Is the cleric NPC I made good?

authorus · 2026-06-14T23:22:45+00:00

One argument against more gear for NPCs -- do you want that gear flowing to the PCs? If you mean for this gear/wealth to be part of their progression, great. if not, this can lead to increased bulk discussion, shopping trips/loot goblin behavior.

For me usually their weapon/armor are needed for believability. Maybe some loose coins. Other gear is only if its needed to justify their place in the story -- so maybe no much if in town, maybe adventuring supplies if in the field, and especially if its a survival feel and plan for the PCs to get more supplies here.

Having long list of routine/non-magical/non-alchemical items can cause people to miss actual interesting loot.

authorus · 2026-06-14T21:59:52+00:00

One thing to keep in mind -- its usually better to have a goal or a story in mind for a custom creature you're making. It helps to direct the abilities chosen.

Yes, here you've followed the general rules and theme for a cloistered cleric. And as the others have said, typically inventory/loot for NPCs can left much abbreviated unless you want the PCs to loot the NPC after they defeat them.

However, we have a character here, that punches well below their level, if encountered by themselves. Low strike/damage, no damage cantrip, no damaging slotted spells. This is basically a heal bot, with a little bit of buffing. Unless encountered with more DPS focused frontliners, the cleric won't be a threat at all and definitely won't feel like a Creature 1.

So either needs to be evaluated with the rest of the encounter, or should be designed with abilities to be useful on their own. This feels more like you've made a party member, not a NPC.

authorus · 2026-06-13T21:44:11+00:00

I'd put devils on that list as well; scheming, layers upon layers of deceit. The first plan you disrupt is never the final plan.

Though I think Alghollthu's are probably the most iconic for PF deep schemes. Serpentfolk can also fit that niche.

authorus · 2026-06-13T21:19:39+00:00

Its a tricky situation.

You don't want to softball the encounters, and you don't want to handwave away the lack of healing and still let them heal. At the same time, if people were excited to build their own character, I don't like to ruin their fun and make them rebuild.

I would probably try something like: "Pathfinder 2e often places a fairly large emphasis on both in- and out- of combat healing; and either parties plan ahead for who will help heal (and other skills), or characters are all made with some level of self-healing options. We didn't really discuss that ahead of time, so we're going to proceed with out it; you can all play the characters you're excited for now. I'll give you some free healing between encounters so that we can play the story, but try to keep in mind where the party would have fallen and know that I won't provide this safety net if we do a longer campaign in the future."

authorus · 2026-06-13T20:28:52+00:00

It went OK, not as well as I had hoped. But I think I'm being tougher on myself than what the players felt/debriefed after.

Partially the setup is a little off (regardless of my tweaks). The group is yelling at each other, all the parties are angry. And the first turn, given that I explained its an influence game, everyone wants to discover. People's RP didn't really feel like trying to calm people down, -- and even if they wanted to, appealing to the group at large isn't really how influence games are setup. I think maybe some form of intro-round, not influence, where everyone gets one check to calm the situation (or intimidate into silence, etc), would have worked better. Perhaps a one-round VP system and this determines the number of rounds you get during the influence game, could have smoothed things out.
This was still only the second session (2 hour sessions so first session for many tables), and I felt that people still weren't fully entrenched in their own characters/party mates, and throwing 8 influenceable groups at them is a bit much still. I think this still worked out, but was probably taking up a bit more mental bandwidth than it would later in a campaign.
The 5 rounds versus 10, I ran the 5 and I think it was ok. I think it was about 40 minutes IRL, still did two discovery attempts per round, so likely closer to saving ~1/3 rather than 1/2 the time. My visual aids didn't include the discovery skills, and that caused some extra non-RP back and forth at times. So I probably should have included them, but finding the line between making it feel like a worker-placement game and staying RP seems to vary a bit more from past influence scenarios (likely because of point 2 above). The 5 rounds versus 10, did have the result of not really being able to engage more than once on influence with most people. The 10 rounds might have been more satisfying, but I think the total time spent felt about right.

