|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Tonight we played ... with a new GM ...
This is probably the key part of your post. If you haven't already done so, I would contact the GM first. (You will eventually have to go to the event organizer or a VC if the characters were reported as dead to get that corrected.) New GMs (and experienced ones) make mistakes. Try not to make this an adversarial event. Tell him you read the scenario afterwards and have some real concerns about how events played out. If he's reasonable and willing to discuss not only will your characters most likely come back to life with no drama, but you will also have improved his GM skills and made future scenarios better for everyone.
It's difficult but what you describe is impossible at low tier (You were 1). It' possible he ran high tier which would be outright impossible unless the table was 1, 4, 5, 5, 4-5, 3-5 since you need to get to a minimum of 3.6 with 5 players to play up.
Don't forget the "up with 4-player adjustments" option. I ran this last week for a table of APL 2.6 who had to play up because one character was level 4.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
|
For what it's worth, your GM was not entirely wrong.
That being said, I'd still overturn the death. Chalk it up to a learning experience on all sides.
|
|
Even without the 4 it is still forced up with 4 player with 5+ pcs.
In the fringe case where there are no players that are high enough to have reached the subtier level (such as a party of six 3rd level characters), the group may decide to play down to the lower subtier.
edit: Hmmm... that may be only for Seasons 0-3 now that I take another look. There's no paragraph break.
|
Okay - here is my advice:
A) a bad title of this thread even if the 'c' word is in quotation marks. This just causes bad blood. I understand the title unemotional but I'm far enough emotionally removed to avoid reading selective. Some words are best avoided to have a non emotional conversation - especially in the title.
B) new GM, 12 years old, complex new scenario makes a bad combination. I would suggest that someone locally organizes an experienced and respected GM as mentor for him.
C) lots of other advice given - not much to add here
|
|
I am relatively new to pathfinder society (tonight was only my third adventure). Tonight we played the scenario #6-01 trial by machine with a new GM who was about 12 years old. Spoilers below.
I've ran this 4 times so here are some thoughts.
Two monsters means he ran it high tier, especially if they could move. So that could be a mistake if everyone was indeed low level.
33 damage is within the possible damage output of one of the creatures with a confirmed critical and two handed power attack. (which is legal, though thematically odd.)
GM probably did fine with the descriptions, unless someone had Technologist feat and Knowledge Engineering. Without that feat a lot of those sections can be hard to grasp.
And you are wrong on the Fearmonger's gaze attack, it's a legit gaze attack which means it is constant and can be used as a standard action attack.
So, from my take it looked like maybe a mistake in the running of the first fight but everything else seemed fine. Calling the GM a cheater (even unintentionally) seems far from warranted though.
Venture-Captain, Netherlands
|
The tactics for the Fearmonger (final monster) are as follows:
all adversaries with its fascination gaze, then attempts to
pick off one opponent at a time."
Altough attacking someone that was already fascinated would be odd. Its way more sound that it would go after someone that made the will save.
The DC is indeed 16 for the will save. Its the same on high and low tier, making it a much easier fight for the high tier.
If you befriended the NPCs, they would reasonably slapped you out of the fascination.
|
|
Fascinated: A fascinated creature is entranced by a supernatural or spell effect. The creature stands or sits quietly, taking no actions other than to pay attention to the fascinating effect, for as long as the effect lasts. It takes a –4 penalty on skill checks made as reactions, such as Perception checks. Any potential threat, such as a hostile creature approaching, allows the fascinated creature a new saving throw against the fascinating effect. Any obvious threat, such as someone drawing a weapon, casting a spell, or aiming a ranged weapon at the fascinated creature, automatically breaks the effect. A fascinated creature's ally may shake it free of the spell as a standard action.
