| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm just not certain how that's not "fluff". Ecology, routines, and motivations seem pretty fluffy to me. Or to put it another way, that's only going to come up if the players are interested in non-combat solutions or doing extensive recall knowledge.
The bit about how a dungeon reacts to player actions does seem more mechanical...but also that's something Paizo puts in their APs.
To circle things back to the original topic, PF2 NPC design (which, for those that do not know, also includes almost all enemies you'd encounter in combat) encourages different tiers of specialization. That was the entire reason they ditched 3.x's reliance on HD and class levels; it serves the writers' purpose better if the same NPC can have a skill ability completely out of bounds of their combat ability.
A villager absolutely can negotiate with a Lich, if that serves the purpose of the writer of that module.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Since PCs and NPCs gain power differently I need to explain how they gain power differently and not just why the PCs gain power so much more quickly than the NPCs.Why do you need to explain this? Does the mechanical difference between an NPC statblock, a PC sheet, and a monster statblock need an in world explanation? The difference between the three is their utility in play either to the player or to the GM - and doesn't serve an explicitly narrative function that would need explaining.
I treat the mechanics as a science in my world, it's a massive help for me wrapping my brain around the fantasy world and figuring out how this stuff really works.
In PF1 this works out because everything follows those rules all the time. Even the monsters follow the rules to the letter. Feat every other hit die on odd numbers, BAB and Save system operates this way, all that stuff. There may be bonus feats and very high stats, but they're still operating under the same rules as the PCs and NPCs with PC classes aside from the first Hit Die not being full and not having any favored class bonuses. I can tell where the NPC with a class is getting extra HP/skill points from compared to a monster and thus rationalizing the difference is effortless.
In PF2 a creature can get a free bonus with 0 explanation. Take the Jailer for instance. He has +4 strength and yet his club deals d6+8, his crossbow does d8+4, and throwing his club does d6+6. There's no listed area where he gets his bonus from. It sure as hell ain't from Weapon Specialization because he's level 3 and that's not till level 7 for martails. His math doesn't even add up legendary prof anyway, he's expert. There's no way this level 3 jerk has Greater Weapon Specialization. Oh, and there's the part where his weird, +4 bonus is halved for throwing the club but not shooting the crossbow for no discernible reason. The thrown quality doesn't have any text about cutting any bonus in half, strength or otherwise, it's just going from +4 to +2 with no explanation. It would be one thing if he had abilities the PCs couldn't get, in fact that's a neat idea and prevents options meant for NPCs mingling with options meant for PCs, but bonuses should be given a source.
Also his HP is off. Accounting for the 8HP humans get he's gotten 37HP from 3 levels. And we know it's 3 levels because the math checks out with proficiency rules. This means he's getting 12 and 1/3 HP per level. Now I'm fine with levels giving weird HP values. Everything in PF1 gains an HP value with a hidden .5 attached to the end at each level. The problem is that the con bonus doesn't interact in any meaningful way. Either we're working with Barbarian hit points with the con score divided by 3 or we're working with fighter hitpoints with the con score multiplied by 2 and 1/3. If he had 1 less Hit Point and an extra point of con his HP would math out perfectly.
What makes this worse is that a lot of other things math out perfectly. AC? Perfect match for trained prof. Saves? Expert in fort and ref and trained in will. Skills? Trained in diplomacy and expert in athletics and intimidate. Odd that there's two expert skills at level 3 but the math still checks out. Some rules are being followed to more or less the letter while others are being tossed into the wood chipper.
This may be nothing for some DMs and even a boon for others, but for me it's a massive problem. Why are the monsters and NPCs following different rules than the party? Are we just operating with different internal power cores? Is everyone just making deals with devils/fae/celestials/dragons/gods/etc. on the side for hidden bonuses? Are they just hopped up on drugs? I don't care what the explanation is, I'll take they had a really good nap, just give me some reason.
Now granted I'll figure out the in-universe reason for rulebreaking with time but for now it's an especially annoying box on a long list of "things I have to get organized in order to run my setting in PF2."
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
I treat the mechanics as a science in my world, it's a massive help for me wrapping my brain around the fantasy world and figuring out how this stuff really works.
In PF1 this works out because everything follows those rules all the time. Even the monsters follow the rules to the letter. Feat every other hit die on odd numbers, BAB and Save system operates this way, all that stuff. There may be bonus feats and very high stats, but they're still operating under the same rules as the PCs and NPCs with PC classes aside from the first Hit Die not being full and not having any favored class bonuses. I can tell where the NPC with a class is getting extra HP/skill points from compared to a monster and thus rationalizing the difference is effortless.
