Pathfinder 2e introduces a variety of exciting mechanics and features to enhance gameplay and character progression. One such mechanic is the reinforcing rune, which allows players to imbue their weapons and armor with powerful magical properties. The reinforcing rune is a special enchantment that can be applied to any weapon or suit of armor. It provides a range of benefits to the item and the character who wields it. One of the primary functions of the reinforcing rune is to enhance the durability and resilience of the item. It increases the hit points of weapons and the hardness and HP of armor, making them more resistant to damage and wear and tear.

Pathfinder 2E finesse fighter - am I missing something? (1 Viewer)

Back when Pathfinder 2E was released, I tried creating a human fighter with an elven curve blade. But I ended up dealing 1d8+2 damage with a two-handed weapon, having brought my strength up to 14. As useful as dexterity is otherwise, this still feels like a bad tradeoff and low damage for someone whose job it is to deal damage.

Combined with the general. mediocrity. of fighter feats, I gave up. Today I was reminded of it and I'm wondering if I missed something or if trying to use finesse weapons as a fighter is just not a very good idea. But I also get a feeling like the swashbuckler playtest renders it all moot, since they actually have features based around using finesse and agile weapons.

Lord Shark

Varoonik!

No, I don't think you missed out on much. High DEX is nice because it gives you better AC and powers some handy skills, but a high-DEX, medium-STR fighter is going to be lacking in the damage department.

Of course, bonus damage from STR is less important when you start getting your hands on striking runes to boost the number of damage dice you roll.

It looks like if you want to be an optimal high-DEX melee specialist, you'll have to be either a thief racket rogue or a swashbuckler.

jimthegray

Validated User

and one can always get proficient in aldori dueling blades, taking all of the feats is debatable but getting the basics feat is imho good for a dex fighter

Tomestone

Validated User

The PF2nd edition does struggle a bit if you go the finesse fighter route and unless the Advanced Player's Guide takes some steps to rectify the situation I would recommend sticking with a more traditional fighter build.

It is one of the glaring weaknesses in the rules thus far. Then again given the 3.x D&D legacy of the rule system it is be expected.

Strange Visitor

Grumpy Grognard

Also, a note that there's no automatic reason your Strength has to lag that far behind your Dex unless you actively want it to; PF2e gives out a lot more overall attribute points than 3e era games did (by the time my sword-and-board guy was 5th, he had an 18 STR and a 16 DEX, so the opposite shouldn't be hard).

Mind you if you're really heavily chasing damage, yeah, you need to get Strength (its one of the things Strength is for after all) but a point or two isn't going to kill you.

Morty

Validated User

Having a lower damage bonus from strength wouldn't be so bad if finesse weapons didn't also get smaller damage dice. A 1d8 two-handed weapon feels excessive. Particularly since its only trait besides finesse is, shall we say, nothing to write home about.

It does appear that the traditional approach of finesse weapons being weak and having to be used by classes with extra damage sources (rogues, swashbucklers) is fully in effect.

jimthegray

Validated User

or go
Aldori Dueling Sword
Source World Guide pg. 28
Damage 1d8 S; Bulk 1
Hands 1
Category Advanced
Group Sword; Traits Finesse, Uncommon, Versatile P
An Aldori dueling sword is a slim, single-bladed dueling sword with a slight curve and a sharp, reinforced point.
Critical Specialization Effects
Source Core Rulebook pg. 283
Sword: The target is made off-balance by your attack, becoming flat-footed until the start of your next turn.

so d8 1h which helps offset the lower dam for a lower str,

of course using it means delaying other multiclassing should you be wanting other multiclass options but it works, i suspect the upcoming duelist archetype will also help in this regard.

Morty

Validated User

Come to think of it, I also tried to recreate my halfling fighter from 5E. In 5E, I reskinned a rapier to be a spear. In PF2E, there is actually a one-handed finesse spear. but it deals a whopping 1d4 damage. So yeah, that plan wasn't going to work either.

Duddubuddu

Validated User

Welp, you could go with a Rapier. it's a finesse weapon with Deadly D8 and Disarm.
Or
for something strange you could use
Fire Poi; has Agile, Backswing, Finesse, Twin, Uncommon and does 1d4B + 1d4F(when lit)

Personally I think of the Dex Fighter as the Archer.
Though I'm of the mind that there isn't much of a difference between a d4 and a d6.

Morty

Validated User

There isn't, but here it's compounded with the fact that I'm already getting a smaller attribute bonus to damage.

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Pathfinder 2E Secrets of Old Pandora: The First Five Levels (A PF2e West Marches Report)

So, some of you might be aware that for the past six months, I've been running a Pathfinder 2e West Marches on my Discord Server. Since many of our players recently hit level 5, I thought it was a good time to talk about how that's gone so far, since I know several members of the community are interested in the system's potential for sandbox gaming, and in how the system can be adjusted to support a different style of play. So foremost, let me introduce you to the Isle of Crosstaine, the starting point for our adventures through the Pandoran Islands.

This map was created by one of my fellow GMs on the server, best friend, and long time player Soul_Writ3r. It sits in the center of the islands and in L14 is the ramshackle outpost of Scoundrel's Key, wherein would be pirates and treasure hunters have gathered, drawn to the isles by rumors of an island chain full of ancient ruins and abandoned riches. In the past, it was the site of a Pirate Golden Age, a staging ground for countless crews and a pirate nation that fought a war with the infamous Black Moon Syndicate. Now it's the player's starting town, where they set off on each voyage using the hexploration procedure native to Pathfinder 2e. So without further ado, here's my player's guide for the game. We use Foundry VTT for the sessions themselves.

