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How long is the Beginner's Box? 5e's LMOP goes to about level 5 and has a solid town, a couple of decent dungeons and sidequests. Apparently the Beginner's Box ends at level 2 already, and should be followed up with Troubles in Otari and then Abomination Vaults? That sounds a bit short to me for the Beginner's Box to me, but maybe I'm comparing it wrong?
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Aug 30, 2022 20:09
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 13:28 |
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I play digitally, so I'll be using the Foundry VTT module. I've heard nothing but good things about Foundry itself, and the official Beginner Box module. Not quite sure what to do after the Beginner's Box though. Troubles in Otari follows afterwards, but that will get my party to level 5, where Abomination Vaults looks like it should start at level 1 or 2. Maybe I should just go directly to AV, but I like the idea of really establishing Otari as a home base with TIO in between. I suppose I could scale AV up a little in the beginning, not sure how hard it would be. I've DM'd a couple of years of 5e so I know my way around numbers and how to tweak and homebrew stuff there, but PF2e is new to me.
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Aug 31, 2022 02:31
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I think I might go for that. Scale up the early bits of AV, level them up a little bit slower, and they'll catch up soon enough. Thanks for the help!
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Aug 31, 2022 03:02
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I'm just starting up myself after a couple of years of 5e. You picked a good time. New Foundry version just hit, and they're starting to release premium versions of the modules on Foundry, complete with maps, music, art, journals etc. I'm having my first Beginner Box game in a few weeks. I'll report back how it went but I'm really excited. Then more I read, the more I like what PF2e does compared to 5e.
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Sep 7, 2022 09:54
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The only downside is, now that I've seen those Foundry APs, I don't want to do any non-Foundry AP campaigns ever again. They've spoiled me.
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Oct 5, 2022 19:09
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Yeah I just finished my first session as well. Beginner's Box on FoundryVTT with six people, most of whom I've ran through D&D5e campaigns on Roll20 in the past. I had a great time and they did too. Prep was effortless, but mostly I loved that things just made sense for me as a DM. There were a lot more direct mechanical rules for doing things, and I had to do so much less rulings on the fly. Except the Aid action which felt surprisingly vague. Felt like 5e with having to make rulings based on their suggestions of what they thought would count as Aid. Only thing that stood out to me compared to all the other actions in and out of combat. We're not done yet, probably have one more session for the Beginner's Box, maybe two. Then into Troubles in Otari! Super impressed so far with both PF2e and Foundry and the premium module.
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Oct 17, 2022 04:15
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Yeah, I think I might just set a base rule of "make the same skill check/attack roll against the same DC/AC or 20, whichever is lower." (I think the DC 20 is a bit high early on, considering they have to spend action and reaction for just a +1). Thanks for the advice.
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Oct 17, 2022 15:13
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Yeah I've upped the amounts of enemies by 50% or made some of them into Elites. Most battles have been easy, but the crypt battle downed three of them. They survived, though. It's going well! Balancing the end boss seems the toughest for me, making that thing Elite will bump it's AC up pretty high, and I don't want the fight to be miss, miss, miss. But ultimately my hope with PF2e is to be able to trust the system without having to tweak monster stats beyond weak/elite or adding/removing monsters. Might be hard for a tough solo boss when the party is 50% larger than intended though.
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Oct 20, 2022 13:51
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Yeah one of the Elite Zombie Shamblers crit and would have completely one-shotted (from full health to 0) my cleric if he hadn't had Shield Block to absorb some of the hit. It can definitely be tough early going! As for the end boss, what I mostly want to avoid is the party just failing to hit the drat thing over and over. In my experience the least fun way to buff enemies is to bump up their AC too high. It's much more fun for players to hit the monster, but it takes more hits, than whiffing entire attacks more often and doing no damage. The Elite template has been excellent so far, but the AC is already high on the boss, so I'm worried that will buff it too much. Normally I would just add more enemies. I find that usually the best way to scale encounters. But part of what attracted me to PF2e is the idea that I can actually have meaningful tough combats vs solo bosses without action economy making it a joke challenge-wise. But of course, increasing group size by 50% is a pretty big jump. I've got years of D&D5e DMing under my belt so adjusting monster stats is nothing new to me, but my hope is that PF2e will require less of that. I'm going to trust the encounter budget and use the elite template and see how it works. Either that or I make two weaker dragons instead.
