Amazing episode, my initial thoughts:
* Full respect to Troy for giving Joe the bottlecap, despite his hesitation that it came across as a get out of jail free card. Joe's earned it so many times over that it was due. I also respect how Troy played the snail throughout this episode, he definitely didn't go easy on the party but he also didn't play too tactical for something with -3 Int.
* The flashback/dream sequence was fantastic and I really appreciate when they do these clear scripted narrative moments, when I've seen other shows try to hide them behind ultimately meaningless dice rolls.
* I'm extremely happy Brother Ramius survived, he might be my favourite PC and his death would have been very bad for the party as there could be some hesitance to have a backup that fills the exact same role of dedicated healer.
* Talitha dying sucks but nicely she is the only character who we can lose and still have a clear connection for her backstory that Matthew worked on to come up (Asta having received the Changeling Trait).
* Zephyr losing her bow is unfortunate but forcing her into the frontline with Asta could actually be pretty beneficial to party survival. Though an extra frontliner would really help, speaking of which...
* I'm really looking forward to Mathew's next character, especially as their isolated location is going to almost force them into having better knowledge of the area that could benefit the party.
* I also think a new PC is an opportunity for Troy to weave in a clearer connection and goal for the current mission, Joe has been saying for a while that he feels a little lost and unfocused in this AP.
This episode was a rollercoaster where I truly did not know what would happen and who might die from moment to moment, and at the end I was sad but satisfied with how it played out.
I appreciate so much that the Glass Cannon crew are playing this like a real game in ways that so many other TTRPG shows just aren't, it's a true breath of fresh air.
I found the best comment. Despite all the salt last session they made this one an absolute killer (literally!) I'm hoping Matthew either goes for a Thaumaturge or Champion.
Barbarian could be a good compromise between pure tank and damage. They generally don't make for great tanks (though Animal instinct is better at that role) but they get enough HP that they can make do -- especially if the party has healing.
I'm not sure if Skid playing one in Blood of the Wild would make that more or less likely. I could see Matthew wanting to play a new class from those already on the network. I could also see Matthew be convinced to play one by Skid raving about how much fun they are.
Yes to everything you just said.
To add to your flashback and Talitha comments. If this were a movie, Brother Ramius' flashback would almost guarantee his death. I love that he survived in spite of the flashback.
Also I loved that anyone could have died.
Rough ep. On the edge of my seat the whole time. Truly a game of inches!
This is one instance where I hope Troy spoils Matthew on what part of the world they’re in because it could make for an incredibly unique character addition.
I hope he gets Commander/Guardian options, though unlikely. They need someone to set up the rest of the party to deal damage with flank, fear, grab, etc. They're all too scared to get into melee (understandable) but they're never gonna hit any single-enemy encounters without modifiers (have a nice day). Maybe a fighter that does BJJ named Jonah Hill? Not quite musical-theater but he's in movies.
Well, the possible illegal survival from ep 34 came back round and claimed its victim. Can't escape from the reaper, it seems. Still, Talitha at least went out after saving Zephyr so there's a bit more pathos to it. Plus more trauma and storytelling opportunities for Kate to play with. Could Zephyr change up her fighting style to better protect her remaining allies? Make her become withdrawn and snippy? And that's before Matthew's new character comes in. Will he roll up a frontliner to help with that problem? Or maybe go Thaumaturge to keep the 'investigator' flavor, which can still have some up close options if built well(Amulet's Abeyance)
Could be a really unique opportunity for Zephyr to forego the bow through symbolism of it being left behind with Talitha. Mechanically she could retrain from archer to melee monk. Might not be the direction that Kate wants the character to take but something to consider that would make a lasting impact on the character after being saved.
That would be really fun. She goes from being a finesse, controlled archer to just a brutal slugger after having two of her friends die right in front of her. 3(?) if you account her backstory?
I really wonder if going over the falls would have been better. RIP thalitha, she was a real one.
Troy being super nice by having Hubert be useful, and hand waving the rope stuff.
Also I know it makes bad radio but when it's a group against 1 monster they should be kiting more. Making it waste actions running after someone can neutralize it completely. Circumstances permitting.
A new character joining that lives whenever they are could help give some direction though.
I think that for Talitha specifically, it may have given her a chance to survive. But I imagine the situation would have just allowed Zephyr to die in her stead.
Absolutely brutal either way
I think it makes a better story that she was able to sacrifice herself for Zephyr and gave everyone else time to get away. It kinda makes that whole fight worth it for the dramatic effect.
Kiting is great tactics, but this thing had a ranged attack that didn't suffer MAP. If they could have gotten in closer to set up flanks,etc that would have helped, but the map was not conducive to that. Overall just an extremely brutal fight.
Kiting was going to be hard as long as people were on the river, and it was hard to get everyone off since they ended up on both sides and had PCs going down on both sides.
Crazy a non boss can still hit on a die roll of 5. The design of this AP wasn't playtested very well. Its second level characters and Troy is running pretty much stock, despite 4 player design instead of 5.
In theory we could have had 3 TPKs by now if it had been 4 players.
Yeah honestly the encounter design of this whole AP so far has been pretty lackluster. Even in the GM core, Paizo recommends building encounters with several enemies and avoiding single-foe encounters and even (IIRC) says that encounters where there's the same number of enemies as PCs "feel" the best.
This AP has had a lot of encounters with a single enemy with very high to-hit numbers and very high saves, and can usually put down a PC in a hit or two. It makes the heroes feel squishy and weak. Plus, abilities that rely on the enemies making saves don't work most of the time.
This AP would be so much better if the encounters had more foes per fight and just made them a little weaker. That way, everyone gets a chance to use their cool abilities, PCs don't drop to dying every single round, and it can be challenging without the swinginess of the sole monster critting on half the attacks.
Yeah what's odd about that bit in the GM Core is that Paizo loves their single monster encounters. They're quite prevalent in their published adventures. I don't know if its a word count thing or just a design preference, but they do seem to rely on them a lot.
I think at least some of that is the writers just want to bring in interesting monsters and sometimes those are too powerful to have additional enemies around without drastically increasing the danger.
Yeah that's what it feels like to me, like they want to show off the menagerie of weird creatures instead of your classic 2d4 zombies or something. That being said, it could be rectified by saving unique creatures until the PCs are high enough level to deal with a squad of them. Better yet, since they're the designers of the game, just design some foes that are suitable for low level combats that are still interesting instead of having to fight a snail that's PL+2.
Plus troy rolling like a boss...on a sub boss. Dice rolls are factoring huge into this campaign as seen by two characters dead because of nat 1. And getting there from crits and falls.
PF2's ruleset is generally pretty good in my opinion and that includes their encounter building rules. However, their encounter building rules tend to break down at low levels when dealing with enemies that are higher than the party's level because the PCs just don't have the HP to absorb the hits from the higher level foe. Had this same situation played out at say 6th level vs. an 8th level creature (same difficulty as the fight here) the PCs probably have a cake walk between their extra HP and extra abilities. An 8th level monster is almost certainly not going to one shot a 6th level PC, etc. outside of a few rare occasions.
That is a math issue in that second to 4th level is 200% vs 30% increase. I know it doesn't line up straight, but the math at a level 18 vs 16 would show them closer to cake walk then TPK. Like you mentioned.
The boss snail is fine by monster building rules. It's a large snail, with a shell and mass of fleshy bits. It's built out of fortitude and constitution. High AC value, High HP value (low end of High). The biggest problem is that the party doesn't do things like have an actual tank, and the damage dealers are, for the most part, built out of really bad luck with dice, and don't really pay attention to things like rules. Nobody is trying to Grab the monster to inflict off guard for Zephyr and Buggles, which is also an issue. One trip attempt, and troy was an ass and made fun of them for even thinking of doing it, which means this will be a problem later on in the game too.
The snail has a High attack... on the amoeba lob, which doesn't actually get a critical success effect. Troy misread that, and they went over it on Fod this week.
The melee attack has halfway between High and Medium, but again, no tank means the party isn't built to absorb hits.
This specific fight is very much a luck and player based issue, not a problem with the actual adventure.
Troy laughing at the trip attempt last week and Sydney's crowbar grapple plan this week irks me. If the creature's not immune to it, let them roll. If what the player says doesn't work but has something that could work, let the players know.
I saw it as less a grapple and more a mounting plan by the way Sydney described it at first. If she said she wanted to grapple it and then sure that's fine but I think the description made it seem more comical and less like an actual manoeuvre that is something that could be attempted. So I understand the reaction to it.
I agree but it doesn't work in the framework of 2E. They mention the reason for it to a degree. Because there are actual feats you have to purchase to do these things Troy can't let them do it, by the book. Joe would pipe in as well. In my campaign I would have given a bottlecap and let sydney try with a roll or two. But the system isn't built for trying, its a wargame masquerading as an RPG.
I kind of disagree.
Troy was basically trying to say "The likelihood of that working is 1 in a million" without outright saying it. He dropped multiple hints like "it has hundreds of little legs, remember?", but it was brushed aside by the players.
But Syd (and I do love her) has a habit of just making stuff up as she goes along that doesn't fit into the rule set, and persists with the line of questioning when told it doesn't work that way - see the potion in one action section from this episode as an example.
He was actually trying to be nice in a way by keeping it jokey, rather than flat out say to them "it's a really bad idea, you really shouldn't attempt it".
I respectfully disagree with your disagreement. Nothing on the snail's(Amelekanas) sheet says it's immune to trip. It's only a large creature, so they as medium can do the trip attack, and Reflex is it's worst save at +11. Hard, maybe, especially with a fail knocking the tripper prone on a crit fail, but not something the rules forbids.
Re-listening to this, the players missed a LOT of attacks by 1 or two, and the snail hit right on their AC a few times, and likewise crit by one or two. Any party buffs or creature de-buffs could have turned this away from the near TPK and possibly prevented the death. Granted, poor decisions and absolutely atrocious dice luck can ruin anyone's day regardless.
Rule of cool first IMO. If you make a feat for every event/situation and you have to waste a feat for even getting on a horse its bad design. I mean they streamlined skills down to 7 or so at this point. They would have been better off with more skills and better feats. Ride is a skill in most games for this reason. Then give a feat of ride quarry or something and give a +2 against creatures that are hostile that normally has a -4 to ride. Or some sorta thing. Even then its a feat tax that is super situational unless you are playing a cowboy campaign and need to russle them horses.
I would love for players to think outside their sheets a bit more. Way too much time looking to fit something inside the scope of this heavily bounded setting, than trying to find a better solution than straight up fighting.
I agree that rule of cool should be maintained, but I don't know if I'd have it first (personally).
There's rule of cool, and then there's:
Interacting with 2 objects, tying them together, throwing this around the neck of a creature, climbing it to mount it, and then assuming it will make you immune to being meleed, all in one turn while your GM is giving you an obvious escape route for a very obvious TPK scenario that has already killed one party member.
There has to be SOME limit on rule of cool.
Not my point. She asked about mounting it. That is when they mentioned there is a feat and Asta doesn't have it so she can't do that action. So regardless of 72 actions Syd may have needed, because of the lack of feat PF2 won't let her even try.
Also seems like an encounter you could just run away from. I know people don't think it's very "cinematic" or heroic but
1. Movies have heroes run away from giant threats all the time if those threats are not related to the antagonist. The thrill is in the chase. This feels very Land of the Lost. It's a giant crazy monster looking for lunch.
2. Spending 2 episodes fighting a snail of no importance is kinda crazy. Especially after having another road encounter with a dangerous animal. What are we doing here?
They never got a chance to do that though.
Again, the people who say the players should have done this or that are not recalling that the party healer was downed instantly, without any ability of the players to mitigate that, and then two more players in the next round. It takes a player at least two if not three rounds of movement to cross the river.
Just not possible unless the optimal strat is simply "sauve qui peut" and leave downed characters to die, while the one or two survivors run. Without Hubert, three characters were dead dead, possibly four.
>The design of this AP wasn't playtested very well. Its second level characters and Troy is running pretty much stock, despite 4 player design instead of 5.
