Wandering Adventure Party

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.

Writing rants on the Fediverse is how I’m trying to wean myself off of that space. The book release schedule keeps reeling me back in!

Oran becomes a Summoner, from season 3 of Rotgrind! https://youtu.be/W0IX9_AMvSs

This is a post by Reddit user u/FarDeskFree who, during the Battlecry! playtest defended the Guardian as Good, Actually. Reproducing here in its entirely, for posterity. https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1chem84/hot_take_guardian_is_actually_pretty_good_how_are/ I’m seeing a lot of hate for Guardian on this sub and it honestly kind of baffles me. I don’t think the class is perfect or complete but for a playlets I think it is in remarkably good shape. I am actually far more excited about playing one than I am the Commander. I have played a lot of tanks in this game. It is probably my most common party role and I’ve gotten to do it at level low and high levels, (or at least as high as 16 and counting anyway). Champion has long been one off my favorite classes in the game, but I’ve played just about every tank build imaginable including: Champion, Barbarian, Armor Inventor, Mountain Stance Monk, Earthen-Armored Kineticist, I even played a mostly tanky Fighter for a little while. In all of those the one thing I never did was optimize to deal damage. Well…. The fighter might be an exception but that’s Fighter, that’s his thing. It feels like when issues of balance between classes is brought up on this sub, or when people try to talk about how good or bad a class is so much off the conversation is focused around damage output. I have a whole separate soap-box around how good of a class I think Summoner can be if you stop focusing on trying to do damage with your Eidolon and actually play like a caster. My Angelic Summoner with a divine sorcerer archetype might be the best pf2e healer/support I’ve ever seen, but all that is beside the point. Back to Gaurdian. People seem to be pretty disappointed in Taunt, and I really don’t get it. The hardest part of playing tank is that once a creature figures out you’re hard to hit, they stop targeting you and aim for your backline. Taunt is the best remedy for this I’ve seen. People keep comparing it to Barbarian (especially Giant Barb) but I really don’t think it’s a fair comparison. Yes, you take a -2 to that creature, so it looks similar on paper, but lets also keep proficiency in mind. Barbarian get’s expert AC at 13th level and never even hits Master. Fighter gets Expert AC at 11th level and Master at 17th. Champion (the previous AC champ) goes Expert at 7th, Master at 13th, and Legend at 17th. Prior to this playlets, Champ and and Monk were the only classes in the game to get Legendary AC. Guardian picks up expert at 5th level, Master at 11th, and Legendary at 15th! So looking back at comparing this to a Barb’s rage feature, By the time the Barbarian even gets Expert in AC, Guardian is two levels shy of Legendary. -2 AC might look similar on paper, but prof has the Guard ahead by somewhere between +2 and +4 depending on what level we make the comparison. Not only that, but the Barbarian has a penalty to their AC against everybody, and Taunt only gives a single enemy that buff, and we haven’t touched on the buff that Taunt gives to your whole team. You effectively increase all of their ACs by 1-3 depending on a roll, and that’s 1 on a monster rolling a success, they have to crit your class DC in order for your team not to get the benefit. So let’s look at how that DC scales. Turn out it actually scales identically to Champion with Expert at 9th, and Master at 17th. This is about 2 levels after the full spell casters get their increased to Spell DC. You will not that I said “Effectively” increases, and that is a very important distinction. In actuallity the emery is taking a penalty to their attack roll, which is actually a huge difference because that means that it stacks with all kinds of other AC buffs that your buddies could have. It stacks with the Protection/Circle of Protection spells, it stakes with shields, it stacks with Rallying Anthem, it stacks with weapons that have the parry trait, it stacks with the Dueling Parry feat line. It really can’t be overstated how good this is. It is very difficult to find stackable AC buffs in this game. A Guardian and Bard together could in theory buff their whole party’s AC by +6 in addition to whatever Shields and other things they’ve got going on between a crit fail on Taunt and a Critical success Fortissimo Composition of Rallying Anthem. That turns a severe boss encounter into a big wet noodle! So to sum up, you have the best AC in the freaking game, which you can choose to lower down to EVERYONE ELSE’S AC in order increase your whole party by 1-3 and you can just keep doping this every damn turn. The baddie is defending with a Will save, which is typically a low save for big bruisers who it hard. Let’s also mention here that Taunt gives you a circumstance penalty to AC, which doesn’t stack with Off-Guard so if you were already flanked, it isn’t even a penalty. All this is really only talking on that one mechanic though, there are so many other cool little things in there. Here’s a non-exhaustive list: You get armor spec. out the gate, compared to Champion who has to wait until 7th level, and fighter at 11th. You then get greater armor spec, which doubles your resistance from the previous ability as of 13th level. The Mitigate Harm Threat technique is awesome! The worst part of lowering your AC to your Taunt target is not getting hit more, it’s getting crit more, which this gives a specific resistance to that scales overtime. The Raise Haft feat lets you parry with a 2 handed weapon, and if the weapon already had the parry trait (such as a Bow Staff, or fucking Mithral Tree) it increases the parry from +1 to +3. For those keeping track at home, that more than offsets your penalty from Taunt and is better than a shield, albeit you don’t get to mitigate damage with Shield Block with a Parry weapon, but that also competes with Intercept Strike for your reaction. So… shrug I guess. There are so many other really cool and narratively dynamic feats for soaking damage and pushing people around and protecting your allies. TL;DR: this class looks effin’ great and y’all crazy.

