Take Your Third Action ...

Take your third action first, and other PF2 lessons from chess!

Before we begin: a warm welcome to all the new subscribers joining us this month. We’re very excited you’re on board. I hope you have a fun time!

Speaking of boards, lately I’ve been playing chess. Like, a lot of chess. Perhaps too much chess, given that I’ve begun to visualize my Subaru as a rook weaving between pawns (other cars) who are blocking my open ranks and files (other lanes) on the 101 highway in San Francisco.

As my wife told me recently when confronted with my latest all-in obsession: “It’s lucky you never tried heroin, honey.”

In any case, it turns out this is a fairly common gaming crossover, at least in my own circles of dice-slinging Pathfinder players. And it makes total sense, too, when you consider that chess is basically the OG of grid-based tactical combat simulators.

While the basic laws of chess haven’t changed much in recent memory (see this US Chess Federation article for a fun history of weird pawn promotion), Pathfinder’s rules got flipped on their head in August 2019 with the release of Second Edition. And no feature of the new Pathfinder system was as revolutionary as the “three-action economy.”

Unlike in previous sword-and-sorcery editions where actions in combat were sorted into different types — Standard, Move, Full-Round, Swift, Immediate, Bonus, Legendary, Lair, Sleepy, Dopey, Bashful, etc — in Second Edition, an action is an action, more or less. You get three of them on your turn.

Want to move around the battlefield? That’ll cost a certain number of actions.

Prefer to use those actions to swing your sword? Or cast a spell? Or open a door? Or draw and load a crossbow? Or ponder what sorts of weaknesses that zombie-looking monster might have? Go ahead and spend your actions on that instead!

On the topic of drawing and loading, please earn yourself a Hero Point by aiming a click at that heart button up top. I have no idea what it accomplishes, besides making me feel good!

Such universality is deeply freeing, but the three-action economy also presents potential hazards. Such as: a player who’s attacked twice, or moved and swung a sword, or cast a two-action spell, and who suddenly can’t decide what to do with their final action. (This is particularly relevant because additional attacks take a big to-hit penalty, and so rarely land).

Third-action paralysis can grind the momentum of battle to a halt. As Troy Lavallee, GM of the “Glass Cannon Podcast,” described the phenomenon a few weeks back in a behind-the-screen episode of “Cannon Fodder”:

This third action, I understand: don’t use it for a third attack. But the options that remain to you are lame and shitty for a podcast.

Ah, but here’s the thing: third actions only suck if you use them at the end of your turn, after you’ve already attempted the Big Cool Thing (move and attack, or cast a two-action spell, or launch a two-action activity like Power Attack or Hunter’s Aim) and there’s no more juice left in the orange, so to speak.

What if you instead used that third action at the START of your turn, to improve the odds that your Big Cool Thing actually succeeds?

Now we’re talking advanced tactics.

In chess this do-one-little-thing-BEFORE-the-other-big-important-thing approach has a name: preparing a move.

I never studied specific chess openings in my previous eras of play (elementary school chess club; midnight drunk college chess), so I’ve been learning them from scratch. And as Black, I’m typically playing the Caro-Kann Defense in response to White’s common first move e4.

The idea of the Caro-Kann is simple: we want to contest the center and challenge White’s pawn on e4. The quickest way to do this is to play d5 — but if we lead with d5, aka the Scandinavian Defense, guess what:

White’s gonna capture our pawn. So we send our queen out to capture back, and then all hell breaks loose (aka lost tempo) as we try to whisk her back to safety. No thanks.

Instead we can respond to e4 with c6, which is not the most spectacular first move on its own. But playing c6 prepares d5 on our second move (after White’s typical 2. d4) by pre-defending the d5 square:

Let’s goooooooooooo!

How do I suggest applying this lesson to your three actions in Pathfinder? Simple: before you rush into the fray by immediately declaring your Big Cool Thing …

PLAN OUT HOW YOU WANT TO SPEND ALL THREE ACTIONS ON THIS TURN.

The problem, as I see it arise at my tables, is one of patience. Players hear the GM say, “It’s your turn!” and they can’t wait to do their Big Cool Thing. And once it’s done they realize, “Oh … huh, I’ve got an action left to spend, wonder what I should do with it?”