The problem is that though PF1 was technically simulationist, in practice it was never actually so. Just look at this post during the playtest.
So what PF2 did was cut out the middleman and just skip straight to the endpoint.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
If anything it's the Gamemastery Guide's tables that should be a guide. All the NPCs and monsters follow the same rules for what you can expect from them number-wise.
It's the PCs who differ. They tend to have less raw numbers, and many more options. In universe you could see this as them developing as a unit of 3-6, where they can use their numbers of people to make up the difference of their numbers of math, trading that for more varied types of actions. Because that makes them flexible, and rule-breaking. Which adventurers are understood to be in universe.
The PCs are exceptional, because they are the exception.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Since PCs and NPCs gain power differently I need to explain how they gain power differently and not just why the PCs gain power so much more quickly than the NPCs.Why do you need to explain this? Does the mechanical difference between an NPC statblock, a PC sheet, and a monster statblock need an in world explanation? The difference between the three is their utility in play either to the player or to the GM - and doesn't serve an explicitly narrative function that would need explaining.I treat the mechanics as a science in my world, it's a massive help for me wrapping my brain around the fantasy world and figuring out how this stuff really works.
(great examples)
Now granted I'll figure out the in-universe reason for rulebreaking with time but for now it's an especially annoying box on a long list of "things I have to get organized in order to run my setting in PF2."
As the base PF2 system itself is quite robust already, I would have personally created NPC exclusive classes that are largely symmetric to PC ones for each creature type (the math differences can be easily handled with repeatably takeable class feats which add flat HP and other statistics), with the Humanoid class able to take class features that handle those "higher challenge in a skill encounter" scenarios, so the like. In fact this also roughly solves problems for players who really want to play actual non-conventional "monstrous" entities too.
...that is, if I actually had the time IRL. (deep sigh)
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
I treat the mechanics as a science in my world, it's a massive help for me wrapping my brain around the fantasy world and figuring out how this stuff really works.
In PF1 this works out because everything follows those rules all the time. Even the monsters follow the rules to the letter. Feat every other hit die on odd numbers, BAB and Save system operates this way, all that stuff. There may be bonus feats and very high stats, but they're still operating under the same rules as the PCs and NPCs with PC classes aside from the first Hit Die not being full and not having any favored class bonuses. I can tell where the NPC with a class is getting extra HP/skill points from compared to a monster and thus rationalizing the difference is effortless.
The problem is that though PF1 was technically simulationist, in practice it was never actually so. Just look at this post during the playtest.
So what PF2 did was cut out the middleman and just skip straight to the endpoint.
Yeah, the fact that everything followed the same rules was just an illusion.
Bonus feats, racial bonuses, if you are an undead you get free immunities, if you have four legs you get certain advantages, plus special abilities didn't really have any rules governing them.There were rules for many things, and countless ways to break each of them.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
1e monster building/advancement rules also have lot of other shenanigans :'D
Like did you know that according to raw, CR 13 outsiders have 18 HD for some bizarre reason? I'll just say now that vast majority of them don't have that.
When I converted a npc summoner eidolon into unfettered eidolon, raw wise it ended up becoming absurdly powerful for CR just by following that HD table because lot of 1e bestiary monsters are in fact just "eeeeeeeeh, put the numbers so they are close to target and then reverse engineer what their base stats need to be so end result is right"
Since PCs and NPCs gain power differently I need to explain how they gain power differently and not just why the PCs gain power so much more quickly than the NPCs.Why do you need to explain this? Does the mechanical difference between an NPC statblock, a PC sheet, and a monster statblock need an in world explanation? The difference between the three is their utility in play either to the player or to the GM - and doesn't serve an explicitly narrative function that would need explaining.I treat the mechanics as a science in my world, it's a massive help for me wrapping my brain around the fantasy world and figuring out how this stuff really works.
(great examples)
Now granted I'll figure out the in-universe reason for rulebreaking with time but for now it's an especially annoying box on a long list of "things I have to get organized in order to run my setting in PF2."
As the base PF2 system itself is quite robust already, I would have personally created NPC exclusive classes that are largely symmetric to PC ones for each creature type (the math differences can be easily handled with repeatably takeable class feats which add flat HP and other statistics), with the Humanoid class able to take class features that handle those "higher challenge in a skill encounter" scenarios, so the like. In fact this also roughly solves problems for players who really want to play actual non-conventional "monstrous" entities too.
