The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 10/11/23

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

Today's Fod is STUPID. We Are Stupid dominates the show this week as Professor Eric gives notes on the first combat scene of Gatewalkers along with all of Strange Aeons Episode 83. There are new Monk and Investigator abilities to discuss as well as Alchemist's Bomb traits, the last line of the Demoralize action, and a wrinkle in Recall Knowledge that Joe and Troy had never heard before. It is time for NERDAGE. In Listener Mail, Troy talks about changing encounter mechanics on the fly when suddenly more or fewer players show up for the session. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/gKKywtvcGvI For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com and for exclusive content and benefits, subscribe today at jointhenaish.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Tim's 60th anniversary and Roll Up to Win is back! Roll your way into prizes like coffee, donuts, and even $60 Tim's gift cards! Play now on the Tim's app. Rules apply, Canada only, no purchase necessary. Visit the Tim's app for details. Whoa, what are you listening to this for? Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built-in, so you can change the music. Oh yeah, Alexa, change station to 99.2. See?

Purchase a 2024 Escape ST-Line all-wheel drive with Tech Pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment. That's just $267 bi-weekly. Cash value of $40,294. Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca. You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network, the premier source for role-playing game entertainment. Welcome to Cannon Fodder, a behind-the-scenes look at the Glass Cannon Network.

Yo! What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to Cannon Fodder. It is Wednesday,nesday october 11th 2023 and i'm your old pal joe o'brien and i'm troy the king and john lavallee the king in john i always forget that i have this statue on my desk of hester this uh something to terrify your children with yeah no it was uh it was gifted to me i think i talked about this on some show. The statue itself wasn't gifted to me. My mother-in-law got me this gift from, it's called the Mysterious Package Company. And they send you just like shit that you're supposed to figure out. I do remember this now. And she didn't know I was into Lovecraft or anything.

So honestly, this was way before Time for Chaos or anything like that. Way before I probably even did the new game, Who Dis, Cthulhu. And I was was like what the fuck and i open it up it's got a copy of the king in yellow and it's got a statue of pastor and i leave it on my desk and i never really realized that i've got the king in yellow just just chilling here just chilling just hanging out there he is that's fantastic what's up everybody welcome back to the fad uh we got a fun one for you today. It's so funny. Both of us have a lot going on today, and we're like, let's try to keep this tight. But this is going to be a tight yet chunky FOD.

Tight and chunk? Super chunk, dude. Well, first combat, man. There's lots to talk about. First combat. So what we're going to do here today is get that network news out of the way immediately and keep that really short. And the bulk of this week is going to be we are stupid.

So get excited, folks, because we are very, very dumb. And it's going to be fun to dig into some PF2 rule conversations for you rules freaks out there. And then, of course, we'll do a little listener mail. So kicking right off at the top, dude, big news this week. I don't know if you realize this because of the way the schedule is working out and it's going to be so close to our next FOD, but it's not, but it's coming before our next FOD.

I don't know what the hell you realize. This is the last FOD before voyagers of the jump returns. I did not know that. Exactly. I knew it would surprise you. It's kind of a tricky timing because it's not till next week. It's Monday. It's Monday, but it's, it'll be until next week. It's Monday. It's Monday.

But so it'll be out before the next five. So Monday, October 16th. Those of you that have been waiting for Voyagers of the Jump to return, season two comes out on Monday. Wow. That's exciting. Yeah. We were originally aiming for September. And as we started to look at the schedule, we're like, no, let's do October.

I think we can push it till then and then have it go straight through the holidays. This first episode, spoiler alert, you're going to want to listen. I know. I can't wait for people to watch it, hear it, whatever it is. So very excited.

That's on Twitch, right? That's going to be a live stream on Twitch, eight o'clock Eastern on Monday night, twitch.tv slash The Glass Cannon. In true fodder fashion, I just want to give you a little tidbit that i love um about the way that we've been working really hard behind the scenes to make production better and more efficient and a little bit more professional to be honest in the

sense of um getting ahead and and being able to consistently put out content when we say we're going to and voyagers yeah it got pushed a little bit from our initial plan. But this is one of the first shows ever that is basically done. Like the whole season has been shot before it premieres, like an actual TV show. Oh, that's been a dream of mine for years. Yeah. I can't believe it happened. So it's just so cool.

So yeah, you're going to get that every week from now till Christmas time. So that's awesome. Yeah, that'll be great. Ten episodes is the plan. And, yeah, Mongoose is on board. Yeah, sponsored by Mongoose. Yeah, Matthew's been really excited about it. He was talking about it all summer before they started recording.

He was all summer he was talking about it. He's like, all right, put down the jitter-dutter. I've heard enough. Yeah, he really keeps telling other people that don't play in the game the story. The whole story. Because he's so excited for the second season story. So I don't want to say any more. Definitely got to check out the first episode, though.

It is not what you're expecting. So it's going to be great. The job! Also, New York Comic Con is this week. Oh, man. In two days, dude. In two days, our show at New York comic con, uh, playing the Marvel multiverse RPG, a whole slate of classic Marvel heroes coming up, coming to the table.

