Flubs & Foibles

This page, like our House Rules page, is for those with a working knowledge of 1st-edition Pathfinder rules who are interested in this sort of detail. Here, we’ll attempt to highlight the rules flubs we made at the table while recording. This list is definitely not exhaustive, but hopefully hits the major things. We tend not to get overly hung-up on rules errors as long as everyone’s having fun, but since this has been our first experience having real recordings of our games, it’s been kind of geeky fun to listen back and ponder what we might have ruled differently.

Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD. (This page is updated through Chapter 45. We’re running behind on these updates, but will catch up as soon as we can!)

 

PROLOGUE & CHAPTER 1

  • In the fight with the Nightmare Stalker, Rob forgot to ask anyone but Robert to make Sanity checks upon the sight of the creature. As we moved forward in the recording of Act I, we discussed this on-air numerous times and we all got better about reminding each other about this.
  • In the fight with Doctor Scaen, combat started with Grip grappling her. Rob neglected to remind Robert that Grip should also have gained the grappled condition. However, all he did for the remainder of the fight was continue to make checks to grapple (which is not penalized by the condition), and the one time Scaen attempted to escape the grapple, she got a roll so low that it wouldn’t have changed the result.
  • However, Rob also neglected to remind Robert to add a +5 bonus to his grapple checks on successive rounds after Doctor Scaen failed to escape his hold—this would have changed the outcome of round three.
  • Rob made a series of in-the-moment calls with Dora’s Telekinetic Projectile spell that go against the rules as-written. In round one, allowing her to essentially make a Steal combat maneuver with the cantrip was definitely overpowered, but Rob rolled with it in the moment due to the target being both grappled and flat-footed (also, it was some flavory fun in a first session that helped to establish what Dora’s bag of tricks was going to include). The spell should also have been dealing 1d6 damage to every object she hurled, possibly breaking them. Rob and Katie discussed this after the recording and agreed to not let the spell be used as, essentially, Mage Hand in future encounters.
  • The whole crew came into the start of these recordings after a stretch of playing a lot of Starfinder and Rob accidentally used the Starfinder nonlethal damage rules during Grip’s turn in round one. Instead of separately tracking the 9 points of nonlethal damage he did, Rob mistakenly deducted them from Scaen’s hit point total. This wouldn’t have changed when the fight ended, but it would have left her simply unconscious, rather than dying.

CHAPTER 3

  • In the fight this episode, Rob started things out by forgetting to remind Johnny that Gull was flat-footed before taking his first action (which would have lowered his AC), so an early attack that missed should have hit him. This ends up being a rule we forgot numerous times throughout Act I.
  • In round two of the fight, we forgot that rapiers have a critical threat range of 18–20 when Johnny rolled a natural 18 on his attack. He should have had an opportunity to make a confirmation roll to potentially deal double damage.

CHAPTER 4

  • In the first round of the fight, when Centipede #2 tumbled through Grip’s square Rob asked for Grip’s CMD instead of his CMD+5 (which the Centipede would have failed to hit). He also neglected to add an additional +2 to the DC since it was avoiding one additional opponent (Ray). Grip should have gotten an attack of opportunity and the Centipede’s movement should have been halted.
  • The Unchained affliction system was new to us, and in the fight this episode Rob forgot—twice—to deal hit point damage to Grip upon exposure to poison (he should have taken a total of two more points of damage).
  • In round two, we forgot to have Johnny add +2 to his attack roll for flanking, but the attack hit either way.

