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I mean, it’s different swingy at high levels but really you’re playing a dice game. Streaks happen. If they roll 20s and you roll 1s then things will go bad
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Feb 20, 2024 02:55
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Clerical Terrors posted:Did it go well? It did! It went fairly smoothly although we definitely found a couple things we'll have to make sure we did correctly for next time. We've been playing 4e for so long we had to get used to saving throws on all kinds of things again. My barbarian raged and then crit on a swipe thanks to my musical support goblin and murdered two dudes and then almost killed a third from the crit specialty, so yeah. Good times.
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Feb 20, 2024 07:47
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KPC_Mammon posted:Edit: did you guys save the people hanging in the meat locker a few floors up? One of them should give you info on another faction you should befriend. ...straight don't remember the meat locker. 3 Action Economist posted:I can't imagine starting a combat without the full party there, especially if the missing folk are front line. yeah it was an unbelievably bad idea.
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Feb 20, 2024 09:32
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The game just isn't balanced for that, yeah. Big time bummer.
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Feb 20, 2024 18:39
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If it makes you feel better, I ran session 2 of my own AV game last week, and three of the five PCs died in one particularly brutal fight. The front line disintegrated in two rounds and the two back-line characters fled, leaving them to die. It was, objectively, the right decision.
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Feb 21, 2024 00:31
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Mister Olympus posted:That's the weirdest part, it's the non-barricaded door that leads out to the auto-fight. I read that as disturbing the meditation itself. As long as the players were quiet and didn't touch any of them, the party could pass through safely.
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Feb 21, 2024 01:55
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Stealth question. So our party's rogue is just having monumentally bad rolls when it comes to stealth. So much so I think it's straight up immersion breaking. Obviously at level 10 he can get sneak savant and almost never fail anymore, but until that time I was wondering if Assurance: Stealth was potentially worth it. I've been doing research, and honestly Paizo's own description honestly isn't completely clear to me. And I've heard both sides from "It's so good you don't even need sneak savant" to "It's so bad and I just vomited at the mere suggestion." So which is it? How good or bad is assurance stealth?
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Feb 27, 2024 18:25
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Nelson Mandingo posted:Stealth question. assurance is weirdly straightforward. you get 10 + level + proficiency. so if they're level 7 and Master trained they get a 23 on stealth when using assurance, every time. assurance math most often doesn't work for at or near level problems, with a couple of weird level exceptions where it actually does work. it's intended for and works out to be useful for dealing with problems that are pretty well below your level that you never ever want to risk failure on. in essence, expect that they're gonna be able to stealth by every idiot mook guard without fail while every at/near level or above guard will be able to spot them every single time.
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Feb 27, 2024 19:00
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Nelson Mandingo posted:Stealth question. Assurance is, very simply, the ability to guarantee a result of 10 + Proficiency, adding no other modifiers, instead of rolling. Your proficiency modifier is equal to your level, plus a fixed value given by the proficiency rank, so if you are Expert in a skill and are level 5, your result is 19 (10 + 4 [rank] + 5 [level]). The big drawback here is that you don’t get your ability modifiers, so the Assurance result is likely going to be 3-4 points worse than the average value of a roll. If you’re Expert, level 5, and have +4 in the relevant stat, your average roll is 23.5, with a minimum of 14 and a max of 33. In a vacuum, this looks pretty bad, if your goal is to pass every check. However, the DCs you’re trying to hit are very circumstantial. For Stealth, your target number is your opponent’s Perception, which is based on their proficiency and thus their level. If you are higher level than your target, and you have a better rank in Stealth than they have in Proficiency, Assurance is an excellent pick. A level 4 character that is Trained in Perception and has a +3 Wisdom has a DC of 19, which a level 5 Expert’s Assurance beats. You’re also likely to be fighting many opponents who are lower level than you, since that’s generally how encounters are built, so this will come into play often. In short, Assurance is fantastic against weaker opponents and worthless against stronger ones. If you hate failing rolls that you’d succeed on a 6, take it, but don’t expect to never touch a die again.
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Feb 27, 2024 19:04
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The reason assurance athletics and intimidate work for combat purposes is because monsters can have a lot of save variance, so that you might actually be able to assurance grapple an on-level wizard type to shut them down hard, or assurance intimidate something with low will on a key turn. Stealth is going to be fighting perception DCs which don’t have as much variance iirc In terms of bad luck protection, remember that the game suggests to hand out one hero point to one player every hour of playtime at least. Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Feb 27, 2024 |
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Feb 27, 2024 19:06
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Nelson Mandingo posted:Stealth question. Is your group rolling stealth in secret? You can kind of just make up results if they keep failing over and over again. It's kind of lame IMO and I try not to do it much but sometimes it's better for storytelling to just let them pass the roll.
