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Agreed on all points. Thanks for your input goons. I think I'm sort of coming to the conclusion that letting them get in over their heads was fine and dandy but the nature of the problem made it sloggy - if it had been deadly rather than spongy it wouldn't have been boring, so I'm at least bringing forward a good lesson about encounter design, and have a better sense for when to cut stuff short. Thanks again.
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Mar 5, 2023 20:20
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PastaBakeWizard posted:I've been running Beginner Box -> Trouble in Otari for two players recently and I had a sloggy session today. They came up against the Shadow from the Leadbuster Lads chapter, which has some all encompassing immunities that you can partially get around with magical attacks or those which cast light. The fight dragged on for a very long time and I am really not sure if I should have intervened - the party has an alchemist who absolutely could have decided to retreat and come back with some bottled lightning and alchemist's fire, which they correctly guessed I would have ruled as a hard yes on its pseudo-weakness to light, but they decided to brute force and have the ranger fish for big hits through the resistance using the hunted prey ability. I had exactly this problem when I did this bit for my group. The shadow fight dragged on forever, well into 12 or 13 rounds. Not only could it Hide in people's shadows, making everyone have to make Flat Checks to even hit it in the first place, the immunities and resistances were massive against my precision-heavy party. It took forever, and it didn't help that it created more shadows once it drained someone enough times. They did ultimately win, by using a few spells and just enough grind to get it. But it was definitely a lowlight. It's definitely the thing I would have adjusted and tweaked in mid-fight to make it less annoying in the past, but this was my first proper test of PF2e, so I wanted to really run it fully RAW. I think the lesson my party ultimately took from the fight was the value in having a diverse party with plenty of different damage types and different methods of fighting. The lesson I took as a DM was to continue to trust myself as a GM when I feel like things are not going the way I want to, and adjust there - change the tactics of the Shadow, like you did, or alter the circumstances of the fight somehow to change it up - if not fully just change its HP mid-fight when I think the fight has run its course.
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Mar 5, 2023 20:23
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Could a nonverbal bard do his verbal components by whistling? Not being able to talk isn't the same as not being able to whistle. If so, could a Flatulist bard do their verbal components via farts? It's a legitimate profession.  quote:A flatulist, fartist, or professional farter is an entertainer often associated with a specific type of humor, whose routine consists solely or primarily of passing gas in a creative, musical, or amusing manner.[1]
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Mar 5, 2023 20:45
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Facebook Aunt posted:If so, could a Flatulist bard do their verbal components via farts? Yeah, but if you get Silenced it could be deadly.
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Mar 5, 2023 21:09
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Pryce posted:Yeah, but if you get Silenced it could be deadly. LOL.
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Mar 5, 2023 21:12
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Sensitive System: When you are Silenced you become Backed Up 1. For each round you remain silenced after, your Backed Up condition increases. Backed Up You are Sickened 1 for each point of Backed Up. When you are no longer Silenced, gain Silent But Deadly until the end of your next turn. Silent But Deadly When you cast a spell using Flatulent Casting, heighten 1 for each point of Backed Up. Remove Backed Up and Silent But Deadly.
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Mar 5, 2023 21:28
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Facebook Aunt posted:Could a nonverbal bard do his verbal components by whistling? Not being able to talk isn't the same as not being able to whistle. Pryce posted:Yeah, but if you get Silenced it could be deadly. Harold Fjord posted:Sensitive System: incredible
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Mar 6, 2023 04:13
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Now that's good gamin'!
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Mar 7, 2023 21:29
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Does anyone know if there are any third-party bases compatible with Pathfinder pawns? Apparently Paizo have just stopped shipping them to the UK or something, I can find pawns for the adventure path I want to run but boxes of bases don't exist any more except for stupid prices on eBay. (Is it even worth getting pawns at this stage, or is the whole line just hosed? I'm a new GM so I have no existing minis to fall back on.)
