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Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
I'm a big fan of natural ambition for swash, personally.

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appropriatemetaphor
Jan 26, 2006

Infinite Karma posted:

Nobody can really 1-shot anything without a crit, and even then, the finesse-leaning classes aren't putting up big numbers compared to something like a Barbarian or Magus.

Not to discourage you, Swashbuckler will do what you're asking, but the system isn't built for players to be able to dominate enemies so utterly.

The one hit doesn't really matter, but like some kind of maneuver around an enemy do a thing that isn't just "i attack" every time.


Harold Fjord posted:

I'm a big fan of natural ambition for swash, personally.

Ah that one is better, went for Goading Feint and Nimble Dodge?

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
I like that combo but I went the wit, flying blade, and one for all. Later, cooperative nature. To get panache I do bon mots to help our witch or prepare aid reactions in which I shout encouragement to allies. If my allies do the thing I say outloud I'm giving them aid on, I get panache on a roll of 8 or so. This works against enemies that are immune to my quips.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006

appropriatemetaphor posted:

Ok not sure what I've done, I get real confused with all the traits and ancestries and whatever else:



Anything here just total trash?

https://rpgbot.net/p2/characters/classes/swashbuckler/

Luebbi
Jul 28, 2000
I'd say don't worry too much about making bad or non-optimal Feat choices. There aren't a lot of outright bad feats, and even less must-haves. A lot of it comes down to personal choice and playstyle. Especially Skill Feats can often be taken for flavor, granting minor bonuses in certain areas.

The most important thing if you're looking to make a somewhat optimized build is that you put an 18 in your main stat (which you did), get a starting AC of 18 (which you did), and familiarize yourself with your core features. Don't forget your Finisher deals half of 2d6 even when you miss; also keep in mind that you can't attack after you used your Finisher, so when to use it is a crucial part of playing the Swashbuckler. More often than not, you'll go for one big attack in a round, instead of risking a miss with a multi-attack penalty.

That said, the one thing I would maybe change would be the Lengthy Diversion feat; but only because I don't envision a Swashbuckler hiding as much during fights. Also, Skill Feats are easier to obtain than Ancestry Feats. Arcane Tattoos (especially shield) might be a good one, or Gloomseer for Low-Light Vision (leads to Darkvision).

Other than that, there's lots of inter-party synergies. Bon Mot is great for a swashbuckler, for example - it doesn't count as an attack and fits their style. But the characters who might get the most out of the benefit the feat gives (an enemy suffers -2 to Will save) isn't necessarily the swashbuckler, but their spellcasting friend who's trying to land a big Fear spell.

Luebbi fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Sep 3, 2021

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
A lot of what you want to be doing can depend on the composition of the rest of your party. I shifted to range specifically because we already had an animal Barb and a monk beastmaster in melee range and a witch to support. I also took marshal dedication to buff the horde

Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Sep 3, 2021

appropriatemetaphor
Jan 26, 2006

As far as synergies with party members go, at this point I'm just playing with randos. And probably not going past level 1 with the character anyway.

Am kinda confused about a couple things.

When would you use Goading Feint vs regular Feint? Is it that Goading Feint is defensive (-2 to attack rolls against you) and Feint (-2 AC) is offensive? Why would I ever want to use Goading Feint?

Made a few changes, took Nimble Dodge and kicked my charisma up a point and con down a point (lost 1 hp). Figuring getting Deception up to +6 is more handy than the HP?

Took Fleet (+5 movement) over Toughness (+1 HP) thinking the slight extra mobility will be more helpful than 1 HP? But hell maybe 1 extra HP is super good, would give me an even 20 HP instead of 19...



So basically I want to either Tumble Through or Goading Feint/Feint an enemy first (1 action), which gives me Panache, then use 2nd action for Confident Finish which would be a Rapier +7 roll to hit followed by regular 1D6+1 damage plus 2D6 damage off Precise Strike for 3D6+1 total?

Then I'd still have a third action for either moving to the target or doing some other thing?

M. Night Skymall
Mar 22, 2012

appropriatemetaphor posted:

As far as synergies with party members go, at this point I'm just playing with randos. And probably not going past level 1 with the character anyway.

