ConCurrent adventure log
Jun. 23rd, 2020 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellConCurrent happened last weekend. It felt like everything went more smoothly than it did with PaizoCon, probably because the large group of first-time online players from PaizoCon has now gotten comfortable with the format.
There's nothing spoilery behind the cuts, it all just got kind of long.
PFS2 Quest #4: Port Peril Pub Crawl: The description suggests a fun bar brawl, and yup, there's a bar brawl. But before that there are other various details to take care of, and the brawl itself has a couple of interesting mechanics. Easily the best of the quests I've played, but no, did not make me want to try any more of them than strictly necessary.
PFS2 #1-14: Lions of Katapesh: The Pathfinders are summoned to help out an old friend of the Society by uncovering why lions keep attacking his bridge project. This one is a repeatable scenario, meaning there are elements that can vary from playthrough to playthrough, such as, in this case, the nature of the attacks and the final boss. As a scenario, decent but not spectacular. I had some fun companions for the adventure go.
At character introduction time, the first person to describe his wanted mainly to emphasize how utterly nondescript he was. I don't think he needed to worry about that.
Character #2 was a man carrying a crowned toad on a pillow. He explained that this was the prince he served, and he was adventuring to find the person who could restore the prince with true love's kiss. He was a barbarian whose rage powers involved taking on a froglike aspect and smacking people around with his enlarged tongue.
Characters #3, #4, and #5 were all goblins, which in Pathfinder tend to be chaotic critters with too much curiosity and way too much interest in fire. One was a warpriest of the god of magic, the second was another barbarian who specialized in chomping people's heads off, and the third was a druid with a wildcat companion perpetually wreathed in fire. The druid was also carrying a toad, who was his henchman. He was careful to explain that, unlike himself and the cat, the toad was not on fire, "but we're working on that."
And rounding out the party was my rapier-wielding elf wizard and her fox familiar, who by now could levitate and use his hands like paws. Really, Freddie Mercury would have struggled to stand out in this bunch.
PFS2 Quest #1: The Sandstone Secret: The Pathfinders go to check out an archaeological site, only to discover that someone else has decided to check it out first.
Even by quest standards, there wasn't a lot to it. Decision to give up on quests now that my character's xp is back to an even multiple of 4 confirmed.
My wizard ended up as the party tank, owing to (a) being the only 2nd-level character in an otherwise 1st-level party, and (b) when she has her protective spells up, her AC compares favorably with that of a monk, which is what our only dedicated melee fighter was.
One of the other characters was a halfling who was excellent at thievery despite being lawful good. The character concept was that he was a professor of traps.
PFS2 #1-16: The Perennial Crown, part 1: The Opal of Bhopan: The party is dispatched to a medium-sized island in a rough approximation of the Indian Ocean to check out the report that one of the early Pathfinders was killed there by odd-looking humanoids.
This is one of the most amazingly creative scenarios I've ever encountered in PFS. The setting is beautifully original, and every one of the fights or other challenges has a unique aspect to it. But holy crap there is a lot of material to get through. Even with a 5-hour slot (the usual for playing a scenario is 4), we still ran over and had to rush through the last couple pieces of it.
This was also my first higher-level scenario (level 3-6 instead of 1-4), giving me a chance to observe how one of my wizard's initial powers performed at a higher level. As a specialist in abjuration, she gets a spell that gives all her friends in the vicinity +1 AC. I expected its usefulness to drop off pretty quickly after her first couple levels, but owing to how critical hits work in 2nd edition Pathfinder, it's actually still helping a lot.
2e still gives you a critical any time you roll a natural 20, but you also get a critical success if you exceed the number you needed by 10 or more. So even if everyone's taking damage regardless, it's still a big deal to be able to reduce some of those attack rolls from 10 over the target's AC to 9 over.
PFS2 #1-17: The Perennial Crown, part 2: The Thorned Monarch: With things having gotten badly out of hand at the end of the previous episode, the Pathfinders now race to keep a shambles from becoming a complete disaster, by stopping... well... it's there in the title.
Unlike most two-parters where they're separate adventures, this one picks up the moment that #1-16 ends. Which suggests that this and the previous one were originally conceived as a single scenario, and the overstuffed version of #1-16 that exists now was actually even bigger to start with.
This one didn't overflow as badly. In fact, with only 5 characters, it finished in about 3.5 hours.
Two of those five characters were monks, leading me to comment on just how many monks I'd been seeing lately. It was explained to me that monks in the first edition were fun for roleplaying but stuck with a choice between many suboptimal paths, and monks also suck in the current version of D&D, but in 2e they've been revamped so that they are pretty awesome. And so, since they're so unloved in the other systems, now everyone wants to take the chance to play a monk to balance things out.
One of those monks was named Ethelien the Bloodless. On taking a critical hit in the first fight, he said, "But I'm the Bloodless!" Whereupon it became necessary to point out that he would be soon if he kept that up. Naturally, in a later fight, he was the first one to take persistent bleed damage.
In this scenario I had the lone 3rd-level character in a party of 5s and 6s, so we had to play the high-tier (i.e., more difficult) version of the scenario. 2nd edition PFS has a fix for that, though: the Level Bump. The odd character out gets +1 to practically everything (simulating the effect of being 1 level higher), plus there is a mechanic where one or two other party members can give additional bonuses to certain categories of rolls. Thanks to one of the others giving up a boon slot, I was bumped up to +2 on all my skill checks, and actually got to be pretty useful.