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Oct 20, 2022 17:35
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Finster Dexter posted:What is 4e style?
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Jan 9, 2023 19:51
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Base Emitter posted:So for the longer adventure paths, that are broken up into six sections, can you start halfway through, or is going to be too much trouble bringing a group in halfway through a series? Is there a path one can jump a group into at level 11 where the back half is well written even if the path had a shaky start? Another 11-20 adventure path is coming out this year, maybe that appeals more? It definitely does to me and my group.
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Jan 15, 2023 04:54
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Megazver posted:Trouble in Otari wasn't that interesting tbh, just do AV. Yeah I'm playing through it (DMing) right now. It's fine, it's perfectly all right. It's just pretty basic, some baddies here, some fights there and two small dungeons. It's neat, but it feels very side-questy. Not a big loss if you skip it and just focus on Abomination Vaults instead.
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Jan 26, 2023 18:19
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Finster Dexter posted:I'm holding out for Starfinder 2e that uses PF2e systems.
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Jan 31, 2023 22:50
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I self-host Foundry with zero issues. I don't need to worry about file-size and storage. It's great. I do need to load up the server on my computer for people to log on, but that's usually fine. I load it up when my players ask me to, or some time before the session. However you will need to be able to port-forward, which not everyone can. So if that's not a possibility, I hear great things about the Oracle thing people are mentioning. Forge is probably easy, but I hear performance isn't always great.
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Feb 2, 2023 19:04
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Crafting in PF2e seems a bit flawed. First if all it's kind of weird that everything takes 4 days to make, regardless of what you're making. A +3 greater striking sword? 4 days. A steel shield? 4 days. 10 arrows? 4 days. Doesn't matter how good you are at crafting either. Always 4. Second of all, the cost you pay seems weird too. Baseline it's just full price. Feels like there should be some sort of monetary benefit to crafting an item rather than just buying it. Ah, but if course there is a system to solve both these things! Except it's not really worth bothering with. You can work "extra time" to spend more time on the item, and make it cheaper. But that's all you gain. You can't make the item any better or any faster. Extra time just saves you a tiny bit of material cost. And I do mean tiny. If you're a level 5 expert crafter, you want to make a +1 armour, which is priced 160g. You put up 80g and spend 4 days. At this point you now have to spend a full day(!) to reduce the price by a mere 1g! A full 80 days extra, for 84 days total to reduce the price to 80g for the armor. Who's gonna do that? I've heard this is all because it's supposed to be balanced around not breaking the economy, other Earn Income actions, and to avoid the madness of PF1e crafting. I've no experience with that. All I know it's that it seems kind of lackluster right now, and some of players were looking forward to crafting will probably be a bit disappointed. The new book coming out soon apparently has some new crafting rules. Probably nothing massively different though. Anyone have any opinions/experiences on crafting in a campaign? Anyone run with a house rule?
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Feb 5, 2023 08:07
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I think ultimately what me and my players want is a system that just lets you craft cool stuff because it's cool and fulfills a type of heroic fantasy of being a skilled smith, inventor, alchemist, etc. I understand people's worry about it becoming a broken system that makes trillions of GP that ruins the economy entirely, or makes your players ignore the adventure to just play math simulator and get rich in fake money. But my players wouldn't do that anyway. They want to defeat the evil villains, and if they can spend some of their downtime to make a cool weapon or armor on their own, saving money compared to buying it in a shop, that's awesome. It puts a little personal touch on the stuff they are wearing and using. The easiest and simplest way would be to give them unique formulas, so that the stuff they are making is stuff you can't just buy in a shop anyway, so they have to craft it if they want it. But I think it would be cool if beyond unique stuff, someone trained and specialized in crafting could make the needed rune or 100 fire arrows during downtime, and save some money in the process. I think the system needs some fixing to make that a viable alternative to just buying it, and spending the downtime you would have spent crafting it earning money instead. Ultimately adventuring and questing will make you far more money than any Downtime activity anyway (rightfully so), so I'm not too worried about how they are balanced against each other for how much money you make.