To summarize, players use a lead ranging from "We want to explore to the west" to "We want to investigate that strange temple we found in J11" to "We're searching for the lost city of Atlanta we heard about from that traveling peddler" to initiate a voyage, which is possibly multiple play sessions length beginning when they leave town, and ending when they return to any town they have a writ for, and are responsible for both gathering a crew and arranging the schedule with one of the GMs to run it, detailed spaces like dungeons must be explored with the GM who 'owns it,' something they find out when they find the entrance (or hear about it). The above map on the GM side is divided into zones with their own wandering monster and event tables, each with a designated level (and an expectation of four players) so that players can plan how in over their head they want to get, and things get easier the more players you bring (but obviously, they likely have to split treasure more ways). The players didn't start with boats, so they were intentionally funneled west at first, in a soft, geographical nudge toward somewhat appropriate content, but got them pretty shortly after (and could have just bought them even earlier, so they could have insisted on traveling in another direction as early as session 2, rowboats aren't very expensive so they really just needed a little more than they can reasonably start the game with-- hell, an enterprising party of new pcs could do it by pitching starting gold if they kept their starting equipment sufficiently cheap.)

Very Importantly, players level up by spending gold between voyages, directly tying the acquisition of treasure to the game's core progression system, we also tripled the expected amount of gold to facilitate this and the sandbox expectation that sometimes you won't find the treasure, it was fairly simple to set the gold required to the usual amount a single player gets in a level according to the CRB, and then use the treasure by encounter table x3 to make sure there was a good leveling speed, even when they spend money on magic items:

Our first session saw the players leaving the town and searching the adjacent L13 hex, where I had stocked a "tidal pool table" to be rolled on whenever a search is initiated in the hex. The table is built as a kind of default activity for a new party of adventurers who don't know where to find something interesting and has encounters, pointers to other hexes, and treasure, though each result gets crossed off if the player's find it. In this case they actually did so well in buttering up an NPC, I gave them an extra roll on the table in the guise of the NPC giving them something, which produced a strange key and since they didn't even want the key, but instead to make a mold of it (which was just a spare piece of gear PF2e apparently has one of the player's took, along with a brass ear of all things) it was easy for them to get a copy of it. They continued checking hexes and coincidentally ended up in K14, and finding an enormous metal door buried in the sand, which was actually what the key corresponded to, and so a party of level 1 treasure hunters wandered into a prestocked level 3 lair. The map is simple and publicly available.

In exploration mode they rounded corners, a skittering noise being noticed just in front of them before they came to the point where the left and right hallways meet, and decided to check the southern room first. One of their number, a Strix cleric, lowered themselves into the pit, full of skeletal parts to retrieve some very valuable magic items (bear in mind, gold scales exponentially with level in Pathfinder 2e, and they were two levels below this place and knew it) it was then that the Ghouls, who had hidden in the very back as they lured the party deeper into the cave, flooded the room with the pit. It would have been a severe encounter for level 3s, and the players, boxed into the room thought they were finished, but they got to work, the armor inventor rocked up into their midst and used an AOE (leveraging a once per day extra action from a rare background they got for GMing the prior campaign) then proceeded to tank them like a champ, others ran off into the rest of the party, running interference while they tried to get their friend out of the pit. Eventually, the rogue managed to get a rope down to the cleric and pull them out, which was a game changer as the 3 action version of the heal spell also hurt the ghouls. After a super gross, cinematic moment with the ghast who led the ghouls, they were able to finish off them off and finish looting the lovely treasure in the pit, netting them a Retribution Axe among other odds and ends. But they weren't quite out of the woods, what followed was a multi-day struggle in the field against the crippling effects of Ghoul Fever. But with luck and medicine checks, they pulled through and returned to town triumphant and, I'm proud to say, exhilarated, from their first voyage.

After that, events proceeded apace with two primary goals, unlock their second town, and kill the Giant Hermit Crab who had stolen one of the hulks that served as homes in Scoundrel's Key for cash. I happened to lose a character to it in M14, an Orc Magus, and also got to help kill it (using a new Magus) in a later voyage after that one ended in failure. The second town goal, however, had an interesting resolution, one group set out to follow the road across the tidal causeway to the west (which links L12 and L13) to find another town, but scheduling issues prevented them from continuing until another group of different characters actually followed it much more quickly (not stopping to search every hex) and arrived at the town first, buying their writs and gaining a new settlement for downtime, and a new staging point for voyages, located in K10-- which also unveiled our first actual dungeon, an attached lighthouse and manor complex with strange eldritch undertones, run by one of the other GMs (the oubliette was something any of us was allowed to run, since it can be keyed very simply.) The whole area to the west of the causeway is the 'haunted hills' with a designated level of 2 (sometimes a harsh level 2, granted) and a spooky theming.

We very quickly transitioned from a hex unknown structure to a hex known one, as the players hated piecing it together from landmarks and drawing their own without meta information, this worked much better as the general shape of the continent became an inviting series of hooks and reminders of unexplored territory, what is in each hex is still a mystery until it is explored of course.

Another fun story involves a use of the retreat rules, where the party desperate to evade a group of Biloko in I17 using their recently acquired rowboat (from the manor!) to explore the eastern swamps. We went through obstacles like "Monkeys on the branches hurling pebbles at you" and "you come to a fork, how do you decide which way to go" and I let the players work out ways to contribute, one of the players actually handled the second one by creating a decoy lead that would send the biloko down the wrong fork. The chase rules in pf2e work super well as a sandbox retreat system.

