Pathfinder 2e

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20694686

> u/corsica1990 over on th'other site posted a survey a few days ago, trying to figure out how easily people could intuit creatures' worst saving throws (Fortitude, Reflex, or Will) based on just the creature's name and bestiary art. > > How'd you do? Also, will you, too, forever have nightmares about jellyfish clam squids? Because I ain't ever unseeing that.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/19889099

> So, over on the subreddit there's a post that caught me off guard. I'm not experienced enough with the game to know the ins-and-outs of all of classes, so when someone posted asking about Ruffian Rogues and Picks. > > From the comments, this appears to be a Thing of Great Contention within the Pathfinder space (or, at least within that Pathfinder space; I find r/Pathfinder2e to be a rather... idiosyncratic place, personally). > > The long and short of it is that Picks have the Fatal d10 trait, but Ruffian specifies: > > > You can deal sneak attack damage with any weapon, not just the weapons listed in the sneak attack class feature. This benefit doesn't apply to a simple weapon with a damage die greater than d8 or a martial or advanced weapon with a damage die greater than d6. (Apply any abilities that alter the damage die size first.) > > (Emphasis mine.) > > A lot of words have been published over how the Ruffian doesn't lose Sneak Attack on a critical hit, but this seems pretty straight forward from the text here that it does. Weird and stupid, and something I'd never personally enforce, but clear and straight forward nonetheless. > > This is the updated wording from Player Core 1, no less, and Ruffian's text was updated in the remaster, so there was an opportunity to reword or clarify that was not taken, so I'm not sure what others are reading from this that I'm not. > > How do you interpret this situation? How would you judge it at your table?

Hi, I am starting to listen to more and more podcasts and thought about Pathfinder in this context. Are there any recommended podcasts? Maybe something regarding rules and gameplay or nice and immersive plays? Open for anything interesting.

Thanks!

Xalchs just posted this to Reddit, announcing the launch of a new website hosting their Pf2e compatible item cards. There's currently 40 available, but they're apparently planning to expand the deck to 200 over 2024.

Spoiler Warning: Contains unmasked spoilers for the first encounter of The Longnight Before Krampus

My sister-in-law and niece are staying with us over the holidays, and truth be told, we don't reeeaaaaally have the space to house guests. We just have the most space of anyone in my partner's family. Partially because of this (and partially because the next generation of my partner's family is entirely comprised of only children who have apparently finally started to reach the "WTF is 'sharing'" phase of being only children), there have been some conflicts between the chilluns under my roof this week, particularly when it has come to unstructured play.

So, I thought, maybe tonight was the time to bust out some structured, non-denominational, solstice-adjacent winter holiday themed play! I had The Longnight Before Krampus printed off and ready to go and asked the wee warriors if they wanted to roll some dice. With the other adults in the room busy with holiday baking (I'm off of food prep this year, due to everyone else using my kitchen), and having shouldered more of the youngun refereeing than me (I was out all afternoon running errands), I didn't think anyone else would have the bandwidth for a game, so I thought it would be a relatively rigid affair. You know, the kind of thing that I could control to the point where two pre-teens would tolerate it, because someone was actively entertaining them, but stay in their lane, because I'm a large, loud guy who's often quick to say 'no'.

So anyway, the party of 5 walk into the inn on a cold, dark, storm winter's night, and both kids immediately start to shout over me.

Well... shit.

"I put out a cup and start painting a picture!" cries out the visiting kid, playing a wild order woodland elf druid with an art degree.

"I put out a cup and..." my step-son -- playing a storm order woodland elf druid -- yells his attempt at further mimicking his older cousin cut off by the big, mean game master.

"What are you painting on?"

"I don't know. The wall?" she says, almost confused by the question.

"You see the innkeeper approach quickly. She has a stern, if somewhat surprised, look on her face."

"Uhhh, I meant a piece of paper."

"I put out a cup and start doing magic card tricks!" my step-son yells out again, trying to assert his copy-cattery.

"Do you cast any spells?"

"No."

"Both of you roll perf..."

"I come over and start playing my lute," interjects the bard, played by the older child's mother.

