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Are there good communities to find online 2e games to play in?
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Apr 13, 2023 15:54
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This has probably been asked a million times before, but, what's a good adventure path for an inexperienced DM who is bad at it? Like, what's newbie friendly? The last time I tried running anything, it was Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and gods, I was not good at that.
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Apr 13, 2023 16:15
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the_steve posted:This has probably been asked a million times before, but, what's a good adventure path for an inexperienced DM who is bad at it? Like, what's newbie friendly? Beginner Box is a great starting point, which can lead into Troubles in Otari (low level hijinks in the same town) or Abomination Vaults (dungeon crawl that goes from level 1-10, not needed to run beginner box beforehand). I started running PF2e with these two and they have been very solid so far. Beginner Box and Abomination Vaults have premade foundry modules that you can buy and have basically everything setup for you beforehand.
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Apr 13, 2023 16:23
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Arrrthritis posted:Beginner Box is a great starting point, which can lead into Troubles in Otari (low level hijinks in the same town) or Abomination Vaults (dungeon crawl that goes from level 1-10, not needed to run beginner box beforehand). I started running PF2e with these two and they have been very solid so far. Seconding this. I ran a campaign about two years ago where we started off with the beginner box. It's very well laid out, the game/dungeon master's book gives a lot of detail on how the different things work, and more or less every encounter teaches you about a different game mechanic... persistent damage, poison, traps, puzzles, you even fight a very small dragon at the end! I ran our group through it having never run pathfinder before (and very little of anything else), with a group who had never done pathfinder before and only two out of five had any tabletop experience. It's not a cakewalk either, one of the fights dropped our ranger in a single round (he got cocky). That same player is running an Abomination Vaults campaign I'm in now. So, it is beginner-friendly in the extreme for both DM's and players, but the kid gloves are definitely off. I don't have any experience with Trouble in Otari, but can vouch for Abomination Vaults being fun. It's a pretty straight up dungeon crawl (at least so far for us, halfway-ish through the first book), where it's basically the plot of Diablo: We got this thing in our backyard, go down there and kill anything you find. There's some mysteries involving the place though, and our group is having a lot of fun. We're using the Foundry VTTT module for AV, and it seems like its very well set up with lighting, music, artwork, journal entries, and of course very nice and detailed maps. The only other AP I have experience with is Extinction Curse, which I ran and my players enjoyed, but it involves a bit more roleplaying and investigation than Abomination Vaults. That one has the players set up as circus performers in a town and suddenly Things Happen. There are mechanics for running the circus and coming up with performances, players can make money doing circus things or can just leave the circus as background stuff (my players did). There wasn't really a Foundry "module", I just imported the PDF's and some user-made maps which worked well enough but the whole thing wasn't nearly as polished as the official Abomination Vaults module was for Foundry. If you're not using Foundry, I doubt it would make much of a difference. You can definitely still make it work, you just have to put more time in for preparation.
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Apr 13, 2023 17:02
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the_steve posted:This has probably been asked a million times before, but, what's a good adventure path for an inexperienced DM who is bad at it? Like, what's newbie friendly? I tried running Outlaws of Alkenstsr as my first foray i to GMing for pf2e and it was challenging. I've heard the beginner box is good for both players and GMs but I haven't run it yet.
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Apr 13, 2023 17:14
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Is the Age of Ashes AP any good? I know it's an old one, and from what I read it needs some tweaking, but is it still fun? My group is thinking about learning PF at some point when we wrap up the 5e campaign we're in now, so I'm trying to do some planning. I floated Abomination Vaults, but they're not super excited about a dungeon crawl, and Age of Ashes looked interesting to me.
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Apr 13, 2023 22:04
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Funzo posted:Is the Age of Ashes AP any good? I know it's an old one, and from what I read it needs some tweaking, but is it still fun? My group is thinking about learning PF at some point when we wrap up the 5e campaign we're in now, so I'm trying to do some planning. I floated Abomination Vaults, but they're not super excited about a dungeon crawl, and Age of Ashes looked interesting to me. What I’ve heard is that the 1st book is a bit childish, and it all needs rebalancing by the GM because it was made early on and it’s a fair bit more difficult than most APs that followed, but the overall adventure is a really fun classic globetrotting heroic fantasy
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Apr 13, 2023 22:58
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Big Mouth Billy Basshole posted:Thaumaturge question: on a successful exploit weakness do you learn the value of the target's highest weakness? In the crit success description it specifically calls out that you learn the appropriate values but that wording isn't in the success description. I don't have the wording in front of me but that was my interpretation-- on a successful exploit weakness the GM can share the highest or most relevant weakness to the player, unless that GM is a dick.
