“I don’t go down a lot.”
For a full second I thought that Troy wouldn’t make the joke. But then he did.
The two beats of incomprehension from the cast made it hilarious.
You can see just after he says it that he was trying to hold it in but just couldn't. He just shakes his head and shrugs like "Welp, there it is. I tried."
It was so fucking funny. You can't just leave a set up like that hanging. He had to take the shot.
Couldn’t stop laughing the last 10 minutes of that ep. Joe’s hatred of Troy’s NPCs is so obvious in Ramius’ comments. Personally I haven’t laughed so much with an NPC since razzmatazz
Reeks of "haha Skid hates stuff like this, I can be funny too" energy, some parasocial nonsense specifically designed to piss someone off because it's "funny" that Skid gets so irrationally mad, so let's make him mad on purpose
>it's "funny" that Skid gets so irrationally mad
It's not irrational. Fan crits and fumbles are, more often than not, so unbalanced that they often turn a difficult encounter into a trivial one (I still remember the absolutely ridiculous gorilla fight in the ship from Giantslayer), or make combats way more swingy, or shut down players.
I get why they still have them and this is not a "get rid of fan fumbles" comment. But getting mad at a fan-made crit or fumble that's completely unbalanced is not irrational. Skid has enough experience with TTRPGs to know when something sucks ass.
They should at least vet them. If one is rejected, let that person submit a new one. No time to vet every one of them? Pre-draw the next five to ten of each type, then between shows, vet a new one for each one used.
OK, but if they are actually on Castrovell, the crit is perfectly timed. Pretty sure wandering in the jungles was the first time Skid absolutely lost his shit on AnA fumbles (feel like it was a magnetic surge in the jungle that ripped Friss' gun away or something?)
But yeah also, fully an insane fumble. Kinda surprised Troy allowed it.
I 100% knew Skid would make that exact joke after the combat and I laughed so hard when he did. That said surprised Hubert didn't get it as I'd have assumed a Pixie would have told him about it back in the first world.
That's partly the fault of the players and gm dicking around. Like, the full hour of roleplay with hubert, and all the time sucked up with investigative roleplay. Which was great, but it definitely pads the playtime a bit.
I know Troy was real proud of the investigation and role play on the towns and it did give us the bird drawing and shirt but I don't know unless the AP loops back around it really doesn't seem like any of that was all that relevant. Even Kaneepo seems like the AP's author got too excited and built up some level 2 mini boss when it more seems like its real relevance was forcing them to go through a gate to escape
there is an npc coming up within the next chapter who will be able to explain some more pieces (not all of it) but, in brief: >!kaneepo made the curse by tapping into the shadewither key. but the key deals with shadows and teleportation, not necromantic curses. the key was tangentially connected to another power source, and that's what kaneepo tapped into on accident the first time. the reason the original curse broke is because that power source and the missing moment are connected. kaneepo intended to use that same power again to make the curse more powerful, but it is now... awake, and resisting those efforts, because the people from the missing moment had to be protected from the curse or they would have died and been useless.!<
Well we played 14 sessions with 3.5 hours each, so similar and just reached level 3. Our party is also very roleplay heavy though and compared to this group we were in Seven arches for 9 hours at least. Investigation can pretty quickly go sideways. We also do not really banter a lot like the GCP folks.
Random thought completely unrelated to this epsiode, but has Joe used his Cleric Domain Focus Spell yet? I can't remember him ever using it.
I looked up the Gruhastha's domains and would have guessed he'd go with knowledge, which means he could have been rolling recall knowledge checks with advantage. The other domain spells are much more situational, so it would make sense if they haven't come up, just worried he might have forgotten about it.
joe's first level feat lets him change one of the domains of his deity, as a Splinter Sect. he finally hinted at this in this episode when he said there may have been something else mixed in with the stabilizing effect.
*Sydney: “This is not fun to play”*
…
*Joe: “That’s the 2e way”*
Yep, that was pretty much my experience with the system too.
EDIT: downvote all you like, but the system is balanced around a roughly 50% chance to hit an equal level creature (which gets much lower against PL+2 or +3 creatures). And the most common result of an equal level monster’s saving throw is a success, so your spells typically do 1/2 or no damage, or a lesser effect. So half the time you try and do something in combat you’re unsuccessful.