I know who the heroes are. I've got the adventure. Uh, it's going to be a spooky Halloween themed adventure and it's exciting. Uh, as usual though, my concern is how do i get these six random fucking marvel characters together on a mission it was hard enough at gen con now i'm like why would this person work with this person so that's that's really what i'll be struggling with between now and friday yeah well i do wonder if you if you owe anyone an explanation no i don't think i do and also like sometimes i'm like thinking about it myself like you know what let me just put it

on the players. Let them do it instead of me writing this big glorious intro. Exactly. What do you have to do all that work for? Yeah. Why are you in New York right now? Yeah, exactly. Where are you in New York?

So it's in New York. Oh, yeah. It's in New York, yeah. Nice. They're all set in New York. I know my way around New York. All right. Well, that's fantastic.

And then last piece of news that I have. I mean, this is probably the biggest news of all. I have returned to streaming video games. I thought you were saying I have retired. I am retiring. Like, I know you guys love the sports references, but I'll be the. What's his name? Andrew Luck.

It'll be the Andrew Luck of the Class Gatting Podcast. It's like completely out of nowhere in my prime. I quit. I'm done. I retire. Yeah, I'm streaming Lies of P, and I just want to mention it real quick because it's awesome,

and I didn't know about it. It's a Korean, I believe, developer made a game that is very much an homage to Bloodborne and Soulsborne games in general, and it's completely consuming me. I'm so into it, and so I've streamed it three times last week, and I'm going to continue this week. So keep an eye on the Employee Lounge if you want to check out this game.

It's freaking awesome, and I highly recommend you stop by and hang with us. I had a bunch of people on Friday hanging out. It was really, really fun. Dude, that's fun. And big, bad boss fights that are really, really brutal and just kind of fun to watch tactically. And that's big, bad boss fights that are really, really brutal and just kind of fun to watch tactically. So I shocked that you're able to play that with both Starfield and Baldur's Gate three out. Kudos to you.

But you were telling me about it. And we were shooting in the office this week. And I was like, holy shit, this looks great. I don't know when I can possibly play it. Well, this is the one thing I know for certain you are going to play it beginning to end. You are going are gonna play this game platinum that john yeah i don't know when it'll be yeah definitely 2024 but because i so i've given up starfield to play this i haven't played one minute of starfield since i fired it up last week all i'm playing that's all so i'll get back to starfield at some point but this is just i really wanted to stream something and hang with everybody this one is

really fitting you know i was saying before i'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to stream Starfield. We said in the audience, it's a personal game. It's a sim. It's a life sim in space. And I just want to enjoy that on my own. Yeah. Sometimes I just walk around and get a room in a hotel and go to sleep. Exactly.

That's not a good stream. So if I had a hook, if I an idea for like a short arc story i wanted to tell like i want to play dax like you know role play dax yeah you like or something like i could see doing that down the line but as i'm exploring the game right now i just want to yes it's a it's a more personal experience and i don't find it very entertaining to watch so but lies to p very entertaining to watch me smash my controller live on air. Don't miss that. It looks incredible. So, yeah, I'm excited. All right.

Let's move on to We Are Stupid, Dude. This is going to be the bulk of our episode today as we're going to delve into a lot of mechanics. And I'm excited to talk not only about things we got wrong, but things that are general discussion starters, as Professor Eric is so gracious to bring to the table. We're going to do two full episodes of two different shows right now. We're going to do episode four of the glass kind of podcast. First and foremost, we're going to delve into that. But then for those who want to stick around for the rest of,

we are stupid and listener mail. We're also going to do the Boston show, which was a bear riddled with player mistakes, allegedly. And professor Eric went through it with a fine tooth pen. God bless him. You know riddled with player errors. Riddled with mistakes, allegedly. And Professor Eric went through it with a fine-tooth pen. God bless him. You know, a classic tooth pen. Yeah, the old fine-tooth pen. The old

fine-tooth pen. And really laid out some issues that Matthew is going to have to deal with. Seems like it's going to be a very heavy Matthew made mistakes episode. There's going to be a lot of that on the back end. Actually, let's start out with Matthew as we talk about devise a stratagem, which is the new ability that he has brought to the table with his investigator.

Look at this, Troy. Boom. Already prepped and ready to go. Demi-plane action. Little demi-plane action. Using the Pathfinder Nexus here. Little Demiplane action. Using the Pathfinder Nexus here, Devise a Stratagem is – the wording is very, very important on this ability because it says that you choose a creature you can see and you roll a D20. That's the action. You just roll a D20. Right.

If you strike the chosen creature later this round, you must use the result of devise a stratagem for your strikes attack role instead of rolling. Take that back. That seems weird. How would you know if you struck them, if you didn't use the role? That is what Matthew did. He did it in his own head. It's not lowercase S strike.

It's capital S strike. Right. So striking is the action of attempting to hit. Right. Right. So so but it's just a natural human thing if you strike the creature like oh so if i hit it so in the episode he seems to be implying like so did i hit it you know what i mean and you're like right and what are you asking me and i think i told him in the first round i was like yeah that would be a hit and you're not supposed to do that so uh so professor er out very clearly, Matthew rolls the die and does not add modifiers at this time.