Fascinate is a weaker daze like effect. If the monster facinated then came at ready to smash them they would get a new save. The person getting smashed would automatically break it.
|
|
The attack would wake you up, if you survived it, but the approach wouldn't on this occasion.
|
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
|
Fascinated: A fascinated creature is entranced by a supernatural or spell effect. The creature stands or sits quietly, taking no actions other than to pay attention to the fascinating effect, for as long as the effect lasts. It takes a –4 penalty on skill checks made as reactions, such as Perception checks. Any potential threat, such as a hostile creature approaching, allows the fascinated creature a new saving throw against the fascinating effect. Any obvious threat, such as someone drawing a weapon, casting a spell, or aiming a ranged weapon at the fascinated creature, automatically breaks the effect. A fascinated creature's ally may shake it free of the spell as a standard action.
Fascinate is a weaker daze like effect. If the monster facinated then came at ready to smash them they would get a new save. The person getting smashed would automatically break it.
Heck, I've always interpreted fascinate as being broken by anything combat-like in the vicinity. As soon as the bad guy attacked one person it would break the fascinate for everybody. Fascinate is great for getting away or sneaking by, not great for combat.
Of course, based on the description of this monster, there would be a new check each round as the gaze is an ongoing effect. But each character would have a chance to avert their eyes or save every round while combat was happening.
|
I am the player that took the 33 points of damage in one round. I wanted to verify the OP's story and expand a bit so that you don't think he is just giving a kneejerk reaction to being TPK'd. The first thing I want to point out is that he actually isn't a new GM. He has run a few scenarios in the past and players often leave his table questioning his decisions. He also TPK'd another group a few weeks ago, again because of a questionable decision.
TL;DR version
Construct Fight
When we began to fight the construct, the GM refused to believe that Constructs could be critical'd or sneak attacked. I do not know if this is in the scenario, but when it was critical'd, he said instead of extra damage it was stunned. We had to pull out the bestiary to prove to him that constructs could indeed be crit and SA. But we got through.
As a side note, I was testing out a kind of combat shaman. We had surrounded the construct and out of all the targets, he decides to attack my spirit animal. Dick move, but perfectly legal. It goes down, but is only -2, so still alive. Next round HE WANTS ATTACK MY SPIRIT ANIMAL AGAIN. 5 PCs and an animal companion trying to tear it apart and he is going to curb stomp the nearly dead pile of feathers? The hell?
My amazing death
I move up to fight the skeletons. I take burn damage from standing next to them. That is how I found out they were burning skeletons. My Knowledge: Religion roll of 20 had not told me that, somehow... (I will admit that this may have been my fault, as the entire table was generally giving a "WTF?!" to the situation and either I didn't hear a response or he didn't hear me ask what they were.) Not to mention you don't take the fire damage until the start of your turn, but it wouldn't matter in a second... I think the fire aura spooks the other melee characters, because I somehow end the round the only melee character in the crowd. That may have been a poor tactical decision on my part and I was willing to accept a couple attacks coming my way.
The other players move about, a couple get within 15-20 feet, while the casters stay far away. All four burning skeletons attack me. While I could understand the two in base with me, all four seemed a bit excessive when there were other targets well within reach. Ok, that is still fine. I understand and that was legal. I was praying my armor would save me.
He rolled a scimitar and two claw attacks for all 4. Keep in mind, 2 of the skeletons had to move to reach me, so they wouldn't get a full attack anyways. And second, burning skeletons get a scimitar and 1 claw OR two claw attacks, not all three. He does the 33 points of damage and I just stare at him for a moment, close my character binder and basically go "GG, I'm out."
Ignoring the fact that he messed up and gave them all extra attacks and ignoring the fact that I was a perfectly legal target for the attacks sent my way, do you really think it is ok to make 12 attack rolls on a level 1 character? But again, whatever, it is fine. I put myself in a bad situation and while I was mad about losing him (he had a handful of pregen and GM credits assigned to him that would have let him skip several levels as he leveled up...), I was just going to try to brush it off. The druid offered me a chance to play his animal companion, but I decided to head home instead. Good choice, since the animal companion went down next round anyways because of similar swarm tactics...
