I'm really excited to see where this goes!

The Kickstarter is just about to hit its halfway point, and so far they are just over 67% of the way to being funded. People feel somewhat optimistic about its chances, given the timeframe involved, but there's still a big gap between what's been pledged and what they need. If you're interested in a Pathfinder cRPG based on the 2e rules, and you haven't checked it out, the link is in the title.

And a friendly reminder that the pricing is actually in Canadian dollars, so most people will have a friendly conversion rate given the CAD's current value.

The developers have been doing some interviews, though their ground game doesn't seem to be particularly strong. I've collected some of their media tour below.

• Trailer & Kickstarter Launch Video
• Showcase by Spell&Shield
• Interview with The Rules Lawyer (along side the Dawnsbury Days developer)
• Interview with Matt Barton and Matt Chat
• Q&A with NoNat1s
• Interview with Really Dicey

They've also posted a couple of updates to the Kickstarter page:

Update 1: Approaching 60% Funded!

>Dear Demanders, > >Today, we are happy to celebrate that we are a goblin's breath away from 60% funded with over 4,000 backers and nearly $300,000 CA raised! > >Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand is our dream game. To all who have backed, THANK YOU for sharing our vision of a single-player, turn-based Pathfinder Second Edition CRPG that takes role-playing back to its roots with miniature-based characters and digital dice to recreate the look and feel of a tabletop RPG. With your support, we had a strong launch and were 40% funded in only two days! > >To those who have not yet backed, we invite you to learn more on our Kickstarter page and in our interviews. > >Looking for more reveals? We’ve only just begun. Don’t miss these interviews with Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand Product Director, Alan Miranda: > > LIVE Q&A WITH DRAGON'S DEMAND DEVELOPER - PATHFINDER 2E VIDEO GAME with Nonat1s on YouTube > Discussing Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand with Project Manager Alan Miranda of Ossian Studios with Really Dicey on YouTube > >We have more exciting interviews in the days ahead! > >Here’s a behind-the-scenes insight: For our in-game “props,” we partnered with Gracewindale Mini Scenery because we loved the style of their tabletop scenery and wanted to include it in our game Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand. Their entire line of 3D printable STL props are fantastic, so please check them out! www.gracewindale.com > >Every Kickstarter needs its backers to amplify the campaign, so please share your enthusiasm with your friends and ask them to join the party. Your recommendation and word of mouth are invaluable. You can also shout out about us on social media–Kickstarter makes that easy. We’ve dreamed big, and we need your help to make this dream a reality! > >In Gratitude, >Ossian Studios

Update 2: Spread the Word With This Surprise

>Greetings Demanders! > >We've been busy getting the word out there for Pathfinder: The Dragon's Demand, doing interviews this week with PC Gamer, The Rules Lawyer, and Matt Chat (all soon to be posted). They're all super excited for this game! Being both video gamers and tabletop players, they could relate to the miniatures and dice, and were intrigued by the prospect of playing in a 3D cubic grid system where characters can do all kinds of cool things. > >The vertical movement in a full 3D grid can take your character almost anywhere they want to go. You can levitate to a window at the top of a tower or climb down a chimney for undetected infiltration (mind the fire!). You can rain down volleys of arrows on your unsuspecting enemies from the cover of tree branches or send swooping monstrosities spiraling away with magical blasts of wind. This is a whole new dimension for tactical combat CRPGs! > >And speaking of flying monstrosities, the grioths from the Dark Tapestry inhabit frozen, lifeless worlds in the blacks voids of space, and continuously seek out warm worlds to conquer by ritualistically tearing them away from their suns. But now, these bat-like humanoids have come to the small town of Belhaim with an inscrutable purpose... > >https://2e.aonprd.com/MonsterFamilies.aspx?ID=240 > >So we'd like to bring these creatures to everyone who has backed us so far. In this update, we're giving the Grioth STL from our miniatures collection as a free gift via the link below! If you share the file, don’t forget to tell people where you got it. ;) Thank you all for your support and please keep telling your friends about the game to spread the word so we can reach our funding goal! > >https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1sjVYeMHYWE81tvjWSB47UWI8oLvlZaAZ?usp=sharing > >(Printed and painted by our art director, Philip Lyon) > >In Gratitude, >Ossian Studios

