The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 7/31/24

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

Troy and Joe debrief their quick trip to San Diego before getting into the nitty gritty of Gen Con 2024! There is a TON of new shows and games dropping on the GCN all weekend long. We're doing our best to make this the best four days in gaming whether you're in Indianapolis or joining us from home this year. The guys also react to THE WAGER in Episode 44 of Campaign 2 and of course get into a little We Are Stupid. In Listener Mail, the idea of combat maneuvers start to get MUCH more attractive in PF2E! Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/0kY2ukuvQKg 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. Yeah! What is going on everybody? Welcome back to CannonFodder. It is Wednesday, July 31st, 2024 and I'm your old pal Joe O'Brien. And I'm Troy. I had my first baby six years ago today, LeValley. Hey, happy birthday to the Archmaster Flex. Archmaster Flex, yes. And for his birthday, I'm leaving to fly to Gen Con. What a dad. What a dad.

What a supportive father. Yeah, we just, they can't tell time, so we just celebrated yesterday. So here's your birthday. Cool. Yeah, we just they don't they can't tell time so we just celebrated yesterday Your birthday cool That's amazing well it is a crazy time your your son's birthday jammed right in between San Diego Comic-Con and Gen Con we are in the thick of it now San Diego Comic-Con just behind us Gen Con Laid out in front of us very excited for Gen Gen Con, but it is daunting. There is a lot coming. Well, talk to me about San Diego Comic Con first. How was your Con? How was your San Diego

CC? It's good, man. You know, it's not, that whole scene is not really my cup of tea. I'm not way into pop culture and, you know, I loved comic books as a kid. I still have my collection all in their plastics and stuff and I'm trying to get the kids into it and in toys and shit but it's just not my favorite type of con. However, I had 10 times more fun this year than I did last year because I did more. We got to do the Marvel show in the main hall on Friday night, which was just really, really wild and fun to do this Marvel show right next to Hall H where they announce all the big Marvel movies and whatnot. Then on Saturday, I got to do this great panel in the morning that had like, there must have

been 500 people in there for this. It was called Roll a Niche, how to turn a live play or how to... Basically, the interplay between taking your TTRPGs and doing them live. Then I did Faster Purple Worm Saturday night and then I went to the airport. Overnight flight came back on Sunday. It was a real fucking whirlwind, but I just had a phenomenal time. I even enjoyed walking around the con, looking at the toys and stuff. It was a good time, but would have loved to have another week before Gen Con Yeah, would be nice to have a gap week in between how was faster purple worm? It was awesome, man. It was awesome

You know when I'm doing a show like that where I'm guessing on somebody else's John ski My goal in there is like I want people to leave and look up the Glass Cannon Network. Look me up, look whatever. We got Sydney on these as well. We've got like two for the price of one. It's like, how do I just make my mark? And Skid, because he's the best, went to both panels and we just crushed it. I went in there with a plan.

You know Sydney's going to nail it. I just went in with a plan. I'm like, you're just going to – because I don't there with a plan. You know Sydney's going to nail it. I just went in with a plan. I'm like, I don't play as much anymore. I'm like, I'm going to make my moments count. I just feel like people coming afterwards like, who are you guys? That was really, really funny. Skid and Brody were in the fifth row or something. I could just play to Skid the whole time. I was definitely- Definitely crack it up like a bucket in his chair. I was dying. Sometimes I feel up like a bucket in his chair.

Sometimes I feel like off-color jokes and stuff that's a little edgier, doesn't fly in LA, doesn't fly in front of the TTRPG crowd, but I was like, fuck it, I'm doing it anyways. It worked. Somehow it worked. I got to work with Iffy and Angeley. They've both been on Critical Role. They have these accolades. They're like legit actors and writers in the industry and they were wonderful.

It was great to just make new connections and hopefully draw more people to the Glass Cannon Network. That would be nice. How was the attendance at the Faster Purple Worm show? I want to say maybe 250, 300. Wow, that's great. Yeah. I'm bummed because they asked me to do the show at Gen Con, which it just runs right

up against our glass cannon party, which is the talk of all of Gen Con. It's like- Get out of here. It's happening at the same exact time, so it's like, fuck, I can't do it. And so then they asked Jared and Ross and they were like, yeah, we'll do it. I was like, guys, we got a fucking industry party you got to come to. But I'm bummed because now it's Jared, Ross, Becca Scott, Nora Ibrahim, and obviously Lillard and Bill Rayor.

They're like almost sold out in 800 seat theater. I'm like, motherfucker, I would have just shown up late to my own party or move to the party if I had known that was happening. But I'm sure that's going to be great. Not that my dance card isn't already full as is yours. I got six live shows I got to do. I got to have a GM four of them. I got to play into them and I got to run three or four gauntlets.