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Feb 27, 2024 19:12
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gurragadon posted:Is your group rolling stealth in secret? You can kind of just make up results if they keep failing over and over again. It's kind of lame IMO and I try not to do it much but sometimes it's better for storytelling to just let them pass the roll. Yeah not only in exploration mode are it failures but he's rolling below 5's for in-combat. In about 8 months of playtime I think he's succeeded two Hide actions in combat.
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Feb 27, 2024 19:16
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Nelson Mandingo posted:Stealth question. So one thing to consider is how Sneak Savant works. It only works on specifically the Sneak action, not Hide. You'll note that if you fail on Sneak, you're still hidden. So for certain use cases, if you don't need to be undetected, Assurance will have a lot more utility. The other thing to note is that Assurance doesn't help you very much if you're fully invested, since it functionally removes your bonuses. A level 10 Rogue with Master Stealth will get 26 from Assurance, whereas if they have 20 Dex and a +1 item, they'll have a +22. So it's about the same as permanently rolling a 4, which isn't great. Assurance best shines if you need to not screw up the rolls, but don't have great stats, etc for the skill in question. Mister Olympus posted:The reason assurance athletics and intimidate work for combat purposes is because monsters can have a lot of save variance, so that you might actually be able to assurance grapple an on-level wizard type to shut them down hard, or assurance intimidate something with low will on a key turn. Stealth is going to be fighting perception DCs which don’t have as much variance iirc The other thing is that Athletics Assurance ignores MAP, so you can do it instead of a -10 attack. Suddenly it looks incredibly good, even if you're maxed out on other bonuses. In the example above, you guarantee a 14 on your last attack compared to other things, even with some of the best bonuses at that level. Cyouni fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Feb 27, 2024 |
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Feb 27, 2024 19:30
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Nelson Mandingo posted:Yeah not only in exploration mode are it failures but he's rolling below 5's for in-combat. In about 8 months of playtime I think he's succeeded two Hide actions in combat. Both hide and sneak are secret rolls. They're going to know whether they failed or passed pretty soon but that way you can nudge them to more successes. I'm assuming that you're the GM but if you're not you could remind your GM about secret rolls. Some groups and people don't like secret rolls as much so it can be hard to get used to. I never force a secret roll as GM but if it's really helpful if you want to keep to a story in certain parts and not let the dice decide.
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Feb 27, 2024 19:33
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Stealth in combat seems like the hardest possible way to trigger damage bonus. Extra die rolls, cover requirements, it's just not worth the actions imo.
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Feb 27, 2024 20:03
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Harold Fjord posted:Stealth in combat seems like the hardest possible way to trigger damage bonus. Extra die rolls, cover requirements, it's just not worth the actions imo. Yeah, this part is unfortunate. For the longest time I pored through options to try to find some semi-optimal way of being the sneaky guy who darts in and out of hiding while stabbing/sniping people in combat, and there's just no benefit to it when all you get for jumping through those hoops is a flat-footed target and just about every other source of flat-footed is better/longer-lasting/less conditional than sneaking and hiding is. It doesn't help that all of the feats that would help you pull it off via melee, like Spring from the Shadows from Rogue at 12th or Scout's Pounce from the Scout archetype at 10th, are both Flourishes so you can't use any combination of the two of them or other Flourishes in the same round. Meanwhile the Ranger takes Distracting Shot at 12th and makes targets flat-footed against everyone by just shooting at them a bunch.
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Feb 28, 2024 05:58
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Nelson Mandingo posted:Hide actions in combat. Hide actions in combat are one of the worst things you can possibly do, in terms of action efficiency. They should be relatively reliable though! Are you giving them their bonus from cover? If you take cover before attempting to become hidden you should get a +4 circumstance bonus to the check. Which is one of the many reasons assurance stealth makes me want to vomit, it is often worse than rolling a 2 with modifiers.
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Feb 28, 2024 18:22
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That's a pretty hefty action cost, though, but even standard cover gives you a +2. The action efficiency is a lot better on a Sniper Gunslinger though.