The telephone game
From my conversation with him, the rest of the night went just as well. They would go onto another room where they had to press buttons at random until the GM was satisfied and allowed them to proceed. No skill checks or hints on what to do. Just round after round of "I press buttons... I press more buttons... is there some kind of skill I can make? No? I press more then..." Eventually, the GM lets them go on and in the next room, some Air Elements do some Con damage to them before combat even starts? Without a save or anything? They wail on the elementals, elementals go down.
They head for the exit and get ambushed by another construct. The construct has an always on gaze attack that locks down the group. If you attack the construct, you suffer the gaze attack. If the construct attacks you, you suffer the gaze attack. The creature has a huge AC for a level 1 encounter and apparently cover somehow. It was a mess. He said the last few rounds were entirely the GM playing wack-a-mole with PCs as they try to get out of the gaze effect, heal back from death and maybe get an attack off that had no chance of hitting.
|
|
It sounds like most people commenting in this thread either haven't run this or don't understand the nuances of the monster in the final fight. I have run this, and it actually sounds like your GM ran it pretty much to the letter and did an admirable job. There were a lot of hard-to-grasp and hard-to-remember aspects to that scenario. For a twelve year old to have gotten them all (or even mostly) right is commendable. The truth is that is just an extremely killer scenario at 1st level.
Jeff covered most of this, but it bears reiteration.
2) The robot you encountered is unbelievably hard at low levels. Its tactics explicitly say it Power Attacks if anyone closes to melee range, which means it hits at a +6 (+8 after round three) for 1d8+10 damage and crits on a 19-20. It also has hardness 5, which is hard for 1st level PCs to deal with. Jeff is right that there should only have been one robot at low tier, but there's also a really annoying electro-dart trap that hits two people per round and can stagger them. However, even at low tier it frees itself and can move after round three.
3) From that point on the dungeon is a blur of weird technology that your party can't identify without an obscure and brand new feat, so it's almost always going to be confusing. It's supposed to feel very alien.
4) The scarecrow has a gaze attack. Gaze attacks are very, very often misunderstood and they're insanely powerful. Gaze attacks happen automatically at the beginning of a creature's turn against every creature within range (in this case 30 ft.) who isn't averting his or her eyes. A creature with a gaze can also focus their attack as a standard action to get a second attempt against one specific creature. Scarecrows' gazes also explicitly say that their approach doesn't break fascination, so you're fascinated until it attacks you. If it can take you down in a turn you're pretty much out of luck.
I would say it sounds like legit TPK, which is probably the likely outcome of playing this scenario with all 1st level PCs.
|
|
But then, another player mentions that even if we are somehow surprised, you can't charge on a surprise round because it is a Full Round Action and you can only take Move or Standard on a surprise round. GM changes his mind and lets us act in initiative.
Small point, you can charge in a surprise round, with limitations.
|
|
All right, with the clarification, it does sound like some bad calls were made. On the other hand, you absolutely can charge on a surprise round, you just only get to move single speed. It's often called a partial charge, and you can do it anytime you're denied a full-round action but can still take a standard.
|
|
If you are able to take only a standard action on your turn, you can still charge, but you are only allowed to move up to your speed (instead of up to double your speed) and you cannot draw a weapon unless you possess the Quick Draw feat. You can't use this option unless you are restricted to taking only a standard action on your turn.
I'm just gonna put this whole thing in a spoiler block...
As to the buttons, either no one looked, or no one rolled high enough on their perception check when searching around.
If I recall, the last guy had something like dr 5/fire, very painful for low level characters.
So most of the stuff it sounds like the GM was not wrong on, but wrong enough with the skeleton fight that you shouldn't have died (or at least not as quickly).
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"I am relatively new to pathfinder society (tonight was only my third adventure). Tonight we played the scenario #6-01 trial by machine with a new GM who was about 12 years old."
