Arclord's Envy, player review. Spoilers!

[Dreamtime2k9]

There is a TL:DR at the end for those seeking just a small summary.

Party:
Human Cleric of Sarenrae. (Healing domain, Staff of healing+Shield)
Half-Elf Fighter (2h Guisarme)
Half-Elf Paladin of Iomedae. (2h Guisarme)
Halfling ranger (Crossbow)

All of these characters optimized for sake of having maximum AC values at lowest potential penalty to movement/skills. Thus Hide/breastplates were worn all around. Reach weapons are traditionally good and thus where opted over a sword and board style. All characters had 23 AC(Cleric at 25 when shield raised), HP's were (63/83/73/65) to provide an idea.

Note: Due to flaky people, we had to run with 2 DMPC's that players had control over, both half-elves were GM creations but were both capable and build properly.

Note 2: I checked the module after the game ended to ensure i covered everything necessary.

Retrieving the arclords corpse:
None of us are intelligence based characters, we did not pass the DC 18 recall knowledge check to know more about the Quantium.
> The highest modifier we had was a +5 untrained, the average was a +3. Succeeding this was statistically improbable already based upon these numbers. The game master explained the creature would be moving at 40ft per round.

GM explained our options for retrieving the corpse.

< besides the ranger none of us were particularely stealth, especially so with armor check penalties resulting in most of us having a 3-4 modifier for stealth . As such we opted to attempt the (seemingly) penalty-less deception/intimidate check of 19 that as written had no failure penalty although one could be assumed as otherwise it could be attempted over and over and it would be an easy finish at no risk. The GM mentioned that such a thing would not make sense as grabbing its attention with the stealth option would result in it swatting, we agreed to it as it does not make sense as if that is not the case it is a clearly superior option comparatively to go with the social roll incase it wouldn't have that (assumed) penalty. It really isn't clear if there is a failure penalty or not but it wouldn't make sense to have both options be present if one is risk free and the other is not. And so the creature would swat at the creature for failure on the deception/intimidation check, the same way it would for stealth failures with the same range utilised of being within 10ft for the attempt.
< The fact this creature is moving at 40ft (Party moves at 25/25/30/35 respectively) and you would require a hide action, you would be out of actions even before attempting to retrieve the corpse, if attempting this route by double moving in addition to stealth. You could pre-empt 1 of the movement actions by getting ahead of the golem and attempt the consecutive stealth + acrobatics + athletics rolls which besides the stealth check are all pretty difficult checks for a 5th level party in the first place and has a major chance at failure.

We debated our choices and our Strategy turned into the following; The cleric casted shield other on the paladin who would be attempting the intimidate/deception check as they had the highest intimidate modifier of a +7 against the DC of 19. Once successfull, we would all attempt to interact with the body and get it free.
< It resulted in the paladin taking 3 hits in 9 turns, essentially utilising 1 turn to attempt, 1 turn to heal up, 1 turn to move ahead of it again.
< The paladin and cleric could split the (melee +28, 3d10+10 damage) attack which was crit every time as the creature only required to roll a 5 or more to do so for 6d10+20 damage. Mind you this is against the optimized AC the party had of 23(Max at this level without a shield) as thats the way the new system works.
< If it weren't for shield other, this attack by itself has the potential to one shot even the tanky paladin with 73 HP(Con 14+toughness on a d10 class, having maximum AC while not choosing to use a shield for their build which in fairness, would still have the creature CRITICAL more then 50% of the time).

Needless to say, we were already rather miffed despite our strategy preventing death at least. Our ranger was very glad he didn't attempt to stealth in before the successfull distract as such hits would likely kill him outright as he did not have shield other on him.

Essentially the gm wasn't sure how to handle the third failure which would result in the golem attacking for stealth failures but no mentions made for any kind of social failures what so ever, all but guaranteeing a TPK assuming the party was within 20ft range. In the end, having no idea how to actually interpret the rules of the challenge, they gave up on trying to interpret the stipulated scene and simply had the corpse fall of the foot as recommended for multiple failures.

The cleric with a medicine of 10 required a 12 on the roll now which even with hero point spending, did not get. The ranger attempted the same with a +7, using lucky halfling to retry again but to no avail. The fighter & paladin both required a natural 20 to succeed and did not do so.

We gave up on the quantum golem after informing the authorities the corpse should be checked out and given burial.

We went to the scene of the crime and were offered the following bits of information by the guards;
< They managed to subdue the golem that was going berserk, it was done to preserve the crime scene for investigation. Golems are immune to most magics but;
< Electricity spells would be healing it.
< Fire did not appear to be effective(contradictory to its statblock), The gm phrased it as such because the fireball trap appears to have little effect on the golem. (Its really awkward, definitely misleading according to both my gm and myself.)

To quote the misleading aspect of the module which is where my GM phrased it as such; "a fireball trap that had little effect on the magic-resistant golem". This is terrible writing, its misleading and i feel cheated now by the module itself.

We checked out the scene, We made half of the (high) DC checks of 18 despite none of the group being good at arcane or occult modifier wise. We got bits and pieces of information but in the end, all we knew is some form of earth conjurerer was involved but not in which manner.

Before we could react to this newfound information, the golem awoke.

-Round 1-
< Golem goes first and (unsurprisingly) Hits(Prone) + Crits the cleric who only has 23(max for level) ac without the raised shield, as such went down before they got to do anything. If shield would've been raised, the crit would've just been an actual hit but can't do multiple things at once in exploration mode which is a bit frustrating and a huge flaw in the exploration system as is.
< The fighter missed both its attacks after moving after the cleric went down.
< The paladin moved over to the cleric and brought her back to conciousness by utilising its channel life.
< The ranger missed with its attack after using hunt target, running reload afterwards to gain distance towards the door.

- Round 2 -
< The NPC guards give it to the nearest person, such would be the ranger who was near the door. We asked if the sword was magical and it turned out, no it was a simple (not even expert) longsword with something drenched on it. The sword remained not used for the remainder of the combat therefor as the hit penalty was a bigger concern then its damage reduction compared to the party's magical equipment. (Why didn't they just give us the coating, at least THAT would be a usefull action on their part.)
< Cleric crawled away from the golem with its slowed 2 condition, that was the turn.
< Golem smacked the paladin, hit + Crit + hit and paladin goes unconcious.
< Fighter misses both attacks.
< Ranger crits with his crossbow before and after reloading for a good hit.

- Round 3-
< Paladin failed the DC23 to stabilize.
< Cleric pumps a good 40 into the paladin to prevent death and to avoid being the sole healing force in a battle as hard hitting as this one.
< Golem knocks out the fighter with a crit and two hits.
< Measely damage from the crossbow ranger as the DR hurts when your lowing roll on that one hit you roll. (2d10+4 is respectable damage but when you roll ~10's on damage.. its not that great with 5 resistance)

(Note: It sounds like luck for there to be so many crits but concidering the modifier of higher level creatures in addition to the prone condition and the crit rules that just need to exceed something by 10, its really not that surprising this creature would proceed to crit multiple times each turn.)

I won't bother going further into the round per round but to break things down.

Slowed 2-3 after being healed from dying condition combined with getting pummeled again because it attacks the closest creatures, who are still prone due to reduced(or no) action economy from slowed while having their hands emptied upon going unconcious resulted in the cleric attempting to put up a fight, hoping for the golem to roll multiple terrible rolls in a row to the point recovery could be a concideration. It did not happen, the ranger could not solo kill this monster and eventually both fighter & paladin died when the cleric ran out of healing. The cleric & Ranger could get away but at which point our GM called the session. Justifyable so as we could not finish with 2 characters and already TPK'd prior and this was our second chance after all.

------------------ (TL:DR) ------------------

Closing Thoughts:
< Several things were not explained properly such as what the penalty would be for going the distract tactic over the stealth one, and so on.
< The DC's of this module were over the top, especially in the consecutive cases because unless trained+ability modifier of 18.. Odds of success is incredibly low. 50% odds for optimized characters is a terrible design.
< Utilising a lvl 20 creature for effect in addition to punishing for failure to meet the high DC's feels terrible. You know your fighting the odds, you use what little clever strategy you can use but ultimately with only 3 failures required... you will just lose PC's for sure.
< Utilising a creature at higher CR then the party will just result in crits a plenty. Once several members went down from prone, there is no chance of recovery because of the slow mechanic unless the monster was already relatively low at the time it occured.
< Damage needs to be downscaled or survivability for PC's needs to go up. Either needs to occur for the system to be remotely playable as it stands. I honestly feel tomb of horrors and others as such would be more forgiving then this particular adventure concidering the state pathfinder 2e is in presently.
< Medicine does not have an option for exploration mode, there is no recall knowledge so what action are we actually taking when utilising these medicine rolls. This was another (short) debate in the group.

EXTRA: The survey is filled out by those thay played/ran it. There was a lack to add details and the right questions where absent from the form i believe. Hence my decision to write this up.

