Kichae

Taken from Reddit. The MLB Xitter account is engaging in international relations the only way the 'Muricans seem to know how.

Every time I see a discussion pop up about Stealth and initiative, I get a little irked. The way the GMG/GM Core recommends handling it has always bothered me, and bringing up my preferred alternatives in those spaces -- you know the ones -- tends to result in people trying to explain the rule to me like I'm 5 and have never touched dice before.

So I decided to blog about it this time, instead.

Submitted for your approval...

cross-posted from: https://wanderingadventure.party/post/189

One of my favourite things about Pathfinder 2e is its Alternative Initiative Skills rule. It's a simple and intuitive guideline for making character skills more valuable and pulling in "exploration"/non-combat mode activities and behaviours into combat initialization.

For those who haven't played the game before, while there's a default initiative roll that everyone can use at the start of combat based off of your Perception modifier, you can also use whatever skill modifier maps onto the task you were doing at the time of initiative if you, or your GM, chooses. So, if you're a Barbarian busting down a door, you can roll Athlethics for initiative, or if you're a Cleric pre-casting Shield, you can roll Religion.

This is all pretty simple, straight-forward, and elegant until you get to someone who is sneaking at initiative, because Avoid Notice -- PF2's formal name for the 'sneaking around' Action in exploration mode -- interacts with everyone else's Perception DC (PF2's proxy for Passive Perception). Checks, attacks, and skill rolls in PF2 are always done against a DC; the system never does contested rolls for these. This means trying to avoid being detected by someone is always done by rolling a Stealth check against the Perception DCs of anyone around who might be able to reasonably notice them. So, if you roll Stealth for initiative, and you beat all of the enemies' Perception DCs, none of them should notice you. None of them should know you exist.

But initiative is a contested roll. It's the only contested roll in the game, RAW. And, as mentioned, the default ability for rolling initiative in PF2 is Perception. Why? Because it's supposed to represent you noticing that the other creatures in the room are about to throw hands. And now we have a Perception roll contesting a Stealth roll.

This is where things fall apart. This opens the door to the hiding character beating their opponent's Perception DC -- and so, being unnoticed -- while the opponent rolls higher on initiative. What are you supposed to do in this case, where the hider has successfully hidden, but the perceiver succeeds in noticing?

Much to my perpetual bemusement and frustration, GM Core suggests that the opponent just... knows someone is out there.

GM Core pg. 25: To determine whether someone is undetected by other participants in the encounter, you still compare their Stealth check for initiative to the Perception DC of their enemies. They're undetected by anyone whose DC they meet or exceed. So what do you do if someone rolls better than everyone else on initiative, but all their foes beat their Perception DC? Well, all the enemies are undetected, but not unnoticed. That means the participant who rolled high still knows someone is around and can start moving about, Seeking, and otherwise preparing to fight.

So, why does it do this?

Well, biggest reason is probably that PF2 doesn't have surprise rounds. Instead, it uses its regular stealth system to handle this.

The in-text reason is subtle, and likely won't be picked up by someone who isn't familiar with the game's stealth rules. Pathfinder 2e has five different awareness/perception states for creatures: Noticed, Concealed, Hidden, Undetected, and Unnoticed. These states are relative to the viewer+viewed pair. The first three are fairly straight forward and intuitive: Noticed creatures are in plain sight, unobscured, and viewed by the viewer; Concealed creatures are seen, and their location is known, but there is something obscuring the viewer's view, making their position seem a little "fuzzy"; and Hidden creatures are not seen by the viewer, but their location is known. The Undetected and Unnoticed states, though, are often a bit of a stumbling block, because, by name, they appear to be synonymous. They're actually significantly different, though. An Undetected creature is one that the viewer knows to exist, but that they do not know the location of, while an Unnoticed creature is one that they don't know exists at all.

If you review the quoted block of text above, you'll probably pick up on the fact that the authors are very careful to say that the character that succeeds on their Stealth roll is undetected, is careful about the use of unnoticed, and goes out of their way to avoid other synonyms. Beating the enemy's Perception DC on initiative rolls makes you Undetected, and not Unnoticed.

But that's not how people use it anywhere else in the game. Outside of initiative, if you roll Stealth and beat the other creature's Perception DC, you're usually going to be Unnoticed. If you beat the guard's Perception DC, you're going to be allowed to sneak on by without them paying you any attention.

So, why does it work this way with initiative? The books don't say definitively, but I'm pretty sure it's because if you tell your players to roll initiative when you haven't told them that there's anything around, they will assume there's something hiding in the shadows. Most GMs don't just randomly throw players into initiative, and most players don't want to be thrown into initiative with no payoff. Hidden enemies are Undetected by default, because players can't ignore the metacontext of the encounter (nor should they).

But GM Core presents this as a symmetrical situation, and it shouldn't be. The stealth initiative rules are set up this way for good meta reasons, but the GM should be working to a higher standard vis-a-vis metagaming. There are no in-fiction reasons why these Stealth rolls should have different outcomes from any others.

So, how should this play out?

