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I'm starting a Pathfinder 2e game over roll20 with some friends soon. We had a session 0 (where my input was "please dear god someone have a heal spell"), but since no one has played Pathfinder ever (including me), and we have a couple of people who are new to TTRPG's entirely I decided our first session is going to be like a "non-canon" sequence taking them through the dungeon from the "beginner's box". I looked through it, and it looks like it spoon-feeds you mechanics well and it's got a variety of challenges. At the end is a wyrmling dragon (at level 1? jesus christ), so my intention is to have the players go through the dungeon, and warn them before the dragon room that the kid gloves are off and I'm going to do my level best to wipe them out in the next room. Whatever that outcome, I'll bring them all to level 2 at the end (or possibly before the dragon fight), and then launch into Extinction Curse at level 2 instead of level 1, so everyone should have a few more tools (and be a little more experience with them vs totally new people/characters) and not quite so fragile. Since everything is so new to every one, I've also told them that I'm fine if they want to redo their characters at some point, as long as it's not to the point of trying to optimize for every session. I'll probably have them lock down after the first book in the path (if we get that far).
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Apr 17, 2021 01:05
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boxen posted:I'm starting a Pathfinder 2e game over roll20 with some friends soon. We had a session 0 (where my input was "please dear god someone have a heal spell"), but since no one has played Pathfinder ever (including me), and we have a couple of people who are new to TTRPG's entirely I decided our first session is going to be like a "non-canon" sequence taking them through the dungeon from the "beginner's box". I looked through it, and it looks like it spoon-feeds you mechanics well and it's got a variety of challenges. At the end is a wyrmling dragon (at level 1? jesus christ), so my intention is to have the players go through the dungeon, and warn them before the dragon room that the kid gloves are off and I'm going to do my level best to wipe them out in the next room. They should hit level 2 before the fight in the throne room against the dragonkeeper, which is before the dragon. I didn't think it was that bad when we ran it, the cinder rat fight was way worse than the ending, but that may have been a dice thing. Certainly the wyrmling was anticlimactic because the ranger crit saved the dragon breath, and then crit hit it immediately after for 60% of its health and it fell over not long after.
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Apr 17, 2021 01:13
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boxen posted:I'm starting a Pathfinder 2e game over roll20 with some friends soon. We had a session 0 (where my input was "please dear god someone have a heal spell"), but since no one has played Pathfinder ever (including me), and we have a couple of people who are new to TTRPG's entirely I decided our first session is going to be like a "non-canon" sequence taking them through the dungeon from the "beginner's box". I looked through it, and it looks like it spoon-feeds you mechanics well and it's got a variety of challenges. At the end is a wyrmling dragon (at level 1? jesus christ), so my intention is to have the players go through the dungeon, and warn them before the dragon room that the kid gloves are off and I'm going to do my level best to wipe them out in the next room. If you, or anyone else, is looking to try out PF2E in Roll20 and want to just have a brief 1-shot to introduce players to the system and play style, I still have a full copy of the first PFS Quest for 2E "The Sandstone Secret" complete with notes and instructions that I can spin off copies of for people to take out for a test drive. It also has all the core level 1 pre-gens included so people can just try out the classes they are interested in to see how they play. I think it works well as an intro, and I did my best to include all the DM instructions I could think of.
