The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 4/12/23

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

The wait is over! Troy and Joe reveal what is coming to Glass Cannon Labs in May! Also, Joe is going to the closest thing to a PF2E Summer Camp? In We Are Stupid, we discuss the Drain Bonded Item action, Surprise Rounds, Pepsi, Suki's DCs, and why you should never, ever, ever attempt a Grapple on your third action. In the wrap up, Joe pushes back on the idea that PF2E is a bad system for radio. For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com and for exclusive content and benefits, subscribe today at patreon.com/glasscannon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The Happy Stack, only at Kudo. Conditions apply. 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, April 12th, 2023, and I'm your good buddy, Joe O'Brien. And today is my mom's birthday. I'm Troy.

Happy birthday, mom's birthday. I'm Troy. Happy birthday, Troy's mama. April 12th, yep, mom's birthday. I hope by the time this drops, I remember to send something. What do you usually do for Ma's birthday? When you say send something, do you send flowers? Do you send like a gift from Amazon? Flowers are like, oh, shit, flowers.

Oh, shit. Yeah. But, you know, sometimes it might be like fucking Omaha Steaks. They love to have a big box of meat show up at their door. Who doesn't love a big box of meat on their birthday? That's usually for dad. But sometimes I'm like, ah, now they got some food for a couple weeks. But, yeah, no, I don't know.

It's usually, I could honestly send like a picture that I took of my phone, on my phone of the three kids and like, she would think it's the greatest gift ever. Get it printed at CVS and mail it in an envelope. A t-shirt with all of their faces. And she'd be like, this is my favorite thing I've ever received. Oh, she must be so excited. Not only to have grandchildren, because we know your brother's not,

not bringing it, bringing the heat. And, and then to get a granddaughter, she must've just been so excited. It's gotta be so different. Cause she only had boys, just me and my brother.

So it's a whole new, a can of worms for her. But yeah, they're excited um yeah man it's it's it's a it's a cool time it's a cool time to be alive cool time to be alive cool time to play pathfinder second edition yeah strange aeons converted bro wow playing on the moon dude we like to play our sword and sorcery fantasy games on the moon bro walking on the moon we're on the moon baby uh we got uh glass cannon episode 70 uh to talk about today which is gonna be awesome we're gonna dig into a ton of We Are Stupids as we got into a chunky combat. There's plenty to talk about. Professor Eric is going to be in session today.

We also have some fun and exciting news, more tour stuff coming up, and then we're going to tease a little May Labs. I think we teased it last week. This week, we're going to tease Labs for many weeks out yet because we're so excited about what we're going to be getting back into. So let's kick it off with just quick tour updates. It kicks off next week? Next week? Dude.

Next week. Are we doing fodder or are we just going to be like, ah, we'll take it off next week so we can get out to Colorado early and just start smoking weed nonstop. Let's get high the second we get off the plane. I think they hand it to you like a lei in Hawaii. Just a rolled joint. Weird states. Here's a rolled joint and a metal straw. Thanks.

And then a rickshaw to take you to your hotel. What is this place? What was the question? Oh, the tour is back. Are we canceling FOD next week because we're going to Boulder, dude? God, so much to talk about. Yeah, so old FOD or like iteration 19 of FOD

from last year was we would do road FODs on Friday. Yeah, because they were always on Friday and we'd always be traveling on Fridays. FOD's different now. FOD is a legit drop. So I'm expecting a legit FOD drop on Wednesday, but I think we should still do road content. We won't call it a road FOD,

but definitely you should be glued to the gram and to the talk to see some fresh road content. I've heard tons of young people calling it the talk yeah yeah i hear it all the time troy i you because you hang out outside schools your hands in your pockets outside of 7-eleven talking to the kids uh your dad let you smoke it's such a disturbing first thing to come up with you have a sick mind man you got a problematic playground a weird opening question is your dad let you smoke also why dad like it's just such a weird question on so many levels oh god

it's too early for a little pedophilia humor but the tour is back this is the longest hiatus that we've had since COVID but we had so much work going on with the prep for the studio and obviously I knew I was having

the baby and so I was like we'll do it in April and that just seemed like forever when we wrapped up that show in Philly. And it is my favorite. I always say it's my favorite thing that we do. So I cannot wait to be back on the road. I am very excited to go to Colorado. I love Colorado. And I'm very juiced.

I've never been to Boulder. So I'm very psyched. I'm very psyched to get back there. And I just get such great vibes coming off of Skid at all times about this. He is so happy to be having a show so close to Denver. And yeah, he is going to be on cloud nine on that stage. It's going to be a great thing to be a part of. Yeah, you could expect probably 10 minutes of the show of him just calling out people you've never heard of. Who are in the audience exactly all right let's wrap it up it's good we know 35 people close best friends all came to see you here save it for the sock bag good right do you have to name every single one of them uh no it's going

to be great to have all those skid fans in the crowd and just i mean the energy i can't even imagine what the energy in that room is going to be like also considering the break we've taken yeah four months off for almost five months off yeah almost five months off of touring uh we're going to be so fired up to be back on that stage so look forward to it sold out and new state and uh i think we're going to have a member of a show called Time for Chaos in the audience. Mr. Rob Kirkavich. That's right. Is going to be coming out because that's his home.