First of all, in the majority of cases, at least one player is going to either fail their Stealth roll and be perceived, or they're going to opt to roll with some other skill or ability, so it'll be a moot case. The NPCs will have a reason to investigate the shadows. But if the whole party rolls Stealth for initiative, and the whole party beats the first NPC's Perception DC, but fails to beat their initiative roll, I think that NPC should pass on its turn. I will generally roleplay whatever it is that they were doing for 3 Actions, and then pass the baton off to the next character. Eventually, we'll either get to an NPC whose Perception DC was high enough to actually notice that something's afoot, or we'll reach a PC, who will probably make sure all of the NPCs are in the know.

This provides opportunities for the players to passively observe their targets for a moment without being in the reactive state of "Oh Shit, It's My Turn", and also rewards players with a little extra reward for having tried something as a unit and unanimously succeeding. Plus, it side-steps the invalidating and disappointing feeling of having a 'win' stolen away, which is what succeeding on your Stealth roll but having your enemy know you're there anyway does.

So, I came into a couple of inoperable amplifiers/receivers recently as I was putting together a budget audio solution, thought they might provide a good opportunity to learn how to actually test circuits and diagnose issues with these types of devices. I'm struggling to find substantive resources on line that can help me start this journey, though. The Internet's now flooded with IT Help Desk style "turn it off and on again" type articles that just end with "if that doesn't work, send it in to be repaired".

I know there are, like, college courses for this kind of stuff, and that's probably going a step too far. I'm not actually looking to do repairs myself (not yet at least), just learn how to use the tools and where to poke them so that I can go "ah, so that's what's wrong!"

Are there reasonable resources for dipping my toes into this? Good intro textbooks? MOOC lectures? Video tutorial series? Or even just specific terms I should be using while searching for such things that will help clear up my queries' signal:noise ratio?

Trump calls the US-Canada border an "artificially drawn line", in what seems like one of the most dumbfounding statements the "build the wall" president could possibly utter.

But which probably isn't, because it's Trump.

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

Someone's going around on Reddit recruiting for a Nova Scotia 'friendlies' Discord server. I just wanted to pass the link along in the off chance that someone here was interested.

https://discord.com/invite/C2qPFDMc

u/Tragedi, the creator behind the Legend of Zelda conversion for Pathfinder 2e Paths of Hyrule, has released v1.3 of their player and GM resources, and announced that v1.4 is currently in the works, building off of Howl of the Wild content.

Formerly known as Adventures in Hyrule, Paths of Hyrule is a massive total conversion homebrew supplement for PF2e that I've been working on for the past year or so. It currently features 19 feature-complete ancestries, a slew of new backgrounds, animal companions, specific familiars, spells, class feats, subclasses, deities, archetypes, and items. Needless to say this project is a massive undertaking that aims to provide you with all the tools you need to run fully Zelda-themed campaigns regardless of your preferred Zelda game or era.

Paths of Hyrule Player Core 1.3: Scribe, PDF

Paths of Hyrule GM Core 1.3: Scribe, PDF

Pathbuilder Pack: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1euSWHql7q1P548RQpL40pnAGp4uZJyG5/view?usp=sharing

Tragedi's Discord Server: https://discord.gg/ampVnNdZ

Original Post (Reddit): https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1cncuc6/paths_of_hyrule_v13_a_zelda_supplement_for_pf2e/

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?

Crazy how the only one of these airing criticism that says the budget isn't doing enough is the publicly owned one.

Hey everyone, just an update to my last post from Sunday night.

The eclipse went off without a hitch -- thankfully, I am not personally capable of interfering with celestial events -- and I have to say, nothing could have ever possibly prepared me for the experience. No photo has ever actually captured what I saw Monday afternoon. I don't think any of them have come close.

Picture of my own attached for total lack of effect.

As I looked down at my camera screen and watched the last light of the crescent Sun disappear from my view, I felt totality occur. The umbra of the Moon swept over me while I looked down, and the world got noticeably chilly. The wind died down. The world was silent for a hiccup. I immediately and excitedly looked up, and I think my brain broke.

Hovering in the sky over Potato World was an black, alien orb, surrounded by a thin ring of brilliant white and pink shimmering fire. It was something straight out of a science fiction movie, and not necessarily a good one, either. It looked so incredibly fake.

It looked downright cartoony.

And it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wept as I stared at it, completely unable to maintain composure. I gawked at how bright the solar corona actually was -- I had completely expected to have to strain to see it. I marveled as I realized I was seeing, with my own two, naked eyes, solar prominences arching over the limb of the Moon. And I just sobbed through the whole experience.

My fiancee, whose interest in this had seemed to be primarily a mix between modest curiosity in a significant natural and cultural event and support for my interest, also cried at seeing it, while her son sat on the ground with his mouth hanging open.

It was both the longest and the shortest 3 minutes of my life. When it was over, I just stood in the field in a daze, periodically pressing my camera's shutter button. In just a few minutes following the end of totality, the field, in which hundreds of people had gathered, was nearly empty. Only a handful of us remained, and most of the others had heavier equipment than my DSLR and tripod.

At the end of the day, I didn't quite get the pictures I wanted. I had hoped to get bracketed exposures during totality, and I had assumed that my camera's settings for that when using the LCD display as digital viewfinder would be the same as when using the optical viewfinder, and they weren't. But I'm not too fussed about it. The pictures still turned out significantly better than I could have hoped for.

I'll be posting the rest of my photos -- including some pictures of Potato World itself -- to my PixelFed account, which can be found here, if anyone's interested: https://pixey.org/i/web/profile/384533916920271164

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.