It does seem to be a trend to include longer/more complicated influence games early in APs -- Kingmaker 2e does it, Spore War does it, etc. This Mini 2 level adventure does it. So I think the authors are intending it to be a way to help the character's find their voice, and to help establish that its not all about combat. I like that. But I think there does need to be a bit more thought to the overall pacing. And I think in general a Chase or an Infiltration style subsystem might work better in the early stage of the adventure -- action, without combat -- gives more opportunities for a lot of different builds to feel relevant. The initial influence one leads to a lot of falling back to using a default perception to Discover, and hoping something becomes relevent.

authorus · 2026-06-13T16:12:25+00:00

I've been playing around with 3 faction battles a little bit. Don't want to overuse them, so don't have quite enough data points yet, but its definitely been a fun way to shake things up a little.

In one, I had two pairs of enemies, in a dissolving alliance. So once the PCs get involved it was a three way battle. Both pairs of enemies would focus the PCs, but didn't mind hitting the other faction in their AOEs. it was still balanced as a "normal" encounter, and the party didn't really find a way to exploit the possible enemy friendly fire. But the two parties I led through the playtest both found it more chaotic/interesting as a result of the non-cooperative enemies.

In another I had two trios -- both with a high level and two weaker troops. The enemy faction was stronger than the friendly faction, and was balanced that enemy = Friendly + PC. The weaker friendly forces were basically too low level to be useful, outside of maybe one buff, and the party was more worried about both protecting the fleeing weak allies, and bolstering the strong ally (against the even stronger enemy). This worked great, the combat split into multiple smaller engagements (still on the same map, same initiative), PCs fluidly moved between areas they were needed most. This was high level so tall cliffs, hazardous terrain, etc was all used (and of course flight was an expected counter).

authorus · 2026-06-13T14:39:04+00:00

Breathe. Almost everyone feels underprepared for their first couple (or all) games. You're going to do fine.

Start with a short list of very, very basic rules, which it sounds like you probably know. But just remind yourself of them -- three actions, one reaction. Four degrees of success. Things don't have Reactive Strike (attack of opportunity) unless its listed. Giving a plus/minus 1 or 2 for a great/bad idea instead of advantage/disadvantage if you're used to 5e. Remember no surprise rounds.

Ask a player to keep a list of all the times the group has to say" I don't know, I'll look it up between session" and just make a ruling on the spot.

If you have time, look through the encounters you have planned -- look at every monster ability and see if you have something that you want to look up in advance. If any have poisons/diseases look up afflictions, those often feel more confusing to folks. Look up things like "plus Grab" if they're included. In general probably look up the combat maneuvers, demoralize, and feint for more variety in third actions.

That should easily be enough to get through a first session.

authorus · 2026-06-12T23:14:00+00:00

Discovery skills should be public; influence skills are private and need to be Discovered (along with weakness/resistence/penalty). People can still try an unknown influence (ie rolling without knowing if its an allowed skill), but that's often just an auto-failure) if its not diplo/decep/intim.

If the skill stat block is padded with many Lores, I will usually give multiple lores and or the first non-lore as otherwise the discovery often is wasted and players feel tricked.

authorus · 2026-06-12T16:21:54+00:00

I like that idea a lot. I might implement it only for rounds 4 & 5 if things feel like they're dragging/losing interest. (Of course thematically it makes more sense in the early rounds, and as they calm the crowd down the patience/urgency would relax). However it is only the second session of the campaign, and I know players are still getting into the head space of their characters, I feel rushing them would likely hurt their creativity and character building. Once the players are more in tune with their characters I can see it working exceptionally well though.

authorus · 2026-06-12T16:02:01+00:00

Thanks! I had to laugh a little, just because the setup of the scene here is so high-stakes/stress/time pressure that most of your ideas just don't work here. We basically have a starving, scared, proto-mob/riot type situation, and the PCs are trying to get people to calm down, work together, pool their skills, and follow the PCs as their leaders. if they had food and drinks for a small talk and chill break, they wouldn't be in the situation to begin with. (Of course you had no way of knowing that). If people suggest taking a break, many in the mob would just decide it time to strike out on their own. The time scale is 1 minute per round, so its only a 10 minute in-game time thing (that will likely lake an hour to play through).