It's going to be wild. So let's talk about it as we look forward to Gen Con. First thing out of the gate is gonna be, and this is interesting, our first ever Get in the Trunk Live. So Get in the Trunk Live is happening first thing, first day of Gen Con. And you're playing in that

and you're not playing Roger Cumstone. Right. And I don't know who you're playing, so this is gonna be interesting. I'm running it. I can sit in and send you a a character shape and I'm like, yeah more fun who cares and and I believe that one is gonna be streamed, which is why I bring it up

so like people should know like if you want to see it like Check the Gen Con twitch channel. Is it 1130? No, it's a 12 12 on Thursday It is my understanding that is going to be the first streamed content for all of Gen Con on the Gen Con Twitch channel. And it will be the only one of our six shows that is streamed. As far as I know, because I haven't seen anything else in the program about Blade, Starfinder or the 1920s Call of Cthulhu and obviously our Modern and Glass Cannon Live aren't streamed.

So that might be your only chance to catch us streamed, but you'll have plenty to watch with the other stuff that we're releasing. Right. And so that kickoff at 12 o'clock will be streamed. That's great. But then also right at the same time, I guess we're going up against ourselves on in terms of YouTube. Oh, we get along.

We're going to be premiering on YouTube a bunch of stuff every day. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Let's start just talking about the very, very beginning, like tomorrow, because it's going to start tomorrow. What should people be ready for? Is it 10 a.m. Eastern Time tomorrow? What is airing? It'll be a Pathfinder second edition scenario, a four-hour plus session that Joe ran.

That I ran. That's right. That's going to be 10 a.m. tomorrow that Joe ran. That I ran. That's right. That's going to be 10 a.m. tomorrow, Pathfinder Society, one shot. That's 10 to two, and then from two to six, it's a Starfinder second edition play test one shot that I ran that you're in, and Skid, and Matthew, and Kate, and we had a blast with that. Thursday is Paizo Day. And then of course, we're going to be doing Get in the Trunk, which will air at noon on

the Gen Con channel. And then Thursday night is Glass Cannon Live at the Athenaeum, which we'll be running up against a new episode of the Glass Cannon podcast, which is by the way, a fucking unmissable episode. So spectacular. And that's just day one. That's just day one. That's just day one. It really is, I think, we're feeding right

into this best four days in gaming thing. We really are just, and with all the publishers that we work with, just going ham on how much we're putting out over a four day period. And also how much we're playing while we're there at Gen Con. We're going to be just doing a bunch of shows and airing a bunch of stuff Including so on Friday, we got a couple man. What's on Friday?

Give me 45 minutes. No Friday kicks off with Pendragon part 3 the finale of Pendragon. So our little Pendragon game if you've been watching watching it, the finale is going to be on Friday morning. Friday 10am. That's a two hour session. That is awesome. So just FYI, like I already recorded it. It is awesome. Yeah, we recorded all of these. You got to check out that final part. And then at noon on YouTube, the first part of our two-part Deathmatch Island game is going to premiere. That's Jared running me, Rob, Skid, and Mary Lou through an absolutely unbelievable game that is going to – I guarantee it's going to be the game that people purchase the most

after Gen Con, after they see us play this. It's so wonderful. It's kind of like Survivor except you're killing each other. That's happening at noon. Then after that is welcome to Night Vale. Obviously, last week we showed Jared and Matthew. Sample of character creation. Create a little character.

This will be them playing in this world. Then we finish off Friday with Marvel character creation using the X-Men expansion book, which comes out during Gen Con. I think there'll be some limited copies available at Gen Con and then it releases on August 1st or 2nd. Yeah, you can purchase it either at the Con or you can order it online. This book, I mean for fans of the X-Men, it is one of the most beautiful source books I've ever seen.

We got to hang out with Matt Forbeck, the creator of the game at San Diego Comic Con. Got a good night hang with him after it was like a post-party party. It was just like us and Forbeck and his son and a couple of other really cool people and just chatting him. Dude's a wealth of information on the font of info in the industry. This is going to be his like, it's like his 38th Gen Con or something. Like his consecutive Gen Con, maybe even more than that. It's wild. He goes back to the

old old days like, you know, like in Geneva. Yeah, the Lake Geneva days. So that's what's happening on YouTube on Friday, but then at the con on Friday in the morning We've got or the afternoon should say we've got call of Cthulhu live Which is the 1920 show that I'm gonna run with a cavalcade of characters I've got seven six or seven players including Seth Skorkowsky, Ross Bryant, Jared Logan, Rob Kurkowitz. It's going to be out and this is the scenario that Scott Dorward has written. I have a tab open on my screen right now.

I'm prepping that and I took a little time off for cannon fodder. Then Friday night is our Athenaeum show, which at the time of this recording, we're recording this on Monday. We're pretending like it's Wednesday. Wednesday is my son's birthday. We celebrated this on Monday. So we're pretending like it's Wednesday. Wednesday is my son's birthday. We celebrated it on Tuesday. But there's two tickets left to that show. Two tickets left.

So probably sold out by the time you listen to this. That means we've added like 150 people from last year's show. That theater is going to be insane. And that's modern Call of Cthulhu. I'm calling it Goonies 2. And it's going to be insane. That's modern Call of Cthulhu. I'm calling it Goonies 2. It's going to be wild. I have a whole playlist for the pre-show that's different from our normal playlist just to get everybody in an 80s mood.