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Apr 14, 2023 00:00
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the_steve posted:This has probably been asked a million times before, but, what's a good adventure path for an inexperienced DM who is bad at it? Like, what's newbie friendly? Beginner's Box and the Free RPG day sets-- Little Trouble in Big Absolom, A Fistful Of Flowers, and Threshold of Knowledge are all also very good and clearly designed to walk absolute neophytes through the process. I've run two of them and they both play really well with newbies and give GMs a good variety of taste for various things your average Adventures will have.
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Apr 14, 2023 00:02
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Little Trouble is very good fun. Introduces you to rules gradually, and everyone gets to do a little kobold voice.
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Apr 14, 2023 13:23
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3 Action Economist posted:Are there people who don't play with Free Archetype? It seems pretty much the standard at this point. I'm not using it because I didn't want to overwhelm people with options. I'll probably introduce it at some point though.
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Apr 14, 2023 15:38
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Big Mouth Billy Basshole posted:Thaumaturge question: on a successful exploit weakness do you learn the value of the target's highest weakness? In the crit success description it specifically calls out that you learn the appropriate values but that wording isn't in the success description. mind the walrus posted:I don't have the wording in front of me but that was my interpretation-- on a successful exploit weakness the GM can share the highest or most relevant weakness to the player, unless that GM is a dick. RAW, you only get its highest weakness on a success, not the numeric value of the weakness. That's fine IMO, since the success is you normally recalling a fact about the creature, while the crit seems like your flash of insight is coming from the magic of empowering your esoterica, not just what you personally remember. But it wouldn't break the game if you house ruled knowing the value of the weakness on success.
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Apr 14, 2023 16:07
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Speaking of weakness... Any suggestions for Foundry for dealing with it? By default it doesn't apply weakness/resistance, because that would be really hard to keep track of which ones apply, because of things like thaumaturge. But if a player rolls attack, and hits, and then rolls damage, what's the easiest way to adjust the amount before applying it to a critter? If I select the critter and hit damage it just does the flat amount and I don't get an option for a quick adjustment. Any suggestions?
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Apr 14, 2023 16:39
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Rescue Toaster posted:Speaking of weakness... Any suggestions for Foundry for dealing with it? By default it doesn't apply weakness/resistance, because that would be really hard to keep track of which ones apply, because of things like thaumaturge. You can hold shift while pressing the apply damage button and it will open a menu for quick adjustments
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Apr 14, 2023 16:43
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Rescue Toaster posted:Speaking of weakness... Any suggestions for Foundry for dealing with it? By default it doesn't apply weakness/resistance, because Turn on having it automated in the settings
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Apr 14, 2023 17:38
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Also for Thaumaturge there is this module that makes things easier since Thaum stuff isn't fully automated by the base system yet
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Apr 14, 2023 18:10
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Are their sites other than Paizo's to buy the books? I guess I've bought things off of more sketchy sites, but their card processing widget does not give me a lot of confidence in data security...
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Apr 14, 2023 23:23
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Fidel Cuckstro posted:Are their sites other than Paizo's to buy the books? I guess I've bought things off of more sketchy sites, but their card processing widget does not give me a lot of confidence in data security... Pretty much any major bookseller. Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, etc.
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Apr 14, 2023 23:27
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But also their site is just fine
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Apr 15, 2023 00:06
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Fidel Cuckstro posted:Are their sites other than Paizo's to buy the books? I guess I've bought things off of more sketchy sites, but their card processing widget does not give me a lot of confidence in data security... I've bought several things from them direct, never had a problem. If you don't want to buy from them though please call your local bookstores and/or gameshops to see if they have what you need.
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Apr 15, 2023 01:04
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Fidel Cuckstro posted:Are there good communities to find online 2e games to play in? Yes, mostly discord for Society games. Pfschat.com will take you to the main online ledger's discord.