CHAPTER 5

  • In the surprise round of this episode’s fight, Rob forgot to ask Paul to roll for initiative to see if Ray would beat the haunt to action. (He would have, so the outcome was the same.)
  • In round one, Rob should have applied a –4 penalty to Dr. Latchke for making a melee attack from a prone position, but the result was unaffected due to a high attack roll.
  • Continuing the theme from Chapter 3, Rob forgot that Grip was flat-footed—and thus unable to take attacks of opportunity—before he took his first round of actions. This resulted in one of the Crawling Hands getting destroyed before being able to attack Grip.
  • Multiple characters had to make the DC 10 Constitution check to stabilize after being reduced to negative hit points, and in each instance we forgot to subtract their negative hp from the result. (Fortunately, the outcomes would have been the same.)
  • In round three, Robert mistakenly added +2 to his damage roll from Grudge Fighter (instead of +1), but it didn’t end up changing any outcomes.
  • We all forgot about Orc Ferocity when Grip was first dropped below 0hp, but we discuss that on air.
  • For anyone reading along with the book, Rob did make a few adjustments in this episode: he slightly adjusted the triggering condition for the Imprisoned Viscera haunt, and he opted to make the fail-by-10 effect for dreaming in Briarstone a fail-by-5 effect.

CHAPTER 7

  • We had a combat here that began with an attempted coup de grace against an opponent that wasn’t technically “helpless,” though Johnny argued that the circumstances allowed for an attempt at a killing blow. Rob found his argument convincing, but since the target was at full health, under no actual impairment, and aware that she was in danger, he opted to have her keep her Armor Class, but simply suffer the flat –2 penalty of the “blind” condition. In retrospect, Rob probably should have also applied the flat-footed condition, but he wasn’t thinking of her as being “surprised” by this combat.
  • In round three, we botched some of the rules associated with Dora’s Phrenic Amplification and Mindtouch abilities. Katie should have linked her spell at the time of casting rather than after the result of the spell was determined, and since her target succeeded at the Will save against the linked spell, the Detect Thoughts effect should not have happened.
  • Continuing the theme from Chapter 5, we made the same error with the DC 10 Constitution check to stabilize after being reduced to negative hit points.

CHAPTER 8

  • For anyone reading along with the book, Rob opted to have these particular Ghouls in the laundry area be destroyed by a single use of channeling since (given the circumstances) neither was a significant enemy.

CHAPTER 9

  • We did Psychometry as a secret check in this episode, and that’s a check Katie should have rolled for herself.

CHAPTER 10

  • For anyone reading along with the book, Rob did slightly adjust the haunt’s hit point total in order to keep things moving. Paul had already blown through four daily uses of channel energy (with a couple of tragically low rolls), and Rob thought this felt like a more-than-sufficient amount of resource usage for the encounter.

CHAPTER 11

  • We had long had a practice of rolling the concealment miss chance before an attack roll (a house rule we started using when we were playing a bunch of very high-level campaigns, in order to save us a little time and math), which we continued to do in this game for a while. We switch back to the rule-as-written midway through the book.
  • In the surprise round, Rob forgot to ask Robert for Grip’s flat-footed AC, but the attack against him was a miss either way.
  • Gull should have had an opportunity to roll twice on saves versus disease in this fight, due to his Foe of the Strange trait. We all forgot about that here, but Rob gave him a chance to make a roll retroactively in a later chapter.
  • In round three, Ray targeted Gull (who was in the fog) with a touch spell, and Rob forgot to check concealment.
  • Dora draws an acid flask on the move in round four, which is probably not something she should be able to do. But the rules about whether or not certain alchemical items count as “weapons” or not seem to be the subject of continuous debate.

CHAPTER 13

  • Rob forgot that nobody can take attacks of opportunity until they act the first time, regardless of whether they are surprised or not. When the fight started, there was no surprise round since both sides effectively hid from the other until the moment they were all suddenly face-to-face, and Rob mistook “nobody’s surprised” for “nobody’s flat-footed.” The only upside to the blunder was that it was made to the benefit of both sides, so nobody was over-advantaged.
  • Rob failed to notice that the Pickled Punks’ “Attach” ability allows them to automatically deal bite damage when they’re attached, so Gull should have taken more nonlethal damage over the course of the fight than he actually did.
  • Rob probably should have applied the penalties of “squeezing into a square” for the rounds when Gull was under the tables.