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Apr 17, 2021 01:18
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M. Night Skymall posted:They should hit level 2 before the fight in the throne room against the dragonkeeper, which is before the dragon. I didn't think it was that bad when we ran it, the cinder rat fight was way worse than the ending, but that may have been a dice thing. Certainly the wyrmling was anticlimactic because the ranger crit saved the dragon breath, and then crit hit it immediately after for 60% of its health and it fell over not long after. When I looked at the stats, it seemed like it could be very dependent on the dice, yeah. If the dragon happens to go first and opens up with a breath weapon and then flies, a heavy-melee party could have problems. I'm also going to point out they can rest before the dragon fight in the dragonkeeper room, so the fight might be a lot harder if they don't rest. So win or lose, I hope to reinforce the importance of rest and preparation. I haven't DM'd anything in over a decade, so I don't want to get into a place where I ACCIDENTALLY kill them. Toshimo posted:If you, or anyone else, is looking to try out PF2E in Roll20 and want to just have a brief 1-shot to introduce players to the system and play style, I still have a full copy of the first PFS Quest for 2E "The Sandstone Secret" complete with notes and instructions that I can spin off copies of for people to take out for a test drive. It also has all the core level 1 pre-gens included so people can just try out the classes they are interested in to see how they play. I think it works well as an intro, and I did my best to include all the DM instructions I could think of. That would be super handy, actually. I was looking at the beginner box just because it was on roll20, so it has dynamic lighting and all the tokens are all set up already, but there's not actually a hell of a lot to the beginner box, unfortunately. boxen fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Apr 17, 2021 |
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Apr 17, 2021 01:24
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M. Night Skymall posted:They should hit level 2 before the fight in the throne room against the dragonkeeper, which is before the dragon. I didn't think it was that bad when we ran it, the cinder rat fight was way worse than the ending, but that may have been a dice thing. Certainly the wyrmling was anticlimactic because the ranger crit saved the dragon breath, and then crit hit it immediately after for 60% of its health and it fell over not long after. My wyrmling dragon crit failed against fear and then it got massacred before it even got a chance to run away. boxen posted:When I looked at the stats, it seemed like it could be very dependent on the dice, yeah. If the dragon happens to go first and opens up with a breath weapon and then flies, a heavy-melee party could have problems. I'm also going to point out they can rest before the dragon fight in the dragonkeeper room, so the fight might be a lot harder if they don't rest. So win or lose, I hope to reinforce the importance of rest and preparation. I haven't DM'd anything in over a decade, so I don't want to get into a place where I ACCIDENTALLY kill them. I will note that the tactics explicitly say to only hit one person with the breath weapon. If it goes first, I'd say it moves and then Draconic Frenzy, and then you see when to follow the noted breath weapon tactics from there.
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Apr 17, 2021 06:51
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MadScientistWorking posted:Can I ask what scenarios you were playing? Also don't take that as an excuse because that shouldn't be happening. Even with some wonky scenario balance and issues you shouldn't be averaging 4 deaths a month and a TPK a month. It probably wouldn't sting so much if it didn't take three sessions to reach level 2, which is way too long. You should go 1>2 in a single 3-4 hour session, full stop. And most of the issues were related to crits which feel way too lethal and swingy at low tier.
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Apr 18, 2021 20:57
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Syrinxx posted:Sorry forums were down. There's a subtier 1-2 fight vs. a loving dragon in Menace Under Otari that wiped us, also the fight in 1-15 where every loving combatant explodes on death for 2d6 poison was a tpk, and the fight with two god drat lions and an invisible dude at the end of 2-13 would have wiped the party except the GM did a deus ex and let an NPC bring up our cleric. Finally we all went down against the chair mimic in 2-11 and that would have been a tpk but you can't die in that scenario I guess It's definitely weird compared to other editions that it takes pretty much the same amount of time to level regardless of the level, but it's an intended feature. Are you guys healing up to full between encounters? It may not feel like a big deal to be down a few HP, but it generally is the difference between "I got crit and now I'm dying, time to spiral towards a TPK," and "I got crit and am at full capacity to do poo poo with 2 hp left." Healing out of combat is cheap and easy for a reason. Also in combat, things like raising a shield make a big difference in preventing crits, a much bigger difference than taking a swing at -10 or even -5.
