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One of the snags with PF2e is that it’s harder to adapt for changing player counts. XP is per player so you can’t just do the “split the XP among more people so the PCs are lower level later on”, and the action economy is really sensitive. It’s best to try to scale up encounters using the guidelines in the book, but scaling to 8 may need some fudging.
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Aug 21, 2022 05:19
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VikingofRock posted:Scaling to 8 is really easy, just double the number of enemies. All BBEGs have a equally evil twin. Which is more or less what the book tells you to do, but has the problem that if double the enemies end up attacking one tank PC, then they too easily get trashed. If you can somehow find a way to spread the party out then it can work, but tacticians tend to avoid that.
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Aug 21, 2022 17:06
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sugar free jazz posted:Anyone run ruby phoenix? What was good what needed to be tossed? Gonna be reskinning as a tournament anime Ew boy. Ok, I had a hell of a time running this one, and it does require a fair amount of tweaking. Spoilers ahoy for the rest of the message. Generally Hao Jin is a goddamn Mary Sue (her name is basically Mary Sue!). I had to tone her down a bit, which wasn't that difficult given the errors in other areas of the adventure. Yea, she's a powerful magician but she loses touch with people who aren't and is a bit untethered from the real world. She's also under a heck of a lot of stress given that wars are fought over who she sides with, which she never asked for. It's important that she's sympathetic for the plot to resonate properly, so don't be afraid to tone her down a bit. There are too few references to the larger plot early on. It's perfectly possible for the players to get all the way through without actually knowing the background. I ended up having to have Hao Jin explain it at the very end, which was kind of awkward. I played this with the Stamina rules to allow easier regeneration between rounds but make health loss within rounds more significant. This worked pretty well in theme, although I had to rescind it for the last few battles. Part 1 The tournament rules are woefully inadequate for the capabilities of level 11 characters, and most of the other team members and enforcers have only immediate combat spells. This means that party members with invisibility/mind control/summoning/teleport other can screw things up completely between matches. It's probably worth clarifying that this kind of shenanigans will get them disqualified if it's something your PCs might consider. Because of the way the adventure is written, the PCs have to manage scarce spell resources but the opposing teams don't. This isn't very fair for a tournament, so I fudged that the arenas magically allow everyone to use all their spell slots while in a fight then resit them to how they were before the match as they leave. Planey waney stuff or something. The main part of the adventure is trying to be Fortnite built in the PF2 engine, but it doesn't work that well because PCs don't have that much motivation to do anything but explore. Don't be too surprised if your players just want to "look for another team to fight them" since that's the only way they get ahead early on. I basically had to ignore most of the island geography and just give them the encounters in the order that might be interesting. Basically, if the PCs play to try to win the tournament as best they can according to the rules, the adventure breaks. It's counting on them to just treat it like a hex-crawl. Also, the adventure has the treasure pickups apart from the static encounters. Again, it's trying to be Fortnite, but this doesn't work at all in an environment where you can't play over and over again and "learn the map". Instead just where the PCs randomly wander can give them a hard adventure or a really easy one. I just put the treasure packets with the monsters. In Event 5, watch out for particularly opportunistic PCs attempting to challenge the opposing team after saving them while they're exhausted. In Event 8, we have the traditional problem of "assult on the base" encounters in Pathfinder APs, which is that there is no way for the PCs to know that the opposition isn't infinite until the source is stopped, and no way for them to investigate that source. Be ready for the PCs to wander around outside the temple. Event 11: the PCs may well have all the points they need by this stage, which can make this amusing, as in my case the enemy team left the arena perimeter and the PCs just went "huh. Well, we're alright jack." Event 12: no, they don't disintegrate Hao Jin. If they do that, the PCs will rightfully run for the hills from these obviously incredibly powerful casters. Save the Phoenix thing for the ending. The exhibition events are kind of daft, since Hao Jin won't allow anyone to be permanently harmed there is no reason not to volunteer for all of them. Obviously the adventure wants the PCs to do this, but it might be a bit awkward. Phoenix Challenge: for the magical genius that she is, it seems Hao Jin forgot that Fly is a level 4 spell. The Lightkeepers: Blue Viper may need some buffing or modification. He is practically useless until the final encounter because of the onset times on his poisons. Part 2 The Sixth Pillar Archetype is considered broken by the designers themselves. Don't grant it to players. Event 3: if your PCs are the strongly heroic type, they might think this is an invitation to start trying to hunt down the Golden