Later, I got to see a clause I built into the Voyage and Leads procedure, where a player can suggest a lead based in their backstory and a GM can accept it as valid material take effect, and that was a fun session-- our resident Wellspring Mage Summoner, an unknowingly dispossessed heiress heard one of her daddy's ships was in the area and wanted to try and get back to him, only to discover he was trafficking other Wellspring individuals, resulting in a fun rescue operation that had an infiltration challenge (same basic victory point structure as the chase rules) and some strong roleplay and character development in it. The player backstory clause is definitely a good addition to my procedure, and it's easy enough to not let it take over, since the GMs can simply refuse to run a particular lead until normal leads have been run more often if it started happening more than we thought healthy.

Another time, they encountered a patrol of goblins and managed to talk their way out of a fight, but the goblins took a nearby hill fort in L12 to establish themselves in the eastern portion of the zone, which would have likely led to raids on the key (I actually have a procedure for 'timed events' like this and how to intervene / what happens if you don't, it relies on time advancing every three real world months, but being ambigious within that season-- so the quest to repel invaders can occur at any time before then, but if its not the GMs can modify the world accordingly) if they didn't deal with them, so one of our PC Goblins, Bonzu the Great, led an assault on the hill fort and claimed it in his own name, it is now theoretically 'Fort Bonneru' though I don't have a system in place for player owned settlements or forts, so its not providing a mechanical presence right now.

I figured out pretty fast that while the neutrality is fun, it required us to build some additional safety nets into the procedure-- at low levels, foes are likely to demand something from the PCs in place of a TPK, and another GM discovered that we could let players engage in healing in exchange for time during a chase-- taking a moment to administer a potion to dying ally at the cost of not advancing the current obstacle and bringing the party closer to being caught. We took for granted that largely everyone can detect everyone else's level, like a Dragon Ball z power level, which often gives players a very good idea of what they can and can't take. This also led to the following guideline: foes pretty much universally prefer to attack targets that are bigger threats to them, rather than lower level PCs-- though they won't have mercy with fireballs or breath weapons and such either. This has allowed us to do some cool level mixing without the game system's level scaling making it, so low level PCs wouldn't want to come along. Our new player, a level 1 alchemist, has used this to come along on a level 4 lead, providing support through their alchemical items but mainly ducking behind cover. Paizo gave us a big boon too, in the form of the player undead rules from Book of the Dead, now if a player character dies, and resurrection isn't an option for whatever reason, they can be directed to rebuild as undead if they'd prefer to continue their character's story, its a lovely organic "second chance" system built into the game.

So far the players have explored a small handful of dungeons, and ranged as far north as their next towns in G7 (the ruined farmlands zone, beset by Goblin Ninja bandits) and H18 (the swamp zone, horribly corrupted by my setting's overarching threat of aberrations.)

There are major plot points (recurring story threads that exist throughout the hexes, public events, and dungeons) the players have started to uncover, including the Black Moon Syndicate's hold on the nearby city of Crosstaine (which the island is named for) in the island's western half, and some surprisingly intricate politics involved with it, and the ancient fey worshipping civilization of half elves that resided here, and the true purpose of the lighthouse and the strange ley lines that crisscross the islands, and finally, the renegade psychopomp Davey Jones and his minions, who serves as a tyrant demigod and tempts pirates to make deals in exchange for many years of service after their eventual deaths.

One of our biggest challenges has been player retention, not because the game isn't enjoyable but because my core group has had some extreme work related scheduling changes, and West Marches are prone to people ghosting since it isn't confronted by an ongoing commitment, and ghosting is already frequent among online-met players-- as a result the game has slowed down somewhat during the summer as everyone has gotten fairly busy. Unfortunately, player scheduling simply remains a challenge because most players don't want to take the initiative and instead approach each weekend in terms of 'oh what are we doing' rather than having goals-- so there's a passivity there that has led to GMs kind of prodding things to indirectly organize it themselves, the worst expression of this is the tendency some players have to try and play every weekend by ear-- some of that is work schedules not releasing until later than you'd think which is fine (there's simply no way anyone will know what dates they will be available in a month, or even further out than the next few days) but some of it appears to be more about wanting to stay free on any given night and hoping other players are stable enough in their scheduling to support that drop in, only for the GMs to go into the weekend not entirely sure they should have actually kept their own schedules free for game after all. Its not the worst because in theory we're just prepping whats there anyway, but its still frustrating to have to be so flexible to make sure game happens as often as possible.

Similarly, players (mine anyway) don't talk as much as the Ben Robbins blogs would lead you to believe, which has led to people being unaware of each other's leads, since I deliberately avoided centralizing information in one place to encourage a social metagame or personal conversation. I think this has to do with the culture of play they come from being less oriented toward planning than some older play cultures are. This has humorously led to a player complaining they didn't have any leads to find a ship, but another player has been holding onto one since level 3, and still other players were also aware of it. We have too many players now for a regular game (and schedules don't line up for that either) but too few for as stable a west marches as we'd like, some of that is also the fact that we're careful about who we add to our community, for good reason, so we don't have the massive public discord server going on, it has 36 total members, and a large portion of those are social connections of the core group who never come on but have the channel for occasional video games or people who never really followed through.