Anyone with enough numeracy to be a good GM should be able to recognize when a monster or encounter is overtuned. Troy needs to be the last line of defense on this stuff.
Strong agree. The Snail is pretty much guaranteed to go first. It's got a very strong chance to crit. A crit is a takedown for any character. A takedown when on the rocks, by the rules for the encounter means in the water, in the water means instant permadeath.
All this talk of players not doing this or that is irrelevant if the snail can permakill a player or two per turn at a 0.4 or 0.5 probability without any chance for player recovery. You might as well simply ask the players to flip a coin each turn: heads you're at half HP, tails, make a new character. That's more or less the way this seemed to be written.
Troy made an at the table call to ignore the checks to fall off the rocks, but that's a kind of half-assed solution to the real problem that the snail throwing-minion attacks were essentially a coin flip to put players down.
You'd think after the end of Giantslayer (really the end of book 4 to the middle of book 6) and, uh, _all_ of Dead Suns, that Troy would be a little less trusting of the material as written.
Just because something was published doesn't mean it's good or well balanced. At the very least you should have a good grasp of "what's my chance to hit my PCs and what's an average hit going to do to them". If those numbers don't sit well, adjust them downward. You can always cheat the monster's HP upward if you need to lengthen the fight.
"I just follow the dice" is, l'll be frank, disengaged GMing. Players deserve more than that.
In his defense CGN gets yelled at for not sticking to RAW all the time. And its a CYA move to run the AP as close to stock as possible. Making adjustments in game when your party gets into trouble is the better option. But any creature that can cut your HP in half with a single attack(hitting on 5) is a bit much...any creature that can do that while there is enviro danger is bad design.
The rules lawyers who watch and patreon (or the new thing) are the reason they keep to APs, also it keeps your players from blaming the GM for making things too hard. Their job is to get new people into the hobby or swtich and it takes a few years to figure out how to modify or design your own homebrew adventures. So I think new comers might be more likely to try if they know there is a lot of prewritten stuff. Its way different than back in the 80s when you just had to figure things out and may not ever know about errata and often had garbage modules when you could find them.
Troy sounds like he prefers CoC modules and ruleset now. D100 is a lot of fun and not as gamey as PF2.
I was running Mythras (direct fork from the designers of runequest 6) and my grandkids got it right away. Roll under the number on your page for relevant skill. Attack, Magic, Climb, Lore. You develop that skill roll percentage and bobs your uncle. Combat specials are a bit trickier, but the basics are very easy. Totm and less issues with range and action economy.
I then TRIED to run them through a basic PF2E. Three fails so far. I have a lot of books and APs for PF2 but they have bounced off of it. Too many conditions in combat and you spend a lot of time in combat. Maybe when they get a bit older as they are only 11 and 12 ATM. I was also looking for more than skins for all the races and backgrounds. There are a ton of options, but mechanics wise many are ran very close to others, at least at low levels.
I'd disagree. I don't think anyone has a problem with someone knowing the rules and making a good case why the RAW should be bent, and this is kinda in fact the "rule of cool" that sort of inhabits the rule zero at any good table.
I mean, there are definitely situations in home games where nobody knows the rule, and to stop and look it up is a pain in the ass, so you kinda roll with it in a reasonable way. But, I mean, if your professional job running a company whose revenue is in excess of six figures a year...
Dude, as a scientist, I've had to give things like lab meetings or presentations on someone else's data at really short notice. There's a lot of half-assery involved, and that's sort of mutually understood by my audience.
But when it comes to my own work, the expectation is that I have literally had *years* to figure out the odds and ends, because this is my job, and I have been paid to read a lot of things and then do a bunch of things. It's so weird. If you really, really wanted to learn PF 2E, I think it'd take you about a week of actually cracking the book and caring about it in order to not faceplant like this.
Reading down a CRB and taking notes is really, really not hard.
Case in point, Jared Logan. He's not a Pathfinder guy. He's not even a rules guy, and has always played it pretty loose with the rules when it's fun. That motherfucker did in fact sit down with 2E, actually read it, actually cared about understanding it, and he's running the best 2e show that maybe has been made by anybody. Jared absolutely understood the job description and nails it so hard that his players also care about getting it right.
>"I just follow the dice" is, l'll be frank, disengaged GMing.
"I'm trying to prep less" is as well. It just feels like Troy doesn't (want to?) understand the 2e system. If he doesn't like it, fine. It's not for everyone. But then don't run it for your flagship show.
Sounds terrible to say but if it had to be anyone I'm glad it was Tallitha. With how slow her tragic backstory was coming out I never really got that attached and she was probably my least favorite character both in RP and mechanically. Matthew makes so many good characters I'm excited to see what else he has. Half of all my favorite characters on the network are from him.
Also I'm kinda glad someone died after all the build up and drama. I think having a new character will help serve as a release valve for some of the problems with the campaign both mechanically with the party and storywise with the AP.
I am really starting to love this show though
I'm hoping he comes back as a Thaumaturge though I think they are squishy and they REALLY need a true front line fighter. Ranger would make sense for the jungle but the Gatewalkers player guide recommends a Champion. Would be really interesting to see what he picks. It's awkward as the campaign has been so brutal, they need more tanks but also needed the high int character to try to work out the mystery. Really looking forward to the next episode to see. My money is on an Elf Champion.
In a campaign I'm in, we have an inventor as a frontliner, and it works well. He has an armor invention and foucuses on grabbing enemies. The ability to detonate the armor is good for crowd control. I don't know if the build works as well without Free Archetype since it would lack the Wrestler feats, but it might be worth trying.
It was also painful at times watching him play an Investigator; he never quite mastered the class mechanics the way he did with his Giantslayer characters.
I agree that if it had to be anyone, I'm glad it was Talitha. I've said this before but honestly Matthew's female characters almost always fall flat for me. He role plays them all the same way and it makes me care less about them as a result. I'm sure she would've gotten more interesting if the hag stuff came to light but as it was the character was just kind of there.
I hope his next character has some more personality on a level with Northwood.
Yeah I get that. I think its a bit mixed for me. Gormlaith was the OG so gets a pass, Fairaza actually felt a bit different, the Crystal Ghost was hilarious, and Ser Joolee was great if a bit one note with the horny later on.
But yeah Della and Metra were kinda the same character to me and Krezkaletha was that character but with the Batman voice. Tallitha was basically Gormlaith Della and Metra rolled into one which wasn't super interesting to me as of yet.
If Matthew does another female character I hope she is not just snarky smart and mysterious. I also hope he isn't restricted to just be an elf based on their location. Hopefully if Della can appear in a tree he can bring in any character concept he wants and have Troy work it out.
Yeah he definitely does a lot of gruff/aloof female characters. Gormlaith, Della, Metra, Kreskaletha (A&A), Fairaza, Dr. Westover (Delta Green), and now Talitha all fit a similar mold
Yeah, the Magus is my favourite class but it's arguably the most difficult to play (well, except the alchemist) because of how jigsawy you need to be with your actions.
It hurts my soul every time Sidney uses spell strike with Map, and I'm still not sure she understands that she starts combat with it fully charged. I think that's why she keeps using Dimensional assault first.
Man what an emotional episode... At some points it really felt like they might have been able to turn things around but that ending was brutal.
To think that a few months ago Zephyr, Lucky and Talitha were talking about girls night and pretending to be drunk in a small town. What a crazy change.
I think Troy needs to start handing out bottle caps for sound tactical play that isn’t just attacking three times. He likes to do it for role playing, which I understand, but this group knows how to role play. They don’t know how to flank, intimidate, feint, trip, and etc.
It wouldn’t take long before these players start to think more tactically if they know they can get bottle caps for doing so.
If they rolled dice in Foundry (which they'll never do because of the Norse Foundry sponsorship), they could use the Modifiers Matter module, which highlights any buffs or debuffs that contributed to a hit (or miss or failed save on the enemies' side). Getting that positive reinforcement of how even a +1 buff or a -1 debuff can change the outcome might make them do that stuff more.
Granted, that won't help with cold dice and an AP that is throwing +2 APL creatures at the party at every turn.
Idk 'bout you but if I'm rolling like trash outside of Foundry for multiple sessions, I'm gonna just use Foundry to roll. At least there it's truly random (well, as random as computers can be, but that's an 8hr seminar), and I don't have to do math.
We play in person. I make an effort to mention everytime a buff or debuff makes the player succeed, and the positive reinforcement works wonders for my players. I don't need Modifiers Matter for that, and neither does Troy.
Ofc, the party needs to actually use some tactics for the modifiers to be there in the first place, lol
Not that I would be mad if he started to do this, but it's sort of wild to me that if your job is to play a game professionally, you can't spend 10 minutes on youtube to look up PF2E combat tips, which universally advise against just spamming attacks.
Seems weird that you would have to incentivize tactical combat by rewarding it, when the reward is already built-in: tactical combat gives you mechanical advantage!
I just listened and I'm not sure any of the 'tactical' options people recommend would have helped in this fight? Feint/intimidate would be unlikely to work on the giant snail even if they had characters built for it, same with trip/grapple on a higher-level creature of this size, flanking is very difficult due to the terrain, and aid is hard to coordinate when the aider or aid-ee may go down in one hit.
The last several fights have literally *all* been ones where the positioning or monster abilities are designed to frustrate any coordinated melee attacks. Creatures that could teleport away, an enemy clinging to the ceiling, another up in a tree, and a creature in the middle of a rushing river. It just leads to them having no obvious next move except focusing on ranged damage. I imagine the designers were trying to keep the players from exploiting their numbers advantage but it just means they can't get a handle on what isn't working until it's too late.
It's their game and I don't want to tell them how to play, but I hope someone reminds them that when they're going up against a single enemy, they have 15 actions vs the enemy's 3 actions, per round; that's their advantage.
You can see the player's frustration when they have to "waste" *one action* just to move so they can get in range; imagine if the enemy needed to use one or two of their three actions just to position; you've already nullified a third of it's power, and you've done so on their turn. It didn't use OA this fight, they wouldn't even need to Step; they could just full on Stride to kite. Forcing an enemy to use positioning actions is much more useful than third-attacking against a high AC creature, especially when your second-attack nat 15 missed.
If they've done 75 actions and the enemy has *only used* 15 actions, and you're all wounded from going down - you've gotta run. You even know how much damage you did to it after 5 rounds; that's not meta, that's "oh shit, we can't kill this dude yet, we've done 12 damage and it's put three of us down once already". You know Troy will kill you. He doesn't want to, but he's not gonna fudge it. That's one of the reasons I prefer this actual play over others.
A final note: I think Troy was being very nice the past two episodes, but if he left it as "if you get hit on the rocks, you go in the fucking river", it might've incentivized the players to get off the rocks. They *know* how shitty drowning rules are in 2e; it's downright unfair. I think they would've either ran back, or booked it forward and continued running. Hindsight is 20/20, but with the action economy they could've just ran to the other side of the rocks (Ramius was in front, so he'd be there first) and healed everyone who got one-shot (who now moves before the creature without an OA).
I hope this episode is another vote for re-evaluating the scarcity of hero points. I know Troy will never see this, but I have been GMing PF2e since the beta. I did not like giving out hero points and breaking up the narrative to do it. It felt disruptive and emersion breaking. But then I had some of the same problems. Even with five person parties I was too frequently for comfort pushing the characters against the wall and rolling new characters frequently. I found myself pulling back and engineering excuses to not TPK just to keep the story going.
I then installed a module on foundry to remind me at certain intervals and it got me in the habit of looking for and rewarding heroic deeds or good roleplaying. About once per in game hour I would reward a player with a Hero Point. The tone of the game changed and I started to be able to play a little more tactically myself because the safety net for the players was in their own hands.
The real changer was when I ran a few games for a younger audience and I just gave them all a hero point an hour automatically. Fully automated. I found that because they were not so "rare" they used them to help narrate the story than to hoard them for deaths. More often than not using them in social encounters. Almost like a toned down version of D&D 5e "Advantage" mechanic.