Then Saturday, dude. Saturday. Saturday is free league day. Saturday is free league day. It's going to be all free league games all day. I think we start with... Alien, I believe. Alien, yes.

Yes, Alien followed by One Ring followed by Dragon Bay. So for those of you in the know, so we did an Alien one shot. I went back and forth with Tomas at free league about what they wanted to kind of showcase and some of the prewritten stuff that they wanted to do just wasn't quite ready. And they had licensing issues they were running into. And so they were like, just do your own thing. Just do your own kind of homebrew thing. And I was like, all right.

So for those of you in the know that listen to this and watch the FOD, we're basically continuing our labs game as part of this one shot. However, it's crafted in a way, and there's also a couple new characters in it. It's crafted in a way that it can be a standalone, you know, kind of one shot or kickoff to a longer campaign. So if you didn't see anything before, you'll be totally fine watching this. But if you are in the know from Labs, you'll know a couple of the characters and their backgrounds in the days leading up to this event So it's kind of cool. It's like having a little bit of a you might have watched the prologue But this is kind of the real start of this like alien movie that we're making a two-hour little splash

So, oh my gosh, it was so much fun and I'm not gonna say anything else about it So as to not spoil it, but after that, it's an epic, epic, four-hour, one-ring game showing off the new Moria, the Doors of Doran or Into the Doors of Doran. Through the Doors of Doran, the Moria sourcebook. My first text was to Skid and Jason Charles Miller, who obviously we hung out with Skid but Jason Charles Miller was at Comic Con and just put Skid and Jason in a room together and that's all they talk about. That's a four-hour session of that.

That's going to be a blast and then we finish off with you doing more Dragonbane. Yeah, more Dragonbane. That session was great too. Yeah, it's going to be a hell of a day for Free League. That's going to be really, really fun. Of course, we have two shows at the con on Saturday as well. We've got Blades in the Dark Live, a brand new Busted Muffler Squad. That show has like 70 tickets left as of the other day and that might sell out.

All these shows are going to have over 300 people, which is fantastic. Then later in the day, we have the Starfinder 2e playtest live, which is going to be using first level characters at the start of a much longer adventure. I was prepping this in the airport lounge Saturday night. And for those that are going to be there and able to see that show who watched the playtest before that on Thursday, the playtest sample that we do before that, that's with pre-gens. So we play with iconic pre-gens from Paizo for that first day, but now we're making our own original characters for the Starfinder live show at the convention itself.

So that's going to be a fun change as we see people, their first attempt at making their own Starfinder 2e characters. Yeah, I hope you guys don't wait till Saturday morning to do it. But that should be a lot of fun. That happens Saturday and then Sunday. Sunday is going to be so nice. It's always the saddest day of the Con, but I have the least to do that day. We're going to be debuting.

There's three interviews that kick off Sunday morning. We're going to be interviewing CJ Cervantes and Matt Forbeck from Marvel, Carlos Cabrera who is a freelancer that works with Renegade Game Studios, and then Brian Holland obviously from Chaosium to talk Pendragon and everything else they got going on there, Runequest, I'm sure a little Call of Cthulhu slips in, slips into the back. Then we've got the part two of Deathmatch Island which we recorded that last week. It is so fun.

I'm telling you, it's going to be the game. That's the first thing I'm going to buy even though I could just be like, hey guys, can you send me a copy? I want to go buy a copy of Deathmatch Island and then they're going to do the Life Well Lived Supplement. This 5e supplement from Cubicle7. We're going to run through their – they're going to run through their life pack character creations a lot like traveler character creation creating these D&D 5e characters. That runs off Sunday.

I didn't see it. I wasn't there as part of the recording, but they raved about it. The people that were on it raved about it. I would totally use this for creating characters in 5e. It was so much fun. It gives the game you're about to play, whatever it is, it's kind of like world agnostic. It gives you a, a deep, much deeper starting point to begin a campaign with the characters. So your backstories are kind of already built with each other as really, really cool engine.

And so I, I'm looking forward to seeing that one myself. And then of course, on top of all this, we've got a brand new reimagined booth on the floor where we're going to be running gauntlets all weekend long from open to close all four days. We're going to be running these gauntlets. And then there's just, I don't know, some other fun stuff at the booth, plus a bunch of new merch, new pins, new hats and everything. And I don't know, we're just trying to make it a place that people want to hang out at and

you might even catch us there from time to time. There's also, despite all of this, another piece of content you might be unaware of that we were unaware of early on that hit YouTube that is not on our channel and this is the taping of our Let's Play Kong show, Kong Skull Island show that we did with Evil Genius at Stand Up New York in Manhattan. We talked about this on FOD. We did it right in the middle of Times Square at an awesome theater below the Edison Hotel. And it was a blast of a night with Khalees Hawkins and Natalie Cuomo, the two comedians join us for

this show. And it was all taped, took a while in post-production, but now it's ready and it's out there. So if you want to check that out, you can go to Evil Genius Games YouTube channel and it's split into two parts, part one and part two, and you can check it out there. So by all means, go over there, check it out, leave a nice comment about how much you love the Glass Cannon at work. Help us out. That was really fun. And so I watched the beginning of that. They did a great job in post-production with the graphics