CHAPTER 14

  • As in the previous fight, Rob failed to notice that the Pickled Punks’ “Attach” ability allows them to automatically deal bite damage when they’re attached, but that error didn’t end up mattering in this particular combat. However, he also failed to notice that anyone striking a Pickled Punk with an unarmed attack is supposed to be subject to its “Irritant” ability, and thus he neglected to have Robert make two saves that he should have had to make. (He’d likely have passed, but still.)

CHAPTER 15

  • Rob again flubbed the rules for using Acrobatics to avoid attacks of opportunity when Grip attempted to tumble through an Apostle’s square, failing to beat her CMD+5. The Apostle got her AoO, but Grip’s movement should have been halted.

ACT I INTERLUDE

  • Rob allowed a non-Paizo spell from Riddle’s past, called Updraft, to be available to him since it’s not a game-changer and it was a key flavor-y part of his low-level arsenal back in the old days.
  • In round one, Rob had Bloodtooth take an attack of opportunity on Riddle, which he should not have been able to do as he had not yet acted.
  • Bloodtooth landed a critical hit on Long Fist in round two and Rob mistakenly rolled x2 for the damage instead of the x3 for a longspear.
  • In round three, Rob really mismanaged Long Fist’s grapple check. First of all, Long Fist should have gotten a +5 circumstance bonus on this CMB check because Bloodtooth had failed to escape the previous round, which would have led Long Fist to succeed. Secondly, if Long Fist had indeed failed, as Rob ruled, he should have failed to maintain the grapple. At least this botched round didn’t skew the direction of the fight since Bloodtooth was dead before his next spot in the initiative order came up.
  • For anyone who’s read the books, Rob has adjusted the build (gear, skills, feats, etc.) of the NPC he’s calling “the Stranger” a little bit to suit his longterm purposes.
  • At the end of the fight, Rob mistakenly had the Stranger make a full attack after a move, but after that 6 points of Dex drain and with around half her speed, Riddle was done for anyways.

CHAPTER 17

  • According to RAW, Rob should be having Ray make Knowledge: Arcana checks to identify specific magic auras, but we typically allow either K:A or Spellcraft to be used for that particular application of Detect Magic.

CHAPTER 18

  • The being inside the fog cloud is supposed to be immune to mind-affecting affects, so it shouldn’t have been able to be read by Dora’s detect thoughts spell.

CHAPTER 19

  • For this entire fight, Rob neglected to calculate the effects of the hallow spell operating in the chapel. This would have changed a few individual moments, but likely wouldn’t have affected the overall shape or outcome of this fight given the way the rolls were falling.
  • At the dormant state of his phobia, Grip should have had to make a Will save every round he was within 30 feet of the various bladed weapons involved in this fight, but we forgot after his first check.
  • Rob accidentally skipped Jared’s turn in round four.

CHAPTER 21

  • Rob forgot that rolling a natural 1 on a Research check is supposed to be an automatic failure, which should have increased the library’s Knowledge Points total.

CHAPTER 22

  • Grip should have had a chance to lose his madness at the start of this day, but Rob remembers to do this in the next session.
  • Rob confused the Oneirogen’s Veil of Mists ability with something totally different and handled it incorrectly (a successful save should have made a PC immune to that ability for 24 hours). As he realized he was doing it wrong, he attempted to soften the blow by allowing near-instantaneous waking up outside of the fog—the idea being that the dreamstuff was “new” every round (from the constant, sputtering surge), but that it was “less potent” than it should have been (since she’s a “malfunctioning” Oneirogen).
  • Grip attempts grapple checks in rounds one and four and Rob forgot to give Dr. Losandro attacks of opportunity.
  • Late in the fight, when there were multiple combatants all rolling around on the ground, Rob did away with some of the bonuses and penalties for being prone (to simplify some math), since they were all effectively in the same situation relative to each other (basically, nobody had special advantage or disadvantage).
  • Rob apparently miscalculated his math at some point because he ended up 1 point off on the Oneirogen’s hit points.

