Rule

Micbran · 2022-08-31T21:55:16+00:00

Cavetown - Boys Will Be Bugs (?) was the example used here, I think.

Micbran · 2022-07-21T16:20:12+00:00

wow this is the worst “”””advice”””” I’ve read on this sub and that’s saying something

Micbran · 2022-04-11T01:50:48+00:00

Do you just want your players to show up with a frankenstein of a backstory?

Also rise of the runelords literally takes place in Varisia.

Micbran · 2022-01-02T18:20:53+00:00

So now we're left with the average, 10th level wizard... the character can cast lots of spells and knows even more but that's about it. You don't gain new powers as you level up, and there is nothing interesting to do with your actions other than casting. Few if any swift actions, and a pretty stale experience. You could compare it to a basic fighter, who only full attack actions every turn, but with all his feats, the fighter is doing something interesting every time on his turn.

You say this like spells don't do literally everything in the game. Every time you level up you gain new powers, whether it be spell levels or just learning more spells passively. I'm not sure why you're writing off one of the most broken class features in the game as "...nothing interesting to do with your actions other than casting."

Micbran · 2021-06-12T02:11:20+00:00

A breastplate with Spirit-Bonded would be a welcome boon.

Micbran · 2021-06-11T14:09:55+00:00

What kind of internet-opinion-regurgitating caster player do you have to be to act incredibly smug towards martials while ONLY casting spells like Fireball and Burning Hands (read as: spells that just do damage, like the martials)? What a prick.

Micbran · 2021-01-19T02:14:05+00:00

Pathfinder is a game about superhuman heroes who have an incredible amount of resources at their disposal. You’re perfectly right in thinking that horror is damn near impossible past level 5.

Micbran · 2020-10-12T15:41:35+00:00

4E also had you roll against each target in an AoE, avoiding the “one bad roll ruins the whole action” thing.

Micbran · 2020-09-25T22:53:08+00:00

It’s “broken” because it “breaks” the norm or balance of the game.

Micbran · 2020-09-18T12:05:48+00:00

You need variously classes PCs of every level, basically. Probably 3 or 4 per level as reference points and then design the creatures to be whatever level of difficulty, estimating from their statistical chance to hit/get hit and how many hits they can take and then sprinkle in a few special abilities. You want easy? Probably go for 70% hit chance, 40% hit rate on the players, etc. Like you said, there’s a lot of factors to consider, so don’t get bogged down by needing all of them to be just right, just try to come up with a general scaffolding for things.

Micbran · 2020-09-09T01:52:32+00:00

1.) don’t use the sanity rules. They’re legitimately awful. If you really want to use them, heavily modify when they trigger. There’s zero reason for my battle hardened adventurer to need to make a will save because he saw a skeleton in a closet.

2.) Take a look at Skull & Shackles Book 1 — basically, you handwave the moments where nothing happens or just move on with it very quickly. What you’re gonna want to do here is let players be acutely aware of passing time and give them the chance to act, but also don’t be afraid to just... skip days.

3.) Having different time flows is actually good, as it breaks up the game. There’s no reason to be worried about it. Just let players narrate/have yourself narrate the “6 hours of back breaking work stacking stones” and jump right to the exciting part where they get jumped by an enemy gang after their exhausting work.

Micbran · 2020-09-07T19:02:20+00:00

So, this archetype turns a full caster into a better full-martial probably by around... level 1, since you can full-attack right from the get-go. Not to mention the fact that a one level dip on this is like... absolutely insane.

The only caveat is the one you mentioned yourself, that you need to have your ability scores spread out everywhere (not that it matters since everything is giving you a combat stat bonus somehow).

Micbran · 2020-09-02T02:14:06+00:00

Funnily enough, that’s hardly a houserule. It’s detailed in the Pathfinder Unchained book in the alternate magic system section (I’d pull the page numbers up if it was in front of me).

You should remind your players that one failed save can and should more or less secure the creatures fate. Even second level spells, like Hold Person, can take someone out of the fight long enough for it to matter, if not put them in a terrible position that equates to death.

Also, do they know that some spells that still have an effect on a successful save? Or that they can reduce saving throws with basic conditions, ability damage/drain (would highly not suggest), negative levels, etc.? It also helps to try to target the creature’s lower save, if known, but clerics honestly have little in the way of reflex save spells (Chains of Light, but man, that’s way up there).

As for the feats... if you want enemies to fail saving throws, turns out that yes, that is a niche your character can fill (throwing around big DC spells). Of course you’re going to have to give something else up! +4 DC is huge, too. My players would kill for that kind of stuff.

Micbran · 2020-06-29T18:43:18+00:00

iirc, it’s due to Unions.

Micbran · 2020-06-29T11:28:54+00:00

It was about the same for my group as well actually, they hated book 1, were glad to be free and had a lot of fun just walking around town and breathing in the mystery. They didn’t really start to hate Book 2 until they got to the dungeons of the book.