and the highlights. And it's really cool. Reminded me of how much fun that game is. It's fun. Fun system. Yeah. Such a fun system to play. And for a two-hour game with your friends, it's so much fun to recreate great action movies., all right. Well, man, we are well, well into it. Uh, that was, that was news alone, but Hey, it's Jen Conway. It's a big week. Uh, we'll have nothing to talk about next week. Oh, and Philly tickets are on sale too. Philly tickets went on sale last week. Philly tickets went on sale. Don't miss that. Cause that show always sells out. Don't wait. Uh, you know, get, I know it's August or whatever, late July,

like get ready to get in the Christmas spirit. You gotta buy your tickets now for the Christmas party. It's essentially the GCN, Glass County Live Christmas party every year in Philly at City Winery. It's gonna be a freaking blast. And from what you're telling me, Dude, we sold half the tickets and then first we have been.

It's gonna be a pretty big show too, most likely, in terms of Strange Aeons. Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna try and kill you all guys, live on stage, And what you're telling me is gonna be a big show too, most likely in terms of Strange Aeons. Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna try and kill you all guys live on stage and then end the adventure. And then end the adventure. Nice clean end of the year. You like it that way.

Yeah, it's really like a clean end of the year break, start something new next year. There we go. All right, let's talk a little about GCP. We'll do a little We Are Stupid and then of course we'll squeeze in some listener mail. So this episode of the GCP, you're already raving about the episode that's going to air, that's going to premiere tomorrow night, and I know why. But let's talk about the episode that aired last week, that premiered last Thursday night,

the episode that was just freaking hilarious and what I, I'm pretty confident will go down in history here as the start of the bet, the wager, whatever you want to call it. The first to get to 10 hits wager for a rune, for a potency rune, a striking rune, whatever it is, I think it's a striking rune, just created such hijinks at the table and so much degeneracy. I mean, I don't know. So looking back on it now that you've had some time to process, is this is this good for the game? Is this bad for the game? What's your early reaction here? It's good for our game.

It's good for our game. It's a lot of fun. Anything that's fun, you really should lean into. I mean, we've got a real kick out of it. I mean, you and I have obviously, we're gamblers and so we speak all the terms like it's nothing. We didn't go into like overly explaining what these terms are. So I'm sure a lot of it went over people's heads. But it's really interesting. Like I mean, dude, it's right out of Lord of the Rings.

You know what I mean? Like, Gimli and Legolas do the same exact thing. Right. That's right. That's friendly competition to keep up in each other's game is what is going to make you each better at what you do, perhaps. We'll see. We'll see how it plays out.

I'll tell you though, the combination of that and really thinking about our conversation last week about the roll offs, I think I'm anti-roll offs now. I think that it's becoming too, because you know what it is? Sydney and Matthew want everything. Whether it's relevant to their character or not. They just have that like. They are in every scene. Like I have, I go into almost no roll offs, partially because I don't like them.

And partially because I'm just like, I see who should have an item almost immediately and at worst it's a tie between two people. It's never three different people that would get the same value out of one particular item. And so I'm always just like, you can have it or, you know, I'm, I'm not interested in that. That's just not part of my character. That's not part of their build, whatever. But yes, Matthew and Sydney always, I can just picture, I'm looking for a die right now. And I don't have one next to me. But I can just always picture Matthew's just always like turns. He looks at me a little bit of a side eye. He goes, roll off. Like, every time no matter what the item is, I'm like, it's a freaking spell book. You don't even cast spells. He's like, yeah, but I could sell it. Oh, I hate that. The roll off to sell. Yeah, that's just crazy talk.

Yeah. Like, yeah, I don't know. I don't like it. I think it's, I mean, obviously they've both been playing a long time, but in the cumulative like how long we've all been playing, the two of them have been playing the least. And I think that's a very new player sort of thing. It's like, I want that, I want that, I want that. You don't think like, well, how would this work best for the party?

That weapon would be best in so-and-so's hands. I don't know. I think that if it really comes down to two people who really, really want it, then maybe a roll-off is like, let's just keep things moving. But at the end of the day, I might just say, no more roll-offs. Let's have a discussion who this is gonna work for. Right, and if it's like it works equally for both,

then somebody be generous. Give it to somebody else, and then that karma should come back to you, right? Then the next thing that comes, whatever, we roll that over, think about who got the most recent thing or whatever. And but yeah, in this case, like I'm saying I'm anti-roll off, but then is this just an extended 10 part roll off?