CHAPTER 24

  • Rob could have asked for a Sanity check with these Ghouls here, but with their CR of 1, even a failure would have resulted in no Sanity damage.
  • In round one of the opening fight, Rob neglected to check concealment on Gull’s first shot with his pistol.
  • We neglected to notice that the sickened condition applies a –2 penalty to all weapon damage rolls, which should have been applied to the hit Gull made with his pistol in the first fight and the alchemists’ fire against the Boilborns.
  • In the second round of the opening fight, Paul got a natural 19 on his attack roll, which should have been a critical threat with Ray’s light crossbow.

CHAPTER 25

  • Rob forgot to apply the –2 AC penalty to the Unicorn for charging and Gull’s readied shot should have hit. Gull couldn’t have killed it with a single shot, though, so this didn’t affect the outcome of the encounter.
  • Rob should have changed Gull’s initiative order after his readied action went off (he would have gone after Dora).
  • We played a little fast-and-loose with the Diplomacy rules with the Unicorn (it’s supposed to take a minute to attempt to change someone’s attitude), but we fairly typically follow the roleplaying flow with that skill rather than worrying overmuch about RAW.
  • In round two of the second fight, Rob should not have pre-rolled Ghoul #2’s attack rolls before resolving the results of each hit. Since Grip ended up being paralyzed by the bite, the following two claw attacks would have different results. This was a significant error, since two more successful hits that round would have killed Grip.

CHAPTER 26

  • In the fight with the Apostles, Rob inadvertently skipped Ray’s turn in round two.

CHAPTER 27

  • Rob wondered after the fact if he should have asked for Planes rather than Nature on the Knowledge check to identify the Nightgaunt. Its type is Monstrous Humanoid, but it is extraplanar, and lumping knowledge of such a creature in with knowledge about the natural world of Golarion felt a bit odd to him.

CHAPTER 29

  • Rob forgot that spell-like abilities do not have verbal components, and mistakenly gave the players multiple opportunities to hear the ratlings casting their various spells (in both Chapters 29 and 30).
  • In round four, Rob switched Horsepiss and Jared’s initiative positions by mistake.

CHAPTER 30

  • Dora used Combat Advice twice against an invisible enemy during this fight, which shouldn’t have worked, but neither Katie or Rob had noticed that part of the feat yet.
  • In round five, Rob moved Gull in initiative by mistake during the chaos. In rounds seven and eight he missed Vaustin’s turns, and he skipped Benji’s swarm’s turn in round six.
  • Between episode recordings, Rob forgot that Ratch’s rat swarm had been summoned by a spell with a limited duration and it stuck around several rounds longer than it should have. But he did accidentally skip their turn in rounds five and eight. And they never did any damage anyways, so in the end it all worked out fine.
  • In round seven, Dora fed a potion to Ray as a standard action and it should have taken a full-round action.
  • In round eight, Gull took an attack of opportunity while using total defense, which he should not have been able to do.
  • Late in this fight, Gull was running around attacking with his pistol in one hand and his dagger in the other. We’d forgotten that there is handed-ness in Pathfinder and he should have either had to use an action to switch hands after his pistol misfired or his dagger attacks should have been penalized as being made by an off-hand weapon.

CHAPTER 32

  • When Gull was exposed to the Stench ability of Klades, we should have applied his +2 bonus to saves vs. poisons that he gets from the Investigator class. He saved either way, but would not have needed to spend two points of Inspiration in order to do so.
  • In round four of the Ghoul fight, when Grip made a grapple check, we should have applied a –4 penalty to his CMB since (as he was wearing a shield) he didn’t really have both hands free, but the result would have been unaffected.
  • Then in round five, Grip should have gotten a +5 circumstance bonus on his CMB check since Klades failed to break the grapple, but this also wouldn’t have affected the outcome.
  • Rob messed up the Oneirogen’s Veil of Mists ability again, misreading it to say that once someone wakes up, one no longer has to save against it. It should be that once a PC makes a successful save, they are immune—which Grip hadn’t actually done at the time Rob declared him immune.
  • In round one of the Oneirogen fight, Grip made a trip maneuver attempt from a prone position and we forgot to apply the –4 penalty for melee attacks made from a prone position, but it didn’t impact the outcome.