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Mar 9, 2023 00:01
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pumpinglemma posted:Does anyone know if there are any third-party bases compatible with Pathfinder pawns? Apparently Paizo have just stopped shipping them to the UK or something, I can find pawns for the adventure path I want to run but boxes of bases don't exist any more except for stupid prices on eBay. (Is it even worth getting pawns at this stage, or is the whole line just hosed? I'm a new GM so I have no existing minis to fall back on.) The whole line has been cancelled. If you can’t find a Pathfinder 2 bestiary 1 box (which comes with bases), don’t bother - the adventure path pawn collections are additions that require the bestiary box, they don’t include all the monsters and NPCs in and of themselves.
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Mar 9, 2023 00:07
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Why would they cancel pawns/bases?
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Mar 9, 2023 02:50
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The Golux posted:Why would they cancel pawns/bases? Pandemic economy changes to the price of shipping and paper made them incredibly expensive to produce. They were printed on THICK card stock, a box or folio of bestiary pawns is 5 pounds of just cardboard.
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Mar 9, 2023 02:54
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Tian Xia is next year. Two books. The Mwangi-style setting guide and a character options book. I’m pretty hyped.
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Mar 9, 2023 10:03
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We also have the dwarf book this summer 
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Mar 9, 2023 21:24
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I may be starting Pf2e with a group this weekend. The plan is to see who shows up (4-7 players plus a DM), customize our characters a bit, and learn the VTT. The DM and half the players are D&D veterans moving over, the rest of us just play a lot of board games and CRPGs. Us newbies are locked into the iconics and core stuff for the first adventure, though it looks like there will be some customization. One of the other newbies and I have been collecting RPG books to skim and admire art for decades so we took this opportunity to buy the humble bundle and a few PDFs. I still like the spiritual but fighty lizardfolk character I asked about earlier, but we've been bouncing other character ideas off each other all week. I have two I kind of like that are way too far out there for a beginner campaign but I'm curious if they would work and what veteran players think. A blue dragon ancestry kobold storm druid who is afraid of his own power but needs to master it. Maybe his tribe was wiped out by a storm he thinks he caused, so he sought out a druid mentor. Or maybe he heard of some version of the butterfly effect and thinks he is causing a blizzard in a desert somewhere every time he uses wind gust to deflect a bandit's arrow. He'll stop at nothing to improve his control and learn what he can about nature, but he's deathly afraid of loud noises and large furry beasties. He's happy to provide fire support, maybe some healing, and plenty of bright and breezy sunny days to his adventuring party in exchange for keeping him safe. What? It's raining? There must be a more powerful druid lurking nearby and working against the party. With a little more experience and treasure he will surely soon outmatch him. A skeleton summoner. Now I haven't read any of the book of the dead or even any necromancy spells in the core book yet, and I've only superficially glanced at the summoner class. But I like the idea that a necromancer seeking revenge tried burning a stolen relic to raise the skeleton of an ancient warrior hero but somehow got a [insert civilian peasant job here] skeleton instead. He was so apoplectic at his failure that he blasphemed at Callistria and died of a heart attack at the same time. As a curse his spirit was bound to the skeleton as a rage eidolon. The skeleton might just want to get back to eternal rest or [insert normal peasant job here], but he has to help the eidolon get his revenge if he wants to be rid of him. Meanwhile the eidolon finds he can't move far and is oddly dependent on his "summoner" to do anything, let alone get his revenge. This started as a joke "In Pathfinder, skeletons summon you" and I'm sure I'm borrowing the basic idea from a dozen fantasy stories/games/animes. The GM specifically made fun of some of the more outlandish uncommon and rare ancestry options in pathbuilder so I'm not hopeful about playing either with this group but they are fun to think about. Azarketi and Fleshwarp are a bit less unintuitive than skeleton, lizardfolk and kobold so you never know. I'll be happy keeping things simple while I learn to play and check out his setting and the group's playstyle.
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Mar 10, 2023 21:10
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bagrada posted:The GM specifically made fun of some of the more outlandish uncommon and rare ancestry options in pathbuilder so I'm not hopeful about playing either with this group but they are fun to think about. Azarketi and Fleshwarp are a bit less unintuitive than skeleton, lizardfolk and kobold so you never know. I'll be happy keeping things simple while I learn to play and check out his setting and the group's playstyle. why have things and not use them tho. just don't play with smelly gm if they don't like kobolds. no game is better than game where you aren't having fun
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Mar 10, 2023 21:15
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Little Trouble In Big Absalom is a good intro session for making people love kobolds.
