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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Paralyze TPK'd my buddies 40 years ago in AD&D and Abom Vaults has continued the tradition, which I am not happy about. I think a lot of the love that abom vaults gets is because of the work done in the reprint to make it more of a cohesive whole. A lot of modules suffer from a problem where the characters you meet and locations you go to in book 1 become completely irrelevant and you end up doing something completely different by the end of the book, while Abomination Vaults stays centralized and grounded. Encounter design is definitely lacking in places though. Things ended up working well for my group by adding the Troubles in Otari content as well and letting them get a little bit of extra experience & loot to better face the content- by the time they hit floor 7 things equalized (although at the final floor they did hit level 11, so I retooled the final fight to better suit the campaign & group)
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Jan 18, 2024 21:59
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Oh another fun thing about that fight was (again, spoilers for Abom Vault level 3) the entire party had ghoul fever by the end of it, one of them had it Stage 2 so even if they lived they would have spent a bunch of days in town just running down the clock until the Gauntlight was going to fire again, trying to shake a fatal disease because they rolled bad. Just really annoying enemy design! The ghouls weren't even interesting tactically, they just did melee strikes in a small area that did massive bad stuff to the party when they hit.
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Jan 18, 2024 22:28
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Our first attempt at AV ended with everyone dying of disease and the players loved how grim it was. We played another 1-10 AP as a palette cleanser, and everyone was excited to try to tackle the dungeon a second time after the break. Failure isn't always a bad thing.
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Jan 18, 2024 22:32
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We'll see what happens, but two of my players are Critical Role heads who took it pretty hard. They were really invested in their characters. Ah well.
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Jan 18, 2024 22:39
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Hearing these stories is weird. My group never had trouble with the ghouls because they used the convenient one-tile hallways to make a chokepoint so that only one ghoul could attack at a time. They also went back to town and paid for a bunch of remove disease casts as soon as they got fever. They also saw the gibbering mouthers, registered the gimmick, and immediately shut the door and ran until they could come back at level 4 with earplugs. e: and weed. weed is an item bonus and earplugs are a circumstance bonus so that's +3 right there Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 18, 2024 23:16
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Yeah I did. The (spoilers for level 3 of the Abom Vault) Canker Cultists are Level 3, the party is level 3, no Incap help at all. They got hosed. A DC 20 Fortitude check was a 13+ for their Martials and they burned their hero points off trying to resist. Both Martials got taken out of the fight on the first round. ...are you sure the martials only had +7? I feel at level 3, all of the martials should be at least +8 or +9, since they'd have Expert, level 3, and 12/14 Con. Rogue is probably the only one that doesn't.
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Jan 18, 2024 23:24
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Arrrthritis posted:That sucks. I was in a game where the GM would keep adding the elite template to enemies in encounters that were already two levels above the party. It's frustrating as heck when every battle turns into a grinder. This is effectively what is happening in my game where enemies are getting benefits such as Attack of Opportunity or added resistances / reductions to weakness to damage they don't have on the stat block. So they're effectively elite enemies. If not potentially stronger. I really don't like looking up stat blocks, that's cheating. But this is explicitly out of hand. I just did the calculations too and I'm hundreds of gold behind what I should have as well. Azran posted:Could be worse! I saw this a couple days ago and yeah my problems aren't that bad. That DM is deranged. If you don't like the 3 action system don't play Pathfinder 2e. Nelson Mandingo fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 18, 2024 23:27
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:We'll see what happens, but two of my players are Critical Role heads who took it pretty hard. They were really invested in their characters. Ah well. ah, podcasters, there’s your problem right there
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Jan 19, 2024 00:05
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People invested in the game and enjoying other players tv show content is a...problem? Yeah I dunno about that one. Nelson Mandingo fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 00:11
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Cyouni posted:...are you sure the martials only had +7? I feel at level 3, all of the martials should be at least +8 or +9, since they'd have Expert, level 3, and 12/14 Con. Rogue is probably the only one that doesn't. Yeah, was gonna say, I looked at all my martials that I've played recently (Magus, Fighter, Gunslinger) and they're all +8 (Gunslinger) or +9 (Fighter/Magus).
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Jan 19, 2024 00:15
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Being dismissive of people because they happen to like CR is some grog poo poo.