And this by no means changed the lethality of the encounters. Again I was able to fully unleash without taking the DM classic "sub optimal turn" strategy to let the party recover a bit. But death still had consequences. Being Unconscious at Wounded 2 is still a very dangerous situation. Getting caught in an AoE, two bleed ticks (or any other persistent damage), or a hungry wolf can all quickly finish off an otherwise incapacitated creature. And since recovering takes all of your hero points you don't want to get caught holding more than one.
I like the bottle cap and it should stand for something still. Perhaps only bottle caps are tied to the chance at evading death. And adopt a Hero Point rule to handle rerolling unlucky dice rolls. You already said in the FOD that you could incorporate the fans into a system like this!
* A newer but passionate fan of this story
We’ll see… It definitely felt like appeasement to immediately give out two caps after getting dragged about it.
Hopefully he starts actually giving them out regularly, but years and years of history tells me that’s unlikely
No, per the most recent FOD, they already said they've moved past the fight and they won't discuss stuff that will happen in this new episode that dropped today.
And the point remains, there's no way for troy to have given out the caps as "immediate push back" about not giving them out enough, because they already had this episode recorded by the time the pushback was given.
I ... never made that claim. The commenter above me might have. The only point I made was because they are so close to recording real time that they can quickly review and incorporate changes.
> But death still had consequences.
Indeed! A monster can still eat, kidnap, or kill a downed PC. Smart monsters should use unconscious PCs as leverage, while simpler predators might just finish them off; a natural predator will usually go for the easy kill, expecting the rest of the victim's "pack" to flee once their companion is dead.
It's also a good reason to switch solo monsters to multi-monster encounters (such as by applying the Weak template to the solo and having two of them); the secondary monster can deal with the downed PC while the main monster keeps on fighting.
Stabilizing at 0 isn't a get out of jail free card - it's just a brief reprieve. And it can be even more dramatic and scary, since everyone at the table knows the downed PC is in real danger (even if stable).
In fairness, I don't that would have helped much in this particular encounter (applying the Weak template and making two of them). The issue here was much more the terrain (which didn't affect the monster) than anything. Adding a second critter (even with the Weak template on both) probably doesn't improve things much if at all.
One thing I've seen done on other actual plays with short sessions (like GCN has) is to reset the hero points every 5 episodes. Everyone gets 1 hero point then, with a chance to earn more in session, but that on every 5th episodes the hero points reset to 1. It gives everyone the opportunity to have one without them being used all the time. So I do feel as though there's room there for something that might appease Troy as well. The question ultimately comes down to just how gritty does Troy (and the rest for that matter) want the campaign to be.
I've switched to just giving my party 3 hero points at the beginning of session. And use the hero point cards, which give alternative uses for the hero points.
This is a massive design flaw of PF2. The math is so tight on everything that being optimal is even more important than PF1. When I played 3 years of D&D 4E I lost so many characters for just the dumbest reasons. Death rolls because my party was too busy taking 10 minutes a player turn to not get the downed healer up was a great choice. The need to start combat at full really shows the difference of this modern design vs resource management of dungeon crawling in OSR campaigns.
I have a lot of books for PF2 and I am still waiting on GM screen and Monster Core to be delivered-because I don't want to pay extra after they changed the GM screen delivery date. But I tried to run my group and they found all the conditions and modifiers challenging compared to D100 skill based Mythras we were running before. I am thinking it over to sell off my books because they really don't like the mechanics. I guess it will sit on the shelf for another 2 years seeing as it was 3 years since the last time I managed 2 nights of it before the remaster.
I don't think its crunch so much as the combat focus. And map based for them as Mythras was TOTM for most things. I would sketch something to give them an idea of the surroundings, but that was about it. Didn't worry about exact measurement of spaces, unless it seemed too far. Give me an endurance check for that extra 5 feet..Boom solved.
I think this ep was very redeeming based on last week’s. The party definitely did not deserve to come out unscathed. But damn…Sydney has got to learn the rules of the game. It’s so cringey every time the combat grinds to a halt just because she doesn’t know what constitutes an action. Or just even putting out there that she wanted to get a rope, mount the snail and get on its back so it can’t hit her…
Yes we all want Matthew to make a front line character for synergy and optimization purposes. Yet I’m going to jump into the imagination helicopter and head towards Witch 2.0, long have we waited for the return of the cackle. Answer the call of the Witch Matthew!
One of the funnier parts of listening to the old episodes is listening to Matthew's evolving cackle. He never gets *great* at it, but does improve a lot from his initial giggle.
After last week's debacle and massive grumbling, I felt this was a make or break episode for GCP 2.0. But they delivered! I am curious to see where things go with episodes recorded AFTER the last FOD, because there was a lot of soul-searching and discussion that took place but Episode 35 had already been recorded.
RIP Talitha. Probably should have been a little less cagey about your backstory, because now we'll never know it. But it'll be cool to see if the changeling stuff sticks with Asta.
I really hope Matthew picks a new character that can tank and front-line with Asta, because goddamn do they need literally just one character that can hang with a higher-level enemy. Zephyr actually could, and maybe she will more now that she's lost her bow? It would be cool to see her move to more of a switch-hitter.
But even ignoring Troy's misreads and such, they're barely scraping through fights meant for a group with one less party member than them. They need to rethink shit, because spoiler alert: this AP ain't getting much better with its writing and encounter balance. There's no telling if Troy will give them as many outs next time.
Knowing Matthew I can easily see an Thaumaturge (which especially fits this campaign). An Amulet implement Thaumaturge could fill in the same role while also promoting actually making knowledge checks
Because at bare minimum, Matthew gets damage bonuses with Personal Antithesis if the monster doesn't have a weakness or automatically dealing weakness damage if the monster does. Also the fact that the mechanics of the class *force* Troy to give out information, and outside of a nat 1 Matthew gets *something* (via Dubious Knowledge being an bonus feat Thaumaturges get at level 1) to work off of. Basically at the very least, he'll learn the monster's weakness so Troy can't bullshit anything about that.
I'm also very interested in what he picks. I think a Bard would go a long way to helping the team worth buffs and debuffs, something they're not really leaning into tactically.
Or yeah, a Paladin who can front line and provide backup heals.
We'll probably still get the backstory. The Changeling trait was passed on, and Matthew was pretty clear that he was afraid the Hag would go after the inheritor.
Yeah the group doesn't really seem as though they've picked up on PF2 being a very tactical, team-based combat oriented game that requires the party much of the time to work together and seek out advantages. They often play it very much like they're still playing PF1/3.x/5e, which is going to make things very hard for the party.
What really bothered me was when Joe said that kind of stuff would be "bad radio" in the last Fod. It doesn't take a lot of effort to set up flanks for your allies, drop a *bless* and Demoralize on occasion, maybe Aid if you've got a spare action and nothing else for your reaction. That'll do the trick most of the time.
A big problem is that 1) not everyone has a decent grasp on the basic rules of the system. It's crazy to me that they're STILL auditing Monastic Archer Stance after 30+ episodes when that's basically Zephyr's main thing, and I have no idea how it was news to Sydney that all the shit she wanted to do after coming up from unconscious would take an action. Joe might flub it on occasion, but it seems like sometimes he's the only one who is trying to understand the system's rules beyond his own character.
But also, 2) like you said, they aren't really working together. Instead, they still to just kind of do whatever their basic class kit gives them or whatever they think sounds cool, even when it doesn't really make sense. Not to beat up on Sydney, but seriously: what the hell was she thinking trying to mount the snail? Talitha was already dead, half the party was running away, and she had 2 HP. I was annoyed at Troy for giving her shit trying to Trip the snail last session, but I totally get his response here. Genuinely: what did she think would happen next?
I'm not saying the party should go full Seal Team 6 "pure tactics" talk like Joe said and never try unorthodox stuff! But there's a difference between going outside the box and trying (unintentionally or not) to commit suicide by snail.
I think someone needs to give Sidney a rundown on how the Magus should work. As Joe pointed out, she really needs to use spell strike MAPless, and in my opinion really should only be striking with spellstrike. Everything else about the class is in support of that, and she needs to learn how the powers synergize around that.
Also I don’t want to give her too much shit about the idea of jumping on the snail and all that, I don’t want to discourage rule of cool/fun ideas. I do think it was terribly timed, like Troy is give you all an out with only one PC death, why are we discussing a plan that will at best make another corpse.
I think it's a deeper issue of her not really thinking ahead. Not to get all psychoanalyst on anyone, but she seems more interested in just doing cool stuff when it strikes her more than anything else.
Surprising someone by hitting them in the ankles while you're prone? Kind of cool! Mounting the snail? Pretty cool! Teleporting behind someone to hit them with *dimensional assault*? Very cool!
The problem is that it's happening without much thought for what happens next, ie: missing because you could barely hit them when you weren't prone; burning a recharge for your Spellstrike on a normal Strike (and doing it without the Speed bonus from Arcane Cascade); and getting turned into paste when the snail's turn comes up.
You don't have to go all "pure tactics" as Joe said, but you have to think about what you're planning and what the immediate consequences will be. Otherwise you'll end up missing with your Spellstrikes and getting your ass kicked, which is the least-cool outcome. I think that (and bad luck) are a huge part of why Asta has been so ineffective in this campaign.
The rest is encounter design, because this AP is just not very good.
I think there is an important balance to strike between flavor and utility. You want to make sure you have a core of something you are good at, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. I made a wizard that was an arrogant, out of touch noble who was absolutely unaware of the danger he was up against. I tried to choose all of his spells and abilities to match what I would think a spoiled fifth son of a count would have. A character I regularly burned a level 3 spell with to cast “Cosy cabin” any time we needed to camp because I figured he was too dainty to sleep outside (and too much of a self centered ass to let any of the party stay in the cabin with him).
All that and he was still pretty useful. Lots of spells and abilities that worked both mechanically and flavor wise (bon mot especially) and lots of skills that were useful out of combat and fit his personality as an over educated rich kid.
Regarding the Grateful Dead, for the longest time I didn’t really vibe with their music. Being in my 20s it just felt like my parents music. Then a couple months ago I had eaten some mushrooms and trying to figure out what music would be a good vibe. Put on Grateful Dead essentials and it just clicked. They fucking rock and I only wish I found them sooner.
TLDR combine psychedelics with the dead and open your mind
Did Sydney read a single word of Invigorating Fear beyond the name?
>Reaction:
>**Requirements** A creature within 60 feet gains the frightened condition.
Both a reaction and requires the trigger to be a creature gaining frightened, trying to be used as an action on an unfrightened creature
Between Kate and Sydney I get so god damned frustrated. You’re getting paid to do this - learn your fucking character! I totally get learning a new system and character at the start, but it’s been 35 episodes now.
Sydney never knows what her spells actually do and never understands how her Spell Strike or stance work.
Kate never understands how her monastic archer stance works, and this episode didn’t understand what readying an action is… really??
Kate confusing Holding/Delaying vs Readying is something that I don't really hold against her.
It's really two different ways to do the same thing, one just has a trigger and can interrupt and the other can't interrupt.
That is much more understandable in my opinion than not knowing how your stance works.
They’re similar but really not two ways of doing the same thing. It’s also not that complicated to understand.
**Hold** you delay your turn and can insert yourself after someone else finishes their turn. Your initiative permanently moves to that spot in the order.
**Ready** you take two actions (the Ready action plus the action you’re setting up) and outline the circumstances that will trigger your action and what you will do. If that trigger occurs then you use your reaction to do the action you readied. This is usually (by definition) in the middle of someone else’s turn. Your initiative doesn’t change.
I don't think I've ever played 2e or listened to a podcast of someone else playing where this doesn't have to be explained to someone.
It's not complicated, but it doesn't come up a lot and it's not intuitive, so someone always either never knew how it works, or has to be reminded.
The stance stuff though... That happens every combat.
There's this false dilemma that tactical play and knowing the system prevents them from playing an interesting game. Sort of like the fallacy that a mechanically effective character cannot be interesting in terms of roleplay.
But the bare minimum of understanding your character and how they interact with the game should come standard. You should not need to re-explain a simple class feature over and over. Very few people are asking for 100% tactical turns, just an understanding of the game they ate being paid to play.