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Mar 10, 2023 21:18
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bagrada posted:I may be starting Pf2e with a group this weekend. The plan is to see who shows up (4-7 players plus a DM), customize our characters a bit, and learn the VTT. The DM and half the players are D&D veterans moving over, the rest of us just play a lot of board games and CRPGs. Us newbies are locked into the iconics and core stuff for the first adventure, though it looks like there will be some customization. if the VTT is foundry, this video will help you learn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzobL67MJNM if you're running the beginner box, it's amazingly well set up behind the scenes as a tutorial for the GM specifically to learn foundry
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Mar 10, 2023 21:19
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7 players, yeesh. Combat is gonna be slooow
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Mar 10, 2023 21:32
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Mister Olympus posted:why have things and not use them tho. just don't play with smelly gm if they don't like kobolds. no game is better than game where you aren't having fun Uncommon and rare tagged things are explicitly not available by default This is a game balance and design decision by Paizo
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Mar 10, 2023 21:37
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It's not a balance thing, they're explicitly not "more powerful"
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Mar 10, 2023 21:42
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Thanks for the foundry video, that is what we'll be using. He gave two of us a test drive and showed us around last week and let us pick from the four starter iconics. It might turn out to be too many players, one friend is really interested but won't mind dropping out if all 7 potential players turn up. The GM was thinking he could handle 4-6. His D&D veterans get to make their own characters since he trusts them to know him and the campaign style so I'm curious what they turn up with and how many join in.
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Mar 10, 2023 21:54
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sugar free jazz posted:Uncommon and rare tagged things are explicitly not available by default if there was a system of objectively more powerful ancestries then all the guides and discourse would account for that. rare and uncommon tags are not remotely equivalent to power. gunslinger is balanced against fighter, maybe a little weaker and less flexible, but gunslinger is uncommon. they are equivalent to things with setting implications for golarion that gms who care a lot about the integrity of the setting should be aware about
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Mar 10, 2023 22:13
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sugar free jazz posted:Uncommon and rare tagged things are explicitly not available by default It's a design decision, yes, but not a game balance one. The access rules are there so that things that are game-changing are gated behind GM approval. Teleport isn't a spell that measurably increases a party's combat abilities due to the inaccuracy and long casting time, but at-will instant travel around the world dramatically changes the flow and pacing of a game, so it's Uncommon. Similarly, having a skeleton adventurer in your party isn't inherently unbalancing, but it adds a ton of complications to the game, including as mechanical things like negative healing and role-playing things like having an undead monster in your party. Since it's got such an outsized effect, it's marked Rare.
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Mar 10, 2023 22:26
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Also some campaigns don't work too well when the PCs walk up to a city and people start to scream and run because they're a giant sentient spider, a twisted abomination of magic gone horribly wrong, an eight-foot tall masked furry thing whose mane is filled with thousands of blinking eyes, and a foot-high wooden doll holding a butcher knife.
