ChibiNyan's page

I really wanted to take this spell before, but it's just a worse version of Fear. When the enemy succeeds on their save, this is pretty much an absolute waste of a spell slot. When enemies saves against the basic "Fear" spell, they are still frightened 1. That alone makes me aovid this spell.

Doing damage is nice, but this spell is going to disappoint you in any tough fight.

Design Manager quote from another thread

Mark Seifter wrote:

Multiple attack penalty applies. The CRB says "Striking multiple times in a turn has diminishing returns. The multiple attack penalty (detailed on page 446) applies to each attack after the first, whether those attacks are Strikes, special attacks like the Grapple action of the Athletics skill, or spell attack rolls." We're looking to push an update soon to explain this in the errata entry in question.

I see a new errata, but not this clarification anywhere in there. If anything, it became more confusing. This is not what it says in the new text.

"Sometimes a skill action can be an attack, and in these cases, the skill check might take a multiple attack penalty, as described on page 446."

Specific beats general, right? So this passage must mean that those skill actions with the attack trait must apply and contribute to MAP or else this passage from page 449 means nothing.

They Might be affected by MAP, as described on page 446.

The second time you use an attack action during your turn, you take a –5 penalty to your attack roll. The third time you attack, and on any subsequent attacks, you take a –10 penalty to your attack roll.

So attack rolls take a -5 penalty. The errata just said they are no longer considered to be Attack rolls. They are actions with the "attack" trait, or "attack actions". Page 446 would need to be re-written to say "A -5 penalty on your check to perform an attack action".

Skill check might take a multiple attack penalty, but I can't find the cirucmstances where it does.

I'm still not convinced about how MAP interacts with combat maneuvers. Is there a clarification on the RAW that doesn't require a lawyer studying 3 different explanations across the book? This is VERY confusing.

Errata wrote:

Page 446: Attack Rolls. There was some confusion as to whether skill checks with the attack trait (such as Grapple or Trip) are also attack rolls at the same time. They are not. To make this clear, add this sentence to the beginning of the definition of attack roll "When you use a Strike action or make a spell attack, you attempt a check called an attack roll."

This is how it is but I don't really like it. This creates some weird stuff like A Grapple not benefitting from True Strike but a Grapple with Telekinetic Maneuver doing so.

It also really means you can't make a DEX-maneuver character by using Finesse Maneuver weapons (which might be good, making STR more important).
I hope the balance is worth this exclusion.

Edit: While this might clear up some confusion about some rolls being both a skill check and an attack roll (which they are clearly not, now) it makes the trait name Attack now really badly chosen.

So are maneuvers affected by MAP now? It says any action with the Attack trait increases MAP, but it only applies a penalty to attack rolls specifically.

The more attacks you make beyond your first in a single turn, the less accurate you become, represented by the multiple attack penalty. The second time you use an attack action during your turn, you take a –5 penalty to your attack roll. The third time you attack, and on any subsequent attacks, you take a –10 penalty to your attack roll. Every check that has the attack trait counts toward your multiple attack penalty, including Strikes, spell attack rolls, certain skill actions like Shove, and many others.

So do you get a -5 on your grapple/push attempt?

I'd like for the Arcane schools to be revamped a bit, kinda like how DMW's house rules improves them. For example, Evocation school giving you the benefits of Dangerous Sorcery will have a positive impact throughout that char's career as they build for blasting and do less mediocre damage (still far from good damage). Changing the focus spells could be done like the specialized schools in 1E, so for the second edition in a row we can get rid of the useless single magic missile in exchange for something relevant.

I've found the damage spells to be very weak on Wizard. Almost always feels like they should have tried a debuff or other disrupting spell instead. When the enemy has an elemental weakness, cantrips are preferred since the extra damage is flat.

Have a campaign where 2 of my players have started spamming Lightning Bolt and it does like 20-30 from the 4d12. Enemies save almost as much as they fail the save, at which point it's a light breeze for most enemies. Granted, I try not to use mooks that are lower than party level -2 because they're just a waste of precious session time most of the time. You kill them to speed things up and clog the battlefield and not because they pose any threat. Need some scenarios where you fight 10x lv-3 or -4 enemies for them to all crit fail and get obliterated.