He lives out there now. So did I tell you my Kirkavich story? It's very brief and not that interesting, but it cracked my shit up. So I met Rob. He's an old friend of yours, similar to Francis. But I met Francis at your wedding, your bachelor party, all that stuff. I never met Rob. You weren't that close with Rob, but you knew him from back in the day.

Well, Rob and I went to high school together. He was a year behind me, and we were like best friends. And then I went to college, and I didn't talk to Rob for 22 years. Right, 22 years. Off and on, we would Facebook message each other, but we never saw each other another hand never hung until right before time for chaos and now our friendship around time for chaos time you were casting it and you were like i think i want to reach out to my old buddy rob because i i know that he's a gamer and like we haven't talked in a long time and i think he'd be interested he said he would do stuff whatever and so you got that conversation going once he

was locked in then it comes to me then it gets kicked over to me and it's like uh all right you got to do paperwork and all that shit and contracts and everything so i reached out to him and i had a call with him and had a great call i was just like man this guy is great and i knew that he was like you mentioned that he was like on television uh that he was in a show like a network series and um i was like oh that's great for him i thought he'd be in la he wasn't he lives't. He lives in Colorado, lives in Denver or whatever. And just the nicest guy. And I also thought that he was just an actor, but he's not. He's a gamer too. And he spoke all the lingo. He had a stack of board games in the back of his screen. I was just like, all right, this guy gets it. And I really

like him. So loved watching him on Time for Chaos. Got to play with him in, what was it? Not Cyberpunk. What was it? Cyborg. Got to play with him in Cy what was it not cyberpunk what was it cyborg yeah to play with him in cyborg super fun and so just the other day i uh am downstairs watching a phillies game i think it was and um i just like click over for a second and it was just a rerun of uh ncis new orleans which is i, the show that he was on. Yeah. I just clicked over and I just had no idea that he is like, you know, like a major character in that show.

And I've never seen multiple episodes of it. But when I clicked over, it was just a it was a full on Rob Kirkavich scene. Like he was the guy. They were all talking to him about this situation and he's like briefing scott bacula on a thing and just like going into detail and being by the way like very funny while he's doing it and just killing it and it was so weird to see somebody that like was just somebody i played rpgs with and like to flip my tv and it's like there he is talking was very weird but uh i was like go robbie k K. Get after it. on there. And he's still working, even though he's in Denver now, he's just self-taping. He's got

a great, I mean, one of the best agencies in the world. And he's writing a lot and trying to sell scripts as well. So he's super well-rounded dude. I hope we can get him involved in more stuff before he books another seven-year series. Yeah. Once they book, those are never available. Those shows put you on lockdown. They just always have your time booked. You had to move to New orleans yeah series right yeah it's so wild uh but yeah can't wait to play can't wait to play more with rob um okay moving on uh before we get to we are stupid a dense we are stupid let's talk about labs uh glass cannon labs in may you've already booked and you're very excited about this. I'm very excited about this. Talk to me.

Talk to me. It's going to be May. I noticed that the first Glass Cannon Labs that I had on the calendar was set for May the 4th. I've never been a big fan of the fact that that's Star Wars Day, but I do enjoy that it's cute. May the 4th be with you. I do like cute things. I celebrate it every day. I don't think it just needs a day.

The reason I don't like it is because all these fucking people come out of the woodwork with their Jar Jar Bink t-shirts and they think they know what Star Wars is. Yeah, I like to gatekeep Star Wars fandom. I'm the only one. But I was like, we got to fucking get back to Star Wars.

Dude, so amazing. Matthew's going to run. I think we're going to do it for two weeks, but we're going to do it on May the 4th live on Glass Cannon Twitch. So that'll be fun, man. I think the plan is to just bring back our characters and maybe add a new one. It would just be amazing. It would just be amazing. would just be amazing so yeah may the fourth star wars celebration if we can make it two weeks fantastic um also labs next week is it's labs it's kind of still up in the air but we're trying to uh do another alien app next week i think it's trophy dark is what i have yeah i think we're going to substitute that with alien oh okay let me update my calendar well i don't know yet we

we might do it might actually don't update your calendar because now you mentioned it might end up being that second star wars might be alien and we might come back to star wars later oh um so yeah anyway we were just chatting about it and uh everybody's really keen to get back in and do another episode of Alien. Awesome. And since we kind of had that flow of, like, you do an episode of Labs, and then you do the next one a month later, like, we don't want Alien to go too long before it has another one. So, anyway, you and I will talk about it, but it could be more Alien in May, too. So, looking forward to that. It's tricky.