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Mar 10, 2023 22:31
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My general read on character option rarity is this: -Uncommon: It generally fits into the generic fantasy milieu Pathfinder goes for, but it could be a bit weird. So when you take an uncommon option, just pause for a second to think about any possible complications. Maybe you're making a gunslinger but your friends are weird about guns in fantasy, maybe you're playing a campaign about fighting demons and playing a tiefling could be too much extra drama. If you can think of an issue, talk it over with your group. If you can't and your group is cool, you're probably fine to just go for it. -Rare: This is wild and fiction-altering enough that you should talk it over with your group no matter what. Maybe it's just a fictional problem like the secret royalty background, maybe it's a mechanical thing like healing undead, most of the time it's both. Either way, if your group is cool you can work something out one way or another. EDIT: Well, and sometimes the fiction-altering issue for Rare options is just something simple like "your people live in a small corner of the Mwangi Expanse, why are you here". So talking it out with your group can just be "I want to play a Shisk explorer that decided to settle here" "Sure, go for it". Lurks With Wolves fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Mar 10, 2023 |
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Mar 10, 2023 22:44
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Uncommon/Rare tags are, by and large, assigned based on narrative disruption, not mechanical. They're a big yellow/red flag that says "This might not fit in your setting and/or this might screw up your campaign's plotline." The obvious example of the former is firearms, but it also applies to most of the things that are entirely table dependent like whether monstrous ancestries fit in, at your table or whatever. The latter is probaly best exemplified by the way the tag is used on powerful divination, travel, and resurrection spells - these are effects that, if allowed freely, will dramatically change how your campaign plays and feels, and can completely wreck a GM's plans for a story. Thus, access to them is gated by GM approval. The handful of exceptions to that mostly are "this has an uncommon/rare tag because access to it is meant to be specifically gated by this other feat option, which is readily available." (I'm not a fan of the fact that they've overloaded both of those uses onto the same pair of tags, but it's generally not a huge deal, as the latter category is mostly obvious.) Chevy Slyme fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Mar 10, 2023 |
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Mar 10, 2023 22:58
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I remember wanting a fictional sales warlock who was always selling high value illusion items and mechanics but never got to keep any of the money because his patron would turn it illusory and yoink it for 5e once. The DM was weird about the money. I don't think they understood what I was saying.
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Mar 10, 2023 23:20
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blastron posted:It's a design decision, yes, but not a game balance one. The access rules are there so that things that are game-changing are gated behind GM approval. Teleport isn't a spell that measurably increases a party's combat abilities due to the inaccuracy and long casting time, but at-will instant travel around the world dramatically changes the flow and pacing of a game, so it's Uncommon. Similarly, having a skeleton adventurer in your party isn't inherently unbalancing, but it adds a ton of complications to the game, including as mechanical things like negative healing and role-playing things like having an undead monster in your party. Since it's got such an outsized effect, it's marked Rare. teleport is classically one of the most powerful spells in the game and it’s real weird that you see balance as a combat only thing
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Mar 10, 2023 23:37
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sugar free jazz posted:teleport is classically one of the most powerful spells in the game and it’s real weird that you see balance as a combat only thing I don't think that's what that says at all.
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Mar 10, 2023 23:54
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Harold Fjord posted:I don't think that's what that says at all. Yeah, this. Teleport isn't powerful because it wins fights. Teleport is powerful because it lets you go "instead of doing this whole adventure, I'm going to teleport the entire party to the end goal and back again", and the ways that changes how you allocate your resources completely warp the game. It's the definition of a big fictional effect you want to restrict player access to because it makes adventure design a lot harder, and the point is that character option rarity is less about things being numerically better and more about the fictional effects being hard to write around.
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Mar 11, 2023 00:14
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I'm playing Kingmaker, and I was hoping for folks' thoughts on something. Is the whole module the party being colonizers? We stumbled across somekobolds in a radish patch, with a quest to get some radishes, our diplomacy failed and the koblolds attacked. All over some radishes that we were willing to trade for. Is the whole module like this? Invading and murdering indigenous peoples in "untamed wilderness"?
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Mar 11, 2023 03:31
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Yeah, this. Teleport isn't powerful because it wins fights. Teleport is powerful because it lets you go "instead of doing this whole adventure, I'm going to teleport the entire party to the end goal and back again", and the ways that changes how you allocate your resources completely warp the game. It's the definition of a big fictional effect you want to restrict player access to because it makes adventure design a lot harder, and the point is that character option rarity is less about things being numerically better and more about the fictional effects being hard to write around. I feel like there should be two different kinds of teleports; those that are short range, like combat teleports, and those that are long range but require a "receiver" at the other end. Most major cities or settlements probably have a teleportation circle to receive people, or you can build your own somewhere. This still enables the party to go places without having to travel if they have access to teleports but doesn't let them just skip stuff all the time. I say this without knowing what kind of teleports are in Pathfinder, of course.
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Mar 11, 2023 03:39
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The Slack Lagoon posted:
Nope, that's on your group. When we went through Kingmaker we ended up peacefully incorporating most of the little monstrous humanoid tribes around. But "is it all colonization?" Um, yes? That's the literal point of the adventure path. You get to build your own kingdom from scratch.