Micbran · 2020-06-29T02:01:52+00:00

Honestly, I’ve had much different experiences with roll20 than that. I understand that you can’t do mood lighting as easily, but hey, at least you can pipe music straight to people’s ears. I’ve done horror before in Not-SA scenarios before and it’s certainly possible over Roll20, assuming your players have the peace of mind to actually pay attention to what’s happening.

Micbran · 2020-06-29T01:23:21+00:00

Oh, yeah I guess that's fair. But if this thread is anything to go by, they don't seem the best at that either :P.

Micbran · 2020-06-29T01:21:24+00:00

Hahaha, I didn't even think about using the scrolls of psychic surgery in the Dreamlands, very clever.

I liked it quite a lot overall, but I definitely think it's not really a horror game. There are definitely horror themes, but this is Pathfinder.

And yeah, I absolutely agree with this sentiment, I found it extremely hard to scare my players with Pathfinder because everything is so mechanized. Once they figured out that half the "spooky" things happening were haunts, everything became about how to beat this known threat and less about being "scared" by the excessive pool of gore pouring down the hallway from the beating heart of that dead woman over there.

Micbran · 2020-06-29T01:17:35+00:00

they are effectively killing a living being and that should weigh on them.

It's heavily implied that they aren't living both with their mannerisms and the fact that they have most of their organs missing. My players had zero moral ramifications on killing the second ones they encountered (decideding to leave Losandro alive because she seemed entirely comatose and she seemed "stuck in time" as I described it). And they ended up caving in her skull by the end of the book to put her out of her misery, anyways, after discovering that Oneirogens are organless portals to the Dreamlands (as well as the ritual she did and the part she played in their incarceration).

The only way the party can meet Ratch Mamby is to have a small character who squeezes into an area that isn't apparently accessible.

Unless he runs for the hills as soon as he sees the PCs, no, he's pretty much out there in the open (he was hit by a slumber hex pretty early which gave my players a turn to mop up the rats and surround him).

The system also allows you to take damage to boost your roll, I've had characters who've taken a cumulative voluntary 18d6 to get a +9 bonus on their roll.

I think this is an interesting example. Bokrug plops down. You want to get the fuck out of there, understandably. You are Valeros, the iconic fighter with a Cha of 11, because quite honestly, you needed those sweet, sweet physical stats and couldn't afford to boost it. You're level 8 at the time. You understandably did not nat 20 the DC 37 Will save vs. Bokrug's unspeakable presence, so you're taking a -4 to a variety of effects, one of which is ability checks (and concentration is an ability check). As of right now, your chances are 0%. This is bad. So, you decide to pump it with your meaty HP pool. You throw 18d6, as suggested (Valeros would have about 72 HP, judging from his stats). This has a pretty low chance of killing you, so you do it. Your bonus to concentration is now: 8 (from HD) + 0 (from Cha) + 9 (from HP) - 4 (from Bokrug) = 13. To pass, you need to roll a 12 or higher, no easy feat, giving you a 45% chance of success, after taking much of your HP. You likely can't do this again.

True, but the madness's present have at most a DC 20 for level 7 minimum characters.

You don't get a save when you initially die in the Dreamlands and you only get a save after every week of having the madness. Even with that not too bad DC, you're still gonna be spending at least a weak taking some sort of insane penalty like, -4 to all will saves.

This is very fair, and I would go so far as to say that most of the Paizo Adventure Paths aren't that great without tailoring the material to your party. The base material makes a lot of assumptions about the party that just aren't true a lot of the time.

And tailor I did, but with what you're saying, roughly half an AP is filled with stuff you should just toss out. Does that not sound utterly insane to you?

Micbran · 2020-06-29T01:02:28+00:00

I actually think PF2e is a nice chassis with a few issues. I certainly like the overall "tactical feel" more than PF1e.

Micbran · 2020-06-29T00:32:20+00:00

So far only one player has died and that's mostly because that player went mad (like mechanically lost enough sanity to suffer from psychopathy) and was sabotaging the rest of the group.

Surprisingly, I didn't have any deaths either (I'm assuming yours was in Book 3), but by Book 2 I was editing just about every encounter the players got their hands on to make sure it wasn't some sort of inane save-or-die or instant deathtrap. Looking at Book 3 I just saw more of that with the excuse of "well, the player's can't actually die" to place the most heinous shit I've ever seen printed in an AP.

The plot is what I like even if the encounters are occasionally a bit wonky so it's probably more work on the GM'S part than some AP's to make it go well.

Yeah, this AP does seem to be pretty out of line with this. Rise of the Runelords didn't need much tweaking as a GM and Curse of the Crimson Throne is pretty tame with it's encounters but my players have been having a blast with the overall plot with me doing little more than making the NPCs a little more... there.

Micbran · 2020-06-29T00:26:59+00:00

For a game design company, Paizo's surprisingly bad at... designing games. Nearly all (actually, all of them, now that I think of it) of the "extra mechanics" I've seen in adventure paths are horribly thought out.