I'd love to finish that Cyborg and finish Blade Runner, but like, it's not really what Labs is. And this is another reason why we're not releasing it as podcasts or putting the videos out because it's super raw and we just sit down and play. Maybe we finish it. Maybe we don't. I don't want to put that type of content out there in perpetuity. You see it live. You want to watch the VOD, enjoy it. But like, it's meant to be, it's meant to be something different. Yeah. It's meant to be raw and in some cases unfinished yeah i mean just like practice it's just practice it's it's spring training um talking about practice we're talking about practice speaking of talking about practice good buddy strange aeons has become in this conversion we talked a little bit last week about how that conversion has hurt some of the narrative flow of the show. Absolutely. We're

not going to deny that, but also that like, we're glad we did it because we need the reps in 2E. And anybody out there that says, why can't you just get the reps with 2E off air? Like that's your job. Doesn't really know what my job is. My job is not playing games. I can tell you that much. 90% of my job is not having any fun at all. So trust me, it's just like other jobs in that respect. So like we don't have the time to like really devote to these games and not have it be time that's set aside to make content. So to have that be part of the flow is like we have a show where we're learning 2E is the best way for us to really dig into it and really get all that time in with the system. But I, me personally, am making an effort to even accelerate my 2E knowledge and my 2E learning as – I don't think you even know this.

I am going to the Order of the Amber Dye game for one day of one of their marathons to sit in and watch the masters of the system play their game and see how they approach this game, this game of 2E. How do they approach their actions? How do they – what is their time management like? What is their action economy management like? These are people that are so dedicated to the efficient use of the system in a way that most exemplifies whether a pre written module is balanced or imbalanced, right? Fair or unfair, strong or not strong. And the GM has no, Adam, the amazing GM has, he is there to try to kill them. And they are happy about that because they want to,

they want to defeat the module and he makes the module as hard as it can be. And so I'm really interested to sit in that room for a day and really see how that goes. And by a day, I mean like 15 hours. Wow. So you're going to be there for all 15. You're doing it.

Oh, I'm doing it. Wow. You told me that you were talking, this was a months ago. You were telling me about this. I'm like 15 hours. Wow. So you're going to be there for all 15? You're doing it? Oh, I'm doing it. Wow. You told me that you were talking. This was months ago you were telling me about this. I'm like, oh, all right. Well, let me know. I saved this date.

Must have been November. It must have been November. I saved this date. And now it's here. And now I have a second date on the books in mid-July. Oh, shit. Is this the all gunslingers party that they're doing? Yeah, this is the all gunslingers party.

So are you going to play or you're just a silent observer? I'm playing, yep. Wow, okay. Yeah, I'm getting an NPC. Matt, who's the player captain, you know Matt, is amazing. Oh, Matt's wonderful. I've been told that sometime later this week I'm going to get my character and he'll talk me through stuff. Dude, I'm honestly so excited to see someone else live, in person, play this game that knows the rules really well and to see what it's like.

Enjoy playing a gunslinger because they are not allowed on Gatewalkers. I made that very clear. Made that very clear up front. Yeah, that's another thing is I'm just curious to see how the gunslinger works in 2E. Curious. But yeah, we shall see. Training is always important and we're going to get to that training in just a second with more we are stupid but i do

want to talk about the episode for a second absolutely wild uh encounter in this app and um i just wanted to bring up one thing which is um the langul fever is this something that you recall do you remember this do you hear about this uh yes where are you going with this does ethel have it uh from a previous like injury no in this encounter like ethel gets bit he rolls a save you're like you definitely don't have lang ghoul fever something like that and he we didn't know if it was a fail i guess it was kind of a tweener but it seemed like it could be a fail and you're like everything seems fine like we went down that road of yeah he has it he has so he has it so like uh i just wanted to make sure like what does that first stage mean because you didn't give him anything. You didn't mention it again.

Yeah. There are no effects of the first stage. And that lasts for, you know, a day. And then you roll again if you fail. But does it carry over into real life? Guess we'll have to wait and see. All right. Yeah.

Because it just wasn't mentioned again. Yeah. And I didn't notice it until the re-listen. And I was like, wait a minute. Is that not going to, like, carry Leng Gull fever into like – because I don't know that we know how to heal that like easily. So I'm a little frightened. If it's just a Dreamlands thing, then that's fine. But like if he carries it through, that's messed up.

That's messed up. That's a big-ass building you got in front of you. Exactly. And that's the other thing is like we could be in the Dreamlands here for a long time. I don't know. This is going to be wild. As I mentioned in the app, like this looks like a legit dungeon crawl just from a metagame standpoint from the map. I just see a huge black box that's like has to be explored.

And it sounds like it's multiple levels. So I'm like this seems like a legit dungeon crawl. So we will – pardon me. We will see. As far as digging in more into the app i think we can just do that through we are stupid thank you again to professor eric for sending along uh multiple points this week to to get into first of all we open with the the counteract check uh against the fireball uh that that you had casted and i used my new shadow siphon spell

he believes we did that all correct, all by the book, right down the line. So that's really good. However- I felt good about that. Like you hadn't done it before and you weren't feeling super confident, but you felt like you got it right. But as I was reading, I was like,

yeah, it sounds like we got it right. Yeah. You know, I just am so gun shy now because of how many experts out there we have listening to us. It just makes you gun-shy to ever be confident about anything. Like if you say like, yeah, I know this. Because then not only – you get the correction from the reasonable listeners. Like you get the correction.