Troy should not tell him if it's a success or not until Matthew spends the action to strike. You still don't have perfect knowledge, but you have very good knowledge. You know exactly what you rolled. You know what the number is going to be. And you have to kind of guess at the AC, right? Early in a combat. So and then when you strike, you're adding your intelligence. If you use the divisor stratagem, you're adding your intelligence modifier instead of your strength or dex and another damage die on top.

Yeah, that's insane. So this is something I'll let everybody know. We have cleared up with Matthew, but we had already recorded some episodes. So you may see that mistake again, but it is fixed in future episodes. And we do know about it. So devise a strategy, I think, is going to come up from time to time. But, you know, it is what it is. Next on the list, I mean, absolutely had to bring it up.

Troy, just in case you didn't know a wakizashi has the deadly property oh wait look at that look at that right there email sydney deadly deadly uh yeah we thought that uh the wakizashi is something that you would have to like get critical specialization in order to unlock the deadly property i truly wonder wonder sometimes how my stupid, stupid brain works. Like, I just don't understand it at times. Like, I've known from the beginning that deadly is just a trait that some weapons have. Like, why would I think you had to be a higher level to unlock the deadly property? Did you say that?

I mean, I did. I mean, in so many words, I didn't like listening as you got. Matthew, you lied to her face. And I'm like, I literally wasn't listening to you guys. Yeah, I didn't really like drive the force behind that. Sydney sort of said that she needed. I was like, oh, yeah, OK. And at least that's my memory of it anyway.

But I was just when you do a show, your brain just doesn't work the same way. So much going on. Yeah. And you're just kind of you just get a little dumb so i was stupid there of course deadly just you know when you crit you get that extra d8 and uh we did get that called out after the fact and got it fixed but you just made fun of sydney many times which was really funny well i didn't give her the extra d8 that was you didn't give her the extra d8 and matthew rolled a recall knowledge of some kind

later which we'll talk about in a second on the gorga the gorgo or whatever yeah and you were like you know what you do know because you rolled like a 13 you're like you know what you do know that a wakizashi has the deadly problem i mean it was awesome i think sydney flipped me off oh you know what i believe she did i didn't video. Dude, there's nothing I get a kick out of more. It's like when a player realizes something later that would have done more damage and I don't give them the damage as a punishment. I mean, I've been doing that for years. It's fantastic. I find it really funny.

But I mean, it would just like start fist fights in home games. Also, I always want to point out when Professor eric gives us a good grade and and a compliment he says however it is in the same situation with the wakizashi it's great to see an effective use of debuffs to help generate a crit demoralizing as a first action to set up rather than as a third action is great to see that's what he said. So we're learning. Little by little. Okay. Oh, boy.

I hesitate to get into this. I really don't think that we should, but the fact is it was brought up in this episode. It's in this episode. People might be out there talking about it, so we're going to have to talk about it. Should I open the AP up? No, you don't need to open the AP up, and you'll see why immediately when I throw this up on screen. It's the monastic archer. Oh, that's the wrong one.

That's not it. That's not it. Here it is. The monastic archer stance. Ah, yes. So this causes issues again later that we have addressed. So forgive us if it comes up again, but I do want to address it now because Professor Eric makes it clear that when she is in this stance, she can still use, you know, not when she's in this stance. When she's holding a bow, she can still do unarmed attacks.

The problem is the wording of monastic archer stance basically says you cannot attack without a bow or, you know, the required weaponry to do it. And so what Eric is saying here is most of the time GMs, because there's no rule on how you get out of a stance. And we talked about this behind the scenes later down the line in recordings. There's no real written rule for it. So most GMs do a one action drop the stance action if you want to then change the kind of way that you're fighting however you could just drop the bow so dropping the bow is a free action that would immediately break the stance but what gms are sort of ruling out there is if you want to keep holding the bow and then you want to start kicking in melee with flurry of blows or something like that you need to spend an action to drop the stance almost like spending an action to sheathe the

bow kind of thing but if you just drop it then you it automatically breaks the stance it's kind of a tricky uh the bow is what's causing the confusion yeah it says uh well no here's what's causing the confusion um i believe that it's on here let's look at it it says while in this stance the only here it is while in this stance the only strikes you can make are those with long bows short bows or bows with the monk trait so that is a the key line here that professor eric focuses in on he also then admits there's no rule for turning off a stance quote unquote there's no rule for turning off a stance right it simply says and i believe i have it here let's see well why don't you click on the stance trait for a second i am so so i'll go to the monk and uh they have in in uh demi plane they have a a summary thing here it

is key terms of your class yeah uh stance a stance is a general combat strategy that you enter by using an action with the stance trait and that you remain in for some time okay some stance lasts until you get knocked out until its requirements if any are violated yeah until the encounter ends or until a new stance whichever comes first after you take an action that has the stance trait, you can't take another one for one round. You can enter or be in a stance only in encounter mode, which makes sense. Oh, by the way, that's an interesting thing to keep in mind is like you can't just be like, I enter a monastic archer stance before the door is opened, right? Like, very tricky. You have to be in encounter mode.