Am kinda confused about a couple things.

When would you use Goading Feint vs regular Feint? Is it that Goading Feint is defensive (-2 to attack rolls against you) and Feint (-2 AC) is offensive? Why would I ever want to use Goading Feint?

Then I'd still have a third action for either moving to the target or doing some other thing?

It's pretty easy to get the flat footed condition on an enemy a variety of ways, but the most common is to flank them. If they're already flat footed and you can feint for free (rogues and monks can do this, not sure if swashbuckler has an action economy thing for it) then it's better to use goading feint than to do nothing with your free feint.

Generally as a swashbuckler you'll start combat by doing a tumble-through to get panache/move into flank position, then confident finisher, then tumble through or I guess goading feint to get panache again so you end your turn with panache. It's best to always have panache if you can. If you start with panache then you just finisher right off and it gives you a 1 action buffer in case you fail a feint/tumble through. If you're going feint you should have some charisma so you should pick up intimidate as something to do as a 3rd action.

ETA: Also, it's not a huge deal, but swashbucklers aren't very strong at low levels, and at best they get to like almost as good as other martials at higher levels. They're certainly not broken bad, but if I were playing a level 1 one-shot I wouldn't play one personally.

M. Night Skymall fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Sep 4, 2021

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
If this is just a level one I'd go gymnast wrestler. An orc who calls himself the world's strongest goblin, maybe. Stupid characters and ridiculous synergies are the best part of pf2e.

Chevy Slyme
May 2, 2004

We're Gonna Run.

We're Gonna Crawl.

Kick Down Every Wall.

Harold Fjord posted:

If this is just a level one I'd go gymnast wrestler. An orc who calls himself the world's strongest goblin, maybe. Stupid characters and ridiculous synergies are the best part of pf2e.

Pathfinder in general honestly. My favorite 1e lvl1 one shot character was a wizard with 20 strength and like 12 int whose primary spells were Mage Armor and Enlarge Person. I played it as a martial type and stunted on low level fighters.

Chevy Slyme fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Sep 4, 2021

appropriatemetaphor
Jan 26, 2006

Trip Report on Swashbuckler!

Turns out someone else was already a Swashbuckler so that was pretty shameful. He also took the place of some babe that was there the week before so like double whammy.

Then I rolled <5 like 6 times in a row on the same Kobold just whiffing everything failing all checks. loving Gary the Cunning just blundering everything! The party right now is Default Cleric, Default Fighter, Swashbuckler, another Swashbuckler, and a Witch. We kinda kept getting all bunched up all the time since almost everything is melee so thinking of doing a more versatile hero?

The DM mentioned a Magus is some new hero that's like a battle wizard or some poo poo? That sounds dope af so gonna roll a Magus for the final bit of the beginner adventure, which supposedly could turn into a longer campaign (so I guess no more switching heroes every time).

HidaO-Win
Jun 5, 2013

"And I did it, because I was a man who had exhausted reason and thus turned to magicks"
You could run a bow wielding magus and you’ll sidestep some of those issues of having too much melee.

A magus is a bit feast or famine by nature, basically you have an ability called spell strike where you spend two actions to make a melee attack and you also cast a two action spell at the same time. If you hit with the melee attack you do your attacks damage plus your spells damage. So its a single hard hitting attack. If you roll decently, its awesome, roll poorly and your turn was meh. To recharge spell strike you either spend an action or cast a type of Focus spell called a conflux to get recharge it. One type of magus can use a bow in place of a melee weapon.

appropriatemetaphor
Jan 26, 2006

Bow magus sounds pretty dope. Is pathbuilder.com updated to the new magus book? It's hard to tell since there's some playtest pdf that seems to have different talents and things than pathbuilder.

Andrast
Apr 21, 2010


appropriatemetaphor posted:

Bow magus sounds pretty dope. Is pathbuilder.com updated to the new magus book? It's hard to tell since there's some playtest pdf that seems to have different talents and things than pathbuilder.

Pathbuilder is updated, the playtest is old and obsolete

boxen
Feb 20, 2011
I'm working on a low-power magic item to give my players, since some of them have a sort of fondness for cinnamon whiskey.

