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VikingofRock posted:However, there are occasionally rules that feel like they are "missing" to me. For example, I am currently the GM for an Abomination Vaults game, and one of my players loves to listen at the doors for whatever is in the next room. This feels like this should be such a common activity that there should be explicit rules for it, but it's kind of nuanced to follow by rules as written and give meaningful direction to the player. The players are exploring, so it feels like this should be an exploration activity. The two best options seem to be the Scout activity, which just gives a flat +1 to initiative (and honestly feels kind of awkward to explain in indoor settings), or the Search activity, which seems more focused on finding objects than creatures. All of this is even more complicated if a player says something like "I sneak over to the door and listen" -- then it feels like maybe they should be using the Avoid Notice activity as well. Overall, I think your idea for the future ruling is great. Exploration Mode is often about matching the activity as best you can, but being willing to improvise for anything not foreseen. If enemy creatures were on the other side, I would also do a Perception check to be able to hear through the door (assuming no keyhole and a possible penalty for door material/thickness) and if they succeeded I’d also use it for their initiative but with +1 for them and everyone else for Scout, borrowing somewhat from the Avoid Notice rules. With the door closed the party is automatically hidden, if not completely undetected. If unsuccessful, I’d keep both sides undetected for each other and wouldn’t roll initiative until something more avert happened If they wanted to open the door to peek instead of listening, then I’d give them the stealth roll for Avoid Notice, but not the Scout bonus. Initiative would be called for everyone else while the Avoid Notice player would use that Steath roll for initiative. If the player successfully avoided notice against the enemy Perception DCs then the reward there would be that all of the party is in initiative, undetected, and aware while the enemies are in initiative, detected, and still minding their own business.
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Aug 18, 2022 17:37
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I agree that Cling is a subordinate option and doesn’t require a reaction, but I think using Cling as part of the attack should be considered optional, like Improved Push. But a swarm that only seems to want to suck blood would potentially just keep reapplying itself. To run it more intelligently you’d have to have it recognize when a player already is loaded up with its brethren that it needs to go find other food or leave. Either way, using this in my next session as the minions for some stronger creatures.
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Nov 9, 2022 14:13
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One of my least favorite parts of Pathfinder2e is that this can happen to many different classes in different cases. Mental is a major once because a lot of offensive Occult and Bard spells use that trait. Another big one is Clerics/Divine Spell List and the primary damage being alignment damage, which does zero damage to enemies that are not of the specific set of opposite alignments. A third annoyance is the number of creatures that are immune to precision damage, which hurts Precision Ranger and any Rogue looking to use Sneak Attack (i.e. all of them). You’re right in that your player would have a better time with that character in a different campaign, or if they had taken a second reload option like Running Reload.
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Jan 4, 2023 01:16
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The way I see it: what is your primary activity while you’re in the dungeon or traveling and there’s a chance of an encounter breaking out? If the answer is that you’d always want to be prepared to get the jump on whatever you encounter, then yes, you’d always be Avoiding Notice so that you can always roll Stealth for initiative. If you want to do something else, like pick a lock or get into positions to scout, then you’re no longer focused on Stealthing. You can then take feats to both Stealth and do other things at the same time. The whole party may want to sneak in case of an ambush, one part of the party may want to just Defend so they are the decoy, one may want to focus instead on Seeking for something hidden like doors or traps, or everyone could be doing something except the Stealther who can then quickly try to take out a valuable target at the start of a combat.
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Jan 7, 2023 07:39
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Rescue Toaster posted:Hey in pathfinder 2e is there a concept of monster templates? In 4e there were all these mechanics to add some class features to a monster, like if you had a group of goblins and quick wanted to make them a little more unique, you could template a couple of them to clerics/shaman and a couple rangers or something. Of course that was a little easier with how D&D 4e's powers worked. No, there isn’t anything you can quickly grab. For me, I look at abilities other similar monsters have or feats that players can have, re-theme them and redo their stats. That’s all there really is. The GMG includes monster combat role explanations and the stat spreads for each, which you can use directly for archetypes.