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Apr 18, 2021 21:11
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25% off PDFs sale at Paizo until May 2. Perfect for Foundry GMs who want to import their poo poo using the importer module and save a grip of time
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Apr 21, 2021 17:24
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Small update with the game I mentioned: We had our first actual play session last night. People had made characters in Pathbuilder, and then we went through copying everything over onto roll20's Pathfinder character sheets. That took awhile but I think we eventually got it in well enough. The initial fight against the rats went well, the completely-new-to-RPG's fighter rushed in and got knocked down to half (other players: "Yeah dude, that's a rite of passage for anyone who plays RPG's, at some point you're just going to get your poo poo rocked by rats"), but crit the hell out of the last remaining rat his next round. Then we had the challenging part: doing a DC15 athletics check to descent a 10-foot ledge. This took five people roughly half an hour. They searched the basement of the fishery for useful items, I told them they didn't find anything special, just some fishing equipment, ropes, fishing nets, that sort of thing. The cleric had the bright idea to drape a net over the ledge to have something to grab onto, I told him that it was a fishing net so he wouldn't be able to get a toehold on it, but he could hook his fingers in it and it'd help. Was going to give him a +2 circumstance bonus, but it still took him 3-4 tries to get down. The catfolk ranger basically cartwheeled down the ledge, the druid made it down without issue, and the goblin alchemist hopped into an empty (still slimy and smelling of fish) barrel and bounced down, critting on an acrobatics check, so they hit the ledge at speed, rolled around on the walls and came to a wobbly stop at the bottom of the ledge right-side-up, a bit dizzy but otherwise looking very stylish. The fighter from earlier saw this all and tried to climb down, critically failed the first roll and took five damage. Once again, the other players said "Yep, that's just how it goes, the dice are fickle." I have dynamic lighting on the map and set up everyone's darkvision to have a 60 foot distance (might up change that later), so everyone but the catfolk could see in the spider cave. The fighter tried to cross first and got stuck immediately, the spider ran up (going second in initiative), missed the first attack and hit the second, and the fighter succedded on his fort save against poison (  ), crit the spider and rolled max damage and made the spider very dead (so, two attack crits and one skill crit fumble for him on the night, welcome to RPGs). They explored that cave a bit and we called it a night.Lessons: Roll20 (at least the pathfinder character sheet) is kinda non-intuitive, but we're working through. I might up the difficulty on some of the fights later but we'll see. No one is quite sure they plugged their info into their character sheets correctly, but we're learning. I need to get them to stop trying to walk through walls on the VTT. Everyone is new to both Pathfinder and Roll20 so we're all being patient with everything and having a good time. Everyone wanted to keep playing at 10:30 PM but we're all in our 30's and had to work the next morning. Everyone's excited for next week.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:03
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boxen posted:Lessons: Roll20 (at least the pathfinder character sheet) is kinda non-intuitive, but we're working through. I might up the difficulty on some of the fights later but we'll see. No one is quite sure they plugged their info into their character sheets correctly, but we're learning. I need to get them to stop trying to walk through walls on the VTT. When it comes to the general pain points with Roll20, I'd recommend Foundry VTT - it's got nicer quality of life all around, and it's got about a billion community-made add-ons. It may seem a little pricy ($50), but it's a one-time purchase and only the GM needs it, so you're easily coming out ahead of subscription stuff for continued play.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:14
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boxen posted:I have dynamic lighting on the map and set up everyone's darkvision to have a 60 foot distance (might up change that later), so everyone but the catfolk could see in the spider cave. The fighter tried to cross first and got stuck immediately, the spider ran up (going second in initiative), missed the first attack and hit the second, and the fighter succedded on his fort save against poison ( The first couple of fights are, since it's the beginner box, kind of intended to be cakewalks where it's mostly just about figuring out the basics of gameplay. I wouldn't say the beginner box is really hard or anything, but the fights do get harder as you go. It seems like you have 5 people, so you might need to adjust for that. Be careful of just slapping elite templates on things though, try to add more creatures to get up to budget instead whenever possible. I think Foundry's way better than Roll20 for PF2E, but you also have to buy it, get the PDF for the beginner box from Paizo, (should be a discount from Roll20 for already buying it there though I think.) figure out how to host it(self hosting is easy, but you have to do it), get images onto all the monster tokens, etc. I think the time cost for all that is easily worth being able to use all the automation in Foundry, and also I'm pretty tech savvy so I enjoy the flexibility of Foundry a lot, but it does take a bit more upfront work to get everything going. It's worth noting that Roll20 does not have a ton of content for PF2E beyond the beginner box, so if you wanted to run something after the beginner box on Roll20 you have to do all the prep work as well, and your reward is using Roll20 for PF2E (this is not a reward.) I'd probably just switch if you guys want to do a longer campaign after the beginner box.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:40
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I read about Foundry VTT, the impression I got from it was that it's harder to set up intially and somewhat less user-friendly, but afterward it was better than Roll20. With all the stuff we were already trying to figure out with pathfinder 2e and roll20, having something that was even less user-friendly to new people seemed like not a great idea.
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Apr 21, 2021 19:57
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Foundry theoretically has a lot of backend stuff to make life easier, but it's still not mature software yet. The character sheet is still a mess, the macros sometimes just stop working for a few hours, and movement/lighting can be hit or miss without a lot of prep.