This was the largest encounter I’ve ever run, and what an experience it was! I learned as much from this one fight as I have from months of adventure prep and minor encounters. We’re a very casual table, just me, my partner, my step-son and a friend, running short (~90 minutes) sessions every week or two. We’re progressing slowly, and levelling up even more slowly. I decided early on, due to the material I’ve, uh, stolen my ideas from, that level progression would be locked to McGuffin acquisition, but speed with which the party is actually getting their hands on these objects is much slower than I had initially expected. We’ve settled into a tick-tock adventure cadence, then, with mid-level power-ups being added via gold and item injections into keep everyone happy. Which is all to say, when the players level up, it’s a big deal, and I’ve taken to giving them something worthy of their new powers to cut their teeth on. This time, we’d been running the Forge of Fury, which I converted as we went. Consider this a spoiler warning for this 25 year old module! Hiding in the third section of the dungeon – known as the Foundry – was the party’s second McGuffin, and after some unexpectedly friendly interactions with a group of Hryngars (nee Duergars), a frightening from an Allip, and a really awkward discussion with a crypto-succubus, they managed to find their level-up trinket. The original adventure hook for the module was to go searching for some ancient +1 weapons, or some such, but that seemed like some pretty weak sauce. The intent was also for players to delve too deep and encounter Nightwing, the black dragon and its hoard of gold, but I’d sent the players in there looking for an NPC and a McGuffin, and have a setting where dragons are very rare, and where at least some of the enemies are (unbeknowst to the players) trying to resurrect a dragon, so just throwing one at the players early in the campaign would be kind of undermining. So I threw zombies at them, instead. A lot of zombies. Forge of Fury has a Xulgath (nee Troglodyte) den on the second level, and that is where I stuffed the NPC they were trying to find/rescue. Unfortunately, the party bypassed the den, and took the outer route around the outskirts of the dungeon. This meant that the amped up Drow Sorceress/Necromancer I had following them had some bodies she could unalive and then un-unalive. Not exactly RAW, of course, since it takes a full day to use the Create Undead ritual for a single target, but the players don’t know this, and what they don’t know can’t hurt them. Besides, Summon Undead is a Rank 1 spell. *shrug* The players return to the main hall, new power-up in hand, to discover the troop of friendly Duergars fighting a large wave of shambling Troglodytes (a Level 4 Shambling Troop). It’s at this point that I hand them the stat blocks for the Duergars and a list of names that they will be playing. Each of them got 2 Duergars Sharpshooters and a Duergar specialist of some type to play, which I expected them to use as cannon fodder. Each round, I unleashed new creatures onto the battle field. First, it was spiders (four Hunting Spiders and a Huge Spider Swarm), then it was the missing NPC’s party (2 human Zombie Shamblers), then it was the Xulgath leader and an Orc captive (2 Zombie Brutes). Some skeletal warriors and a Ragewight followed this, before themselves being followed by the boss: A custom built undead anti-paladin, representing the NPC they failed to save. The battle was chaos, in the best way. Even with this giant roster of enemies, the players got a turn every couple of enemies, and my partner seemed really into the idea of running multiple creatures, and letting the dice determine their personalities. This was also the encounter where I decided to say “ok, fuck it” more often. As we’ve played, I’ve been increasingly convinced that PF2 not just works as a fiction-first game, but plays better that way. I’ve lacked the confidence to truly give in to this idea at the table though. But with three other characters at her fingertips, all of them martials, my partner started mulling over her character sheet less, and just… dropped her knees into the boss’s back. The NPC was tied up at this point, and prone, thanks to a critically successful bola attack, so there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about this. I thought about it for a second and decided that it sounded like an unarmed strike to me. But it also sounded like she was now on top of the guy. Like, that’s what happens when you drive your knees into a prone person’s back, right? So, I threw caution to the wind, let the fiction take over, and told her “you’re now sitting on top of him”. The light in her eyes at hearing that was magical. On his turn the NPC shook her off, broke his bonds, and got to his feet. The battle resumed, but something had changed. The players now understood that they had permission to try things, and I had confidence that I could decide whether what they were trying made sense, and, importantly, what potential outcomes made sense. The fight ended a couple of rounds later, the boss disarmed (they thought to kick his sword away) and once more knocked to the ground. The party’s Guardian did a Smash Bros. style leaping downward strike with his sword, pinning him in place, while two enlarged Duergars stomped a mudhole in him. After four sessions, and nine rounds of combat, the battle was won, and the module was complete. And my table finally started seeing the game through their characters’ eyes, as a world where they can try to get away with anything.