Update 3: Weaving a Narrative

>Greetings, Demanders! > >We’re thrilled to announce the project is now 66% funded with a little over two weeks remaining. With your continued support and enthusiasm – and, if we may so bold as to ask, social media shares and word-of-word – we’re hoping to smash through the funding target and into the stretch goals with the force of Gorum exploding across the realms! > >I'm Luke Scull, lead designer and writer for Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand, and I want to talk about our approach to implementing the game’s story and many colorful characters, as well as how we plan to grant the player agency in interacting with this beautiful world our artists have created. > >Firstly, it is important to state that Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand is a deep, intricate computer role-playing game with all the narrative depth and dialogue complexity of the most celebrated titles in the genre. Players will experience a compelling new plotline that weaves the machinations of the Dark Tapestry into the high fantasy story of a town under threat from a wicked dragon. > >During the adventure, the player will meet hundreds of NPCs that can be interacted with. How these characters respond to the party will depend on the player’s choices and the dialogue skills they possess. Do you wish to be a paragon of virtue and help the many colorful characters that dwell within Belhaim? Or would you rather take advantage of those you meet, and lie, cheat, and steal for profit, or to deepen your connection with the mysterious dark benefactor who haunts your dreams? > >Every NPC in Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand has a story to tell. Unique dialogue options will show up depending on the player character’s ancestry, background, and class, as well as their reputation, for as the hero’s legend grows, the people of Belhaim will begin to react to their deeds. Harm too many people or loot too many houses and you may find yourself almost as reviled as the great scaled beast that threatens town. Go out of your way to do favors for folk and they will cheer your name as you walk by. Some may even gift you powerful items or show up to aid you. > >The world of Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand is hugely reactive, with every choice the player makes changing how the story plays out, and deciding the fates of the hundreds of characters who call Belhaim and the surrounding environs home. No two players will have the same experience: in fact, the game will encourage multiple playthroughs with different character builds to fully experience the breadth of possibilities. > >Allow me a moment to talk about companions. We plan to have a total of 12, of which the player can select up to three to travel with at any time, for a total party of four. Aside from the Iconic goblin alchemist Fumbus, these companions have yet to be announced, but each will have their own backstory, character arc, and associated quests. Companion relationships with the player character, as well as each other, will shift as the story unfolds. Upset a companion too often and they may leave the party permanently… possibly to show up later as a sworn enemy. Impress a companion often enough and new dialogue options will be revealed—perhaps even leading to romance, if Shelyn wills it… > >These companions, as well as important story NPCs, will be voiced by experienced actors, bringing some of the best voice talent to Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand. With thousands of voiced lines and enough dialogue to fill several fantasy novels, my ambition as lead writer is to provide a deep world of incredible complexity and unforgettable characters that is every bit as engaging as the best tabletop campaigns. > >Finally, I would like to say how excited I am about working with Pathfinder fans on incorporating their own creations into the game. Our higher reward tiers allow backers to include their own personalized magic item, NPC, bard song, or even quest in Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand. These would henceforth become part of official Pathfinder lore, to be discovered and enjoyed by players from release to ten or twenty years from now. > >If you’ve ever had a beloved magic weapon from your tabletop campaigns that you wish to see included, or you’re a GM who would love to see a favorite quest you once wrote experienced by thousands of players worldwide, consider investing in one of these higher tiers. Your support will also help push the game towards its funding goal and beyond—maybe unlocking new stretch goal features to include even more of the magic of what makes Pathfinder Second Edition so special! > >In Gratitude, >Ossian Studios

First house rule from my P2e remaster game, offered for your review.

Spell Slot Heresy

Since Pathfinder is balanced at a per encounter level, per-day limits on daily abilities are largely only kept around due to tradition. And tradition is just peer pressure from strangers, I don't see a good reason to follow it.

Any spellcaster can recover spent spell-slots with a one-hour activity, as noted below, while characters with focus points can recover them during combat.

---

Recover Magic

Traits: concentrate, exploration, manipulate Requirements: You have expended a spell slot or used some other once-per-day activity

You spend one hour to recover your expended magical power.

During such time you may not work on any other activities or actions or be treated for wounds. At the end of the hour you regain spell slots or once-per-day abilities as per your daily preparations. If you have cast spells from a wand or staff, the item also regains any expended uses or charges.

If you are a prepared spellcaster such as a cleric or wizard, you may not replace what spells you have prepared for the day.

---

Refocus (1A)

Traits: concentrate, flourish, manipulate Requirements: You are missing at least one focus point.

You take a moment to perform some deed to restore your magical connection, such as touching a talisman, speaking a phrase, or simply taking a breath. Doing so restores 1 Focus Point at the end of your turn.

---

EDIT: For the record, please presume the above is all released under the ORC license as a derivative of Player Core 1.

There are a few mechanics in PF2E that I feel are either unbalanced or not fun and I've come up with band-aids for them. Would love to hear what others think about these ideas and other ways to approach them.