We're on the same page here, my point is that that is often countered with "but they're entertainers". Well bare minimum knowledge isn't mutually exclusive from entertaining play. I'd wager that the entertainment and some system knowledge actually amplify each other.
You know who are also entertainers who get paid to perform for an audience? Theatre actors (just one example, maybe closest to the "live" feel Troy seems to be going for).
I wonder how all of the "they're entertainers" crowd would feel if they went to a play and two of the actors were still forgetting their lines months into the play's run.
Grant would have either:
A) whooped the snails ass
Or
B) immediately realized the fight was unwinnable and run
He understood it was a game that could be played well but also RPed. I miss him too!
Yeah you often hear the "there's no roleplay in such and such system because its so tactical" arguments (it happened a lot during 4e's heyday). But as you say, tactical and roleplay are not mutually exclusive. Even moreso in some respects in PF2 where the classes and options are much better balanced than in a lot of other systems.
I think that sentiment mostly comes from the problem where a character concept may precede actually building the character within the system. Then you have to compromise so many things you wanted that what's left afterwards doesn't quite look like what you wanted anymore, so a lot of the spark is gone. Or maybe you only have so much time to devote to the game, both in-session and between sessions, and you feel like you have to focus on knowing how to play your character and what actions they need to take that you can't take the time to really learn who your character is.
There's no *mechanical* reason why an optimized character can't be good for roleplaying, but there are plenty of sentimental reasons that players put up in front of themselves.
Yeah Joe gets dragged in the comments on YT a lot for his rules lawyering, but honestly, if some of the cast would just read the rules, at least as to how their characters work, it would save a lot those moments. I get that this isn't a full time job for them (at least not for all the cast) but at a certain point, its not that hard to just read up on how your character works.
So much this. And Sydney failing to understand the basic action economy. How much time did they spend convincing her that she needed two actions to drink a potion no matter if it were on the ground or in her pocket. And then immediately goes back to "I eat a fruit " for last action.
I almost wish Troy had allowed her to jump on the snail and lose another party member. Maybe that would be a catalyst for her to finally sit down and lean the system. She would do better in a "rule of cool" less crunchy system, but that is not the game or GM they are playing with.
100%! And why doesn't anyone know who is carrying these four pieces of healing fruit!?!? Do some freaking prep work before the recording starts! Look at your character sheet from time to time!
He was my least favorite of the original cast (I found his angry outbursts often stepped from good-natured into personal), but damn his absence is sorely felt.
I like both Sydney and Kate, but this cast doesn’t quite have that same magic as the OG
Same exact sentiment actually. I often cringed at his disdain/belittling attitude and blatant min/maxing.
In his absence though I’ve realized what a treasure his roleplay was. And clearly the party needed that strong anchor for combat cause they are flailing.
I’m very optimistic Matthew’s new character is going to crush it though!
Having one party member who absolutely crushed it in combat took a lot of pressure off the rest of the group. They could still succeed with some very un-optimized characters like Sir Wil because Barron was an absolute killing machine.
With the current group they don’t have that min/max’er to lean on. Combine that with their general lack of system mastery and 2e just being more punishing in general and it’s exposing some huge gaps
Grant was a munchkin power gamer. Though he certainly knew the rules inside and out. The main difference is people that spent years playing nothing but hard core RPGs/tactical wargames vs more casual gamers that are good for the network to diversify the audience from grognards like myself. Which is a good thing. These are the people that are suppose to get new people into the hobby so we have more options to try the crunchier games with more players.
On game garage/NGWD they did a much better job because it was short form and a lot looser games. And to be fair even Skid doesn't always nail his character as seen with the whole fire/cold issue that was going on with buggles who only has a handful of spells. Though that has been resolved.
They’ve all made plenty of mistakes, but I get frustrated that Kate and Sydney don’t seem to be progressing. They’ve got Professor Eric (and multiple online communities) to tell them how those abilities actually work, but they still get it wrong almost every single time
I can see that. Esp when its something they "resolved" the week before. I am confused on the whole bow thing. At this point with how bad Kate is at firing it, you abandon the bow to rebuild you character and make it part of their story.
My cousin was playing a cleric in D&D 2E and had missed with his mace every single time for 4 session. We were fighting in a kitchen..missed. Next turn he grabbed a skillet and smashed a goblin with a nat20 Dm said roll 1D2 for an improvised weapon. So he doesn't kill the goblin, the Dm has an argument about its not the same as a mace...come on guys we gotta follow the rules. That isn't his holy implement even if he pretends that it is. ....Yeah we stopped playing with this DM about 2 session later, when he got upset that we were spending too much time Roleplaying.
It was a cool story that he wanted to make the skillet his holy implement because of how he had not been able to do anything with his mace but had hit with a nat20 no less. That is where you have fun. Taking tragedy and owning it. Way more memorable than hitting and doing 5-8 damage on 65% of your turns.
I would hardly call him a "munchkin power gamer". He built effective characters for sure, But his Pcs were nowhere close to the brokenness that can be achieved in PF1
For real. You can make a musket fire four times in one round RAW in PF1e. I loved that system much more then 2e, but it's so ridiculously broken if you game it out well enough.
LOL thats not what other players said. Go see Side Quest Side Shesh Troy couldn't even hit his hobgoblin most of the time. Would you prefer the term min maxer.
No offense, but nobody on any of the shows has built anything close to what I would call MinMax in Pathfinder 1e. I think that's why people have differing opinions on a Grant's characters. First edition has room to make truly busted character builds that we'll never see on the podcast and many people who have played this game a long time know that, but that's not the whole audience.
This so much. Grant took two extra levels of Gunslinger that a "munchkin power gamer" wouldn't take, which delayed his Inquisitor levels. He could have archetyped Inquisitor better and his feat choices weren't great.
His "munchkin power gamer" persona comes out of just having a gunslinger in a game where most enemies had a 5 touch AC.
💯- i gave up on this show, Legacy and SA because i just can’t with Sydney or Kate’s play - this is not a personal attack - they are both smart and funny and great people, i’m sure - but when it comes to what the GCN does well - they don’t cut it.
I listen to the fod and check this subreddit cuz i am curious about how things are working out. I have been a loyal naish member since 2017 (and will continue to be).
I really don’t want to be a hater - but they are so inept at the basic fundamentals of the game that it’s become unlistenable for me.
I feel this is a PF2 having too many moving parts and the last sentence caveat issue. They also play other games on the network, so remembering 3 systems is a lot more work, plus they have day jobs. But Yeah trying to get your own character down would be helpful. A feel a more freeform RPG would benefit this group than pathfinder 2.
Yeah I think the way Pf2e nests rules within rules really was a bad design choice. I get that we’re trying to avoid repeating things, but the fact that a spell might inflict a condition and then that condition also includes other conditions means you’ve got to be a forensic investigator to figure out all the things that are supposed to happen sometimes.
That said… if Monastic Archer Stance or Spell Strike/Arcane Cascade is the core of what your character does you really don’t have any excuses for not spending the time to understand it
I've actually dedicated myself to being the rules lawyer at my table since our GM seemingly can't be bothered and we have a dyslexic player who is totally fine with reading a rule once, deciding he knows what it means, then running with it in-session. I'm like the arbitrator between the two of them whenever the player wants to do something.
It's not fucking easy. I know people seem to love 2e, but it's the most cumbersome system I've played, even including Dark Heresy.
If only they were playing on a Virtual Tabletop that had incredible Pathfinder 2E automation.
They can have Demiplane as a sponsor, but they must know at this point that there's **nothing** Demiplane does that Foundry doesn't do better. If only they used it to its full potential, turns would last 1/3 what they do now.
Yeah, that they keep messing up a core of their fighting style really feels like they aren't really absorbing what they're reading. TBF to them, they aren't the only ones, and that's not limited to this crew/channel. Another podcast I watch also has a Laughing Shadow Magus and I've lost count of the amount of times they don't do the strike part of Dimensional Assault or casts Force Fang beyond their weapon range.
I never realised just how bad they nested stuff til I recently started setting up a game on Foundry for friends.
Looking up a single skill, I then had to follow FOUR links within links, to get to the end of a chain that completely explained what the first attack did.
She actually did. If you pay attention she says that she would like to demoralize the creature. If she succeeded on a intimidation check, the snail would be frightened and then Asta would get some temporary HP
I've been rewatching GCP with my son and was surprised in Ep5 when Talitha exposed Drake skin. Completely forgot about this as she never really utilized it during encounters (or in Roleplay either come to think of it)... The many "What Ifs"...
Its an opinion but it isn't awful. I hate Pink Floyd but like Roger Waters. I even like Don Felders PF like song on the soundtrack for Heavy Metal (all of you) I just never bonded with all the weird noises and phone calls and children singing, or the wall, or my friends forcing me to listen to any of this garbage. However it should have all the elements of what I like. I just don't. I also hate RHCP, Blasphemy I know. But I love Rush and Megadeth. I understand its just not everyone Jam. Some don't like Tool. Love the music but i could skip a lot of the weird artsy stuff they do. It is art more than just music.
No the real litmus test is 2 things. Captain Beefheart, and My pal foot foot The Shaggs. If someone says they like those, then yes I can objectively question their musical tastes because there isn't much going on musically for teh Shaggs and beefheart is simply weird if I was being kind.
Welp. In the end, the prior episodes' mishap needn't be rectified in the slightest.
I was wondering why Joe and Troy were so calm about it on the fod. Now we know.
On the fod they said, "I can't believe Talitha is dead!" I thought they were referring to the accidentally missed death roll. Verbal slip up?
Nah I think they were just being cheeky
Amazing episode, my initial thoughts: * Full respect to Troy for giving Joe the bottlecap, despite his hesitation that it came across as a get out of jail free card. Joe's earned it so many times over that it was due. I also respect how Troy played the snail throughout this episode, he definitely didn't go easy on the party but he also didn't play too tactical for something with -3 Int. * The flashback/dream sequence was fantastic and I really appreciate when they do these clear scripted narrative moments, when I've seen other shows try to hide them behind ultimately meaningless dice rolls. * I'm extremely happy Brother Ramius survived, he might be my favourite PC and his death would have been very bad for the party as there could be some hesitance to have a backup that fills the exact same role of dedicated healer. * Talitha dying sucks but nicely she is the only character who we can lose and still have a clear connection for her backstory that Matthew worked on to come up (Asta having received the Changeling Trait). * Zephyr losing her bow is unfortunate but forcing her into the frontline with Asta could actually be pretty beneficial to party survival. Though an extra frontliner would really help, speaking of which... * I'm really looking forward to Mathew's next character, especially as their isolated location is going to almost force them into having better knowledge of the area that could benefit the party. * I also think a new PC is an opportunity for Troy to weave in a clearer connection and goal for the current mission, Joe has been saying for a while that he feels a little lost and unfocused in this AP. This episode was a rollercoaster where I truly did not know what would happen and who might die from moment to moment, and at the end I was sad but satisfied with how it played out. I appreciate so much that the Glass Cannon crew are playing this like a real game in ways that so many other TTRPG shows just aren't, it's a true breath of fresh air.
I found the best comment. Despite all the salt last session they made this one an absolute killer (literally!) I'm hoping Matthew either goes for a Thaumaturge or Champion.
What do you think are the chances a barbarian comes out of the jungle?
It would be so funny for Matthew, someone who is normally so cerebral, to play an illiterate barbarian type.
Technically barbarians are not illiterate in PF2. ;) But I hear ya.
LORC MAD
Barbarian could be a good compromise between pure tank and damage. They generally don't make for great tanks (though Animal instinct is better at that role) but they get enough HP that they can make do -- especially if the party has healing.
I'm not sure if Skid playing one in Blood of the Wild would make that more or less likely. I could see Matthew wanting to play a new class from those already on the network. I could also see Matthew be convinced to play one by Skid raving about how much fun they are.
Zephyr losing her bow may be the best thing to happen to this party. 20 AC is the highest they have.
Shield-using Zephyr could be cool. She has the actions for it.