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Jan 19, 2024 01:12
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Nelson Mandingo posted:This is effectively what is happening in my game where enemies are getting benefits such as Attack of Opportunity or added resistances / reductions to weakness to damage they don't have on the stat block. So they're effectively elite enemies. If not potentially stronger. It's been pretty obvious from the beginning that your GM is one of those "lower 50%" people I mentioned, my friend. This ain't the system for them and I'm amazed you're persevering. It sounds miserable. Also re: the +7. The Fighter has 10 CON because he wanted to make a "swashbuckly" Fighter with some CHA stuff, so that's where that went. The perils of MAD. The other +7 was that the character normally has +8 but was Sickened 1. Doesn't really matter now though. Not sure about the whole "they should just go cast Cure Disease" that's 64GP in cures from one fight, and they'll absolutely get diseased again. That's a ton of money for a level 3 character, not really feasible if I obey the treasure rules as it's going to start eating into their required runes money pretty quickly. Looking online the ghouls are a real bad problem for some people and a cakewalk for others. It all comes down to variance, I suppose. Pass those Fort saves and they're not very dangerous, fail them and you're dead. edit: Talked with my players and we're all not sure where to go next. I really hated how that combat played out, they didn't have fun failing saves and watching their friends be ripped apart, and I'll be loving damned if I want to run a tactical game that's so badly designed that one twerp sitting at a bottleneck and 1v1ing guys is optimal. A real crossroads moment, there's a lot I like about this system but this is absolutely not it. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 01:17
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Yeah that's an optimization problem too. Not even a wizard should want to risk 10 CON at start, I feel Maybe do a level 11-20 adventure, since early level PF characters are in general a little frail and not good at many things. The HP buffer to play a little worse comes in at around level 5 or 6 in my experience, which is why people recommend doing Troubles in Otari first so they have a bit of a level advantage over the expected level for Vaults, and don't need to lean so much into strategic positioning. That said, PF2 in general is constructed such that you'll do a lot better if you're really wargaming it out and disabling enemies, choosing to focus down one target at a time and prioritizing what's the biggest threat, positioning yourselves to minimize spillover damage, etc. That never changes, you just get more leeway for mistakes and more ability to generate that advantage on a character-by-character basis. Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 01:23
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In our case, our Swashbuckler did in fact get paralyzed and spent multiple combats t-posing somewhere while the rest of the party took care of business. We had one Dwarf Fighter/Barbarian who just happened to roll like a loving god so never got any nasty fort save rolls, and me playing an elf meaning I just got to flat out ignore the paralysis bit. Said fighter just pounded every ghoul into the ground by critting and that floor really presented very little challenge at all except for the room with the mist. I did contract ghoul fever however but the GM just had Wrynn cure me of that because he didn't want to have to deal with keeping track of that for days. You could have one of the Otari NPCs give the entire group some antidotes so they at least have some ways to defend against the ghoul fever, that likely won't mess too much with their total gold. And I think you'll be forgiven for houseruling the increasing DC on paralysis away and just putting a number limit on it.
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Jan 19, 2024 01:27
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I'm convinced forlorn elf is one of the better ancestry options due to how much bullshit they end up ignoring. Death warden dwarves a close second depending on campaign.
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Jan 19, 2024 01:33
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That's valid too, Paralysis is really a huge feelbad mechanic, which is why it has Incapacitation stuck on it. For me the #1 thing I always remove is when certain monsters have big arbitrary swathes of immunities, like golems. Especially if someone is directly affected. Not every "instant death" mechanic is as harsh as ghoul paralysis either, which is funny. The basilisks on level 5 give you ways to play around their petrification because it requires multiple actions and focusing on their part.
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Jan 19, 2024 01:33
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Also re: the +7. The Fighter has 10 CON because he wanted to make a "swashbuckly" Fighter with some CHA stuff, so that's where that went. The perils of MAD. Are they running a CON penalty ancestry or something?  It should be easy to get +4/+0/+2/+0/+0/+2 with one free stat boost with a human or the "everyone can just do two free bonuses" rule.
