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Regarding the Duration of Shapeshifting, it's an easy fix: Make the duration in hours UNTIL you make an attack, at which time the remaining hours convert to rounds/minutes.
My order was cancelled, as the item was deemed unavailable. However my store credit used for this order was not reinstated for use on something else. If I can't buy what I wanted, I'd like to have my store credit back to apply towards a different product.
My order was cancelled, as the item was deemed unavailable. However my store credit used for this order was not reinstated for use on something else. If I can't buy what I wanted, I'd like to have my store credit back to apply towards a different product.
My playtest pregen was over 3 pages long. Compare to some other games where a character sheet can be effective on only an index card.
Ok, thanks. I did see that "apply store credit" button on my subscriptions page, but not until AFTER I had written this email and placed the order. Thanks again
I recieved an email stating that I have a $15 credit, but when I placed the above order at no time did it have anywhere for me to USE this credit. The order has been moved to my sidecart to be shipped with my next subscription, but if I cannot get the $15 credit applied to this order I'd rather cancel the order entirely. Thank you
Furthermore, IMO, they started work on PF2 long before Starfinder, and the latter was intended as a testing ground for some PF2 ideas and as a funding bridge during the "dead year" between releasing the playtest and releasing the final product. I am aware of that quote. I know that's what they said, and it might be true. But history of similar circumstances in TTRPGs make me think my original statement holds merit, and when the final version of PF2 comes out we can then look back and see if there any obvious parallels (beyond the common origins) between the two systems.
There are certainly some payers that HATE the new rules and they have made their opinions clear. But it seems to me that they are in the minority. I would say that those bothering to try to voice their opinion HERE are in the minority. But I think you are vastly overstating the number of people currently playing PF1 that intend to make the shift to PF2. Paizo WILL lose customers, but they are banking on picking up more than they lose. Furthermore, IMO, they started work on PF2 long before Starfinder, and the latter was intended as a testing ground for some PF2 ideas and as a funding bridge during the "dead year" between releasing the playtest and releasing the final product. They did sell a ton at GenCon 50, but I don't know anything beyond that. My gut feeling (based on my own reading of the SF material) is that SF isn't that popular in the greater RPG community, and may not be meeting the goal set as the lifeboat between editions. But I have nothing to back that up other than my own feelings, so take that for what it's worth.
The problem REALLY seems to be the wealth by level and the item cost scaling (and the assumption that players have total access to anything they can afford). Resonance doesn't touch this at all. It adds a clunky, arbitrary system to side step a problem rather than fix it, like a Band-Aid on a severed artery.
North Carolina and Georgia in one region, South Carolina in another? Ooo-kay...
Please cancel my Starfinder Adventure Path subscription
It seems almost non-existent in Middle TN. Change in leadership and two venues drying up. But I also stopped playing locally over a year ago, and I'm partially going by the decreased chatter in their Facebook group. I obviously could be wrong, I haven't looked at their Warhorn calendar in over a year.
Then you run into the problem of drawing and nocking an arrow being an equivalent action to simply releasing the bowstring. Sure, if "releasing the bowstring" equals "attacking". Aiming, especially a shot into a melee or at a distant target, takes considerably more time than just letting the arrow fly randomly.
Readying a shield to block an incoming attack is almost purely a reflexive action. Most notably, it requires keeping your eyes peeled for incoming attacks. Nocking an arrow requires properly orienting the fletching and LOOKING at the nock, taking your eyes off the combat, most every time. Further, you must seat the nock properly and hold it securely with your fingers before you can lift, draw, and aim. Yeah, there are YouTube videos of a guy shooting really fast, but there is absolutely NO WAY readying a shield should take MORE actions than loading a bow. If "Ready Shield" is enough to warrant one of your limited three actions in a round, there is more than enough justification to do the same for nocking an arrow. You may not agree, based on purely rules balance or gameplay issues, but in the real world, one is much easier to do than the other, and the easier of the two is the one that doesn't require fine motor manipulation and taking your eyes off of the battle and looking down at your weapon.
Make drawing and nocking an arrow an action (instead of a free action). Done. If "readying a shield" (which is literally just lifting your arm) is enough to qualify as an action, reaching into a quiver, pulling a long arrow out, putting it across your bow, and finding the string with the noc sure as hell shouldn't be free.
When everyone's BAB is special, no one's BAB is special.