Some thoughts from general play that aren't module related;

- Crossbows feel very underwhelming. Hunt target feels underwhelming too. Running reload is interesting but their damage potential as a martial class feels very underwhelming as a whole.
- Healing clerics feel satisfying to play, having channel energy heightening heals allows for quite some healing output especially mixed with the likes of healing hands, being able to increase the pool with healing font also felt like a nice addition. I just wish besides shield other, i got to use more of my other spells but being on the backfoot from the beginning will do that to you, i guess?

I didn't get to see enough of the cool stuff of paladin & fighter this time around to formulate an opinion. I'm certain the brutish shove chain could've been interesting if it had actually worked at any given time. Retributive strike feels relatively easely avoidable in most cases if it does come up.

-------------

Thats it for me. I hope this feedback was helpful, incase there would be any questions... i'll respond when i'm back awake if i have an answer of sorts.

[Laik]

I have GMed 2 groups through this scenario (both succeeded) and have some thoughts to add.

The challenges provided are really tough, as long as the GM and the players adher to the tactics suggested in the scenario itself (AFAIK, GMs in PFS are obliged to follow instrctions exactly). Meanwhile, all successful behaviors and solutions I saw result from both GM and players NOT following the scenario suggested tactics, while not breaking the game rules or anything.

For instance, both groups I GMed used telekinetic maneuver to get the corpse out of the golems feat. It is not an option listed in the scenario description, but I felt free to allow it (as I would in any of my house games) because it works much like a typical Athletics check to "move something an enemy carries around". This use is way safer, yet omitted by the writer. Knowing my players, I doubt they would even try provoking that 20th level creature - corpse would not be worth it to them.

Instead of going right into the laboratory, they started long detailed talks to the gaurds, as well as using their recall knowledge skills, relying on the guard's description of the golem. Not limited by time at this stage, they could make a few attempts. Made some mistakes on the critical fumbles, but at least they recalled the fire vulnerability. I typically feel generous about giving "1 piece of information" , since the rules do not really describe what IS one piece, so I give info which seems coherent and most likely reliant to the character's expertise (sorcerer rememeberd stuff about fire and overall magic immunities, while fighter remembered about the golem's DR/adamantite).

Etc., etc. This is not the only paizo scenario that looks playable only when you play it freeform instead of following the scenario scripts: from my experience, the more must-use instructions for GM the scenario has, the worse is the average result. Any survey results on Arcolor'd Envy should be extremely messy, because survey offers no way to tell what exactly the palyers did, whether GM was actually playing it "strictly as written" or not, etc. I expect unusable statistic results in this case.

[Dreamtime2k9]

While some GM's are a bit more loose for their home games, because PFS support the idea of following suggestions exactly as its presented and there being a lot of GM's out there like that, it would result in this being a downright rediculous challenge level in this particular module.

If you aren't playing as written, then it would be hard to test what is presented to a new playergroup with a new GM who'll have an easier time following something as its written up instead of adding too much of their personal touch, especially so if they would not be confident in doing so just yet.

For what its worth; If i were in my homebrew game, i'd be a lot more loose aswell and applaud inventive or particularely clever ways to circumvent the encounter to a degree(such as the example you provided) but with PFS stuff the idea is to playtest the system and module which is the approach we took and the results speak for itself i think.

If it was a homebrew game, i likely would have left this golem alone after seeing the first hit and seeing how powerful it is. For sake of testing however, we continued to see if it felt playable.

[Laik]

Dreamtime2k9 wrote:

If you aren't playing as written, then it would be hard to test what is presented to a new playergroup with a new GM who'll have an easier time following something as its written up instead of adding too much of their personal touch, especially so if they would not be confident in doing so just yet.

I see all that as testing the game system, not as testing the "PFS scenario usage rules" . I am not a PFS member and not planning to be one, exactly because I know how PFS official rulings diminish potentially fine game experience. Why having bad games when you can have good ones?

So I strongly distinguish between game rules (that I need for home games, preferably modular and moddable) and PFS scenario-use rules (that I am not particularly interested in testing or using). Rules on Acrobatics, recalling knowledge etc. both in and outside combat is what attracts my attention when I do playtesting here: can characters use them when they want, do I have game rules to model things players are inventing on the fly? This is what I consider to be part of game system.

But using suggested monster tactics, forced solutions, dialogues with limited options? No. This is not a part of game system, this is poor narrative, a completely different thing that does not need any extra testing.

[vestris]

So I really do not understand the combat math here nor the initial combat situation. I agree that the encounter is worded badly (especially the fire damage part).

The group enters the shop, the golem sits there trying to free itself from the restrains like a berserker, which he makes after 1d4 rounds. How does he even get to the cleric first? Like at least the fighter should position himself in a way that he will be the first target if a fight breaks out. If no one is in range the first round is, stand up, move berserk slam. If the fighter stands alongside the Paladin there will be an autotrigger of retributive strike.

Then how does the cleric fall? First attack at +15, ok +8 to hit is nasty, he takes an average of 18 damage. Falls prone reducing his ac to 21 including MAP the golem now has to roll a 20 to crit with his +11 bonus. And needs to deal another batch of damage which would be 32 on average. Avg. Total of 50 damage total if everything is correct the golem did 13 more points of damage than average.

The paladin: +8 to hit bashing him into the ground, another 20 for a crit and another 16+ to hit a third time? First hit 18 avg. second hit 32 avg. last hit 18 average. Avg. 68 total, dealt at least 73 again at least 5 dmg more than average.

The fighter: First a crit, so rolled 18 or higher, then two regular hits, rolling 10+ and 15+. The fighter took 15 more than avg damage. to go down.

In total, the golem rolled 2x20, 18+, 16+, 15+, +11, 10+ and 2x 8+. Lets say all rolls have bin minimal that nets an end result that is 31.5 points higher than the avg, in 9 rolls I would say that is quite some luck. Then the damage 3 rounds with three hits should net 156 points of damage on average you took at least 219, 63 more than average that is your cleric down in extra damage, even with 2 crits the average extra damage would have been at 188.

The fighter rolled 11-, and 16-, the ranger 11-, then 11-, 16- and a nat. 20 for the ranger.

I would say your group was very unlucky with the rolls. Of course the cleric being downed by a natural 20 hurt giving him the slowed 2 condition. Neither the paladin nor the fighter could profit from their reactions? No buffs pre-combat which must have been considered inevitable. Or did the golem roll a one on the escape throw too?

Crossbow and Hunt Target do not synergise well that is true, however I do not understand why the ranger did not apply hunt target before combat.

[Dreamtime2k9]

Regarding the "why didn't you prebuff" comment.

IF you see the following in chat; (direct copy of some of the golem relevant bits until we started investigating it further)

< "We had received reports about some kind of break-in," the light-brown-haired Eiab explains to the party, "so we rushed over here, saw a berserk golem, and subdued it. We avoided taking further actions to dispose of the construct, because we wanted to preserve any evidence of the crime."

< In one corner of the room, an unburnt yet badly shrapnel-damaged flesh golem bound with sturdy silk rope twitches, groans, and strains against its bonds.

Let me ask you this; Would you assume you needed to pre-buff concidering they subdued the golem in question prior to our arrival after being pointed out its badly injured in addition? The golem did not appear threatening until it started swinging.

While the cleric(myself) may have been a bit careless as to believe she could inspect the golems wounds, it is only because of the context provided. The other 3 were preoccupied with a peculiar package; what i assume(never quite made a succesful roll there) was part of the evidence as to the culprit.

In addition to that, as mentioned in the OP both fighter & paladin were NPC's in essence to assist the party. We as players had control over them but concidering we were pre-occupied with our own characters actions and they had found the package and were already dealing with that... neither of us thought more of it concidering the situation presented. I assume the golem rolled a 2(was GM rolled so unclear) before it got to act.

The golem is not prone according to the pdf, in order to inspect the wounds of the golem one would be close by, hence why the closest target was the cleric and resulted in a triple swing.

I do agree the fighter & paladin probably could've been closer if we did assess the golem was a threat, which we didn't in part due to poor rolls on identifying the creature due to high DC's and lack of trained skills across the group and the other part due to player strain of having multiple characters to control which was not the plan but with people flaking last minute... that was the way the cookie crumbled.

Regarding rolls; 2d12+3+d4 for berserk slam, obviously multiplied incase of a critical. Average minimum damage roll of 19 is correct according to my math.

15/11/6 attacks against 23/21 AC.
+15 vs AC 23 -> 8 to hit, 18 to crit. (Would be at +1 subsequent rounds due to targets already being prone)
+11 vs AC 21 -> 10 to hit, 20 to crit.
+6 vs AC 21 -> 15 to hit, 20 to crit.

Those to hit rolls sound about right from memory - i remember the cleric & paladins sounding just about right but the fighter rolls are a bit more fuzzy concidering raised stress levels of attempting to think of a way out of this. I won't claim the GM didn't roll very hot this particular encounter. Sadly, i didn't save the log from maptools to confirm but i probably will henceforth.