Here's what I have so far, any suggestions? I realized today I should probably put an onset time of ten minutes or so before the sickened condition kicks in. I chose sickened because it's fairly bad, but you can take an action and be rid of it.

This necklace is made of a thin copper chain that has eight small vials of amber-colored liquid attached to it. As an action, a player can remove one or more vials from the necklace and drink it. The liquid tastes strongly of alcohol and cinnamon.

If one vial is consumed, the player must immediately attempt a DC10 constitution saving throw or be Sickened 1 for 10 minutes.

If two vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 12.

If three vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 13 or the player becomes sickened 1. The player may also spend a second action to make a melee attack in the form of a 5 foot cone of fire, dealing 1d4 damage.

If four vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 14 or the player becomes sickened 2. The player may also spend a second action to make a melee attack in the form of a 10 foot cone of fire, dealing 1d6 damage.

If five vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 16 or the player becomes sickened 2. The player may also spend a second action to make a melee attack in the form of a 10 foot cone of fire, dealing 1d8 damage.

If six vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 18 or the player becomes sickened 3. The player may also spend a second action to make a melee attack in the form of a 15 foot cone of fire, dealing 2d4 damage.

If seven vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 18 or the player becomes sickened 3. The player may also spend a second action to make a melee attack in the form of a 25 foot cone of fire, dealing 1d10 damage.

If all eight vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 24 or the player becomes sickened 4. The player may also spend a second action to make a melee attack in the form of a 15 foot cone of fire, dealing 2d6 damage.

blastron
Dec 11, 2007

Don't doodle on it!


Ah, a necklace of Fireball.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
Hilarious

zachol
Feb 13, 2009

Once per turn, you can Tribute 1 WATER monster you control (except this card) to Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your hand. The monster Special Summoned by this effect is destroyed if "Raging Eria" is removed from your side of the field.
Do they regenerate? Have one regenerate a day. Otherwise I'd rework it to remove the one and two vial effects.
Why is the eight vial cone shorter? That seems like a typo.

Chevy Slyme
May 2, 2004

We're Gonna Run.

We're Gonna Crawl.

Kick Down Every Wall.

boxen posted:

I'm working on a low-power magic item to give my players, since some of them have a sort of fondness for cinnamon whiskey.

Here's what I have so far, any suggestions? I realized today I should probably put an onset time of ten minutes or so before the sickened condition kicks in. I chose sickened because it's fairly bad, but you can take an action and be rid of it.

This necklace is made of a thin copper chain that has eight small vials of amber-colored liquid attached to it. As an action, a player can remove one or more vials from the necklace and drink it. The liquid tastes strongly of alcohol and cinnamon.

If one vial is consumed, the player must immediately attempt a DC10 constitution saving throw or be Sickened 1 for 10 minutes.

If two vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 12.

If three vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 13 or the player becomes sickened 1. The player may also spend a second action to make a melee attack in the form of a 5 foot cone of fire, dealing 1d4 damage.

If four vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 14 or the player becomes sickened 2. The player may also spend a second action to make a melee attack in the form of a 10 foot cone of fire, dealing 1d6 damage.

If five vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 16 or the player becomes sickened 2. The player may also spend a second action to make a melee attack in the form of a 10 foot cone of fire, dealing 1d8 damage.

If six vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 18 or the player becomes sickened 3. The player may also spend a second action to make a melee attack in the form of a 15 foot cone of fire, dealing 2d4 damage.

If seven vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 18 or the player becomes sickened 3. The player may also spend a second action to make a melee attack in the form of a 25 foot cone of fire, dealing 1d10 damage.

If all eight vials are consumed, the DC of the saving throw increases to 24 or the player becomes sickened 4. The player may also spend a second action to make a melee attack in the form of a 15 foot cone of fire, dealing 2d6 damage.