># Character Creation >## Extra Ability Skill Bonus >Choose one ability. All trained skills based on that ability receive a minimum ability bonus of +4 regardless of your actual ability score. Note that in order for skills to qualify for this bonus, they must be a core part of your character concept and background. The motivation for this is to allow character concepts that are too MAD (e.g. the Warpriest who can deliver a compelling sermon or the Dwarven Barbarian who is a skilled blacksmith). ># Combat >## Increased spell damage >All damaging spells add the caster’s key ability to damage for one of the targets (chosen by the caster). This effect occurs only when all targets of the spell are within half of the spell’s range. This is intended to: >* Increase the viability of many underutilized spells and cantrips >* Improve caster damage at low levels >* Introduce an additional tactical trade-off (do I get with 3 hexes of the ogre in order to do more damage to it). >## Increased ranged weapon damage >All ranged attacks add half of the attacker’s Dexterity to damage as long as all targets are within half of the weapon’s range increment. This does not stack with the Propulsive trait. ># Spell balance >## Daze >You push into the target's mind and daze it with a mental jolt. The jolt deals 1 mental damage, with a basic Will save. If the target fails the save, it is also stunned 1. It is stunned 2 if it critically fails. Heightened (+1) The damage increases by 1. ># Feats >## Assurance >Fortune, General, Skill >Prerequisites: trained in at least one skill >Even in the worst circumstances, you can perform basic tasks. Choose a skill you’re trained in. Once per ten minutes you can roll two dice and use the higher roll (do not apply any other bonuses, penalties, or modifiers). Special: You can select this feat multiple times. Each time, choose a different skill and gain the benefits for that skill.

Hey there GM here,

i polled my group and we landed on Jade Regent as the next campaign we want to tackle (it would be the first in that constellation of 6 players).

Those Campaign Traits, seem rather important, and every playercharacter should have one to have stakes in the Adventure and relationships to the main non-player characters, right?

What about the Caravan Submodule, is it worth it to use/transplant from 1e to 2e?

Also the Calender Year, I haven't found anything (or skimmed over it), when does the Adventure starts (year and month/season)?

About the play:

We are 6 players + me as the GM, and play roughly monthly in person. We have access to Herolab.online and a FoundryVTT server. My notes and conversion I keep in a Obsidian Vault with TTRPG plugins.

Would love to hear your input!

Potential Abomination Vault Spoilers Below

*** My group primarily plays homebrewed DnD 5e campaigns but we have enjoyed playing the beginner box so much that we have decided to play another Paizo adventure using Foundry VTT. So we have chosen Abomination Vaults which I will be GMing. I figured I would make posts about our shenanigans in the Vaults both as a way to provide some content to this community and to encourage me to take detailed (read: useful) notes to document our misadventures. Our group has 3 primary GMs that trade off each week, GMing our respective campaigns and sometimes special 2 or 3 shots ( We are running a 5e converted Tomb of Horrors module in a couple weeks for our most Masochistic DMs birthday, which should be... Fun?). Which is to say that updates on our shenanigans will be few and far between.

All that said Id like to introduce y'all to the cats I'll be wrangling. Hopefully their characters can serve as inspiration and/or be good for a laugh.

Meet the Chucklefucks

***

The Enigmatic Dave, Human Psychic

! Dave is a down on his luck middle aged man. Who wears a greasy Cheeto stained robe. He has always peddled as a psychic giving sham tarot readings for little money. He has never really felt a purpose in life and as such has retreated into himself and fell into the bottle. Recently his wife, Susan, and “their” 2 kids left. She found another man who is 1000x’s better than Dave. I mean. He’s very rich and lives in Absalom if you’re into that kind of thing. He’s into real estate and has a ton of time to take Daves family on vacation. One time they took a vacation to Otari. Dave spotted them traipsing through the street in their fancy clothes. Susan still wanted him though. Dave could tell. Through her leaving Dave’s psyche was irreparably fractured however. He found latent abilities within himself. He rebranded, The Enigmatic Dave, and started giving true readings in Otari's local market. He’s made a bit of a name for himself locally. Dave hasn’t fixed any of his habits though. He instead hired a “manager” to keep him in line so he is sober and coherent enough to perform at his shows and readings. One day he will be known the world around. One day Susan will take him back.