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Jan 19, 2024 01:37
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Mister Olympus posted:Yeah that's an optimization problem too. Not even a wizard should want to risk 10 CON at start, I feel Eh, there are different kinds of optimisation. Wisdom improves perception checks, will saves, and initiative -- that is useful all the time. Every point of Intelligence gets you another trained skill and 2 languages. You can never have enough languages. Dex does AC and reflex saves, plus lets you parkour through enemy spaces and poo poo. Con is boring. I hp and fortitude saves. 
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Jan 19, 2024 01:48
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Kyrosiris posted:Are they running a CON penalty ancestry or something? I'm guessing when they said "swashbuckly" the player also wanted finesse weapons, which means they probably went in for dex primary, str and cha secondary for damage and the extra cha stuff. Which is fine, I'd just like do +1 in str and cha, +2 in con, +4 in dex. Or even +1 con +2 str or cha, if you really want to commit, but +0 is real scary at low levels. Of course the advantage there is that with dex primary, you can easily swap to a bow and be a back-liner if it's more useful, depending on the encounter. It's not a bad build at all! Just tricky for someone who wants to be up close all the time Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 01:49
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:It's been pretty obvious from the beginning that your GM is one of those "lower 50%" people I mentioned, my friend. This ain't the system for them and I'm amazed you're persevering. It sounds miserable. does the rest of the party also have quirky builds like the 10 con fighter? how did they approach the fight? Is this a group who knows how to play pf2? if the answers are yes, casually, and no, then move the difficulty on encounters down so there is a challenge that they can learn the system on but don’t die and be explicit about that There are often reasons why some encounters have high variance beyond just dice rolls
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Jan 19, 2024 02:11
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Mister Olympus posted:I'm guessing when they said "swashbuckly" the player also wanted finesse weapons, which means they probably went in for dex primary, str and cha secondary for damage and the extra cha stuff. Which is fine, I'd just like do +1 in str and cha, +2 in con, +4 in dex. Or even +1 con +2 str or cha, if you really want to commit, but +0 is real scary at low levels. Ah, yeah, that makes way more sense.  I would say "at some point I'll play a bow-based Fighter" but gently caress that, I'm having entirely too much fun with my spellshot gunslinger. Jezail my beloved. 
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Jan 19, 2024 03:04
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One thing to consider is also that Abomination Vaults is still a megadungeon, and based on your description it's at least a Moderate-tier encounter. So if they go in with stats that are...a tad questionable for the situation at hand and choose to avoid tactics that would help make them more successful, then it's very easy for the situation to go bad. Not to mention that a Moderate encounter at level 3 has tons of potential to go bad to start with. Blood Lords, for instance, has quite a few people dead in the opening area despite it being really easy to avoid with good tactics. (My group took literally 0 damage in the harder encounters for that portion, on the other side.)
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Jan 19, 2024 03:15
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Nelson Mandingo posted:I really don't like looking up stat blocks, that's cheating. But this is explicitly out of hand. I just did the calculations too and I'm hundreds of gold behind what I should have as well. After playing a ton of BG3, I'm of the opinion that the more open enemy information is, the better. Let the standard be that players know what enemy strengths and weaknesses are and plan around them, and anything you want to be dramatic be obscured behind a recall knowledge check.
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Jan 19, 2024 05:45
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Arrrthritis posted:After playing a ton of BG3, I'm of the opinion that the more open enemy information is, the better. Let the standard be that players know what enemy strengths and weaknesses are and plan around them, and anything you want to be dramatic be obscured behind a recall knowledge check. I don't think you're wrong. Especially for a group that is experienced and the focus is tactical combat but I think for a sort of ludo-dissonant narrative it makes sense to have to spend an action to recall knowledge. My preference would be the DC's are lower in general though. I don't like the idea of enemies knowing the fighter can attack of opportunity before they do it as an example. And vice versa a monster your character has never personally seen before being something they know everything about immediately. It works in BG3 because knowledge of the mechanics beforehand isn't a problem and the fight is the focus. And narratively every party member in BG3 is an experienced hero before the start of the game except Lae'zel.
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Jan 19, 2024 06:42
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I also like players having more information rather than less. I generally do this by just being extremely generous with the RK checks and often give simple/boring stuff like 'has piercing DR' as freebies there just for spending the action.