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Jan 14, 2023 06:34
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boxen posted:We ran into issues doing that... things like the permissions not properly being reset, or multiple tokens staying selected when you were trying to select only one, vision permissions getting wonky... Is there any reason to not just have all the players have equal access to all the player characters? I do it for one game and the biggest bonus is specifically letting other players easily command characters for missing players.
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Aug 7, 2023 01:46
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Correct, no opposed rolls, with the closest thing being initiative. For encounter building, if you’re building for exactly 4 PCs then your budget is the same that you award. If you’re building for any other amount, you scale your budget up or down, but you award XP as if it was a 4 PC party anyway.
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Aug 8, 2023 18:11
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I do one of two things. If the action being done was from an undetected creature, and especially if it could have been done as a Readied Action, I let it happen and then immediately roll imitative if I believe the two sides will fight. If it’s something like a spell being cast that would ruin stealth to some degree, then based on the rules I put them in initiative first, as a higher initiative means that they were able to react in time. I may give the aggressor a circumstance bonus to their initiative, let them roll a different skill to represent what they’re doing (e.g. for a spellcaster I’d let them roll the skill related to their magic source), or both. Yeah, there’s no surprise rounds, so in general unless someone is playing by Sneak rules then initiative means that the other side always have a chance to react.
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Aug 18, 2023 18:30
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I believe the Hide or Sneak rules mention that your next action needs to be Sneak or Strike, and anything else reveals you (you lose the hidden condition and become detected) before the action resolves so that you don’t get any Off Guard bonus from it. The only exception to this is if you have enough cover or magic (e.g. Spell Rank 4 Invisibility) to keep you hidden. Because of that, and the because of the RAW “one side walks around in initiative unknowingly” which feels better designed to happen to NPCs than for players, I try to run it as Sneak Attack + Readied Actions and then roll initiative. This also keeps it so that one side isn’t all grouped up in initiative due to Delay. But admittedly this works best for a “bust down the door” situation when you don’t have full information on your enemies, so you wouldn’t know enough to have them all in initiative order unless you could see through a keyhole. This also works for cases with a single hidden creature or creatures with a special reaction because it glides into initiative without the players having a “spider sense tingling” out-of-narrative moment if one has player has a high enough initiative but doesn’t actually detect anything coming. After writing all that, I’m nerfing the players, aren’t I? Especially if they are all able to win the Stealth checks necessary, all because I’m afraid of stumbling myself into a situation where a bunch of archers attack in a row and pin cushion them. More GM experience required… Anyone have a cool stealth related encounter from one of their games to share?
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Aug 19, 2023 09:47
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I think the proper answer for most D&D-likes is supposed to be for the Barbarian to pack a few strength-based throwing weapons, whether they be axes or javelins, and especially at early levels. For PF2E at higher levels, you recycle leftover loot to keep the throwing weapons semi-relevant, or you invest in magic items for mobility and range, like the Extending Rune (https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1055).
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Aug 29, 2023 12:29
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Jen X posted:I did say "from the start," because yeah, everyone is goku at level 18, anyone trying to be mundane there is a moron But the characters live in a world that has a lot of arcane and primal magic abound, has feats of religion from literal gods, ghosts and zombies are things people actually worry about, and several low level creatures could only really exist in a world where the answer can be “because magic” (e.g. oozes). Even if a character spent all their life in a farm growing up away from all that stuff they would have still heard about it while growing up. And there is still the likelihood of a town witch or some local magical phenomenon that the town just lives with. I guess what I’m trying to say is, the feats of a low level caster isn’t going to necessarily be impressing everybody.
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Sep 4, 2023 12:19
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There are a lot of secret checks that the GM is supposed to do automatically, like if a character is Searching for their exploration activity or if a hazard has no minimum for perception proficiency. If the GM isn’t the type to do that, then yeah, agree with Pick Another Feat. I know my GM does almost no secret checks and it irks me a bunch.
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Sep 15, 2023 17:26
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Fidel Cuckstro posted:One thing that's surprised me a bit about 2e, coming almost directly from 4e, is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of 1hp mook or cannon-fodder type model for enemies. There's the weak template, but still it seems like the Pathfinder Society adventures I've been playing/running tend to have only 2-3 enemies (against a 4-5 person group) all the time because of it. I don’t always follow along with the thread, but did you already know about Troops? https://2e.aonprd.com/Traits.aspx?ID=367 They are not the same, sadly, but they are there to try and fill the niche of slaying through a bunch of enemies. Unfortunately, they also add more work to the GM for how to represent them on a grid whether in person or online, and how to describe them losing numbers. But overall, I do like them for a similar reason to why I like Oozes; they just reposition into a spear or horseshoe formation, vroom into players, and then go wild with attacks.