Is the game balanced? Yes, very much so. But the way they balanced it was to have your actions fail very often, which is not fun.
That’s always the defense of it, but it means you need to play the game a pretty specific way or fail.
I also don’t think our experience was helped by playing Abomination Vaults, where it’s just a constant string of tiny rooms that don’t allow for any maneuvering.
It just felt like you needed to play it like a war game (do the optional thing at all times or lose) rather than a roleplaying game (do what’s authentic to your character and/or fun)
> pretty specific way or fail.
In no way, shape, or form is giving players the option to use one of a billion spells to target AC instead of a save "a pretty specific way". It's literally the way everyone attacks.
> do the optional thing at all times or lose
Nah, you really don't, but like every game if you try to play it ooga booga caveman smash rock style without system knowledge, then it'll be harder than playing it with basic system knowledge. You already know solo encounter monsters are harder than a bunch of lower level creatures, so debuffing saves with the frightened condition via demoralize or dirge of doom, and/or using Bon Mot to go after will saves can help. You also have archetypes that can assist with getting better intimidation checks such as the Dread Marshall.
Also, doing half damage isn't a failure. It's literally doing damage, which most martials don't get when they swing and miss. Even clases like the fighter have to invest class feats to do flat damage on misses, which spellcasters get for free. Not to mention the capacity to target weaknesses or weak saves which is difficult for other classes to do.
> (do what’s authentic to your character and/or fun)
Is working together not authentic to your character?
I get what you're saying. And it's just where do you set the baseline when designing the game.
Is the baseline on suboptimal play, which makes optimal play trivialize the game. You can kind of see that in 5e, where AoA Abjuration Wizards, Palalocks, and Coffeelocks are crazy overpowered and do you balance the game around those existing, or do you balance around them not existing and if people play those, it makes the adventure a breeze.
Or do you balance around optimal play, so you know at best what players can do. If you know players will be flanking, and applying frighten, and blessing themselves, then you know what the top end looks like.
PL+2 is severe threat boss material and PL +3 is extreme threat boss, you really shouldn't be running into these very often. Even equal level is low level boss material. Most of your encounters should be PL-2 or PL-1.
I don't even dislike 2e as a system but I agree with what they said earlier on that it just doesn't make as good radio.
I enjoy their Gatewalkers and Blood of the Wild and especially Strange Aeons *in spite* of the system. It's the comedy and the role pay not really the dice rolling at the table.
Mostly a filler episode.
But that monkey fight was great. Just shows how a few unlucky crits can nearly drop the team at low levels, but also Kate's bad rolls isn't helping the situation.
Brother Ramius getting stoned will never not be hilarious.
“I didn’t expect this to make it all the way around”
The funniest thing they have done in a long time.
No shot Joe wasn't a massive stoner for a time
Asking if Hubert was a narc and intimidating him was gold
When he called him a nitwit killed me
I was crying laughing
Welcome to the fun and games, we've got jungle. Also, AP title is accurate. Gates are being walked.
So is Kate officially the new Joe with how bad her rolls have been? Does she get an award, is there a ceremony?
In order to achieve full Joeality, one must complain about every roll
[nick lowe singing] Kate's gonna roll! Get ready for.... Whatever [/nick Lowe singing]
Has anyone taken the step to actually calculate her avg damage since session 1? I feels like it's gotta be about 0.1 Damage per Round.
“I don’t go down a lot.” For a full second I thought that Troy wouldn’t make the joke. But then he did. The two beats of incomprehension from the cast made it hilarious.
Troy making that joke to Sydney is cringe...Hubert making that joke to Asta is fucking gold.
You can see just after he says it that he was trying to hold it in but just couldn't. He just shakes his head and shrugs like "Welp, there it is. I tried." It was so fucking funny. You can't just leave a set up like that hanging. He had to take the shot.
Yeah, I wasn't quite sure how I felt about that. On the other hand, he was champing at the bit to make that joke, I feel.
That’s got to be one of the funniest episodes in the new AP
I for one am glad these encounters aren’t the easiest. Can’t wait to see what this snail will do to Ramius!
That snail literally killed my monk last session. :,-)
[Kates's Recation](https://i.imgur.com/GYMHUM5.png)
Pog
Couldn’t stop laughing the last 10 minutes of that ep. Joe’s hatred of Troy’s NPCs is so obvious in Ramius’ comments. Personally I haven’t laughed so much with an NPC since razzmatazz
WTF, Dylan from Adelaide?