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Jan 19, 2024 06:59
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I give my players HP, AC, and saves upfront, it's really bad to have to test that stuff
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Jan 19, 2024 11:21
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Mister Olympus posted:I give my players HP, AC, and saves upfront, it's really bad to have to test that stuff Does anyone ever RK in your games?
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Jan 19, 2024 16:46
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Nelson Mandingo posted:I don't think you're wrong. Especially for a group that is experienced and the focus is tactical combat but I think for a sort of ludo-dissonant narrative it makes sense to have to spend an action to recall knowledge. My preference would be the DC's are lower in general though. Yeah, i'm sure someone could probably implement a system where the DCs are lowered overall, and if your passive (10 + skill) arcana/crafting/religion/nature/occultism/lore check beats the default check, you get base stats when initiative is rolled or something like that and any further details could be gated behind a recall knowledge check. That would require a lot of system retooling and changing of feats though, so personally I'm more of a fan of doing something like this. Andrast posted:I also like players having more information rather than less. I generally do this by just being extremely generous with the RK checks and often give simple/boring stuff like 'has piercing DR' as freebies there just for spending the action. Although I realize should make more of an effort to be consistent in this regard.
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Jan 19, 2024 16:47
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It's funny, I think I'm the complete opposite of the consensus here. I always make my own monsters (I tell the players upfront because I do reuse names but not stats, so they don't complain to me about differences from the official stuff) and give absolutely no info besides what's visually obvious without a successful RK check. Plus I always make sure to have pre-written believable fake info for crit fails. On the other hand I do let people roll whatever skill they can justify for RK. Fighter wants to use Athletics to try and gauge the training and strength of an enemy goblin? Sure. Cleric using Medicine to try to figure out if they know about any nasty wounds caused by the weird monster? Absolutely. I usually give info tailored to the skill used, too.
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Jan 19, 2024 17:01
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Infinity Gaia posted:It's funny, I think I'm the complete opposite of the consensus here. I always make my own monsters (I tell the players upfront because I do reuse names but not stats, so they don't complain to me about differences from the official stuff) and give absolutely no info besides what's visually obvious without a successful RK check. Plus I always make sure to have pre-written believable fake info for crit fails. On the other hand I do let people roll whatever skill they can justify for RK. Fighter wants to use Athletics to try and gauge the training and strength of an enemy goblin? Sure. Cleric using Medicine to try to figure out if they know about any nasty wounds caused by the weird monster? Absolutely. I usually give info tailored to the skill used, too. I’m much more in this camp. I want to encourage use of recall knowledge and I feel that just giving stat blocks is way too video gamey and goes against the type of world interaction and exploration that I want my players to do.
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Jan 19, 2024 17:13
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:In fact I'm generally not happy with Abom Vaults in general and wondering why it gets so much love. It has a lot of fights in lovely, cramped locations and frequent encounters against a single hard-hitter (boring) or against stuff with save-or-suck abilities. It's starting to feel like a real grind. I'm feeling some of this while playing my first campaign in the Abomination Vaults, though we're going in the opposite direction. We have a five-player party, and we're mostly crushing it, but I am suspecting that the DM is going easy on us. I don't think the encounters are being adjusted upward to account for an extra player, and I suspect that some numbers are being tweaked in our favor here and there. On the one hand, I'm having fun because I feel useful; I invested in knowledge skills and dealing lots of different kinds of damage (bomber alchemist), which turns out is great to have in AV. On the other hand, a single enemy fight that's party level+2 just isn't interesting to fight over and over. Especially since a lot of them are just standing in one place, trading blows and hoping to hit while the cleric heals us.
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Jan 19, 2024 17:37
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sugar free jazz posted:I’m much more in this camp. I want to encourage use of recall knowledge and I feel that just giving stat blocks is way too video gamey and goes against the type of world interaction and exploration that I want my players to do. Yeah, I'd be real annoyed as a spellshot if my whole schtick (getting RK checks while doing other stuff) were diminished. The flip side of that is knowing your table. If people aren't engaging with the system as it's designed to be, then I can see where people want to provide more.