Might as well use something like Glitterdust or the multi-target fear most of the time. Those really get the job done against most enemies.

Refining the idea of +1 proficiency jumps a bit, my group came up with a potential house rule to address these issues that would not require updating every statblock in the game:

If your character is a spellcaster, you get a +1 proficiency bonus to attack rolls. If you are a martial, you get a +1 proficiency bonus to all spell attacks and save DCs (for all traditions). This is in effect starting on level 1 (thought there's an argument to start at 5). No effect on Magus for now.

It seems pretty jank and backwards (It is a half-baked house rule, after all), but the goal is to make characters more competent at stuff that is already suboptimal for them, in case they want to build around it. Enemy stat blocks don't have to be adjusted (Hell, most NPCs already have something like this), and you can have Melee Bard, Melee Druid, Melee Sorc (after jumping through some hoops), and a very nasty Warpriest. On the flip-side, it also helps Martial-first gishes that want some offensive spells.

Will be playtesting some version of this in my games. I expect it might be too strong during the few levels where caster weapon proficiency overlaps with that of some martials (1-4 and 11-12), but that is yet to be seen.

I have started to believe that the PF2 playtest had it right with +1 for proficiency levels, rather than +2. At the time it really looked lame to have a +30 to-hit, of which only +4 come from being LEGENDARY in weapons; but by playing a lot of PF2 you realize that's just a perception issue. A +2 to hit compared to non-martials that is essentially insurmountable is HUGE and will be felt! It took until the game came out to realize how big of a difference a +1 is! Playtest multiclass combinations could achieve some really interesting things because proficiency wasn't so throttling. Those -2 or sometimes -4 differences are painful when enemies are benchmarked to challenge optimized fighters. It's compounded slightly by non-martials being unable to get a starting 18 on STR/DEX and usually not getting the potency runes as fast.

I might be experimenting with that as a house rule to see if it makes people become able to play things like melee focused Bard/Druids/Oracles without making the dedicated martials feel unimpressive (which can be fixed with more feats or something). It could also make martials with MC spellcaster or some other form of spells with bad scaling become more palatable. Should allow more "dabbling"!

Think 5E kinda had it right making the underlying math be equal for everyone, with the actual abilities from your class being the main differentiators. Fighter has the same to-hit as the Wizard at every level, but they have better weapons, better class support for weapons and multi-attacks, so they're still top tier fighters.

Where's the Belmont family class options? I remember some in PF1 that were really cool, I think for Ranger or Slayer.

I mostly play the regular Paizo APs in Golarion and very rarely some PFS here and there. I noticed the Society is basically a non-factor outside of PFS modules, which makes it really difficult to incorporate them into other Adventures in Golarion.

As it is, it's very difficult to have an AP player character belong to the society, as it'd just overcomplicate party dynamics. This means the PFS have to be used as NPCs, possibly antagonists. Maybe that's something we'll see in the future? Gotta think of some ideas where any of this lore and options would be relevant to players outside of Organized Play.

I didn't see any rule that advertising something like this was not allowed, so let me know if I should stop!

So here's some shameless self promotion of the Venture Captains Youtube Channel,
the link to our latest Lorefinder Video, going over the Empire of Cheliax.

Feedback is very important to us! Let us know what you think.

Cheliax is personally my favorite location in Golarion, and HV has been one of the most fun Adventure Paths to play. While working on the episode I noticed how much this nation got screwed during the lifespan of First Edition. Is the time for a glorious comeback coming in 2e!?

Perpdepog wrote:

For the sake of a hypothetical homebrew, what would be good levels to drop in a +1 spell attack item of some sort? The +2?

I guess I shouldn't call this hypothetical, since I am now considering doing this for any future PF2E games I run, and I'm also likely to leave this at a +1/+2 bonus maximum rather than the typical +1/+3.

Tricky to say. Personally, I think low level spell accuracy is actually fine, making cantrips superior in damage to ranged weapons right up until Potency Runes kick in, so I'd say 4th level for the +1 is about right (though 3rd would also be fine).