League in the city. The tournament itself is fine, depending on how heavily munchkinised your player group is. You may need to tell the players that the adventure does not actually require that they win the tournament, otherwise they may switch off if they think the result is predestined. Drake Race: The "chase subsystem" does not work for vehicles and honestly barely works at all. This is used at least twice in this adventure. You might end up needing to fudge heavily or even just graft another one on instead (I suggest pinching one from Savage Worlds if it comes to that) Challenge of Falling Stars: make sure to start both teams separated and on different levels of the arena. If they all start at the bottom, there is no reason for them to engage with any part of the map, since they just want to fight each other. Blood and Beauty: there goes Hao Jin forgetting about Fly again. Panic on the Seven Dragons Bridge: making the encounter about saving the crowds kind of complicates things. PCs may be concerned about what happens if a dead 50'x50' creature falls on a bridge. Also bear in mind that if any PC has a "knocks prone.." ability, technically that causes a flying creature to plummet all the way to the ground and potentially require several rounds of full movement to get back to where it was, which can bypass or disrupt many aerial fights. If you want to keep Hao Jin even more humanized, bear in mind that a powerful planar sorceress has shown up in their city, and then the place has had to be evacuated due to planar creature attacks. What would you think? Razu: seriously, someone stick that chase subsystem where the sun doesn't shine. Part 3 The thing about S------ controlling geography in the demiplane should be thrown out instantly. It means he's either an idiot or he would defeat the PCs trivially. G1: the map does not show the tunnels or "lookout windows", so this may require some sudden amendments. G2: why would someone leave a bunch of astronomy equipment lying outside exposed to the elements? This is only part of a very strong suspicion I have that the G- area was actually built as a dungeon and then converted to an island at the last minute for the AP. The Night Parade: another bit of evidence for the "dungeon" theory is that this takes place in a clearing, and jungle surrounding a clearing isn't necessarily impassible. PCs who can take to the trees or fly over them can trivially attack the Parade from areas it cannot enter due to its size. G5: don't show the PCs the picture of the Dimensional Darkside Mirror that's printed in the adventure. Their response will be "we walk up behind it and push it over." The Grand Dojo: remember what I said about Blue Viper? Plum Rain Deluge + Tears of Death is a potential one shot TPK. Be very careful with this. H4/H5: crawl-experienced PCs are not going to use a magic pillow or a magic rope in the heart of their enemy's base. Ending: to lower the Mary Sue element a bit, I had Hao Jin do the phoenix thing while still within the Lighthouse and then appear seriously wounded and disoriented, and let the PCs rush her back to Goka on their craft (watch out for PCs with Legendary Medic, of course) for medical attention. I also added a bit about the empress's scouts having found Tino's Toughest in the woods, just so they know they're alright. This also slowed down the ending a bit, because it's otherwise a bit sudden. Somebody fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 16:10
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KPC_Mammon posted:I think your second change might have caused the first problem. I can see there's a connection. The main reason for the second change was to avoid creating a prisoners dilemma where the the PCs - or even the NPCs - waited to avoid being any team's first fight of the day, because if you're the second or later you can face them at reduced effectiveness. Using spells out of combat could be much more effective than in the rounds. For example, it's established that the hostile creatures living on Bonmu can kill tournament entrants without being subject to the rules. This provides lots of loopholes for Druids or other characters who can control animals to sic those creatures on enemy teams as they travel. A Druid could even get away with turning into a tiger or something and then killing another entrant, because how does the opponent know that it wasn't just a regular tiger that happened to be on the island? None of the enemy templates have detection or dispelling. If you can turn invisible, you can sneak up on another team as they sleep, grab their Phoenix Necklace and go chuck it in the bay, then they will be disqualified for not being able to present it. No-one has see invisibility either, not even the enforcers (other than Koto). Yes, you could try and say "well Hao Jin sees everything that's happening and tips the enforcers off" but then why would she allow Event 8 to happen? Bear in mind that the tournament rules are a bit weird as well, like being able to reduce losses against teams you fear by challenging them for 1 feather then immediately surrendering. The PCs probably would not do that but the NPCs might. sugar free jazz posted:I'll take a look at some of these things, particularly the chase stuff The big problem with the chase rules is that they assume that the PCs are spending all their actions moving, and anything else they do slows them down, so they wouldn't do it very often. That works for a foot chase, but all the chases in Ruby Phoenix are done in vehicles where that problem doesn't apply - it only takes one person to fly the vehicle and move everyone (and sometimes they get an NPC pilot) which gives the PCs all their actions free and lets them mess with the chase in ways the rules clearly didn't expect. The other issue is that it doesn't have any mapping of chase position to actual distance, which becomes awkward when the PCs want to throw missiles, use spells, Errol Flynn their way onto the opposing vehicle, etc. hyphz fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Sep 8, 2022 |