From the unreasonable listeners, you also get like – and you're an asshole for saying that you knew what it was when you were wrong. I don't mean to say it so confidently if I don't truly believe that that was right, but I often am wrong. But yeah, I wasn't 100%. I was pretty sure that we were good. So I'm glad that that worked out and Eric confirmed it. However, he does use in the language he sends to me, I think the counteract check was done correctly. So even he's afraid to use strong wording in front of the nation. I know the poor guy's getting beat up on the discord if he gets something wrong. Is he really? Leave him alone. Those animals. We don't care about the game the way you do. They're going after him on the discord.

Well, this is why I work with Professor Eric and not a lot of those cats, because Professor Eric loves these rules and he loves getting them right. But he also realizes, you know, that like not all games care about the rules and not in a show shouldn't always care about the rules. Yeah. Which brings me to this point. It is a great point and it's something that needs to be remembered. But I'm just going to read it because he does such a great job explaining. Drain bonded item.

just going to read it because he does such a great job explaining drain bonded item this is what i used to shadow siphon your fireball a second time i prepare that spell shadow siphon and i have used it but my bonded item once per day allows me to recast a spell i've already cast that's been prepared so i used my drained bonded item but said, drain bonded item is a free action, which I knew. I'm like, great, but only usable on your turn. So not as a reaction,

which makes so much sense. As soon as I read a sentence, I farhead slap. That makes a lot of sense. I think I, this is Eric. I think I probably would have allowed it. That sentence.

I don't understand. Because it's a free action. Like, you know, normally they're only usable. Oh, he said I probably would have allowed it, but probably a topic to discuss. I think the reason is because I essentially broke another rule, which is having two reactions before my first turn. I just don't know why. I didn't think of that at the time, just in the hecticness of the combat. I didn't think of it. But he says, coupled with the, quote unquote, surprise round, I think it's reasonable.

In general, it feels like a place where rules were stretched on the player and the GM side, but the resulting story felt okay and not broken. And in general, you kept things flowing efficiently. So both sides. I would agree there, yeah. Yeah. He feels like we both stretched, but he felt like it balanced. And I don't know why. I didn't read his notes until after my re-listen. And in the re-listen, I still didn't realize about the drain bonded item being only usable on your turn and not as a reaction which by the way side note is a very interesting thing because it probably means i should prepare two shadow siphons a day

because other spells i could cast recast right look at how much it saved the party exactly so i do need to think about that but outside of that when i re-listened i was like i did two reactions before my first turn like you can't do that that doesn't make any sense um but the surprise round was obviously a huge factor in that and that was a confusing thing so we've never done that before in 2e and so well it's tricky right because like i agree that at the end of the day there was a little bit of shenanigans and it all kind of balanced out but the difference is I'm allowed to bend the rules, you're not. So I think that if you're not allowed to use it as a reaction, as a free action,

you shouldn't be able to do that even though that I was stretching the rules by giving myself a surprise round because I thought that was more dramatic. I think overall it worked for the story because you guys were about to get annihilated. For real. You know, after saving and you're all hyped because you were able to, you know, make that fireball so much less effective, to then have another one just crush you would have been brutal. So I'm glad you were able to do it, but it is important to know that you can't do that. Yeah.

Well, also important to say, I would say here, the fireball was so much less effective. It was not ineffective. Right. It still not ineffective. Right. It still did a ton of damage. 40 damage to Suki after it was halved or something. 40 damage. Crazy. So, yeah, that was just a wild, wild series of events.

I also used Hero Point during it because my first casting of it, I rolled a natural one. It's just like, come on! Yeah, I think that that was a really fun moment. So I'm glad that we did it the way we did it. But it is good to know I won't be doing that again. I will not be draining my bonded item for a reaction spell. So that's something to keep in mind. Go ahead and point back to this fodder episode when I do exactly that about eight months from now because i forgot um let's move on to impending doom and incapacitate this one has been featured on fodder many times and today it's featured every professor has to do this every once in a while they have to give you the golf clap nice work and all professor eric says is you did it right

it's nice to see that running smoothly so we did do the incapacitate trait right on impending doom. And as you could see, it was very ineffective. Once you had a like a higher level creature, it's just like, no, you really need to focus that spell on a lower level creature on a mob that's out there during a fight. So as far as the surprise round goes, he goes into great detail on the different ways he would have done it. The raw way, once any side is planning something that takes place in actions, everyone rolls initiative. The non-combat initiating side would just approach the door, continue to – whatever. This ends up being practically the same as what I listed above. So, you know, the other option is to roll initiative, but just like essentially fudge initiative. So you just roll initiative and then he just gets to go first, no matter what he rolls. Yeah.

