Regional Venture-Coordinator, Central Europe
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I have a question regarding the Mist Evasion ability that some of the vampires possess.
Mist Evasion [reaction] Trigger Bolger would take damage from a critical hit, or from critically failing a saving throw against a damaging effect. Effect Bolger’s body briefly evaporates into the surrounding mists, dispersing the triggering attack. The attack has the results of a failure instead of a critical success.
So if this was triggered by an attack it turns a crit success into a failure (maybe a bit too powerful without any limitations, but whatever)
But what happens if it was triggered by crit failing a saving throw?
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Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle
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Mist Evasion here replaces Mist Escape (which is arguably not a very useful or convenient ability in Society play) from the standard non-evasive Vampire Count.
I couldn't find a precedent in any other existing creature for an ability that (a) is triggered by both crit fails on saving throws and critical successes on attacks, or (b) turns a critical hit on an attack into a failure (i.e., reduces the degree of success of an attack by 2 steps).
I submit that the obvious interpretation here is to apply symmetry to the mechanic and increase the degree of success of a crit-failed saving throw by 2 steps, making it a normal success.
A possible counterargument against this interpretation is that it wouldn't result in symmetry of effect between attacks and saving throws, since normal successes on saving throws very frequently still incur some damage whereas failures on attacks very frequently do not. And, after all, Mist Escape (the ability being replaced) states that while in mist form at 0 HP "the creature is unaffected by further damage", i.e., that notionally the protection provided by being in mist form does not distinguish between damage from attacks and damaging effects with saving throws.
A counter-counter argument is that if the intent was to allow the vampire to evade all the triggering damage using Mist Evasion, then the text could simply have said something like "the vampire takes no damage" rather than referring to changing the degree of success of the attack.
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Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle
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Pretty clearly a typo (the elite CR5 vs. regular CR4 is correct; weak should be AC 20).
In that vein, History isn't a skill, but as it's highly unlikely that zero PCs wil be trained in Society, it is unimportant. (Any relevant Lore would work also.)
Without more info on the precise nature of the 2 "magical" silver daggers given in the briefing I'm assuming they are the lowest possible (+1) silver weapons, which is the kind of minimal help I can imagine coming from Narsen.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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I ran this Thursday night but had to call it due to time. High tier, 5 players. Mushroom fight was rough, but they had an archer to kite which helped. But the last fight really took it out of them. In various moving around the healer got left fighting one mook and the boss while the others grouped on the other mooks. A lack of focus-fire combined with their fast healing, dr, and opportunistic blood drinking kept them going. As the cleric already had some Drain from the first encounter, they Drained him dry. A bit later, I got a crit-fail & fail from the phantasmal killer, taking out the rogue.
Looking back, I did miss-run it a bit. I assumed the Mist Evasion turned their (many) crits into regular hits not fails. So the vampires should have been doing even better.
The store kicked us out with the boss and one mook still doing ok, and the last 3 party members (archer, witch, warpriest) running low. Was too close to really say which side would win, so I called it a mission fail but said they escape.
The question that remains is the person who got drained to zero. Resurrect doesn't clear "long-term debilitations" and blood drain takes a week per point to clear. You have to heighten it to level 9 to not have the negative conditions. I'm letting them escape WITH the bodies, so they're not getting buried 3 days and coming back as Spawn at least. So, does the 40 acp boon still cover them? Do they need to buy the 20 acp Condition Removal boon first?
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Central Europe
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The Pathfinder Society takes care of its members by removing most ongoing nonpermanent negative conditions and repairing agents’ damaged gear to the condition it was in at the start of the scenario.
The following conditions are not automatically removed and must be cleared from the character before the end of the adventure or the character ceases to be available for organized play:
Death
Permanent negative effects, including polymorph or petrification
Curses
Since drained isn't a permanent condition and is not on the list of conditions not removed by the Society I think it should be removed for free at the end of the scenario.
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Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle
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A victim’s drained condition decreases by 1 per week. A blood transfusion, which requires a DC 20 Medicine check and sufficient blood or a blood donor, reduces the drain by 1 after 10 minutes.
I take this to mean that if a party member is willing to donate blood, and you have someone to do the DC 20 Medicine check, you can remove [this specific type of] drain in 10 min (i.e. you don't have to wait a week).
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What are GMs giving players who try to recall knowledge about vampires in general? All vampires have abilities like Revulsion that seem highly relevant. I wish the scenario provided some guidance on what to give and tables will have a high degree of variation.
I set DC by level for a general RK check. Crit gets them a useful weakness.
Mask Narsen gives them an axe and garlic, assuming he would tell them some of these things anyway.