As you iterate on this, consider taking a look at the Capsaicin Tonic for some further ideas. https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=903

Elysiume
Aug 13, 2009

Alone, she fights.
Templating it more like a breath weapon (or Burning Hands) might make it clearer, if I'm understanding the intent correctly (e.g. "As an action taken within one round of drinking the whisky, the character may loose a 15-foot cone that deals 2d4 fire damage with a DC 16 basic reflex save."). I like the flavor of the 1-2 vial options just getting the drinker drunk, but I think the risk/reward ratio skews too heavily. I know you said "low-power," but you need 4+ vials to be worth it (the 3-vial option will be reliably worse than just attacking; a 5' cone is a single square), and there's a considerable penalty attached for failing the save. Maybe cap the vials per drink at 5, start effects at 2, and try to balance 4 around Burning Hands or something, so it's like a two-use Burning Hands with the option to have one be slightly above/below curve? I might have the wrong power ballpark.

Elysiume fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Sep 8, 2021

boxen
Feb 20, 2011
Thanks for the feedback, it was an idea I thought up one night that made me giggle. A couple of my players went to Washington State and are big football fans, there's a thing with Fireball whiskey there.
I did have a regeneration time, the whole necklace regenerates every day (one reason to keep the power down). I was trying not to overshadow actual good magic items, when I originally wrote it up I had been looking at lists of "useless magical items" for inspiration.

I played around with the distance a bit when I came up with it, the distances should go up every few vials but since I messed around with it a couple of times.
The 1-2 vials are mostly for "hey y'all, that was a hell of a fight, let's all have a drink" just for fun. I like having the idea of a bottle of booze that never runs dry as a magic item.
The mid-level stuff wasn't super intended to be useful in combat (maybe in some sort of specific circumstance), but we're running through Extinction Curse and I thought being able to breathe fire more or less on command might be fun for some of the characters, although no one has used it for that yet. The alchemist has ideas. Alternately, you could do the 4-vial version twice in a day.

There are definitely tweaks that will need to be done, Burning Hands slipped my mind as did Produce Flame, I might use those for a rough estimate on damage. Also, yeah the 15 foot cone was a typo, I think my original intent was 30 feet but I chickened out, but forgot to fix the rest of the distances. Also the 7 vial version should have a DC of 20-21.

I was debating adding an onset time, but I think I like it better without one. If you want to down 8 of them in combat and let loose that much, be prepared for the consequences.

It actually got used to great effect tonight, when one of the players finally remembered they had it.
Extinction Curse Spoilers:
They were in the fight at the end of chapter 1 vs Nemmia, the rat swarm, and the giant rat. Nemmia opened combat by casting Entangle on everyone, which really messed with them for the rest of the fight. They were struggling a lot with getting in range for attacks, and it so happened that the swarm was reduced to 11 hit points while standing 10 feet away from the giant rat. The fighter, who'd been mighty ineffective so far, remembered the necklace and stepped up so they were in range and managed to roll max damage, killing them both, and then succeeded the DC 24 saving throw.

The Golux
Feb 18, 2017

Internet Cephalopod



blastron posted:

Ah, a necklace of Fireball.

This reminded me of a player in the 1e game I'm in who is a cleric and brewmaster... so I worked this up. Not sure about the save DCs or the result on failure but I was working from the one Boxen posted (though this is definitely a more powerful magic item, since I made it literally based on the Necklace of Fireballs).

Necklace of Fireball
Aura moderate evocation; CL 10th; Slot none (can be worn on the neck or elsewhere); Price 1,650 gp (type I), 2,700 gp (type II), 4,350 gp (type III), 5,400 gp (type IV), 5,850 gp (type V), 8,100 gp (type VI), 8,700 gp (type VII); Weight 1 lb.

DESCRIPTION

This item appears to be a chain with a number of small vials attached to it by the stoppers, with a fastener on the ends to allow it to be worn as a necklace or attached to something. (If worn, it does not occupy a magic item slot) All of the bottles are full of an amber liquid, and someone who wears or holds the item can see a number of stars on each vial, indicating the strength of its contents. If a vial is pulled loose from the necklace, it opens and the contents can be drunk, tasting strongly of alcohol and cinnamon (removing and drinking a vial takes a standard action). After drinking the vial, the user exhales a 30-foot cone of aromatic fire, the damage of which is actually half fire and half divine, and must make a fortitude save or be sickened for a period of time. The vials come in different strengths, ranging from those that deal 2d6 points of damage to those that deal 10d6, and the the DC of the fortitude save increases along with the damage. The market price of a sphere is 150 gp for each die of damage it deals. Each necklace of fireball contains a combination of vials of various strengths, as listed below:

Type 10d6 9d6 8d6 7d6 6d6 5d6 4d6 3d6 2d6 Market Price
Type I — — — — — 1 — 2 — 1,650 gp
Type II — — — — 1 — 2 — 2 2,700 gp
Type III — — — 1 — 2 — 4 — 4,350 gp
Type IV — — 1 — 2 — 2 — 4 5,400 gp
Type V — 1 — 2 — 2 — 2 — 5,850 gp
Type VI 1 — 2 — 2 — 4 — — 8,100 gp
Type VII 1 2 — 2 — 2 — 2 — 8,700 gp

2d6: DC 10 or sickened for 1 minute
3d6: DC 12 or sickened for 2 minutes
4d6: DC 13 or sickened for 3 minutes
5d6: DC 14 or sickened for 4 minutes
6d6: DC 16 or sickened for 5 minutes
7d6: DC 18 or sickened for 7 minutes
8d6: DC 20 or sickened for 8 minutes
9d6: DC 22 or sickened for 10 minutes
10d6: DC 24 or nauseated for 1 minute and sickened for 10 minutes

CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS
Feats Craft Wondrous Item, flame strike; Cost 825 gp (type I), 1,350 gp (type II), 2,175 gp (type III), 2,700 gp (type IV), 2,925 gp (type V), 4,050 gp (type VI), 4,350 gp (type VII)

midwifecrisis
Jul 5, 2005

oh, have I got some GREAT news for you!

Harold Fjord posted:

If this is just a level one I'd go gymnast wrestler. An orc who calls himself the world's strongest goblin, maybe. Stupid characters and ridiculous synergies are the best part of pf2e.

I'm about to play in Extinction Curse and Worlds Strongest Goblin* sounds great.

midwifecrisis fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Sep 8, 2021

boxen
Feb 20, 2011

midwifecrisis posted:

I'm about to play in Extinction Curse and Worlds Strongest Goblin* sounds great.

There is a background in Extinction Curse called Animal Wrangler, where you can get the feat Titan Wrestler for free. Lets you Disarm, Grapple, Shove, or Trip creatures two sizes larger (standard is one).

Go out there and powerbomb an elephant.


Edit: for "World's Strongest Goblin", I was going to suggest there's a hobgoblin race, but having it be an orc or half-orc is more fun.

DoubleDonut
Oct 22, 2010


Fallen Rib
Alright, I'm pretty interested in PF2e and I'm thinking about getting my friends into it, and I have some questions:

1. What kind of books should I be looking to get to start off with? I noticed there's a Beginner Box, but I'm not sure if that's gonna be worth it over just buying full rulebooks; the RPG experience in the group ranges from one guy who has never played (but read a lot of Drizzt books in high school and is used to playing RPG video games) to "got into D&D 5e recently" to "played a lot of D&D 4e in college." I'll be DMing which I have some experience with in other systems.

2. Are the published adventures good, particularly for relatively inexperienced DMs? I'm mostly coming off of D&D 3.x where I mostly played in homebrew settings/adventures and 4e, which had notoriously bad adventures for a long time, so I'm kind of wary of published adventures even though they'd probably make my life a lot easier. I don't know if any 1st edition stuff can be easily ported to 2e, but if so I'm open to that as well.

3. What kind of tools are available for playing online? I see roll20 has support for it but I've never actually used roll20, so I'm open to any kind of suggestions.

edit: I'm real dumb and typed "relatively experienced" instead of "relatively inexperienced" whoops

DoubleDonut fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Sep 10, 2021

Toshimo
Aug 23, 2012

He's outta line...

But he's right!

DoubleDonut posted:

1. What kind of books should I be looking to get to start off with? I noticed there's a Beginner Box, but I'm not sure if that's gonna be worth it over just buying full rulebooks; the RPG experience in the group ranges from one guy who has never played (but read a lot of Drizzt books in high school and is used to playing RPG video games) to "got into D&D 5e recently" to "played a lot of D&D 4e in college." I'll be DMing which I have some experience with in other systems.