If removing the negative hp countdown clock is the goal, can't this be accomplished with the critical fail rule already mentioned? Go negative in hit points, roll to stabilize: Critical Success: Stop bleeding, stabilize, regain consciousness
Now you still have a simple, familiar system with an unpredictable timer. Doesn't this also meet the stated design goals?
This subsystem stinks on ice. Streamlining rules shouldn't lead to MORE per-day bookkeeping. If you remove the need for the Big Six, item slots work just fine. The problem before was this stupid arms race, where no one would give up their Big Six item in favor of a cool new item if it used up the same slot. If CLW Wands are the real problem, make wands limited per day, make them more expensive, and remove the magic item shops. Seriously, throw all that wealth by level and formulaic magic item pricing out the damn window. You can't abuse wands you don't have.
Honestly, I'd MUCH rather have points and a menu to choose from than classes that each have their own sub-menus of class specific mechanics. Some of the contortions some players use combining Feats, Traits, and Multiclass combinations to get some specific outcome boggles my mind. Buy off a list common to all and be done with it.
I have been a staunch supporter of HeroLab on these and other forums for YEARS, as a quick perusal of my posting history will attest. My group has used it and would never dream of NOT using it especially for high level play where recalculating buffs and temporary conditions could be a math nightmare. That said, I WILL NOT support a "software as a service" pricing model. We will not use any "online" version of character generation/game management software. Starfinder launched to great acclaim, and HeroLab was basically a no-show. Not because they couldn't have had it ready and out the door by launch, but because they used it as the test platform for their subscription model, and over 6 months later it apparently still can't do what the old version of HL can do. No thanks. This is one decade-long staunch supporter out the door.
Who exactly is throwing DC 50 skill checks at anyone if they want the party to be able to succeed at the check without a specialist? Actually, who is throwing DC 50 skill checks at all? And who is making these characters with a +42 in a skill? I just finished wrapping up RotRL a year ago, in which one guy played a half-elf druid. 18 ranks in Perception, +2 racial bonus, racial bonus skill focus feat went into perception, druid has perception as a class skill, and he pretty much maxed wisdom. 18 ranks, +3 class skill, +6 feat, +2 racial, +9 (I think) Wisdom modifier = +38. Pre-buffs. Buffed for big fights I believe he was at +42, in fact. The bonus Invisibility gives you to Stealth is only +20, +40 if you don't move. He could detect invisible opponents without a spell. We called him Spider-Man (as in, "you rolled a what for your Perception check? Ok, your Spidey-Sense is tingling...")
I'm frankly surprised that no one has yet likened this to Castles and Crusades' SIEGE Engine mechanic (which 5e "borrowed" quite a bit from). Almost everything except attack rolls are d20 +stat mod, +level if it's a "class ability". You can try nearly anything and they recommend letting you add level to nearly any check unless it intrudes upon what another class is specifically designed to do (anyone can Move Silently, only Thieves can add their level). C&C mixes it up by having 2 (3 if you are human) of your 6 base ability scores be designated as "Prime" ability scores, which drops your target DC by 6 (effectively, +6 to your d20 roll). These are also used for saving throws, so if you are making a check based on a Prime, you get d20 +level +ability mod +6. If your check is against a non-prime stat, it's d20 +level +mod, and if it's something niche protected, you just get d20 +ability mod (still with +6 if it's against a Prime stat). Obviously they aren't lifting this wholesale, but if they substitute a flat +/- some number instead of using a prime attribute, well that's still pretty similar.
Or, the Player handles the (potentially fewer) modifiers they can control and the DM handles the situational modifiers in the form of changing the target's AC?
Still, though. This seems like it has been in the cards for a while. The end of edition products remind me a lot of the end of 3e, and Starfinder parallels SW Saga in a lot of ways. The coincidences are piling pretty high. It's a lot older than that. Gamma World 4th ed (NOT the "4th ed D&D Lite" edition) had several rules concepts that made it in to 3rd ed D&D, I believe. Plus... Honestly, I've been expecting this for 2 years now. There are a lot of 3e derived problems that were simply papered over in the name of backwards compatibility, (and a few new ideas that simply didn't work out so well, which is absolutely normal in games development). Plus asking a game company to never, ever do a new edition seems like a good way to trap them in oblivion. Yeah, for the past year we've been getting more and more hardback books that just rehash/update material that previously appeared in several softback books. I would add the end of the RPGSuperstar competition as well. How long ago did they end that, around the same time they started work on PF2/SF?
