think I felt more threatened before the game due to the hype surrounding it than I did at any point while we were playing. I think we were all more worried about not being able to finish because of the time constraints than the enemies and obstacles on the map. This all being said, I can imagine that if you show up to a Con to play this and end up going into it without a well balanced party, the right levels, or time to discuss battle strategy that it could be endlessly ruthless. Good times.