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Apr 15, 2023 06:19
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Gracias and gracias 
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Apr 15, 2023 09:46
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VikingofRock posted:I had the opposite experience. My party hit the ghouls at level 2 and almost got wiped several times. The ghoul paralysis is nasty and can easily effectively take a character out of the fight. And the fight with Aller Rosk is very hardcore at level 2; it's the only time my party full-on ran from an encounter (dragging their paralyzed and ghoul-fevered ally behind them). This is old but I just got to the ghoul floor for the second time with different people and it was once again a complete stomp. Were you using the incapacitation rules correctly? You basically have to roll a nat1 to be paralyzed by most of the ghouls on the floor. edit: Ghouls seem to spend a ton of their power on paralysis, which means they are extra awful against higher level PCs. Most of the fights are trivial at level 3 and pretty easy at level 2. I could see the floor's bosses being a problem but definitely not the ghouls. KPC_Mammon fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Apr 15, 2023 |
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Apr 15, 2023 22:23
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KPC_Mammon posted:Were you using the incapacitation rules correctly? I had completely missed that the ghoul paralysis was an incapacitation effect.  Thank you for pointing that out. I'll ask my party if they want to fix that, or to keep playing it as a non-incapacitation effect. Making the ghoul paralysis effective against the PCs really makes the ghouls much scarier, and the party seems to like that.
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Apr 15, 2023 23:39
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VikingofRock posted:I had completely missed that the ghoul paralysis was an incapacitation effect. Another option is to just quietly start playing it properly once it’s no longer an unexpected shock - it lets you give them that holy poo poo terrifying combat when they encounter it unprepared, and then settle in to something more manageable and less likely to gently caress the gang over with some bad dice as they progress.
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Apr 16, 2023 00:28
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I mean you can follow the rules too but adjust the DC up slightly to pretty much still get whatever fail % you're looking for based on their average saves. My group's main tank is a half-elf so I'm realizing that's going to be pretty much a worthless ability anyway.
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Apr 17, 2023 16:39
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Our group (2 5E vets including DM, 4 prolific CRPG players) finished the beginner box. We played the iconic premades and it was a strange but fun experience. I wanted to throw out the dice but we were playing on foundry. We had a lot of misses on 1s. My rogue got downed two times to crits from kobolds, and went down to 3 hp from full on a third attack later on, and that was with the GM being very fair about targeting different people. I'm pretty sure 5 attacks were aimed at me through the whole experience and 3 of them crit with the other 2 being misses. It lead to our warrior and cleric being very gunshy themselves and raising their shields at most opportunities. Now we're rolling up our own characters for Gatewalkers. It strongly recommends Investigator, Psychic and Thaumaturge. Is that just for flavor? Our 5-person group looks like it will be champion, barbarian, melee ranger, wizard plus me so I was aiming at a cleric or druid. The recommendations are odd because they also strongly recommend elves and half elves then warn you that you will have to disguise yourself to go somewhere needed because elves aren't welcome there.
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Apr 17, 2023 18:22
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bagrada posted:Our group (2 5E vets including DM, 4 prolific CRPG players) finished the beginner box. We played the iconic premades and it was a strange but fun experience. I wanted to throw out the dice but we were playing on foundry. We had a lot of misses on 1s. My rogue got downed two times to crits from kobolds, and went down to 3 hp from full on a third attack later on, and that was with the GM being very fair about targeting different people. I'm pretty sure 5 attacks were aimed at me through the whole experience and 3 of them crit with the other 2 being misses. It lead to our warrior and cleric being very gunshy themselves and raising their shields at most opportunities. The strongly recommend is just like things that will become relevant, and provide interesting interaction for you as a player. Like Blood Lords had Changeling as a recommended ancestry, because it dealt with hags and thus could be worked into an interesting story for the character.
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Apr 17, 2023 18:26
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If none of you are elves you don't get to navigate socal situations where everyone hates elves
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Apr 17, 2023 18:39
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bagrada posted:The recommendations are odd because they also strongly recommend elves and half elves then warn you that you will have to disguise yourself to go somewhere needed because elves aren't welcome there. Having to disguise yourself and having RP repercussions for your character choices is significantly more interesting than sleepwalking through a campaign because no one in the party interfaces with the cool poo poo that was signposted in the character creation guide.