Stove, Lizardfolk Beastkin (Were-goat) Kineticist

! Stove grew up as a feral were-goat child in the Otari Hinterlands with nothing but a small scrap of flesh (birth certificate?) with the name “Steve” poorly tattooed on it, so poorly in fact that when Stove had someone literate read it to him for the first time they misread it as Stove. Stove has been curious about proper living for a while now though and has lurked on the outskirts of the town creeping and learning. One day he found Dave and started going to his shows. Finally started talking to him and learned that Susan had left Dave and now he was going to have to live with his mom again. Stove excitedly jumped at the opportunity and said he'd live with Dave and be his manager! Dave, desperate to not live with his bitchy mother again, begrudgingly accepted. Now Stove has a room at the very back of Dave's place that's very poorly lit, smells terrible, and has bones of small animals littered about the place. More like a barn at this point than a guest room. It goes fairly well with the rest of the house which has takeout boxes and empty liquor boxes littered everywhere. Dave never visits Stove in his room... he always just waits for him to come out if he needs something.

GM note: Without any prompting from me, The Enigmatic Dave (T.E.D. as we now call him in the discord) took the Market Runner background and decided to tie his backstory in with Stove who is a weird looking lizard goat dude who manipulates elements. Keeleno Lathenar is going to be incredibly distrustful of Stove since he is a druid adjacent animal person. So naturally I decided that Keeleno will be T.E.D.’s landlord of a small flat adjacent to the Otari Market and I'm going to let them decide if they try to hide the fact that Stove lives there or not. Shenanigans will surely ensure.

Kolbold, Goblin Warpriest/Cultist of Zarongel

Kolbold is a cultist dedicated to Zarongel the hero god of dog killing, arson, and travel. Moving around otari mounted atop his goblindog and generally being a menace setting fire to adventure camps and killing stray dogs when he isn't scavenging the city. Kolbold was sent by the tribe Oracle to go join a group and raid a dungeon for shineies.

Edicts are Dog killing, arson, and beast riding.

Anathemas spare the dog, not burning your enemies buildings, not having/seeking a mount or riding a horse or dog.

GM note: I'm going to try and make this PCs tribe the same former tribe of “The Scribbles” from the AV expanded document. How that plays out, however, is anyone's guess. This player is a bit of a wildcard.

Kenji Ito, Human Magus/ Time Traveling DnD 2e character

Kenji Ito: The Stray Fox After Rengar the Demon Core was once again sealed by the Blitz Brigade and the Pensive Protectors (DnD 2e Campaign he plays in), Kenji sailed back home to Shidekima to reconnect with family. His plan was to take a few dozen years of his new extended life as a vampire to live and protect the ones he cared about most before turning back to his mission. Life had other plans. While out for an afternoon ride with his grandfather a shrill sound started to fill his ears. His horse made no indication it could hear it too, so he glanced over at Ojisan and suddenly he felt a familiar sensation of his body being ripped from the time stream. He went hurtling through the void; silver threads extending far in the distance each one the lifeline of a person he had saved mere months ago. Kenji realized he was falling, his control slipping from his mind as his connection to Faerun was fading. What felt like hours passed before he could see anything: the bright light. First a pin prick, then it grew to surround him until he was out of the void. He looked back and saw the hole quickly closing as he fell further away, toward a strange new place. His instincts kicked in as he reached out to the weave to arrest his fall, but he found something else. New magic, just as ancient as the one's he studied before but new to him connecting the essence of the world. With the ground quickly meeting him a sudden gust of wind changed his course, sending him sideways and landing him in a large haystack. Curious and thankful, he crawled out and realized he was stark naked, and hungry for the first time in years. The farm he was on had a large barn, so he went there first to try and make himself decent. Opening the barn door, he was met with an old figure that was made out of vine and plant material, Alder Twig. After their initial embarrassing encounter Twig and his partner Magnolia (plant Leshies) took him in and helped acclimate Kenji to his new surroundings. He worked for the Twig's, and they paid him in room, food, and a silver here and there. Kenji would travel to the nearby town of Absalom to buy books and study the new Arcane connection he felt, finally learning to wield some of the simpler cantrips. After a few months, he could afford a sword and some decent travelling supplies, so he said his farewell to the Twig's and went forward to follow the only lead to get back home he could think of, this strange new magic and the mystics that control it.

Rogath Treesplitter, Orc Barbarian

An orc that immigrated to Otari with his mom's and pops when he was young. Turns our that even at a young age, orcs are still pretty useful at felling and moving trees so that's where he has made his money. He likes to explore the surrounding areas and every now and again go to the city to see what kinda weird shit they have out there.

Wrin is a friend of the Treesplitter family.

