I recently heard about Mothership from some YouTubers and decided to run a one-shot for a couple of guys in my Pathfinder 2e group. I was really impressed by the way that a more rules-light system naturally encourages more player engagement and creativity. We will probably end up playing a lot more of it in the future.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/26511521

So, if you're unaware, the basic math of PF2e's armour items assumes that for light and medium armour, (item bonus + dex cap) = 5, and for heavy armour, = 6. This means that as long as you can pick an armour that has a lower dex cap than your dex bonus, you are expected to be getting either 5 or 6 AC from your armour.

With all that said, there are a ton of armours out there that offer some kind of tradeoff, where that formula doesn't hold. For example, the Armoured Coat gives +4 AC between item bonus and dex cap, but it has the flexible trait which negates the check penalty to athletics and acrobatics checks. In my mind, that's a crazy tradeoff to make. The extra AC is so much more important.

At the end of the day though, I don't have the time to analyze the tradeoff offered by all of these "sub-optimal" armours. So yeah, I'd love to hear if anyone has experience with an armour item that yields less than 5 AC (or 6 for heavy armour) and yet the tradeoff was actually worth it for them.

So, if you're unaware, the basic math of PF2e's armour items assumes that for light and medium armour, (item bonus + dex cap) = 5, and for heavy armour, = 6. This means that as long as you can pick an armour that has a lower dex cap than your dex bonus, you are expected to be getting either 5 or 6 AC from your armour.

With all that said, there are a ton of armours out there that offer some kind of tradeoff, where that formula doesn't hold. For example, the Armoured Coat gives +4 AC between item bonus and dex cap, but it has the flexible trait which negates the check penalty to athletics and acrobatics checks. In my mind, that's a crazy tradeoff to make. The extra AC is so much more important.

At the end of the day though, I don't have the time to analyze the tradeoff offered by all of these "sub-optimal" armours. So yeah, I'd love to hear if anyone has experience with an armour item that yields less than 5 AC (or 6 for heavy armour) and yet the tradeoff was actually worth it for them.

The NPC gallery from the legacy GMG wasn't reprinted in GMC. No more generic "bandit" "mad scientist", "assassin", "priest", "necromancer", "gang leader"

These had a lot of value for telling the sort of stories I like to tell in my games, which are less about killing unequivocally evil "monsters" and more about regular people who may be morally complex and provoke more interaction from the players.

I'm well aware one can simply use legacy content, but that ignores that some of these had mechanics that have been revised in the remaster, and they were an important part of the toolkit provided to GMs in the GMG. Right now, the GM Core feels very lacking in terms of providing support for creating a cast of NPCs in adventures. There's literally a half a page dedicated to NPCs and it basically just says "make 'em up". Saying "You can use legacy content" is not a valid point when these new books are supposed to serve as a foundation for the system standing on their own.

Additionally, the official Paizo FoundryVTT bestiary portraits module, which I paid good money for, appears to have removed the portraits for these generic NPCs when the remaster content was added to the system. The realization of that was actually the thing that prompted this post. I was setting up an encounter for my players and was confused as to why the "Antipaladin" art was this instead of this. I am almost certain that before the remaster it used the art from the GMG for those tokens.

Background:

I'm running the Pathfinder 2e Abomination Vaults adventure for a group of 5 players, though I've set it in my own homebrew setting and have not shied away from deviating from the published adventure. I'll try not to, but I may let slip some minor AV spoilers

The players have just reached the end of book 1, and are about to go into book 2. At this point, about a month of in-game time has passed since the adventure began, and one week into the adventure there was a big supernatural event which made big news around the town that the adventure is set in. I like to play up the verisimilitude of the setting by having NPCs and the world react to the things that happen, as well as to the passage of time.

One thing I've come up with which I'm excited to see play out is that enough time has passed that word has spread around the local area about this megadungeon that has been discovered near the town. The players have been telling everyone who will listen about this heretofore undiscovered complex. In my mind, this would mean that other parties of adventurers would come to the town with the intent of doing the same thing the players are doing: looting dungeon, killing baddies, leveling up, getting rich and famous.

I've created a rival party of five adventurers of the same level as the players. This rival party is called "The Vanguard Edge" (or simply "The Edge"). I've spent a chunk of the last few days making notes on how to RP and employ The Edge. Here's what I've got so far:

The party is likely to try to join forces with The Vanguard Edge. This should never be possible.

The Edge don't follow the same rules as other NPCs. Think of them as a group of DM-controlled player characters. They know the rules of adventuring and they think like players.

The Edge are not villains. They are fundamentally "good guys", but their goal is to eat the party's lunch. They want to go into the Abomination Vaults and find all the cool loot first

In general, the Edge fulfill the negative stereotypes that most people have of adventurers. They are demanding, dismissive, and arrogant. They flaunt their wealth and brag about their exploits, they get bored when they go too long without fighting something. They sometimes speak in slightly more metagame terms, such as talking about their hopes to "level up" and "gain experience".

If the party ever shares useful information with The Edge, they will look at it with some skepticism. The members of the Edge would never dream of sharing Intel with other adventurers.

The Edge will occasionally have reached certain places first. This should be used sparingly, and only when it is a real gut punch for the party. It should be easy to tell where they have been, because they are completely unsubtle in their approach to adventuring.

Sometimes the implication of treasure can be added to the adventure, but with the added implication that the Edge got to it first. Maybe Abomination Vaults doesn't explicitly mention treasure in some room, but there was some in there, and the Edge already took it.

If an encounter is about to turn into a TPK, the Edge can show up to save the PCs. But they will never let them live it down.

Those are the notes I've made so far on how to use this new element of my campaign. I'm curious if anyone out there has any thoughts, either in things I've noted or things I've missed. I'd love folks to give their feedback

Thanks in advance!

The party finds a secret door. Not knowing what's on the other side, they send the fighter in first. The fighter pushes open the secret door. As it swings forward it pushes aside a corpse on the other side that apparently died trying to pry open the secret door and escape from the next room.

The fighter steps over the corpse, walks into the room, looks around, sees there are no enemies immediately attacking him, and says to the rest of the party "come on in guys, looks like it's safe in here!"

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/1339512

As a GM I'd like to feel like I fully understand how to utilize my monsters tactically, but over the past couple months as I've been running the beginner box and now leading into Abomination Vaults, I feel as though I'm very often just making three strikes with an enemy or moving and striking twice unless the enemy has a very specific action in its statblock which is obviously better. Like a dragon is obviously supposed to use its breath weapon, but then I ran goblin warriors last night and I couldn't even figure out how to use their scurry reaction beneficially.