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Apr 17, 2023 19:16
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KPC_Mammon posted:Having to disguise yourself and having RP repercussions for your character choices is significantly more interesting than sleepwalking through a campaign because no one in the party interfaces with the cool poo poo that was signposted in the character creation guide. Yeah, it's fun when the campaign is designed around you navigating that social situation and accounting for it vs playing a cleric of desna/pharasma in blood lords or something where it very much wasn't intended for that.
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Apr 17, 2023 19:22
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Essentially like playing a character with positive energy spells and abilities could be fun in blood lords. but is something you very much would need to clear with a GM and isn't accounted for in the adventure without a GM doing some things to make it work. Playing an Elf in Gatekeepers seems like it's something they put some work into giving a viable path through in the text of the adventure itsef.
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Apr 17, 2023 19:28
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bagrada posted:Our group (2 5E vets including DM, 4 prolific CRPG players) finished the beginner box. We played the iconic premades and it was a strange but fun experience. I wanted to throw out the dice but we were playing on foundry. We had a lot of misses on 1s. My rogue got downed two times to crits from kobolds, and went down to 3 hp from full on a third attack later on, and that was with the GM being very fair about targeting different people. I'm pretty sure 5 attacks were aimed at me through the whole experience and 3 of them crit with the other 2 being misses. It lead to our warrior and cleric being very gunshy themselves and raising their shields at most opportunities. I have my first session playing Gatewalkers this week. It may be interesting how our experiences compare to each other.
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Apr 17, 2023 19:39
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Big Mouth Billy Basshole posted:I have my first session playing Gatewalkers this week. It may be interesting how our experiences compare to each other. I'll remember to post here once we get rolling. Do you know what your group's party makeup will be? Just curious.
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Apr 17, 2023 19:49
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bagrada posted:I'll remember to post here once we get rolling. Do you know what your group's party makeup will be? Just curious. It's going to be a Thaumaturge (me), two Investigators, a Magus, and a Monk but they won't be able to make the first few sessions. On paper it feels a little sketchy. I'm planning on taking the Champion archetype so hopefully that will help with tanking some stuff. One of the Investigators is taking the healer subclass, I'm hoping that can keep everyone up.
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Apr 17, 2023 20:08
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Big Mouth Billy Basshole posted:It's going to be a Thaumaturge (me), two Investigators, a Magus, and a Monk but they won't be able to make the first few sessions. May the dice be in your favor. We've got a likely champion, likely wizard, definite deep gnome animalistic bearbarian, and possibly an elf melee ranger with the thievery skills and kit, plus whatever I roll in with. I hope to know more this weekend. We don't have great communication with the GM yet to coordinate as much as we'd like. I've got my usual-for-any-game indecision about who to play. I have a dwarf thaumaturge who thinks his implement is way more powerful than it actually is (an old in-joke), a similarly overconfident blue dragon kobold storm druid, a dour dwarf warrior muse bard who was a drummer and field medic in an army somewhere, a lizardfolk warpriest of Gozreh who was my first choice but I'm saving him for a different adventure, and a solemn elf who likes exploring, stargazing, and helping travelers who is likely a cleric of Desna.
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Apr 17, 2023 21:03
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Are there any good actual plays, or maybe more 'overviews of actual plays', of the Kingmaker campaign, either edition? I'd love to hear how others threaded all the adventures and exploration and such together in a way that at least kept the GM from just going nuts.
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Apr 18, 2023 00:25
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Fidel Cuckstro posted:Are there any good actual plays, or maybe more 'overviews of actual plays', of the Kingmaker campaign, either edition? Other than LPs of the PC game?
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Apr 18, 2023 01:47
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Kvantum posted:Other than LPs of the PC game? Right, more about understanding how a GM manages all those systems throughout a campaign.
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Apr 18, 2023 01:59
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Fidel Cuckstro posted:Right, more about understanding how a GM manages all those systems throughout a campaign. I'm not sure about any LP's but Paizo has a forum for Kingmaker 2e specifically. https://paizo.com/community/forums/pathfinder/adventurePath/kingmakersecondedition Apparently, the kingdom building needs fixing for it to work and my GM is talking about trying to fix it but we might just end up kind of doing kingdom building in the background. Maybe play the CRPG if you haven't already because they pulled inspiration for the 2e Kingmaker from it. I'm a player so I haven't looked at the adventure path yet, but what systems do you mean? The kingdom building or the smaller systems like the social or dueling systems?
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Apr 18, 2023 03:24
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