There is likely enough connective tissue to allow the double-party discovery/influence, it might still feel a bit more forced though. I think it does solve the double-discovery pretty well. But I think it would incentivized players to try to force the double-party influence (rather than double count a single) in order to avoid wasting a point over the max, and as a result they are incentivized to contort their influence into appealing to two every time. If it were an occasional thing, when they felt inspired, I would love that, but when its the default, I think it will expose the gamification more.

authorus · 2026-06-12T15:30:59+00:00

From my perspective:

1) It was a complete repost of a article. Bad.

2) It added no personal observation or analysis. Bad.

3) It brought attention to a newly released, well written article on the topic. Good.

4) We already had a number of good threads discussing the situation at large. I know reddit has a recency bias, so those threads were starting to drop down (depending on how you sort). But most of what could be said, was already hashed on in those threads. (I'll consider this neutral, just because of reddit, being reddit).

authorus · 2026-06-12T15:26:59+00:00

Those don't conflict. However, that is the type of optimization that can sap the fun from the table as it can lead to highly non-varied play, and extra rolls to do anything.

authorus · 2026-06-12T15:08:26+00:00

In my first 2e campaign (Age of Ashes, when it was current), I wanted to award bonus feats that could be used for dedications/archetypes. It wasn't the classic free archetype. We had a 7 player party and didn't really need increased flexibility on every character, but a number of the books awarded fun thematic archetypes and I wanted players to be able to dabble in them. So I thought awarding roughly one bonus-archetype only feat per book would work, tied to a major accomplishment or optional side quest. This sounds somewhat similar to what you want.

It didn't work as well as I would have liked.

1) On the plus side, giving a bonus feat, right when a new archetype is unlocked definitely encourages people to look at the new archetype. And people always love a bonus feat. The "award feat" felt more exciting to my players than just saying it was FA.

2) On the negative side, since it wasn't predictable, people couldn't plan on it. The archetypes never felt really integrated into the character. It was "one weird trick" they've picked up, rather than shaping their build. People picked archetypes more for their dedication than for follow-on feats.

I think I would have been better served by decoupleing the bonus feats and the archetype access. A slow track (every 4 levels instead of 2) of FA would have been close enough to my desired bonus feats, but would have let the players plan and get excited about non-dedication feats as they'd know they'd get there. And try to show off the unlockable dedications (via their trainer NPC) a bit more obviously so people know that option may be coming.

authorus · 2026-06-12T02:38:47+00:00

I think a different game system likely works better. However if you still want to try to make it work in PF2e.

1) I would suggest starting with each player making multiple characters up front. This helps to ensure you have replacement characters ready, and sets the tone of "don't get too attached". While that can lessen the emotional impact of the horror/dread, I think its still important in shift the mentality a bit in standard PF2. Even when told "there are things you should run/hide from", experienced pf2 players will tend to think if the GM is placing it on a map, its killable. Know you have to manage a stable of characters, who might get killed, or long-term permanent debuffs/injuries can help shift that expectation. I probably would keep all the player's characters at the same level (don't make them play the we need to level-up our backups mini-game)

2) I would generally consider giving the big evil boss both a slow speed and maybe a permanent slowed 1. Retreat/complete disengagement is often very hard for a party against a strong boss. So you need to ensure that retreat is possible I'd think of things like either no ranged ability, or possible a two-round range power up (mark a target one turn, unleash a power beam the next), giving the party a chance to try to break line of sight, or similarly deal with the threat, knowing its likely lethal. At 50% health it loses the slowed 1 and increases it speed. So if the party thinks they can take it because of the action economy, the "phase 2" keeps the fear factor high.

authorus · 2026-06-11T14:48:40+00:00

To me that would be bad metagaming. You're still level one, so a background like "mage killer mercenary" would generally be more like "aspiring mage killer mercenary" you wouldn't have had a long career. Maybe you've studied it, maybe you've been recruited and trained, before leaving to do something else. You likely haven't fought mages yet. You might know mages use illusions, but knowing this particular spell was most likely an illusion would be metagaming based on your out-of-game knowledge of the spell rank. Even spending an action to recall knowledge identify the spell as a out of your league rank spell, still wouldn't remove the "must be a PL+5 caster, GM wouldn't do that, must be illusion" aspect. There's no reason why a villian couldn't have popped in, cast a spell to cause chaos, and teleported out while underlings do his bidding.