The +2 is harder to say, though with Weapon Runes hitting +2 at 10th and spell attack Proficiency lagging behind a Martial's weapon attack proficiency at 13th and 14th, I'd definitely have it kick in between 10th and 13th.

My own House Rules are a bit different from this, but I give out the full +3, so that's rather inevitable.

Personally, I also have the item in question do something else (my version adds an attack roll cantrip to the wearer's list of options), and probably be Invested. Of course, mine are also gloves, if you're gonna require a free hand to use this item maybe having it be Invested on top is overkill...

Can I see your full homebrew for the spell attack items?

I've been GMing Second Edition for almost a year now (going great!) and my #1 problem has been that whenever there's a loot drop, the game just grinds to a halt.

By the core rules, it takes 10 minutes to TRY to identify the properties of a magic item using Arcana/Occultism/Religion/Nature. Often, multiple small magic items drop in 1 encounter/treasure room, after that, the all items have to be individually checked for magic and then identified, usually taking over 30 minutes of in-game time and a buncha dice rolls. This has started to annoy my players as well, since they want to ID everything as soon as they find (otherwise they'll forget to do it later). This takes longer at the table than I'd like to admit, with 4/5 chars just twiddling their thumbs (They say they'll refocus or something).

I realize there's some value in not immediately telling them what each magic item is, so they can fail to ID an item and either experiment with it (they'll never do this) or be unable to use until they retry the next day. Sometimes this just feels like a relic of old school D&D and it's not adding a lot of value... If they don't ID the item on the first try, it just gets ignored, possibly forever.

Do any of you house rule this? How? I remember IDing was automatic in the playtest. I'm looking for ideas of what to do with this slow system. Perhaps only high-level items should require Identification, or maybe IDing takes just a few seconds if the item is low level.

1. Way too many people complain that every class is underpowered. Alchemists are underpowered! Spellcasters are underpowered! Monks are underpowered! Now, all the APG classes are underpowered! At some point, people are going to have to accept that if they think everything is underpowered, then maybe everything's correctly powered and they just have weird expectations.

2. All new classes start off being viewed as underpowered, because players don't know how to use them optimally yet. They get better with more time and more equipment, and people discover some combinations of parties that work unexpectedly well together.

Pretty sure Fighter and Rogue are very good! Nobody complains about those classes. They are the gold standard.

Everyone keeps saying there's not enough Spells that use spell attacks. You are right, however, there are 3 important cantrips: Produce Flame, Ray of Frost and Telekinetic Projectile, that do use spell attacks, and they are a staple of most spellcasters. People in this forum probably don't know those spells exist because they use Electric Arc instead, but they're real.

You'll see a lot more spell attacks than you'd imagine just because those spells are very spammable! They start of pretty decent, but become kinda unhittable later even for the low damage they do. +1 to spell attacks is worth having in the game if only to keep the power level of cantrips a bit more consistent.

Bumping this because my Barbarian just got Swipe:

If I use Swipe against an Orc and a Goblin, dealing 1d12+4 (6+4=10) damage:
The attack roll Crits against the Orc, but is a regular hit for the Goblin.
Orc takes 20 damage. Goblin takes 10.
Since I triggered crit specialization, can I deal the extra 6 damage from my weapon die to the Goblin? (Or another adjacent target to the Orc).

If my Swipe crits BOTH the Orc and the Goblin, then can I deal the crit spec 6 damage to both? Crit on Orc applies to adjacent goblin and vice-versa?

Even the regular shield with no spikes or Boss counts as a weapon (I believe)! So if you want to use it, yep! Aciton economy might be tight even with extra reactions if you wanna raise shield + TWF and then also Shield Block and Riposte.

Well, they're just very early level 10, versus lvl8 monsters, so they don't have any +2 Equipment yet, making them have less to-hit as a result. Yeah, the AC and HP are tight depending on the char. I think those level 10 PCs might be able to 1v1 the lv8 enemies (Bestiary 1 was VERY lacking on lvl8-9 monsters I wanted for this random encounter). They would probably be annihilated at 8, though.

