The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 4/24/24

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

It was a big episode of the GCP this week as the party encountered Kaneepo the Slim. Troy and Joe talk through what goes into prepping a villain's big moment in the story and get into the blow by blow mechanics of the toughest fight the party has encountered yet. In We Are Stupid, a look back into optional rules from over 40 years ago, how the Remaster has updated Stances, and a huge upgrade to the Interact Action. In Listener Mail, a fantastic message from an International member of the Naish results in Troy recommending a permanent ban on a player! Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/wpjlnCM-6a4 For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com and for hundreds of hours of exclusive shows and benefits, make your membership official and join Glass Cannon Nation today by becoming a subscriber at jointhenaish.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. What is going on everybody? Welcome back to Cannon Fodder. It is Wednesday, April 24th, 2024. And I'm your old buddy, Joey OB. And I'm Troy. Hi.

Hi Troy. How are you today pal? I forgot to fill my water before this so we have to do it. I have done that on fodders before I'm like What's going on everybody? My name is Joey O'Brien And then as you're saying your name I go to like grab my water, and I'm like oh shit I got to do the next hour. That's all I got left man So it's got to be a 10 minute app because I I need my water man gotta stay I gotta stay wet or maybe you just got a Ration you just got a ration

No planning ahead how you do anything is how you do everything What's going on nash welcome back to the FOD we got a juicy up for you today juice juice We have got some news bits not you today. Juice. Juice. We have got some news bits, not too crazy on the news. We'll be through that pretty quick, but then we'll get on to the app, big app this week in Glass Kind of Podcasts Campaign 2. And of course, it's going to come along with plenty of We Are Stupid and listener mail, including a lot of YouTube comments.

It's going to be a great show. Troy kick us off with the biggest news in your life right now. The biggest news in my life right now. Jeepers, dude, I got so much going on. I don't even know where to start. I'm starting to become a member of the 5AM Club though. Yeah, good club. Which is pretty exciting. I finished reading the book and so I'm starting to practice it. Wait, what are you talking about? That's look the 5 a.m. Club. Oh, it's an actual book. I thought you just meant getting up at 5 a.m

Yeah, well that I mean that's what it is, but it's a lot more than that own your morning elevate your life, dude My god, you're constantly reading this garbage people out there. No, no, dude. It's it means the closest thing I've come to reading fiction this year because of the way that it's written. But I'm like 20 books into the year, all nonfiction. I'm reading books about business. I'm reading books about parenting. I'm reading books about investing. I'm reading books about, dude, crazy.

I'm all over the fucking place. It's great. I'm just pulsating with ideas. But I wanted to read The 5AM Club. It was so wildly popular when it came out. And so I was like, oh, I'm wanted to read The 5AM Club. It was so wildly popular when it came out. I was like, oh, I'm going to read this. Then I started reading it. I was like, oh, I wasn't expecting the book to be written like a fiction novel, but it's fucking amazing. Step one is just start getting up at 5AM every single day, which means I got to go to bed earlier.

I'm interested to see how I'm going to navigate this with the travel this week because everything that I do at home, I'm in the zone and then once we go on the road, everything goes out the window. I'm drinking wine in first class at 8 a.m. I'm just like, immediately you're thrown off. I don't know how I'm going to be able to- When you get a couple margaritas, then it's off to a brewery to try an 8% or like you're all over the place.

Yeah, it's just, it's hard to like reconcile these things. We've only traveled once this year and like I was in the zone and then went to Toronto and was like, what's going on? So I'm going to try and keep things going because things are, things are good, man. I'm like really, really in the zone right now. And I'm seeing like the benefits in all aspects of my life, but especially old glass cannon network. I feel like we're all in right now.

That's great to hear. That's great to hear. You know, you have always mocked Matthew for being in the 5 a.m. club. This is his life. And he always leaves shit at 8 p.m., 9 p.m. because he's in the 5 a.m. club. And you always be like, look at this loser leaving the pot.

Are you gonna be that guy now? Are you gonna leave the hang at 9.30 because you gotta get up at five? Dude, I don't know. No, probably not. Shh. Yeah, no, I never, I always respected his getting up early. I thought that was very diligent of him

to like get up and do that, but it's lame that you gotta leave things early. Yeah, but it comes with a cost. You gotta leave early. You gotta have a little FOMO. It's extra hard in gotta leave things. Yeah, but it comes with a cost. You gotta leave early Yeah, you gotta have a little FOMO It's extra hard in the middle of like Bruins and Celtics playoffs cuz like I'm laying in bed Watch it like I'll tape it and then I'll watch it and fast forward through the commercials and fast forward through like icing penalties And so I can watch a game in like an hour and a half, but last night

I was like up a little late, but still 5 a.m. Up so funny It's what I've been doing the last two years with Philly's playoffs is like like fast-forwarding literally like between pitches You know what I mean? And I'm just like Am I like not getting the real experience of watching a game anymore? Cuz I'm just like I got too much shit to do like I have to like zip zip zip zip Like it's just it's just busy guys. Yeah busy busy guys. Speaking of which, it's show week. We're off and rolling this week. We're getting ready for Troy to put away all those good habits and break out all the bad

ones as we head to KC today. We're leaving for KC today show tomorrow night in Kansas City. Very, very excited for that. And then off to Austin. Yeah, it's, it's show weeks are funny. They're interesting. We usually have very light recording weeks those weeks. Obviously we don't really have anything planned to Austin. Yeah, it's it's show weeks are funny. They're they're interesting. We usually have very light recording weeks those weeks, obviously, we don't really have anything planned to

record. It's fun stuff like this fodder, I'm going to do a stream while I'm doing it later today. We're recording this day before. But if you missed Helldivers to we got the group together again. It happened yesterday, Tuesday, April 23, go to our Twitch channel and check out the VOD if you missed that. I'm sure it's gonna be blast. And what else, what else? Yeah, light on recordings and then we just go do the shows.

