BishopMcQ's page

I made a NPC human fighter, rebounding toss, ricochet stance, quick reversal and combat reflexes. All in on Athletics and fun skill feats with same.

Most of the time it was shield tossing, and shoving or disarming folks. Was he the biggest damage dealer around, no. Was he a ton of fun to play for a few sessions without outshining the BDH in the group, definitely.

It gave me some ideas on how I would remake him if I was going to play as a long term character.

Someone is disarming a trap. An ally is pooling their knowledge on how to disarm traps (aiding them). The person disarming the trap is taking extra effort to be clear and descriptive of what they see and what they are doing to try and help the person who is sharing their knowledge be able to share said knowledge (aiding the person who is aiding them).

Thanks! That helped me see.

Can someone layout an example where that would be feasible?

Other than a double bounce on a trampoline (and even that's not quite there) I am having trouble picturing a scenario where I set you up to help me, and my reaction to help you help me doesn't distract me from the task at hand.

A scenario that I could see:

Two characters are running from the guards and turn down a dead end alley. Character A gets to the end first and Aids another to boost their friend over the wall. Character B still running, gets to the wall and starts to scramble over it (reaction triggers). When Character B gets to the top, they pivot and reach down to offer their friend a hand up.

One character aided another and was aided on the same task, but they both independently had to complete it.

Could they both have just run, climbed the wall, and kept going? Probably.

Does this route guarantee that both of them get over the wall so the guards don't catch them? Yes.

Feels like a good story, I can see it play out in my mind's eye, doesn't feel cheesy.

Buy 4 - 10 foot poles, 100 feet of rope and a repair kit. Be Trained in Craft.

Frame them into a 5'x5' square, do some lashings, use the wood working tools in the repair kit to trim off the excess lengths. Spread the portable hole over the framing. Positioning one person on each side, you can now stand the hole up, align it on the floor, or with some scaffolding place it on the ceiling to appear through the floor into a room above.

Fun and hijinks ensue, much of which is not outside the realm of other 15th-17th level characters, which is where we would be to have the hole in the first place.

Thanks.

Would they use the character's level or the item level for the heightening?

Ed Reppert wrote:

Don't schools teach basic logic any more?

Weren't you reading? They got rid of schools.

I thought the Wizard blurb provided whole new schools of civic wizardry and fire pickles.

I think we just need to polish it up. Clearly the Kineticist's biggest issue is that it keeps moving around. The further it moves, the less energy it has. We can fix this with a little bit of polish and create the truly powerful, Potentialist.

The Potentialist doesn't need to worry about gates or composites. It has untold power, drawing that power from all that passes around it, even vast cosmic forces.

The Potentialist synergizes well with the Inventor, as the Inventor can truly exploit Mechanics to help the Potentialist spring into action. The Potentialist has truly explosive responses when combining with others. With a simple charge, the Potentialist can become electrifying to watch.

If the class is balanced around the idea that (within limits), the wizard will have the right spells prepared, how big of a change in power would it be to let Drain Bonded Item let you gain the ability to cast one spell that you know, rather than one that you prepared?

It's a once per day effect, you still need to cast it, etc.

If you are standing in a well lit area, with no cover, then the fighter is going to be more likely to hit. If the enemy is hiding behind cover, the Ranger is more likely to spot them and be able to attack at all.

Also, the fighter spends 2 actions to Double Slice or Power Attack. The Ranger spends 1 action to Hunt Prey, 1 action to Twin Takedown or Hunted Shot. Or the Ranger can give their party all bonuses on hurting the monster.

Level 2 - The fighter gets a new way to hurt people in well lit areas. The Ranger gets a new way to be in the wilderness, ignoring difficult terrain to be able to get away from monsters or close the distance on them while the fighter splashes through the muck.

Fighting on an open battlefield in the morning or in a well-lit tavern, yes the Fighter is going to hit more frequently. Good for them.