Robin Thorne, Human Nephilim Ranger

Robin Thorne, monster hunter. Her dad Murdoc was more involved in her life than Thalomin (Player’s character in another 5e campaign we play in) was in his. Thalomin was a good dad, but he stayed busy with the whole "saving the world every time it's asked" thing. Murdoc later goes on to live a similar life, but had a daughter and wanted to be more present for her. But she would hear stories about Thal and the Untamed, and his helping the Flaming Rose crusade (Avernus reference), and she wanted to be like her grandpa. Old grandpa Thal is a grumpy old man but a teddy bear to his grand daughter.

Preparing for the Adventure

*** Ive decided to add several elements from the AV expanded document, including: Starting the campaign at level 2 with a festival celebrating killing the dragon from the beginner box, The Scribbles, Rajani’s daughter, as well as the ritual to release the original Roseguard heros from the gem lenses. But most of these things will come later. Right now I am trying to decide how best to balance encounters for a party of 6 experienced and creative ttrpgers. Right now ive decided to use the Elite versiom for encounters against mostly one creature and just increasing mobs by about 50%. But I would love any advice in this regard!

So, if you're unaware, the basic math of PF2e's armour items assumes that for light and medium armour, (item bonus + dex cap) = 5, and for heavy armour, = 6. This means that as long as you can pick an armour that has a lower dex cap than your dex bonus, you are expected to be getting either 5 or 6 AC from your armour.

With all that said, there are a ton of armours out there that offer some kind of tradeoff, where that formula doesn't hold. For example, the Armoured Coat gives +4 AC between item bonus and dex cap, but it has the flexible trait which negates the check penalty to athletics and acrobatics checks. In my mind, that's a crazy tradeoff to make. The extra AC is so much more important.

At the end of the day though, I don't have the time to analyze the tradeoff offered by all of these "sub-optimal" armours. So yeah, I'd love to hear if anyone has experience with an armour item that yields less than 5 AC (or 6 for heavy armour) and yet the tradeoff was actually worth it for them.

I'm sure we've all seen the old 5D dungeon post on reddit, this isn't quite that and its use of 4D space is rather simplistic being a basic translation through 3 slices of an un-rotated 4D cube, however its already set up and ready to go.

I hope some DMs out there get some use out of it wether that be for a confusingly long dungeon crawl or just a one session gimmick.

For more context, I'm thinking of playing a centaur barbarian which means with the practiced brawn ancestry feat I can get +1 to athletic checks to shove and any succesful shove is a critical success.

Despite the potential for cool Trip just seems better though? it targets a save which most monsters are worse at than fortitude, also steals a movement action and puts the enemy off-guard until their turn. Is there something I'm missing or is trip just a better option every time that doesn't involve a convenient cliff or river of lava?

The NPC gallery from the legacy GMG wasn't reprinted in GMC. No more generic "bandit" "mad scientist", "assassin", "priest", "necromancer", "gang leader"

These had a lot of value for telling the sort of stories I like to tell in my games, which are less about killing unequivocally evil "monsters" and more about regular people who may be morally complex and provoke more interaction from the players.

I'm well aware one can simply use legacy content, but that ignores that some of these had mechanics that have been revised in the remaster, and they were an important part of the toolkit provided to GMs in the GMG. Right now, the GM Core feels very lacking in terms of providing support for creating a cast of NPCs in adventures. There's literally a half a page dedicated to NPCs and it basically just says "make 'em up". Saying "You can use legacy content" is not a valid point when these new books are supposed to serve as a foundation for the system standing on their own.

Additionally, the official Paizo FoundryVTT bestiary portraits module, which I paid good money for, appears to have removed the portraits for these generic NPCs when the remaster content was added to the system. The realization of that was actually the thing that prompted this post. I was setting up an encounter for my players and was confused as to why the "Antipaladin" art was this instead of this. I am almost certain that before the remaster it used the art from the GMG for those tokens.

Hello, title. I have been playing pf2e coming on 2 years now. Unfortunately, I have never enjoyed character creation or progression in this system. I like playing with my group, but would rather never again make a decision when it comes to character options.

I am surprised because it seems like there are very few written resources or videos which just make a build with feats/spells chosen, retraining recommendations by level, etc. Any recommendations?

I just got the beginner box for my group (I'm an experienced GM and the group consists of young teens with neurodivergence) and the box looks like a perfect fit for us, and I plan to continue with the Troubles book and possibly the Abomination book as well.

Does anyone know if it's worth to get the flip-mat and if the books will get reprinted to ORC?

I also would like to get any ideas for adventure books fitting for a group of younger players if you have any!

Thanks in advance

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.