• You only need the Core Rulebook to play/DM, but the Bestiary certainly helps give you a nice pile of monsters to work off of. Everything else is entirely optional.
• You can see all the stuff legally for free at their partner site, Archives of Nethys (https://2e.aonprd.com/), including what comes from which book.
• You can get the PDF versions directly from Paizo for pennies on the dollar, if you don't have strong feelings about holding a physical book. (Example: https://paizo.com/products/btq01y0k?Pathfinder-Core-Rulebook)

DoubleDonut posted:

3. What kind of tools are available for playing online? I see roll20 has support for it but I've never actually used roll20, so I'm open to any kind of suggestions.

Pretty sure all the major virtual tabletops support it, but the 2 big ones are:
• Roll20: Free to try and faster to just spin up a game and hit the ground running.
• Foundry: Full of fancy bells and whistles, but takes a lot more time investment from the DM to get going. No free version.

There's a bunch of other smaller boutique ones, which I'm sure goons will fall all over themselves to suggest.

Free online character builder: https://pathbuilder2e.com/
Additional PF2e online tools (ymmv): https://pf2.tools/

Syrinxx
Mar 28, 2002

Death is whimsical today

As usual Toshimo should be absolutely ignored when comparing Roll20 and Foundry

Foundry's PF2e system includes every book, module, supplement, etc published by Paizo for free in the compendiums.
Roll20 includes nothing at all in the PF2 SRD and you must buy each and every book at full MSRP in order to use it for character creation (or beg someone to add you to a game where they have it shared). The Core Rulebook alone costs more than a Foundry license

Cyouni
Sep 30, 2014

without love it cannot be seen
Only people who hate themselves play PF2 on Roll20.

For context, the other GM in my group and I were using Roll20 on the Pro version since 2013. I dumped it in 2018 for FantasyGrounds (and later the Unity version). He tried running with it for years (also with Roll20
Enhancement Suite for a good while) and finally dumped it in April for Foundry. Within a day, he had something far more usable and intuitive than anything that had been managed in years on Roll20.

FantasyGrounds is probably better than Foundry if you can spend the time and effort to set up the proper automation, which is FantasyGrounds's strongest suit. A casual GM should use Foundry.

The use case of Roll20 is if you refuse to pay for base FantasyGrounds, and can't port forward for Foundry. Or if you refuse to pay any money whatsoever and hate yourself. (Or if someone has a sub-720p monitor for some godforsaken reason.)

Chevy Slyme
May 2, 2004

We're Gonna Run.

We're Gonna Crawl.

Kick Down Every Wall.
Alternately, if your “table” is cool just using their pathbuilder character sheets and then rolling dice and adding numbers to them themselves, you could try an even lighter vtt like http://owlbear.rodeo and not care about the flame war that is about to erupt ITT

Toshimo
Aug 23, 2012

He's outta line...

But he's right!
I should mention that ALL of the VTTs that support audio/video suck extremely hard at it and you should expect to use discord/zoom/etc. for your a/v needs.

DoubleDonut
Oct 22, 2010


Fallen Rib
Thank you, I will check out the options that are available. I think we'd prefer to have something that handles rolling and stats and junk itself; I grew up playing in AOL chatrooms and IRC but it feels impolite to subject my friends who have things like "children" to that kind of nonsense.

midwifecrisis
Jul 5, 2005

oh, have I got some GREAT news for you!

boxen posted:

There is a background in Extinction Curse called Animal Wrangler, where you can get the feat Titan Wrestler for free. Lets you Disarm, Grapple, Shove, or Trip creatures two sizes larger (standard is one).

Go out there and powerbomb an elephant.


Edit: for "World's Strongest Goblin", I was going to suggest there's a hobgoblin race, but having it be an orc or half-orc is more fun.

Hmm, with a half-orc or orc I could take Iron Fists to give my fists the Shove tag, which could also be fun.

boxen
Feb 20, 2011
I started out running a PF2e game in the spring for some friends, on Roll20. We started out with the Beginner Box, then rolled with the same characters into one of the published campaigns ("Adventure Paths") called The Extinction Curse. At the same time we started the campaign, we moved to Foundry VTT.