And doing the shows is- Light for you maybe. I had a time for chaos yesterday and you know I hate recording anything else during show week, but like we're trying to finish the season, get it in the can and oh man, it was good app. Good app. How far ahead are you? When is this app going to air?

We only have three more apps to go. We did episode 17 yesterday, so we got 18, 19, 20. Okay. All right. Yeah. Hearing good things. By all accounts, Time for Chaos Season 2 is better than Season 1. Your thoughts?

I mean, yeah. Season 1 started slow because we were still getting to... The prologue is a little linear, the Peru prologue, but also there's a brand're still getting to, you know, the prologue is, it's a little linear, the Peru prologue, but also like there's a brand new group getting to know each other. So I think that we were kind of going through like the hiccups of getting to learn each other's rhythms and whatnot. By the time we got to New York, it's flying. The downside to that is I think a lot of people tuned out after Peru or like those two couple

of my guy, not for me, but I mean season one just cooked. And then season two, we just started out hot and it's just gotten better and better and better. I don't want to spoil it, but like we had a bit of a character change recently. So there's just a lot going on. And I feel like the adventure, there's so much going on in the pre-written adventure, but like we really like leaned into this thing where there's a story that's going on that has become so rich that has nothing to do with the adventure that they're kind of running

parallel and then intersecting at different points. So it's kind of a dream. Sounds like Giant Slayer. Dream campaign. Yeah. I never made that connection, but that's kind of what's been happening lately. These games lend themselves to that more, you know, I want to get that into Gatewalkers as well because right now we're kind of like not on the rails in the

traditional sense, but like we're playing the adventure path. I want to get away from that. Yeah. All right. One piece of news before we head into the episode, speaking of Gatewalkers, we do want to, I want to highlight that Blade Runner started this week, if you didn't catch that. Everybody's raving about this, and it continues next Monday night, 8 o'clock Eastern, premiere on YouTube. From what I

hear, you got to see this three-parter, and you got to stick through to part three, apparently. All I keep hearing is, you got to see this. So I'm very excited for that whole crew. Really, really great cast on that show. Yeah, if you remember, Skids running it along with Jason Charles Miller, Seth Skorkowsky, Alicia Marie, and Paula Deming. So hell of a cast.

They just started it last week. Or this week, sorry. Yeah, they just started it this week. And episode two is on Monday night, April 29 at 8pm Eastern. So check that out. All right, let's talk. Gatewalkers. This is, this is a big gap. This is a chapter boss, we would say maybe, I mean, almost felt like a book boss. I'm like, where the hell's the book boss? Because this has really been, Kniepo has been in our line of sight for a long time now, ever since we first heard about this at the, you know, in Seven Arches, in the town of

Seven Arches, that there was this creature that seems to be trying to plot some sort of return to the material plane and some mass of destruction. We walk into the room, This is last week's episode. It's a classic villain thing. Talk to me about GMing, how you approach, I kind of know because of the evidence over the years, but I'd like to hear you explain what goes through your head when you're about to prepare for a villain speech, a villain offer, right? Like a classic opening to a Bond fight. You know Mr. Bond, we could just join forces, blah blah.

That kind of thing. How do you approach this as a GM and sort of what, if anything, did you change from the module in that aspect? I'm trying to remember. What I'll do is I really dig back into the character backstory because oftentimes, especially in Pathfinder Adventure Paths, when you're fighting a main character, they've got back matter on them that shows their whole stat block and then gives you a one and a half page summary of their life.

Their whole life, yeah. I usually start there, and I've been doing this since long before Giant Slayer. I start there and I think about, okay, what does this person want to get across to these people that the characters don't already know? I try to use the opportunity pre-fight to tell you everything you haven't learned so far that you're not going to discover after you inevitably defeat the monster. Because if you just come in and start guns blazing, you don't really know the why. Why was this all happening?

And there were still a couple of loose ends that I felt like Kniepoh needed to fill in there. So I used that opportunity to do that. And if you don't get it out, you can always throw it in a journal afterwards. We do that all the time. That's a front door option. But like with Kniepo, I really wanted to lean into the idea that like they wanted, they think that this is all normal.

They think that like this is an amazing opportunity. Like why wouldn't you take this? I'm about to bleed my world into the material world and take over that big section and we can run it together. Then eventually, I'm going to pass and then you can have it. Why wouldn't you want this? It's just insanity. So many people have tried to get this far and you made it.

You're special. You're chosen. Worthy. And so, this was set up all the way back when you're doing the investigation after the library to figure out how to get to the thin lands, who this Kniepoh is. You hear this idea of worthiness and people that have been chosen since generations ago were chosen and they were deemed unworthy. Some were actually among those few, some were actually brought into the lair and then some only made it as far as the vivisection room.

Was it just combat prowess? Is that really you have to fight your way through and that determines your worthiness? Well what you get in this speech that I don't know if you guys notice it or not And maybe you'll you'll think about it between episodes is like there was something about you that was special Yeah, and it seems to be that you were marked in going through the gate But you don't know what makes you special because you have no idea what happened when you disappeared from the world and so have no idea what happened when you disappeared from the world. So, Kniepo doesn't even know what that is, but can sense it. Maybe it's that deviant ability.