So reading that, to me, I'm going to go back to it again. To me, this says here, until its requirements are violated. So why couldn't you just attack without using a bow, thus in the stance, the only strikes you can make are those using long bows, short bows, or bows with the monk trade. So once you're near that stance, you cannot kick. However, would that be considered if you started kicking that you violated the stance and therefore you,

you're now out of the stance. That's what I'm thinking. I think that's the roundabout way of doing it. You just have to remember that if you're going to do that, you're no longer in the stance and you cannot enter back into it in this encounter. Right? I don't think that's the case. If you use...

You can't enter a new stance, I believe. Oh, no. You can only be in it in encounter mode. In one round. In one round. You can't use another action with the stance trait. Yeah. So if that is considered violating the stance...

So if that is considered violating the stance. After you take an action that has the stance trait, you can't take another one for one round. So that's the way I read it, because they've specifically said until its requirements, if any, are violated. And the requirements of monastic archer stance is that you can only use longbow shortbows. So, yeah, the way I'm reading that is you can. That's the way you get out of it. You violate it by kicking and punching. And then next round, you've got to burn another action to get back in the stance if you want to do a flurry with the bow. You got to email Kate and then round episode 13, 14, 15, this will come into play.

Yes, exactly. Oh my God, so funny. But thank you, Eric, for delving into that because it is tricky. I like that the first two things that we're doing here in We Are Stupid are really deep dives into new classes we haven't played before. That's really what this is. It's a monk-specific thing and an investigator-specific thing as opposed to general combat rules. Yeah. Yeah, it's something I don't spend a lot of time on. I don't dig into your individual classes. When I look at the breadth of my prep and the time that I have to prep,

part of my prep isn't like, let me learn the blah, blah, blah class. I learn through play. That to me is more interesting because my goal isn't perfection. My goal is creating something that is a learning experience for the players and the viewers. I think that's way more interesting than already knowing

everything out the gate. Although I do expect you guys to know it uh know your classes that's where i get a little antsy it's like come on you have one thing you gotta learn yeah but what we're dealing with here is and i'm not going to give matthew an excuse because to me devise a stratagem is is pretty clear we just screwed up on the our understanding of it but like it's it's pretty clear the and that extra damage wasn't on we were when we recorded we were still using the beta of demi plane and the little extra damage die wasn't on there right so he just forgot because it wasn't on his sheet right and that's the problem with living by digital

sheets it's like you still got to know how the class actually works you can't just go by the digital because the digital could be wrong or not right the digital is in beta right it's being worked on and it's fixed now and so now he remembers it but what's the other thing i wanted to mention uh real quick oh just that like the monastic archer stance though like it has nothing to do with knowing your class this this is a an unclear rule where debate is possible in in raw versus rai and you a gm needs to make a call for this game like do you have to spend an action every time to get out of a stance or not? That's a GM call. Cause it's not written in the,

in the rules. Yeah. So yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't offer that house rule of like, just use an action to drop the stance. I would say violate it. That's how you drop it.

You got to, that's the action you got to use. And if you, you know, that's, that's how I read it. Interesting. Yeah.

And you always read the traits and that's something I even forget, especially with Interesting. Yeah. And you always read the traits. And that's something I even forget, especially with spellcasters. Like, got to read those traits. Usually there's just so much happening, especially when we're live for Strange Aeons. It's like, I do the prep, and then we're in it. And it's like, we do our best. That's the game. That's how people play.

100%. Let's look real quick at treating wounds. So I treated wounds. I think it's trot. It's the past tense of treat. It's trot. You trot wounds. So I treated wounds. I think it's trot. It's the past tense of treat. It's trot. You trot wounds. I trot wounds in this episode

and I did not treat disease, but under the medicine trained actions, there's treat wounds. Treat wounds. So I got a nat twanzoni. I critted on the treat wounds and you'll see that a critical success, the target gets four D8 hit points, and its wounded condition is removed. So I was able to roll four D8, heal myself a whole ton.

The reason that I bring this up is because Professor Eric said, make sure you realize that treating wound – criticals on treating wounds are roll 4d8, not roll 2d8 and double it. And the reason that that is a very clear distinction, whereas like most other crits that we do are, you know, you roll the damage and double it.

Like that's how we're doubling damage when we hit on crits and stuff like that. The reason you don't do that on treat disease is because of this section here. can increase the dc of the check to increase the hit points regained by a flat number in this case it's 10 if you do dc 20 if you're a master it's dc 30 let's say it's a dc 30 check and you're going to increase the hit points gained by 30 this is what suki is doing

now by the way in in Strange Aeons. Like she's now increasing the DC because we're higher level. Yeah. So if you crit, it would be 48 plus 30? Exactly. Not 2d8 plus 30 times 2. Yeah. Okay.