The creature never did anything to provoke an AoO concidering the combat never moved from the position it started in with people subsequently going prone/going into dying and being unable to get back up with the moving initiatve upon death, After the paladin engaged in the fight they healed and went down before their next turn came around and never regained their ability to use a reaction before being downed again.

The ranger was investigating in exploration mode instead of worrying about combat.

[vestris]

I understand that you had a bad situation to begin with, with only 2 players and 4 PC's.

As that description should imply that he is indeed in berserk mode desperately trying to get free yes you should have prepared for combat. (As I said the encounter is worded badly) With 20 hp missing badly wounded is a stretch as well.

So again the description is not your fault. What I am trying to say is what happened here is not the fault of the system either. It is a bad description assuming that you get the right cues to prepare yourself. Especially this: it is not badly injured and it is not fire resistant. That the text did not successfully convey that the golem was raging and trying to break free from the silk ropes that held him is a real issue.

Then the GM was overly lucky. Lets say the cleric does not fall in round 1, the fight will be completely different. The same should be assumed for the paladin and the fighter in the subsequent turns especially when the cleric is then ready to heal.

Quote:

Only 1d4 rounds after the PCs enter the workshop,

the golem finally succeeds at snapping the cords
confining it, lurches to its feet...

So the Golem still has to stand up first. Which then could prompt an AoO, and since it is mindless the fighter in the frontrow + paladin behind can exploit him for regular retributive strikes.

In general colette seems to roll very high which is not a fault of the system, and yes with the combat math and action economy everything that happens is extremely important.

I do not see the same issues with the exploration mode that you and colette see. Those tactics are not the only tactics possible and you can of course just stand there raise your shield and watch (recall knowledge) or the like. Those are some defaults, any 2 actions can be used in exploration mode. Those are just helping guidelines for unexperienced GM's.

[vestris]

As rounds are very important in this particular setting I would have switched to encounter mode right when you entered the house. That would also gave you the metagame cues that something is about to go down. And helped with the rather bad descriptions.

[Laser—Boards]

vestris wrote:

As rounds are very important in this particular setting I would have switched to encounter mode right when you entered the house. That would also gave you the metagame cues that something is about to go down. And helped with the rather bad descriptions.

Honestly if the system can’t handle encounters without giving the players time for advanced preparation that’s a failure of the system. You can’t assume every group is going to play super paranoid characters and the DM shouldn’t have to ruin surprises by tipping off the players about future encounters. If the game falls apart from the basic unexpected attack scenario that’s a really big problem.

[vestris]

Laser—Boards wrote:

vestris wrote:

As rounds are very important in this particular setting I would have switched to encounter mode right when you entered the house. That would also gave you the metagame cues that something is about to go down. And helped with the rather bad descriptions.

Honestly if the system can’t handle encounters without giving the players time for advanced preparation that’s a failure of the system. You can’t assume every group is going to play super paranoid characters and the DM shouldn’t have to ruin surprises by tipping off the players about future encounters. If the game falls apart from the basic unexpected attack scenario that’s a really big problem.

Have you read any of my posts before?

There was a Golem in berserk mode trying to get free in the room (Nothing what I would call surprise encounter). If that does not tip your paranoia and lets you prepare for some kind of encounter I don't know what tips you.

As I said the wording on the encounter is bad which is not a part of the system.

Letting the fighter observe the creature up close or have the group at least in a decent marching order if something happens is no advanced preparation. Plus both crits where rolled 20's so the new crit system hasn't even been involved in that.

Another addition where is it a stretch to go into encounter mode when you know that the players have 24 seconds at best to search the room before they are attacked, with the attacker already being visibl?

[Dreamtime2k9]

Note: i'll split up my responses as i went in length on this one. Assume more to come.

vestris wrote:

Lets say the cleric does not fall in round 1, the fight will be completely different. The same should be assumed for the paladin and the fighter in the subsequent turns especially when the cleric is then ready to heal.

I agree with this, alas it is what occured nevertheless.

You stated you didn't see a mechanical issue with the system, so let me break down my reasoning and that'll indicate an issue potentially depending upon viewpoints and player expectations. I know what mine are in any case, i am unaware of yours presently.

------

So the Golem would reliably deal about 19 damage as the average on a minimum per hit(i'm using anydice for this kind of math and utilising the number closest to 50% on "at least"), with a 15% chance of a critical(18+ roll) on the first attack and subsequent 5% chances on 2nd and 3rd attacks which would mean just shy of 40 damage per round as an average assuming no criticals.

Assuming a critical + regular hit; this would mean just shy of 60 damage assuming it does not go over its average minimum damage resulting in very decent odds of knocking out someone out who is barely above 60hp.

Concidering its attack modifier and the maximum AC values at this level, you'd be looking at it hitting twice on average unless you have someone who managed to get bane off, you have a shield focussed character as the character it is whacking on for the extra +2 AC.

The max HP's in the party being the following;

* Cleric 63: (8 race/ 8 Class / 14+ toughness con.(Effective modifier of 3, max being 5 at this level)
* Ranger 71: 6 race / 10 class / 16 con, no toughness. (Effective modifier of 3, max being 5 at this level)
* Paladin 73: 8 race / 10 class / 14+ toughness con.(Effective modifier of 3, max being 5 at this level)
* Fighter 83: 8 race / 10 class / 18+ toughness con. (Effective modifier of 5 of the maximum of 5)

This means the maximum hp a character could have at this level assuming human or gnome's 8 (Thus could be raised by 2 for half-orc/dwarves, lowered by 2 for halfling/goblin) and maxed out con + investing their only general feat at this level in toughness would be;
< 93(D12), 83(D10), 73(D8), 63(D6)
< D12 classes: 1, D10 classes: 4, D8 classes: 5, D6 classes 2.

This costed them 4 of 13 statboosts(again, assuming human for conveniance as they kind of represent the default in any case), their only general feat at level 5(assuming they did not invest the ancestry feat in it being human).

In theory average constitution would be defined as 14 (in my opinion, concidering they are trying their best to prevent dumpstats with bulk for str/resonance for charisma) with 13 statboosts to be split between 6 stats. Meaning the (quick math) average HP across the board would be 58-68hp(which means average of 63 exactly) across all classes/races/stats.

The difference between average and maximum is only a 2(3 for hp because toughness is a feat), however but because of the statblocks in the game and the math being so tight... you'll need to have those maximum's to be effective for sake of offense, ac and hp. Which means 3 stats need to be 18 resulting in a single 12 which for some builds is not feasible to muster, in addition unless you'll also want to shore up your saves which are tied to 2 of those 3 stats aswell unless your a character utilising wisdom as an offensive stat.

Moving on from maximum HP's;

A single heal utilising the cleric(who is vastly superior in healing compared to any other class by quite a wide margin)utilising its most powerful 3 action heal that would output this amount of healing;

6d8(3rd level heighten+healing hands)+4(wis)+1(staff of healing)+12(healer's blessing) - average minimum 38-39 points of healing. This is assuming the target is in touch range otherwise; 1d8+2 or +12 would be substracted to create a ranged heal instead.

In a sense, i could accept this if there were more/better ways for after combat recovery or incase you would have 1 to 2 combats per day at most, otherwise... those recovery resources you'll have with these averages will not manage to get you through unless your group is specificly tailored towards it.

Good luck to the unoptimized character to get through this module, good luck to the party that lacks a divine caster to get through this encounter, etc. Again, the averages in the system are the inherent issue in a sense in this module which appears like a trend thusfar across doomsday and this particular module; thus the playtest. At least that is my reasoning.

---

Now i'll ask you again;

Do you not see an issue with the combat math and what this would do for build variety in the system as a whole?

As i do think if you really look at the above, you'll realise why this system is currently in a problematic state to play without a healing cleric(seems to be a universal complaint already judging from the forums), why this system is downright impossible to play with the expectancy to live for any imperfect defensively rolled character(many TPK's are had, again looking at the forums).

I went through the first 3 doomsday dawn modules aswell, twice for the first part even; most of them had simular issues with the combat math that was very bursty in addition to high average substained damage resulting in needing above average rolls for the group and/or a healing cleric to make it playable. I will state now that we made it through the first and the last part; largely in part because we played with two clerics and at least one additional healer, all rolled for optimum tankyness to prevent having someone being bursted down which still felt like a challenge in the sense that when crits came into play; it wouldn't work 100% of the time. (Hence use of shield other and the like.)

All of this indicates that the system expects you to do certain things but doesn't make such an indication when creating a character, its why i stated in my TLDR that i believe defensive quality for PC characters SHOULD be raised or the statblocks of encounters reduced or not have encounters above the party level because their math just does not support that what so ever.

This is not assuming saves which for the record to regain conciousness when the fighter did fall, who had a +11 modifier which is the absolute maximum, they still required to roll a 12 to pass the dying save.

[Dreamtime2k9]

vestris wrote:

Quote:

Only 1d4 rounds after the PCs enter the workshop,

the golem finally succeeds at snapping the cords
confining it, lurches to its feet...