Maybe it's that thing. So, connecting it back to that, it kind of help, hopefully will help to deepen the mystery for you guys. You've got to figure out what happened when you walked through the gate. What happened to make this extraterrestrial being just desire you in such a way? Like in many ways, this this Kniepoh thing feels like a side quest just to impress upon you how special you are. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. What about the the three kind of main NPCs that we were

searching for from Thinlands Farms, maybe just before Thinlands Farms, a mixture. Those three primary NPCs, you got the druid with the nose piercing, the septum piercing. You've got the woman who was the mother of the kids that we talked to, and then the hoarder. Yeah, Varna, Maybelline, and Henry Buckets. Yeah, Henry Buckets, old Henry Buckets. So are we to assume that they never met Kniepoh?

Because they never quote, made it to the throne room? Is that like they were never invited into the throne room? Why immediately were they vivisected and experimented on? Yeah, it's unclear whether or not they met Kniepoh or not. You know that Bolan met Kniep or not. You know that Bolan met Kniep. You know that Bolan had an audience with Kniep and became entranced by Kniep so much so that he began to do Kniep's bidding. Did that happen to Maybelline? It seemed like Maybelline had a pretty normal life and then all of a sudden became obsessed

with this. So it kind of leads you to believe like maybe there was a meeting and Kniepows wiles infected her so much so that she would leave her family behind. Nobody just leaves their family behind. And then Henry Buckets, he had, it seems like he had nothing. And you know, maybe Kniepow found a way to prey upon that. Whether they physically visited these people or that, whether he, whether they physically visited these people or not, it's clear that they did something to infect them.

And even though you guys showed up and were able to say, no, no, we're not going to do that. Kniepo still was able to lead you all the way there. Yeah. So there's this great, there's great power in that and almost almost took your lives. Did you feel like any adjustments needed to be made from a narrative standpoint? Because I asked because I've done this before. I've seen the villains in games that I'm running. And I've seen the offer that they make. And it's laughable. You know what I mean? It's like murder all your friends. Did you consider or did you soften anything in any way in order to attempt to actually

pitch the PCs in some way to get someone that might actually think their character might be motivated to do something like this? Or did you just keep it pretty straightforward, evil, and nonsensical? Yeah. I mean, I think that it's not really explicit in the book what I did and it's like one of you choose to murder all your friends. I just thought like giving that choice would give each of the characters a moment of like pause to consider it.

Maybe there would be someone there that like, well, tell me a little bit more, you know, and then like all of a sudden you defeat Kniepoh and then you remember that moment like, well, that was weird that Zephyr like kind of considered doing that for a second. Right, right. Plant a seed of doubt. You should give an eye on Zephyr. Yeah. So it's more about like creating future possible drama for the party.

But also you plant that seed and then you hope like everyone goes down except one person. And now you've got like four bodies on the ground and one is still rising. Canipo stops the fight and says, you sure you want to keep going? Yeah. You want to take the deal? Who knows what happens there? In my mind, especially as the fight started going, I'm like, oh, I think I'm going to get to this little side John that I have here. With Brother Ramis. I'm going to give you the deal again, right?

Yeah. It's wild. It's wild because, okay, so then let's get into the fight itself. What are some of your takeaways from the fight? I mean, one clear one is you thought you were pretty damn close to having multiple PCs knocked out in such a way that you could re-offer the deal to the last standing member. What were your key takeaways from the fight? I mean, it went way better than I thought in terms of like dramatic. You always want your mini bosses to be like these dramatic fights and you hope for that and sometimes it doesn't work out that way or like the look-see man.

You get some fan crit, fan fumble that just eats the entire encounter. I was hoping that wouldn't happen. Yeah, I mean it totally delivered. I made very few modifications for five people. I just, a very small one is I gave an extra shadow to the, when they activated the key, I gave an extra two shadows instead of, because it looked more like the image. As written, you really only get one shadow. But I think there's fun things that we can do with that as well.

But beyond that, I don't even know if I gave them more hit points. It just kind of worked and you guys kept getting in lines. I knew I had a line attack, but it never frigging works out. How excited are you when you get to do lightning bolt as like Atticus? It's the best. It's the best. I'm like, God, how excited are you when you get to do lightning bolt? Yeah, it's like Atticus is the best. And I'm just like, I'm like, I still remember the fight on the in this is strange. And it's the fight on like the ships on the river when it was like in that dream space, dreamscape, pull up nexus. And we had to fight a bunch of sailors. I still remember it was so thrilling watching around with like watching chess pieces

on a board. You were just lining them up and didn't realize it as you were tagging other people. And I was like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, like it's perfect. And the stars aligned and then I jumped in, lightning bolt. And so yeah, you must've seen three of us line up.

Oh my God. And you know, maybe it's just from playing Baldur's Gate that my eyes were even drawn to that because like in Baldur's Gate, when you do lightning bolt, you totally get to line it up wall of flame or wall of fire. I do the same thing. Like my eyes were ready for it, but you just think they're never going to fucking live. And you guys just kept ending up in, in lines.

Just the shape of the room made it where it's not like guys were being dumb. It's just, there was always a line for me to get to where I could catch like three of you or at least two of you. So yeah, I mean, it just, you want those fights to deliver. I think a lot of people think I'm always out for blood because like I always make it feel that way. And I joke, I'm always over and over again. Like, it's just part of being the showman.

Like, you know, I want, I want a great fight. And there were parts there when some of you started to go down and I'm like, oh man, I hope they don't go. But it's weird because like people will be like, well, you can control that. You could not do it. But like, that's just not how I play. I let the dice do it because then I don't have to worry about it. But I was worried there for a little while.

I was like, oh man, I I think somebody's gonna die here. But great fight. Yeah, I really thought so too. I knew I was dwindling on heal spells. And then also, this was the most interesting fight that I've ever had as a healer. I haven't played too many like dedicated healers. And this was definitely a fight I loved and hated it because like it really pushed on the mechanics, which I love. Yeah, but I hated it because it really pushed on the mechanics, which I love, but I hated it because it was torture. It put me to, there were a couple of decision points where it put me to decisions of bringing up one person or another. That is brutal.