Another problem is the prep of a hexcrawl. the actual work isn't too much, I was able to fill out the hexes (probably making the content too dense) in like a fourth of this in very short order (like a week of fairly casual work), and by dividing the work between the GMs its even easier (like, one of my GMs loves designing encounters for the tables)-- the real problem is depression and (what is presumably) ADHD, which led to me pumping out most of the content that lasted us months in like a week, and then not being able to do much more than a few events for months. I can still force myself to prep dungeon content for next session which led to my current dungeon an underground fey temple with a neat teleportation ring mechanic that takes you to strange rooms, but even when I haven't GMed in a month, no hex work gets done. I've always had this problem and it sucks. Pathfinder 2e makes it easy to create encounters due to its mountains of monsters and hazards, and easy to work out how much treasure to give, so I can produce content rapidly. but I have to make myself produce any at all. Its also a logistical challenge to keep 3 GMs in the loop, nagging people about stuff we're procrastinating on, and feeling empowered to produce content, especially since I'm not the only one who has trouble sitting down to prep.

This affects other aspects of my life as well, so c'est la vie.

The final challenge is roleplaying, this group has always been mechanically minded, and struggled with heavier roleplay systems (such as Masks: A New Generation) but lately I've been trying to deconstruct some of the frustrations as I read the elusive shift because I know some of them really WANT to roleplay, so I've been trying to recapture what that means and make it something that I can show/teach them. We've had some good roleplay in this game, but its just something on my mind, and im going back to like, the 4e manuals for advice and such, because thats where I learned to teach my college group how to RP, a lot of it is just different personalities though. I also think playing online contributes because we're not riffing on each others energy and body language, and its harder to tell when someone else wants to talk, but that's virtually impossible to solve since my players are all over the country, and even the world these days. So i think there's a lot more tuning out, getting distracted with browsing the internet, getting restless due to sitting in one place with headphones on, or even just being tired because we tend to play after work for many of us-- we do still have great sessions, but they can start to drag much faster.

Some players don't feel compelled to explore and want it to be more rewarding, but I think they're actually reacting to the fact that we've been dealing with two dungeons for the last few months during the slowdown-- dungeons always pay off better than simple exploration, but exploration is how you find the entrances to them, so you have a boom bust cycle accounted for in our treasure math, where you earn little by trawling the map (but can certainly earn some from random events or other odds and ends), but then once you find a dungeon you can brave its dangers to absolutely make bank. These aren't the only high treasure scenarios on offer, but they're the ones that the players have discovered so far. Once these dungeons dry up, they almsot have to explore or stop progressing, so that probably works, its not the first time its happened either.

Does Pathfinder 2e add to this?
I would say so, simply by virtue of the fact that its a high-customization system, its much easier for me to make Pathfinder 2e do this by messing with some wealth tables, than to add all those options to something that's more typically used for this kind of play, plus the game has a lot of simulated elements that make it easy to handle 'weird' situations as they come up-- for example ships and cannons, while we haven't gotten to it yet, is very well supported by the multi-action siege weapon rules from Guns and Gears, or how victory point chases and infiltration made it trivial to run those kinds of scenarios more or less on demand when my players needed to do so for a plan they had. My players also prefer their characters to survive for longer for the sake of continuing their story, and the system is of course more built to support that idea than something like OSE would be due to its trad roots.

It works better than 5e would because magic items are much lesser buyer beware for including in the game in plentiful quantities which feels necessary for a treasure centric experience, and it has better guidelines and balance for everything-- also guns are immensely well supported, a big boon for a pirate game. The level scaling seems like a detriment but in reality, its kind of a boon, not only does it make different types of encounter and such just work out of the box (things like solo bosses, or horde encounters) but it also deepens the sense of the sandbox because there's a real sense of a world thats there waiting to be explored and dovetails beautifully with the wealth scaling to mean being in over your head has a huge payoff-- its a natural incentive to bite off almost but not quite more than you can chew, and our retreat system and modifications reinforce that by allowing for skilled play in selecting and negotiating fights, there's a strong sense of sometimes being chased away only to come back later and have a satisfying revenge. Finally, the rarity system lets us cut a good balance on treasure and spells, where there's a lot of stuff you can just buy with your gold in town at different settlements, but then there's lots of things you can only get by going into deep dark holes in the ground. I even added a neat little mechanic where there's a library guarded by a living rune not far from the key, where players can show up and offer an uncommon spell to the library to get access to the pool of uncommon spells previous pirates have added, allowing them to spread once we've included them even once.

Conclusion
In the next few levels, players will likely be acquiring proper vessels and moving onto a second map designed to go up to level 10, we're having a great time with our Pathfinder 2e West Marches, despite some of the personal challenges we've had with this kind of play. The system is shockingly good for a neo-trad approach to OSR adventure structures, which is pretty much what I was hoping for, so now its a matter of leaning into that and continuing to get my players comfortable embracing their character personalities and ability to swim through the lore of the world and the play space provided by the game. We've also learned that a good retreat system really helps to curtail some of the risks of higher level foes in the system without having to neuter their sense of danger through 5e style non-scaling, and generally lubricates the system by adding counter play to overwhelming situations. Overall, Secrets of Old Pandora, been my own grand experiment and when I'm not depressed and second guessing myself, I'm actually super proud of what I've achieved in creating it.

Pathfinder 2E I feel at peace

I love talking about my games, so I figured I would post a (long and rambling) update because I GMed the first session of Legacy of Fire yesterday! It was a bit of a rocky start because the game store was hosting an event and my map press got lost in the mix and we couldn't use our normal room but were instead stuck in the loud fishbowl up front and my throat still hurts from having to talk over everyone, but everyone had fun in the end.