That’s when they’ll ponder a handful of common third actions: Raise a Shield, Recall Knowledge, Demoralize, Create a Diversion, Bon Mot, Guidance.

Guess what? There’s a decent chance each of these third actions would have been more useful if you’d done them on your first action!

• Instead of Raising a Shield (or casting the Shield spell) with your third action to buff your AC, you can Raise a Shield with your first action in case the monster has some nasty Reaction triggered by your attack.

• Instead of Recalling Knowledge with your third action to inform your party of a monster’s weakness, you can Recall Knowledge with your first action and target any known weaknesses yourself.

• Instead of Demoralizing with your third action to frighten the monster and lower its defenses, you can Demoralize with your first action and increase your own chances to harm it.

• Instead of Creating a Diversion with your third action to make yourself momentarily hidden, you can Create a Diversion with your first action and make any foes flat-footed to your attack.

• Instead of using Bon Mot with your third action to lower a monster’s Will save, you can Bon Mot with your first action and then cast a spell against its weakened mind (or Demoralize and then Strike).

• Instead of casting Guidance with your third action to buff an ally (which they’ll probably forget to use anyways), you can cast Guidance on yourself with your first action and cash in that sweet +1 bonus right away.

I know, I know: you had a shitty day at work, your heroic partner put the kids to bed so that you could drive all the way across the bridge to play Pathfinder, and now it’s past your bedtime on a Tuesday night and you’ve waited 15 minutes for the initiative order to come back around to you … and all you want to do is Power Attack a demon in the face with your warhammer.

We’ve all been there, friend.

But you know what’s more satisfying than missing the demon’s AC by 1 and then grumpily deciding what to do with your lame third action?

Demoralizing with your first action, landing the killing blow, and saving the day.

• THE MINI AND THE DICE

Speaking of the world’s OG tactical war game, that handsome knight pictured up top — carved by hand from natural boxwood — is part of my recently acquired Championship Series by Alabama-based chess manufacturer The House of Staunton.

The company is named for the British chess master Howard Staunton, who was the world’s best player in the mid-19th century, though the company admits the pattern “was not designed by the egotistical Staunton, as he never laid claim to such.” I love the design of the horsey’s beady eyes and perky ears! It is SO READY to gallop around the board, obliterating your pawn chains.

As for that black-and-gold dice set I purchased years ago for my halfling cleric of Kurgess — who somehow survived the deadly PF1 module “The Dragon’s Demand” from start to finish — I couldn’t resist: they’re sold by the OG grandmaster of polyhedral dice manufacturers, Chessex.

See what I … [sighs] … yep I’ll show myself out.

• NEW FROM THE WAREHOUSE

This isn’t exactly a new Pathfinder product, although it will be someday soon: yesterday Stephen Glicker over at Roll for Combat and the Battlezoo line of bestiaries announced the 2023 edition of the PF2 monster design contest RPG Superstar!

You might recall that two of the monsters I designed for the 2021 edition of the contest — the Emperor Shark Penguin and the Bathtub Ooze — won Copper and Silver medals and will be published in the upcoming “Battlezoo Bestiary: Strange & Unusual” hardcover book.

New monsters can be created directly on the RPG Superstar website via a slick template, with lots of tools to help refine your math. The deadline for final entries (up to three submissions per writer) is May 28, 2023.

I think I’m going to design a trio of different rakshasas to enter this time around. Er … I mean … three normal humans who are not secretly evil shapeshifting fiends. Yes, for sure that second plan.

• PARTY DYNAMICS

A new section of the newsletter whaaaaa?! This recurring bit is designed to serve as, like Jack Black’s Special Monday Morning Tape from the film “High Fidelity,” a fuckin’ … [snaps fingers] … conversation stimulator, man.

So here’s your chance to jump into the comments section below and swap some nerdage of your own. Today’s question:

What is your favorite chess opening to play, for White or for Black?

Or, if you don’t play chess, here’s an alternative:

How in the nine hells did you manage to watch the Netflix limited series “The Queen’s Gambit” and not fall further down the chess rabbit hole?!

Seriously, I need to learn the art of self-restraint from you. Please.

That’s it for this month. (Ahem, checkmate.) And so, as I say at the end of every Pathfinder module I run: this has been Ambush Tactics. I’ve been your Game Master. I hope you had a fun time. 

Adventure!