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Sep 22, 2023 00:44
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If I understand it correctly, because so many archetypes of fighting styles are essentially archetypes of fighter traitlines, fighters must be strong since they get that stuff without having to archetype. The counter argument is that the other classes don’t necessarily have to archetype. A Champion can stride, grab, and raise a shield, while also then having its reaction class feats and features, for example. Yes, others can get Flurry of Blows at level 10 but Monk still has the best overall defenses built into their class chassis. The counter-counter argument is that Fighters get to do a bunch of combat maneuvers through their class feats, which allow them to get maneuver benefit + do an extra thing. And why wouldn’t you want to do an extra thing? That’s part of what makes the combat style archetypes appealing. You get to do the maneuvers and other stuff. But I would then say as a counter-counter-counter argument that the other classes are still getting to do their own cool thing, just more versatile from their class features and the class feats that they may still pick up over archetype feats at some levels. At that point it’s a point of preference. Did I do the argument thing right?
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Sep 22, 2023 12:05
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Weren’t there people at paizo that mentioned Leshy is one of their most popular new ancestries ever, and management completely missed the boat when the writers were telling them that they would blow up? They were so popular that one of the yearly RPG Day one shots was written to have all the players be a Leshy.
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Sep 30, 2023 15:49
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Lamuella posted:I think for me the lesson is "talk with your players while they're developing their characters". I’m a lurker 99% of the time, but I unironically love reading about these positive experiences in GMing. It’s like the opposite of r/rpghorrorstories. Much better formatting too.
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Oct 1, 2023 15:53
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appropriatemetaphor posted:For Hardwood Armor you get a little free shield, do you still have to spend an action to raise it in order to use the Shield Block reaction? Yep. You still have to follow all shield rules, including using an action for Raise Shield before using the Shield Block reaction.
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Oct 6, 2023 07:34
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Dick Burglar posted:Goons, tell me about flurry and precision rangers. My understanding is that precision is numerically superior unless flurry is making 3+ attacks per round, which means they're basically doing nothing but standing there and attacking. Which, in PF2E, is less than ideal, because it also means they're not doing anything but attacking, and if they're melee then they're at risk of getting multi-attacked right back by their targets. At the same time, I'd be lying if I said the idea of stacking static bonuses and spamming attacks as a flurry ranger doesn't sound appealing to the "MANY DICE, BIG NUMBAZ" part of my brain. But then again, precision rangers can make good use of the eldritch archer archetype, which I think is thematically cool as poo poo. I haven’t gotten to try this myself, but it was mentioned to me once that Flurry Ranger is good in melee with double slice type feats (get more attacks in with less actions) and also works well even if you want to spend an action using Trip or Grab first, which is much better than it is for other classes. Flurry Double Axe is probably the next Ranger build I’d try one day… Doing a turret build does like it would be boring, but Double Slice feels like it would let me be a bit like a Monk and mix up my turns a lot more. Proven fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Oct 7, 2023 |
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Oct 7, 2023 02:39
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If it helps, the majority of spells people will want to use are in Secrets of Magic and Rage of Elements. The majority of items people will want to use are in the Treasure Vault. All three include some reprints from APs. It’s not a one stop shop, but it does let you focus on fewer places to look. There’s also Archives of Nethys, if you’re willing to do all of the filtering. You can filter by any number of books and item/spell traits. Edit: Bah, you posted a response first.
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Oct 28, 2023 16:21
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I’ve literally given up on doing anything on their website except for sales and major book releases because I shouldn’t have to clear my cache to give you money or do anything else with an account on your website in the year 2023.
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Nov 9, 2023 01:03
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 05:58 |
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I think you’re both agreeing? It’s the same as climbing; you do the check, and then move according to the check. It’s still just one action and one check, and not two actions.
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Jan 8, 2024 17:17
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