Fighting in the outdoors with factors like poor lighting, underbrush, and fog, then the ranger will do better.

Are you really going to sit here and use an anecdote to excuse the disgusting mess that is an Improve Knockdown Fighter? Show me any single action in the game as efficient as a Fighter knocking a boss flat on their back while dealing damage.

It is 2-actions and requires two feats. There are some other limitations around it as well.

Now, does that feat need to be rebalanced? Possibly.
Is a single edge-case proof that a class is entirely overpowered? No.

Having run games with a fighter and several other characters, the Fighter did not consistently outshine the other characters. Each character had time in the spotlight.

A bucket of sand is a finite object. A cup of water. Yes, it is made up of smaller parts -- but then again so is the tree. Pathfinder is not designed for us to get into the cellular level. The pedantic answer for measuring gas would be to do a volumetric analysis, understanding partial pressures. This would require some assumptions that Golarion's atmosphere is similar to Earth's.

If it was a sapling, yes, I would say that it probably could be done within the bulk limitations. Just not a tree large enough for a bridge (unless it was a bridge for ants).

Using base kinesis to weed a garden, where the phytokineticist looks at a weed and says "No" and it goes away, would be reasonable.

I would likely say that the Tree is one object, and can't have a portion suppressed. There are plenty of other ways to knock down a tree.

keftiu wrote:

The 1e Ninja was basically just a Rogue with a few Monk features; in 2e, a Rogue with a Monk Multiclass Archetype will be the closest thing by far.

Not quite. The ninja could do quite a few things a monk couldn't do and do some of them sooner. Someone said Rogues could turn invisible, yeah at lvl 20, far too late imo. Would I get more traction in the homebrew forum?

I do think you would get more folks who want to homebrew and come up with new things in the Homebrew section of the forum. In the General Discussion, most readers will likely point at how to do it within the current published rules.

I've also found the homebrew forum to be more responsive if you present a draft and ask for feedback, rather than ask for others to come up with the idea whole cloth for you.

Good luck with the conversion

Hello, there appears to be a minor layout glitch with the interactive map file for Dreamers of the Nameless Spires. The title page on the file that I downloaded from the store last night has the cover art for Dreamers, but the title says "They Watched the Stars"

The maps all align to the adventure for Dreamers, so it's functional. It just looks like the cover page needs an update.

I'm looking at items that can speed up overland travel.

Ring of the Weary Traveler is a 5th level item that temporarily blocks fatigue and has +10' movement for Overland Travel.

Hardy Traveler (9th level racial feat) has a similar +10' and another bonus.

Horseshoes of Speed are a 14th level item for the +10' version, 7th level for +5'.

If we made a new item say, Horseshoes of the Messenger, that just increase the speed by 10' for overland travel, would it be reasonable to be a 4th or 5th level item? I recognize that tactical movement is worth more than overland movement due to the combat applications.

I would agree with "Lore skill from backgrounds auto scaling like the Additional Lore feat." I think that's a fairly minor change that would likely not impact overall game balance.

I also like the option to have more spells with variable action economy. Having spells with 1/2/3 action variants can take more space in the books, but has a nice flow with the 3-action system. I really like the choices with "do I power this up or should I use my feat to give it reach?" This again is something that I feel can be done without a balance swing for the game designers.

Many of the options feel like "make my favorite class a little cooler."

All of that said, looking at the survey structure disincentivized me from taking the effort to check each box and read through the vast number of options, much less weigh the impact of each change against the others and the overall impact on the game system as a whole.

I would roll my dice and just apply attacks from left to right. As long as you have a consistent routine that doesn't make anyone think that you are cherry-picking specific dice for specific modifiers, it should be fine.

I've also made index cards with my common attack sequences or placed trimmed index cards into a sheet protector designed for baseball cards or similar, then used a wet erase marker to add modifiers.

There are a lot of options. Play around with a few and figure out what works best for you.