...that is, if I actually had the time IRL. (deep sigh)
We had something like that in PF1 simple monster creation and Starfinder’s monster creation rules. I had hoped that would be the basis of PF2, but was saddened that did not happen.
I don’t think it’s incorrect that the more free form version was put into the game, but I’m hoping they make a more codified version with Adept, Warriors, and Expert (and perhaps a 4th or 5th NPC “class”) offered as proficiency bundles that templates can be applied to.
Especially for summoning tables. I deeply appreciated the summoning templates on Starfinder, and really wanted that to be the base for PF2.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I mean, you can build every NPC as a PC in your own game if you want. It is just a lot of needless work and they will all have far too many abilities to keep track of in a reasonable fashion.
The developers have also provided suggestions for helping GMs dress up their NPCs to fit various in world archetypes and organizations. Instead of trying to fit all NPCs into 4 arbitrary classes, there is one general framework that fits well enough and an endless amount of archetyping you can do to make your NPCs unique and interesting without making 20 choices, 3 of which will have any significance on the encounter they appear in.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I treat the mechanics as a science in my world, it's a massive help for me wrapping my brain around the fantasy world and figuring out how this stuff really works.
Having had this conversation before with other people, here's where it loses me. What is the in world science behind BAB? How does one class getting a full level of BAB and another class getting a half level of BAB help you understand the fantasy world better?
An argument that you prefer the mechanics of PF1 to PF2 is completely understandable. The argument that NPC's now having a different stat block makes the fantasy world harder to understand is a bit of a stretch.
Either we're working with Barbarian hit points with the con score divided by 3 or we're working with fighter hitpoints with the con score multiplied by 2 and 1/3. If he had 1 less Hit Point and an extra point of con his HP would math out perfectly.
You're not working with either, that's the point of decoupling NPC stat blocks and PC full builds. He's a jailer, he's neither a Barbarian nor a Fighter. If he was either of those - he'd be the PC.
Again though, the conversation you're having is about the mechanical underpinnings of the system and not the fantasy world.
Now granted I'll figure out the in-universe reason for rulebreaking with time but for now it's an especially annoying box on a long list of "things I have to get organized in order to run my setting in PF2."
First it isn't rule breaking, it's two different sets of rules. Secondly, annoying it may be - but it's a task you gave to yourself.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I mean, you can build every NPC as a PC in your own game if you want. It is just a lot of needless work and they will all have far too many abilities to keep track of in a reasonable fashion.
If you have software, it's really not hard at all to create and run a PC-style NPC. Obviously it is more work than grabbing a statblock, and you'll almost never remember all the things it can do, but it's surprisingly useful for several reasons.
1. It's easy to scale, customize, and adapt over time based on the interactions with the party. I really like having side characters that level up alongside the party and show things in their build that are the direct result of the party's actions. Hirelings, for example.
2. Some NPCs interact with the party enough that fleshing them out fully may actually pay off. Again, hirelings are an example, but also NPCs offering spellcasting services who might get dragged into an encounter.
3. It keeps you grounded in the world from the player's perspective. If you don't get to play as much, it can be easy to lose touch with what it means to be confined to the PC rules. Making NPCs using the same rules they get now and then can help remind you what it's like to not have the set of abilities you'd like to have at a certain point.
4. It's fun and shows off what the players might not have realized they can do. I recently had them run into a high level android paladin who smote a lich's ruin upon the mountainside, and they were like "...There's fukkin androids in this game?"
Any plans for a PF2 NPC Codex?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I mean, you can build every NPC as a PC in your own game if you want. It is just a lot of needless work and they will all have far too many abilities to keep track of in a reasonable fashion.If you have software, it's really not hard at all to create and run a PC-style NPC. Obviously it is more work than grabbing a statblock, and you'll almost never remember all the things it can do, but it's surprisingly useful for several reasons.
1. It's easy to scale, customize, and adapt over time based on the interactions with the party. I really like having side characters that level up alongside the party and show things in their build that are the direct result of the party's actions. Hirelings, for example.
2. Some NPCs interact with the party enough that fleshing them out fully may actually pay off. Again, hirelings are an example, but also NPCs offering spellcasting services who might get dragged into an encounter.
3. It keeps you grounded in the world from the player's perspective. If you don't get to play as much, it can be easy to lose touch with what it means to be confined to the PC rules. Making NPCs using the same rules they get now and then can help remind you what it's like to not have the set of abilities you'd like to have at a certain point.