"Ok, I'll need performance checks from all of you," I inform them as I secretly roll a d10. The first pages of the adventure introduce a bevy of triggers for the first encounter, the suddenly most appreciated one being "if no one triggers it within 10 minutes". A mixed set of performance rolls nets them a couple of coins, and nets me one step-son asking every 30 seconds if he can re-roll his failed check.

The adventure actually prompts the GM to hand out hero points after each encounter, so I didn't start the party with any (thinking they'd have one in short order, and that it would feel better getting one as a victory prize). It was around this point where I started regretting that decision.

While the merry band of uninvited buskers do their thing, the party's Oracle -- played by my partner, and the mother of the mother of the already tilted younger druid -- decides to talk to the innkeeper. She orders a drink and starts to ask her a question when the elder cousin suddenly screams out, "I seduce the innkeeper!"

With seemingly everyone else in the room distracted, the Rogue Thief does a circuit around the room, easily picking every pocket they come across.

I roll the d10 again. It comes up as a 3.

The Bard, suddenly freed from her sense of obligation to spotlight her little one, looks around the room and sees the innkeeper's son looking longingly at the ever shortening candle on the fireplace mantle, as he waits for the moment where he can open the mystery boxes under the Christmas Longnight tree. So, using her foot, she slides one of them across the room to him.

"Oh thank the gods," I think to myself. Touching one of the presents is an encounter trigger.

"I need everyone in the room to give me a perception check," I inform them. Most of them roll pretty low. Meanwhile, the evil poppet inside the box rolls a massive deception roll for their initiative, and looks like a regular windup toy to everyone. Only the thief takes notice of it at all, amused by how it seemingly is heading back to under the tree, where it just was.

I turn to my step-son and ask him what he wants to do. His cousin excitedly leans in front of him and starts yelling again, but I cut her off and inform her that it's not her turn yet. I repeat my question.

"I go over to \[Bard\] and point the toy bear out to them," he says.

"Ok, that's your first action. What else do you do?"

"Wait, we're in combat?"

"No, but we are in encounter mode. All that means it that the order in which everyone does things matters. You have two actions left."

He spends another action pointing the walking doll out to everyone else, and then finishes his turn off finally re-rolling for his card trick.

The Oracle goes next, but she pays little attention to the transpiring events. Instead, she spends an action to talk to my step-son, and to drop a silver coin into his cup, before turning back to the inn keeper to ask her about renting a room for the night.

Next, the Rogue starts investigating the doll. A middling crafting check informs them that this thing doesn't look like something that should be able to walk on its own. Also, who wound it up? They pick the bear up, only to have it squirm out of their grip. The Bard comes over to try grabbing it, and rolls high on their grapple attempt. They look closely at the bear and discover that it spells of black powder, and seems to have ill intentions.

The elder druid throws her dagger at the bear \-- and her mother -- landing a critical blow. She then walks over to the window and opens it.

The bear tries to break free, but fails its saves.

Now the younger druid, who I foolishly allowed to have a jezail because I'm that dumb, turns his rifle on the bear \-- and the Bard. At this point the Rogue -- his other bio parent -- points out that someone is holding the bear, and that he'll end up shooting them, too, he instead turns to them and says "I'll shoot you, then".

Nice, quiet, structured play. That's what this'll be.

They did, eventually, win the encounter. And somehow, no one got shot, despite multiple threats -- it turns out the over-tired ten-year-old competing for the spotlight is very sensitive to being told he'd have to relabel his character as chaotic evil if he shot any of his teammates. But yeah, gonna keep a closer eye on that one before he succeeds in Marty Jannettying someone through a window.

Last year’s wildly successful humble bundle is back for an encore.

I'm a fan of Puffin Forest's RPG Story videos, and Abserd was one of my favourite recurring character from them, so I got a kick out of the latest TRL video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NvlgkARcpY

Been running AV for a year or so now and we finally made it to the labs and the Warped Brew. I wanted to come up with some good music for Shadow Malice to play and I think I found the perfect thing: Days N Daze. Folk punk works so well here. I personally played Call in the Coroner and my players absolutely loved it, probably one of the most energetic sessions we’ve had.