When you are the party healer and you have to look at a friend of yours and say, I'm going to heal the other friend's character and not yours, even for good reason. It never feels good. You know? So, uh, that was, that was really, that was really tough and part of the thing that made it fun. Uh, but I mean, it's another example of it. It's not me tooting my own horn.

It's another example of like, how do you do that fight without somebody that is only healing the whole time? How do you do it? You know, it's wild. Yeah. that is only healing the whole time. How do you do it? You know, it's wild. Yeah, like if it was a four person party without a healer, you better get a lot of potions. Yeah, because like even, yeah, a lot of potions. But even- That's two actions.

Even with massive damage output, you could be like, oh, well, if you just have so much damage output, you could burn them down before people go down. Or burn them down before people go down. The problem is they had that shadowy ability to dodge out of attacks triggered by taking damage. Soon as you do that, you completely negate the biggest, brawniest damage dealer.

It just doesn't matter. And then you also add onto that essentially mirror image. And it's just really complicated. So yeah, I don't know how we would have done it without a healer, but it was pretty tough. So you're saying for the record, this is recorded, you know. You didn't take your foot off the gas? No? No.

No, I don't. I don't feel like I did. I think with one exception. I think with one exception. Me taking my foot off the gas is like not attacking someone when they're down. If you call that taking your foot off the gas when there's other standing opponents, like that's why I lean to say that's not. Like it's, I'm not trying to, if I want to kill you, I can kill you.

That's not really what Kniep is trying to do. Kniep is like trying to teach you a lesson in a way during this fight. Discipline you, yeah. If I needed to, I could kill. As long as there's people still standing, it doesn't make sense. There are some enemies where it's like, I'm out for blood and even if I'm going to die, if I can take one of you with me, I'll do it. I've played that way before and I've killed people because of it.

I mean, I think of like zombie paralysis, like continually attacking someone. Zombies are mindless. They don't know they just want to eat brains. That happened in end of book one of Strange Aeons. A smart character knows like as long as there are people standing in the battlefield, there's no reason to continue attacking other people. And then the other way I may take my foot off the brake is by randomly attacking people as opposed to, you know, focusing on the most tactically advantageous target to take down.

But here's, here's a little truth. I lie about that all the time. I pretend that I'm rolling and sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. But you know what happens? No one's feelings are ever hurt if I pretend to roll a dice. Because some people, especially our group, get sensitive. Like they're like, why are you going to keep attacking me? Or why do you ever attack me? As Jared says, why do you ever have to put my character in danger? Why have I ever been attacked? Yeah.

I try not to metagame knowing like, all right, well, so and so's got the worst, we'll save. I'm casting a spell, there's a will save. I'm going to do that. I try not to metagame like that. Unless I'm against the ropes and I'm like, all right, I need to turn this encounter around. Let's metagame a little bit here to build suspense. But for the most part, I do sometimes say, one, two is this, three, four is this, five, six.

And I live by the die, but sometimes I do that and just lie because I know what's gonna be best for the encounter and then nobody's feeling for it. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting, makes sense. Yeah, you can take that. Fun little option there, yeah. You got some sensitive friends, try that one out. It's what the FOD is for.

Anybody, any GMs out there run RPGs with sensitive people? Little option. Yeah, I think that's all sensitive friends try that one. It's what the fought is for anybody Anybody any GM's out there run RPGs with sensitive people? Sensitive nerds. Yeah sensitive nerds are yeah the the overwhelming majority of RPG players So we all have that experience. All right, so I think with that I'm gonna move on We have more fallout to talk about. Obviously the episode ends the moment the fight ends. So we'll talk more about the fallout next week. But for right now, yeah, just looking at the initial introduction of our villain and the

fight itself, that's all I wanted to cover today. So let's get into a little, we are stupid. Look at this fight from another angle. Thank you. Nicholas. Actually, before we go into that, I'm going to do we are stupid looking back at last week's FOD. If you recall, Troy, this is why I love the YouTube comments folks are so diligent on there sometimes that I love it. There is we discussed, remember skid brought up using a spell book as a scroll, a page from a spell book, and you could consume it. And Professor Eric was like, there's no rule for that in 2E. I don't even

see a rule for it in 1E. I believe it's transferred over from 3.5. That's what I said. I think something in your collective unconsciousness was reminding you of something from like an earlier iteration of D&D. Yeah. So we had two juicy, there were several responses, but we had two really juicy ones on the YouTube comments that I want to shout out for writing really, really good comments. And it's so funny because both say completely different things for where this is coming from. But both seem so accurate that like, I just have to mention it. So first we have Walter Engel, who writes in about this and says, This question

was asked in an issue of Dragon magazine in the sage advice column. And they believe it was answered by Guy Gax. And essentially, a spell and this is what I love a spell in a spell book is an esoteric understanding of magic expressed in a personal notation unique to each spellbook scribe. So like, it's not that if you have a magic missile spell in a spell book, it looks the same as every magic missile spell in every spell book. Like each scribe or each wizard that pens these has their own sort of flavor and take on it, which is why it is difficult to decipher when, even if you're a trained wizard, to decipher the read magic spell. It means you need to be able to decipher this stuff. This is why transcribing a spell requires another major wizard hours or days

to interpret the spell and then make it their own, right? Which is this very cool idea. So then an option was suggested in Dragon Magazine that as an alternate players could in dire straits use a spell book page as a scroll. However, it was said that if for this to be done, it would wipe the spell from the spell book and only the person who wrote the spell in the book could use it this way. So you could not do it if you found a spell book. Uh, it had to be from your own hand. Uh, he says, not only do I think this was an inspiration for ritual spells, but it's probably the origin of skids rip and run idea.