4. It's fun and shows off what the players might not have realized they can do. I recently had them run into a high level android paladin who smote a lich's ruin upon the mountainside, and they were like "...There's fukkin androids in this game?"
I am all for doing it where it is fun and helpful. If someone needs every single character built that way to have fun, then they can do this for every NPC. I just don't think it is necessary, and the game allows you to make really fun and dynamic encounters with much simpler rules for NPCs...
...and to bring this back to the OP......And the reason this works so well, and it is so easy to make mechanically interesting and varied encounters is because level has a strong floor and ceiling for what it means in world as far as general numbers, but also for some really important less mechanically feeling elements like when players will be able to fly, when casters will be casting fireballs regularly, etc.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I treat the mechanics as a science in my world, it's a massive help for me wrapping my brain around the fantasy world and figuring out how this stuff really works.
In PF1 this works out because everything follows those rules all the time. Even the monsters follow the rules to the letter. Feat every other hit die on odd numbers, BAB and Save system operates this way, all that stuff. There may be bonus feats and very high stats, but they're still operating under the same rules as the PCs and NPCs with PC classes aside from the first Hit Die not being full and not having any favored class bonuses. I can tell where the NPC with a class is getting extra HP/skill points from compared to a monster and thus rationalizing the difference is effortless.
The problem is that though PF1 was technically simulationist, in practice it was never actually so. Just look at this post during the playtest.
So what PF2 did was cut out the middleman and just skip straight to the endpoint.
Yeah, the fact that everything followed the same rules was just an illusion.
Bonus feats, racial bonuses, if you are an undead you get free immunities, if you have four legs you get certain advantages, plus special abilities didn't really have any rules governing them.
There were rules for many things, and countless ways to break each of them.It was a high level illusion though. And sometimes, it was actually true. I prefer both parties to operate on the same system, but that's not how Tabletop RPG design has gone. And there's plenty of reasons why, and coming around to the benefits of the NPC system vs a unified NPC/PC one will increase one's enjoyment of PF2.
I don't enjoy making monsters as much in PF2, but for the amount of time they exist in game, I enjoy the extra time I have for other parts of adventure prep I have gotten back.
It really boils down to this:
PCs built like NPCs will get boring to play pretty quickly because their frame is designed around doing one or two things in the one encounter they will exist in. The are incredibly gimmicky. This is a good thing.
(All) NPCs built like PCs will overwhelm a GM because PCs are designed around giving the player enough choices to have interesting and fun things to do over the course of 100 or more encounters. "Gimmicky" PCs tend to get really old really fast and left to die so the player can go and make then next new gimmick.
-is not rooted in any Paizo product released in the last two or more years or more because of the NPC gallery bit that's been around for ages.
You're not arguing to defend actual Paizo products, you're only shadow-boxing with a myth designed to annoy you.
So which specific NPC was given more than a page of text to themselves? Obviously, your NPC's will have more than a page total but almost none of them will have more than a couple of paragraphs of detail written about them. It doesn't take much to draw up a basic story web and start filling in important points with two-paragraph NPCs.
| 14 people marked this as a favorite. |
So which specific NPC was given more than a page of text to themselves? Obviously, your NPC's will have more than a page total but almost none of them will have more than a couple of paragraphs of detail written about them. It doesn't take much to draw up a basic story web and start filling in important points with two-paragraph NPCs.-is not rooted in any Paizo product released in the last two or more years or more because of the NPC gallery bit that's been around for ages.
You're not arguing to defend actual Paizo products, you're only shadow-boxing with a myth designed to annoy you.
Uh...pretty much every adventure path book has at least 2 NPCs with 2 pages each.
I mean, you can build every NPC as a PC in your own game if you want. It is just a lot of needless work and they will all have far too many abilities to keep track of in a reasonable fashion.
If this was a reply to me, that’s not remotely what I’m talking about.
The rules I reference are much like the PF2 rules, but are a full matrix of level and preset combinations of strikes, saves, speed, etc. Much like the road maps referenced in the creature building rules in fact, except it actually says what the values are at each level, and suggests combinations of abilities.
In almost every fashion, the rules I’m looking for resemble the ones we have, they just go further to make it even faster.
Edit: I mentioned “Adept, Warrior, and Expert”, but I did not mean the PF1 NPC classes. I meant the combatant, expert, and spellcaster arrays, suitably renamed as a nod to the previous edition.