So that's why it's important to make that distinction between the two in Treat Disease because the higher versions have a flat bonus that never gets doubled. I would never think to double it because I would just read it and it says 4d8 but i also like totally never heal totally yeah it's just it's just a note you know this is more like he wanted to make sure we didn't do something wrong here because i did roll 48 but he's just like make sure but i know somebody else did i don't know if it's in gcp or if it was in a in another game but somebody rolled 2d8 and just doubled it when they crit on their treat wounds. And I just wanted to show and explain why not,

because at later levels, you will get flat bonuses that don't double. So don't get in the habit of rolling 2d8 and doubling it. All right. One more topic here on episode four, before we move over, this is a, this is a general topic that came up because

uh because of matthew's investigative ability to i can't remember the name of it right now but where he gets like a free knowledge check when he uh is using devised stratagem yeah you can add a knowledge check onto it and this brought this kind of opened a can of worms in Professor Eric's opinion, which is a comically – that's ironic – a frequently debated issue in the community right now, which is retrying recall knowledge checks. By the book, there is a rule for it. I'll actually show it to you right here. And this is actually in the GM guide. You have to go to the GM guide for this, but it lays out for you additional knowledge. Sometimes a character might want to follow up on a recall knowledge check, rolling another check to discover more information. After success, further uses of

recall knowledge can yield more information, but you should adjust the difficulty to be higher for each attempt. Here's where it gets tricky. Once a character has attempted an incredibly hard check or failed a check, further attempts are fruitless. The character has already recalled everything they know about the subject. That's the key there. Can't retry after a fail. Right. But here's what the community brings up. That's the key there. Can't retry after a fail. Right. But here's what the community brings up.

It's a philosophical question. Is a recall knowledge check always and exclusively based on group knowledge or individual knowledge, as in, is it just knowledge on Gorgas or is it knowledge about this Gorga in this combat in this round? Is that different than group knowledge? So if I'm like reading a book about Gorgas, right, and I roll my check two days before we encounter one because we've heard they're out there and I get a piece of success or I fail and I don't really get anything. Let's say Matthew's character does the same thing. I fail and I don't really get anything. Let's say Matthew's character does the same thing.

When he then fights a Gorga, can he not know anymore that, well, he's in a fight with it? But you rolled the check. Not say he rolled the check. In our game, I rolled the check. But let's say he rolled the check and he let's just say he failed. My gut is no, unless there's something about this Gorga that is unique and different from your basic Gorga. Then that's where it gets into a gray area. So the way that Eric laid it out is basically the complication comes with a few classes. Investigators, Mastermind Rogues, and Outwit Rangers. or builds of these classes that specifically have abilities that give you retries, essentially,

on – not retries as much as like give you knowledge checks on someone you're currently fighting, right? And what he says is the general recall knowledge rules of failure means you can't try again is nerfing these classes' abilities because it should be you can't try again on this Gorga. But if you turn to this gorga maybe you could learn something you know about it and there's three interpretations one is it's all group if you don't know it you'll never know it the other interpretation is it's all group

for everyone else except people that have these specific abilities and then there's the third interpretation which is all knowledges are individual based. You're always just doing this monster, this creature, not all of this type of creature or whatever. Well, I would say a fourth one is the one I like. It's like it only matters if they're different. Like you're fighting two Gorgers. They have identical skills. If you fail on one, you're not going to learn anything from the other one because they have the same exact skill set. However, if there was like a daddy Gorga and a baby gorka then i would allow it so i think it's kind of like this is this is

your gm call that's how i would call it like if you're fighting three identical creatures if you fail on one you fail on all um and i wouldn't even let you burn the action if you go to recall nudge it i would be like they all look the same to you um and then you know you're not going to get anything you know you're not going to get anything more. You know you're not going to get anything more. Save your action. That's my compromise. But oftentimes, you'll have like, you fight a group of kobolds, and there's the kobold leader, and then there's the kobold warriors. And the kobold leader has maybe a little bit extra that you could use.

That to me seems fair, because then you're not nerfing, but you're not like uh letting them you don't just let them keep trying until they get get the knowledge about the creatures yeah yeah what's nice about using foundry because i'm using foundry for my monsters is like all the checks are right there with the dcs and the skill the applicable skills and so i've got the dc set and uh it's kind of came up recently in a show that is going to come out later this year where it said something was incredibly hard because you guys were like, what? How come we didn't get that? It was a very high roll. And I'm like, well, it says incredibly

hard. And then we started to work out on air as to why. And that was interesting. That was cool. Did you know about this? I'm assuming you did not. This additional knowledge thing. I mean, I think that that's awesome. I never knew that. I probably read it once and even after succeeding you can attempt another check to get more information but it's obviously it's recommended here that that the gm adjusts the difficulty to be

higher for each attempt that's cool i like that uh something to keep in mind. If you rolled, you know, a 24, and you're like, and for you, whatever, that was like an addy 12. And you're just like, you got some information. You're like, I know there's more. There's something Troy's holding back. Like, I want to do it again. Like, all right, but now it's going to be DC 26. Or have somebody else roll it. True.

Somebody else roll it in action. There's so many times still that people don know what to do with that third action. If you haven't rolled that recall knowledge, even if you don't have a great roll, try it. If you know there's more to learn and the other person can't re-roll because they failed, use it. Yeah. All right. Well, that'll do it for Episode 4 of the Glass Cannon Podcast. Let's look at the Boston show.