So the Golem still has to stand up first. Which then could prompt an AoO, and since it is mindless the fighter in the frontrow + paladin behind can exploit him for regular retributive strikes.

This was an oversight on our behalf, i missed it and i suppose as did Colete however concidering the situation... i believe it would not have mattered for sake of the standing up part.

The tactic would've been good, if the cleric wouldn't have gone down resulting in the paladin having to be the closest target alongside the fighter to get them back up, its likely what we should/would've done.

vestris wrote:

As that description should imply that he is indeed in berserk mode desperately trying to get free yes you should have prepared for combat. (As I said the encounter is worded badly) With 20 hp missing badly wounded is a stretch as well.

So again the description is not your fault. What I am trying to say is what happened here is not the fault of the system either. It is a bad description assuming that you get the right cues to prepare yourself. Especially this: it is not badly injured and it is not fire resistant. That the text did not successfully convey that the golem was raging and trying to break free from the silk ropes that held him is a real issue.

My thought process was something of this sort after seeing that description.

1) The golem was a lot more injured then it was.
2) The guards at the door managed to be able to subdue it without our presence, we are double the people and assumedly (because its a tabletop RPG) more competent then the 2 city guard present.
3) The golem was trying to break free but seemed unable to do so presently.

I do agree that the module's description was poorly phrased, resulting in the situation from manifesting which was a bigger issue then the system mechanics itself.

vestris wrote:

As rounds are very important in this particular setting I would have switched to encounter mode right when you entered the house. Tha

Laser—Boards wrote:

Honestly if the system can’t handle encounters without giving the players time for advanced preparation that’s a failure of the system. You can’t assume every group is going to play super paranoid characters and the DM shouldn’t have to ruin surprises by tipping off the players about future encounters. If the game falls apart from the basic unexpected attack scenario that’s a really big problem.

I agree with this. While a good chunk of my characters are very paranoid, they are typically my more experienced higher level characters or my more intelligent characters; having to be overtly paranoid as a character quirk will cause to repetitiveness t would also gave you the metagame cues that something is about to go down. And helped with the rather bad descriptions.

At least for me personally, it wouldn't have changed a thing as in all of my typical playgroups; metagaming knowledge is very frowned upon. (I do not know Colete's view on this, nor does this matter.)

Laser—Boards wrote:

Honestly if the system can’t handle encounters without giving the players time for advanced preparation that’s a failure of the system. You can’t assume every group is going to play super paranoid characters and the DM shouldn’t have to ruin surprises by tipping off the players about future encounters. If the game falls apart from the basic unexpected attack scenario that’s a really big problem.

I agree with this. While a good chunk of my characters are very paranoid, they are typically my more experienced higher level characters or my more intelligent characters; having to be overtly paranoid as a character quirk will cause to repetitiveness in a non-fun way.

vestris wrote:

Plus both crits where rolled 20's so the new crit system hasn't even been involved in that.

Yes and no, i would say. The crit system is involved as there are no longer confirmation rolls.

The rounds that followed these 3 (We had another 3-4 rounds i think before deaths occured), the new crit system mattered for sure regarding its 1st attack.

[Colette Brunel]

At no point did I ever parse the golem as prone at any point, because the adventure never actually describes it as prone.

[Laser—Boards]

vestris wrote:

Laser—Boards wrote:

vestris wrote:

As rounds are very important in this particular setting I would have switched to encounter mode right when you entered the house. That would also gave you the metagame cues that something is about to go down. And helped with the rather bad descriptions.

Honestly if the system can’t handle encounters without giving the players time for advanced preparation that’s a failure of the system. You can’t assume every group is going to play super paranoid characters and the DM shouldn’t have to ruin surprises by tipping off the players about future encounters. If the game falls apart from the basic unexpected attack scenario that’s a really big problem.

Have you read any of my posts before?

There was a Golem in berserk mode trying to get free in the room (Nothing what I would call surprise encounter). If that does not tip your paranoia and lets you prepare for some kind of encounter I don't know what tips you.

As I said the wording on the encounter is bad which is not a part of the system.

Letting the fighter observe the creature up close or have the group at least in a decent marching order if something happens is no advanced preparation. Plus both crits where rolled 20's so the new crit system hasn't even been involved in that.

Another addition where is it a stretch to go into encounter mode when you know that the players have 24 seconds at best to search the room before they are attacked, with the attacker already being visibl?

I did, but I just don't see why it's unreasonable for the players to automatically doubt the guards competency. I mean, the guards managed to subdue the golem in the first place which speaks to their competence and the nonthreatening danger level of the golem. Now sure, some characters are going to have a personality that would make them super wary of the tied up golem that two random NPC guards managed to defeat but not all of them. If the system doesn't accommodate more trusting, naive, laid back, confident, etc. characters without risking a party wipe that's a problem.

And beyond the encounter this kind of unexpected attack should be a workable encounter. If the game turns super lethal as soon as the players get in a slightly bad tactical position that's not good. I can think of a variety of situations where the players might get attacked by stuff when out of position. Traitorous allies, mimics, gargoyles, things that are summoned, etc. It's a common enough situation that the game should be able to handle it.

Yeah, going into encounter mode to tip off the players to the impending attack is what I meant by spoiling the surprise. Ideally reliance on such out of character information should be kept to a minimum.

Look, maybe this scenario was supposed to have the potential for an unexpected attack or maybe it wasn't. But regardless the players did end up surprised and that exposed a weakness in the system.

[Laik]

Guys, what you discussing is a scenario problem, not a system problem.

The guards have no stats, we can't say if they actually could subdue the golem. They are plot devices who tell their stories as if they are "competent enough to deal with the situation", - and useless when fight breaks up. Worse than useless, considering how they waste the adamantine blanche. Very bad way to trick the group into beleiving the situation is under the guards' control.

Trap effect description and golem condition do not match. Would not be much of a problem ina hack-and-slash scenario, but this is supposed to be investigation! The very genre expects the author to check for such things.

When monster starts combat in some unusual circumstances, i would expect its first actions described mechanically for the GM (like, "1 action to break bonds, 1 action to stand up, 1 action to do as it pleases"). Without that, the GM does not have much useful info about what an enemy has to do to start the fight. Instead, the scenario drowns important things in irrelevant and not matching information, like 'what players are expected to do'.

What you end up with is not game system testing, it is fighting poor narrative structure and author's wrong assumptions.

[Laser—Boards]

Laik wrote:

Guys, what you discussing is a scenario problem, not a system problem.

The guards have no stats, we can't say if they actually could subdue the golem. They are plot devices who tell their stories as if they are "competent enough to deal with the situation", - and useless when fight breaks up. Worse than useless, considering how they waste the adamantine blanche. Very bad way to trick the group into beleiving the situation is under the guards' control.

Trap effect description and golem condition do not match. Would not be much of a problem ina hack-and-slash scenario, but this is supposed to be investigation! The very genre expects the author to check for such things.

When monster starts combat in some unusual circumstances, i would expect its first actions described mechanically for the GM (like, "1 action to break bonds, 1 action to stand up, 1 action to do as it pleases"). Without that, the GM does not have much useful info about what an enemy has to do to start the fight. Instead, the scenario drowns important things in irrelevant and not matching information, like 'what players are expected to do'.

What you end up with is not game system testing, it is fighting poor narrative structure and author's wrong assumptions.

I think this does expose a system problem. If we wipe away the fluff, what we have is a simple case where while not in combat the group moved slightly out of position and then they got attacked. That's absolutely a thing that happens and that the system probably should support.

[vestris]

Laser—Boards wrote:

vestris wrote:

Laser—Boards wrote:

vestris wrote:

As rounds are very important in this particular setting I would have switched to encounter mode right when you entered the house. That would also gave you the metagame cues that something is about to go down. And helped with the rather bad descriptions.

Honestly if the system can’t handle encounters without giving the players time for advanced preparation that’s a failure of the system. You can’t assume every group is going to play super paranoid characters and the DM shouldn’t have to ruin surprises by tipping off the players about future encounters. If the game falls apart from the basic unexpected attack scenario that’s a really big problem.

Have you read any of my posts before?

There was a Golem in berserk mode trying to get free in the room (Nothing what I would call surprise encounter). If that does not tip your paranoia and lets you prepare for some kind of encounter I don't know what tips you.

As I said the wording on the encounter is bad which is not a part of the system.

Letting the fighter observe the creature up close or have the group at least in a decent marching order if something happens is no advanced preparation. Plus both crits where rolled 20's so the new crit system hasn't even been involved in that.

Another addition where is it a stretch to go into encounter mode when you know that the players have 24 seconds at best to search the room before they are attacked, with the attacker already being visibl?

I did, but I just don't see why it's unreasonable for the players to automatically doubt the guards competency. I mean, the guards managed to subdue the golem in the first place which speaks to their competence and the nonthreatening danger level of the golem. Now sure, some characters are going to have a personality that would make them super wary of the tied up golem that two random NPC guards managed to defeat but not all of them. If the system doesn't accommodate more trusting,...