So I made some modifications to the first book – I couldn't find any adventures that I liked and fit well within it, so I wrote my own based loosely (very loosely) on 'The Temple of Zanak Khan' from Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss with violence and xenophobia replacing sex and depravity. I also made the murder mystery in part one of the module an actual murder mystery – with the motive being the dreams from the temple. I kept it pretty simple and made suspect cards (an absolute necessity for any whodunit in my opinion) and it ran great (despite the noise from the other four games being run in the same room at the same time).

murder mysteries aren’t complex until they're Mage: the Awakening murder mysteries. I love the game but I would spend weeks working out how everything happened and thinking of potential clues and solutions: yes you absolutely can go back in time and try to stop the murder from taking place (other players notice my evil smile and immediately think to check the Acanthus’s gun against the bullets from the victim to make sure that they didn’t commit the murder by going into the past to stop the murder that they themselves committed in a temporal paradox); and sure Death can just tell you who did it but she wants a favor from you in exchange (my evil smile betrays me again… though they later went back and took the deal!).

We ended it almost exactly where I thought we would despite me having seven players and things tending to take forever with that many. I did run two combats: a moderate with two low threat creatures and a hazard and a low with a single boss creature and they went very well and though the boss got swarmed as I expected, he took a couple of characters down with crits before he died. I love that in 2e, making fun, interesting, challenging fights takes me about 10-30 minutes (literally for the boss I copied an NPC’s stats out of the book and swapped out two abilities for quick draw and double slice). In 1e I would have to spend hours on every fight to get much less satisfactory results.

Next time I get to run my first dream sequence – I am either going to go for a fast and dreamy chase rule inspired sequence or (since I have so many players), a team PVP camp infiltration/defense sequence, or a siege sequence depending on how much time I have to prepare for it.

Finally, I designed a new time wheel for Legacy of Fire. This time I used GIMP for better control of the wedges, and printed it out on glossy photopaper with borderless printing and used spray adhesive to adhere it to thin cardboard

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Philip Benz

A Dragontooth Grognard

In addition to my take on Serpents skull for PF2E, I am still running kingmaker (pf1e), though it’s finally reaching its conclusion.

Hey, I'm late to the party, but I noticed you're also running Serpent's Skull in PF2. I've been using the second half of book 2 (Tazion) in a highly modified version for some 15 or so sessions now, and we're just beginning book 3 (Saventh-Yhi), again in a highly modified version. Notably, I've had to homebrew a lot of creatures because my PCs are now 9th level, 2 levels above the baseline for this book. I've had to set up a lot of maps for VTT and wondered if we could pool resources, depending on where you are in the campaign.

!DWolf

Adventurer

Hey, I'm late to the party, but I noticed you're also running Serpent's Skull in PF2. I've been using the second half of book 2 (Tazion) in a highly modified version for some 15 or so sessions now, and we're just beginning book 3 (Saventh-Yhi), again in a highly modified version. Notably, I've had to homebrew a lot of creatures because my PCs are now 9th level, 2 levels above the baseline for this book. I've had to set up a lot of maps for VTT and wondered if we could pool resources, depending on where you are in the campaign.

That is a great idea; unfortunately we are far behind you (and I only play in person so I don’t prep or need VTT stuff). My group is just about to leave Kalabuto (where they played through a mashup of Carrion Hill, N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God, and Dawn of the Scarlet Sun); and since I am going to add a bunch of stuff to the river voyage (elements from Theodore Roosevelt’s River of Doubt expedition, encounters from River into Darkness, stuff with Mzali because we had a player join who is playing a Bright Lion, etc.) it will probably be at least six months before we get out of Tazion since we only play Serpent’s Skull every other week.

I am interested in how you modified Tazion, though. My previous prep added elements from Cult of Cinders into it (specifically the dragon pillars and barrier and a modified version of the mine so that they have another way to sneak into the city and bypass the pillars), but since the Mwangi Expanse book came out and I got a new player, I am redoing it as well as some more Mzali stuff (I retconned that in their height the Mzali found and explored the ruins, and had a small archeological outpost there, then they accidentally unleashed a horror in the water system which will take the place of the decapus).

Philip Benz

A Dragontooth Grognard

My modifications were centered around 3 themes:
1) Modern wizards are obsessed with the idea of lost Azlanti magic - my group began their quest on the trail of an evil wizard who had captured and maimed over half the group earlier in the campaign, and his "expedition" replaced the competing factions. Once in the city, the PCs explored a series of subterranean Azlanti tombs corrupted by the foul magic of the serpentfolk.
2) The Charau-ka were also corrupted from their tribal demon-worshipping origins to serve the serpentfolk god, and made regular sacrifices at the Well of Souls where the decapus was replaced by a fiendish squid with Cthulhoid overtones, kind of a Watcher in the Water vibe, and only by destroying that creature could they lift the curse over Tazion.
3) The northern zigurrat held the most well-preserved Azlanti artifact, a portal that could be activated by four Azlanti Aeon stones recovered from the tombs of Savith's fallen companions and that could be guided (with difficult Arcana checks) to teleport almost anywhere, but would eventually be used to reach lost Saventh-Yhi. After facing the four Azlanti idols, the PCs absorbed the spirits of long-dead Azlanti heroes, gaining a part of their memories (which retroactively gave them the Free Archetype feats, representing the knowledge of these past lives).

Now that they are just beginning to explore Saventh-Yhi (book 3 of the campaign) they will have to combat the ressurgence of dark serpentfolk magic which is insidiously weakening the wards over Saventh-Yhi and re-establish the power of the Seven Spears to prevent the rise of old Vaolisa, the Serpentfolk Empire that thirst for revenge on the descendants of the lost Azlanti.