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Feb 28, 2024 18:33
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Cyouni posted:That's a pretty hefty action cost, though, but even standard cover gives you a +2. Yeah, I wouldn't use the hide action in combat unless I was playing a ranger or gunslinger that either made take cover or hide checks free. Even without take cover the typical rogue is down at least 7 points (4 dex, 2 cover, 1 item bonus) by level 3 if they use assurance. Edit: Bows generally want to take multiple attacks, so it is better to get off guard with teamwork. KPC_Mammon fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Feb 28, 2024 |
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Feb 28, 2024 19:23
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Assurance is good for skills with fixed difficulty checks. Athletics to climb, or swim or break things. Medicine. It’s not good for anything else, and that’s by design
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Feb 28, 2024 19:26
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Also, I've seen some guides online (especially on RPG bot) that have some absolutely awful hot takes. People will write 50 pages about ancestries, feats, and equipment without understanding the importance of a +1 bonus (yes, I'm still mad about a guide I read that claimed Ancient-Blooded Dwarf isn't good because the bonus doesn't scale and is therefore trash at higher levels. If you don't have another reaction it is pretty drat awesome if you remember to use it). You know for a fact that at least 90% of the nonsense they are writing is completely untested garbage. I assure you that people hyping up assurance for stealth were either running it wrong or have never actually tried it. edit: So many feat evaluations also rely on a white room with zero movement and no teamwork. Which is the quickest way to get absolutely clobbered in this game. KPC_Mammon fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Feb 28, 2024 |
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Feb 28, 2024 19:33
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Got a story from Society play this weekend I think is pretty hard to top. We're running an Osirion scenario; go in, investigate a shadow path leading to a pyramid, find out why undead attacking the lodge, etc. We've got 4 people, two fighters, a ranger, and an alchemist. Very light on divine and healing. One guy's wife (who has played several times in the past) had come to just hang, and we teased and pleaded with her to play, even if she didn't have any 5-8 characters, joking we needed a cleric. She (with feigned reluctance) acquiesced, sat down, took Kyra (and filed off the name and stuff so it wasn't Kyra but a new character), and decided to play. Now, while much of Avistan and Golarion is not all that hard to figure out what media or culture inspired it, Osirion is, as most of you probably know, pretty less blatant about it and much more explicitly "just a renamed Ancient Egypt". They even worship the actual Egyptian pantheon, and as said, build pyramids, desert realm centered on a river, it's far less subtle than most places in the setting are. Our new cleric, in the real life, turns out to have a literal doctorate in Egyptology. I lost count of the amount of times the GM is reading the snippets about the place to us before she cuts him off. "You see a shrine to a small god with fertility-" "Oh, it's Bes." "You see a large basin containing white crystals-" "Nitre, it's used for embalming." Nobody at the table was mad; we all acknowledged it as one of the coolest moments. The GM's face lit up every time he started describing something because he knew she'd know exactly what it was.
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Feb 29, 2024 00:00
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Sky Shadowing posted:Got a story from Society play this weekend I think is pretty hard to top. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Feb 29, 2024 |
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Feb 29, 2024 00:18
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Sky Shadowing posted:Got a story from Society play this weekend I think is pretty hard to top. Do you have the name? Sounds cool.
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Feb 29, 2024 00:27
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MadScientistWorking posted:Ok I've got to know but did her name start with the letter R? Your description sounds eerily suspicious to an Egyptologist I used to play Pathfinder Society with. And Im not sure what would be weirder you just randomly bumping into someone I know or there being two Egyptologists who play Pathfinder. To my knowledge her name does not start with R, though more than a few players I've met go by names other than their actual first name, so she may be using a nickname. I also suspect that though she had played before she was more on the 'beginner' side than a long term veteran (for instance, she didn't have any characters between 5-8). California, just in case that can rule it out for you. Facebook Aunt posted:Do you have the name? Sounds cool. 3-14 The Tomb Between Worlds is the scenario.
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Feb 29, 2024 00:48
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Just so I'm understanding correctly, you have to use an Action to raise a shield for the AC bonus to apply, correct?
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Feb 29, 2024 00:55
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Vargatron posted:Just so I'm understanding correctly, you have to use an Action to raise a shield for the AC bonus to apply, correct? That's correct. Raise a Shield is what grants you the 2 AC, then you can opt to Shield Block to mitigate damage of an incoming attack.
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Feb 29, 2024 01:00
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It's very strong and no one in my group has ever done it.
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Feb 29, 2024 01:30
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My current, limited experience is that Raise Shield is a great defensive tool because it causes the GM to immediately consider attacking somebody else instead.
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Feb 29, 2024 01:39
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I have a player who not only raises his tower shield, but sometimes also takes cover behind it. He's also a paladin and another player has opportunistic backstab, so ignoring him will sometimes result in an explosion of damage and a very dead monster.
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Feb 29, 2024 01:48
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Thanks for the confirmation. I've been reading through the rulebook in preparation for our session 0 this Saturday. Really wanted to get the action economy and skill system nuances down before I explained it to the group members. Thankfully, one of the players has GM'd a 2E game before, so I can have him help me out with rule interpretations I get wrong. Equipment having durability was one thing I had to read on a good bit, but it looks like it doesn't really come into play unless you're intentionally trying to destroy an item or are using Shield Block if you're a Fighter.