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Feb 5, 2023 18:33
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I've run with milestone leveling for years, but recently started doing XP in my Beginner's Box -> Troubles of Otari adventure, and my players loved it. There's small moments of mechanical victory in between the levelups, beyond just progressing the plot and RPing. You do things, and get small numbers. Numbers go up. Enough small numbers going up makes bigger numbers go up. Big number go up and you're more powerful. That feels good. I think as long as you make sure to reward people for other things than just killing monsters, it's good. It helps that in PF2e it's always 1000xp to level up, and each fight is like 80-120 xp depending on difficulty. Easy to keep track, generally.
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Feb 8, 2023 00:24
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Speaking of XP vs milestone, this is what Brennan Lee Mulligan and Matt Mercer thinks of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbgYM39j8Mc
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Feb 8, 2023 20:08
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It's a little bit less handwavy now (no more 4 days only), and you can make more choices when crafting, but ultimately I still don't like that crafting an item gives you basically no benefit compared to just buying it. I understand the reasons why, but I think there should be something to gain for all the feats and skills spent on becoming a better crafter. I think I'll just end up letting my players focus on crafting stuff you can't buy normally by letting them find unique formulas, and give out crafting materials used only for crafting, but worth more than just the equivalent in gold. Maybe throw in a custom magic item that lowers cost and/or time spent or something.
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Feb 10, 2023 19:01
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I think it's more there's no way to stop it, so why not support it? Roll20 just allows importing of ANY PDF file, and since Paizo (unlike WotC) actually sells PDFs, it's something worth retweeting about.
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Feb 10, 2023 22:05
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The Kobold Warrior is -1, so he's 2 levels below your level 1 party. So he's only worth 20xp. This would make him a Trivial fight (since that's 40xp or less). If you want a fight with Kobold Warriors to be remotely meaningful for your party of level 1s, you would like 2 for a Trivial threat fight, 3 for a Low threat fight, and 4 for a Moderate threat fight (4x20 = 80xp).
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Feb 12, 2023 23:45
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PastaBakeWizard posted:I've been running Beginner Box -> Trouble in Otari for two players recently and I had a sloggy session today. They came up against the Shadow from the Leadbuster Lads chapter, which has some all encompassing immunities that you can partially get around with magical attacks or those which cast light. The fight dragged on for a very long time and I am really not sure if I should have intervened - the party has an alchemist who absolutely could have decided to retreat and come back with some bottled lightning and alchemist's fire, which they correctly guessed I would have ruled as a hard yes on its pseudo-weakness to light, but they decided to brute force and have the ranger fish for big hits through the resistance using the hunted prey ability. I had exactly this problem when I did this bit for my group. The shadow fight dragged on forever, well into 12 or 13 rounds. Not only could it Hide in people's shadows, making everyone have to make Flat Checks to even hit it in the first place, the immunities and resistances were massive against my precision-heavy party. It took forever, and it didn't help that it created more shadows once it drained someone enough times. They did ultimately win, by using a few spells and just enough grind to get it. But it was definitely a lowlight. It's definitely the thing I would have adjusted and tweaked in mid-fight to make it less annoying in the past, but this was my first proper test of PF2e, so I wanted to really run it fully RAW. I think the lesson my party ultimately took from the fight was the value in having a diverse party with plenty of different damage types and different methods of fighting. The lesson I took as a DM was to continue to trust myself as a GM when I feel like things are not going the way I want to, and adjust there - change the tactics of the Shadow, like you did, or alter the circumstances of the fight somehow to change it up - if not fully just change its HP mid-fight when I think the fight has run its course.
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Mar 5, 2023 20:23
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Put your foot down, and if they're being a passive aggressive whiner about it later, kick 'em. That's all there's to it, really. Don't let anyone ruin your fun campaign.
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Mar 21, 2023 21:06
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Treat Wounds only works if you have the feat 'Stitch Flesh'.