You know, and that's, that is as fudgy as making up a surprise round that is kind of not, you know, in the rules. It's not in the rules. And you know, I thought about it a lot before the session and i was just like i just feel like in the narrative it works here you tried to demoralize him you wouldn't leave after he told you to leave he's got a a fireball he wants to cast you come over there i just i just wanted to get that fireball off and i and you know i guess i what should have happened is like you see him starting to do something.

You see flame starting to erupt. And now I'm telegraphing a little bit, but for the show's sake. Then you roll initiative and he might go third. And now two of you have a chance to either scatter or get in there and attack. And that's probably, well, it is the quote unquote right way to do it. I just really wanted to mix things up. I kind of wanted to like, you're standing there in front of this enormous building.

I think I'd even said in the episode, and you don't know what's going on here. Why are you on the moon? I wanted to fuck you up before you even got in there. You're like, whoa, okay. The tone has shifted dramatically here. This is a different Dreamlands encounter. Yeah, I hear you. I just wouldn't do that i wouldn't

do that in my game i wouldn't recommend it i think that it's i think that the other way to everything about the story you say is exactly dead on but what i would do is i would either just give him first initiative which by the way i would give that to pc sometimes too like when the pc said this came up in uh PC sometimes too. Like when the PC said, this came up in a legacy of the ancients recently, the PC says, um, uh, let's say Ethel just says, I bury my hatchet in his head. And you say it during a con during a conversation. And then you say, okay, roll for initiative. Like, I think he should just automatically get first in the initiative because he made an action that no one else expected.

That's interesting. Whereas if he – because he's starting the fight, right? What happened in Legacy was Casino Primavera said that she charged into the room and that started an encounter. We all rolled for initiative. And if Casino rolls fifth in initiative, it's like – it doesn't make any sense then. That never happened. You're erasing the narrative so like i just feel like um like there is i would be fine personally as a gm just talking for me with fudging that initiative role to act as like a surprise round what my

problem is i think you cross over into very dangerous territory mechanically when you start giving a creature two aoe blasts before another creature can even act that's really messed up and um but i think he rolled a high initiative too yeah that's exactly like i already decided it didn't roll that way it wouldn't have felt as bad but yeah um but the other thing is i think what you could have done is just made up a hazard like you could have made up a trap that's just a fireball trap for As soon as we walk in, it explodes. Roll for initiative, give him first initiative and let him. And you have the same result without the same sort of fudginess to it, in my opinion. Right. But you'd rather be fudged than the initiative because then nobody knows.

Exactly. It's still dirty. It's just a different kind of dirty. It's white collar fudging. It's white collar fudging. It's white collar fudging. But the other thing I said is I would also fudge in the PC's favor too. When you feel like they got the jump on someone, you give that as, you could also give an initiative bonus. You could say, take a plus 40 or initiative just because you

started this thing and they are surprised by it. And then if they still roll crappy, you can say the enemy got the jump on them even though they started to get the jump. Well, this is a part of 2E that we don't really talk about. We just kind of do it and it doesn't often come up, but exploration mode is a thing. And it's like, whatever you're doing

right before the encounter begins, you know, nine times out of 10, it's perception. 19 times out of 20, it's perception. But occasionally it's not, and that's your initiative. So what then becomes your initiative when you charge into the room or when you bury the hatchet? Could you say, now this isn't in the rules that I know of, but could you say, if Athos says I buried my hatchet, what if your attack roll is your initiative? That is absolutely in the rules. The rules say anything can be your initiative.

You can. You can make it your attack bonus. I don't see why not really what your attack bonus is if you take out the item but you could say you have to remove the item bonus but if you say it's just your ability your primary ability score modifier modified by your proficiency bonus right that's the language you would use to say that's your initiative role is because it's your attacking that is giving you the advantage. And if your attack role still happens to be very low, that means it was a bad attack role and a bad initiative, right? There's a lot of different ways you can do it.

I think that's a really fun idea. We'll need a fodder for the fodder, but I would imagine the language says skills specifically, but I certainly think that'd be fun. But then what do you then do in the Casino Primavera instance? Do you just add her movement speed as your die modifier? You have 20 feet of movement, give yourself a plus 20 to your initiative. I don't know. Or is it your athletics? I think in that case, it's athletics. How fast did you get over there? Were you able to move quickly? And so there's probably a way to tie it to some sort of skill every single time. There's so many different skills.

It seems like you could do that. Oh, I don't have athletics, but I have acrobatics. Okay, I could see that. But if it's bury your hatchet, I don't know. Athletics, again, you can kind of always lean on athletics instead of using your attack modifier. But it is interesting. And people should be doing that. Like when I say, okay, what's everybody doing? I'm just looking around. Okay, well, you're going to roll perception for initiative. I'm stealthing. Use your best skills. You're going to give yourself a little edge and an ish. I am balancing along this wall. It's flat wall you know but my acrobatics is better than my perception you have to well we talked about this a couple weeks ago on fodder like you gotta just be reasonable you know you gotta this is again i key i've said this now for a couple years i sound like a broken record it's why blades in the dark is the best written core rule book in the last 20 years because it mentions this exactly it's like if

you're going to keep rolling this you should roll any skill you think is right and the gm does not tell you which skill to roll you choose for any given action if you keep choosing the skill you have the most points in in order and make that narratively work so that you're always rolling that skill, you're playing the game wrong. Just stop doing it. You know what I mean? It's like very clear on that because this is what some people, their inclination is to get their highest possible bonus. And, of course, that natural inclination is understandable. You've got to suppress that.