Yeah. So pretty, it was really great comment there. And then from Baraz Red, casting from a spell book came from the first edition of Unearthed Arcana by Gary Gygax in 1985. It was in an optional extra rules area. And they said they used this book in AD&D and in AD&D 2e. They loved Unearthed Arcana. But basically the rules seem the same.

It consumed the page. It also had an additional risk of consuming the entire book. You had to roll on it, I think, to see if it consumed the entire book. It had to be from the same class. It had to be a spell you already know. In this one, it does not say you had to physically write it, but it had to be a spell you already know from a class that you already know. In this one, it does not say you had to physically write it but it had to be a spell you already know from a class that you already know. So anyway, those two comments I thought were interesting and a little like look back at the 80s of

D&D and how that probably got into Skids unconscious way back then and has stayed with them all these years. Isn't that cool? Yeah, it's just really cool. All right, a We Are Stupid from Toronto really quick. And this came from YouTube. From the Toronto show? From the Toronto show. At 63 World Series, I cast Shore Strike, formerly True Strike, before casting a telekinetic

projectile to, this was the flaps fight to a creature that was concealed. They write in 63 World Series to say that Sure Strike as a spell ignores any flat check for concealment or hidden. So that's a good thing to know and makes that way more powerful, which is awesome and good to know. All right, let's get back into Professor Eric's Analyzation of episode 31 from campaign two. Yes, yes, we know. Matthew forgot that Kniep was the target of his lead, pursue a lead, and that his divisor stratagem should have been free. He knew it right after the episode and was just head slapping and was so frustrated. You will hear it next week in the episode. The next episode we record, he's like,

he's so mad at himself. Yes, thanks for pointing that out, Professor Eric. Matthew realized that just after the episode was over. This is a quick note from him. Sometimes it's not a correction as much as it is a note for future reference. I think this is particularly to you Troy on incapacitation. He says, just remember, the creatures that once were a higher level than us are moving past to a lower level than us. In this example, the Temerger Gorga. He's just that, you know, it might have been 10 episodes ago, they may have been beneficiaries of the incapacitation trait, whereas now they fall, you know, underneath our level and would be subject to the spell as usual. Did we do it differently? I believe he mentioned it. He said, remember that the Tempest Gorgas is lower level than you

and incapacitate does not apply for effects like stunning fist. This is where I guess it came up. He said the Gorgas saved so it had no effect, but it was not a critical success. We must have said in the episode that it's a success. All right. So basically a critical success and then moved on. He was like, it's a success.

So it didn't matter. It didn't matter in the episode at all, but it should not have been that the Gorgas now lower level than us. Yeah, in my head, Cannon, I wasn't thinking about incapacitation trait. I don't remember it coming up either, but he's watching this with a fine tooth comb there. So I think maybe he caught that. But anyway, just something to keep in mind. I would have never even thought like, oh, the last time you fought the Gorgas, Maybe he caught that. But anyway, just something to keep in mind. I would have never even thought like, oh, the last time you fought the Gorgas, that

encounter is gone from my memory. Yeah. But yes, it is good to know. Okay. Let's go back to the monastic archer stance, something that we've gone into many times. Professor Eric bringing this one up this time is to clarify that, ah, they did in the remaster address the issue of dismissing the stance. And I'm going to share here a little bit right from Demi Plane, our fantastic sponsor, that

the stance is a general combat strategy that you enter by using an action with the stance trade. This is actually pulled from the fighter chapter of the player core. This is just a sidebar. A stance lasts until you get knocked out until its requirements are violated until the encounter ends or blah, blah, blah. We know all of this. They had to add on a sentence at the end. You can dismiss a stance.

This was not in the original, original, the original core rule book for second edition. Now in the player core, this one simple edition of five words, you can dismiss a stance, then points us to an action, a general overall action dismiss. It's just in the game. You end an effect that state you can dismiss it, dismiss ends the entire effect unless noted. Otherwise it is an action. So we now, uh, now, you know, you do whatever you want, but now they've cleared it up and by the book, Zephyr should be able to exit the stance without stowing or dropping the bow as long as she spends an action to do it.

Yeah. I mean, I'm fine with that. Just, you gotta use the action. So you kind of get burnt either way, but spends an action to do it. Yeah, I mean, I'm fine with that. You gotta use the action, so you kinda get burnt either way, but that's great. Yeah, and the way that he laid it out is, and Professor Eric always dives into these things,

I love it, he says, the remaster, blah, blah, blah, blah, he says, Zephyr can drop the bow free action to lose the stances requirements and exit the stance. And then in parentheses, of course, picking the bow back up would be an action later. So it's effectively time deferring the same action cost. Yeah. So you know, drop the bow and don't deal and you're like, I'm just going hands and fists for the rest of the fight. Totally, totally. And like, yeah, most of the time you would just pick up the bow at the end of the fight, but you did pick up that as an action, even if it was after the encounter, right? Like you do essentially always have to pay that price, but it might be more valuable to do it after the

encounter. But sometimes you want to keep that bow to stay flexible. So using the dismiss action. It'd be worthwhile to take like a sorcerer dedication for Zephyr or something so that like, you get that, save the action, drop the leg, get to a certain point in the fight, we drop the bow and just start slinging spells. Mm-hmm. Then you don't have to worry about it. You could punch, but you also have ranged cantrip options. I hope somebody takes a dedication. Those are fun.