Actually the guards standing there did not subdue the golem.

Quote:

...Eiab and Zanhanal, two of Quantium’s city guards...

Quote:

If asked, these guards can

relate that members of the Nexian guard had subdued the
berserk golem when their forces arrived after reports of
the attack, but they have avoided taking further actions to
dispose of the construct, wanting to preserve any evidence
of the crime.

They restrained him with a sturdy silken rope (rope has a hardness of 4, lets say silken has a hardness of 5 and +2 for sturdy as the item does not exist in the rulebook), so yeah it is pretty possible that it will break free. Heck the guards even warn the players that the golem is increasing its struggles.

The counter of 1d4 rounds can be used to describe it freeing itself, unless he roled a one then he will just rip it. If you do not want to play it out in encounter mode. But letting your player just run in taking some minutes to research the crime scene when they do not even have a single minute, there is a hostile force present, it might attack so yeah this is in encounter mode!

And of course surprise makes a threat more dangerous, it is a +2 encounter so already a high or sever threat boss, if that is played out as a surprise attack (which I still doubt it is) it could be considered 1 level higher, so extreme which should be very threatening for the group (which it was).

The specific encounter is badly written, very dangerous and the eminent danger was not relayed to the players. Not a systemic problem but a specific problem of this adventure.

[vestris]

Dreamtime2k9 wrote:

stuff

I fully agree that the adventure description is very problematic and makes this threat extreme if the danger is not relayed properly by the GM, which it is not if you stick to the text. Especially the wounded and fire resistance part are very bad.

The 2 guards alone were not able to subdue the golem, forces of the nexian guard did so.

There is no description of the breaking free however if it only takes it 1d4 rounds it is kinda an easy escape and should be described as such, ripping of the rope etc..

The switch to encounter mode is well covered by the rules. It is an eminent danger just short of breaking loose so I would say encounter mode is warranted in addition to descriptions of the breaking free. Descriptions and rp are my favorite path of handling such issues as well however the rules can support that notion.

Granted no more confirmation roles.

[vestris]

Dreamtime2k9 wrote:

HP and Damage stuff

The golem has a 60% hit rate with his first attack, 40% with his second attack (against optimized AC). Averaging 11.4 and 7.6 damage 2.85 damage on the 3 attacks without crits. 25% chance of critting with the 3 attacks. Adding 2.85, 0.95 and 0.95 damage on average. Sure he can run hot, however the Golem running hot is way less likely then the PC's running hot with 3 against up to 12 rolls a round.

I still stand by the point that this encounter was/should have been very obvious so I would assume a class with 10 HP/Level is the frontliner, with con 14, 60 damage don't drop such a character.

With someone in the party being able to heal, and heal being a single action you should easily out heal the golem's damage for a couple of rounds.

The encounter should drain quite some resources as of its leve. The cleric falling first due to a lucky crit. was the issue and should not be the mean.

Quote:

Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters

most groups of characters can consistently defeat, and
as such they are most appropriate for major encounters,
such as with a final boss. Bad luck, tactics, or a lack of
resources due to prior encounters can easily turn a severe threat
encounter against the characters, and a wise group
keeps the option to disengage open.

I played a couple of DD adventures so far and most encounters have been pretty easy for a rested party, while the groups where able to manage to pull through 2-3 encounters per rest. And that with some relatively hard encounters in between. No cleric in either of the groups. Combat plays very different to PF 1 though which I like a lot. In total 2 of my players went down once not more.

And that even with most monsters being a little overtuned.

And for colette the golem is not described being prone but his first action is standing up after ripping the cords. It is easily missed but can be very important especially if no PC is initially in range. Again it is poorly worded. I made a thread about this specific encounter.

[Laser—Boards]

vestris wrote:

Actually the guards standing there did not subdue the golem.

Quote:

...Eiab and Zanhanal, two of Quantium’s city guards...

Quote:

If asked, these guards can
relate that members of the Nexian guard had subdued the
berserk golem when their forces arrived after reports of
the attack, but they have avoided taking further actions to
dispose of the construct, wanting to preserve any evidence
of the crime.

They restrained him with a sturdy silken rope (rope has a hardness of 4, lets say silken has a hardness of 5 and +2 for sturdy as the item does not exist in the rulebook), so yeah it is pretty possible that it will break free. Heck the guards even warn the players that the golem is increasing its struggles.

The counter of 1d4 rounds can be used to describe it freeing itself, unless he roled a one then he will just rip it. If you do not want to play it out in encounter mode. But letting your player just run in taking some minutes to research the crime scene when they do not even have a single minute, there is a hostile force present, it might attack so yeah this is in encounter mode!

And of course surprise makes a threat more dangerous, it is a +2 encounter so already a high or sever threat boss, if that is played out as a surprise attack (which I still doubt it is) it could be considered 1 level higher, so extreme which should be very threatening for the group (which it was).

The specific encounter is badly written, very dangerous and the eminent danger was not relayed to the players. Not a systemic problem but a specific problem of this adventure.

Interesting, you'll note that earlier in the scenario the players were told that the workshop is being watched by the Nexian guard. Now that you point it out it's not necessarily the case that the two guards are part of the Nexian guard but you can see where the players could easily make that assumption. Though even if not members of the Nexian guard the Nexian guard was confident enough in their abilities to handle the golem that they were left there without backup from what I can tell. So unless the Nexian guard is renowned for the organization's incompetence the players shouldn't necessarily consider the golem likely to break out, kill the two guards, and go on a rampage any time soon.

Sure the counter could be used to telegraph the encounter to the players thus ruining any potential surprise. But like I said the DM shouldn’t have to ruin surprises by tipping off the players about future encounters. If the game falls apart from the basic unexpected attack scenario that’s a really big problem. And the forced metagaming solution is even worse. Metagaming has its place but ruining surprise encounters to avoid party wipes because the system can't handle a surprise monster very well really shouldn't be one of them.

Looking back over the encounter building rules I didn't notice any advice on how a simple unexpected attack would push the encounter challenge up to potentially campaign ending levels if one is not careful. Maybe I missed it or maybe it's hidden away somewhere else but either way it looks like that bit of information needs to be put front and center in the encounter building rules. It's a good thing playtesting demonstrated this oversight so it can be solved.

Yeah, I'm sure that attacking the players when out of formation is a problem contained only to this one module and will never come up again. But seriously it looks like another piece of evidence that points to a wider systemic problem with the math being improperly designed to the point where it can't handle common scenarios since a simple advantage in positioning or using good tactics causes the lethality to skyrocket.

[Gaterie]

vestris wrote:

Then the GM was overly lucky. Lets say the cleric does not fall in round 1, the fight will be completely different. The same should be assumed for the paladin and the fighter in the subsequent turns especially when the cleric is then ready to heal.

According to my calculations, the golem has between 4.3% and 5.8% chance of killing the cleric at first round (it's 4.3% if we don't take into account the "prone" rider of the first hit; 5.8 if I always assume "prone" on the second and third attack).

Realizing a 4.3% probability isn't "overly" lucky; it's just "lucky". It happens all the time. In PF1, such a probability corresponds more or less to "the monster needed a 4+ to hit, he rolled an crit! (and confirmed it)". If you've already seen a monster landing a crit in PF1, you should expect to see a Level+2 monster OTK a character in Path 2 (at a higher frequency, since monsters usually don't hit on a 4+ in PF1).

The OTK against the fighter after the OTK against the cleric is quite lucky - now we're talking about a 1/2000 chance event. It's still the kind of event I've already seen multiple of time.

Now you have to take into account:
- the group was optimized in defense. Usual groups have a higher TPK rate, by a large margin.
- There's no way to prevent a fight against a Level+2 creature. Even if the maths of the game was functional, those monsters would have still better skills than the PCs thanks to the +2 Levels: low chance of stealth, deception etc. If an adventure uses a Level+2 encounter, the chances you can avoid the encounter by playing smart are low.
- Your group has to fight 12.5 Level+2 creatures to level up - in other words, you should expect a lot of fights against Level+2 creature (or a lot of farming against Level-2 creatures, if your players like farming in TTRPG) before you reach level 5.
- If you're unlucky just once, it's game over.

Right now as the game is balanced, I'm quite confident there's no way you can play a whole AP as they are designed now. You have to optimize to the max to get a low chance to attain the 6th book. This is a systemic problem, not a problem of this adventure - and this is a problem of people not understanding what a probability means: they do not understand that a low chance of TPK every fight quickly escalate to a sure TPK when the game requires to farm monsters to level up.

[Dreamtime2k9]

vestris wrote:

so I would assume a class with 10 HP/Level is the frontliner, with con 14, 60 damage don't drop such a character.

With someone in the party being able to heal, and heal being a single action you should easily out heal the golem's damage for a couple of rounds.

The encounter should drain quite some resources as of its leve. The cleric falling first due to a lucky crit. was the issue and should not be the mean.