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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I take this to mean that if a party member is willing to donate blood, and you have someone to do the DC 20 Medicine check, you can remove [this specific type of] drain in 10 min (i.e. you don't have to wait a week).A victim’s drained condition decreases by 1 per week. A blood transfusion, which requires a DC 20 Medicine check and sufficient blood or a blood donor, reduces the drain by 1 after 10 minutes.
By that logic, the person donating the blood should become just as Drained as the person being healed got restored. And there's also the issue of blood types - even among just humans in Europe random chance would only grant a 55% acceptance rate. Who knows how weird it gets when you bring in non-humans.
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Regional Venture-Coordinator, Central Europe
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That sounds a lot like a GM discretion question. Can you donate blood to someone from a different species.
Personally I would allow it if they are the same subtype (so human to human) and most likely if they are the same type, like humanoid (so dwarf to goblin). Everything further I think the answer is most likely no.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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Barring anything explicit saying you can't (which this scenario does not have) I think it is assumed in Golarion that all blood is valid blood for this type of transfusion.
The 'logic' of Medicine checks is already pretty *shrug* in a lot of ways: just being trained in Medicine makes you equally competent at treating humans, dwarves, elves, birds, plants, robots and stuffed-animals. It may be a vast oversimplicifcation of actual RL medical procedures and distinctions, but that is a boon for the smoothness of gameplay.
I'd also say that being the donor does not then give that person the Drained condition instead - think of it as maybe not giving the victim back the full ammount of blood the vampire just took, but enough to get them healthier and keep it moving.
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Hej all,
I loved running this scenario this afternoon! A few rules related questions that came up during the combat with the Tendriculoses:
Do monsters get their Resistance to Piercing & Slashing damage against a target that has been swallowed? I ruled that they did since I couldn't find they didn't. That felt really dirty though, hence the question :/
Can a PC escape though the same hole that a previous PC used to rupture out of the creature? I ruled no because I couldn't find that they could, although that didn't feel very satisfying either.
How does a Thaumaturge's Exploit Weakness interact with the Rupture threshold when he has been swallowed whole? The Thaumaturge used the Fire weakness of the creature to boost the damage of his Slashing attack. I ended up ruling that it would work to help burst out of the creature. It seemed fair to do so since it was part of the same damage instance.
Does Swallow Whole have the Attack trait? It has "(Attack)" mentioned at the start of the description, so I assume I did that right?
Finally: My compliments on setting up the high tier BBEG ! It was awesome to run a BBEG who could survive a severe beating from the party while at the same time casting spells like there was no tomorrow (which there wasn't, of course). Felt amazing!
Venture-Lieutenant, Oregon—Portland
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I've never seen anything that suggests the resistances change as a general rule, although I think there are some creatures that might specify that. I would have ruled the same way as you.
The swallow whole ability says the rupture damage frees the "engulfed creature" when discussing being able to attack while inside. I wouldn't let multiple creatures get out, or treat it as a permanent hole.
The thaumaturge seems like a gray area but I'd rule it the same as you. The exploit vulnerability mortal weakness doesn't change the damage type, so I'd consider it all slashing.
Yes, in the abilities section of the Bestiary, the parenthetical indicates associated traits.
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Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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I (re)played this adventure yesterday, and while we personally had no trouble with getting Swallowed Whole by the tendriculoses, there is something I'd like to point out. They have a rupture value of 14. With piercing and slashing resistance, that goes up to 19. Most light weapons I've found go to 1d6. Let's assume you have a striking rune. That's 2d6. At level 7, most martials get weapon spec for +2. Assuming a maxed out Strength, that's 2d6+4+2. If you roll max damage, that's 16 damage, still not close to reaching the Ruptire value if you take the resistance into account. You'd need some kind of spell effect, item, or class feature that allows for additional damage in order to pop out, and Flaming runes and the like are available from level 8 on. The Thaumaturge in the example above is a good one, but how is a standard Fighter going to reach that (okay, running the numbers, most melee classes can boost their damage, but only if they took a certain feat/subclass: Barbarians with rage, Fighters with Power Attack, Investigators/Rogues/Rangers with sneak attack, Monk with the right styles and flurry, Wildshaped Druid)? Let alone a lower-level character playing up. Hell, even 14 seems like a high number. The only saving grace is that it's off-guard, so it's slightly easier to crit. The only other option is to escape through the mouth again.
An argument against resistances from the inside is also that for most creatures, their skin is protected somehow (thick hide/scales, and so on), but it wouldn't make sense for their insides to have the same protection (the stomach is basically a goopy bag - then again, would a plant have the same kind of stomach?). I don't know why a tendriculos would be resistant against slashing and piercing specifically, but I wanna bet the inside wouldn't have that.
TL;DR: I think Rupture 14 is already pretty tough, adding resistances on top of that (specifically resistances against damage types to escape the belly) is practically impossible for most classes.