^^
It's dead Jim. (Unless you want to subscribe.....)
Most people have all of their modifiers pre-calculated, so getting an actual total shouldn't be hard. I would assume that part of the streamlining effort going into PF2 would be cutting down on the minute modifier details. Adding/subtracting 10 is just moving the 10's place digit up or down by one. Not really enough to consider actual "math".
I used to use Trapper Keeper folders to safely store my Dragon Magazine copies, two per folder, slotted on my bookshelf between the boxed sets and the hardcovers.
No, I totally understand how Kickstarter works in general as well as this Kickstarter in particular. My comment was not directly about the value of THIS Kickstarter, just metal vs plastic vs resin. But still, $100 for 36 fragile resin minis isn't for me. I have backed or contributed to three Reaper Bones Kickstarters and gotten WAY more minis for my investment, including some very large monsters that I would NEVER have gotten in metal due to price. Bones may not hold the same level of detail, but I can literally throw my painted Bones mini across the room or off the roof or into a Tupperware box with dozens of others like it with no fear of breaking the model. Every other resin mini I've ever painted had to be treated like a vial of nitroglycerine.
There is no way resin should be more than metal. None. More than $5-$7 for a medium metal mini (assuming no game support cards/tokens etc) is just too much. Reaper Bones are much cheaper and certainly good enough for "table ready" minis. Resin is fragile and light, and any extra detail you get isn't worth the extra effort of treating them like faberge eggs. In my experienced opinion.
I have been a MAJOR supporter of HeroLab in play and on these forums and others. I see zero compelling reasons to migrate to HLO. This whole "software as a service" movement that Adobe, Microsoft and others have begun moving to in recent years is troubling to me, and I don't particularly want to support it, whether it's HeroLab or Photoshop or whatever. If my tabletop RPG is so complex I need a computer (and internet connection) to play it, it's time to rethink my game of preference.
Sundown? The Final Sundown? (Cue Europe...)
That's what Wish/Miracle is for.
If the BBEG is hacking the peasants and their thatched-roofed cottages to bits with an adamantine battleaxe and everyone KNOWS this, and then the GM describes the NPC as wielding an adamantine battleaxe when in reality it is carrying a feather duster and the DM KNOWS this because he has a PICTURE of it then it's blatantly a set-up. He has a valid concern. Even more disturbing is the prospect that the local VC is using bribes to cover it up. Both of these issues are completely worthy of discussion and not an immediate sweeping under the rug as many here have suggested. "Hear no evil" does nothing to fix problems like these.
Huh? He already has an army of Stone Giants why does he need Frost Giants? To smash Sandpoint/Ravenmoor without changing or depleting the forces at Jorgenfist.
Bingo. IMC the party defended Sandpoint, but the group of giants that hit the south end of Sandpoint made off with several named and unnamed NPCs (including Ameiko, Mayor Deverin, etc etc), so the raid on Jorgenfist was initially a hostage rescue and then a seek and destroy.
There are a couple of frost giants at Jorgenfist negotiating to join the army. If they don't go to Jorgenfist, then let the negotiations be successful and add several tons of frost giants to the next raiding party to hit Sandpoint....
So, a soulbound doll can use a weapon, but a homunculus can't? And if you pay to give your homunculus a voice it still can't use wands?
The Anniversary Edition doesn't say they are also trapped. I kinda had the dimensional overlay fade immediately after the release of the Runewell's energy, so everyone but Karzoug was back standing at the base of the Pinnacle. I made it clear that he was still alive, but only able to contact minions via the Sidhedron items, and it would be a loooooong time before someone could make another artifact to breach the dimensional barrier to his pocket realm and restart the soul harvesting process. The elven wizard in the party already stated his intention to stay in Xin Shalast for the rest of his considerable lifespan and make sure no progress towards that end is made in that time. He might have said something about "taking over" under his breath, but I didn't catch that clearly....
Awesome! Sounds like fun! My group ignored Karzoug completely, but that wasn't the plan. As they were making their way up to him (I put the whole place under a Dimensional Anchor linked to a Limited Wished Unhallow spell), the party bard poked at the Runewell with is Dominant Keen Dueling rapier +1. When that didn't work, he took a poke at the Soul Lens and did all of like 1 point of damage. But the look of abject terror on Karzoug's face and the fact that Karzoug killed him (and the wizard foolishly standing next to him) the next round sent up a big red flag. The dwarven ranger full attacked it with his Dominant Holy Adamantine Waraxe +1 and that was it.