Push that down and think about what's more challenging or what's more interesting for your character, where failure could be a cool thing here. I remember a Blades game with with the with. Yeah, the tin whistles where I had when I had my alternate character because Archie was was captured and I did a roll to jump off the side of a building to like get into a fight that I had to get into really fast. It was like a 15 or 20 foot drop or something like that. And I had to roll a skill I have nothing in in order to do it. And I was like, I'm doing it anyway. And I just rolled it and I failed outright without any partial success. And Jared broke my leg. And that just like it was awesome story.

It totally changed the fight. I got in there so slow. I was hobbled. I was messed up. And then that character couldn't go on another score for like months because he had to recover from a broken leg. It was amazing. And by the way, that wasn't just narrative. Like mechanically how you heal things because of how severe that injury was took multiple scores before it could be healed.

So it was just – it was really cool. And you should still like – you would have an opportunity to resist that depending on what your stress was and so you should always try those things because there's a chance that you can resist it and take less stress and then have that broken leg go down to a fractured leg and so you just take less effect or instead of let one less die or whatever it was i don't know if that was level three harm, but it also blades encourages you to use, to not only use your best skills because you were an XP when you take desperate actions and with those certain skills. And so, you know,

you can just, I'm really good at sway. I'm just going to sway the whole game, but like, you're never going to get better. I'm going to sway this bullet right into my chest. And technically the game master is, is supposed to allow

you to do it right because you get to choose well and that's you will never grow in the other skills exactly and that's the whole point and and the john harper when he writes the book says this specifically it's just like the gm and by the way i only bring i don't bring this up to to um to applaud blades in the dark mechanics i'm talking about like the literal part of the rulebook where john seems to be talking to you as the reader and seems to be saying like, your GM is not responsible to police you on this. The GM does not make this decision. You do as the player. Be a better player. Do not just always roll your best skill. It's lame. And I just, I like that part. There is nothing about a skill in the rule for initiative in the book.

It simply says typically you're rolling perception. Sometimes the GM might call for you to roll some other type of check. There it is. Now, the only examples they give are a stealth check, a diplomacy deception check. But it's another type of check. So it's anything you want check you know so it's anything you want it to be uh so yeah i think that that's an interesting idea if i have an attack role actually be an initiative if there is a sudden a sudden combat where the other people

wouldn't see it coming uh moving along and we are stupid uh pepsi got three actions in this combat for anybody that caught that that was a mistake a little error on our part but that was just a that was like kind of a to me that is my version of like a typo i'm like that wasn't us getting a rule wrong as much as it was just like losing track of actions and then nobody caught it uh i made a joke like isn't that pepsi's 19th action i feel like you may have i don't i don't recall but uh we did um miss i usually don't miss that i'm usually like tracking everybody's actions but somehow i missed it uh but eric goes into detail on which feats do allow uh that which is very cool i'm looking at that i'm like hmm if i ever get an animal companion into animal companion

into in the future i i would want that feat uh there is there's a feat that gives you an extra action three instead of two when you could use the uh command animal action so that's pretty amazing but anyway yeah i shared that with sydney she was very aware she was like i i knew it like right after the episode and i so yeah she's she's on it um so ineffective it doesn't matter oh pepsi oh pepsi um i wonder if professor eric write in Professor Eric. Let us know if you have any suggestions for Pepsi being more effective. What are we missing? Is there something here we're missing? One more thing on Suki. Professor Eric believes that Suki's Days DC sounds wrong.

I can get in the math of it, but he basically says he thinks she is underselling her days dc it might have just been a mistake live i again i shared this with sydney she said she's going to go back into her uh character she didn't take a look at this make sure that it's right but um he says even with the the lower wisdom that she has which like is lower than most people's it still shouldn't have been a crit when you rolled to save on that days, you basically critically succeeded. And he was like, that would mean it would have to be this low. And he just can't see how it could be that low. I think it was a 25 or something like that, or no, 24, 23. So he thinks that she's missing

something. So we're going to take a look at that. Lastly, and this one is a good rule to know about grappling. Grappling requires either a free hand or a weapon that has the grapple trait. Ethel, who likes to do a lot of different things when he's fighting, is a two-weapon fighter. Always kind of has the warhammer and the scimitar, the vorpal scimitar in hand. So he says, Ethel either has to have a third arm or drop a weapon in order to grapple while dual wielding.