Earlier, on the trail of the evil wizard searching for Tazion, they had to confront most of the content from the 2nd half of book 2 (Mzali necromancers, various jungle hazards, stray demons once worshipped by the Charau-ka, and dozens of dinosaurs living in the Bandu hills). All the while pursued themselves by an expedition mounted by the cunning Aspis Consortium, who will become one of the main adversaries in Saventh-Yhi.

Although I far prefer playing around the tabletop, with the lockdowns and curfews we've gone through in the last year and a half here in France, we've been forced to play on VTT, so I've had to source maps and tokens and such, in addition to writing up tons of creatures adapted from PF1, and often raised several levels. My group was 6th level when they left Kalabuto and now are 9th level as they begin trying to reach the outskirts of Saventh-Yhi, so a lot of the creatures had to be made just a wee bit more dangerous than the stock versions from the bestiaries (when the critters even exist in statted form in PF2, which isn't always the case).

!DWolf

Adventurer

So it been a while, and I figured I would update about the games I’m running in case anyone is interested.

Legacy of Fire

We played our second session of Legacy of Fire last week. In this session the players started tackling the monastery and cleared most of the first floor. This session was interesting in that it included the most difficult to run encounter of 2e so far: the chapel. It was difficult mainly because of the huge two level structure with multiple hazards that changed levels combined with the larger number of monsters (there were nine). Normally, I would reduce the monsters to a troop, but because of the importance of individual positioning in this battle I didn't. The very noisy environment we were playing in (multiple Warhammer 40K games were going on at the same time and some of the 40K players brought their kids and they were watching movies on their laptops) also didn't help. It only took an hour and a half to run but it felt like four hours to me. If I were to run it again though, I would definitely invest the time to make a multilevel map because having the entire table covered in maps and having to constantly move tokens/minis from one map to another didn’t work very well. Everyone still had fun though:

The cleric entered the chapel by himself and got ambushed by the pugwampis hiding in rafters by their nest. The other characters quickly arrived and a ranged weapon fight broke out, with the pugwampis slowly whittling down the players. Then the monk managed to get up to the rafters, followed shortly by the sorcerer and finally the rogue, causing the pugwampis to begin to retreat back to their nest (as outlined in the module). A retreat they were able to complete because the sorcerer attempted to move up to the monk and collapsed a support beam with their combined weight, sending the sorcerer crashing to the floor below while the monk grabbed an edge. The monk then leaped across the rafters, grabbing the side of the pugwampi nest, after which he proceeded to kick out the supporting beams, causing the entire structure to begin to collapse. A structure that was now on fire because the ranger and the cleric had decided to light it up from directly below (I made a rules mistake here: a flint a steel would take at least three actions to light a torch and I let them do it in one). The pugwampi, who had delayed, took their actions to escape the flaming, collapsing deathtrap by leaping down, which did not go well. The ranger and cleric got clear as pugwampi slammed into the ground all around them. Then the goblin rogue jumped down from the rafters and killed a couple of the prone pugwampi with a death from above maneuver. The sorcerer then used a three-action harm to kill most of the remaining pugwampi, save for the king and one of his retainers who had not managed to get clear of the structure before it collapsed. Crawling his way out, the king managed to knee-cap the goblin before he got killed by said goblin. The PCs then retreated from the burning room to let the fire die out. The resulting plume of smoke was visible for miles, so that will be interesting for next session.

I am also happy so far with my Numenera inspired magic item system. The basics is that there are only limited number of permanent items (which are all relics) and all other items are consumables. To facilitate play I printed out a bunch (currently over 30 and I intend to keep adding more until I get up to multiple hundreds) of 3x5 index cards with consumable magic items on them, with no level or price listed, and I just hand them out randomly whenever a magical treasure is indicated. The key to this is getting the players to use the consumables instead of hoarding them, and so far they have been (probably due to the difficulty/perceived difficult of some of the fights so far).

Serpent's Skull

This session was a dungeon crawl based on the second level of N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God and I ran it with no player visible maps, just my description of the dungeon and combats (very oldschool, which is not my usual style as I am usually very map and prop heavy). I deliberately set the dungeon up to be run this way: the rooms were simple to describe without complex layouts (a complete contrast with the Legacy of Fire session) and every combat was with only one or two monsters. In the end I think it went very well and I had a lot of fun running it. So much so that I am debating using this style of play to run the crypts under the monastery in Legacy of Fire (expanded a bit into a proper dungeon), the aqueduct in Tazion (expanded into a full dungeon), the lower parts of the House of the Beast, and the Vaults of Madness. If I do use this style of game again, I am going to try the tension pool mechanic from Angry GM, especially for the House of the Beast which I want to feel very dynamic.

!DWolf

Adventurer

I’m stuck at home with a migraine so have an update:

Out of curiosity I calculated the combat times for my last five sessions. My average combat time is about 31 minutes, median is 24 minutes, and the maximum was 86 minutes (the pugwampi nest). Here is the list of combats if anyone is interested:

Howl of the Carrion King Session 1:
• Attempting to subdue a duelist – 45 minutes
• Rescuing a goat from two pugwampi in a cactus field – 36 minutes

Howl of the Carrion King Session 2:
• Stumbling on a trio of bloodseekers encountered while scouting – 13 minutes
• Fighting a 10 pugwampi, including their king, in the rafters of a chapel – 1 hour 26 minutes
• Fighting three pugwampi “chefs” in a glass filled kitchen along with four baboons that heard the sound of nearby fighting and joined in to reinforce the pugwampi – 46 minutes

Howl of the Carrion King Session 3:
• Ambushed by a giant solifugid – 24 minutes
• Examining a laboratory and being ambushed by four oozes – 25 minutes