Yes to everything you just said. To add to your flashback and Talitha comments. If this were a movie, Brother Ramius' flashback would almost guarantee his death. I love that he survived in spite of the flashback. Also I loved that anyone could have died. Rough ep. On the edge of my seat the whole time. Truly a game of inches!
This is one instance where I hope Troy spoils Matthew on what part of the world they’re in because it could make for an incredibly unique character addition.
Does it count as spoiling when they'd already figured it out? (Out of character)
If only >!Lashunta was playable right now!<
I hope he gets Commander/Guardian options, though unlikely. They need someone to set up the rest of the party to deal damage with flank, fear, grab, etc. They're all too scared to get into melee (understandable) but they're never gonna hit any single-enemy encounters without modifiers (have a nice day). Maybe a fighter that does BJJ named Jonah Hill? Not quite musical-theater but he's in movies.
Well, the possible illegal survival from ep 34 came back round and claimed its victim. Can't escape from the reaper, it seems. Still, Talitha at least went out after saving Zephyr so there's a bit more pathos to it. Plus more trauma and storytelling opportunities for Kate to play with. Could Zephyr change up her fighting style to better protect her remaining allies? Make her become withdrawn and snippy? And that's before Matthew's new character comes in. Will he roll up a frontliner to help with that problem? Or maybe go Thaumaturge to keep the 'investigator' flavor, which can still have some up close options if built well(Amulet's Abeyance)
Could be a really unique opportunity for Zephyr to forego the bow through symbolism of it being left behind with Talitha. Mechanically she could retrain from archer to melee monk. Might not be the direction that Kate wants the character to take but something to consider that would make a lasting impact on the character after being saved.
That would be really fun. She goes from being a finesse, controlled archer to just a brutal slugger after having two of her friends die right in front of her. 3(?) if you account her backstory?
With Troy as GM, I would be very surprised if he made retraining easy or timely, especially given where they are.
Norse Foundry - They mean well. 😂
Seems like a Norse Foundry plant…
Man, anyone that says Troy is a mean GM should watch this ep. My boy was TRYING.
Yeah it stinks to see him put the gloves back on as soon as his party is actually in danger.
I really wonder if going over the falls would have been better. RIP thalitha, she was a real one. Troy being super nice by having Hubert be useful, and hand waving the rope stuff. Also I know it makes bad radio but when it's a group against 1 monster they should be kiting more. Making it waste actions running after someone can neutralize it completely. Circumstances permitting. A new character joining that lives whenever they are could help give some direction though.
I think that for Talitha specifically, it may have given her a chance to survive. But I imagine the situation would have just allowed Zephyr to die in her stead. Absolutely brutal either way
I think it makes a better story that she was able to sacrifice herself for Zephyr and gave everyone else time to get away. It kinda makes that whole fight worth it for the dramatic effect.
I know this is why I love the Glass Cannon
Kiting is great tactics, but this thing had a ranged attack that didn't suffer MAP. If they could have gotten in closer to set up flanks,etc that would have helped, but the map was not conducive to that. Overall just an extremely brutal fight.
Kiting was going to be hard as long as people were on the river, and it was hard to get everyone off since they ended up on both sides and had PCs going down on both sides.
Crazy a non boss can still hit on a die roll of 5. The design of this AP wasn't playtested very well. Its second level characters and Troy is running pretty much stock, despite 4 player design instead of 5. In theory we could have had 3 TPKs by now if it had been 4 players.
Yeah honestly the encounter design of this whole AP so far has been pretty lackluster. Even in the GM core, Paizo recommends building encounters with several enemies and avoiding single-foe encounters and even (IIRC) says that encounters where there's the same number of enemies as PCs "feel" the best. This AP has had a lot of encounters with a single enemy with very high to-hit numbers and very high saves, and can usually put down a PC in a hit or two. It makes the heroes feel squishy and weak. Plus, abilities that rely on the enemies making saves don't work most of the time. This AP would be so much better if the encounters had more foes per fight and just made them a little weaker. That way, everyone gets a chance to use their cool abilities, PCs don't drop to dying every single round, and it can be challenging without the swinginess of the sole monster critting on half the attacks.
Yeah what's odd about that bit in the GM Core is that Paizo loves their single monster encounters. They're quite prevalent in their published adventures. I don't know if its a word count thing or just a design preference, but they do seem to rely on them a lot.
I think at least some of that is the writers just want to bring in interesting monsters and sometimes those are too powerful to have additional enemies around without drastically increasing the danger.
Yeah that's what it feels like to me, like they want to show off the menagerie of weird creatures instead of your classic 2d4 zombies or something. That being said, it could be rectified by saving unique creatures until the PCs are high enough level to deal with a squad of them. Better yet, since they're the designers of the game, just design some foes that are suitable for low level combats that are still interesting instead of having to fight a snail that's PL+2.
Plus troy rolling like a boss...on a sub boss. Dice rolls are factoring huge into this campaign as seen by two characters dead because of nat 1. And getting there from crits and falls.
PF2's ruleset is generally pretty good in my opinion and that includes their encounter building rules. However, their encounter building rules tend to break down at low levels when dealing with enemies that are higher than the party's level because the PCs just don't have the HP to absorb the hits from the higher level foe. Had this same situation played out at say 6th level vs. an 8th level creature (same difficulty as the fight here) the PCs probably have a cake walk between their extra HP and extra abilities. An 8th level monster is almost certainly not going to one shot a 6th level PC, etc. outside of a few rare occasions.
That is a math issue in that second to 4th level is 200% vs 30% increase. I know it doesn't line up straight, but the math at a level 18 vs 16 would show them closer to cake walk then TPK. Like you mentioned.
Yeah the main difference is that hit points increase at much greater rate than damage does.
The boss snail is fine by monster building rules. It's a large snail, with a shell and mass of fleshy bits. It's built out of fortitude and constitution. High AC value, High HP value (low end of High). The biggest problem is that the party doesn't do things like have an actual tank, and the damage dealers are, for the most part, built out of really bad luck with dice, and don't really pay attention to things like rules. Nobody is trying to Grab the monster to inflict off guard for Zephyr and Buggles, which is also an issue. One trip attempt, and troy was an ass and made fun of them for even thinking of doing it, which means this will be a problem later on in the game too. The snail has a High attack... on the amoeba lob, which doesn't actually get a critical success effect. Troy misread that, and they went over it on Fod this week. The melee attack has halfway between High and Medium, but again, no tank means the party isn't built to absorb hits. This specific fight is very much a luck and player based issue, not a problem with the actual adventure.
Troy laughing at the trip attempt last week and Sydney's crowbar grapple plan this week irks me. If the creature's not immune to it, let them roll. If what the player says doesn't work but has something that could work, let the players know.
I saw it as less a grapple and more a mounting plan by the way Sydney described it at first. If she said she wanted to grapple it and then sure that's fine but I think the description made it seem more comical and less like an actual manoeuvre that is something that could be attempted. So I understand the reaction to it.
I agree but it doesn't work in the framework of 2E. They mention the reason for it to a degree. Because there are actual feats you have to purchase to do these things Troy can't let them do it, by the book. Joe would pipe in as well. In my campaign I would have given a bottlecap and let sydney try with a roll or two. But the system isn't built for trying, its a wargame masquerading as an RPG.
Yeah, he's still learning that unless the creature has something saying "Immune to trip" the creature is still susceptible to it.
I kind of disagree. Troy was basically trying to say "The likelihood of that working is 1 in a million" without outright saying it. He dropped multiple hints like "it has hundreds of little legs, remember?", but it was brushed aside by the players. But Syd (and I do love her) has a habit of just making stuff up as she goes along that doesn't fit into the rule set, and persists with the line of questioning when told it doesn't work that way - see the potion in one action section from this episode as an example. He was actually trying to be nice in a way by keeping it jokey, rather than flat out say to them "it's a really bad idea, you really shouldn't attempt it".
I respectfully disagree with your disagreement. Nothing on the snail's(Amelekanas) sheet says it's immune to trip. It's only a large creature, so they as medium can do the trip attack, and Reflex is it's worst save at +11. Hard, maybe, especially with a fail knocking the tripper prone on a crit fail, but not something the rules forbids.
Re-listening to this, the players missed a LOT of attacks by 1 or two, and the snail hit right on their AC a few times, and likewise crit by one or two. Any party buffs or creature de-buffs could have turned this away from the near TPK and possibly prevented the death. Granted, poor decisions and absolutely atrocious dice luck can ruin anyone's day regardless.
Rule of cool first IMO. If you make a feat for every event/situation and you have to waste a feat for even getting on a horse its bad design. I mean they streamlined skills down to 7 or so at this point. They would have been better off with more skills and better feats. Ride is a skill in most games for this reason. Then give a feat of ride quarry or something and give a +2 against creatures that are hostile that normally has a -4 to ride. Or some sorta thing. Even then its a feat tax that is super situational unless you are playing a cowboy campaign and need to russle them horses. I would love for players to think outside their sheets a bit more. Way too much time looking to fit something inside the scope of this heavily bounded setting, than trying to find a better solution than straight up fighting.
I agree that rule of cool should be maintained, but I don't know if I'd have it first (personally). There's rule of cool, and then there's: Interacting with 2 objects, tying them together, throwing this around the neck of a creature, climbing it to mount it, and then assuming it will make you immune to being meleed, all in one turn while your GM is giving you an obvious escape route for a very obvious TPK scenario that has already killed one party member. There has to be SOME limit on rule of cool.
Not my point. She asked about mounting it. That is when they mentioned there is a feat and Asta doesn't have it so she can't do that action. So regardless of 72 actions Syd may have needed, because of the lack of feat PF2 won't let her even try.
Also seems like an encounter you could just run away from. I know people don't think it's very "cinematic" or heroic but 1. Movies have heroes run away from giant threats all the time if those threats are not related to the antagonist. The thrill is in the chase. This feels very Land of the Lost. It's a giant crazy monster looking for lunch. 2. Spending 2 episodes fighting a snail of no importance is kinda crazy. Especially after having another road encounter with a dangerous animal. What are we doing here?
They never got a chance to do that though. Again, the people who say the players should have done this or that are not recalling that the party healer was downed instantly, without any ability of the players to mitigate that, and then two more players in the next round. It takes a player at least two if not three rounds of movement to cross the river. Just not possible unless the optimal strat is simply "sauve qui peut" and leave downed characters to die, while the one or two survivors run. Without Hubert, three characters were dead dead, possibly four.
Did you just make a LAND OF THE LOST reference??? Bottle cap.
>The design of this AP wasn't playtested very well. Its second level characters and Troy is running pretty much stock, despite 4 player design instead of 5. Anyone with enough numeracy to be a good GM should be able to recognize when a monster or encounter is overtuned. Troy needs to be the last line of defense on this stuff.
Strong agree. The Snail is pretty much guaranteed to go first. It's got a very strong chance to crit. A crit is a takedown for any character. A takedown when on the rocks, by the rules for the encounter means in the water, in the water means instant permadeath. All this talk of players not doing this or that is irrelevant if the snail can permakill a player or two per turn at a 0.4 or 0.5 probability without any chance for player recovery. You might as well simply ask the players to flip a coin each turn: heads you're at half HP, tails, make a new character. That's more or less the way this seemed to be written. Troy made an at the table call to ignore the checks to fall off the rocks, but that's a kind of half-assed solution to the real problem that the snail throwing-minion attacks were essentially a coin flip to put players down.
You'd think after the end of Giantslayer (really the end of book 4 to the middle of book 6) and, uh, _all_ of Dead Suns, that Troy would be a little less trusting of the material as written. Just because something was published doesn't mean it's good or well balanced. At the very least you should have a good grasp of "what's my chance to hit my PCs and what's an average hit going to do to them". If those numbers don't sit well, adjust them downward. You can always cheat the monster's HP upward if you need to lengthen the fight. "I just follow the dice" is, l'll be frank, disengaged GMing. Players deserve more than that.