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Mar 11, 2023 05:48
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Lurks With Wolves posted:maybe you're playing a campaign about fighting demons and playing a tiefling could be too much extra drama. I feel like a campaign about fighting demons is a great place to play a tiefling. Considering it's called out specifically as an option in the player's guide for WOTR I feel like Paizo agrees. I'd honestly say a tiefling is most inappropriate in a location with almost no demonic presence, because your origin becomes questionable and your features will be maximally unusual. To use a concrete example, I'm playing a Loxodon in a D&D campaign that takes place in a setting that's basically 100% humans (discussed with the DM and party in advance), and the first like, dozen sessions any time the party met someone new we had to go through the whole "holy poo poo a talking elephant!" bit again. That's the kind of situation where I feel like something like tiefling would be disruptive, if you're constantly having to explain to people that they're not a demon and talking people down from attacking you.
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Mar 11, 2023 05:57
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The Slack Lagoon posted:I'm playing Kingmaker, and I was hoping for folks' thoughts on something. Is the whole module the party being colonizers? Yes. One thing the module's backstory leans on heavily that most of the encounters and setpieces barely show (because they were obviously writing all this stuff piecemeal and off the cuff) is that people of every species have all been trying to settle the area for literally thousands of years, and that for one reason or another every nascent kingdom and colony has eventually failed. (This becomes a plot point later, though it's a poorly-connected one.) What this should mean is that everywhere you go you should be walking over both ancient ruins and new settlement attempts, and that most or all groups you run into should be ones who have only even settled there themselves within living memory, but the AP doesn't bother to try evoke either of those points.
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Mar 11, 2023 07:19
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Lurks With Wolves posted:Yeah, this. Teleport isn't powerful because it wins fights. Teleport is powerful because it lets you go "instead of doing this whole adventure, I'm going to teleport the entire party to the end goal and back again", and the ways that changes how you allocate your resources completely warp the game. It's the definition of a big fictional effect you want to restrict player access to because it makes adventure design a lot harder, and the point is that character option rarity is less about things being numerically better and more about the fictional effects being hard to write around. that's game balance. the spell is too strong for what paizo wants and it's uncommon tagged because of that.
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Mar 11, 2023 07:27
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In the majority of cases rarity is just because it's rare in Golarion with no regard to what it does to a game. Stuff from APs also get blanket uncommon/rare tags. The cases where something gets a tag because of its effect on the narrative is relatively rare. This honestly makes the whole system kind of terrible, there really should be a separate tag for "hey this actually has gameplay considerations/gives players extra narrative power" and "cat people are not that common" Andrast fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Mar 11, 2023 |
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Mar 11, 2023 07:57
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sugar free jazz posted:teleport is classically one of the most powerful spells in the game and it’s real weird that you see balance as a combat only thing That's not what I said at all. Teleport is very powerful, but it's not unbalanced, because it's a campaign-level party utility thing. It doesn't really matter that one specific player has it, because in practice it's something that the entire party decides to use and benefit from. It's marked as Uncommon not because it's too powerful, but because it's a game-changer. Balance is about individual power, whether that's in combat, when exploring, in social encounters, and so on. D&D 3.5's Knock spell is unbalanced, because it can open any door, at medium range, silently, with no check required. It is flat-out better than any other option for opening things, including the entire class built around the fantasy of being a sneaky thief who can pick locks. Buy a wand of it and you've replaced your rogue entirely. Pathfinder 2e's Knock is much more balanced, because it just provides bonuses for a Thievery check, meaning that difficult locks will still require someone good at Thievery to open. (Note that 3.5e's Teleport absolutely is a personal power thing, and absolutely unbalanced. It is (mostly) pinpoint accurate, instant cast, and extremely versatile in its usage. A wizard with Teleport is not just the best way to get around the world, but also the best way to ambush an enemy, the best way to flee from combat, the best way to break into a vault, and so on.)
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Mar 11, 2023 08:36
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sugar free jazz posted:that's game balance. the spell is too strong for what paizo wants and it's uncommon tagged because of that. No? If it was "too strong for what Paizo wants" it either wouldn't exist or wouldn't exist in its current form.
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Mar 11, 2023 08:44
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