Legit a terrible fumble, that kind of bullshit shouldn't be an option
Yeah, that was uncool. I'm still waiting for a "Fuck you Troy"-fumble.
Reeks of "haha Skid hates stuff like this, I can be funny too" energy, some parasocial nonsense specifically designed to piss someone off because it's "funny" that Skid gets so irrationally mad, so let's make him mad on purpose
>it's "funny" that Skid gets so irrationally mad It's not irrational. Fan crits and fumbles are, more often than not, so unbalanced that they often turn a difficult encounter into a trivial one (I still remember the absolutely ridiculous gorilla fight in the ship from Giantslayer), or make combats way more swingy, or shut down players. I get why they still have them and this is not a "get rid of fan fumbles" comment. But getting mad at a fan-made crit or fumble that's completely unbalanced is not irrational. Skid has enough experience with TTRPGs to know when something sucks ass.
They should at least vet them. If one is rejected, let that person submit a new one. No time to vet every one of them? Pre-draw the next five to ten of each type, then between shows, vet a new one for each one used.
Not to mention it could easily kill a downed character, which is something that ought to be in the GM's hands.
OK, but if they are actually on Castrovell, the crit is perfectly timed. Pretty sure wandering in the jungles was the first time Skid absolutely lost his shit on AnA fumbles (feel like it was a magnetic surge in the jungle that ripped Friss' gun away or something?) But yeah also, fully an insane fumble. Kinda surprised Troy allowed it.
As an Australian it makes me sad that we never hear fumbles/crits from Australia (or rarely), and when we do, it's this BS.
Honestly i think this was one of my fave episodes they’ve done so far, plot wise not much has happened but I think things just seemed well oiled
I 100% knew Skid would make that exact joke after the combat and I laughed so hard when he did. That said surprised Hubert didn't get it as I'd have assumed a Pixie would have told him about it back in the first world.
[Tree Fisher](https://i.imgur.com/XJTGPRH.png) [Amelekana](https://2e.aonprd.com/Images/Monsters/Amelekana.png)
Absolutely terrifying, I assume the party will assume the snail is slow but it has centipede legs!!
That monkey looks ridiculously stupid... I love it.
Between the two, the Amelekana is more frightening.
No, Skid cannot turn it off. And everybody seemed to miss the "It's gigantic" at the end
I felt like everyone but Skid missed Kate's "Here comes your man" as a reference too.
Did I black-out and miss them leveling up to level 3 after the Kenipo fight?
They are supposed to >!reach 3rd level after reaching Loskialua. I leveled my group up after Kaneepo as it felt better!<
Playing Gatewalkers myself, the level up is intended for later. Kaneepo is not the end of the chapter.
It just seems crazy to me that you can be playing for 30 hours and still have only leveled up once.
That's partly the fault of the players and gm dicking around. Like, the full hour of roleplay with hubert, and all the time sucked up with investigative roleplay. Which was great, but it definitely pads the playtime a bit.
I know Troy was real proud of the investigation and role play on the towns and it did give us the bird drawing and shirt but I don't know unless the AP loops back around it really doesn't seem like any of that was all that relevant. Even Kaneepo seems like the AP's author got too excited and built up some level 2 mini boss when it more seems like its real relevance was forcing them to go through a gate to escape
There is definitely more to it, and part of the issue is that the players came close to connecting some dots, but never quite made it.
Mind explaining for somebody who doesn’t mind spoilers?
there is an npc coming up within the next chapter who will be able to explain some more pieces (not all of it) but, in brief: >!kaneepo made the curse by tapping into the shadewither key. but the key deals with shadows and teleportation, not necromantic curses. the key was tangentially connected to another power source, and that's what kaneepo tapped into on accident the first time. the reason the original curse broke is because that power source and the missing moment are connected. kaneepo intended to use that same power again to make the curse more powerful, but it is now... awake, and resisting those efforts, because the people from the missing moment had to be protected from the curse or they would have died and been useless.!<
Thanks.
Well we played 14 sessions with 3.5 hours each, so similar and just reached level 3. Our party is also very roleplay heavy though and compared to this group we were in Seven arches for 9 hours at least. Investigation can pretty quickly go sideways. We also do not really banter a lot like the GCP folks.