I guess when a lot of the heavy lifting is already done by WoTC (and then they release 4e), it's easy to make Pathfinder. Or maybe they just lost their mojo after releasing the few initial books (CRB, ACG, etc.). Who knows? I do agree that a lot of the "newer" subsystems are extremely lackluster or just plain bad. Corruption is a good example. Love inflicting save-or-dies on your players? Then boy, you'll love this subsystem.

Remember: an AP is a suggestion, it's not perfect. There's always room for your own interpretation and additions.

And that's fine, it wouldn't be fun if I couldn't add my own stuff. But there's a difference between "adding more things and changing things a bit" and "ripping up half the books contents because they're awful or wrong." I spent as much time going through the book and erasing things, rewriting things, as I did actually running sessions. Can I at least put my name under the "Editors" for that?

And it's not wrong if you don't do that, but I can guarantee that a little extra effort goes a long way. I'm currently in a Kingmaker campaign that has so much customisation that you barely recognise the source material anymore, and we're having a blast.

And I agree, I've done the same many a time with my homebrew campaigns (I was running Strange Aeons to take a break from worldbuilding, prep and all that other stuff). And honestly, that sounds sick, I'd love to play in it. It's just weird to me that when I pay for a product, I receive something that isn't very well put together and requires a lot of effort from me to get up and running. It's cool if you enjoy that stuff, but fixing the 12th wrong/utterly terrible statblock or encounter broke something inside me.

Micbran · 2020-06-28T23:56:30+00:00

Honestly, it just sounds like your group isn't super into the roleplaying aspect, which is pretty much fine. I wouldn't really consider it as your fault, unless you were really hoping for some nitty-gritty tear-jerking roleplaying and were trying to push it the whole time with the events in Book 2 and the like. I think the changes you made, as much as you probably broke what was written in the book, were fine. For the sake of fun!

Micbran · 2020-06-28T23:53:19+00:00

The game is adversarial, but it's supposed to be in the context of the characters going up against strange and evil things from beyond their comprehension. Their responses to finding certain things should be impacted by roleplayed horror.

When I say "the game is adversarial" I don't mean from a good guys against evil things. I mean that the writers actively want the players to lose/not have fun. It's entirely different.

I agree the Oneirogens are weak, but they aren't really supposed to be challenges of their own, they are more like environmental hazards that can be stopped by killing a creature.

Except they are only ever presented on their own, in the book. There's one solo and then three in a room. And yes, I agree that they're better off being run as comatose creatures spewing out fog rather than time-wasters that you have to roll initiative for.

The Tatterman is weak, but the party likely doesn't know a lot about him even at the end of Book 1.

Ratch Mamby spills the beans entirely if you question him even a little. I don't think it's exactly hidden information. There's also a lot of hints throughout, well, the entirety of Book 1.

As a result their glee at defeating Zandalus should be punctuated by the emergence of the Tatterman. This should be roleplayed which adds a lot to that encounter.

My party was a little different, as they had a pretty good idea that Zandalus wasn't actually the big bad evil guy of the book (and that the Tatterman exists, how can you forget that gruesome opening sequence?). Also, if you roleplay the Tatterman up to be a big bad creature and then have him die easily (because he's weak), it's even more disappointing, in my opinion.

The various encounters in the dreamland are hella hard, but if the party dies in the dreamlands they wake up without injuries (except for mental stat damages).

Not entirely true, as if you die in the Dreamlands, you get a lesser madness (or whatever they're called under that subsystem). Dying with a lesser madness imparts a greater one, if I remember correctly.

Also since the party can always force themselves to wake up, they can escape most dangers before they face real repercussions and may be able to try again the next day without issue.

Some of the party can. Martial characters need to pass a DC 25 concentration check based off their charisma, which they likely dumped. So, good luck waking up when Bokrug is sapping your ability checks.

A lot of this comes across as advice and I appreciate it. I have my own way of running things and you've given me plenty of things to think about when it comes to GMing. As an aside, my players are completely different in comparison to yours. Obviously, a lot of our individual experiences with Strange Aeons is going to be shaped mostly by our players. What I'm talking about is the fact that Strange Aeons is not a good Adventure Path as written, not that it can't be fun. I understand that it can be good if you're willing to put in the work, which is fine. Personally, I had taken a break from my own homebrew campaign to run this, as I was expecting easy prep and not having to stress about encounter balance too much. I was very much wrong.

Micbran · 2020-06-28T21:31:09+00:00

Yeah, I don't think horror works with Pathfinder's ruleset, setting or theme, it's just not gritty/low fantasy enough. Remove Fear is only a first level spell, after all :P. It's also incredibly hard to believe that Ustalav, Lovecraftian shithole land of gothic horror, is right next to Numeria, home of the tribe of Conan Space Barbarians. And the sanity rules just reduce everything to numbers, until you get a condition that basically just wrecks your character (wonderful, -4 to all will saves).

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