So which specific NPC was given more than a page of text to themselves? Obviously, your NPC's will have more than a page total but almost none of them will have more than a couple of paragraphs of detail written about them. It doesn't take much to draw up a basic story web and start filling in important points with two-paragraph NPCs.-is not rooted in any Paizo product released in the last two or more years or more because of the NPC gallery bit that's been around for ages.
You're not arguing to defend actual Paizo products, you're only shadow-boxing with a myth designed to annoy you.
The only AP I have on hand is Mummy's Mask, which is a pretty old one, but here are the NPCs with one to two page writeups in the NPC gallery in each book.
Meret-Hetef, Nebta-Khufre, and Ptemenib in book 2
Deka An-Keret and Muminofrah of Sothis in book 3
The Forgotten Pharaoh and Userib in book 4
Isatemkhebet and Tef-Naju in book 5
Hakotep I The Sky Pharaoh, and Neferuset in book 6.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
2 pages is the standard for important NPCs (of which any given book has 3 or 4) and has been for a very long time. Mummy's Mask has it and that was 2014. It includes art and the stat block, but it also includes the NPCs origin, motivation,. And role in the campaign.
Also, maybe I'm getting my threads mixed up here, but fluff being the easiest thing in the world to write and demanding more than 2 pages for a lone NPC feel like pretty contradictory values?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Uh...pretty much every adventure path book has at least 2 NPCs with 2 pages each.
I did not see that in Plaguestone, which is the only PF2 adventure I've attempted to run, and don't recall any important recurring NPCs when I was a player in Skulls and Shackles. I'm not going to pay for another sample of a product when the first one I bought wasn't impressive.
If other APs are better that's cool but Plaguestone was sub-par, it had a fairly generic story, and it felt rushed and overly combat-focused without doing enough to make the fights interesting. Instead, it just made every encounter no easier than moderate and filled the back half of the adventure with severe encounters. Run as written I can't see the party clearing out the main 'dungeon' without making multiple trips and narratively that seems like complete nonsense given the time pressure on the party.
2 pages is the standard for important NPCs (of which any given book has 3 or 4) and has been for a very long time. Mummy's Mask has it and that was 2014. It includes art and the stat block, but it also includes the NPCs origin, motivation,. And role in the campaign.
Also, maybe I'm getting my threads mixed up here, but fluff being the easiest thing in the world to write and demanding more than 2 pages for a lone NPC feel like pretty contradictory values?
I could be mistaken, but I don't recall there being any such NPC in Plaguestone.
The lore thing is that writing a couple of sentences of lore for an NPC is easy. You can smash out a village with a half dozen 'important' NPCs in 20 minutes if you know how to write a basic story web and are willing to use pre-published tables to generate quirks for your non-combat NPCs. Yes, more fluff is going to take longer to write but back when I was more into forum-based RP I could knock out a few thousand words in an afternoon. So when I see fluff in an adventure I expect more than I could brainstorm for myself if I was going to run my own setting. If it isn't more and better than what I could do on my own then why should I pay for it?
| 12 people marked this as a favorite. |
So the judgements about the Adventure Path product line are being made based on the experiences noted by looking at a more concise adventure that is not included in the product line being commented on?
The Adventures line are meant to be short duration 2-4 session adventures that can be plugged into any campaign - its NPC's are more loosely defined so that you can more freely adapt the adventure and its characters to your campaign.
Adventure Paths devote considerably more column inches to its NPC descriptions, as others have said.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
2 pages is the standard for important NPCs (of which any given book has 3 or 4) and has been for a very long time. Mummy's Mask has it and that was 2014. It includes art and the stat block, but it also includes the NPCs origin, motivation,. And role in the campaign.
Also, maybe I'm getting my threads mixed up here, but fluff being the easiest thing in the world to write and demanding more than 2 pages for a lone NPC feel like pretty contradictory values?
I could be mistaken, but I don't recall there being any such NPC in Plaguestone.
The lore thing is that writing a couple of sentences of lore for an NPC is easy. You can smash out a village with a half dozen 'important' NPCs in 20 minutes if you know how to write a basic story web and are willing to use pre-published tables to generate quirks for your non-combat NPCs. Yes, more fluff is going to take longer to write but back when I was more into forum-based RP I could knock out a few thousand words in an afternoon. So when I see fluff in an adventure I expect more than I could brainstorm for myself if I was going to run my own setting. If it isn't more and better than what I could do on my own then why should I pay for it?