I did. Brother Ramius has a medic dedication. Oh, but I'm talking about like the dedication. Oh, medic archetype. Yeah, yeah, like another class. Yeah, it's the multi-classing for 2A. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, I guess is medic, is that technically a dedication or is it an archetype? I think it's the, I think it's an archetype, but it's called something different. No, it's definitely called medic, but it's a, oh, it is an archetype. It's an archetype, not a dedication.

Well, it does say medic an archetype not a dedication well it does say medic dedication it's a dedication it's just that legacy content though so it's something different now is it yeah it's this ledgers very high it's very boldly highlighted as legacy not legal in the remaster sorry you can no longer be medic no but let's be honest, you never were. Let's be honest, you never were. Honestly, it's one of my favorite ongoing stories of Brother Ramius is like the, the, I never thought of this when I made the character, never pictured this. And this is one of those beautiful things I think that came out of gameplay is his harried,

like, local frontier doctor vibe. Like, it just cracks my shit up. Like all these people are always coming to him and he's just like not even that good. He's just the only one that's there to do it. It's so funny. He's doing the best he can. He's doing the best he can.

Okay, a note for Sydney. I'll send this along to Sydney. We talked about recharging spell strike by casting a spell. Regular cantrips or even regular spells do not recharge spell strike. Only her focus spells, like dimensional assault, recharge spell strike. I think this is my fault. I don't think Sydney ever did that or said that. He says in his notes, Professor Eric says, I think Joe confused her. But it didn't really impact the episode. But it was like, I think I said like, I'll just cast the spell to recharge it. Like it has to be

a specific only the spells that are from her focus spells can recharge spell strike, not just casting any spell. Let's move on to Talitha laying or Matthew laying this out. We had a little back and forth about this. And it ended up being a very interesting and enlightening thing for me from the remaster and that is, oh sorry, that is the interact. Oh man, where is it? There it is. The interact action. Swap. How huge was this Troy? Yeah. Shout out to Matthew for catching that. I think a fan told him. For real. I mean, it's just awesome that he brought that. I had no idea you could use this. Taking that two action thing of storing a weapon and drawing another one and

turning it into one action. It's just huge. I know a lot of people would think it's not huge because it's like, dude, it's an action. What's the big deal? It's like the action economy feels so tight in this game. And the amount of times you want to swap one held item for another, it's almost every fight, you want to do that at one point or another. And so yeah, I think that it is incredibly valuable. And then that was a huge bonus to learn that that change in the remaster. So yeah, shout out to Matthew and then fans that pointed that out to to help us with that. Yeah, that's, that's a good change for sure. It's just minor, but it adds just a little more,

what's the word I'm looking for? It's like, it just enhances the user experience. It's just like a little bonus for the player to hamstring them a tiny bit less. Yes, exactly. And that's it, which to me is fantastic, considering how many mechanics were in that episode, how many people went down, you know what I mean?

You were using really interesting, cool new abilities from Kniepoh. I mean, I don't see anything here that was like, oh man, it would have changed the outcome of the fight. Yeah, dude, I mean, I'm thinking to, we did Strange A the outcome of the fight. Like, it's almost none of that. I'm thinking too, we did Strange Aeons last weekend on Saturday night, and that was another crazy fight. And you know, I'm sure there's some stuff we did wrong,

but overall I think our combined aptitude is growing, because we're putting in the work. And it's really making a difference in the combats. And this is what I keep telling myself, it's like, just all put in the work a little bit each day and get like 1% better every week. And you'll be 52% better by the end of the year. And that makes a huge difference

because if we get the rules down to the point where like you don't have to think about it anymore, it's like doing a play. They always say like, until you learn your lines, you can't really start thinking about delving into the character and acting. You learn the lines, just know those so you never have to worry about it. Now you can start really working.

I've never let the rules get in the way of what we do, but as I think about like ways that we can separate ourselves further and further from the pack, you know, why not just know the rules as well as we possibly can So that then we can really start to play and it sounds obvious and something we've been dealing with for a long time But you know, we're we're at a good place right now where we have some extra time to delve into that and I think it's gonna It's starting to you're starting to see the fruits of that Available time that we have. Yeah, I agree and it's about repetition. It's all about playing this game over and over again. I was talking to my daughter the other day because she has started playing softball and does not know the sport at all. And so we're learning and we're playing and baseball is an incredibly complicated

sport to just like walk into with no reference, especially when your only references have been like soccer, football and basketball, which in one way or another, all kind of have two teams going for a goal at one end or another in one way or another. This is like very, very hard to wrap your head around. And so little times I'll give her a little tidbits, little tidbits about why this game is different and why, and one of the things was she got, she struck out three times in a game, her first game, and she was so bummed out. And I was like, exactly. I told her the story about our first, do you remember our first golf ball game?

My first at bat slow pitch coed softball. I struck out my first at bat on Troy's team. And Joe's a very good player. So it's just, you got the, you got the yips. I got the yips. I got the yips. I swung and missed at an underhand toss to me. I mean, it was just crazy. You just start with one strike, but yeah.

Yeah, that's true. We did start with some with one strike, but anyway, uh, I, I was trying to explain to her how complicated this is and how long it takes to understand and get better at it and how even when you're great at it, you also strike out all the time, right? Like it's a kind of a hard thing to wrap your head around. Best hitters strike out 70% of the time. Right, exactly.

And so I always think of the line in Moneyball where it's just a throwaway. It's not even a big line. It's just throwaway where the scouts are all talking and they're like, we like this guy. Like, I don't like that guy. He blah, blah, blah. He's like, yeah, I know he's not quite ready yet, but bring them up. This kid's in the major or in the minors, bring them up. Now we'll get them 500 at bats and you're going to start to see some improvement.