And while it was retconned, it might have been a crit fail, which would have let Ethel- It grab Ethel. Would have let it grab Ethel or knock Ethel prone. And then he adds this line, and this is for everybody out there. Just know this trying a third action grapple is very risky. And that's cool because you're, you're more likely than any other role at that point to critically fail because you're using it with, it takes the map, the minus 10. And, and if you

critically fail, they can knock you prone or grapple you so so ill-advised to grapple on the third action even if you have that free hand yeah grapple is a decision like you do you do two other things and then grapple so that you're restraining them because they are grappled until the end of your next turn unless they try to escape the grapple um it's just locked in. It's changed wildly from first edition where you had to just – you could just free maintain the grapple for monsters. Well, yeah, it's complicated. But I don't know.

I like it better now. Yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of things I like better now. Some not so much because it's fun still playing Legacy. But I've definitely – Legacy of the Ancients, our Rise of the Rune Lords game on Patreon is first edition. We are not converting Rise of the Rune Lords. We are playing that first edition, keeping that purity of the original AP, the original Pathfinder AP. It – there are times when we definitely miss second edition.

There are times when we're like, oh, I wish this was 2E right now because the way a certain skill works or an ability works or the way a crit would have gone or a fumble would have gone um it's it is interesting there are other times when we're happy we're in first edition right but it's it does swing both ways so um anyway some some perspective there on playing both systems at the same time you've fully moved. You are not playing any 1E anymore, and you're totally in the 2E swamp working your way through it. Yeah, I am in the swamp, but I'm feeling better every day with it, more confident,

and just pumped to start clean with Gatewalkers. Well, that'll bring me to my end-of-show convo. I don't know if you had something, but I'd love to bring something up that has been bothering me a little bit. Yeah. It goes back to fodder maybe a month ago or so. It could have been a little bit more where you mentioned that this – it's partially in the show as well. in show as well, in episode, I think maybe episode 67 or 68,

was guilty of it, where you say that this system is not good for a podcast. We talked about it on fodder. Yeah. It was a long fodder discussion. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about it since you talked about it because, I mean, this is our business. This is what we do.

I think it's important to think about these things, what makes the best show. And I'm not – I just want to say that the more I think about it, the more I'm just really not ready to write it off as not good for a podcast. I think that there is a lot to be said for it being a relatively new system to us. And even though it's been a couple years, it still doesn't compare to the years we had of 1E, which I mentioned in that fodder conversation. But also, we need to know our characters better. I mean, I think that it's on us. I think we really have to look inward before we look outward to the system as being the problem. I don't think Pathfinder 2E as this, let me sum it up this way. I don't think Pathfinder 2E as a game system is more challenging to make a good podcast than D&D 5E or Pathfinder First Edition. They're all tactical RPGs that are heavily, heavily focused on tactical combat. And those will always struggle to be easy, smooth narrative shows without some really deft maneuvering from its players and GM.

So I don't think 2E is any more so struggling with this. I think if we are smoother with our actions, if we know our characters better and can pick those actions quicker, I think that it'll smooth things out a little bit and that we'll see that it has the same challenges that any tactical RPG has making into a podcast. I agree that there's a lot of times Call of Cthulhu is smoother as a podcast. I mean, getting the trunk can just be so much smoother at times as a podcast. Completely agree. I'm not saying 2E is going to be that smooth. I just don't think it as a system is harder than the other ones. Your thoughts no i i don't completely disagree obviously i hyperbolize when i make these grandiose statements but uh for sure i i uh it's just not my favorite system you know what i mean and so that plays a lot into it as well and uh when you get five

pcs in there each with three actions it kind you kind of run into the same problem that you do with high level first edition play and that like whew man these turns these rounds are taken forever but i 1000 agree that like the more uh comfortable and knowledgeable uh the cast gets and that i get uh the smoother it's going to be. Like, I have no concerns about this not being a phenomenal choice. Not getting better and better and better as a show, yeah. If I was concerned, I don't think that, like, hitching our wagon to Pathfinder Star is what makes or breaks us. I think we could go on there and play anything on the Glass Cannon podcast, and we would

have viewership. This is an active choice to do this. And so I think it's the right choice. I just think that there is a mountain of work that needs to be done for it to be the best. Because I'm not interested in just making a great show. I'm interested in making the best show. And so we all have to rise to this occasion. And I think we're getting there. I think that our business is a lot different than it was a year ago or two years ago. We were really in the trenches and we didn't have any help whatsoever. We have a great staff now that is letting us take some burdens off so that we can

focus on content creation, which is our bread and butter. So we just have to make sure that everyone understands the gravitas that is involved here and rises to the occasion. And I have no doubt that they will. But we've seen some growing pains in Strange Aeons as that has been an issue since Seattle last year, jumping into this. into this. I still think us stumbling through and having fun, though, it still makes for a great show. It's just people who expect a certain base level of competence and we're not there. It does. We do come off as amateur, even though we're great entertainers. And that's tough. I don't care if we're the best at the rules. We should strive to be, you know, if we're so good at entertaining, why not be great at the rules as well? Yeah, sometimes it comes down to a bandwidth issue. Like if I've got X amount of hours to do it,

I'm always going to favor the story and the camaraderie at the table over like making sure I got every little fucking rule right. Yeah, I do the same thing. And I love the rules in 2E, but I do the same thing and get in the trunk. when i am really pressed to the last moments of prep it all goes

into the story and and not into you know like if you can dodge the first swing at you and around and where that puts you in your action economy like i'm just like whatever we'll figure that out like i want to make sure that this npc's motivation is exactly right i want to make sure that the scene is set well. You know, that's much more important to me. And I understand there are people who's just – they listen to it and it's nails on a chalkboard. Like how can they not get this? It happens to me.