It's like a roll off to 10 in a way. Dude, I don't even know what their bet was for. I was more interested in my bet. Was that what it was? They were actually rolling off the roof. Your ridiculous parlay. So yeah, I just, I find it fascinating and I think it's really relevant. I think it's I think it's hilarious I think you should have to earn something and and this is a great way to see like

You know keeping track of who's gonna get to what hits and so then We see Sydney and I mean this is gonna be the next couple of thoughts is gonna be like wager watch Sydney and I mean this is going to be the next couple of thoughts is going to be like wager watch. It's going to be like, where are we at in the, like the, the, the quest for the striking rune and Sydney gets off to an unbelievable lead getting four hits in a single round by hitting twice and then on the third attack getting a crit, which counts as two. So she's up for one on Matthew at the end of episode 44. It's just, I mean, you can't write this stuff. We come up with this idea and then all of a sudden she has this

explosive rat. You see Matthew's just like head down to the doves and the people in chat just being like, whoo, it's going to be tough for Matthew to come back from this. Like we never would have had that conversation if we don't have that bet come up, you know So let me point to a comment from Lone Weasel on the episode on YouTube it says the absolute Degeneracy of Troy and Joe in this episode is unmatched. This is the hardest I've laughed since mighty phallus That was a good one. But yeah, it just, it cracked me up and it got me so much more invested in it. Skid was into it. Yeah.

Kate was getting a little into it because Kate's on team Sydney. And so Sydney came out to an early lead. Kate's like, yes. Yeah, it was just, it's fun. It's just fun to do shit like that. You know what I mean? Don't take yourselves too seriously. Add a little extra wrinkle in there.

I mean, you could go crazy with this. Yeah. But I don't know. This is fun for our game. Well, we'll see. I want to see where it goes. I want to see how it all ends up, you know, and then we'll make judgments on it, see if it's something we want to do again, or if it's going to be lame or overplayed.

My gut says like, this will not be lame or overplayed and that we should do this all the time. Like we should always have a stat up for something. We should always be like friendly competition within the group for something. And I mean, like I'm not going to put any money on the line, but I love the idea of gambling for in-game fictional items. I think it's just so funny. So fantastic.

So anyway. Yeah, I'm glad people got a kick out of it. Curious to see where that goes. Let's talk about these creatures for a second before we move on to We Are Stupid. These were weird. Are these scribes, scales, scale scribes, are these scale scribes original to this adventure? Are they from one of the bestiaries? Do you have any of that info? Because I've never seen anything like this before, but they also,

I don't know. I'll get to my next question in a second, but when I find out if they're original to this adventure. I don't think they are, but I'm just kind of like looking real quickly here. I only see them on archives of Nethus for second edition. Sometimes like you can see where the copyright is for them. Bestiary 3. Bestiary 3.

Okay. Well, Bestiary 3 could have come 3. Bestiary 3. Okay. Well, but Bestiary 3 could have come out after Gatewalkers and all the back matter monsters get added into future bestiaries. So that doesn't necessarily mean that it was added there. Usually you can tell like if the step block is in the back. Let me just, yeah, I'm not sure. Or actually, if the step block is written there or go to the back, then you know it's

a unique monster. Otherwise, it would just or go to the back, then you know it's a unique monster. Otherwise, it would just say go to Bestiary page, whatever. Here, I'm sorry. I'm stalling as I'm looking it up. These fucking modules are huge, dude. The three-book adventure paths, the books are so much larger. As much progress as you guys have made. All right.

So, Scale Scribe, Scale Scribe, Skale Scribe. Uh, yeah, Bestiary. They're from Bestiary 3. Yeah. So, uh, that, uh, they're very cool and kind of weird creatures. Why were they like stalling us? And I mean, if that's something that's going to like become clear in the next episode, you don't have to answer it, but like, I just don't think it is, you know, to be like, I'm curious why you were like, interrogating us. Is that like a natural part of the creature? Is that like something that's in their monster

description that they just talk a lot and want? Like, they want information all the time? I'm just curious about the motivations of the creatures. I can't tell you until after next week's episode. So if you want to put a pin in that, then I can explain to you what they were trying to do. OK. Yeah, I'll try to remember to ask you that next week. But yeah, otherwise, interesting creatures did not put up much of a fight, which is,

I think, another reason why the bet, the wager itself was really fun. And you know, we were, because nobody felt really threatened. You know, there wasn't like a character was really fun. And you know, we were, because nobody felt really threatened, you know, there wasn't like a character was going down. It wasn't one of those kinds of combats, kind of felt in hand. And then, you know, we take one out. What brings you to the decision to have the other surrender?

Is that something that's written in the monster stat block? Is that a choice you make on the spot? How does that develop? Yeah, it's written in the stat block. And I, you know, I try to lean into those. It just makes my life easier. Just like last week we had the fungus, LESH fight that you could have avoided and then eventually you didn't have to fight them.

You stopped. This one was nice to have another fight that didn't end in death and murder. I would have liked to have the other one surrender before it died, but it's whatever. I was also bummed I didn't get to use their really cool ability. I tried to use it on Bugle's spell, but I forgot that he's the one spellcaster that can do everything with his mind, but it is really cool. They can write the spell down and create a scroll right there that they can then use on the next turn.

Yeah, it's called transcribe. Yeah. That's a reaction. Very, very cool. What a, what a great trigger is another creature targets the scale scribe with a spell requiring verbal components. And then they attempt to copy it. Just so cool. So cool. Yeah. So I saw you roll a die to do that. And I was like, well, what are you doing? And now I'm seeing on the step like that it is a counteract check against the spell to see if you successfully transcribe it.

And then you can make it a scroll that you can then cast. So cool. Yeah, I think I asked Skid what is like caster DC was or whatever, cause that's helps me figure out what the counteract DC is. But yeah, that sucks. That would have been fun. That would have been fun.