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Apr 21, 2021 20:09
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I'm so looking forward to ditching both Foundry and Roll20 and playing in person again, our group finally has nearly everyone vaccinated and a tentative in person gaming session scheduled for May 14. Speaking of, anyone know of an app that can assist in printing out maps from AP PDFs that are properly scaled for minis?
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Apr 21, 2021 20:15
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Enos Cabell posted:I'm so looking forward to ditching both Foundry and Roll20 and playing in person again, our group finally has nearly everyone vaccinated and a tentative in person gaming session scheduled for May 14. Last time I tried it, which was a really long time ago, it was way easier to find someone who'd remade the maps in different software and use that to print them out. It's definitely still pretty easy to find all the AP maps remade in dungeon fog or dungeon draft, and I'm pretty both of those can print them to scale pretty easily.
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Apr 21, 2021 20:27
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I ignore all the sheets and advanced features in roll20 and just use it as a map I can draw on and roll dice/write simple macros in. Everyone has their character sheets in pathbuilder anyway
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Apr 21, 2021 20:33
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M. Night Skymall posted:Last time I tried it, which was a really long time ago, it was way easier to find someone who'd remade the maps in different software and use that to print them out. It's definitely still pretty easy to find all the AP maps remade in dungeon fog or dungeon draft, and I'm pretty both of those can print them to scale pretty easily. Cheers, thanks!
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Apr 21, 2021 20:39
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Just regarding the "cost" of PF2e on Foundry -There is no free SRD compendium in Roll20. In order to create a character with drag and drop items, feats, etc. you must buy the CRB ($60) or be in a game with a GM who has not only bought the CRB but also has a Plus or Pro subscription to be able to share it with you. ($60 + $5-10/mo). To have options from the APG you have to also buy that, or be in a game with a GM who has bought and shared it ($50) -Foundry does require your GM to have a license ($50) but has every single published thing already in the system and accessible from any game you create. All the content from core, gmg, adventure paths, lost omens, all 3 bestiaries, all the pfs stuff, etc is available in compendiums in Foundry for free. The only downside is that the monsters typically do not come with any token art. Also as usual Toshimo is wrong - the character sheet in Foundry is really good, has a nice degree of automation, and is the diametric opposite of the pile of dog rear end that is the R20 sheet. My Foundry AoA party leveled last week and it took about 3 minutes total - change the number in the level box and drag in a couple feats/spells from the compendiums, the end. This is with two completely non-technical people in the group. I say this as a GM and a player of APs and Society games on both platforms, I would absolutely never go back to R20 for any reason when it comes to pf2e. I'm only stuck there now on occasion when a society GM hosts their games there and it's always a huge loving chore to get my stupid characters made on that awful sheet because I don't own the CRB on it. There is a moderately useful import script that brings in about 40% of your character from Herolab but still its 20x worse than Foundry character creation (where, by the way, you can import a json of any of your characters to have a playable sheet in 1 second)
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Apr 21, 2021 21:32
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Syrinxx posted:be in a game with a GM who has not only bought the CRB but also has a Plus or Pro subscription to be able to share it with you. ($60 + $5-10/mo). This is false. You don't need to have a subscription to share books with your players.
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Apr 21, 2021 21:44
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Toshimo posted:This is false. You don't need to have a subscription to share books with your players. So the cost for "Being able to make a Roll20 character that uses something from both the CRB and the APG" is $110 then, no subscription cost required
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Apr 21, 2021 21:53
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Toshimo posted:Foundry theoretically has a lot of backend stuff to make life easier, but it's still not mature software yet. The character sheet is still a mess, the macros sometimes just stop working for a few hours, and movement/lighting can be hit or miss without a lot of prep. This has not been my experience at all. The character sheets are easy to set up and easier to use (and really quick to level), I've never had macros just stop working and movement/lighting require no more prep than setting up the maps in any other VTT, and even less than most if you use the Importer.