There's nothing spoilery behind the cuts, it all just got kind of long.
PFS2 Quest #4: Port Peril Pub Crawl: The description suggests a fun bar brawl, and yup, there's a bar brawl. But before that there are other various details to take care of, and the brawl itself has a couple of interesting mechanics. Easily the best of the quests I've played, but no, did not make me want to try any more of them than strictly necessary.
PFS2 #1-14: Lions of Katapesh: The Pathfinders are summoned to help out an old friend of the Society by uncovering why lions keep attacking his bridge project. This one is a repeatable scenario, meaning there are elements that can vary from playthrough to playthrough, such as, in this case, the nature of the attacks and the final boss. As a scenario, decent but not spectacular. I had some fun companions for the adventure go.
At character introduction time, the first person to describe his wanted mainly to emphasize how utterly nondescript he was. I don't think he needed to worry about that.
Character #2 was a man carrying a crowned toad on a pillow. He explained that this was the prince he served, and he was adventuring to find the person who could restore the prince with true love's kiss. He was a barbarian whose rage powers involved taking on a froglike aspect and smacking people around with his enlarged tongue.
Characters #3, #4, and #5 were all goblins, which in Pathfinder tend to be chaotic critters with too much curiosity and way too much interest in fire. One was a warpriest of the god of magic, the second was another barbarian who specialized in chomping people's heads off, and the third was a druid with a wildcat companion perpetually wreathed in fire. The druid was also carrying a toad, who was his henchman. He was careful to explain that, unlike himself and the cat, the toad was not on fire, "but we're working on that."
And rounding out the party was my rapier-wielding elf wizard and her fox familiar, who by now could levitate and use his hands like paws. Really, Freddie Mercury would have struggled to stand out in this bunch.
PFS2 Quest #1: The Sandstone Secret: The Pathfinders go to check out an archaeological site, only to discover that someone else has decided to check it out first.
Even by quest standards, there wasn't a lot to it. Decision to give up on quests now that my character's xp is back to an even multiple of 4 confirmed.
My wizard ended up as the party tank, owing to (a) being the only 2nd-level character in an otherwise 1st-level party, and (b) when she has her protective spells up, her AC compares favorably with that of a monk, which is what our only dedicated melee fighter was.
One of the other characters was a halfling who was excellent at thievery despite being lawful good. The character concept was that he was a professor of traps.
PFS2 #1-16: The Perennial Crown, part 1: The Opal of Bhopan: The party is dispatched to a medium-sized island in a rough approximation of the Indian Ocean to check out the report that one of the early Pathfinders was killed there by odd-looking humanoids.
This is one of the most amazingly creative scenarios I've ever encountered in PFS. The setting is beautifully original, and every one of the fights or other challenges has a unique aspect to it. But holy crap there is a lot of material to get through. Even with a 5-hour slot (the usual for playing a scenario is 4), we still ran over and had to rush through the last couple pieces of it.
This was also my first higher-level scenario (level 3-6 instead of 1-4), giving me a chance to observe how one of my wizard's initial powers performed at a higher level. As a specialist in abjuration, she gets a spell that gives all her friends in the vicinity +1 AC. I expected its usefulness to drop off pretty quickly after her first couple levels, but owing to how critical hits work in 2nd edition Pathfinder, it's actually still helping a lot.
2e still gives you a critical any time you roll a natural 20, but you also get a critical success if you exceed the number you needed by 10 or more. So even if everyone's taking damage regardless, it's still a big deal to be able to reduce some of those attack rolls from 10 over the target's AC to 9 over.
PFS2 #1-17: The Perennial Crown, part 2: The Thorned Monarch: With things having gotten badly out of hand at the end of the previous episode, the Pathfinders now race to keep a shambles from becoming a complete disaster, by stopping... well... it's there in the title.
Unlike most two-parters where they're separate adventures, this one picks up the moment that #1-16 ends. Which suggests that this and the previous one were originally conceived as a single scenario, and the overstuffed version of #1-16 that exists now was actually even bigger to start with.
This one didn't overflow as badly. In fact, with only 5 characters, it finished in about 3.5 hours.
Two of those five characters were monks, leading me to comment on just how many monks I'd been seeing lately. It was explained to me that monks in the first edition were fun for roleplaying but stuck with a choice between many suboptimal paths, and monks also suck in the current version of D&D, but in 2e they've been revamped so that they are pretty awesome. And so, since they're so unloved in the other systems, now everyone wants to take the chance to play a monk to balance things out.
One of those monks was named Ethelien the Bloodless. On taking a critical hit in the first fight, he said, "But I'm the Bloodless!" Whereupon it became necessary to point out that he would be soon if he kept that up. Naturally, in a later fight, he was the first one to take persistent bleed damage.
In this scenario I had the lone 3rd-level character in a party of 5s and 6s, so we had to play the high-tier (i.e., more difficult) version of the scenario. 2nd edition PFS has a fix for that, though: the Level Bump. The odd character out gets +1 to practically everything (simulating the effect of being 1 level higher), plus there is a mechanic where one or two other party members can give additional bonuses to certain categories of rolls. Thanks to one of the others giving up a boon slot, I was bumped up to +2 on all my skill checks, and actually got to be pretty useful.