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Apr 5, 2023 12:19
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I've had this argument a lot, and plenty of people disagree about how this works. There's multiple threads on the Paizo forum of people arguing one way or another, about what spells work, what healing works, etc, etc. The main argument really boils down to if Basic Undead Benefits overwrite the Undead trait, or they are both active, and if an undead character counts as "living creature". The way I read it, a skeleton ancestry has the undead trait. It's right there in the tags for the ancestry. And Stitch Flesh has the text "You can use Treat Wounds to restore Hit Points to undead creatures, not just living ones." A Skeleton ancestry IS an undead creature. So therefore, Stitch Flesh would be required to use Treat Wounds on it. Similarly elixirs of life has in its text "Elixirs of life accelerate a living creature's natural healing processes". A skeleton is not a living creature. Now, obviously, this is all down to how you read things. If you go by the idea that the undead trait isn't applicable for Skeleton (despite it being there) and instead only Basic Undead Benefits count, you can be healed by anything that isn't positive healing - so Elixirs of Life works on you despite you not being living, same for Elixir of Rejuvenation. It also makes Stitch Flesh kind of pointless. What are you gonna use it on? Random zombie minions following you around? It definitely would make things easier for a party with a skeleton (like mine), but I can't help but feel it's a bit weird for a skeleton to be considered a living creature, that can be healed just the same as anyone else through bandages and salves and whatever, with just a standard Treat Wounds/Battle Medicine check. I'm torn, honestly. I read the rules the way it makes sense to me, but maybe it would just be easier to be more permissive.
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Apr 5, 2023 14:20
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Sunday Gold was good. No real experience with any of their other titles. Cautiously optimistic, I guess?
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Apr 6, 2023 18:19
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You decide on the fly that a boss villain has 10 more hit points so that he doesn't die to a tick of permanent damage, and rather dies to a sweet crit the party is setting up with teamwork. Or vice versa, your party did something cool and badass, and the resulting damage leaves the boss on 6hp, so the fight drags on for one more anti-climactic round. Just lower his hp by 6 so this awesome moment is how they kill him. Neither of these things mean the entire game is on rails and decisions doesn't matter. I don't know why people always have to be so extreme in these arguments.
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May 26, 2023 17:58
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Yeah I'm sitting out of updating anything for a couple of months this time around.
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May 29, 2023 20:45
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The drow have been completely retconned out of existence as of the Remaster. They're just not a thing in Pathfinder and Golarion anymore.
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Jul 19, 2023 21:31
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I am rejoicing! Their current website is straight out of the early '90s. It's absolutely insane they've managed to scrape by as much success as they have with such a terrible website and store. A sign of the quality of their stuff I guess.
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Jul 20, 2023 14:04
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Jarvisi posted:Does anyone have experience with the pf2 animations mod for foundry? Trying to see if it's worth it to do the paid tier of jb2a animations It's brilliant. It's flashy and very cool. You can just buy one month, get everything, and then unsub from the patreon. Resub at some point in the future if you want all the stuff that's been added since, otherwise you've got lots of cool effects for a fiver or so. Worth it, imo!
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Jul 29, 2023 21:44
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But Warp Step is a cantrip, not a level 4 spell?
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Aug 29, 2023 01:39
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Ah yeah, you mentioned Psychic Dedication, I forgot they had super cantrips.
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Aug 29, 2023 02:05
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Dick Burglar posted:If the DM (...does PF call it a DM?) GM for Gamemaster! 
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Aug 29, 2023 20:43
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Jon posted:If anyone found the above list useful let me know and I can make a more exhaustive source list for good digital maps with Foundry integration I found it super useful, thank you for the tips!
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Aug 31, 2023 00:02
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Looks a bit inspired by the Sami to me, people in the very north of Sweden/Norway/Finland.
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Sep 1, 2023 18:56
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Honestly, it sounds like the GM is playing things perfectly fair and fine to me, after hearing your clarifications. If you as a group think it's too rough - your style just being a little bit more laid-back and using less tactics and teamwork than most (which is fine) - then it's about having a conversation with the GM about what you want from a campaign, versus what they want, and if you can find a middle ground.
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Nov 2, 2023 23:04
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The Slack Lagoon posted:Back alley doctor forensic medicine ivestigstor I'm currently DMing Outlaws of Alkenstar, and a player character played exactly this. It's excellent, can highly recommend.
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Dec 10, 2023 04:12
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In my experience (a total of one person between levels 1-6) the Forensic Investigator with Medic Dedication was arguably the star of the show. Great healing, good skills for out of combat, and solid damage in fights. So I wouldn't be discouraged at all.
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Dec 24, 2023 03:12
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 13:28 |
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That's just the first chapter, not the entire first book, you have tons of fun stuff to go! I'm currently running an Outlaws of Alkenstar campaign and I've really enjoyed it! I've got two and a half chapters to go or so, but I keep adding my own stuff, so it's been a bit longer.
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Jan 20, 2024 19:57
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