I've never been a fan of dropping the raw scores in favor just the modifier number. I didn't like it when M&M did it, and I wouldn't like it if Starfinder did it. Ingrained into the core PF/SF system is the idea that even scores give a bonus from a modifier increase and odd scores unlock prerequisites, and that Ability Drain/Damage is a very real thing. Plus, no one likes having a negative stat, or even just "zero". Having "average" = "zero" just rubs me the wrong way, no matter how streamlined or logical others may see it.
Many years ago when I ran the Catacombs, I used fan-made maps, printed to scale on cardstock, then cut rooms out and had a folder to keep them in. As they opened a door, I'd lay down the cardstock map. I did this for the first 3 books, I think. In more recent years, we acquired enough Dwarven Forge to go that route, but even then, oftentimes I'd just make new set pieces. In fact, I did Fort Rannik in 3D cardstock buildings for the exteriors (flat cardstock for the interiors) and I had a version of Sandpoint for the start of book 4 done in cardstock buildings, Styrofoam hills, resin river, flipmat grounds, and some scale model buildings as well. It was sufficiently epic.
Thanks! Right now, I'm taking a break from running anything. Since January one player has started a Traveller campaign, and another is trying out a home-brewed superhero system. We will try about 5 different systems at this year's GenCon (including Starfinder) and I should have the Scarred Lands Player's Guide kickstarter for Pathfinder by then. My previous campaign was in that setting, and it ran for 7-8 levels and several years before we did RotRL. Then again, whenever things looked bleak during Runelords over the past few years, the chorus was "if everyone dies, we can make PIRATES!!" in reference to Skull and Shackles.
Yeah, the conditional victory. They never even tried to touch Karzoug.
Our group stared the Rise of the Runelords in September of 2009. We are all adult (chronologically, anyway) professionals with careers and families, so we only got to play a few times per year, so it took us until January of 2017 to complete this epic journey. Here are the photos of my version of the Eye of Avarice, in which I replaced the floors with permanent Walls of Force, and a customized Karzoug. There are also some pics from their final assault on the Pinnacle of Avarice as well. This was done with some custom made terrain and a whole lot of Dwarven Forge tiles. Enjoy!
Thanks for looking into it. On my Order History page it was listed as "complete" and "set to ship with next subscription" so I don't know what I did wrong or what happened. Thanks
I had placed this order over a month ago to be shipped with my next subscription. Well, my subscription arrived today (wet, thanks to the mail carrier not putting it behind the screen door in the rain) but this order was not with it.
**cough-cough** scorpion whip **cough-cough**
So.... why is Silent Tide being offered?We always try to offer some older stuff since a large portion of our community has not played the "classics." Unfortunately, this year with all the additional new content (Starfinder) our ability to offer old skool stuff is diminished. That said, Silent Tide is widely viewed as one of the best low-tier scenarios so it's an easy choice to offer it. Well ok then. Thanks.
Five hour slots came about because previously they had 4 hour slots, with no breaks in between, squeezing 4 slots from 8AM to midnight. The scenario itself is designed for at most 4 hours of actual play time, the rest of the hour is for set up and take down and paperwork, plus wiggle room for late starts and bathroom breaks. I'd say since moving to 5 hour slots, I've gone the whole 5 hours maybe 3-4 times in dozens of slots played.
The game is officially on sale at 11AM Thursday at Gen Con, so they have not scheduled any organized play events before then (thus the Quests only before then). Scenarios for organized play are numbered by year and by release, in numerical order, so "#1-" is all of the first year's releases, and "-XX" are the individual scenarios in the order they are released. #1-00 is the big introductory scenario to be played with 4th level pregens, but any time you use a pregenerated character in organized play, you can keep the chronicle sheet (like a "receipt" of your game) and apply it to your own unique character. The regular season scenarios are all scheduled after Thursday to give people time to buy the rulebook and make their own character for future play. #1-01 is an evergreen scenario, meaning you can replay it with a new character as much as you like. The other two are just the first of the coming season, which I think will have one new scenario per month. It typically takes three successful scenarios for your character to gain a level, so you could leave Gen Con with a second level 1 Starfinder Society Organized Play character.
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