Just wanted to share in case anyone else runs into the same desire.

I just downloaded one and, unless I'm missing something, the file is missing the usual, "Permission to print for personal use…." text.

Perhaps Paizo has a standard statement somewhere else that these can be printed? Without the ability to print these I'm unsure, outside of VTTs…maybe, what their use is for GMs.

I purchased one to try out, and was planning on having it printed on a large-format printer at Kinko's. However without that statement/release I can't see any commercial provider touching these for printing.

Just what the title says.

Me (DM) and my friends will be trying out the beginner box this weekend. There are 2 players and myself as the DM.

Is there anything we should do before we play? We’ve played D&D 5e a couple times but this will be our first go at Pathfinder.

Thank you!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/1339512

> As a GM I'd like to feel like I fully understand how to utilize my monsters tactically, but over the past couple months as I've been running the beginner box and now leading into Abomination Vaults, I feel as though I'm very often just making three strikes with an enemy or moving and striking twice unless the enemy has a very specific action in its statblock which is obviously better. Like a dragon is obviously supposed to use its breath weapon, but then I ran goblin warriors last night and I couldn't even figure out how to use their scurry reaction beneficially.

Anyone excited for the new Rage of the Elements module dropping in a couple weeks? I've been helping one of the authors doing playtesting for the last year and it's going to be awesome!!

I'm planning on running a one shot for a new group soon. Two of them are fairly experienced, having played Sundered Waves and Plaguestone. The other two are brand new. Plan at the moment is Mark of the Mantis. Would love to hear everyone's favorites and stories!

Let’s help get this community more active! One of my favorite parts of role playing games are the creative backstories people come up with for their characters. Tell me about your favorite!

How funny is it that I found PF2e after D&D tries to suicide itself and now I'm looking for a reddit substitute after they do the same? What is wrong with the world right now?

So to help get this community off the ground I'm gonna post a recent build I made to accentuate the Jinxed Halfling's "class fantasy" of manipulating luck and fortune.

So obviously our Ancestry is Halfling and we're taking the Jinxed Halfling Heritage. We're also going to pick up the Chosen One Background to further accentuate the idea of manipulating (or in this case, delaying) fate through fortune effects and debuffs. Lastly we're taking the Oracle Class with the Time Mystery (Fate Domain). So we're not really going for a super optimal build here and are more focusing on the fantasy of having a lot of things that interact with our core character concept.

We're going to focus our Ability Boosts into CHA, WIS, DEX, and CON, our skills we're going to pick up the usual suite of face skills and focus on Deception and Diplomacy and pick up the Distracting Shadows feat to help us be harder to hit. So now with Prophecy's Pawn we can reroll failures and force others to take a penalty to their own rolls. We also have Temporal Distortion to allow us to diversify our debuffs a bit and be used more often than Jinx.

At level 2 we're helping out our ability to stay at range with Reach Spell so we can extend Temporal Distortion or make a 1 action Heal have range so we can conserve our actions unless necessary. We'll also take the Lie to Me skill feat.

At Level 3 we'll increase Deception to Expert and take Discreet Inquiry to help our information gathering abilities, this isn't useful in all campaigns but it's useful in mine so if you're in a less intrigue based campaign I'd take Dubious Knowledge or Group Impression instead. We're also going to make Heal and Restoration as our signature spells (mostly cause my party needed a healer).

Level 4 we're picking up Vision of Weakness to get another Focus Point and Courtly Graces to help schmooze the nobility (gotta push them face skills). This doesn't seem like a big level but the increase in Focus Points is huge and allows you to maintain Temporal Distortion more effectively. We're going to be retraining this to Divine Aegis once we hit level 6.

Level 5 we push our Diplomacy to Expert and Boost our 4 core abilities and pick up Cultural Adaptability so we can take Courteous Comeback from the Human Ancestry feats.

Level 6 we take Advanced Revelation and Cat Fall (we had a lot of people falling off cliffs....) and retrain Vision of Weakness to Divine Aegis.

This is far as I've planned out the build but if it progresses in any strange ways I'll make sure to update this.