Alternately, turn the grid off and break out a tape measure. 1" = 5' move your characters around freely. 5' reach, anything within an inch is a fair target.

Welcome (back) to wargaming, which in many ways is the grandparent of modern roleplaying games. This also allows for actual circles, lines and cones rather than the corner cuts you deal with on a square grid.

Provides for an equal level of tactical simulation to account for abilities that would require a grid.

Can anyone provide context as to what this is supposed to be? I got an email that there is a new download available but it appears to be a separate product that is not an update to the Dark Archive file.

With the Jistka Imperium, my understanding was that the transfer was a single time and then they stayed within the automaton. Many of them then left Golarion entirely. (Please jump in here if I'm misremembering)

I'm curious about the ability to switch between organic sleeves based on purpose and activities. Especially since the Androffans have shown the ability to create sleeves built for specific purposes -- having neural pathways pre-laid down for combat abilities, language, art, etc, so that the consciousness who joined in would have those basic functions. Similarly, the reincarnate ritual rewrites the ancestry abilities and modifiers.

While reading about the Androffan foundries, I thought about "sufficiently advanced technology" and the Reincarnate spell.

Reincarnate places an existing soul into a brand new body -- the ritual doesn't really delve into some of the psychosocial changes that could cause for an individual, their self-image vs the reflected image in a mirror, familial relationships, etc.

If the Androffans have the technology to create wholly sentient beings, then the technology likely also exists to create organic shells without a soul. These would be similar to clones or simulacra and serve as a vessel to receive a reincarnated soul or the use of magic jars. We've had spells which could mirror much of this in previous editions, so the Androffan technology feels sufficiently advanced to function as the magic. Having a premade vessel feels like it would be easier to stitch the soul back into, rather than needing the magic to create one fully within the ritual.

Obviously if this was being done to create immortality and prevent the soul from being judged, Pharasma and other powers would likely get involved. But for swapping one organic sleeve for another, how would the lore get impacted? My premise is from empty shells specifically designed for the purpose, not stealing another person's body.

Or it can viewed as the system reinforces the idea of teamwork--there will be some things you cannot handle all by yourself and no one person should be the BDH every encounter.

But what about Androids? Nothing. Do they need to eat? Maybe, maybe not.

Androids breathe, eat, and sleep like a human, although they're incapable of biological procreation.

That part was clear. I agree that a lot of the rest of this can get murky.

The Game Mechanics and LPJ Design had some for PF1. I haven't seen any for PF2 yet, but it should be a pretty quick adjustment.

Summoner/Wizard was a combination that one of my players had a lot of fun with. He went Conjuration specialist, and it was an Eidolon and some Summon Monsters from the Wizard side or if the eidolon was gone, long lasting summons from the Summoner ability.

I have a set of 12 sided D4s. They roll better.

I don't think a lot of 5e players care about rule design!

Some people like Cookies and Cream, others like Rocky Road, some hate ice cream all together and eat pie. There's plenty of options for the gamers of the world to eat their dessert of choice.

From the thread for the Product Discussion, it sounds like they were custom maps, not an existing map pack. One of the GMs who ran it previously offered to link a copy of custom minis they made (cardstock print outs) early on release date for other GMs who might want them.

Can we move the subforums for closed Playtest to the bottom of the list? Maybe do this 2-4 weeks after the Playtest finishes if there is still significant traffic into those threads in the immediate debrief period.

Another thought would be to keep the Advice and Rules forums up closer to the top.

Right now, if I come into the PF2 forums there's General Discussion, then Dark Archive Playtest, Dark Archive Playtest General, Psychic, Thaumaturge, then 4 more subforums for Guns and Gear, 4 more for Secrets of Magic, then finally Advice, Rules Discussions, and the products, 3pp, etc.

Depending on the type of bridge, you may be able to target a smaller component like removing a keystone. Some bridges have multiple keystones.