I played a couple of DD adventures so far and most encounters have been pretty easy for a rested party, while the groups where able to manage to pull through 2-3 encounters per rest. And that with some relatively hard encounters in between. No cleric in either of the groups. Combat plays very different to PF 1 though which I like a lot. In total 2 of my players went down once not more.

And yet said character with such HP did get dropped in round one because of the hot rolls.

Heal being a single action can add quite a bit of burst healing, however if you would read the prior encounter had, you would realise that resources would already be drained a lot from the attempt at retrieving the corpse. I put up quite a fight with my remaining heals but in the end got overwhelmed as being on the backfoot snowballed the fight.

I finished the following(DD);
2x the lost star (TPk because deadly weapons+Clear with 2x paladin, cleric, wizard)
0x Pale mountain's shadow (at recommendation to avoid it because a close friend pointed out that this adventure would trigger me.)
1x Affair at Sombrefell Hall (Clear. We basicly ran 4x tanky healers with minimum damage outputs and ran through all but the fight before the last one before we had a downed person, who would never die with the setup.)

We required 0 rests across these sessions to get through.

Regarding how the golem fight should start; It wouldn't make sense for initiative to start before the golem would be freeing itself from the wraps as thats the action that starts it, hence it would have full actions. In addition unless the players would go against the assumed guards reasoning that putting it down would harm the investigation(which makes sense) and was pointed out by the guards as to why they didn't do this, it would be odd for it to be player instagated if your not in a murderhobo game.

[Dreamtime2k9]

Gaterie wrote:

Now you have to take into account:

- the group was optimized in defense. Usual groups have a higher TPK rate, by a large margin.
- There's no way to prevent a fight against a Level+2 creature. Even if the maths of the game was functional, those monsters would have still better skills than the PCs thanks to the +2 Levels: low chance of stealth, deception etc. If an adventure uses a Level+2 encounter, the chances you can avoid the encounter by playing smart are low.
- Your group has to fight 12.5 Level+2 creatures to level up - in other words, you should expect a lot of fights against Level+2 creature (or a lot of farming against Level-2 creatures, if your players like farming in TTRPG) before you reach level 5.
- If you're unlucky just once, it's game over.

Right now as the game is balanced, I'm quite confident there's no way you can play a whole AP as they are designed now. You have to optimize to the max to get a low chance to attain the 6th book. This is a systemic problem, not a problem of this adventure - and this is a problem of people not understanding what a probability means: they do not understand that a low chance of TPK every fight quickly escalate to a sure TPK when the game requires to farm monsters to level up.

This is a better phrased version of what i was pointing out in my op. Thanks for this.

[EberronHoward]

Haven't run this adventure yet, so I can't speak with knowledge on this specific scenario. I also found "Rose Street Revenge" to have more issues than "Doomsday Dawn" in terms of comprehensibility and having more deadly monsters (Wennel > Drakus). But I will say this:

Laik wrote:

Guys, what you discussing is a scenario problem, not a system problem.

But I think it is a symptom of what PF2 is, that a group should be on its guard at all times. Doubly so if they're playing in a Society game, where multiple fights is a greater possible than a home campaign, where the players could avoid combat or have all-interaction sessions.

It may be unclear whether the Golem is an active threat or not, but the players should definitely evaluate "What would happen if it got loose?". Not just from the Golem's strength, but if an earthquake freed it, or if evil ninjas jumped in and freed it. Being a Society adventure, there's a good chance that the adventure won't just use a Chained Golem as background flavour, and trickery and contrivance is always on the menu in a D&Dish game.

The deadliness of battle is always something to consider, and as long as a PF2 character is near a monster of high level, they *should* be wary of it breaking free and attacking it. Because not preparing for a fight means you lose the fight in PF2.

[Lyricanna]

See, I knew the fight was unwinnable if the Cleric goes down turn 1.

So I'm part of the Wednesday group that ran this exact same module with the same GM. We also wiped to the golem as well, though in far fewer rounds.

Party:
> Human Cleric of Gorum (Melee, Negative Energy build)
> Halfling Druid (Animal Companion)
> Human Wizard (Conjuration School)
> Human Sorcerer (Imperial Bloodline)

All characters optimized for maximum AC, though the Wizard and Sorcerer took a Breastplate and the Cleric took Full Plate.

Note: I'm mostly copying Dreamtime2k9's post format to make sure I didn't forget anything.
Note 2: I seem to have forgotten to export the chat log from MapTool so I am missing some of the rolls here.

Retrieving the arclords corpse:

I'm don't think we even rolled to learn more about the golem, we mostly just got the basics (i.e: Giant Lv 20 golem that moves 40ft/turn, attacks anything within 20ft if not distracted, don't let it hit you) and an idea of what actions we could take.

The general plan was for the cleric (who removed their armor for higher movement speed) and wizard (who summoned an Animated Armor) to lie in wait 40ft ahead of the golem and remove the corpse while the Sorcerer would attempt to distract the golem with Intimidate. The Druid stayed to the side ready to remove the corpse with Animal Form, or attempt a deception roll if things go south.

Suprisingly, nothing bad happened, save the Druid and Wizard making things worse once each. Also the Sorcerer ended up buring to hero Points on the third round to suceed at her distraction. The only really thing I can note here is that neither action had benefits for Critically succeeding, despite the increase on the number of successes required on a crit fail. As the Cleric, it kinda felt a bit demoralizing to only get us back to where we started on a crit after the Wizards Armor made us loose progress.

With the corpse removed, the party all rolled Medicine to begin the investigation, with a crit success from the Cleric, then a success from the Wizard on the arcana roll, and a Crit-fail from the cleric on the nature roll. The end result? Jsut enough good evedence and red herrings that we actually felt like we were running an actual investigation. Though that may have been from our group spending a lot more time roleplaying between encounters due to our terrible track record with combat.

From here, we made our way to the site of the break-in and continued our investigation. As a side note, there was some confusion between me and the GM on what my character was doing, due to the Exploration rules not exactly lining up with what I was trying to do to continue the investigation.

Our investigated proceeded as such: The Druid and Sorcerer searched the room, the Wizard Investigated the golem, and the Cleric Searched the golem. This is what we discovered before combat started:
> The golem went beserk because it was SIGNIFICANTLY DAMAGED
> The golem has several wounds from Adamintine weapons/attacks
> The golem was singed by FIRE MAGIC, to NO EFFECT
> The golem was hit from blunt attacks of stand and stone
> The golem was healed by Electricity
> A package from "Ladhlia" containded materials for making traps

In addition, the contables tolds us
> They subdued the Golem
> Golems are Immune to most magic
> This golem is Healed by Electricity
> This golem did not seem to take meaningful damage from FIRE MAGIC
> Bludgening damage worked to subdue it

If you haven't already figured it out by now, the things in ALL CAPS are contradictory to the actual fight.

From here, the golem proceeded to tie the Druid on Inititive (and thus go first due to monsters winning ties) and immedately knock down the nearest person to it: my Cleric who was searching before the transition to Encounter Mode. It then crit on it's second action to attack the Cleric, throwing her immedately to Deadly 2, before knocking the Wizard prone.

The druid proceeds to summon a Warg to hopefully help out with the fight and spent her bear's only action to move into the melee. The Wizard then spent her turn attempting a Recall Knowledge action and a Ray of Frost, both actions failing. The sorcerer goes, and whiffs his Ray of frost as well.

By this point, I had basically crunched the numbers and realized that the golem would hit at least 2 attacks worth worth on it's turn (actually in hindsight it's closer to 2.5) for a whopping 34 +/- 22 damage. So when the golem proceeded to crit the Wizard, dropping her to Dying 2 as well, then spend it's last two actions attacking us (It's a berserk golem, we all agreed it'd keep attacking anything adjacent regardless if we're moving) the party universally agreed this fight was unwinnable and decided to call the night then.

TL,DR: Any unlucky souls investigating the golem when the fight breaks out are basically screwed unless you use meta-knowledge to know that cold damage inflicts the slow condition AND can actually land at least one cold spell on it every turn. And if it's the cleric that was Investigating the golem -- which is highly likely due to them likely having the best Medicine skill -- you're just asking for a TPK.

[Bartram]

This is very similar to my experience, although our table did eventually complete the adventure. I made perhaps 15 d20 rolls the entire session (Rogue with Wizard multiclass) and I think i succeeded at perhaps 4 of them.

Overall the game felt like a whole lot of: Wait for my turn. Make a roll. Fail. Wait 15 more minutes for my turn to come back around. Make a roll. Fail. Rinse and repeat. I'm pretty sure I only hit one time all night, and that was against the fire elementals in the ambush.

It doesn't help that the GM insisted that opponents weren't flat footed to me before their first action despite the fact that I had a class feature that said they were because "There are no more surprise rounds so they knew you were there even before they acted." Even after I showed him the Surprise Attack class feature line in the book.

[Dreamtime2k9]

Lyricanna wrote:

See, I knew the fight was unwinnable if the Cleric goes down turn

I'm stubborn personally. In the end the cleric going down set us back a round, but i thought the paladin & fighter were unlikely to be instagibbed allowing a potential recover if both me and the paladin heal up together.