Roll20 was fairly quick/easy to get up and running, but definitely had its shortcomings. Foundry VTT takes a bit more setup, but you don't need to know all the details to get a game going. Side note, one of the harder bits for your players is probably going to get all their character stuff entered; the Pathbuilder app someone mentioned will import stuff directly into foundry VTT if you pay a few bucks ($5 or $6 I think). I think it's definitely worth it.

Roll20 makes you pay for each individual book (I made my players initially stick to just the core rulebook and advanced players guide). It had the maps for the Beginner's Box already populated with monsters, and the lighting and such set up, which was nice. The beginner's box was good because it walks you though how a lot of the mechanics work by stepping up the complexity of the fights as you go, adding traps, etc. I had issues getting Roll20 to let me share certain books I owned with the players, which it explicitly should have been doing.

Foundry VTT seems much more powerful, and I like it more. You install the ruleset (which tells the program that you're running PF 1e, 2e, D&D 5e, or whatever), and for PF2e that includes all the rulebooks, I think. You can access the content from the in-game compendium. There are various other QoL addons, you can find lists of recommended ones. A couple I use are one that shows dice rolling onscreen (Roll20 does that by default) which I think is fun, and one that lets me import content directly from the published PDF's of the rulebooks (it checks for the watermark, you can't use pirated versions). This let me import the maps directly from the Extinction Curse books, and imported all the NPC's and monsters. I still had to place them on the map, but the stats were already there. The only real pain in the rear end was adding in the token artwork, but after I figured that out it was kind of fun looking for artwork; most of the stuff I just imported from Archives of Nethys ( https://2e.aonprd.com/ ). Another addon I used was fan-created higher-quality maps with lighting and walls and such added for the campaign maps.

I enjoyed the Beginner Box stuff, and my players did as well I think. I added some fluff so the end of the Beginner Box dovetailed into the start of the Extinction Curse, and they started EC book 1 at level 2 instead of level 1 which helped with low-level character fragility. I think PF2e is less forgiving than what I've seen of 5e, even the beginner box had stuff that dropped my players in the first round of combat (good chance to figure out how death saves work!).

I prefer Foundry VTT to Roll20 now that I've spent about roughly equal time with each (five-ish ~3-hour sessions each). My players either are indifferent or prefer Foundry, although there was frustration having to learn Foundry after figuring out Roll20. We at least had the rules down fairly well when we moved to Foundry.

One thing that helped me learn the rules was listening to various PF2e podcasts, there an official Paizo one I think, I enjoyed the Glass Cannon ones more (be careful, most of their stuff is 1e). I also found one I sorta liked called MNmaxed, playing the campaign we're going through.

Roll20 has text chat and video/voice chat built in, we had issues with it though (don't remember exactly what) and eventually just switched to using Discord for that end of it. I don't remember what Foundry has for that if anything; we've never used it.


I really like the PF2e rules, the biggest issues I've had are making assumptions based on experience with PF1e and D&D5e, for example Attacks of Opportunity are much less of a think in PF2e. The 3-action economy is much easier to keep track of than having a move action, attack action, and bonus actions.

Luebbi
Jul 28, 2000
Another vote for Foundry VTT from me. Me and my players love it. The GM pays a one-time fee, the players don't pay anything. Foundry also has a very good module called PDF to Foundry that will import your Pathfinder 2E PDFs into Foundry. Actually, it mostly just checks your PDF for a watermark and then makes the world for you; it even sets up walls and journal entries. It's very good.

The adventure paths have gotten progressively better. I would not recommend Age of Ashes, that one is known for being unbalanced. They usually go from level 1-20, with some exceptions.

I am GMing the one that came after AoA -Extinction Curse- and it's a lot of fun. The players are part of a circus troupe, although adventuring is at the forefront. Be aware that map resolution for this one is poor. Paizo started providing VTT-usable maps starting with Agents of Edgewatch.

Agents of Edgewatch came next, where the players are guards. Not my cup of tea.

Abomination Vaults is one of the best Adventure Paths. It leads the players to level 11 during an old-school dungeon crawl with a safe haven town in walking distance. Surprisingly good story for what it is, but very combat heavy. Love it.

Fist of the Ruby Phoenix starts at lvl 11, not recommended for beginners.