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Feb 29, 2024 01:49
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Raise shield is very good for a monk. Ours will commonly move, flurry of blows and raise shield. It took that and seeing how the MAP worked to realize how it was intended to work, and it's pretty nice.
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Feb 29, 2024 02:23
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Continuing into Book 2 of Stolen Fate and it's going quite well, Katapesh and Kho is a great change of scenery, but I've had to lower the save modifiers for all the enemies because holy gently caress they are all way too high. Monsters regularly with a +30 FORT or +25 WILL and that just won't do when the highest spellcaster's DC is 30 and the highest Athletics is +23. I fully expect this to be hated, but it's making the game smooth and clean.
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Feb 29, 2024 02:26
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drat, what loving levels are those? A high save of +25 is a level 12 monster, and +30 is a level 16. Are you sure something isn't misprinted or something?
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Feb 29, 2024 05:38
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Cyouni posted:drat, what loving levels are those? A high save of +25 is a level 12 monster, and +30 is a level 16. Are you sure something isn't misprinted or something? Stolen Fate is a 10-20, so book 2 is probably level 14-17? In which case, a high athletics of 24 says more about nobody in the gang being built to specialize in athletics than it does about the monster numbers being off.
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Feb 29, 2024 05:55
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sometimes things do get some nasty spikes. the final boss of abomination vaults has a 33 spell DC for a level 12 enemy
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Feb 29, 2024 06:18
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Chevy Slyme posted:Stolen Fate is a 10-20, so book 2 is probably level 14-17? Oh, hmm. Assuming level 14, you can easily get Str +5, item +2, master +6, and level +14 for a total of +27. So yeah, there's definitely something missing if the high is +24. Checking spellcaster DC, though, that also sounds short with expert at +4, casting stat at +5, and level +14 for DC 33. -4 and -3 on both those numbers respectively sounds really weird.
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Feb 29, 2024 06:31
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mind the walrus posted:Continuing into Book 2 of Stolen Fate and it's going quite well, Katapesh and Kho is a great change of scenery, but I've had to lower the save modifiers for all the enemies because holy gently caress they are all way too high. Monsters regularly with a +30 FORT or +25 WILL and that just won't do when the highest spellcaster's DC is 30 and the highest Athletics is +23. I fully expect this to be hated, but it's making the game smooth and clean. Wait, how is the highest spellcaster DC 30? What level is your group at? My group just finished chapter 1 of the second book of SF on monday and we're all level 15 now so my caster DC is 36 with master proficiency.
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Feb 29, 2024 09:52
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Speaking of Stolen Fate: our group barely managed to win the bossfight of chapter 1 of the second book on monday. We went in with our thaum at drained 2 and down a considerable amount of spellslots. It was looking really rough at one point as our thaum was close to going down, and me and the monk got hit by a Prismatic Spray. GM rolled an 8 on my spray and made me both petrified and take a bunch of acid damage, then managed to get confused on the monk, who promptly beat me to death and got a crit on me with a crushing rune. Luckily the sorcerer had been keeping a cast of Shock to the System handy and managed to get me back up, and the concealment from the cloud was just enough to allow me to survive to the next round, so I cast Time Warp and hosed off to the corner of the battlemap to deal with my health situation and possibly set myself up for petrification. But I got lucky on the recovery rolls and managed to get back in the fight, where aforementioned monk had managed to down an enemy by getting extremely lucky on his rolls against Mirror Image and ended up hitting the real one three times in a row, including a crit. After that the battle started to turn in our favor, although I can't help but feel like the GM threw us a bone by having the main spellcaster enemy target all their fort save spells against the thaumaturge, who had the highest will saves and changed every success to a crit success. After the fight the party decided I should get the Survivor card in honor of the fact that this was technically the second time in this campaign that my character died in combat (last time she got resurrected with a Raise Dead spell)
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Feb 29, 2024 10:32
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Clerical Terrors posted:Wait, how is the highest spellcaster DC 30? What level is your group at? My group just finished chapter 1 of the second book of SF on monday and we're all level 15 now so my caster DC is 36 with master proficiency. For the portion of Stolen Fate in question (Ruins of Kho) you're expected to be Level 15 so something might be off with the party build. My own Stolen Fate game went off the rails when the party decided (early book 2) Hey, Katapesh sucks so let's kill the pactmasters! so i'm retooling a lot of it around that. That, and letting the players (late book 2) enter the harrow realm earlier than normal
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Feb 29, 2024 17:05
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