I was waiting for you to like do divine lance. I'm like, come on. Come on. Come on pull right back at you. Oh Yeah, that would have been really cool. All right, let's let's see what professor Eric's analysis of this was yeah We do a little we are stupid This one is fantastic professor Eric writes in very just a couple notes on this one Professor is in! This one is fantastic. Professor Eric writes in just a couple notes on this one. We'll keep these ones really quick. First of all, Asta completely forgot to do her deadly die when she crit.

I guess we were so focused on the bet that she didn't add her damage die, so just something that he caught. A couple people in YouTube comments caught it as well. So noted. This is a tricky one. I don't think anybody mentioned this in comments. And this one goes to you. To me, to you. And it's specifically about the creature and the,

um, the stat block of the creature. So I'm looking at the stat block again now. And now I see, I notice a little indication. I don't think you, I don't remember you mentioning, which is that they have the trait tiny, that they are tiny creatures. We've mentioned this once before on Fado, this is just for everybody's, you know, as we all learn this game together,

tiny creatures have a reach of zero. They gotta be on the same space. They need to be in your space in order to attack you, which is important because if they start more than five feet away from you, they could provoke an AOO getting into your square. Now, Professor Eric clarifies and says it should be listed explicitly in the stat block as reach zero, but it is not. The reach is not listed in the stat block as reach zero, but it is not the reach is not listed in the stat block. And Professor Eric says

there's definitely a split among GMs as to how to deal with what feels like a very common oversight in stat blocks. Troy ran it the way I would have size tiny but standard reach if there's no reach stated. So if there's no reach stated that you just leave it at reach five. But he says I'm sure that other people might disagree with this and say that all tiny creatures have a reach of zero So yeah, it's just you know, however you want to play it But I'm assuming it's something you didn't even think of in the moment but I was really just looking at foundry and I was like

They just look small but they took up one quarter of a square. So it made sense that they were tiny You know remember how when we you have Pathfinder first edition you would look up like monster sizes, large, huge, I'd have to do that a lot just to be like, well it's huge again, it's huge six or it's huge four. It's huge 15 feet or yeah, huge is 15 feet. And when you Google that, those templates, there would be like large tall and large long or whatever. Some large creatures have 10 feet, some have 15.

It's interesting to think that there are some tiny creatures that have 5 feet of reach and there are some tiny creatures that have 0. Or do all tiny have 0? I don't know. I feel like- I wouldn't excuse me just because, oh, it didn't say that reach was in the stat block because if it says tiny, tiny means zero. Yeah, tiny should, I think tiny should mean zero and because it's interesting. You don't fight a lot of tiny creatures.

So let's make them different than fighting small or medium creatures. And but it's possible that there's a tiny creature that does have a listed reach of five. You know, maybe there are some creatures that attack from five feet away, tiny creatures. I don't know. But it is an interesting mechanic that they would need to be on your square to attack you. And maybe you'd have to use a step back in order to attack them if they're on your square. I don't know. It's interesting. That's actually a good question for Professor Eric, which is if they are on your square and you are a standard medium PC wielding a longsword,

like do you have to step away in order to attack them? Or can you, can you, are you able to attack in your square? Um, I'm, I honestly don't know for sure. Like by the book, I think you have to step out of the square. I mean, that's how I would rule it's like, now you don't, you have reached five. Does reach five mean zero to five? Cause I don't know. I like to hear professor Eric's take on that. So let us know, uh, professor Eric and yeah, otherwise like this gets into an area that always kind of irritates me with some players, uh, and some players that I play with, in fact, where like, I'll be like, if this thing, if this scale scricribe, basically what it does is it like crawls up onto you and like bites your neck and it's right here.

You arguing that you can attack it with a long sword on your neck the same way as you would as if it's five feet away, irritates the hell out of me. You know what I mean? I'm just like, come on, think about what you're doing. How could you have the same momentum? How could you have the same accuracy and follow through? I'm just like, come on. Think about what you're doing. How could you have the same momentum? How could you have the same accuracy and follow through?

It's just not- And then when you miss, how do you not hit yourself with a sword? Right, exactly. Cut your own neck. You're like, ah, no, you're a hero. Heroes can do anything. It's, ah, no, no. So anyway, I'm curious to see what the rules say.

Professor Eric will weigh in on the raw, I'm sure. That's cool. Yeah, I miss that. Yeah. All right, one more thing, and this is a big one. This is a big one. I love sure. That's cool. I miss that. Yeah. All right. One more thing, and this is a big one. This is a big one. I love this.