Using Engineering knowledge, mauls and wedges to make a gap, then placing acid or alchemical items.

If the players are defending the sappers, maybe the sappers started beforehand and the heroes just need to hold out for 5 rounds. Then there can be Dex saves to clear out before the rubble takes them or risking being caught on the wrong side of the bridge.

If they are trying to stop them, give a similar timeframe. The guard comes running to tell the heroes that people are going to destroy the bridge, and the heroes have 10 rounds to get over there and stop it. Do they stay and fight the current bad guys or retreat to save the bridge?

You could also take all the guns out, then call them to you later on in case you are going somewhere they won't let you carry weapons.

Most people make you hand over the gun, not take off the entire belt.

I like it for the ability to pull a gun, do the fire/reload etc as necessary. If I need to drop the gun, that's fine. I pull the next one out when my hands are available. When all is said and done, I can bring the guns back to me and not have to worry about retracing my steps or if I dropped it overboard etc.

Niche use, definitely. Full of flavor, sure. Optimized to help maximize DPR, not at all.

Next book has a dragon, giants, mayhem and adventure. (There are technically a few dragons, but one they can break from its Plan A and then possibly be able to do some of the negotiations etc.)

Book 5 also has a dragon which gave my party nightmares about walls closing in. This I think would be the better one to use in the negotiations and bargaining.

Unless you are fighting enemies that are significantly lower level, that third action is almost always better spent doing something other than attacking. Raise a shield, Step away, or even just switching your grip on a weapon.

As a GM, I also find that by mixing up the levels of enemies it can make the team feel more or less heroic at the same encounter difficulty.

A moderate encounter for level 4 PCs could be one level 6 monster, two level 4 monsters, or four level 2 monsters. The level 6 monster is one that will be hard to hit but will likely be swinging crits on the PCs -- it can feel hard but overcoming it can feel like a fierce win. A handful of low level monsters, the heroes are more likely to be laying out the crits and less likely to get hit.

Go for an extreme encounter and that gets even more swingy at the boss level.

Order vs Chaos has been a frequent struggle in story telling. Babylon 5 did a good job of showing how those two approaches can lead to Good and Evil actions, as well as, the redemption arcs of those who ally with one side then realize what the cost of that philosophy will mean for the rest of the world.

While immortal, inscrutable forces of the universe may follow them, I think mortals are going to end up with a messy gray all over the place. That gets even more complex when you consider the intent behind the choice, the unknown consequences of that choice, etc.

I really like the way a few spells have different effects based on the number of actions spent to cast them. I just wish more spells leaned into that action economy rather than most being a flat 2-actions.

Thanks all!

From a lore perspective, was the discovered/stolen technology in Castle Urion that was discussed in the Numeria book ever followed up on or was that a hook for home GMs to run with? I haven't seen any follow up, but wasn't sure if I missed something.

If it has Spoilers for Iron Gods, please let me know and I will dig into that AP.

Historic enemies can become allies. Gods can change or at least the mortal interpretations of their words can change and new covenants formed. The world grows and adjusts.

Enemies are not constant. The enemy soldier swinging a sword at my comrade in arms will not be shown mercy in the middle of a fight. The enemy soldier who surrenders is not an enemy, they are a prisoner of war.

Should I kill them out of hand? No, that's being evil.

Should I let them return to their homeland and believe that they'll never raise a sword against my kin? That's a big murky gray spot full of situational context.

Pointing at a quote from a decade ago, from an individual who doesn't work for the company any further (to my knowledge), doesn't say where the lore is today. It tells us where the lore and belief was at that moment. Ask yourself where will the world be in another decade?

Sounds like the Red Warlock in Oglaf (Realistic Goals).

That specific comic is safe, but other comics on the same site are NSFW, so no link.