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Apr 22, 2021 05:18
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Evilgm posted:This has not been my experience at all. The character sheets are easy to set up and easier to use (and really quick to level), I've never had macros just stop working and movement/lighting require no more prep than setting up the maps in any other VTT, and even less than most if you use the Importer. Yes, I wonder where that impression comes from - my games are rock-solid with zero issues, and the players love their character sheets. Being able to import from Pathbuilder is a blessing. Even complicated effects like rage function just with a single button press. But seeing as Toshimo has been railing against Foundry VTT for a while, I'd take posts like that with a bucket of salt, anyway. Here's a screenshot of that "mess". Note that the sheet automatically adds new slots for feats depending on class and level, with stuff like Free Archetype being toggleable by the GM. Adding Feats that give Actions automatically adds the action to the seet as well. The small magnifying glasses let players search for feats from all sources and drag-and-drop them directly onto their sheets.  Back to PF2E. I'm dming Extinction Curse tonight, third session. The first two where great! I spent a LOT of time making the circus feel alive. Had a soundboard with music and audience reactions set up. When the show began, lights dimmed and spotlights turned on with a loud clack. I loved the atmosphere. And true to Pathfinder 2E's reputation, I almost had a player kill in session 2, with an especially mean twist. The barbarian got mind-controlled and hacked at the swashbuckler. CRIT. A 12 on his damage die would have been insta-death for the swashbuckler. As the players are married and this was the night before their anniversary, I was glad he only rolled a 10 and dodged that bullet 
Luebbi fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Apr 22, 2021 |
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Apr 22, 2021 05:59
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Honestly, at this point I'm wondering if there are multiple versions of PF2 for Foundry or if I'm being gaslit. My experience is that all of the core functions of the character sheet are nonsensically spread across like 7 pages obfuscated by having seemingly random icons instead of textual page names. It's some seriously "UX is My Passion" stuff. Using Treat Wounds has been a drat nightmare of interlocking parts, so I got the "official" macro for it and yes, it did just stop working for like an hour last session with no feedback or errors, and I had to do it all by hand, which bogged us down. And, yeah, combat has been incredibly slow for us, much moreso than the R20 session I've been running. I don't know if it's lack of player familiarity with the system or how drat awkward the sheets are to use, but I'd say the average realtime turn length for similar actions for my Foundry game is twice that of R20. And, yes, movement continues to confound. Our characters are still getting caught clipping corners or other tiny pieces of terrain, invalidating the entire move (would it kill them to just give the move arrow a red tint or something when the move is invalid?). I'm very tempted to go out on my lunch break tomorrow and see if there's any Youtube/Twitch videos of people actually playing PF2 on Foundry, because it's baffling to me that people think this is "a good way to play".
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Apr 22, 2021 06:23
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Yes medicine checks for treat wounds are insanely complicated someone alert the media it takes almost 3 seconds for me to hotkey the ability so that it takes nearly 0.5 seconds to use in the future https://imgur.com/VkCOtpu
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Apr 22, 2021 08:49
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Syrinxx posted:Yes medicine checks for treat wounds are insanely complicated someone alert the media it takes almost 3 seconds for me to hotkey the ability so that it takes nearly 0.5 seconds to use in the future You're making this hard on yourself! Get Token Action Hud, it's great with pf2e. Then just click treat wounds in the utility tab. I think it also supports feats like risky medicine. Token action hud will also allow your players to quickly attack eith the correct MAP and has toggles for stuff like sneak attack and finishers. https://foundryvtt.com/packages/token-action-hud/ Judging by your comments, Toshimo, your DM maybe used a very old version of the PF2E ruleset and never bothered to update it, which has to be done manually (by clicking “check for updates”). It also sounds like he wasn't well versed in the system. Many of the things you didn’t like are more automated or easier to use now. The system has matured immensely. Some, like the icon thing you complain about, aren’t bad – the magic wand leads to spells, the cardboard box to equipment, I think the system is pretty intuitive. I’ve got to give you credit for giving it another chance despite your initial bad impression, but don’t have a youtube channel to recommend as I don’t watch live games. Luebbi fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Apr 22, 2021 |
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Apr 22, 2021 08:54
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Enos Cabell posted:I'm so looking forward to ditching both Foundry and Roll20 and playing in person again, Yeah, this is about where I am. PFS is basically how I get my die rolling fix since I can't get a home game going in anything, so it's my "scratches the itch, better than nothing" option. Playing over Roll20 is just an extra step too far for me though, I don't really get any enjoyment out of it, to the point that I'm pretty sure I'm just swearing PFS off until we're able to get in person games going again.