And Professor Eric sent me an email with this and said, this is one thing that I presume you will continue to have a blind spot for because it's tricky for everybody right now. The remaster has greatly simplified casting a spell while you're holding a crossbow, which is what Brother Ramious did So I don't know if you saw this in some of the comments But a couple people mentioned this in the YouTube comments as well that I shot the crossbow Then I took my hand off Casted a spell. I don't even remember the spell might have been blessed

I think was blessed and then I'm sorry I cast it blessed first then in order to shoot the crossbow Kate was like don't you Have to have two hands on the crossbow. I was like, that's right. An action to re grip the crossbow and then to fire. And I was like, and now I don't have that action anymore. The remaster has taken that away. You do not need a free hand to cast a spell with the manipulate trait. You can have something in your hand, quote, you must physically manipulate an item or make gestures using an action with this trait creatures without a Suitable appendage can't perform actions with this trait manipulate actions often trigger reactions That's all it says in the remaster and this is meant so that you can as a spell caster

Much like Asta does wield a weapon and just move with that weapon and get the same sort of manipulate trait satisfied of the spell. You do not need a free hand. So it is nice to know, like you can just kind of, with the crossbow or whatever, and you don't have to spend that extra action to put a hand back on it and then fire. So yeah, something to keep in mind. And he says specifically like, this is something that will roll over. He says, this is definitely a place where decades of previous additions will keep telling you you're doing something wrong outside of a few spells that require a locus, you won't need a free hand unless the spell specifically mentioned it,

mentions it. So thank you for that, professor Eric. That's a good one to know. All right. With that, let's, let's take a little fan, let's take a question from the Naish here. We'll do one listener now. We can do one. We'll do one.

We'll do one. We can do one. We can do one. We can do one. We can do one. We can do one. We can do one. We can do one.

We can do one. We can do one. We can do one. We can do one. We can do one. We can do one. We can do one. We can do one. We can do one. We can do one. I miss having Nick at San Diego, man. I know, it stunk. It stunk.

Now hopefully he'll be there next year. This one from Derek, and I don't have a location. Sorry, Derek. This one from Derek who says, hello, has the 2E remaster changed any of the issues that you all have with combat maneuvers? I can think of a couple of times where someone tried one and failed or someone was thinking about a combat maneuver and then was talked out of it because the rules basically made them impossible.

I think combat maneuvers could be really cool and add more variety and flavor into encounters if they actually worked. Interested to hear what you think? Thanks Derek. That's a good question, Derek. I wanted to bring it up Troy because I want to hear what you think, thanks. Derek. That's a good question, Derek. I wanted to bring it up, Troy, because I want to discuss it with you as well,

kind of see what you've seen from monster blocks, particularly with things like grab and stuff like that. Grab, constrict, whatever, you know, on the monster end of things. I can say for my part that I don't have enough data to accurately comment on it. I do think that there's two things that jump out at me. One, it seems like tripping is a really, really good idea in the remaster, that this is something

that Zephyr should be doing more often because it is so powerful to get something prone. We don't often have just like a bipedal enemy that we're fighting that seems easily tripable. Uh, that that's just something we haven't come across much, right? Since we've learned about trip being a very valuable combat maneuver by that same token, I'll say, I think disarm is ridiculous and unusable. Like that's kind of where I'm at with this arm. Cause disarm is like, you need a success in order to give the creature like a

minus two to a future attempt and you have to critically succeed in order to ever get the weapon out of their hand. I guess it makes sense from a balance standpoint because disarming can be, it can break an encounter in very specific situations. But I also think that disarming, particularly when you're not at a boss fight, can be like so interesting and can really take fights

into that realm of ending the encounter peacefully or with somebody detained instead of killed. And the game makes it so you're not motivated to do that. If only a critical success will do it. And the only way to get a boot on that critical success is to succeed in a previous round or with a previous action. It's like, I don't know. I disagree.

I think disarm is pretty great. And I'll tell you why. If you crit success, you knock it out. If you're fighting a boss where you realize a round in like that weapon is going to kill someone, then it should be a focus of two to three people in the party. Like we've got to do what we can do here. And so if you succeed, which you should probably 50% of the time, you weaken their grasp on the item.

Everyone further attempts to disarm the target, get a plus two circumstance bonus. Now you have a higher chance of critic. I wonder if that stacks. Probably not. But then either way, a regular success gives them a minus two to attack with that weapon, and they can end that by using an interact action. Even with that minus two, you could have them burn an action. Now, if you're fighting someone that has a pretty powerful weapon, they probably get

a lot of cool two, three action powers as well. Now you're taking the ability away from them to do that and also buying the team time because I think like, all right, so I can end that effect by interacting to change my grip. But if you use good team synergy and you start doing the disarm attempt right after the creature goes, now for this party, you can have five attempts to try and disarm them. If we're all like, everyone use at least one action to try and disarm them, you could get that plus two, you have a good chance of a crit and if it has a reaction or anything like that, I don't know. I think it's pretty cool. But obviously,

critical failure comes with- Yeah, I tend to agree with you there. I think that I didn't realize that it gave the creature a minus two to hit. That's great. that's huge because that can really change, especially in a boss fight. That can really change, uh, like how likely the creature is to crit you. Right. Yeah. So that could be huge in a boss fight. Um, okay. That is interesting.

Yeah. You weaken the targets grasp on the item further attempts. Gain a plus two circumstance bonus. Okay, so if player A succeeds and then player B in this synergy is following right up, they'll get a plus two circumstance bonus. If they succeed, they do nothing. Right. If they just succeed, yeah, cause you can't, it wouldn't be a plus four and a half. Right.