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Jan 19, 2024 17:51
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Note that remastered RK is a lot clearer and consideration should be made given that. That said, I also just generally feel like freely giving the info straight up invalidates anything with deception as its theme. Those sorts of games don't generally cover that style of tactic. For instance, take the standard example of the boss caster using Project Image to get players to waste their attacks on the image, or the monster disguised as something else (the 1e Corpse Orgy comes to mind here).
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Jan 19, 2024 19:26
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malnourish posted:Does anyone ever RK in your games? absolutely, to find out about resistances and nasty abilities Magil Zeal posted:I'm feeling some of this while playing my first campaign in the Abomination Vaults, though we're going in the opposite direction. We have a five-player party, and we're mostly crushing it, but I am suspecting that the DM is going easy on us. I don't think the encounters are being adjusted upward to account for an extra player, and I suspect that some numbers are being tweaked in our favor here and there. my vaults group is 5 players, and what I do to make the encounter math fit is to split solo encounters into 2 enemies and make them both Weak. I don't do this for encounters that are supposed to be talked through to some degree, however. make sure your GM is adjusting encounters and treasure appropriately for the extra player Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 20:06
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Infinity Gaia posted:It's funny, I think I'm the complete opposite of the consensus here. I always make my own monsters (I tell the players upfront because I do reuse names but not stats, so they don't complain to me about differences from the official stuff) and give absolutely no info besides what's visually obvious without a successful RK check. Plus I always make sure to have pre-written believable fake info for crit fails. On the other hand I do let people roll whatever skill they can justify for RK. Fighter wants to use Athletics to try and gauge the training and strength of an enemy goblin? Sure. Cleric using Medicine to try to figure out if they know about any nasty wounds caused by the weird monster? Absolutely. I usually give info tailored to the skill used, too. I mean I think that's cool and sensible if you're fighting unique, rare, and/or strange monsters, but it really feels absurd to me when it's common monsters that should be familiar within the setting. Mortals have been living alongside trolls and vampires for millenia, and still need to hit a moderately difficult skill check to remember that vampires are weak to sunlight and troll regeneration is turned off by fire and acid? People in our world remember those kind of monster rules even when they're not real, I think someone who was going out to fight monsters would probably have heard of it. You might as well make your Elf players have to roll RK to remember that humans can't see in the dark at that point.
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Jan 19, 2024 20:15
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Taciturn Tactician posted:I mean I think that's cool and sensible if you're fighting unique, rare, and/or strange monsters, but it really feels absurd to me when it's common monsters that should be familiar within the setting. Mortals have been living alongside trolls and vampires for millenia, and still need to hit a moderately difficult skill check to remember that vampires are weak to sunlight and troll regeneration is turned off by fire and acid? Quick reminder that this exists: "You might adjust the difficulty down, maybe even drastically, if the subject is especially notorious or famed." There's also a line which I can't pull up at the moment about how unique monsters don't need to hit that DC to learn about information from their base type.
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Jan 19, 2024 20:29
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Cyouni posted:Note that remastered RK is a lot clearer and consideration should be made given that. Obviously I wouldn't instantly give a fun deception gimmick away, that would be lame
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Jan 19, 2024 20:43
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Taciturn Tactician posted:I mean I think that's cool and sensible if you're fighting unique, rare, and/or strange monsters, but it really feels absurd to me when it's common monsters that should be familiar within the setting. Mortals have been living alongside trolls and vampires for millenia, and still need to hit a moderately difficult skill check to remember that vampires are weak to sunlight and troll regeneration is turned off by fire and acid? People in our world remember those kind of monster rules even when they're not real, I think someone who was going out to fight monsters would probably have heard of it. You might as well make your Elf players have to roll RK to remember that humans can't see in the dark at that point. If it's something so obvious that the players know about offhand then sure, maybe. But to use vampires as an example seems wrong. I don't think there's a single fictional monster with more varied weaknesses than vampires. Maybe it takes an actual knowledge check to separate fact from fiction. A success lets you know sunlight and a wooden stake through the heart works, a crit failure has you CERTAIN that they're forced to count beans if you toss them on the floor near them.
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Jan 19, 2024 21:59
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I don't have the new books yet and AoN hasn't updated yet either, can anyone summarize how they improved Alchemist if at all?
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Jan 20, 2024 11:53
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Alchemist will be in Player Core 2, which is not out yet.
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