Racing to Ruin Session 14 (This session was set as an old school dungeon crawl and it uses a quicker pacing)
• Being examined by four pygmy crocodiles while poling a boat (combat avoided) – 7 minutes
• Fighting through a trapped guard post manned by two xulgaths, who were reinforced by two mud vipers (from a trap that dropped them), and then four more xulgaths from a nearby room – 22 minutes
• Getting stuck in the web of a giant spider who ambushed the party – 10 minutes
• Spotting a zombie working a pump system and attacking it only to be swarmed by the centipedes that were living under its skin – 16 minutes
• Narrowly avoiding being ambushed by a troop of xulgath along with their leader – 16 minutes
• Being lunged at by a frilled lizard that was chained to a wall and couldn’t quite reach the PCs since they were pressed up against the other wall (combat bypassed) – 2 minutes
• Poling a boat and being ambushed by a naga boss – 40 minutes
• Surprising a boss demonologist who after several rounds of fighting the players, joined forces with them to take on the big boss: a spawn of yog-sothoth – 1 hour and 20 minutes

Racing to Ruin Session 15
• Ambushed by ruffians in the night – 32 minutes

Legacy of Fire

This was an interesting session. We started where we left off exploring the monastery. There was a fight with a giant solifugid that was pretty fun and then the players entered the crypts. I went with just using the crypts presented in the book, mostly due to lack of time, and that was a mistake: the players seemed all amped for a dungeon crawl and a boss fight (typical crypt stuff) but since they entered in the alchemical laboratory they fought the ‘boss’ immediately and the dungeon crawl was mostly a loot run. If I were to run it again I would defiantly expand it into a proper dungeon with a couple of traps and a solid boss right by the secret exit.

The monastery cleared, we had a bunch of role-play as everyone moved the base into the monastery. The first custom dream sequence was up next and (again due to lack of time) it was just a three obstacle chase: get into the enemy camp, find the general, assassinate him. It went well enough: except that the characters couldn’t get past the first obstacle! They eventually just attacked the guards and slipped past in the confusion. The rest went better, though I really liked some of the creative solutions that they came up with, so I maybe lowered the DCs a little too much to reward the creativity. Once they woke up they heard the Howl of the Carrion King go out and questioned the gnoll expert about it. So far so good.

Here is where it gets weird. The next day they are given their assignments: they are to scout out the town and start softening the gnolls up for the coming fight. They choose to take the high risk high reward tactic of pretending to be merchants and head to the battle market. This is despite them having horrible success with the same tactic in the dream. But then they start using things that they thought up in the dream to better prepare for their attempt! I didn’t intend or anticipate this.

My current plan is to run the whole thing as an infiltration, with them starting with three edge points from the steps they have already taken. Hopefully, it will all go well. It will certainly be a different experience as I don’t think I have run a non-cyberpunk infiltration game? (if you are looking for a fantastic heist example though: RPPR’s lunar bank robbery episodes of their Know Evil Eclipse Phase campaign are top notch). It may be interrupted by the next dream sequence (which I have already mapped out and probably will not provide any inadvertent foreshadowing) but that will provide a good change of pace for the session (it should be mostly combat this time while combat is a failure state of the infiltration).

Serpents Skull

This was an interesting session in that it was mostly wrap up of the Kalabuto arc. We also had a new player which was kind of good timing as they are leaving Kalabuto and starting the next leg of the journey but mostly bad timing because they didn’t have much to do for the first part of the session and the session pacing was horribly off compared to what it normally is. It was still an okay session and I hope they come back (and I can figure out how to pace the upcoming games).

Then we had a boat ride to the Lake of Vanished Armies that was way too railroady for me. I tried to spice it up with forewarning of upcoming events (Mzali Rangers in the area, talk of the lake monster, etc.) and a mystery encounter leading to a treasure map and a sea hag boss. But the mystery encounter was sort of a miss and we had to end the session before going after the treasure.

The big challenge for future games is going to be running the boat trip up to Taizon. I generally don’t run railroad style games, but the boat ride is sort of like a literal railroad and I don’t know how to offer characters meaningful choices when they are stuck on the boat moving along a set path. I might look up a couple of mystery games set on riverboats or railroads and see what they do. But I remember listening to the The Five Toned Goddess for Eclipse Phase, and while interesting, something like that is completely unsuitable for my Serpent Skull game. So lots of GMing challenges coming up in this game.

Review of Lost Omens: Grand Bazaar for Pathfinder 2nd Edition

Lost Omens: The Grand Bazaar marks the 8th entry in the Lost Omens line for Pathfinder Second Edition (PF2). As these are quarterly releases, we are TWO YEARS into Lost Omens for Pathfinder 2E, and I remain impressed with each book that comes out.

Grand Bazaar is a unique title because unlike the previous books, this one doesn’t feature a specific region or broad topic like, oh I don’t know, the world. Instead, the book is all about the most popular market in Golarion, right in the heart of the Coin District in Absalom.

At this point, I’m not going to keep blasting you, the reader, with links to all of the other Lost Omens reviews. Instead, you can check out this singular link that shows the Lost Omens reviews in one place. Yay for efficiencies!

For all you Agents of SHIELD fans, the Grand Bazaar is like Tahiti – it’s a magical place! There’s something for everybody to find in the concentric rows of tents and shops that makes this the premiere destination for shopping aficionados everywhere. Where you’re looking for powerful magic items, long-forgotten relics, or delightful toys, the Grand Bazaar has whatever you need.

Let’s get into the details of the book!