So, if player A succeeds, they get a plus two circumstance bonus. So, if player A succeeds, they get a plus two circumstance bonus. If they succeed, they do nothing. Right. If they just succeed, yeah, because you can't, it wouldn't be a plus four now because they brought the circumstance bonus. So it would roll to the third person. They get no bonus from the other one's success. So you have your marshal, you're probably going to have two marshal people in the party. They should use their first action with their highest attack bonus to try and disarm and

You know, it's not gonna happen all the time But you're really it's never happened once in our because you guys have never done it You've never been like let's have two two martial people in the same round. We've never attempted like, you know That's what you gotta do around you need that synergy and it means high risk high reward. But sometimes like There are monsters that are built like as long as that weapons in their hand. They're good. They're gonna annihilate you. I'm trying to think Yeah, yeah, I like the minus two to hit that's huge and and having them burn in action is really cool Yeah, I guess I guess I was not giving it enough credit because you you know, if you take it on its surface, I look at trip and I say, trip is, disarm is, if you succeed at disarming them, you don't disarm them.

Trip is if you succeed, you trip them and they go prone. It just makes it seem a lot better. However, I guess if you think about it, it's effectively the same thing. Because if you trip them and they're prone, they're going to be off guard, which gives them a minus two to hit, and they're going to have to spend an action to right themselves. So it's mechanically the same thing. You know, the only difference being that prone would provoke an AOA, whereas an interact action may not. I think a, oh wait, I think manipulate is a trait of interact.

So yeah, I think both of them would even, both of them would even provoke as well. That's interesting, let's look this up. Interact, it has the manipulate trait. So if you have to spend an interact action to re-grip the weapon, you could provoke if you had a fighter next to you, an AOO. Yes, yeah, it's interact capital I. So There's a lot of things there that could go wrong.

Even though your goal is to disarm and you succeed, you feel like you should disarm, just loosening their grip can really screw up the action economy of that enemy. That's great. It's not, you can't use it all the time, but it would be fun if like you realize like we just got to get that thing out of his fucking hands, you know? Yeah. Now, would I do that monster? No, probably not.

But if you were fighting a group of like just three mooks and like they don't really, they're just attack, attack, attack with their short sword, it might be more fun for me to be like, I'm taking that bow out of your hand. I'm taking Asta's Jonski out of her hand and have them go as long as they're trained in athletics You know what I mean? Like if they're trained in athletics, they have a decent bonus like go for it. That'd be really fun Is it athletics? Yeah, it's a he has the attack trait by the athletics to the left against the targets reflex DC Yeah, I mean I gotta admit I love I love when when a good niche question makes us think about how we play our game and maybe change it up a little bit. I've been thinking a lot about Tripp. I'm not

sure if Kate has thought about it since we talked about it with the big, not the squid fight. What was that thing in the river, that horrible thing, the snail thing. It was like we talked about Tripp and then I think we just got put it out of our head because it was just impossible with that particular creature. But thinking about it in the future is a really good idea. And that's something that I'll do when I'm playing a martial character in 2E. I'll make a little bit more attempts at combat maneuvers.

I think that's really, really fun. It's a chance for a fighter to do what traditionally would be like a witches debuff, right? Like you can create for the rest of the round that creature is a minus two to hit against all your allies. That's awesome. That is phenomenal. I like that. Grab now is an action for monsters and not used to have to be a CMB versus CMD check like so you'd hit and then I'd get the CMB to CMD. Now I just have to use the action but like when you have constrict or some sort of third

thing that happens once a creature is grabbed, you've got to hit on that first attack. I've had this happen now both in Strange Aeons. I miss on that first attack. It just fucks me because now I can do like I might hit on the second attack and then I can do the grab and that's my round. Whereas like if you hit, grab, constrict, hit, grab and golf like it works so great but it really throws off your balance. If you don't hit on that first attack and you're not quickened, it's just it's brutal

and it happens to me all the time. Grapple is cool. All right, give yourself the grapple condition because now you're going to have to either escape or this or that. Next round, I just have to use an action to maintain the grab and then I could constrict, constrict or really F you up. I have not seen that happen for me recently. I don't even think I've constricted.

Yeah. Well, you are also working off of your best bonus there to get that. It's your best chance to get it. But that is interesting. Great question, Derek. Thank you so much. That was awesome. I want to get more trippy. Now I'm thinking about disarming a whole new light. It's going to be great. All right. That's going to wrap it up for the FOD this week. Boom. Man, we are there. As you're listening to this right now, like I'm there building a booth. Like it's happening.

We're getting it all together. We're gonna have a hell of a next few days as we get into Gen Con. I hope you enjoy all the new games we played. We had so much fun. And we'll be back and chatting with you guys in a week. We'll give you the debrief, the Gen Con debrief. I hope everybody has a fantastic weekend. Hang out with us all weekend long on YouTube if you're not gonna be an indie. If you're an indie, we'll see you there. Take it easy everybody, bye! Psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, psh, The official member of the Naish today at jointhenash.com. That's jointhenash.com, where you'll get access to exclusive podcasts and live streams you can't find anywhere else.

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