I do agree those weren't the best enemies, but it's what I picked when I needed a random encounter for them on hills, lacking much better selection...

Worth nothing the party didn't suffer that much. It was just very slow and grindy. Flame Strike from the Cleric Sneak attacks were the most useful things I noticed.

By encounter building rules this would have been "Low".

Yup, works fine. My Ranger with Rogue Dedication and Sneak Attacker does this in underbrush.

I don't mind if they're using the terrain for it, at least it's creative and requires some awareness. This combo just feels kinda dumb since most of the time it's available off the starting positions in a fight and it will work anywhere.

Just throwing this out there, but I don't think a Non-Fighter can 1v1 an on-level opponent in a lot of occassions. I was running a lv10 party the other day (Champion, Rogue, Bard, Cleric, Ranger) against Stone Giants and Bulettes (level -2 enemies) and those monsters had higher to-hit, higher damage and higher AC (except champion) than anyone in the group. It took over 2 hours to resolve that battle.

It balances out when the party is working together and the enemies are dumb. Haven't had a chance to GM enemies that have the tools/INT to do smart tactics (Humanoids seem to always be low level in books compared to monsters).

Hello!

Scenario: Bandit roasting a rabbit at a campfire in the middle of a dense forest. His back is against a fallen tree trunk. Bounty hunter is now within 30 ft and is unnoticed and undetected. He has cover from the undergrowth.

BH sneaks towards bandit, which gets him half way there, a stealth check is made because it is deemed that the tree trunk offers enough cover. Now, can BH use multiple Step actions to get up to the bandit while still remaining undetected?

To put it simpler, can you use multiple Step actions while you are undetected or hidden and remain so?

Thanks!

I believe you can just spam Step until you get in range, assuming the Bounty Hunter never gets out of cover during this movement. The Bandit had their chance to spot your char, and failed... Wait why is this in encounter mode?

Wanted to ask about all the rules interactions going on with this combo. I have a PC playing a Halfling Rogue with this Ancestry feat and this combo has beem coming up excessively. It seems that a Rogue with a shortbow (and distracting shadows) can stand behind some random PC, use the Hide action and then shoot. If they did well with the Hide, they become Hidden from most enemies and so they are flat-footed to these attacks. This can be repeated every turn for the entire fight if the Rogue is far enough in the back. With a shortbow it's just 2d6 damage (1d6 bow + 1d6 sneak), though the crits are extremely nasty. I think there is a -1 modifier to the attack from the Soft cover provided by the ally, but the flat-footed condition more than makes up for it.

This has become very boring, but it looks completely intended. Am I missing something?

Zapp wrote:

KrispyXIV wrote:

I'm not sure what "comparison" you're referring to. What I implied is that the notion that shields aren't "consumable" has no origins in reality, where they were in fact disposable items with a shelf life that was generally "one battle", during which they might be damaged or ruined.

And I'm saying this game features magic shields that cost thousands of gold that clearly no hero can afford to wreck, and that these fantasy shields have nothing in common with that, so why bring it up?

If you can't afford to wreck them, don't?

Shields don't need to use Shield Block to be good. Shields gain all of the benefits they've ever had in previous DnD iterations merely by being raised - and the tighter math makes the bonus to AC better than ever.

The fact that Shield Block merely exists does not mean that all shields need to be equally viable for using it. Shields like Spellguard Shields or others with valuable utility don't need to be able to be Blocked with to justify their use.

Just use a wooden shield from levels 1-20, I guess. It gives you the same benefit as pretty much any other shield and breaks just as easily as non-sturdy ones. I guess there's some shields that don't require you to Block to activate that can be helpful, but I still find that arugment disingenous. Seems pretty clear to me that shields scale by becoming more durable.

Midnightoker wrote:

I really despise taunt mechanics, so I hope that it does nothing of the sort.

How do you visualize the concept of "really good at protecting others" working in a way that isn't "making it harder for the people you are protecting to get hit"?

With old school AOO I'll whack them for trying to run past me! Ideally with something like "Stand Still" to block their movement.

It was mentioned that Beastmaster would be able to get temporary Animal Companions depending of their current environment and in some occasions (focus spell maybe?) even being able to have two animal companions at the same time.