I am sorry you were disappointed with the stand alone adventure that was plaguestone. There were several great NPCs that my party remembers from that module. But PF2 APs are a completely different product, weaving together an ongoing story that takes characters across many levels. The plots are far more involved than anyone is throwing together in an afternoon and having NPCs with interesting connections to later story lines makes for really cool playing experiences. It is because of reading APs I have felt up to home brewing my own campaign, but even then I ruthlessly borrow ideas from old APs and lore content.
Also, the designers of Golarion have asked very politely for people to refer to narrative and story material as lore instead of fluff, because paizo values creative narrative content. Continuing to call if “fluff” is pretty disrespectful to the platform you are using to develop your own ideas and to this whole community.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Also, the designers of Golarion have asked very politely for people to refer to narrative and story material as lore instead of fluff, because paizo values...
Thank you for reminder. I know this wasn’t aimed at me, but I consistently forget about this, as I personally see “fluff” as a positive descriptor. And also it lends itself better to an adjective use (i.e. “fluffy”), but I’ll try harder to remember to use lore.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Uh...pretty much every adventure path book has at least 2 NPCs with 2 pages each.I did not see that in Plaguestone, which is the only PF2 adventure I've attempted to run, and don't recall any important recurring NPCs when I was a player in Skulls and Shackles. I'm not going to pay for another sample of a product when the first one I bought wasn't impressive.
If other APs are better that's cool but Plaguestone was sub-par, it had a fairly generic story, and it felt rushed and overly combat-focused without doing enough to make the fights interesting. Instead, it just made every encounter no easier than moderate and filled the back half of the adventure with severe encounters. Run as written I can't see the party clearing out the main 'dungeon' without making multiple trips and narratively that seems like complete nonsense given the time pressure on the party.
Plaguestone is not an adventure path, I wasn't referring to modules, and there is a ton of role-playing content in the first act in particular with Bort, meeting the caravan, meeting the townspeople, etc. I was a first-time GM with first-time players and even we made that happen, I'm surprised such an amazing GM and player as yourself couldn't manage that. In the second act, you have the introduction of war hardened ranger with severe injury. Act 3 is definitely more combat focus but that makes sense given you're going to confront the BBEG. Also, many of the 'combat' encounters don't require combat to resolve and that's spelled out in the book. The very obvious 3 act structure that almost mimics a movie was actually pretty cool IMO.
My group took between 16-20 sessions of 4-ish hours to finish so if there's any rush that's on your group. The adventure runs at the pace set by you and your players with the only rush being to get back to town at the very end. My first-time players didn't have to leave any dungeon and come back so again I'm surprised that someone with all your wisdom would have any trouble at all.
...Uh...pretty much every adventure path book has at least 2 NPCs with 2 pages each.I did not see that in Plaguestone, which is the only PF2 adventure I've attempted to run, and don't recall any important recurring NPCs when I was a player in Skulls and Shackles. I'm not going to pay for another sample of a product when the first one I bought wasn't impressive.
If other APs are better that's cool but Plaguestone was sub-par, it had a fairly generic story, and it felt rushed and overly combat-focused without doing enough to make the fights interesting. Instead, it just made every encounter no easier than moderate and filled the back half of the adventure with severe encounters. Run as written I can't see the party clearing out the main 'dungeon' without making multiple trips and narratively that seems like complete nonsense given the time pressure on the party.
Plaguestone is not an adventure path, I wasn't referring to modules, and there is a ton of role-playing content in the first act in particular with Bort, meeting the caravan, meeting the townspeople, etc. I was a first-time GM with first-time players and even we made that happen, I'm surprised such an amazing GM and player as yourself couldn't manage that. In the second act, you have the introduction of war hardened ranger with severe injury. Act 3 is definitely more combat focus but that makes sense given you're going to confront the BBEG. Also, many of the 'combat' encounters don't require combat to resolve and that's spelled out in the book. The very obvious 3 act structure that almost mimics a movie was actually pretty cool IMO.
My group took between 16-20 sessions of 4-ish hours to finish so if there's any rush that's on your group. The adventure runs at the pace set by you and your players with the only rush being to get back to town at the very end. My first-time players didn't have to leave any dungeon and come back so again I'm surprised that someone with
I'm sure some of that was wasted time spent learning the system and being first-time players of any TTRPG. There was a decent amount of roleplay meeting all the members of the caravan and the townsfolk. I fleshed out the caravan members because there's not much in the book beyond a few sentences. The PCs went through every piece of act 1. I did add to the side quests...