This is going to be a lot of uh highlighting um as we said ethel of course however let's kick it off with uh with our good buddy skid and uh what professor eric predicts will cause an issue and that's the thrower's bandolier uh so this was the new item that skid got did you see anything about about this? Do people say stuff about this on the boards? No, no, I haven't really been reading. Yeah, so I don't know if anybody said anything about it, but he said, Professor Eric said he believes this would be a controversial topic because there's a lot of pros and cons. Controversial like it's going to make Skid mad. Well, no, controversial like in the community, like does it work for bombs or not?

Because it never says bombs in the text. It's kind of for thrown weapons. But people say, you know, like alchemists should be able to use it for bombs, even if even though a bomb is not really like a dagger. It's a thrown weapon. Right. Exactly. Do bombs have the weapon trait? I think I actually have this up somewhere.

Let's see. I do. I don't know. Is there a weapon trait? Looking at like acid flask. Alchemist fire does not have a weapon trait. It has a bomb trait. The bomb trait.

Is there a weapon trait? I don't even know if there is. Yeah. Anyway, the point is. I mean, it's a fucking weapon. It's not meant like, here, this is a kiss on the cheek. Right. I agree.

And so does Professor Eric. Like, here, this is a kiss on the cheek. Right. I agree. And so does Professor Eric. He thinks that this should definitely be allowed and that Skid, that this would make it work a little bit more like the 1E Alchemist that Skid sort of started with and that this feels like a right fit. He did highlight one thing, though. Just remember, this has a plus one weapon potency rune. Oh, it's a little – it's cut out of my screen because of the zoom in factor.

But it is a plus one weapon potency rune, which is going to give a plus one to any weapon that you throw out of it. So it gives a plus one potency to the bomb. But then it's important to keep in mind that these bombs level up. So at level one, they, sorry, at level three, it gains a plus one item bonus to attack rolls. And what Eric points out is these do not stack. So if Skid is using higher level

bombs, those bonuses don't stack with the bonus from the bandolier. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So the plus one weapon potency is an item bonus, and it would not stack with the item bonus of higher level bombs. It's just something's keep moving on. And now we'll get into Ethel. This is an interesting one. Ethel needs a free hand or a weapon with the grapple trait in order to grapple.

Ethel is a two-weapon fighter build. I don't know if one of his weapons has the grapple trait. I don't think that it does and i think he's just he's grappling people assuming he's just like putting his arms around them while he's got these two weapons but that is against the rules you can't do it you have to have a free hand or a weapon with the grapple trait so something we'll share with matthew there it is bravery again this comes up i mean this comes up over and over with uh i say with matthew as if like he's such an idiot but like we all we all forget during the show that like he always should

be reducing his frightened condition by one automatically whenever he gets it so if he's ever frightened one he's just immediately frightened zero if he's frightened two he's immediately frightened one uh so that that's an important thing to remember. Ethel crit with the hammer and we forgot to knock the enemy prone. We did it again. That's his critical bonus is knocking the enemy prone. He did it on an AOO, I believe. And it would have stopped him and knocked him prone.

Stupid. We are stupid. We're stupid. We're being nice by saying we. We're being nice by saying we. We're being nice by saying we. Minor issue with Ethel's class DC. He's only trained in his class DC. So Professor Eric thinks 25 was correct on the AOO.

However, frightened two would also apply to your class DC. So that would lower it to 23, thus a success in that case. So yeah, important to remember that frightened also carries over to your class DC, so that would lower it to 23, thus a success in that case. So, yeah, important to remember that frightened also carries over to your class DC whenever anything comes up for that. Okay, so here's a big one that I'm really glad that he brought up. You know that Eris, I believe, and Ethel are now both rocking this bad boy, Battlecry. Okay. When you roll initiative, you can yell a mighty battle cry and demoralize an observed foe as a free action if you are legendary in intimidation you can use a reaction to demoralize your foe when you critically succeed on an attack roll that's

awesome yeah nobody's legendary yet though i don't believe no no no legendary would be very very end of the line um i think that's like 17 no i think it's like 17 horrible yeah it's like the very end game end game okay so yeah not going to be for a while um if at all the important thing to remember here is that they both utilized this battle cry uh ability you know at the start of the of the combat and it's important to remember that creatures are immune to further attempts against it after so if you go to uh demoralize here on the nexus reminder again the last line regardless of the, the target is temporarily immune to your attempts to demoralize it for 10 minutes. So basically, you can't intimidate a creature again in an encounter, whether you succeeded or failed. And since Eris and Ethel both did it as battle cry, you know, right at the start, it would have made the enemy immune to both of them for the remainder of the combat to trying again.

Yeah. So that's important yeah i'll forget that so yeah i'll need you to come in i think i think that i'll i'll be able to remember that one because i just did not know that rule i never read to the last line of demoralize i have never had a character in 2e that demoralizes it's just not something i've used yet and so uh yeah reading to that last line is important uh the immunity for 10 minutes is going to allow uh you know some creatures you, on a successful save early on to get away with a lot of stuff. So that's cool.