As a GM, if I'm using ABP, why does it have to be linked to the level of the characters? Yes, it makes it easier when everyone levels to 5 add Defense Potency +1. On the other hand, if my characters are 4th level and they overcome a major obstacle in their path, I can give them that bump now and know that they will make 5th level in the next session or two. They get the feeling of advancement outside of just leveling up, and maybe get some cool flavorful items at the same time. This mirrors some of the progression that naturally happens with adventuring and finding magic items.

Some challenges might provide the XP and boons where the characters level up and get their ABP at the same time. Other challenges may raise one but not the other.

I've noticed that the AP maps tend to be internally consistent, but if you compare one AP to another, there is usually some variation. Probably because the cartographers are different.

If you are using CC3+, the Dungeons of Schley style matches some APs. You should also check out the CC3 forums for community resources. There are some packs with thousands of assets especially the Vintyri Project. CC3 has a bit of a learning curve to it in getting the right image sets into the map you want. They tend to self-isolate between City, Overland, and Dungeon. I'm personally not great at staying in the right setup -- especially when making a City and doing maps of the buildings as linked assets.

The 13th Age overland style matches some of the player handout sepia toned map styles. I have the Varisia and Numeria overland maps framed in my office, and have been working on making some in the same style for other realms.

Profantasy Software also has their own YouTube channel with videos. I also found the tutorial videos by Josh Plunkett to be helpful. There are guides on how to convert assets, so any PNG file can be added into CC3+.

Good luck!

Well, I've played PF since launch, and earlier editions of D&D before that. Roleplaying in general for pushing 30 years. All that said, I have only around 200 posts on this forum. There are plenty of people like me, I'm sure who read but don't post frequently. Plenty more who play with their friends and don't contribute to these forums at all.

I think it would be easier to shift the conversation to an IC perspective. To be seen as a veteran of the Pathfinders, how many expeditions do you need to have gone on? I could see them grading within their chapterhouses, much the way that military units have done for centuries. Survived the battle of XXX, explored the caverns of YYY, and you're a veteran. Done 10 of these great deeds, you're seen as an ace of aces, or similar.

The pathfinders also have a history of grading your participation by what you did. Council of Thieves included venturing into a cursed and forgotten Pathfinder lodge, where the heroes learn all about some of the inner politics of venture-companies and what happens when people feel they've been dealt with unfairly.

I noticed that the files for just Book 1 (Adventure and Interactive Maps) are the same size as all of the files for the Abomination Vaults (Adventures and Maps).

Age of Ashes - 133 mb
Extinction Curse - 184 mb
Agents of Edgewatch - 293 mb
Abomination Vaults - 155 mb (for half as many books as previous APs)
Fists of the Ruby Phoenix - 546 mb

That brings in Fist of the Ruby Phoenix as nearly the same size as the first 3 APs combined. What's changing?

Temperans wrote:

Making it so it gives the full +2 always means that characters would be incentivized to get their primary and secondary to 22. Which is impossible in the current system without a gracious GM.

And tertiary... and whatever fourth is.

Quaternary

I was going to say that I thought there was cannon information in Agents of Edgewatch with regards to having an option to make all weapons attacks be able to be nonlethal without taking a penalty, which is the typical thing required to convert a normal lethal strike to nonlethal. However, looking at the book again, it merely suggests it as a viable, or even recommended house-rule, but it does call it a house rule, as opposed to official option.

The Player's Guide makes it hard and fast

This means that, during combat encounters, your character is always dealing nonlethal damage; you are never allowed to deal lethal damage. You take no penalty to attack rolls for dealing nonlethal damage, and all types of damage you deal (whether from weapon attacks, spells, or even poisons) are nonlethal. You gain no bonuses or added benefits for making attacks using weapons with the nonlethal weapon trait. As usual for nonlethal damage, when you reduce a creature to 0 Hit Points using nonlethal damage, the creature falls unconscious instead of dying.

Though the adventure on the GM side calls it a houserule.

I would imagine that Shelyn and her followers would be fine with polyamory and polygamy as she supports love in its varied forms.