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Apr 22, 2021 11:08
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Mark me down as another person who played PF2e in Foundry and had it work great, especially compared to Roll20.
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Apr 22, 2021 12:56
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Syrinxx posted:Yes medicine checks for treat wounds are insanely complicated someone alert the media it takes almost 3 seconds for me to hotkey the ability so that it takes nearly 0.5 seconds to use in the future The fact that you are being a snarky rear end in a top hat about this, then posting the most useless possible "it works" video tells me exactly what I expected: You are stockholm syndromed into thinking your cargo cult bullshit is a lot more than it is. Your other weird posts about spending hundreds of hours using R20 without using the character sheets should have been red flag enough, but this really seals it.
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Apr 22, 2021 14:19
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Luebbi posted:You're making this hard on yourself! Get Token Action Hud, it's great with pf2e. Then just click treat wounds in the utility tab. I think it also supports feats like risky medicine. We tried that add-on (or, at least A token hub, since I don't manage the add-ons) for a bit. I think the other players may still use it. I found it unwieldy and incomplete, and I spent more time trying to get it out of my way than the time saves by using it. Luebbi posted:Judging by your comments, Toshimo, your DM maybe used a very old version of the PF2E ruleset and never bothered to update it, which has to be done manually (by clicking “check for updates”). It also sounds like he wasn't well versed in the system. I can try and talk to them about it, but that last bit is part of my larger point: Foundry has a steeper curve for DMs than R20 (idk how FG compares), so the immediate leap to "Everyone should just use Foundry" feels very much like the square peg in the round hole. Luebbi posted:Many of the things you didn’t like are more automated or easier to use now. The system has matured immensely. Some, like the icon thing you complain about, aren’t bad – the magic wand leads to spells, the cardboard box to equipment, I think the system is pretty intuitive. Ehh... Iconography is hard, and 90% of the time I'm playing on my laptop, so they are just indistinguishable little blobs. From googling around, I'm seeing a PF2 sheet that actually has text page names, so I'm going to see if that's not something I can toggle. But, again, for all it's warts (and they are numerous), one of the things R20 got right, and imo Foundry should have learned from, is that 90% of the buttons that you need to push and numbers you need to reference are on the first page (and spell page for casters). Like I mentioned, that's a big deal for speeding up play, especially for new players. You could throw out all the big piles of ~fancy afornment~ of the Foundry sheet and just give me a compact first page with Saves/AC/Skills/Attacks/Common Actions on it and I'd leap at it. That's really what I want from a VTT character sheet. Luebbi posted:I’ve got to give you credit for giving it another chance despite your initial bad impression, but don’t have a youtube channel to recommend as I don’t watch live games. I mean, I'm playing in a weekly game in Foundry, and doing my best to work within its limitations, and help the other players. I don't have an objection to people preferring Foundry or recommending it. I just get very annoyed that there's a lot of misinformation about both of the big VTTs and how to use them and when they might be a better option for players. Foundry definitely has a lot of nice features, and I like a lot of things about it, but it does feel, even from the player side, that it offloads a lot more on the GM and requires a lot more time and energy invested to get a working product out. Sure, if your GM pours themselves into it, it's got a world of features that do a lot of cool things, but that's a bar above which a lot of folks are likely to bounce off.