I thought about it some more, the day after i basicly thought of the following to recover as it is mindless and will attack the nearest, regardless of conciousness.

Why didn't i drag the paladin away after they went down leaving the fighter who had high odds of surviving at least a round while we could recover with the healing of both myself and the paladin.

So i pointed this out to the GM; only be reminded there are no rules for dragging. I suppose athletics "Shove" would be the closest thing although if those rolls would need to be made for moving an unconcious ally. My cleric wouldn't have been able to, nor the ranger. The fighter could have but thats all in heinsight.

With your group, there wouldn't have been a chance of recovery due to lack of D10 hit dice and thus average damage vs average hp's. Which again, i'd say is at least in part a system issue.

Lyricanna wrote:

TL,DR: Any unlucky souls investigating the golem when the fight breaks out are basically screwed unless you use meta-knowledge to know that cold damage inflicts the slow condition AND can actually land at least one cold spell on it every turn. And if it's the cleric that was Investigating the golem -- which is highly likely due to them likely having the best Medicine skill -- you're just asking for a TPK.

In addition to the false knowledge, i agree with this that it really sets the group up for failure in addition to the higher level creature.

The module being adjusted to;
< The guards being massively injured outside, their captain is seeking reinforcements but them believing the golem will go berserk before his return and asking the party to subdue it would've made more sense.
< They offer the party 1-2 weapon blanches for sake of overcoming its resistance instead of the coated weapon that would be irrelevant because magical weapons are better then a non-expert longsword when your trying to hit something that already is hard to hit.

< In addition, the knowledge of fire/frost/electricity effects and the bludgeoning/adamantine information should all be found before the fight could start without anyone being in its range to swing because the party can discover this thing is mindless and will attack the nearest target until its removed from existance.

With those adjustments i believe the fight "could" be done although it would still be over if people start dropping and/or you miss the cold spell to reduce its action economy. Maybe something in this house would have those effects for non-caster classes to utilise even. If you give it full action economy especially so against squishier groups, it does seem to go as i thought that its average damage is too high to deal with for 6/8 hit point classes with the above example being provided.

Bartram wrote:

It doesn't help that the GM insisted that opponents weren't flat footed to me before their first action despite the fact that I had a class feature that said they were because "There are no more surprise rounds so they knew you were there even before they acted." Even after I showed him the Surprise Attack class feature line in the book.

It just makes me sad to read this, your game master was obviously wrong making this call and went off his personal bias instead of what your class is ment to be able to do.

[vestris]

Dreamtime2k9 wrote:

Why didn't i drag the paladin away after they went down leaving the fighter who had high odds of surviving at least a round while we could recover with the healing of both myself and the paladin.

There are also no rules for breathing, except if you want to breath deep.

The interact action covers dragging, the rules for bulk and carrying give you an idea about how difficult dragging would be. And even if you would be encumbered while dragging, why would you not be able to do so? Carrying (if light enough) the character would have been possible and dragging is easier.

Quote:

Adjudicating the Rules
As the GM, you are responsible for solving any rules
disputes. Remember that keeping your game moving takes
precedence over being a hundred percent correct. Looking
up rules at the table can slow the game down, so in many
cases you’ll be making your best guess rather than scouring
the book for the exact rules. (It can be instructive to look
those rules up during a break or after the session, though!)
To help make calls on the fly, use the following guidelines
the game rules are based on. You might want to keep
printouts of these guidelines and Table 10–2: Skill DCs by
Level and Difficulty (see page 337) close for quick reference.
• If you don’t know how long a quick task takes, go with 1 action.
• If you’re not sure what action a task uses, look for the
most similar basic action. If you don’t find one you like,
use a generic action and add any necessary traits (typically
attack, concentrate, manipulate, or move).
• When two sides are opposed, have one roll against the
other’s DC. Don’t have both sides roll. The one who rolls
is usually the one acting. (Initiative is an exception, and
saving throws are another.)
• If you’re making up an effect, creatures should be
incapacitated or killed only on a critical success (or a critical
failure, for a saving throw).
• If something improves or lowers chances of success, give a
+1 circumstance bonus or –1 circumstance penalty.
• If you’re not sure how difficult something significant should
be, use a high-difficulty DC for the party’s level.
• If you don’t know what check to use, pick the most
appropriate skill.
• If no skill applies to a check to Recall Knowledge, use the
Lore skill (which will usually be untrained).
• Use the characters’ daily preparations as the time to reset
anything that lasts roughly a day.
• When a character accomplishes something noteworthy
that doesn’t have rules for XP, award the group 10 to 30 XP.

Ruling that something is impossible because there is no specific action in the book that is exactly that, is not appropriate. The appropriate skill would have been athletics and I do not see a problem "shoving" someone of medium size if you can potentially shove a huge dragon with a good athletics roll.

Some monster values might be too high, as Mark Seifter acknowledged there might be something off with the monster creation rules.

This specific module needs adjustment, the amount of misinformation for that encounter is immense. And maybe the other PFS adventures too.

Btw. as of RAW the golem would have been slowed for 2d6 rounds by the ray of frost just by attempting it and any fire spell automatically deals damage.

Quote:

Harmed by Fire Any fire magic that targets the golem

causes it to take 6d8 damage instead of the usual effect. If
the golem starts its turn in the area of fire magic, it takes
3d4 damage.
• Slowed by Cold Any cold magic that targets the golem
causes it to be slow 1 for 2d6 rounds instead of the usual
effect. If the golem starts its turn in the area of cold magic,
it’s slow 1 for that round

Which of course makes the discrepancy between the scenario description and the actual background even more glaring.

[Cellion]

I'm having a very hard time believing the summary given in your post OP. Using 23 as your AC for each party member and +15 for the golem using their berserk slam attack, its 3 turns look like:

Rd1 -> hit, crit, N/A vs cleric. This result has a 3.25% chance of happening based on the given AC (0.65*0.05)
Rd2 -> hit, crit, hit vs paladin. This result has a 0.8125% chance of happening based on the given AC (0.65*0.05*0.25)
Rd3 -> crit, hit, hit vs. fighter. This result has a 1.875% chance of happening based on the given AC (0.15*0.5*0.25)

Each of these sequences of 3 attacks are exceedingly unlucky. But to have them happen sequentially is effectively impossible with fair dice (0.0005% chance). I feel very confident in saying that your GM is messing with you and inventing dice roll results.

[Dreamtime2k9]

Cellion wrote:

Each of these sequences of 3 attacks are exceedingly unlucky. But to have them happen sequentially is effectively impossible with fair dice (0.0005% chance). I feel very confident in saying that your GM is messing with you and inventing dice roll results.

If you are a skeptical person and doubt that something happened because it is improbable, then that is your choice. It doesn't take away that it was indeed very improbable, it doesn't take away that it did happen. I'm certain it'll happen again as with enough dice rolled, eventually the improbable will occur. I didn't check your math and wether or not it kept into account that it would only have the 15 instead of 16 to hit when something isn't prone already and wether or not you applied the prone condition to your numbers.

This was highly improbable but even without the highly improbable, it doesn't take away that with criticals as they are; combats feel very, very swingy which only gets worse as the level difference between the group and encounter grows(in both ways) and the chance of crit increases. (This was level +3 and i believe like level +4 is also an option for encounters...)

The rolls were public when it came to combat rolls, so there was no inventing of dice rolls. I will say that i am not familiar enough with maptool to determine if their dice are in fact fair.

In the end because the math is so tight and currently off as shown by any of the math posts on the forum, especially so when compared to the goals the devs have which they already stated in other posts that they have for the chance of success.

Vestris; i get your point and i agree with it. If it happened in playsession, they likely would've come up with some form of ruling. I suggested shove but i suppose interact would probably function better.

I was just surprised there was no reason for dragging as i'd assume it would be a common occurance for grabbing creatures and the sort.

[Lyricanna]

Cellion wrote:

I'm having a very hard time believing the summary given in your post OP. Using 23 as your AC for each party member and +15 for the golem using their berserk slam attack, its 3 turns look like:

Rd1 -> hit, crit, N/A vs cleric. This result has a 3.25% chance of happening based on the given AC (0.65*0.05)
Rd2 -> hit, crit, hit vs paladin. This result has a 0.8125% chance of happening based on the given AC (0.65*0.05*0.25)
Rd3 -> crit, hit, hit vs. fighter. This result has a 1.875% chance of happening based on the given AC (0.15*0.5*0.25)

Each of these sequences of 3 attacks are exceedingly unlucky. But to have them happen sequentially is effectively impossible with fair dice (0.0005% chance). I feel very confident in saying that your GM is messing with you and inventing dice roll results.

Keep in mind that if the first attack from the golems hit, it's not going to be using the slam (+1 to hit) and the player is prone (-2 AC).

Also as much as I hate gatekeeping, you REALLY can't call yourself a roleplayer till you've seen the dice land in ways that seem to defy all known rules of probability. (Spoilers: they aren't, real randomness has strings of numbers that seem outright impossible with how unlikely they would be.)