I listen back to myself and it's like nails on a chalkboard sometimes when you know a rule. You learned it after the fact. Listening back to yourself, you're like, I sound like such an idiot. That definitely is frustrating. But what I'm talking about is a little bit less of people being frustrated with us getting the rules wrong. I don't really care about that. What I care about is when we feel like we are like in a slog, you know what I mean?

Like that, I think we'll get better if we can know our characters better and make choices faster, then everyone is going to have better energy, I think, at the table and have a little bit more fun instead of looking and reading and trying to understand how all their shit works. It's just, it's tough. I don't have a solution. I'm just saying, I don't think the system is the problem. I think that we just need more time to delve into these characters and you got to spend time outside of the sessions looking at your sheet you know i'm not saying people don't but like it when you don't it's obvious like you have to do it you really do and uh you know even if you're in a home game i feel like you should do that it's oh i was just gonna say that like it's insulting to the gm like i don't take it personal but like I can remember when we were in Merwin's game, like if I would feel bad if I like, didn't look at my sheet in like the day before the session, like it just, it just shows that you're not putting the effort in that someone else is putting. Right. It's like sitting, it's like, it's like going to that session with Merwin, sitting down and it, you know, after 15 minutes of actions, it then gets to your turn and you turn to the GM and say,

how does my bloodline work? Right. You know what I mean? It's just like, come on, please don't make the GM do this. I was just, um,

oh fuck. I just had a great little nugget of a thought and I, I lost it, uh, about prepping reading in an advance. Save it for next week. Yeah. I lost it. But yeah, it's just, it's important to,

system mastery, yeah, sure, that can be the goal, but it's not the expectation. We're entertainers. That's all I, at the end of the day, that's all I really care about. But if we want to continually separate ourselves in the industry, we have to have both. You know what I mean?

You really do. And I think we can get there. I really feel every day that we play getting closer and closer. You know what I mean? You really do. And I think we can get there. I really feel every day that we play getting closer and closer. This is what I was going to say. Have a playbook, create a playbook for yourself. I do it now for all my encounters. So I'll have the stat block there and underneath the stat block, I'll have like rounds, round one, two, three, and like four or five options of what my three actions are going to be for that round. Now we might be, it's great to have a plan, you're two rounds into the fight, and I've got to throw it out because, you know, somebody does something that I wasn't

planning, you cast some sort of illusion. But at least I have that basis there. Right, is it Tyson that says that? It's like, yeah, you get out with no plan, survives getting punched in the face. Right. Something like that. Yeah, that's exactly what he said. And that's the truth. And so, but having the plan helps. Players, PCs should have that plan as well. So you're not just like, and I attack again, or and I move.

You know, know everything that you can do. And I said it when I sent you guys the, here are the 78 or 77 pages from the rule book you need to know. And I said, with skills, I said, you can never read these pages enough because there are single actions in the skills page, whether it's like tumble through or like little tiny things of like sneaking and hiding, you know, finding spaces in the room, asking me like, is there anything I can like hide behind? Yeah, there's a little table over there, I guess.

All right, I'm going to move to the table. One action. I am, and I'm going to move there stealthily. Second, I'm going to hide. Third, well, now all of a sudden it's interesting. Obviously you want to beat the encounter, but now you've got a chance to have the enemy be flat-footed to you on the next turn. You know, read those skills. There really are actions there, and I'm trying to get better at it, but it can't always come from me because my brain, it just doesn't work like it used to. I only have so much room in there. But if we all work together, I think, you know, I have no, no concerns whatsoever.

The Gatewalkers and the return of the tour is going to be the best it's ever been. Can't wait. Can't wait. That quote, by the way, word for word is everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Yeah, that's that's the word for word So, yeah, we can go into this fight with all the plans that we want. But, man, once you start busting out two fireball surprise rounds on us, things change. Good luck. Things change really fast. Yeah, I'm really scared about this place, and I'm not looking forward to it. I'll say that much, but it is kind of cool to be adventuring on the moon.

With that, we will wrap up FOD. Thank you, everybody. Have a fantastic week. Hey, if you're on spring break, have a wonderful spring break. It's about that time, so enjoy yourselves. We'll certainly be back next week with our last FOD before we hit the road for Boulder,

Colorado. Until then, take it easy, everybody. Have a good one. Bye. Good night. Thanks for listening to the Glass Cannon Network. For more podcasts and live streams visit glass cannon network.com and for exclusive shows and content you can't find anywhere else subscribe today at patreon.com slash glass cannon