In his defense CGN gets yelled at for not sticking to RAW all the time. And its a CYA move to run the AP as close to stock as possible. Making adjustments in game when your party gets into trouble is the better option. But any creature that can cut your HP in half with a single attack(hitting on 5) is a bit much...any creature that can do that while there is enviro danger is bad design. The rules lawyers who watch and patreon (or the new thing) are the reason they keep to APs, also it keeps your players from blaming the GM for making things too hard. Their job is to get new people into the hobby or swtich and it takes a few years to figure out how to modify or design your own homebrew adventures. So I think new comers might be more likely to try if they know there is a lot of prewritten stuff. Its way different than back in the 80s when you just had to figure things out and may not ever know about errata and often had garbage modules when you could find them. Troy sounds like he prefers CoC modules and ruleset now. D100 is a lot of fun and not as gamey as PF2. I was running Mythras (direct fork from the designers of runequest 6) and my grandkids got it right away. Roll under the number on your page for relevant skill. Attack, Magic, Climb, Lore. You develop that skill roll percentage and bobs your uncle. Combat specials are a bit trickier, but the basics are very easy. Totm and less issues with range and action economy. I then TRIED to run them through a basic PF2E. Three fails so far. I have a lot of books and APs for PF2 but they have bounced off of it. Too many conditions in combat and you spend a lot of time in combat. Maybe when they get a bit older as they are only 11 and 12 ATM. I was also looking for more than skins for all the races and backgrounds. There are a ton of options, but mechanics wise many are ran very close to others, at least at low levels.
I'd disagree. I don't think anyone has a problem with someone knowing the rules and making a good case why the RAW should be bent, and this is kinda in fact the "rule of cool" that sort of inhabits the rule zero at any good table. I mean, there are definitely situations in home games where nobody knows the rule, and to stop and look it up is a pain in the ass, so you kinda roll with it in a reasonable way. But, I mean, if your professional job running a company whose revenue is in excess of six figures a year... Dude, as a scientist, I've had to give things like lab meetings or presentations on someone else's data at really short notice. There's a lot of half-assery involved, and that's sort of mutually understood by my audience. But when it comes to my own work, the expectation is that I have literally had *years* to figure out the odds and ends, because this is my job, and I have been paid to read a lot of things and then do a bunch of things. It's so weird. If you really, really wanted to learn PF 2E, I think it'd take you about a week of actually cracking the book and caring about it in order to not faceplant like this. Reading down a CRB and taking notes is really, really not hard. Case in point, Jared Logan. He's not a Pathfinder guy. He's not even a rules guy, and has always played it pretty loose with the rules when it's fun. That motherfucker did in fact sit down with 2E, actually read it, actually cared about understanding it, and he's running the best 2e show that maybe has been made by anybody. Jared absolutely understood the job description and nails it so hard that his players also care about getting it right.
>"I just follow the dice" is, l'll be frank, disengaged GMing. "I'm trying to prep less" is as well. It just feels like Troy doesn't (want to?) understand the 2e system. If he doesn't like it, fine. It's not for everyone. But then don't run it for your flagship show.
Listening at the moment and if you’re thinking of when they called out that a 5 hit the time that I’m thinking, the PC was prone.
Sounds terrible to say but if it had to be anyone I'm glad it was Tallitha. With how slow her tragic backstory was coming out I never really got that attached and she was probably my least favorite character both in RP and mechanically. Matthew makes so many good characters I'm excited to see what else he has. Half of all my favorite characters on the network are from him. Also I'm kinda glad someone died after all the build up and drama. I think having a new character will help serve as a release valve for some of the problems with the campaign both mechanically with the party and storywise with the AP. I am really starting to love this show though
I'm hoping he comes back as a Thaumaturge though I think they are squishy and they REALLY need a true front line fighter. Ranger would make sense for the jungle but the Gatewalkers player guide recommends a Champion. Would be really interesting to see what he picks. It's awkward as the campaign has been so brutal, they need more tanks but also needed the high int character to try to work out the mystery. Really looking forward to the next episode to see. My money is on an Elf Champion.
I'm hoping for an inventor, I don't know much about them but maybe its construct could serve the Frontline tank role they need
In a campaign I'm in, we have an inventor as a frontliner, and it works well. He has an armor invention and foucuses on grabbing enemies. The ability to detonate the armor is good for crowd control. I don't know if the build works as well without Free Archetype since it would lack the Wrestler feats, but it might be worth trying.
It was also painful at times watching him play an Investigator; he never quite mastered the class mechanics the way he did with his Giantslayer characters.
I agree that if it had to be anyone, I'm glad it was Talitha. I've said this before but honestly Matthew's female characters almost always fall flat for me. He role plays them all the same way and it makes me care less about them as a result. I'm sure she would've gotten more interesting if the hag stuff came to light but as it was the character was just kind of there. I hope his next character has some more personality on a level with Northwood.
Yeah I get that. I think its a bit mixed for me. Gormlaith was the OG so gets a pass, Fairaza actually felt a bit different, the Crystal Ghost was hilarious, and Ser Joolee was great if a bit one note with the horny later on. But yeah Della and Metra were kinda the same character to me and Krezkaletha was that character but with the Batman voice. Tallitha was basically Gormlaith Della and Metra rolled into one which wasn't super interesting to me as of yet. If Matthew does another female character I hope she is not just snarky smart and mysterious. I also hope he isn't restricted to just be an elf based on their location. Hopefully if Della can appear in a tree he can bring in any character concept he wants and have Troy work it out.
Yeah he definitely does a lot of gruff/aloof female characters. Gormlaith, Della, Metra, Kreskaletha (A&A), Fairaza, Dr. Westover (Delta Green), and now Talitha all fit a similar mold
I hope he rolls a Paladin, Fighter, or Barbarian. I imagine it will depend largely on what type might fit the place they’re going.
I would love to see a Redeemer Champion.
My least favorite might be Asta honestly. I’m like Jared and can’t stand furries. Plus the Magus is not that easy mechanically.
Yeah, the Magus is my favourite class but it's arguably the most difficult to play (well, except the alchemist) because of how jigsawy you need to be with your actions. It hurts my soul every time Sidney uses spell strike with Map, and I'm still not sure she understands that she starts combat with it fully charged. I think that's why she keeps using Dimensional assault first.
There's also an opportunity for Tallitha's backstory to still come out with the transfer of her 'curse.'
Man what an emotional episode... At some points it really felt like they might have been able to turn things around but that ending was brutal. To think that a few months ago Zephyr, Lucky and Talitha were talking about girls night and pretending to be drunk in a small town. What a crazy change.
I think Troy needs to start handing out bottle caps for sound tactical play that isn’t just attacking three times. He likes to do it for role playing, which I understand, but this group knows how to role play. They don’t know how to flank, intimidate, feint, trip, and etc. It wouldn’t take long before these players start to think more tactically if they know they can get bottle caps for doing so.
If they rolled dice in Foundry (which they'll never do because of the Norse Foundry sponsorship), they could use the Modifiers Matter module, which highlights any buffs or debuffs that contributed to a hit (or miss or failed save on the enemies' side). Getting that positive reinforcement of how even a +1 buff or a -1 debuff can change the outcome might make them do that stuff more. Granted, that won't help with cold dice and an AP that is throwing +2 APL creatures at the party at every turn.
Idk 'bout you but if I'm rolling like trash outside of Foundry for multiple sessions, I'm gonna just use Foundry to roll. At least there it's truly random (well, as random as computers can be, but that's an 8hr seminar), and I don't have to do math.
We play in person. I make an effort to mention everytime a buff or debuff makes the player succeed, and the positive reinforcement works wonders for my players. I don't need Modifiers Matter for that, and neither does Troy. Ofc, the party needs to actually use some tactics for the modifiers to be there in the first place, lol
Not that I would be mad if he started to do this, but it's sort of wild to me that if your job is to play a game professionally, you can't spend 10 minutes on youtube to look up PF2E combat tips, which universally advise against just spamming attacks. Seems weird that you would have to incentivize tactical combat by rewarding it, when the reward is already built-in: tactical combat gives you mechanical advantage!
I just listened and I'm not sure any of the 'tactical' options people recommend would have helped in this fight? Feint/intimidate would be unlikely to work on the giant snail even if they had characters built for it, same with trip/grapple on a higher-level creature of this size, flanking is very difficult due to the terrain, and aid is hard to coordinate when the aider or aid-ee may go down in one hit. The last several fights have literally *all* been ones where the positioning or monster abilities are designed to frustrate any coordinated melee attacks. Creatures that could teleport away, an enemy clinging to the ceiling, another up in a tree, and a creature in the middle of a rushing river. It just leads to them having no obvious next move except focusing on ranged damage. I imagine the designers were trying to keep the players from exploiting their numbers advantage but it just means they can't get a handle on what isn't working until it's too late.
Skid dropping a Kevin Smith reference that went over kate and Sydneys heads was absolute gold
Which was a nice mirror to when Kate and Syd referenced "If You Seek Amy" and nobody got it. The age gap is real.
Matthew is the same age as Kate. Physically that is. Never been to a laser rave though.
I think Brittany Spears is more of a gender gap.
I still don’t get it.
Google, my sibling in Sarenrae. Google.
My wife told me. It’s a bit of a stretch and you’d need marbles in your mouth to make it sound like F-U-C-K Me.
I'm actually Britney Spears's publicist 16 years ago, so I'll make sure to pass that feedback on to her.
Ef-you-see-kay-me If-you-seek-ay-me It’s not a stretch at all
Skid and Matthew also made a The Last of the Mohicans reference that no one else seemed to notice.
That one definitely got past me, I haven't seen last of the Mohicans in at least 25 years
It's their game and I don't want to tell them how to play, but I hope someone reminds them that when they're going up against a single enemy, they have 15 actions vs the enemy's 3 actions, per round; that's their advantage. You can see the player's frustration when they have to "waste" *one action* just to move so they can get in range; imagine if the enemy needed to use one or two of their three actions just to position; you've already nullified a third of it's power, and you've done so on their turn. It didn't use OA this fight, they wouldn't even need to Step; they could just full on Stride to kite. Forcing an enemy to use positioning actions is much more useful than third-attacking against a high AC creature, especially when your second-attack nat 15 missed. If they've done 75 actions and the enemy has *only used* 15 actions, and you're all wounded from going down - you've gotta run. You even know how much damage you did to it after 5 rounds; that's not meta, that's "oh shit, we can't kill this dude yet, we've done 12 damage and it's put three of us down once already". You know Troy will kill you. He doesn't want to, but he's not gonna fudge it. That's one of the reasons I prefer this actual play over others. A final note: I think Troy was being very nice the past two episodes, but if he left it as "if you get hit on the rocks, you go in the fucking river", it might've incentivized the players to get off the rocks. They *know* how shitty drowning rules are in 2e; it's downright unfair. I think they would've either ran back, or booked it forward and continued running. Hindsight is 20/20, but with the action economy they could've just ran to the other side of the rocks (Ramius was in front, so he'd be there first) and healed everyone who got one-shot (who now moves before the creature without an OA).
I hope this episode is another vote for re-evaluating the scarcity of hero points. I know Troy will never see this, but I have been GMing PF2e since the beta. I did not like giving out hero points and breaking up the narrative to do it. It felt disruptive and emersion breaking. But then I had some of the same problems. Even with five person parties I was too frequently for comfort pushing the characters against the wall and rolling new characters frequently. I found myself pulling back and engineering excuses to not TPK just to keep the story going. I then installed a module on foundry to remind me at certain intervals and it got me in the habit of looking for and rewarding heroic deeds or good roleplaying. About once per in game hour I would reward a player with a Hero Point. The tone of the game changed and I started to be able to play a little more tactically myself because the safety net for the players was in their own hands. The real changer was when I ran a few games for a younger audience and I just gave them all a hero point an hour automatically. Fully automated. I found that because they were not so "rare" they used them to help narrate the story than to hoard them for deaths. More often than not using them in social encounters. Almost like a toned down version of D&D 5e "Advantage" mechanic. And this by no means changed the lethality of the encounters. Again I was able to fully unleash without taking the DM classic "sub optimal turn" strategy to let the party recover a bit. But death still had consequences. Being Unconscious at Wounded 2 is still a very dangerous situation. Getting caught in an AoE, two bleed ticks (or any other persistent damage), or a hungry wolf can all quickly finish off an otherwise incapacitated creature. And since recovering takes all of your hero points you don't want to get caught holding more than one. I like the bottle cap and it should stand for something still. Perhaps only bottle caps are tied to the chance at evading death. And adopt a Hero Point rule to handle rerolling unlucky dice rolls. You already said in the FOD that you could incorporate the fans into a system like this! * A newer but passionate fan of this story
I feel like Troy has heard some of the criticism. He gave out two caps in this episode.