I hope it isn't like PF1 where you some archetypes allowed more than 1 animal companion, but they were ultra low level. There's no room for anything underleveled in a PF2 party.

Talking about poisons, not trying to takeover the thread,just a little ot, do you think their are worth it?

I like poisons, but I am not quite sure they could be that useful.

I do like poisons in this edition. The damage is not going to amount to much, but inflicting Enfeebled or Clumsy on a tough enemy is just a tasty -1 that almost always stacks with stuff and pushes the odds in your favor.

Flank + Inspire Courage + Clumsy on enemy = Crits incoming!

So uh... When are we getting class archetypes? Wasn't that one of the promises for this book long ago? They're back in limbo.

Note that some posters wish for a Medium ancestry that is considered Large for some purposes. The Giant instinct for Barbarians might provide a good basis. But in itself it is problematic: if your character is Medium but considered Large for this instinct, they can wield Huge weapons. Which starts sounding awkward.

Can't small races wield large weapons with this? Seems like a similar comparison: 2 sizes larger.

Wait so a Flaming Rune's 1d6 fire damage is multiplied on a crit, or not? I know the 1d10 on the crit doesn't because of the specific rule for that.

So I out of boredom calculated the hit chance of a Martial (starting with a 18 in their attack stat and level appropriate equipment) vs moderate AC for an equal level enemy on their first attack. Then I worked out the probability of enemy of equal level with moderate saves hitting failing to save against an equally optimized caster (18 to start, Trained to legendary) and compared them side by side.

I tried to add in a table without much luck but here is my maths.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VZzNzs3vWY3u3FxhYmFPvqQMi1teUhHl/view?usp= sharing

This has been done before but it looks ok. Main thing is that which saving throw you target has a huge impact on those save probabilities. I guess yours makes sense if a random one is targeted.

I will continue to say that Bestiary Monsters have more "awesome" than any available PC option!!! Body Strike and Whirlwind Throw from Dropillu are so amazing! Please release these as high level Barbarian feats! My players always wanted to do this in PF1 and now we have a cool example of how it looks.

ChibiNyan wrote:

I don't think it'd be too crazy to have one token "Large-size" ancestry, at least as a novelty. I mean, yeah, it will make the gameplay different and not fit into adventure design assumptions. I don't think this is necessarily bad! It'll at least spark player and GM creativity and be "different". Better than another ancestry just being "Humans but X" and playing the exact same.

It would probably need to be banned from PFS though, which is understandable. Could be a good candidate for the "Rare" keyword to keep it from appearing much.

Right! It might need adjudication at a table by table basis (it's almost as if there's a built in mechanic to enable this...), but what would the harm be with Paizo trying it out? They clearly are about to try out tiny ancestries. As long as it's just one of a number of ancestries released at one time and not like a "Lost Omens Giant People" book, I see absolutely no harm in giving it a try.

Though I think the biggest downsize in a large ancestry is that none of the current maps and materials in the APs and stuff are built to accommodate that. I can think of one battle in Fall of Plaguestone that medium creatures struggle to get to, so a large PC would have to just stand outside and wait...

Smash your way in or try to pull enemies out! A non-PFS Group will always figure a way around things. If the entire thing is a narrow dungeon then it'll take more work, perhaps re-designing, shaping the stone or finding an alternate way in... But it's not impossible.

Jank is in the spirit of roleplaying games! PF2 might be one of the most conservative games so far, but it can still try silly things.

Witches have reportedly gotten the following:

• - Specialized Familiar mechanics along with special familiars and unique interactions (also the introduction of "pet cache" for safety). They lose a spell at every level for this, so it's likely to be powerful.
• 
  
• - Cantrip hexes, so hexes are all day
• 
  
• - Cackle removed as a default ability, now a Class Feat
• 
  
• - All four divine spell lists
• 
  
• - Loose Patron identity that highly depends on the GM
• 
  

I can't speak for everyone, but this version of the Witch sounds amazing to me.

I hope Cackle actually does something now. Imagine using a Class feat to change the concentrate trait for auditory on sustains...