- the sword delivery quest saw the recipient receiving training from two of the party members
- the cleric in the party got pretty involved in starting the church
- roleplayed the training with the ranger
- a PC learning more about their relationship to the town/locket, etc. was a sorcerer with a diabolic bloodline so had a devil in the locket
- PCs befriended the last wall soldier and tried to help him get his life back on track after the ghost
We have spent a similar amount of time on Age of Ashes book one - maybe closer to 14-16 sessions. I did a lot to add to the characters the party liked though.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Plaguestone is not an adventure path, I wasn't referring to modules, and there is a ton of role-playing content in the first act in particular with Bort, meeting the caravan, meeting the townspeople, etc. I was a first-time GM with first-time players and even we made that happen, I'm surprised such an amazing GM and player as yourself couldn't manage that.
I used all that stuff, we had fun with the inn and pushing the old mayor around the town, but it wasn't that much different from the intro to something like Red Hand of Doom. I'm probably just jaded but it felt like the free example campaign that a lot of systems include with their main rules.
Mechanically I never felt like it went out of its way to show what makes PF2 special. I didn't feel that there was anything in Plaguestone that I couldn't have run just as well or better in 3.x or PF1. So when the story is generic - which is actually something I tend to like as I find fluffing a story to meet my needs is easier when there are fewer details that interconnect - and the mechanics aren't a clear front and center focus I wonder why I bought an adventure instead of building my own?
In the second act, you have the introduction of war hardened ranger with severe injury.
I ended the game after they found the lair of the infected wolves. I didn't enjoy DMing it, partially because I hate DMing solely via VTT, and partially because I didn't like the mechanics.
Act 3 is definitely more combat focus but that makes sense given you're going to confront the BBEG.
My players never got this far, but I looked at the monster stats and didn't think that things would go well for my party if they had to fight.
The party was as follows:
Wellspring Gnome - Barrister - Elemental Sorcerer
Str: 8 Dex: 16 Con: 14 Int: 10 Wis: 10 Cha: 18
AC: 17 - HP: 24
Feats:
Animal Accomplice, Enhanced Familiar, Group Impression, Lengthy Diversion, Widen Spell, Blood Magic
C - Produce Flame, Daze, Dancing Lights, Prestidigitation, Sigil, Tanglefoot
1st - Burning Hands, Charm, Hydraulic Push
Stay mostly at range using Produce Flame and Tanglefoot in combat. Had a decent hydraulic push against Hallod, never cast Charm, used burning hands once to limited effect.
-----
Half-Orc - Animal Whisperer - Druid
Str: 14 Dex: 14 Con: 12 Int: 10 Wis: 18 Cha: 10
AC: 19 (21 with shield raised) - HP: 26
Feats:
Orcish Superstition, Train Animal, Battle Medicine, Animal Companion, Order Explorer: Wildshape
C - Ray of Frost, Tanglefoot, Stabilize, Read Aura, Electric Arc
1 - Summon Animal, Shocking Grasp, Heal
Fought with a shield and morning star as our second melee option. Rarey cast her cantrips and felt like her summons and animal companion rarely contributed anything even when set as a flanking buddy for herself or the Champion. Never got to test out shapeshifting due to the campaign's end.
-----
Versatile Human - Warrior - Champion
Str: 18 Dex: 12 Con: 14 Int: 12 Wis: 10 Cha: 12
AC: 19 (21 with shield raised) - HP: 34
Feats:
Toughness, Read Lips, Fast Recovery, Retributive Strike, Shield Block, Intimidating Gaze
Fought sword and board style, the first into most fights as the tank. He was excited by attacking his foes as a reaction and with the idea of using shield block. He had cold dice and rarely hit anything while feeling like he was always getting hit. The player liked to play extremely high AC Knights and Paladins in 3.x, and couldn't replicate that playstyle in PF2.
-----
Unbreakable Goblin - Tinkerer - Alchemist
Str: 10 Dex: 16 Con: 12 Int: 20 Wis: 8 Cha: 12
AC: 19 - HP: 26
Feats:
Burn It All, Specialty Crafting Alchemy, Magical Crafting, Alchemy Crafting, Bomber, Quick Bomber, Alchemical Familiar
He wanted to replicate his goblin bombers from PF1 and that fell entirely flat. He wanted to play as a DPS class as he could in PF1 and was stuck with a support class that didn't do his core fantasy well at all.