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Apr 22, 2021 14:39
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Toshimo posted:But, again, for all it's warts (and they are numerous), one of the things R20 got right, and imo Foundry should have learned from, is that 90% of the buttons that you need to push and numbers you need to reference are on the first page (and spell page for casters). Like I mentioned, that's a big deal for speeding up play, especially for new players. You could throw out all the big piles of ~fancy afornment~ of the Foundry sheet and just give me a compact first page with Saves/AC/Skills/Attacks/Common Actions on it and I'd leap at it. That's really what I want from a VTT character sheet. Yes, Roll20 achieves that by having basically no working functionality that anyone would care about, and being an utter pain to set up. Not to mention everything being a toggleable dropdown that you have to fill in, that's different from the other toggleable dropdown. Roll20's character sheet is effectively a PDF that adds numbers to a d20 on command. And not to mention utterly inane things like the critical damage being divorced from actual weapon damage, spells constantly reassigning their traditions unless (again) you manually check each of them, everything from the APG Compendium being a goddamn mess, etc. Meanwhile Token Action HUD means I never need to open my character sheet and actually have all the information at my fingertips - as a swashbuckler I can easily trigger panache/finisher, have all my actions, reactions, and everything immediately accessible. Edit: Made a quick demonstration. Toshimo posted:I mean, I'm playing in a weekly game in Foundry, and doing my best to work within its limitations, and help the other players. I don't have an objection to people preferring Foundry or recommending it. I just get very annoyed that there's a lot of misinformation about both of the big VTTs and how to use them and when they might be a better option for players. Foundry definitely has a lot of nice features, and I like a lot of things about it, but it does feel, even from the player side, that it offloads a lot more on the GM and requires a lot more time and energy invested to get a working product out. Sure, if your GM pours themselves into it, it's got a world of features that do a lot of cool things, but that's a bar above which a lot of folks are likely to bounce off. My GM spent something like 1 hour on it and immediately got something far superior to Roll20. It's not hard. Cyouni fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Apr 22, 2021 |
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Apr 22, 2021 15:07
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Paizo has added a section to their website for Foundry releases, so there's starting to be some noise that they're going to make an announcement at Paizocon of official modules. That's really exciting as the ability to pay someone to make and place tokens for me is the only thing missing from the software that I really want. The PDF2Foundry guy has also gone dark with no release in a month, so I'm a little concerned that with official Paizo releases coming, the sort of backdoor Paizo releases may stop. Hopefully the module doesn't disappear entirely. Personally I'm fine with paying for things if it means I get pre-built tokens, but if they kill the free option that does sort of suck. In news unrelated to VTT, my players TPKed in AV. Kind of curious if anyone has ideas for how to handle it. Spoilers for Abomination Vaults follow. They finally made it down into the ghouls, which is the first floor where their level advantage from doing the beginner box has disappeared, and honestly the first "hard" floor in the dungeon by my reading. They basically just slammed into the open library area with Aller Rosk and ghouls kept running off to get more ghouls and they refused to retreat down the corridor or do anything but stand there and fight until they were all unconscious. They actually killed basically every ghoul in ear shot except Aller Rosk, who finished the fight with a whole 2 hp left. Their animal companion was still alive, so I gave it 1 attack since according to the rules an unattended animal companion will fight to defend itself(this is an iffy interpretation, but whatever it's kind of funny), and it hit and downed Aller Rosk so now there's just the animal companion with all PCs unconscious and all ghouls dead, theoretically. One of the players has a Pearly White Spindle Aeon Stone, so he'll regen back to 1 hp in a minute. My ideas are: A. Ignore the animal companion, assume Aller Rosk captured them and is dragging them off to succumb to ghoul fever, the regenning player wakes up to Rosk dragging someone else in the party away, but otherwise alone, they can probably get a round to walk up and hit him. Most likely he succeeds, but a reasonable chance he fails. B. Ignore the animal compainon, assume Aller Rosk knows what an aeon stone is and takes it away, the players wake up locked in the Author's Hall maybe without gear, with the ghouls waiting for them to transform. I'll have to figure out some way they could conceivably escape, probably Aegral or maybe help from town. Could put Vol Rajani here as an actual heroic act to make the moral choices in book 2 more interesting. C. Rosk is down, regenning PC wakes up to find Augrael standing over them, trying to help them and impressed at the fact that they've killed all the Morlocks and half the ghouls. They haven't met Augrael yet as they came down a different set of stairs. Leaning towards C, but my players actually voted to be captured, just feels hard to resolve if I take all their stuff away, and kind of awkwardly unrealistic if I don't.
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Apr 22, 2021 15:45
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M. Night Skymall posted:Paizo has added a section to their website for Foundry releases, so there's starting to be some noise that they're going to make an announcement at Paizocon of official modules. That's really exciting as the ability to pay someone to make and place tokens for me is the only thing missing from the software that I really want. The PDF2Foundry guy has also gone dark with no release in a month, so I'm a little concerned that with official Paizo releases coming, the sort of backdoor Paizo releases may stop. Hopefully the module doesn't disappear entirely. Personally I'm fine with paying for things if it means I get pre-built tokens, but if they kill the free option that does sort of suck.  The news is really great though, it would be a big help to be able to pick up the APs / PFS modules all preconfigured. It would be a big win for the Foundry guy[s] as well
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Apr 22, 2021 15:59
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Did the summoner/magus book come out yet?