[manbearscientist]

I have ran books 1-6 (Lost Star through Heroes of Undarin) and this scenario. I ran this scenario with two players that had not played in the system, and a few players that had. It went a lot more smoothly the OP's run.

Party composition:

Human Alchemist, who chose Sleep Poison formula as their one uncommon item and used a hand crossbow or frontlined with mutagens
Dwarf Cleric, Divine Ward from Domain + healing feats
Elf Bow Fighter w/ Wizard Dedication
Goblin Rogue, used a dogslicer until the ambush and had a couple invisibility potions
Half-Orc Barbarian (spirit totem), using a Great Pick

Our ACs were 21-22 across the board.

In the golem fight, the golem activated very early, round 2. The squishier characters (Alchemist with 53 HP, Rogue with 61) had avoided getting too close to the golem contained in silk, and we hadn't yet fully explored the area.

The Alchemist took the time to make a Recall Knowledge check. This was absolutely crucial. It didn't reveal the crippling weakness to fire, but it did allow them to follow up with Ray of Frost to keep the golem slowed (11 rounds rolled).

The Cleric used Divine Ward to tank some of the damage from the initial hit on the Barbarian; the Fighter was still around the corner and hadn't yet joined the fight. When they did, they cast Ray of Frost thanks to their Wizard Dedication.

The frontliners focused primarily on flanking, including the Alchemist who popped a Smokestick round 1 and then Stone Fist Elixir + Bestial Mutagen R2 and went in to brawl.

While a lot of damage was taken, it wasn't quite enough to drop anyone. The Barbarian had too much HP to chew through (93 counting THP), and would have used Orc Ferocity to stay up even if the golem had critically hit a couple times. The Elf Fighter was allowed to attack freely (Point-Blank Shot). The Cleric was essentially a Healadin, using 1-action Heal to keep them sustained and tanking hits with Divine Ward.

The Rogue popped an invisibility potion and got into position to get off hits with their dogslicer, and the fight essentially ended when the Barbarian rolled a natural 20 with their Great Pick, dealing an outstanding 5d12 + 19.

Narrative-wise, the party was a little confused. They thought the golem in the workshop WAS the golem that crushed the wizard underfoot, and jumping after the large Quantium golem afterwards forced us to rewind and explain things.

The party did not have great difficulty getting the body down from the Quantium golem. The PCs easily made the DC 14 Stealth check to avoid the Golem's gaze, and a variety of them made the success checks to free the body. The Alchemist simply jumped up using a Jump Potion. The Barbarian used great Athletics and Acrobatics skill checks to succeed at their checks, and the Rogue was a round shy of beating the Thievery DCs (basically it became a race between the players).

The party bypassed the encounter with Keemah. Or, more simply, the ambushed ended in a single attack. The Alchemist spotted the ambushers and on the first round fired a pre-prepared Sleep Poison bolt. They critically hit on the attack, and Keemah critically failed on the save and was brought back for questioning. The party rested before the gala.

The party was pretty confused about what to do with the gala. They ended up coming in one at a time, and striking up conversations to find the Arclord. Unfortunately, this gave a LOT of prep time to the Arclord, and the party barely managed to stumble to the garden at the same time (the GM had to prod them pretty heavily into it).

We skipped the animated statues to save on time.

The Arclord had the initiative, and started by casting a Flaming Sphere which sat on the Archer (who went to an upper balcony overseeing the garden) for a large portion of the fight. The Arclord, in this case, was Ngasi. I'll note the narrative made it hard to pinpoint between the two, as the human-sized talons could have easily been explained by Phrakavu's summoning. The ranger also got hit with an Acid Arrow.

Another unfortunate critical hit with a Vine Arrow from the Elf Fighter took the apprentice out of combat before they really had a chance to contribute.

The Rogue had switched to the +1 crossbow dropped in the ambush, and joined the Fighter on the balcony putting pot-shots in on the Arclord knowing that (from a previous Gather Information roll) they could see through their potion of Invisibility. The Arclord responded by using the trees/shrubbery for cover.

The Barbarian, Alchemist, and Cleric struggled to approach the Arclord on foot. The Barbarian tried to Sudden Charge, but was met with readied actions from the Elementals. While the Barbarian had Swipe, they wanted to rush down the boss and the pushing of the elementals really prevented them from getting close.

The Cleric mostly focused on Divine Warding damage and healing it back up. They eventually were downed in the second stage of the fight, but luckily not too late to keep the party healthy.

After the Quicksilvered Alchemist and other members got to the middle of the map, the Arclord used their superior speed to retreat to the Fountain at the end with her elementals. The Rogue by this point had jumped down to hunt for a better angle for their crossbow, crucially putting them in range to use the Ring of Counterspells against a Fireball when all but the Fighter had clumped up.

The barbarian, fighter, and alchemist eventually decided to deal with the elementals, but not before the Arclord took flight with Aerial Form and the elementals began exploiting the fountain that the party had jumped into trying to get the Arclord down.

It was looking pretty grim. The Arclord had Acid Arrow'ed the Fighter, the Cleric, and Rogue and was content to circle and direct the Flaming Sphere. The elementals almost drowned the Rogue before the Barbarian finished them off. The cleric was downed through a combination of Divine Ward, Acid Arrow, and Flaming Sphere.

Once again, the party was saved by a timely critical hit. This time it was the Fighter's Tanglefoot cantrip, which made the Arclord immobile. As per the rules on Flight, if you were airborne during your turn and didn't make a Fly action, you fall. The Arclord came crashing down right next to the downed Cleric, taking 40 fall damage and surviving with just a a few HP left. The rest of the party, unwilling to risk another Fireball, swarmed her and took her out.

Ultimately the last battle took a significant portion of time, as the enemies played very defensively and relied on DoT effects to do most of the damage. The party didn't really try to end persistent damage effects or get out of Flaming Sphere range, so they did a lot of work. The players were satisfied with the encounters, but did not get much out of the story or the writing. It was seen as somewhat more railroaded than normal.

The important takeaways were that:

* Items/tactics are more important than 'optimal' AC, as opposed to PF1 where building correctly and full-attacking made you very strong vs at-level encounters
* Recall Knowledge was crucial in preventing damage in the golem fight; we would have died if we played 'efficiently' and simply attacked
* mutagens/potions/poisons were precrafted at the beginning of the day; the alchemist never used quick alchemy to maximize resonance and the mutagens proved effective
* The Fighter randomly having cantrips saved the party's bacon twice
* Sleep poison is either useless or ridiculous with its encounter ending effect and meager DC
* DoT effects are very powerful, as a few level 2 Acid Arrows did over 20d6 of damage just from persistent (no 20s rolled against it)
* The healer using Divine Ward made them even stronger than normal, and without them the math would have been heavily out of favor
* Backgrounds did not come up or matter a single time in the scenario

[vestris]

manbearscientist wrote:

I have ran books 1-6 (Lost Star through Heroes of Undarin) and this scenario. I ran this scenario with two players that had not played in the system, and a few players that had. It went a lot more smoothly the OP's run.

Party composition:

Human Alchemist, who chose Sleep Poison formula as their one uncommon item and used a hand crossbow or frontlined with mutagens
Dwarf Cleric, Divine Ward from Domain + healing feats
Elf Bow Fighter w/ Wizard Dedication
Goblin Rogue, used a dogslicer until the ambush and had a couple invisibility potions
Half-Orc Barbarian (spirit totem), using a Great Pick

Our ACs were 21-22 across the board.

In the golem fight, the golem activated very early, round 2. The squishier characters (Alchemist with 53 HP, Rogue with 61) had avoided getting too close to the golem contained in silk, and we hadn't yet fully explored the area.

The Alchemist took the time to make a Recall Knowledge check. This was absolutely crucial. It didn't reveal the crippling weakness to fire, but it did allow them to follow up with Ray of Frost to keep the golem slowed (11 rounds rolled).

The Cleric used Divine Ward to tank some of the damage from the initial hit on the Barbarian; the Fighter was still around the corner and hadn't yet joined the fight. When they did, they cast Ray of Frost thanks to their Wizard Dedication.

The frontliners focused primarily on flanking, including the Alchemist who popped a Smokestick round 1 and then Stone Fist Elixir + Bestial Mutagen R2 and went in to brawl.

While a lot of damage was taken, it wasn't quite enough to drop anyone. The Barbarian had too much HP to chew through (93 counting THP), and would have used Orc Ferocity to stay up even if the golem had critically hit a couple times. The Elf Fighter was allowed to attack freely (Point-Blank Shot). The Cleric was essentially a Healadin, using 1-action Heal to keep them sustained and tanking hits with Divine Ward.

The Rogue popped an invisibility potion and got into position to...

Nice! Well done.

One thing that sprang out to me is the following, if you recall knowledge to identify a threat, you will get information about the most iconic ability of the monster correct? So in the golems case that should be his magic immunity right? Not a part of it, like it is only one ability that causes all of this.