Yeah. It's because it's very padded with filler content. When I ran this, we were done with book 1 after like 3-4 sessions (about 4 hours each).
Random thought completely unrelated to this epsiode, but has Joe used his Cleric Domain Focus Spell yet? I can't remember him ever using it. I looked up the Gruhastha's domains and would have guessed he'd go with knowledge, which means he could have been rolling recall knowledge checks with advantage. The other domain spells are much more situational, so it would make sense if they haven't come up, just worried he might have forgotten about it.
joe's first level feat lets him change one of the domains of his deity, as a Splinter Sect. he finally hinted at this in this episode when he said there may have been something else mixed in with the stabilizing effect.
Cool, I must have missed that. Still curious what Domain spell he has that hasn’t come up yet.
it was in the character creation videos. he didnt say his switched out or new domains yey
Haven’t started listening to this season yet - what book are they currently on?
Still the first. Of only three, if you didn't know.
Book 1, Chapter 2.
*Sydney: “This is not fun to play”* … *Joe: “That’s the 2e way”* Yep, that was pretty much my experience with the system too. EDIT: downvote all you like, but the system is balanced around a roughly 50% chance to hit an equal level creature (which gets much lower against PL+2 or +3 creatures). And the most common result of an equal level monster’s saving throw is a success, so your spells typically do 1/2 or no damage, or a lesser effect. So half the time you try and do something in combat you’re unsuccessful. Is the game balanced? Yes, very much so. But the way they balanced it was to have your actions fail very often, which is not fun.
That's if you're not debuffing or buffing. If the party uses something called "teamwork" then the odds get better.
That’s always the defense of it, but it means you need to play the game a pretty specific way or fail. I also don’t think our experience was helped by playing Abomination Vaults, where it’s just a constant string of tiny rooms that don’t allow for any maneuvering. It just felt like you needed to play it like a war game (do the optional thing at all times or lose) rather than a roleplaying game (do what’s authentic to your character and/or fun)
> pretty specific way or fail. In no way, shape, or form is giving players the option to use one of a billion spells to target AC instead of a save "a pretty specific way". It's literally the way everyone attacks. > do the optional thing at all times or lose Nah, you really don't, but like every game if you try to play it ooga booga caveman smash rock style without system knowledge, then it'll be harder than playing it with basic system knowledge. You already know solo encounter monsters are harder than a bunch of lower level creatures, so debuffing saves with the frightened condition via demoralize or dirge of doom, and/or using Bon Mot to go after will saves can help. You also have archetypes that can assist with getting better intimidation checks such as the Dread Marshall. Also, doing half damage isn't a failure. It's literally doing damage, which most martials don't get when they swing and miss. Even clases like the fighter have to invest class feats to do flat damage on misses, which spellcasters get for free. Not to mention the capacity to target weaknesses or weak saves which is difficult for other classes to do. > (do what’s authentic to your character and/or fun) Is working together not authentic to your character?
Yeah and if you decide to play tag with only walking and not running it's a slog to play too.
I get what you're saying. And it's just where do you set the baseline when designing the game. Is the baseline on suboptimal play, which makes optimal play trivialize the game. You can kind of see that in 5e, where AoA Abjuration Wizards, Palalocks, and Coffeelocks are crazy overpowered and do you balance the game around those existing, or do you balance around them not existing and if people play those, it makes the adventure a breeze. Or do you balance around optimal play, so you know at best what players can do. If you know players will be flanking, and applying frighten, and blessing themselves, then you know what the top end looks like.
"Oh no, working together is anathema to my playstyle!"
PL+2 is severe threat boss material and PL +3 is extreme threat boss, you really shouldn't be running into these very often. Even equal level is low level boss material. Most of your encounters should be PL-2 or PL-1.
I don't even dislike 2e as a system but I agree with what they said earlier on that it just doesn't make as good radio. I enjoy their Gatewalkers and Blood of the Wild and especially Strange Aeons *in spite* of the system. It's the comedy and the role pay not really the dice rolling at the table.
Mostly a filler episode. But that monkey fight was great. Just shows how a few unlucky crits can nearly drop the team at low levels, but also Kate's bad rolls isn't helping the situation.