It increases the hit points of weapons and the hardness and HP of armor, making them more resistant to damage and wear and tear. In addition to its defensive benefits, the reinforcing rune also grants the item a higher attack and damage bonus. This enables characters to deal more damage with their weapons and improves their chances of hitting their targets in combat.

Lost Omens The Grand Bazaar: Who It’s For

I’m going get straight to the point with this one – the Lost Omens: Grand Bazaar book is primarily geared towards Gamemasters. Or at least, that’s the way that it’s presented. So much of the book is describing specific shops and their proprietors that it seems easy to get lost in the text.

However, I will say that as you start getting into the finer points, like what these shops offer for sale, you begin to appeal to player and
Gamemaster alike. There are SO many items that you look at and see an entire character concept built around them. Not to mention the armor, weapons, and other combat goodies. I’d compare the book to the old Sears holiday catalog. The only difference is that I won’t take a giant marker and circle all the things that I want.

As far as Gamemasters go, the whole point of Lost Omens: Grand Bazaar is to give you plug-and-play shops that you can place anywhere in your campaign. That’s right; these aren’t just for Absalom! There are so many good ideas that I wouldn’t restrict yourself by waiting for your party to head on over to the City in the Center of the World. Especially if you’re dealing in a homebrew environment.

If the juicy details on the shops isn’t enough for you, consider taking a peek at the shop owners. When listed, the shop owners have a nice background for you to read about, which you can certain repurpose for your own characters too. I encourage you to especially take a look at Tesyovensku’s story on page 94, which explains their connection to skymetals.

Lost Omens: Grand Bazaar also opens the doors on a wide variety of player options. For one, there is an entire shop completely dedicated to assistive items, like wheelchairs, crutches, prostheses, corrective lenses, and more. Paizo has made a lot of great strides in making their content with more representation and diversity, and these rulesets take that a step further. I’m very happy to see this, especially since it helps people feel more comfortable at the table.

Beyond the bevvy of magical items and gear, players will also find some additional options for character building. There is one new Ancestry, the Poppet, which is basically a magical construct typically resembling a stuffed puppet. If you’ve been wanting to play as Sackboy, now is your chance!

There are also three new archetypes in the book: Wrestler, Spell Trickster, and Captivator. I especially like the Captivator dedication, and how it fits in with the idea of salespeople in the Grand Bazaar. This dedication enhances your Charm abilities and increases the intensity of certain illusion and enchantment spells. It’s great for those hard-to-crack social encounters.

Overall, there are four full pages, with two columns each, that list out all of the items that you can find in the book. It’s an amazing list! And, it’s not like all of these items are geared towards high-level parties. Although many of them are, there are plenty of items in the sub-200gp category that could impact your adventures right out of the gate.

Furthermore, the rune can be used to augment specific damage types or provide additional effects, such as boosting a weapon's critical hit range or granting extra damage against certain creatures. An interesting aspect of the reinforcing rune is that it can be upgraded as characters level up. It starts at a basic level and can be improved to a major and greater level, each offering more potent enhancements. This allows players to continuously enhance their weapons and armor as they progress, keeping them relevant and powerful throughout their adventures. Obtaining a reinforcing rune requires characters to have access to magic or enchanting services, as well as the necessary materials and funds. Characters can either find runes as loot or purchase them from NPC merchants. The process of applying the rune to the item involves a ritual that requires time and a successful crafting check. The reinforcing rune adds an exciting layer of customization and power to Pathfinder 2e characters. It allows players to tailor their weapons and armor to their playstyle and to the challenges they may face. Whether it's reinforcing a weapon for a melee-focused character or fortifying armor for a tank, the rune provides a flexible and versatile option for character progression. With its diverse benefits and upgradeable nature, the reinforcing rune is a desirable and valuable asset in the world of Pathfinder 2e..

Reviews for "Tips and tricks for optimizing the use of reinforcing runes in Pathfinder 2e"

1. John - ★☆☆☆☆

I was really disappointed with the Pathfinder 2e reinforcing rune. The whole concept just seemed unnecessary and added an unnecessary layer of complexity to an already complex game. It felt like they were just trying to sell more product by introducing this new feature. Plus, it's really expensive to get the materials to craft the rune, and I don't think the benefits it provides are worth the cost. Overall, I found it to be a disappointing addition to the game.

2. Emily - ★★☆☆☆

I have mixed feelings about the Pathfinder 2e reinforcing rune. On one hand, I appreciate the idea of being able to enhance my weapons and armor. However, I found the mechanics of the rune to be overly complicated and difficult to understand. It took me a long time to figure out how to actually craft and activate the rune, and even then, I didn't feel like the benefits were significant enough to justify the effort. I think the concept has potential, but it needs to be simplified and made more accessible to players.

3. Sarah - ★☆☆☆☆

I really disliked the Pathfinder 2e reinforcing rune. It felt like a cheap way for the developers to try and appease the player base without actually addressing the underlying issues with the game. The rune is supposed to enhance weapons and armor, but it barely made a difference in combat. It just felt like a waste of time and resources to even bother with it. I would much rather see the developers focus on improving the core mechanics and gameplay rather than adding unnecessary features like this rune.

4. Michael - ★★☆☆☆

As an experienced player of Pathfinder 2e, I was looking forward to trying out the reinforcing rune. However, I found the implementation to be underwhelming. The benefits it provided were minimal and didn't really add anything significant to my character. Additionally, the rune crafting process was convoluted and required too many resources. I ended up being more frustrated than satisfied with the whole experience. I think the developers need to go back to the drawing board and come up with a better system for enhancing weapons and armor in the game.

Exploring the history and mythology behind reinforcing runes in Pathfinder 2e