I don't think it'd be too crazy to have one token "Large-size" ancestry, at least as a novelty. I mean, yeah, it will make the gameplay different and not fit into adventure design assumptions. I don't think this is necessarily bad! It'll at least spark player and GM creativity and be "different". Better than another ancestry just being "Humans but X" and playing the exact same.

It would probably need to be banned from PFS though, which is understandable. Could be a good candidate for the "Rare" keyword to keep it from appearing much.

I don't think the baseline %s are bad in PF2, but what I think could be improved are the ways you can hedge the odds in your favor. Circumstance bonuses are so ubiqutous that most of the time you can't do much to improve your odds further. Think status bonus are fine, though!

Melee martials can flank, that's -2 Flat-Footed which is pretty good. But if you try to flank a prone opponent while your ally is grappling them and you still get that same -2 AC. -2 is not bad, but a very tactical party in PF1 could engineer much more favorable situations with their tactics when the party all worked in tandem. To get any better, you need a status penalty, so demoralize is allowed to stack, but not prone.

A lot of weapon traits can allow a random +1 circustance to hit, which also won't stack with, say, the Aid action for some reason. Again, getting multiple party members to contribute giving diminishing returns.
You need Inspire Courage or Heroism to do any better.

If you're a caster? lol, Frightened condition is basically all you got. (Clumsy/Stupefied/Enfeebled for 1 specific save I guess). If you're the only caster vs a strong enemy your debuff spell is gonna run out before you can leverage it next turn (they're making the save).

There might be some value in allowing circumstance bonuses to stack in some scenarios if the party is going out of their way to "set up" for one big roll. There is a lot of options in this game, but a lot of times you can't actually squeeze anything out of em.

Right now, I feel playing smart is more about mastering out the stacking rules and getting the right combo than actually doing things that seem smart from an in-game perspective.

And don't get me started on drinking a mutagen and getting only the penalties because you happen to have a magic sword.

Town Guards are probably paid according to earn income equivalent to their level (or less if it's a very low level area). If you're hiring mercenaries to protect your stuff, it would be more expensive for sure, but it's nowhere near "go adventuring with the party" levels of danger and pay. So yeah 2x or 3x the Earn Income for their level, or the level of the task if there's low competition in the market.

If they're joining you on a dungeon crawl or w/e then they're the same as any other party member unless their roles are limited. In which case maybe they can get half a share of loot (or of the reward!) for just following orders in battle.

EDIT: I agree this doesn't really work for APs, which are setup so party can always stick together and nothing crazy happens. Very important for sandbox, though!

If you want to do the most authentic/faithful possible converion process from PF1 APs to PF2 and want to make sure WBL and power balance is respected, you'll have to do something like this:

1- List all PF1 items from the entire AP Chapter, level they're obtained at, and their gold cost. It's entire chapter spanning 3-4 levels to minimize the effect of lulls or spikes in wealth (it should average out over that period). Mark whether each item is consumable, permanent or cash equivalent.

2- Add up all the worth of the items and get the totals for permanent, consumable and cash. Mark in which spots the party is expected to level up.

3- Get what % of the total each of the 3 categories contribute for.

4- Use the PF1 WBL tables to see how much it deviates from the expected total. Combine all levels covered in the book to get the total.

5- Convert items to PF2 the best you can, ignoring "Big 6" that don't exist anymore (Cloaks of Res, Rings of Prot, etc). Use this opportunity to customize for your party. Write down the item level. Make sure you drop +1 Weapons around 2, Striking Runes around 4, etc... So that entire party has access to all fudnamental runes no later than 1 level after the item level.

6- Do the same with that list, except now using the PF2 "Treasure by level" tables to get the expected totals and percents. Compare your numbers between PF1 results and expected PF2 results and adjust accordingly. If PF1 dropped 150% of expected loot, you might be able to get away with 150% of PF2 loot too, it would balance out because they won't find/loot a lot of the items.

7- Count how many items per item level you dropped and compare with expected values. Change some items to get closer to this.

8- During gameplay, as the party gets or fails to get some items, observe whether the party is staying within expected parameters.