Strength of Thousands is the newest Adventure Path and considered to be very good. Players start as students in a magical school and work their way up.

The Beginners Box is very good to get your feet wet. You could also GM Little Trouble in Big Absalom, a free oneshot. I remade the maps for that to use with VTTs: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/pgfrfd/remade_maps_for_little_trouble_in_big_absalom/.

DoubleDonut
Oct 22, 2010


Fallen Rib
Great, that's all really helpful. I don't mind the cost of Foundry if only the GM has to pay; $50 doesn't bother me if I don't have to ask everyone else to buy in as well. I'm used to using ancient stuff like Maptool so I can probably handle some set-up time, particularly if it allows me to offload that from my players. I'll make sure to mess around with it ahead of time to make sure I can make it easy on them.

I'll check out the Beginner Box; I'm not worried about learning the rules (we've all played a decent amount of relatively heavy board games and I ran them through a 13th Age oneshot that went fine last year) but it might be an easy way to get everyone used to the system and setting and let me shake off some of the rust from not being able to RP for a long time.

Otherwise I'll probably just ask them how they feel about the different adventures. Thanks, everyone.

Fair Bear Maiden
Jun 17, 2013

Cyouni posted:

Only people who hate themselves play PF2 on Roll20.

The character sheet is pretty neat and I literally need nothing else (there's Nethys and my own books for that), so I don't.. really... get this at all?

zachol
Feb 13, 2009

Once per turn, you can Tribute 1 WATER monster you control (except this card) to Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your hand. The monster Special Summoned by this effect is destroyed if "Raging Eria" is removed from your side of the field.
I'm still only just poking around on Roll20. It's kind of irritating that the real basics can't just fill themselves in without owning the core book. Like, if I could just say "give that guy a longsword" or "yeah that's a druid" and it would chill about filling in everything, while still requiring that you enter in stuff from other resources manually.

Cyouni
Sep 30, 2014

without love it cannot be seen

Fair Bear Maiden posted:

The character sheet is pretty neat and I literally need nothing else (there's Nethys and my own books for that), so I don't.. really... get this at all?

The problem here is that it has the approximate useful functionality of a physical character sheet while being three times as unwieldy.

Everything is a toggleable dropdown to fill in that's also different from the other toggleable dropdown for visibility. If you buy the CRB and APG on there, whoever filled each of those in had incredibly different styles, so consistency (and at the very least, everything to do with any Swashbuckler feats/features) is a mess - feats aren't drag-and-drop like the CRB, etc. All spells decide their traditions for you, so if you're making a caster, enjoy reopening every spell to check that it's the right tradition, or your DCs are going to be incorrect (and also enjoy manually updating your cantrip information every few levels). Critical damage on weapons is completely divorced from the standard damage, so if you change your weapon, make sure to go read through the critical damage section to make sure it functions. It's also incredibly difficult to interact with because of how it's set up, so you generally want to avoid touching the sheet if at all possible, but it's also set up in a way so that you can't figure out the macros easily.

And of course, the notes sections don't do anything, in case you wanted to note something like Evasion or other situational bonuses.

Doing a quick check, they added a conditions section that also doesn't do anything - if you're sickened, for example, none of your numbers are changed, meaning you need to adjust them on the fly every time. So the main benefit of using a VTT character sheet isn't even there.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006

Fair Bear Maiden posted:

The character sheet is pretty neat and I literally need nothing else (there's Nethys and my own books for that), so I don't.. really... get this at all?

Foundry has a module with a full 5e.tools style database of all items, abilities, monsters that there are on Nethys, etc so you don't need to fill all of them out by hand.

I rather enjoy not having to fill out multiple monster sheets per session.

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MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

zachol posted:

I'm still only just poking around on Roll20. It's kind of irritating that the real basics can't just fill themselves in without owning the core book. Like, if I could just say "give that guy a longsword" or "yeah that's a druid" and it would chill about filling in everything, while still requiring that you enter in stuff from other resources manually.
Yeah but I haven't really seen what Foundry does differently than Roll20 if you are not using Pathbuilder. It still has a faster UI but unless my GM is doing something wrong which could be the case its almost exactly the same.

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