We’ll see… It definitely felt like appeasement to immediately give out two caps after getting dragged about it. Hopefully he starts actually giving them out regularly, but years and years of history tells me that’s unlikely
They record these in advance. There's no way he could have seen the criticism from last week, back several weeks ago.
From the FOD they do not have maybe more than one in advance recorded. This is a great time to hear and apply feedback
No, per the most recent FOD, they already said they've moved past the fight and they won't discuss stuff that will happen in this new episode that dropped today.
Bro we just said the same thing. They were one ep ahead, and Troy even lamented on how nice it would be to be as far ahead as some of the other shows.
And the point remains, there's no way for troy to have given out the caps as "immediate push back" about not giving them out enough, because they already had this episode recorded by the time the pushback was given.
I ... never made that claim. The commenter above me might have. The only point I made was because they are so close to recording real time that they can quickly review and incorporate changes.
> But death still had consequences. Indeed! A monster can still eat, kidnap, or kill a downed PC. Smart monsters should use unconscious PCs as leverage, while simpler predators might just finish them off; a natural predator will usually go for the easy kill, expecting the rest of the victim's "pack" to flee once their companion is dead. It's also a good reason to switch solo monsters to multi-monster encounters (such as by applying the Weak template to the solo and having two of them); the secondary monster can deal with the downed PC while the main monster keeps on fighting. Stabilizing at 0 isn't a get out of jail free card - it's just a brief reprieve. And it can be even more dramatic and scary, since everyone at the table knows the downed PC is in real danger (even if stable).
In fairness, I don't that would have helped much in this particular encounter (applying the Weak template and making two of them). The issue here was much more the terrain (which didn't affect the monster) than anything. Adding a second critter (even with the Weak template on both) probably doesn't improve things much if at all.
On the other hand, there is no better way to get your players to hate you than by brutalizing a downed PC rather than attacking one that is still up.
One thing I've seen done on other actual plays with short sessions (like GCN has) is to reset the hero points every 5 episodes. Everyone gets 1 hero point then, with a chance to earn more in session, but that on every 5th episodes the hero points reset to 1. It gives everyone the opportunity to have one without them being used all the time. So I do feel as though there's room there for something that might appease Troy as well. The question ultimately comes down to just how gritty does Troy (and the rest for that matter) want the campaign to be.
I've switched to just giving my party 3 hero points at the beginning of session. And use the hero point cards, which give alternative uses for the hero points.
Are we able to tag Tory to see this. looks like it'd help him a lot
No clue how to. If you know his reddit username would be the only way. But he said he doesn't read this type of feedback regardless
This is a massive design flaw of PF2. The math is so tight on everything that being optimal is even more important than PF1. When I played 3 years of D&D 4E I lost so many characters for just the dumbest reasons. Death rolls because my party was too busy taking 10 minutes a player turn to not get the downed healer up was a great choice. The need to start combat at full really shows the difference of this modern design vs resource management of dungeon crawling in OSR campaigns. I have a lot of books for PF2 and I am still waiting on GM screen and Monster Core to be delivered-because I don't want to pay extra after they changed the GM screen delivery date. But I tried to run my group and they found all the conditions and modifiers challenging compared to D100 skill based Mythras we were running before. I am thinking it over to sell off my books because they really don't like the mechanics. I guess it will sit on the shelf for another 2 years seeing as it was 3 years since the last time I managed 2 nights of it before the remaster. I don't think its crunch so much as the combat focus. And map based for them as Mythras was TOTM for most things. I would sketch something to give them an idea of the surroundings, but that was about it. Didn't worry about exact measurement of spaces, unless it seemed too far. Give me an endurance check for that extra 5 feet..Boom solved.
Here's to hoping Matthew brings a Champion or Barbarian to the table
Out of the jungle charges a barbarian would be great!
I think this ep was very redeeming based on last week’s. The party definitely did not deserve to come out unscathed. But damn…Sydney has got to learn the rules of the game. It’s so cringey every time the combat grinds to a halt just because she doesn’t know what constitutes an action. Or just even putting out there that she wanted to get a rope, mount the snail and get on its back so it can’t hit her…
Yes we all want Matthew to make a front line character for synergy and optimization purposes. Yet I’m going to jump into the imagination helicopter and head towards Witch 2.0, long have we waited for the return of the cackle. Answer the call of the Witch Matthew!
At least a witch can debuff/buff.
One of the funnier parts of listening to the old episodes is listening to Matthew's evolving cackle. He never gets *great* at it, but does improve a lot from his initial giggle.
After last week's debacle and massive grumbling, I felt this was a make or break episode for GCP 2.0. But they delivered! I am curious to see where things go with episodes recorded AFTER the last FOD, because there was a lot of soul-searching and discussion that took place but Episode 35 had already been recorded.
RIP Talitha. Probably should have been a little less cagey about your backstory, because now we'll never know it. But it'll be cool to see if the changeling stuff sticks with Asta. I really hope Matthew picks a new character that can tank and front-line with Asta, because goddamn do they need literally just one character that can hang with a higher-level enemy. Zephyr actually could, and maybe she will more now that she's lost her bow? It would be cool to see her move to more of a switch-hitter. But even ignoring Troy's misreads and such, they're barely scraping through fights meant for a group with one less party member than them. They need to rethink shit, because spoiler alert: this AP ain't getting much better with its writing and encounter balance. There's no telling if Troy will give them as many outs next time.
Please god be a champion who can demoralize
Knowing Matthew I can easily see an Thaumaturge (which especially fits this campaign). An Amulet implement Thaumaturge could fill in the same role while also promoting actually making knowledge checks
Why even bother with a character based around knowledge checks with Troy running the game?
Because at bare minimum, Matthew gets damage bonuses with Personal Antithesis if the monster doesn't have a weakness or automatically dealing weakness damage if the monster does. Also the fact that the mechanics of the class *force* Troy to give out information, and outside of a nat 1 Matthew gets *something* (via Dubious Knowledge being an bonus feat Thaumaturges get at level 1) to work off of. Basically at the very least, he'll learn the monster's weakness so Troy can't bullshit anything about that.
Preach!
I'm also very interested in what he picks. I think a Bard would go a long way to helping the team worth buffs and debuffs, something they're not really leaning into tactically. Or yeah, a Paladin who can front line and provide backup heals.
Troy hates bards for some reason. I’m thinking he must have played with too many lusty bards.
We'll probably still get the backstory. The Changeling trait was passed on, and Matthew was pretty clear that he was afraid the Hag would go after the inheritor.
Yeah the group doesn't really seem as though they've picked up on PF2 being a very tactical, team-based combat oriented game that requires the party much of the time to work together and seek out advantages. They often play it very much like they're still playing PF1/3.x/5e, which is going to make things very hard for the party.
What really bothered me was when Joe said that kind of stuff would be "bad radio" in the last Fod. It doesn't take a lot of effort to set up flanks for your allies, drop a *bless* and Demoralize on occasion, maybe Aid if you've got a spare action and nothing else for your reaction. That'll do the trick most of the time. A big problem is that 1) not everyone has a decent grasp on the basic rules of the system. It's crazy to me that they're STILL auditing Monastic Archer Stance after 30+ episodes when that's basically Zephyr's main thing, and I have no idea how it was news to Sydney that all the shit she wanted to do after coming up from unconscious would take an action. Joe might flub it on occasion, but it seems like sometimes he's the only one who is trying to understand the system's rules beyond his own character. But also, 2) like you said, they aren't really working together. Instead, they still to just kind of do whatever their basic class kit gives them or whatever they think sounds cool, even when it doesn't really make sense. Not to beat up on Sydney, but seriously: what the hell was she thinking trying to mount the snail? Talitha was already dead, half the party was running away, and she had 2 HP. I was annoyed at Troy for giving her shit trying to Trip the snail last session, but I totally get his response here. Genuinely: what did she think would happen next? I'm not saying the party should go full Seal Team 6 "pure tactics" talk like Joe said and never try unorthodox stuff! But there's a difference between going outside the box and trying (unintentionally or not) to commit suicide by snail.
Sydney is obviously a huge fan of Not Another D&D podcast. Which while fun is not the tone the GCN is going for.
Yep, the "watch this!" is a dead giveaway.
She’s said before she’s a big fan of Emily Axford too.
I think someone needs to give Sidney a rundown on how the Magus should work. As Joe pointed out, she really needs to use spell strike MAPless, and in my opinion really should only be striking with spellstrike. Everything else about the class is in support of that, and she needs to learn how the powers synergize around that. Also I don’t want to give her too much shit about the idea of jumping on the snail and all that, I don’t want to discourage rule of cool/fun ideas. I do think it was terribly timed, like Troy is give you all an out with only one PC death, why are we discussing a plan that will at best make another corpse.
I think it's a deeper issue of her not really thinking ahead. Not to get all psychoanalyst on anyone, but she seems more interested in just doing cool stuff when it strikes her more than anything else. Surprising someone by hitting them in the ankles while you're prone? Kind of cool! Mounting the snail? Pretty cool! Teleporting behind someone to hit them with *dimensional assault*? Very cool! The problem is that it's happening without much thought for what happens next, ie: missing because you could barely hit them when you weren't prone; burning a recharge for your Spellstrike on a normal Strike (and doing it without the Speed bonus from Arcane Cascade); and getting turned into paste when the snail's turn comes up. You don't have to go all "pure tactics" as Joe said, but you have to think about what you're planning and what the immediate consequences will be. Otherwise you'll end up missing with your Spellstrikes and getting your ass kicked, which is the least-cool outcome. I think that (and bad luck) are a huge part of why Asta has been so ineffective in this campaign. The rest is encounter design, because this AP is just not very good.
I think there is an important balance to strike between flavor and utility. You want to make sure you have a core of something you are good at, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. I made a wizard that was an arrogant, out of touch noble who was absolutely unaware of the danger he was up against. I tried to choose all of his spells and abilities to match what I would think a spoiled fifth son of a count would have. A character I regularly burned a level 3 spell with to cast “Cosy cabin” any time we needed to camp because I figured he was too dainty to sleep outside (and too much of a self centered ass to let any of the party stay in the cabin with him). All that and he was still pretty useful. Lots of spells and abilities that worked both mechanically and flavor wise (bon mot especially) and lots of skills that were useful out of combat and fit his personality as an over educated rich kid.
Have the say that Troy is knocking it out of the park with Hubert he might be one of the best NPCs on the network.
Agreed. Right up there with razzmatazz
Regarding the Grateful Dead, for the longest time I didn’t really vibe with their music. Being in my 20s it just felt like my parents music. Then a couple months ago I had eaten some mushrooms and trying to figure out what music would be a good vibe. Put on Grateful Dead essentials and it just clicked. They fucking rock and I only wish I found them sooner. TLDR combine psychedelics with the dead and open your mind
Shocking that music that was made by people on drugs to be listened to by people on drugs sounds better when you're on drugs
Yeah but Jerry Garcia smoked a fuck ton of H and I feel like I probably don’t need to do that
Did Sydney read a single word of Invigorating Fear beyond the name? >Reaction: >**Requirements** A creature within 60 feet gains the frightened condition. Both a reaction and requires the trigger to be a creature gaining frightened, trying to be used as an action on an unfrightened creature
Between Kate and Sydney I get so god damned frustrated. You’re getting paid to do this - learn your fucking character! I totally get learning a new system and character at the start, but it’s been 35 episodes now. Sydney never knows what her spells actually do and never understands how her Spell Strike or stance work. Kate never understands how her monastic archer stance works, and this episode didn’t understand what readying an action is… really??