-----
This group could have worked in PF1 or 3.x but it left our group unimpressed with Plaguestone and PF2. I know for a fact that I would have had to handle the 3rd act with kid gloves as this group struggled with far easier fights. We had more fun free-form RPing the rivalry between the various familiars than we did with the actual game mechanics.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Now that you are aware that it is not an Adventure Path, you can stop using it for the basis of NPC devoted printed space you reference and say the Paizo doesn't have full pages devoted to NPCs.
Sweet.
That's be super.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
To be fair to the writer, it was being developed concurrently with the new rules, so it was pretty difficult to achieve perfect balance before the rules were even known. I highly recommend you pick up the first book of the abomination vaults AP and see what adventure design and understanding the system can look like in concert.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
To be fair to the writer, it was being developed concurrently with the new rules, so it was pretty difficult to achieve perfect balance before the rules were even known. I highly recommend you pick up the first book of the abomination vaults AP and see what adventure design and understanding the system can look like in concert.
I don't have a group that's interested in PF2 as such that isn't a purchase likely to be worth my while.
Also, comparing two starting adventures Plaguestone vs Phandelver there's no contest. One serves as an extremely popular entry to D&D 5e and the other has people bending over backwards to explain why it shouldn't count. Why would I stick with a game after it made a terrible first impression when most other games can manage to get off to a strong start with their first adventures being polished and designed to sell their game?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So you're judging PF2 Adventure Paths against a product that isn't an Adventure Path - that you also didn't even complete?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So you're judging PF2 Adventure Paths against a product that isn't an Adventure Path - that you also didn't even complete?
I'm judging PF2 on what I paid for and tried to run. If Paizo wanted me to have a better opinion they should have put out a good product starting from Day 1.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm talking about the claims you have explicitly stated multiple times in this thread about the Adventure Path line of products - only to now be admitting that you have no experience with them in 2nd Edition.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm talking about the claims you have explicitly stated multiple times in this thread about the Adventure Path line of products - only to now be admitting that you have no experience with them in 2nd Edition.
I was using AP to mean adventure. I didn't realize that Paizo wrote their APs and standalone adventures to such a different standard of quality that they couldn't be compared. Plaguestone was a turd and I'm going to keep judging Paizo for having published said turd.
| 13 people marked this as a favorite. |
Your opinion of any product is your own and you are entitled to it. You however were making comments about specific design and layout of a product you now acknowledge haven't engaged with. The people who corrected your misinformation were met with a fair bit of aggression from you as you doubled down in an effort to be right.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
To be fair to the writer, it was being developed concurrently with the new rules, so it was pretty difficult to achieve perfect balance before the rules were even known. I highly recommend you pick up the first book of the abomination vaults AP and see what adventure design and understanding the system can look like in concert.I don't have a group that's interested in PF2 as such that isn't a purchase likely to be worth my while.
Also, comparing two starting adventures Plaguestone vs Phandelver there's no contest. One serves as an extremely popular entry to D&D 5e and the other has people bending over backwards to explain why it shouldn't count. Why would I stick with a game after it made a terrible first impression when most other games can manage to get off to a strong start with their first adventures being polished and designed to sell their game?
Paizo has under 100 employees. The folks behind D&D have over 6,000, and nearly limitless funding potential as well.
The fact that Paizo can even compete with such a powerhouse is testimony enough of their quality and dedication.
I'd take 1 Paizo staff member over 60 of there's any day of the week.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Paizo has under 100 employees. The folks behind D&D have over 6,000 and nearly limitless funding in addition (at least in comparison).
The fact that Paizo can even compete with such a powerhouse is a testimony enough of their quality and dedication.
I'd take 1 Paizo staff member over 60 of there's any day of the week.
Also Fall of Plaguestone and Lost Mines of Phandelver weren't designed with the same goals in mind. Phandelver is a "Beginner Box" adventure that is built to give new players an introduction to the setting and the game. Phandelver's equal and opposite is the PF2 Beginner box adventure.
Plaguestone is a first out of the gate adventure - which is more of a corollary for Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Which is a bit of a dog in its own right.
In the end narratively there are two outcomes to the godzilla question, either the military (who are massively lower level) can stop godzilla with the right tactics and tools or they can't.
Circling back to this as I had another thought on the idea, specifically with regards to the right tools, another way to handle the difference in level is by leveraging equipment higher level than the characters in question to help them punch above their level in PF2, albeit as glass cannons. Using NPCs with higher levels in crafting than elsewhere (like the Smith and the Guildmaster from the GMG) you can equip the NPCs with higher-level vehicles and weapons can be equipped with attacks that use DCs and attack bonuses beyond what they would produce themselves.