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Sep 8, 2022 17:45
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Anonymous Zebra posted:I don't own this adventure so I can't be sure, but those all sound like interesting and creative ways for the PCs to solve a problem without following the script the module gives them. I wouldn't try to bend the rules to prevent that, as much as I would consider ways to make NPCs act more creatively to hassle the PCs in similar ways. I always come down on the side of PCs finding ways to gently caress the module with creative ideas and spell-use, so good for them. Yea, that's always the kicker - you don't want to railroad the PCs or penalize them for being creative, but at the same time, allowing it can break the AP or result in really crummy fiction. Honestly, the whole "Hao Jin has her head in the clouds" thing in my game came from when the players used Fly to bypass the Phoenix Challenge and I tried to play it as a comedy anime moment with Hao Jin looking on blushing and blinking while the Empress facepalmed. "Oh, I forget about that. I mean, I just use True Planar Translocation all the time.." Also in case this is useful, here's a link to the handout I made with the rules and the implied map of the island (which is blatantly the UK with a chunk taken out of it) that the Enforcers give the PCs as they start up. Our PC team were the Bright Crusaders but it's editable so you can insert your team name. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ii4XZ3F9H82TxcAsOH5dshgxDUDlGLQJ/ hyphz fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Sep 9, 2022 |
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Sep 9, 2022 00:11
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The Golux posted:just conceptually the idea of a skeleton bard is amusing to me. He brings his own xylophone
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Sep 13, 2022 08:50
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The Golux posted:Part of it is that it's generally designed with the assumption of characters on foot with no extraordinary movement abilities and approximately equal base speeds, is my understanding? Basically yes. The big problem is that there’s no mapping from “chase points” to actual ranges or anything else in the system. If the PCs want to do basically anything other than follow the target and use the standard listed ways to defeat obstacles, it’s pure handwavium, which is jarring compared to the rest of PF2e. Also air chases and combats can be really screwed up if anyone has a weapon that knocks prone.
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Sep 26, 2022 16:09
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You do really want to modify that DC 20 later on unless you are prepared for Aid to become a universal bonus once a character is high level and has Assurance.
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Oct 17, 2022 15:57
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Autodrop Monteur posted:In my campaign I've been using the DCs by level when my players want to take an aid action. That's fine provided the DC ends up less than the original DC of the check. The whole point is that helping someone else should be easier because the result of success is less (the helped person getting a bonus rather than the whole task succeeding)
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Oct 17, 2022 21:41
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If you are coming from 5e for the first time, start at level 1. There are a lot more options to deal with and the combat can be very slow until everyone’s up to speed with the system.
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Jan 15, 2023 05:31
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AV can be quite deadly, so you might need to pace the encounters a bit.
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Jan 15, 2023 06:17
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canepazzo posted:How do cantrip levels work? Say Astral Rain, which is a Cantrip 3 - does it just mean I can only learn it when I'm level 5? Astral Rain is Uncommon and is the Unique Psi Cantrip granted by the Tangible Dream splat of the Psychic class. So the only "official" way to learn it at all is through that class path, where you would need to be at least level 5 to learn it. If you're somehow learning it some other way, then presumably it's a suggestion that you shouldn't be able to until level 5, but there are no hard rules on doing so because you're already outside the rules by doing that. If you're just browsing through feats and spells on Nethys or Pathbuilder it's often necessary to check the details of Uncommon or Rare items for this kind of thing.
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Jan 15, 2023 23:26
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Pryce posted:If you’ve played the CRPG they let you just trade with the kobolds if you want to. It feels like that’s probably a clear option in the AP that wasn’t utilized? I haven’t read it yet. I think the GM may need to be reminded that the default NPC attitude is Indifferent and only a crit fail on Diplomacy lowers the target attitude. Not every AP runs like Vaults.
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Mar 11, 2023 19:41
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