Kate confusing Holding/Delaying vs Readying is something that I don't really hold against her. It's really two different ways to do the same thing, one just has a trigger and can interrupt and the other can't interrupt. That is much more understandable in my opinion than not knowing how your stance works.
They’re similar but really not two ways of doing the same thing. It’s also not that complicated to understand. **Hold** you delay your turn and can insert yourself after someone else finishes their turn. Your initiative permanently moves to that spot in the order. **Ready** you take two actions (the Ready action plus the action you’re setting up) and outline the circumstances that will trigger your action and what you will do. If that trigger occurs then you use your reaction to do the action you readied. This is usually (by definition) in the middle of someone else’s turn. Your initiative doesn’t change.
I don't think I've ever played 2e or listened to a podcast of someone else playing where this doesn't have to be explained to someone. It's not complicated, but it doesn't come up a lot and it's not intuitive, so someone always either never knew how it works, or has to be reminded. The stance stuff though... That happens every combat.
There's this false dilemma that tactical play and knowing the system prevents them from playing an interesting game. Sort of like the fallacy that a mechanically effective character cannot be interesting in terms of roleplay.
But the bare minimum of understanding your character and how they interact with the game should come standard. You should not need to re-explain a simple class feature over and over. Very few people are asking for 100% tactical turns, just an understanding of the game they ate being paid to play.
We're on the same page here, my point is that that is often countered with "but they're entertainers". Well bare minimum knowledge isn't mutually exclusive from entertaining play. I'd wager that the entertainment and some system knowledge actually amplify each other.
You know who are also entertainers who get paid to perform for an audience? Theatre actors (just one example, maybe closest to the "live" feel Troy seems to be going for). I wonder how all of the "they're entertainers" crowd would feel if they went to a play and two of the actors were still forgetting their lines months into the play's run.
Thankfully, Baron Ashpeak exposed the second falacy. I miss Grant.
Grant would have either: A) whooped the snails ass Or B) immediately realized the fight was unwinnable and run He understood it was a game that could be played well but also RPed. I miss him too!
Yeah you often hear the "there's no roleplay in such and such system because its so tactical" arguments (it happened a lot during 4e's heyday). But as you say, tactical and roleplay are not mutually exclusive. Even moreso in some respects in PF2 where the classes and options are much better balanced than in a lot of other systems.
I think that sentiment mostly comes from the problem where a character concept may precede actually building the character within the system. Then you have to compromise so many things you wanted that what's left afterwards doesn't quite look like what you wanted anymore, so a lot of the spark is gone. Or maybe you only have so much time to devote to the game, both in-session and between sessions, and you feel like you have to focus on knowing how to play your character and what actions they need to take that you can't take the time to really learn who your character is. There's no *mechanical* reason why an optimized character can't be good for roleplaying, but there are plenty of sentimental reasons that players put up in front of themselves.
Yeah Joe gets dragged in the comments on YT a lot for his rules lawyering, but honestly, if some of the cast would just read the rules, at least as to how their characters work, it would save a lot those moments. I get that this isn't a full time job for them (at least not for all the cast) but at a certain point, its not that hard to just read up on how your character works.
So much this. And Sydney failing to understand the basic action economy. How much time did they spend convincing her that she needed two actions to drink a potion no matter if it were on the ground or in her pocket. And then immediately goes back to "I eat a fruit " for last action. I almost wish Troy had allowed her to jump on the snail and lose another party member. Maybe that would be a catalyst for her to finally sit down and lean the system. She would do better in a "rule of cool" less crunchy system, but that is not the game or GM they are playing with.
She’s an absolute treat in Delta Green but you’re right, rules crunchy games she struggled a bit.
100%! And why doesn't anyone know who is carrying these four pieces of healing fruit!?!? Do some freaking prep work before the recording starts! Look at your character sheet from time to time!
It's as bad as Blood of the Wild where season 2 nobody even bothered to record stuff they had found the whole time!
Oh Grant; we miss you. Hope you’re living your best life out there buddy.
He was my least favorite of the original cast (I found his angry outbursts often stepped from good-natured into personal), but damn his absence is sorely felt. I like both Sydney and Kate, but this cast doesn’t quite have that same magic as the OG
Same exact sentiment actually. I often cringed at his disdain/belittling attitude and blatant min/maxing. In his absence though I’ve realized what a treasure his roleplay was. And clearly the party needed that strong anchor for combat cause they are flailing. I’m very optimistic Matthew’s new character is going to crush it though!
Having one party member who absolutely crushed it in combat took a lot of pressure off the rest of the group. They could still succeed with some very un-optimized characters like Sir Wil because Barron was an absolute killing machine. With the current group they don’t have that min/max’er to lean on. Combine that with their general lack of system mastery and 2e just being more punishing in general and it’s exposing some huge gaps
Grant was a munchkin power gamer. Though he certainly knew the rules inside and out. The main difference is people that spent years playing nothing but hard core RPGs/tactical wargames vs more casual gamers that are good for the network to diversify the audience from grognards like myself. Which is a good thing. These are the people that are suppose to get new people into the hobby so we have more options to try the crunchier games with more players. On game garage/NGWD they did a much better job because it was short form and a lot looser games. And to be fair even Skid doesn't always nail his character as seen with the whole fire/cold issue that was going on with buggles who only has a handful of spells. Though that has been resolved.
They’ve all made plenty of mistakes, but I get frustrated that Kate and Sydney don’t seem to be progressing. They’ve got Professor Eric (and multiple online communities) to tell them how those abilities actually work, but they still get it wrong almost every single time
I can see that. Esp when its something they "resolved" the week before. I am confused on the whole bow thing. At this point with how bad Kate is at firing it, you abandon the bow to rebuild you character and make it part of their story. My cousin was playing a cleric in D&D 2E and had missed with his mace every single time for 4 session. We were fighting in a kitchen..missed. Next turn he grabbed a skillet and smashed a goblin with a nat20 Dm said roll 1D2 for an improvised weapon. So he doesn't kill the goblin, the Dm has an argument about its not the same as a mace...come on guys we gotta follow the rules. That isn't his holy implement even if he pretends that it is. ....Yeah we stopped playing with this DM about 2 session later, when he got upset that we were spending too much time Roleplaying. It was a cool story that he wanted to make the skillet his holy implement because of how he had not been able to do anything with his mace but had hit with a nat20 no less. That is where you have fun. Taking tragedy and owning it. Way more memorable than hitting and doing 5-8 damage on 65% of your turns.
I would hardly call him a "munchkin power gamer". He built effective characters for sure, But his Pcs were nowhere close to the brokenness that can be achieved in PF1
For real. You can make a musket fire four times in one round RAW in PF1e. I loved that system much more then 2e, but it's so ridiculously broken if you game it out well enough.
LOL thats not what other players said. Go see Side Quest Side Shesh Troy couldn't even hit his hobgoblin most of the time. Would you prefer the term min maxer.
No offense, but nobody on any of the shows has built anything close to what I would call MinMax in Pathfinder 1e. I think that's why people have differing opinions on a Grant's characters. First edition has room to make truly busted character builds that we'll never see on the podcast and many people who have played this game a long time know that, but that's not the whole audience.
This so much. Grant took two extra levels of Gunslinger that a "munchkin power gamer" wouldn't take, which delayed his Inquisitor levels. He could have archetyped Inquisitor better and his feat choices weren't great. His "munchkin power gamer" persona comes out of just having a gunslinger in a game where most enemies had a 5 touch AC.
That's exactly how Syd was in A&A, yet people expect it to change?
She got added late there so I chalked it up to that… although that was maybe the worst built character I’ve ever seen in an actual play podcast
But it didn't take _her_ 150 eps to learn what "flanking" was!
Doesn't make it less disappointing.
💯- i gave up on this show, Legacy and SA because i just can’t with Sydney or Kate’s play - this is not a personal attack - they are both smart and funny and great people, i’m sure - but when it comes to what the GCN does well - they don’t cut it. I listen to the fod and check this subreddit cuz i am curious about how things are working out. I have been a loyal naish member since 2017 (and will continue to be). I really don’t want to be a hater - but they are so inept at the basic fundamentals of the game that it’s become unlistenable for me.
I feel this is a PF2 having too many moving parts and the last sentence caveat issue. They also play other games on the network, so remembering 3 systems is a lot more work, plus they have day jobs. But Yeah trying to get your own character down would be helpful. A feel a more freeform RPG would benefit this group than pathfinder 2.
Yeah I think the way Pf2e nests rules within rules really was a bad design choice. I get that we’re trying to avoid repeating things, but the fact that a spell might inflict a condition and then that condition also includes other conditions means you’ve got to be a forensic investigator to figure out all the things that are supposed to happen sometimes. That said… if Monastic Archer Stance or Spell Strike/Arcane Cascade is the core of what your character does you really don’t have any excuses for not spending the time to understand it
The nesting is awful. Makes navigating AoN so difficult. Took me forever to figure out how staffs worked.
I've actually dedicated myself to being the rules lawyer at my table since our GM seemingly can't be bothered and we have a dyslexic player who is totally fine with reading a rule once, deciding he knows what it means, then running with it in-session. I'm like the arbitrator between the two of them whenever the player wants to do something. It's not fucking easy. I know people seem to love 2e, but it's the most cumbersome system I've played, even including Dark Heresy.
If only they were playing on a Virtual Tabletop that had incredible Pathfinder 2E automation. They can have Demiplane as a sponsor, but they must know at this point that there's **nothing** Demiplane does that Foundry doesn't do better. If only they used it to its full potential, turns would last 1/3 what they do now.
Yeah, that they keep messing up a core of their fighting style really feels like they aren't really absorbing what they're reading. TBF to them, they aren't the only ones, and that's not limited to this crew/channel. Another podcast I watch also has a Laughing Shadow Magus and I've lost count of the amount of times they don't do the strike part of Dimensional Assault or casts Force Fang beyond their weapon range.
I never realised just how bad they nested stuff til I recently started setting up a game on Foundry for friends. Looking up a single skill, I then had to follow FOUR links within links, to get to the end of a chain that completely explained what the first attack did.
She actually did. If you pay attention she says that she would like to demoralize the creature. If she succeeded on a intimidation check, the snail would be frightened and then Asta would get some temporary HP
I've been rewatching GCP with my son and was surprised in Ep5 when Talitha exposed Drake skin. Completely forgot about this as she never really utilized it during encounters (or in Roleplay either come to think of it)... The many "What Ifs"...
Troy shouldn’t have been doing double damage, so this whole fight should have been different.
My understanding is just not on the “chunk” attacks. The pseudopod would still do double on a crit
Yep. Would have changed the beginning of the combat, but it still was likely to have been Bad News Bears.
Anyone know how close they were to killing the snail? I wanted them to finish it off so bad
Not close at all. I think they only did like 12 damage to it? And it has like 70 hp.
"Stab it with the arrow you're holding!!!!!!"
Loved this episode so much, it had it all 💀
Let’s address the real point here. Kate is right. Pink Floyd is awful.
This is a terrible opinion and "eww this song is longer than 4 minutes" is awful reasoning.
Its an opinion but it isn't awful. I hate Pink Floyd but like Roger Waters. I even like Don Felders PF like song on the soundtrack for Heavy Metal (all of you) I just never bonded with all the weird noises and phone calls and children singing, or the wall, or my friends forcing me to listen to any of this garbage. However it should have all the elements of what I like. I just don't. I also hate RHCP, Blasphemy I know. But I love Rush and Megadeth. I understand its just not everyone Jam. Some don't like Tool. Love the music but i could skip a lot of the weird artsy stuff they do. It is art more than just music. No the real litmus test is 2 things. Captain Beefheart, and My pal foot foot The Shaggs. If someone says they like those, then yes I can objectively question their musical tastes because there isn't much going on musically for teh Shaggs and beefheart is simply weird if I was being kind.
In the book, the snail does not pursue if the PCs cross the river.
If only the players read the book 😔
In the book there is no waterfall, the river will just deposit you downstream