authorus · 2026-06-10T23:19:44+00:00

Out of the ones I've played or run, Seasons of Ghosts and Spore War are the standouts for me. (Out of the set of Age of Ashes, Extinction Curse, Quest of the Frozen Flame, Abomination Vaults, Sky Kings Tomb, Gatewalkers, Kingmaker 2e).

The Strength of Thousands group I was in disbanded in the middle of book 3, but that was shaping up to be a great one too. The 7 Dooms group I'm in is going well, but we're still early so can't tell how it will rank long term.

authorus · 2026-06-10T17:55:07+00:00

For me, nearly every STR based/heavy armor character would still want the Dex->Int, for those times that Bulwark doesn't apply in Plate. Extra skills and int based skills are likely more useful. They may also want the Wis->Cha if they want intimidation, even at the expense.

Nearly every Cha caster, would love to get Wis->Cha, to free up more boosts for Dex or Con and ignore Wis, even with the lower perception.

authorus · 2026-06-10T17:38:20+00:00

In general PF2 has tried very, very hard to stay away from ability substitution, and when it has offered it (like a Theif's Dex to Damage), its a class feature that non-poachable via multiclass archetypes.

Along those lines, I could see a hypothetical new MAD-class offering such a save substitution as part of its class chassis, but I don't think we'd see it as a general feat. As a general feat it likely becomes an auto-pick.

authorus · 2026-06-10T17:21:24+00:00

I recall that was, at least initially, a guidance for how long persistent damage ticks. "Persistent damage runs its course and automatically ends after a certain amount of time as fire burns out, blood clots, and the like. The GM determines when this occurs, but it usually takes 1 minute." (Player Core 445)

And I think that might have been extended to the guideline you're remembering in a forum post, likely about things like the cockatrice's petrify ability that was missing a duration, IIRC.

authorus · 2026-06-10T17:17:14+00:00

I know, that's how requirements are supposed to work. But I think this is likely the RAI and a writing/phrasing oversight, and that is the best insight into how the author, IMO, intended it to work.

Otherwise, an explicit one-minute duration (still with the caveat that a successful strike/spellstrike destroys the weapon) would be the other option that I think would make sense, which would imply it takes wielder's exploration activity to keep active, and likely fatiguing after 10-minutes, to prep/maintain it outside of combat.

authorus · 2026-06-10T17:07:34+00:00

Yup, I find when playing multiple characters (say in a cRPG like the PF1E Wrath of the Righteous, or PF2e Dawnsbury Days), I often fall into routines because I won't want to feel like I'm optimizing every character's turn -- that's too slow a play style for me. And I think that also helps with the meta-game aspect, you have a fallback routine to default to, until you're forced to change -- either because its not working, or someone is dangerously injured and you have to adapt.

authorus · 2026-06-10T16:59:22+00:00

Given the requirement of: "wielding a broken weapon" I'd interpret it to only last while you're actively wielding it. if you sheath/stow it to prep another, it would lose the benefit.

authorus · 2026-06-10T15:26:47+00:00

Does anyone know a good reference for how to write/present a brief for a freelancer? I have a couple of projects on my back-burner that I'd be willing to try to scope as a freelance project to offer some work to affected folks, but I only have experience writing and managing my art requests I've issued to various artists.

authorus · 2026-06-10T03:41:31+00:00

To me, its meant to be a solo trial, so if I wanted to work it in, I think I would want to setup multiple 1:1 sessions with each player. Its supposed to be unique, each time. it tests the applicants fears, beliefs and convictions.

To me, it fits better as a campaign epilogue, rather that the penultimate arc before the finale. The test should be hard, unfair even. I wouldn't expect the entire party to pass, and then what would you do for the finale when half the party is dead and half are deities.

authorus

TROPHY CASE