While I don't want to sound like a typical 40-Something- I think the problem was simply stated, "A new GM who was about 12 years old."
I think this might be an issue, and has been in the area I play at on occasion. I simply refuse to play, the same way I refuse to play at a table with overly immature adults. When it comes down to a whether a Pre-Teen should be a GM, I think the local Venture Captain (or other experienced GM) should supervise until it is clearly demonstrated that the youngster has the experience and maturity necessary to properly run a game.
In all fairness, I have meet a few adults who haven't acted any more mature than the average 10-12 year old... but that is a topic for another discussion.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think the age shouldn't/isn't an issue here.
My 10 year old is a 2 star GM, who ran games at GenCon this year -one table of PFS GMs. She did well and impressed people. But she puts in the prep-time that the scenario needed.
She also creates text documents with all of the stat blocks (including the information from abilities that are not fully described in the stat block - like grab, swallow hole, distract, etc..). Spells are fleshed out (range, damage, effect, etc) if there are spells or spell-like abilities.
She has a good systems mastery. I suspect that she wouldn't make the error of having a creature attack with both weapon and two claw attacks, nor would she focus all on one PC if there are multiple targets - especially for low or no intelleigence creatures.
She has stated in person and on the forums here that the most important thing about playing Pathfinder is to have fun - players and GMS.
If this GM is not presenting the scenarios properly, and does not have good grasp of the NPC abilities, then the VO or organizer needs to have a talk with them - perhaps emphasize more preparation is needed. Perhaps have the next few tables be ones with experienced players/GMs who are willing to help a new GM learn not only the system, but how to run a fun table.
Wow! 10?
Good job, sir.
|
|
Given that nobody has explicitly said that the kid added an additional monster into the first combat, it doesn't sound to me like there's grounds for a death reversal. The original poster sort of implied it, but the other player who chimed in made it sound like it was run with the correct number of monsters. And the memories of the two distinct players from this game aren't 100% consistent with each other, so who knows what actually happened? From both player accounts so far, it seems to me like the kid did a great job for someone his age, demonstrating rules knowledge that exceeds many adults I've played with. It definitely sounds like he made some bad calls, and the "vulnerability" issue from the spoiler above is something I was going to mention as a particularly big "oops," but all GMs make mistakes. Most of what he did, and most of what it sounds like the players had problems with, sounds run as-written.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think the age shouldn't/isn't an issue here.
My 10 year old is a 2 star GM, who ran games at GenCon this year -one table of PFS GMs.
As I didn't seen an abundance of 10 y/o GMs at GenCon, I'm going to assume I was next to your daughter during the event. I heard players compliment her as a good GM. Not just a good kid trying to GM, but a straight up good GM.
If I'd known how to track you down at the event, I'd've passed the compliment along directly.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
|
Let's also keep in mind that this kid is 12 years old.
EDIT: Ninja'd
Perhaps more local guidance is needed on the part of the VOs in the area.
GM selection, etc., is generally handled by the store co-ordinator; the VOs are not expected to be part of the process.
Sure, we get to handle any complaints; should a situation like this arise in my area I'd try very hard to show up at that store the next time the GM in question is scheduled to run a table. But all this is reactive; we can't be at every game day in every store.
We encourage our event coordinators to support and nurture developing GMs - in fact the store where I played last night was running 'GM 101' in the next room. But unfortunately some of the GMs who could learn most from attending such an event are often in denial when it comes to their shortcomings. And no matter how much preparation and pre-screening you do, GMs, like players, will find new ways to surprise you at the table. At our recent convention I observed a couple of things being handled wrong that I'd never even have thought to ask about - they seemed to be such a fundamental part of running a PFS table that I couldn't imaging anybody not knowing the right way to proceed.
|
|
With all consideration due to your 10 year old, the key issue(s) are experience and maturity.
I think it is prudent for the local Venture Captain to be involved in the supervision (if it makes some people feel better, we can call it PFS young-adult development) until the necessary experience and maturity are demonstrated.