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Apr 22, 2021 16:06
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Cyouni posted:And not to mention utterly inane things like the critical damage being divorced from actual weapon damage, spells constantly reassigning their traditions unless (again) you manually check each of them, Can you explain these? I'm not familiar with them.
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Apr 22, 2021 16:10
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Did the summoner/magus book come out yet? I think it's an July/August release. https://paizo.com/products/btq026l5?Pathfinder-Secrets-of-Magic
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Apr 22, 2021 16:32
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M. Night Skymall posted:Paizo has added a section to their website for Foundry releases, so there's starting to be some noise that they're going to make an announcement at Paizocon of official modules. That's really exciting as the ability to pay someone to make and place tokens for me is the only thing missing from the software that I really want. The PDF2Foundry guy has also gone dark with no release in a month, so I'm a little concerned that with official Paizo releases coming, the sort of backdoor Paizo releases may stop. Hopefully the module doesn't disappear entirely. Personally I'm fine with paying for things if it means I get pre-built tokens, but if they kill the free option that does sort of suck. That's great news! As for PDF2Foundry, Mark Moreland posted on the Paizo Forums that they know of PDF scrapers for Virtual Tabletops and don't have a problem with them. Maybe they where in talks with the guy as they set up their shop? Who knows. I hope they'll release their Adventure Paths for Foundry. I bought Extinction Curse 1+2 on Roll20 and imported to Foundry, which went okay but was a bit of work. Art assets and tokens would be amazing to purchase as well.
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Apr 22, 2021 21:06
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Is there much Foundry support for Starfinder? I have been considering trying to get a Starfinder game going and Foundry has been so nice the times I have used it.
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Apr 23, 2021 01:49
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Syrinxx posted:Sorry forums were down. There's a subtier 1-2 fight vs. a loving dragon in Menace Under Otari that wiped us, also the fight in 1-15 where every loving combatant explodes on death for 2d6 poison was a tpk, and the fight with two god drat lions and an invisible dude at the end of 2-13 would have wiped the party except the GM did a deus ex and let an NPC bring up our cleric. Finally we all went down against the chair mimic in 2-11 and that would have been a tpk but you can't die in that scenario I guess Im really sorry you are having so much trouble with it because its not really supposed to be a deadly or aggravating thing. Most of the issues have just been speed bumps with trying to create a product that works in a situation that most RPGs don't really utilize. quote:Paizo has added a section to their website for Foundry releases, so there's starting to be some noise that they're going to make an announcement at Paizocon of official modules. EDIT: I know why. quote:Yes medicine checks for treat wounds are insanely complicated someone alert the media it takes almost 3 seconds for me to hotkey the ability so that it takes nearly 0.5 seconds to use in the future MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Apr 23, 2021 |
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Apr 23, 2021 02:14
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Toshimo posted:Can you explain these? I'm not familiar with them. The Roll20 character sheet critical weapon damage is in no way connected to the weapon's damage. So if you upgrade/change your weapon, you have to a) realize this is a problem, and then b) go back to the weapon and manually fix the critical damage to be correct. It's just a separate entry field that doesn't actually draw properly from anything. Regarding spells reassigning traditions, compendium assumes you're playing an arcane caster, and possibly divine for some of the other spells (I haven't checked this second guess personally since we dropped Roll20). So, for example, if you're playing a druid, and pick spells like Fireball and Heal from the compendium, the DCs will be completely and utterly incorrect, because it's deciding the spell is an arcane/divine spell, which the character probably didn't check up to trained. So enjoy going through every time you add a spell and fixing it. MadScientistWorking posted:Medicine checks are probably the most convoluted checks in the entire game and I seriously wouldn't mind automation at higher levels given how many different variations there are. I know Foundry has at least some level of automation on that, since the wizard's been using Risky Surgery, and I grabbed something similar for FGU.
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Apr 23, 2021 04:15
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Cyouni posted:I know Foundry has at least some level of automation on that, since the wizard's been using Risky Surgery, and I grabbed something similar for FGU. MadScientistWorking posted:How???? How did you find that out???? I can't navigate Paizo's site on a good day let alone find that.
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Apr 23, 2021 14:01
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