CHAPTER 35, PARTS 1 & 2

  • Gull started the fight with the Apostles and the Bag Lady with his pistol in one hand and his magical dagger in the other, and proceeded to make attacks with both throughout the fight. Rob confused the rules between Pathfinder and Starfinder (which doesn’t have handed-ness) and forgot to penalize him for attacks with his off hand.
  • By the end of the fight with the Bag Lady, Rob and Robert completely lost track of all the stuff in Grip’s hands. The most glaring error is that Grip should have had to drop Red Destiny when he made his attempt to flip the grapple around (and thus wouldn’t have been able to attack with it in round five).
  • The more Rob looks at the wording of the Message spell, the less he understands how it’s actually supposed to work RAW. So, you’ll hear us interpret it multiple ways throughout the course of the adventure.
  • Rob forgot to make a couple of concealment checks in the fight with the Oneirogens, but that didn’t particularly skew any results of that encounter.
  • We mishandled Ray’s Life Link ability in this fight. The healing that the ability generates is not something the Oracle can choose to do or not do—the only choice they have is to sever the link as an immediate action. We don’t get our heads wrapped around this until Act II.
  • Johnny used the Long Arm spell to effectively increase the range at which Gull could make a touch attack with his pistol. Rob let it fly in the moment, but starting in Act II, we do require that Gull use a spell like Longshot to do so.
  • When the Tatterman made his first attack, Rob neglected to notice that the threat range for a war razor is 19-20 and missed an opportunity for a critical hit on Grip.
  • For anyone reading along with the book, Ulver Zandalus is supposed to have the Abomination discipline, but since that’s what Katie chose for Dora, Rob adjusted him a little bit. In our world, he had the Pain discipline (that “cocky smile” was him using the Painful Reminder ability).

CHAPTER 38

  • Keeping the tradition alive, Rob forgot to check the party’s sanity upon the sight of this new Undead creature.
  • On his first attack against the Revenant, while running through his attack math, Robert said that Power Attack was lowering his attack roll by 1, but it should actually have been lowering it by 2 because of his +4 BAB.
  • Even though the automatic-death component of a coup de grace action wouldn’t work on an Undead creature, the automatic critical hit component of an attack on a helpless creature should have been applied and Robert needn’t have had to roll to hit on his surprise attack kicking off the second half of the fight. Fortunately, Robert rolled a successful crit anyways.
  • Dr. Trice shouldn’t have still been helpless for Rony’s attack in the surprise round (since he’d been attacked, the Self-Loathing restraints should have been broken), but Rob left him helpless until all of these attacks resolved. In the end it was fine since Rony did no damage anyways.
  • In two instances, we forgot to check against Spell Resistance for spells Dora/Thema cast on the Revenant, but the rolls were made automatically in Roll20 and when we checked after we stopped recording, all was well. We address this at the top of the next episode.

CHAPTER 41

  • In round two of the Phantom Fungus fight, Ray’s Life Link ability should have healed Grip as well as Rony, but we missed it. The same thing happened again in round three, for both of them. And again in the final moments of the fight. We don’t really wrap our heads around how this ability actually works until the next chapter.

CHAPTER 42

  • Rob didn’t use the stats in the book for Daridela, but instead advanced Katie’s character Jane to 6th level.
  • Rob established the Xhamen-Dor infection moment as a DC 25 Fortitude save to avoid being dazed for 1 round. In a sidebar that got edited out, Rob told the players that they could treat this as a save vs. disease, which explains how high of a roll Paul got for Ray.
  • In round three of the fight against Jane and her minions, Grip’s second attack brought the Fungal Wolf to 0 hit points. After all the ghoul fights and the combat with the Revenant, Rob had “0hp=destruction” in his head, but this creature should have had a round to act with the disabled condition.
  • In round eight, we all forgot Ray’s Life Link ability. He would have had to end all bonds as an immediate action in order to stay alive.

 

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