500 at bats. And this is somebody that's already an exceptional college player that went into the minor leagues is a paid professional player. now to make it in the majors They need 500 at bats to see if they can start playing So I so I mentioned that to her and it makes me think of this is like don't underestimate How much of this game you have to play before it starts becoming second nature to you it you have to play? hundreds of hours before it really starts to sink in and flow. And yeah, that's why I think that we're doing great.

I think we're doing great. Dude, so I'm assistant coaching Archer's little league team and now he's like on a legit tee ball team. We were just doing like the last couple of years, we were doing just the basics of like, you have a ball, you chase somebody around with the ball, but now it's like you play games as a practice and it's the greatest thing ever because you know I coached our team forever and despite any of my shortcomings as a human being in social settings, I'm a pretty damn good coach. I'm an inspiring coach. I feel like I'm right back in my element, but as little kids, it's like herding sheep.

Now, I'm just taking Archer out and doing two ground balls a day because he just doesn't know how to field a ground ball. Basically it's like grab at it and stuff. So I literally am like, we're just going to go out and do two ground balls because he can't say no to that. If he's not in the mood, I'm like, come on, two ground balls and that's all we do. I'm just teaching him that. You do that every single day.

This book I finished a while ago called Atomic Habits preaches this and I just kind of mentioned this. It's like you get 1% better every day in something. You're 365% better at that at the end of the year. Two little ground balls a day, you'll see the difference. Just from week to week now, I was teaching them like don't hit the tee. I'm like even if you just hit the ball just a tiny bit, just try not to hit the tee. And now it's just like first hit clean, first hit clean.

And it's just, it's great. I feel like I'm living my dream again. Want to get the jerks back together. Oh man, dude, it's the best. I was wondering where Jalen Hurts was getting that from. That is right out of every Jalen Hurts press conference. He says, you've got to get 1% better every day. We just try to, that's what we say every practice, get 1% better every day. Well, yeah, this is the hardest thing is like when every people want to make change in their life,

all you see is like all the things that you want to change. You're like, I don't even know where to begin. And then you're like, all right, I'll pick this thing. And you're like, how am I going to lose 40 pounds? Like you can't think about that. You know what I mean? Like you just have to like, what's, what's one percent, what can I do today that will put me like 1% of the way there? Then you do that consistently. Not eat six slices of pizza today. Try to eat five slices of pizza. I mean, that's 20% better.

There is a truth to that. It's like you just get 1% better in something every single day. You're 365% better in that. Then extrapolate that over a lifetime, you can really make change. But if you think about the end goal and like how far it is away, you're going to drive yourself crazy. Yeah. Well, bringing it back to this, we're getting 1% better every day at Pathfinder 2E. Little by little, little by little. I think that considering how big that fight was, that's a relatively clean report card from Professor Eric.

So thank you. Awesome. All right. Let's get in a little listener mail. Let's talk to the nation. See what you guys want to talk about. Ah, thank you Nicholas Lowe. You are an amazing composer and singer. Let's kick it off with Michael in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I'm going to give you a softball, Troy, so to speak, coming off of, speaking of softballs, here's a juicy one for you. Hey guys. I'm going to rip it up the third bass line, bro.

Do y'all have any interest in checking out the new Starfinder when it comes out next year? It's supposed to be 100% compatible with Pathfinder remastered. I think it'd be great. Love the show. Michael from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Thank you, Michael, for writing in. Yes, we are interested in Starfinder second edition. That's why I say it's softball. No worries about that. We're going to be, we'll be play testing some of it. We'll be trying it out.

They're coming up with a play test this year. So we're going to try it out. We're going to, we're going to record some Starfinder one, at least one episode that's going to be released during Gen Con. And then we have pitched a, a Starfinder 2e one shot live at GenCon that you'll be able to buy tickets to. The catalog comes out in less than a month. So I imagine shortly before that we'll find out if we got that.

And I mean, I asked for a 400-seat room because I imagine with the play test dropping that day and our association with Paizo, we could get some masses in the seats. And I don't know. I think that'd be a lot of fun. We're going to have some, a little playtest session with the, on-call GM, what's his name, Thurston Hillman, kind of walk us through because there's some significant differences obviously. I can't imagine how they're going to do Starship combat, but we are interested, you know, we're definitely interested.

Yeah, definitely interested. All right, moving along to another mic. Mic in Menifee, California, in regards to, this is just a comment, I think. Oh yeah, yeah. In regards to Asta being nerfed, in regards to Asta being nerfed with Shocking Grasp turning into Thunderstrike, which is now a saving throw instead of an attack roll. Couldn't she just take the expansive spell strike, the expansive spell strike, the expansive spell strike feat at her next available class feat. I'm still new to TUI, but it seems the way to incorporate a

saving throw spell into spell strike. It's not really a feat tax because it applies to a whole lot of spells. Yes, absolutely. You are correct. I didn't know about this until we mentioned it last week. Multiple people mentioned it in the YouTube comments. And this is something that I have shared with Sydney.

So Sydney is now aware of it. I didn't know that that was a magus feat that she could take as a class feat. So there you go. Now we can expand the spells that you can use. Somebody had mentioned it a few weeks ago. I saw it in a comment and I was like, yeah, this is another yet another reason why I'm not just letting you mix and match the most convenient spells. If we're going to lean into the remaster,

then that's why a feat like that exists, because you can't just use. I mean, your table can do whatever the hell you want, but I didn't want to do that because take the feat. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to talk more about the transition to the remaster next week in a listener mail.