Mistwalker- in the case of your daughter, she has obviously demonstrated both of the prerequisites listed above. Congrats, on a job well done.
But I would venture to say that based on own experience, which is extensive, but geographically limited, many of the pre-teen PFS players need to be supervised (albeit gently) in order to maintain a positive role playing experience for everyone involved.
|
|
Right, my clearly poorly delivered point being that this 12 year old may need a little more guidance from local leadership than what is being provided. I'd be kind of a shame for a youngster to get discouraged.
Sorry! I should have used quote tags. I wasn't responding to you, and I agree with you completely. I was responding to someone up-thread who said the existence of the added monster alone was grounds for a TPK reversal. I just wanted to note that no player has explicitly stated that there was an extra monster. And having run the game myself, most of their other complaints (with a few noteable, but minor, exceptions) seem baseless.
Not that I think they're in the wrong to be upset. Unless you have a very specific party make-up, the scenario is written to be intentionally confusing, and incredibly lethal for 1st-level characters. I'd be mad about playing it too. It just doesn't sound like it was (entirely) the GM's fault.
Wow! 10?
Good job, sir.
Thank you, I am quite proud of her.
I think the age shouldn't/isn't an issue here.
My 10 year old is a 2 star GM, who ran games at GenCon this year -one table of PFS GMs.
As I didn't seen an abundance of 10 y/o GMs at GenCon, I'm going to assume I was next to your daughter during the event. I heard players compliment her as a good GM. Not just a good kid trying to GM, but a straight up good GM.
If I'd known how to track you down at the event, I'd've passed the compliment along directly.
Thank you, I will make sure that she sees this.
Mistwalker- in the case of your daughter, she has obviously demonstrated both of the prerequisites listed above. Congrats, on a job well done.
Thank you, and I agree, maturity has a lot to do with it.
But from everything that I have read in this thread, age/maturity didn't really seem to play any role in what happened.
The GM may have gotten the abilities of the NPCs wrong on a couple of points, but does seem to have followed the tactics as described in the scenario.
|
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
Fascinating. The longer this thread goes, the fewer things the GM actually got wrong; if the posted references the stats/tactics/etc are to be believed, then the players have made far more errors than the GM did, and all because they chose to make their declarations without fact-checking first.
|
|
But from everything that I have read in this thread, age/maturity didn't really seem to play any role in what happened.
I don't think this has all that much to do with age, but based on the second player's description of how the first bit of exploration went, it sounds to me like the GM just wanted to get to the combat as quickly as possible and smack the PCs around. And that's just not good GM'ing.
Not grounds to reverse the TPK but definitely something to talk with the GM about.
|
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
|
I think it is prudent for the local Venture Captain to be involved in the supervision (if it makes some people feel better, we can call it PFS young-adult development) until the necessary experience and maturity are demonstrated.
That may be practical in your neck of the woods, but it isn't universally so. The San Francisco Area, for example, covers something like 250 miles N/S (spanning at least 10 active game stores involved in PFS, and as many again that have expressed a desire to get involved, but which don't yet consistently have enough players ready to sign up for regular games), and hosts over 100 tables of PFS at each of three major conventions. It's impossible for a VO, let alone the VC, to be hands-on at every store on anything more than an occasional basis. That's why there are store coordinators to handle the day-to-day events.
|
|
The no criticals or sneak attack on robots is still pretty huge.
The text on the constructs in this scenario can be misunderstood fairly easily to behave the way the GM ruled at table.
Vulnerable to Critical Hits: Whenever a robot takes extra damage from a critical hit, it must succeed at a DC 15 Fortitude save or be stunned for 1 round. If it succeeds at this saving throw, it is staggered for 1 round. The robot is still immune to other sources of the stunned condition.
He was wrong, but I can see misreading that in the heat of the moment and concluding as he (ultimately) did.
I could even see misreading it as invulnerable fairly easily.