Yeah, cool. Good to know. Let's see. How about we go to. Oh, let's go to the alchemist fire again. So the reason I had this up and I thought that this was that this was kind of fun was because alchemist fire – look at those traits, Troy. We always talk about how important traits are. Consumable fire, splash.

Alchemical and bomb. You know what's not in this list? What? Magic. Magic. Oh, yeah. It is not magical. And so as a result, Professor Eric points out, Aldo was in a unique position to be one of the most effective characters against the golem. Because it bypasses its physical resistances and is not magic. So bypasses its magic immunity.

So bypasses its magic immunity. Alchemist fire, fire bombs are an incredible tool to use against the golem. And I believe, or at least he believes that we were treating them as if they were magic. And so they would not affect the golem in the same way. I have to go back and listen. I can't remember if I was specifically saying like, oh, it's he's immune to that. Or it was a while ago. So I don't remember exactly what we said. But in Professor Eric's notes, he says bombs are not magic.

So bombs do not affect the the golem normally. They should affect the golem normally. They won't trigger any of the three branches of the golem anti magic. The property rune, is magic so the sonic damage that skid is now getting in addition would fall under the golem anti-magic which would cause higher than expected damage uh yeah so yeah golem anti-magic is tricky because they're all different there's like some magic that not only hurts the golem because they're immune to most magic except for x but the x does even more damage to them so you have to figure that out and then do it.

And you guys got some of that, but some of it didn't. That's just a good thing to remember. I can't remember how it actually played out because I don't always tell you guys like, oh, that looked like it affected him. That looked like it didn't. Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting. And then he just rounds it out with alchemists often end up being rather effective against golems not affected by

their high physical resistances nor blocked by their magical immunity that's cool so yeah it's an interesting fine line uh skid found there to uh to get it in and then the last thing that we have and this is it then we're done with we are stupid is the slowed wouldn't usually stack but as a cinematic ending slash segue to phase two of the combat i have no complaints professor eric is fine with the stacking slow but it is good to just keep in mind in general but generally speaking slowed is not going to stack so if you're slowed one and then another effect would make you slowed one you're not slowed to you is that true of all conditions or no different conditions operate slightly differently frightened stacks for

example um so i i know that if you're frightened one something else because No. Different conditions operate slightly differently. Frightened stacks, for example. So I know that. If you're frightened one, something else goes. You have to have that list to know what stacks and what doesn't. I don't know if there is a list. I wonder if there's a cheat sheet out there. I need that cheat sheet. Call in and give us the cheat sheet.

Thanks to Demiplane for the Pathfinder Nexus there to look up all that stuff. That's great. Much, much appreach. And let's move on here to a little listener mail before we get out of here. Let's, let's hear from the niche. Let's do it. All right. Thank you so much to Michael in Missoula, Montana. Oh, Missoula. That's a lot of M's.

Michael in Missoula, Montana writes in with a question for Troy. Oh, I already hate it. And Troy alone. I'll see myself out. I used to have a website called Troyalone.com. Really? Did I ever tell you that? Yeah.

It's like my first website. I didn't want to use my name. And so it was just Troyalone.com. And then a publicist that I became friends with when I was working at Caroline's was like, dude, that's your brand. Your brand is Troy of the Valley. Change that shit. And I did. Nice.

I don't know why it was troy alone i just was like numbers i was alone i was a lone wolf joe you still are nothing changes a question for troy i'm i'm a relatively new gm running my first 2e adventure path for some family and friends one of the things that i and many groups i would guess struggle with is fluctuating party size. I'm already having to rebalance every encounter because we have a party of seven in an AP written for four players, and I've gotten fairly proficient at it. The problem arises when one or more of my players cancels at the last minute. I know you've had to deal with similar situations with the live shows.

Do you have any advice or tricks for tweaking encounters encounter difficulty on the fly? I just want to provide my players with a continually challenging experience, but would feel terrible if we have one or more PC deaths due to bad balance. It's a great question. I think a lot of players are GMs deal with he's playing to a to a Yeah, yeah. Home game is gonna be different than a stream game, right? Like for a streamed game or a live show, what I don't want to do is add more enemies because that just drags out combats. But I also have learned you can't just throw an extra one or two points to an AC or one or two points to an attack because that wouldn't make a difference in 1E. It sways so wild in 2E. So I've learned not to do that. The way I've been approaching it in Gatewalkers thus far with five PCs is

really just playing with hit points. And I haven't even been too much of that because, you know, you guys are still learning your tactics. You're still learning this. The hammer's going to fall eventually. I'm just kind of leaving it as it lies. Now, if you're dealing with seven PCs, six PCs, you're going to have to make some other changes.

I would lean in favor of adding combatants as opposed to tweaking stat blocks because unless you know this game inside and out, you can really fuck up encounters by tweaking stat blocks. Add another guy in there. And then you can always call things on the fly. If you add another combatant in and you're like, holy shit, I'm going to TPK this party. of a sudden that guy one of these guys if when he

gets hit for 15 damage and he still has five hit points left just take him out of the combat you know like yeah please in terror moving hit points isn't always like uh giving guys extra hit points sometimes it's like you really gotta you're gonna be able to call this on the fly and see like, was that such a brutal hit that leaving that guy with one hit point is going to add to the dramatic tension when you could just like remove that one or two hit points and be like, and you kill him. And that's just a

moment the party needs, right? That's a win they need. They're on the ropes. Yeah. Give them that extra hit point or two. Just like put the enemy down. I do that shit on Strange Aeons all the time just because it's specifically meant for drama. I'm doing it more for the audience than for the players. But like, yeah, I really haven't had to tweak too much. I think Chewie as a system is unforgiving enough, especially with what I'm doing with bottle caps over hero points.