So I've got a listener mail, a really great question. I just don't have time for it this week, but we're going to talk about it next week in a listener mail. So I've got a listener mail, a really great question. I just don't have time for it this week. But we're going to talk about it next week. Stay tuned next week for some a little bit deeper insight into the transition into the remaster. There's a good one coming. Okay, one last question this week. I love this. This is Mateus from Brazil. So we're getting a an international edition of listener mail from Mateus. First, a long comment that I want to share

because it's very nice. What's up, Joe and Troy? My name is Matthias from Brazil. Me and my girlfriend are huge fans of the GCN for about six years already. Anyway, I want to tell you a great story about the Naish. After the Patreon started, I really wanted to become a member, but it was hard financially because of the US dollar exchange the dollar exchange rate being from Brazil and all one day I was on the subreddit talking with some nation members and that came up well guess what two awesome people Michael and Robert Contacted me and told me they would send me some bucks via PayPal so that I could subscribe and get the experience At the time we were talking about Raiders of the Lost Continent. Well, that was 2019. With their money, I got to subscribe for about four months. After that, I was so hooked on the quality of the content and so inspired by their generosity that I've

kept my subscription going this whole time and have been a subscriber since then. It just goes to show how awesome the community you guys have built is. Thank you, Michael and Robert." So really, really nice comment there. And that just goes to show you we love the niche. And then he says, Finally, I have a if I have time for a question, it would be this. I'm sorry, that's all the time we have to we just run out of time. But keep subscribing. Yeah, thanks. So I'm going to sort of summarize this quickly. but it's basically, how would you feel, how would you deal with a situation where a character dies in a campaign and the same player wants

to bring that same character back in another campaign at another time, like a different campaign, different time with the same build background, et cetera, like a reset. Would you allow them to do this? Thank you so much, Mateus Fell. I don't know if Mateus is actually dealing with this question. Never had this question asked before. I think I know your answer, but.

Troy. I mean, dude, who am I to gatekeep what some weirdo wants to do? I mean, it is not my place to tell some psychopath that they shouldn't do that. Who would I be if I dissuaded some asocial, uncreative weirdo from recycling a dead character instead of making a brand new one I mean look at these books These books are gorgeous for a reason And you can use them to build a new character

Your character's dead, move on Your character's dead, move on! And I recycle my character. I loved it so much. Build the same class! Just build a new backstory! Build everything similar and just reskin it. Build a relative, a brother, sister. Oh, that's like a step, I hate that step too, but like even that would be better than like

bringing him back. Wait, listen, you do whatever you want as long as you're having fun. Yeah, it's really tough. I'll tell you, when you get into this territory and, and Mateus use the words, would you allow it when you get into that territory? It's a little, it's a little tricky as a GM. It's hard to, like you said, gatekeep people from what they're inspired by, or they think would be really fun.

With some exceptions. I think it's pretty, I think it's clear up at the stop, up at the top of the start of a campaign to put a list of rules of things that you won't allow guns. You know, I don't want any guns in my game. That's fine. Yeah, that doesn't seem personal. That doesn't seem like you're attacking somebody who's trying to have fun doing a certain thing.

Um, you know, saying, oh man, no spell casters, uh, because I'm going to be running a no magic campaign, you know, something like that, like that's a style that you want to do and you want to lay that out, players that want to play in that game that, you know, they'll know whatever. Yep. When you get into creative decisions that you just don't like because you find them stupid and annoying, it's kind of hard to gatekeep like that. Like saying, you know, so this comes, this came up with Jared because it was great in Blood of the Wild. I don't even know if it's aired yet, but it's not a spoiler. It's just basically there was the joke was made, like one of the best ways to get Jared to not kill

your character is tell him that your backup character is a frog man or like a lechie or something like that because he hates those kind of weird classes. And Jared, when you put the screws to him on it, it's like, if you want to play that garbage, of course I will let you do it. Like you know what I mean? He's like, I can't not allow you to do it. I don't have to like it, but I can't not allow you to do it. So it is tricky when you get into what a GM can and cannot allow.

Make sure that the player is having fun. That is the most important thing. If you're playing a campaign that's like a prequel and they're like, Oh, well, my character wouldn't have died yet. Could they just be level one again and blah, blah, whatever. And they really excited about the idea. Fine. I mean, of course I would allow it. I would never do something like that. It's not something that I'd be interested in, but like, it really is hard to, don't get too into the business

of not allowing things as a GM. It just sours the game a little bit for players. Try to say yes more, and you're gonna end up having a better game overall. But yeah. Or do what I would do is kick that person out of the group for even suggesting it. Sure, you can do it in your new group because you're out.

Yeah. So I guess the extreme response would be, Hey, you're not not allowing it. You're just kicking that player out of the game permanently for even suggesting. I'm also going to tell every other group I know to not let you in. I'm going to blacklist you on top of them. Blacklist you? Sure, you can do it. Oh my God.

Just not in the state of New York. God, that's amazing. Well, Matthias, thank you very much for the question. Thank you for writing in. Please write in again. We love these kinds of questions that are about everybody's game and what, you know, advice we can give in those areas. And we really, really appreciate you sticking with that subscription even after the gifted

months. We really appreciate it. That's how we keep the lights on. Oh, oh, what is that? Is that a little, little Roger Cumstone action over there? Just got to get ready. We start recording season six soon. Oh, that's right.

Got to get in the cum zone. The cum zone. Stay away from the cum zone. Do yourself a favor. Stay away from the cum zone. All right, everybody. That's going to do it for this week. Thank you so much, as always, for checking out the FOD.

You know, fun stuff coming up as usual. We got Gatewalkers tomorrow night, eight o'clock. Also, we're live in Kansas City tomorrow night at eight o'clock. Yeah, we have Austin show on Saturday. We've got Blade Runner Episode two on Monday, and then we'll be back with more FOD next Wednesday. Until then, take it easy, everybody. Have a fantastic weekend, can't wait to see you Kansas City and Austin, see you guys soon.

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