Like I don't really need to tweak too much. It's hard enough, but I would say lean towards adding more combatants than messing around with stat blocks. Cool. I was playing in the Order of the Ember Die game with I think seven PCs and Adam from Order of the Ember Die is a terrific GM.

Obviously he wasn't doing this on the fly. He was prepared. He knew exactly how many players he was going to have but he buffed acs and two hit numbers i want to say by two something like that and for seven players uh it's it's absolutely vicious for every individual player so that plus two to ac and plus two to hit effectively means that you need to combine all of the strikes from all seven people to maybe get two hits on the creature because it's AC is so high that you, you,

you never create it without a natural 20 and you have to like roll a natural 15 or higher to even hit it. And so it, it feels impossible in a way. And characters go down all the time. Like they, they go to dying all the time. Like they, they go to dying all the time, but in the encounters that I did run with them,

uh, everybody survived and we won every fight after like, but they were all harrowing, you know? So I think it was pretty well balanced to add two to AC, but it does make it like, you're lucky if you get one hit or two hits, your personal character on that boss or that creature during the combat. It makes it like,

it's just really hard to hit and they hit you really hard. And so, yeah, I don't know, combining all seven people's abilities, it seemed to balance the fights pretty well. You got to know your group and you got to know your game. Like, that Order of the Badaje is a seasoned group. They know the game really well. They're going to play super tactically. Yeah, so when somebody goes down, other people are like,

they're using their actions very efficiently to like stabilize people. They know to leave somebody unstable for a round because they don't need to do it that round. They can do something else for that round. And like, so they're very savvy like that. And so he's able to put them in those positions. But I more so disagree with you

that adding eight to AC and adding to hit is deadly yeah and we're just we're not that type of game you know what i mean like we're not savvy in that way we're savvy in the entertaining way and so if i started adding one or two to ac especially these strange aeons encounters which is a you know a converted uh adventure path it would you guys would be miserable you'd never hit anything. Another thing you can do is fudge your dice if you want. It's not something I do, but if you're a new GM and you're just trying to create an experience for your players, fudge your dice.

If you added a guy to the combat and they're still mopping, all of a sudden your fucking natural three is an 18. Get a couple more hits in so that you make make them feel like they're on the ropes and then later on maybe when you roll in 18 uh have it be a miss if you so you kind of even out for the the the cheat the fudge earlier you can even out later if that like you never want to fudge on a killing blow but i'm just trying to think of like things you could do behind the screen just to you know yeah that's the whole point of that and i think fudging uh fudging is an interesting idea when you've already added a combatant and you're doing that combatant's roles right it's like that combatant shouldn't even be there in the first place right you can do a wild card and so if you

want to fudge a little bit fine and then because if you really don't like fudging then like you could be like well i mean the the main one the main combatant there i'm not fudging, then like, you could be like, well, I mean, the main one, the main combatant there, I'm not fudging. Like, there's nothing fudging about that. I might fudge a little bit on this added threat because it's already doing damage

that's not in the book. You know what I mean? I'm going to add, you know, a little bit of a fudge here or there to make sure that it feels balanced to the players. I never advocate for fudging,

but I think for new GMs, you're trying to create an experience. Like, you do what you got to do and then as you get better at the game, you can leave that out. Yeah. You know, that's how I feel. But it's very important as a new GM to read the room. You got to just read the room.

And get through the day. If everybody's down. Get through the session. If everybody's down, like, just don't keep leaning on them, you know. But there are going to be times when, like when they need to know that you can kill somebody. They won't respect you until they know that you'll kill somebody. If they feel like they get out of every scrape without a scratch, eventually they're going to not have any fun. So you got to –

You got to kill someone just to keep them in line. Sometimes right in the first session just so they know you mean business. Dancex mocking a kill too. Set the tone. It's like going to a poker tournament. Very early on. You want to make

a strong move early. Set a tone. Go all in on the first flop. First pre-flop. Who brought this dick? Who brought this dummy? All right.

Well, that's going to do it. That's going to do it for us this week on the old FOD. Thanks to everybody for hanging out. And hey, we got an encounter in the books, good buddy. We got one on the books. Oh, man. Next week.

I've already edited next week and the week after. These are some good apps coming up. We recorded some more last week. It's going to be hot. Oh, by the way, anybody surprised at my first heel as a character for treatment? Minimum reality. Minim treatment? Minimum reality. Minimum. Minimum reality.

All right, we're out of here. Take it easy, everybody. We'll see you next week. Bye. Voyager season two on Monday. St. Louis, four tickets left. Thanks for listening to the Glass Cannon Network. For more podcasts and live streams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com.

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