Here's an example of how I did it for Hell's Vengeance 3: The Inferno Gate (Spoilers). It was very time consuming.

Here's my improved PF2 WBL tables. In my case, this was for a party of 5.

If you wanna nerf Darkvision, we can always look at the old-timey INFRAVISION, which actually had several drawbacks and limitations.
It didn't properly aid in dungeon exploration, but it did allow you to fight in darkness. I recall it was completely blinded by bright light, but you could turn it off and on.

I would take the Earn an Income table as a baseline.

Double it at least, for Hazard pay! These guys are putting life and limb on the line and shouldn't settle for what an equal-level service worker makes.

I think house ruling a sturdy rune can work out, just be aware that shields were not designed to work like weapons and armor and thus you will probably have to mess around for a while to strike the right balance of what levels are appropriate for giving out the different kinds of runes and how much HP bonus they should grant on top of shields of different materials, as well as figuring out how to create level sensible limits to how many runes you can put on a shield since there is no such thing as fundamental runes for shields.

Which is why that change is not likely to happen at an official level. Shields were not designed to have HP in the playtest and were a completely different item than weapons and armor until late enough in the playtest that trying to change them that much probably was too much work to get done in time.

I think it would be amazing if shields could have Potency runes (hardness and HP) that let you stay competitive with sturdy shields, and also property runes that let you add cool abilities to the shield similar to what we have or even more generic things like "Hardness is doubled vs Fire damage".

Actually balancing this would be really easy, PF2 abounds with tables and examples of what any equipment of a given Item Level should be able to do and how much of it PCs should have.

Pretty sure its primary role is to be used on your Animal Companion. That's pretty much how it's always been used.

Animal companions calculate their modifiers and DCs just as you do with one difference: the only item bonuses they can benefit from are to speed and AC (their maximum item bonus to AC is +3)

So it does not work on ACs. I'm pretty sure this spell is useless after the monk gets +1 handwraps.

siegfriedliner wrote:

I was wondering if I was to homebrew a shield master dedication feat which gave a minimum shields hp and hardness scaling with each shield feat (through better handling) what would be fair?

Remember that dedications are meant not to be better than classes.

And that the only class which has extra hp on a shield, renouncing his critical specialization or a companion, is the champion.

So, giving for free what is currently only for 1 champion specialization would be way extreme, mandatory for any class which intends to use shield, and in a single word, broken.

I suggest you instead to run some simulations in terms of fights at different levels. Roll20 could help you dealing with this.

The goal would be understand the differences between a sturdy and a non sturdy shield in terms of combat.

Clerics can increase their shield durability too! I think this is a fine ability.

The time will come when, once the dust is settled, they'll start printing power crept options to balance/fix the game.

Count me in with the group that thinks it was unwise to make Sturdy Shield a unique type of Magic Shield instead of an enchantment that can be placed on OTHER shields via a Rune System.

That said, if you're looking at this from the perspective that you should be able to block 3+ attacks per combat against a foe who is an Extreme Encounter on their own then I'm afraid you're trying to squeeze WAY to much value out of ANY given Shield.

The damage reduction component of Shield Block is the cherry on top for the Shield Rules but lots of folks here seem to be treating that function as the main event. At the end of the day when you make the decision to Block you ALSO get to know immediately if choosing to do so will break your Shield so if that hit won't kill you or put you in mortal danger but would break your Shield then I think the intent here is PROBABLY that you need to make a difficult choice, risk v reward and all that. It's supposed to be something that you can use once or twice a combat to help curb some damage that's incoming or to save your life when there is a massive hit incoming, not function as free Resistance against all Physical Attacks permanently.

If Sturdy Shield is bad for the game, it's bad because the number crunchers and min-maxers want to perfect their spreadsheets and Action Rotation for whiteroom simulations, not actual play.

Pretty much every Shield Feat and special ability works off the "Shield Block" reaction. It's not like some obscure bonus rule that only jank characters use, it's baked into Fighters, Cleric Champions as the main way the engine allows them to make defensive builds.

Shield system was designed so people would block with it, it's the only way to use all of the shield abilities or to distinguish shield specialists from random people with a shield.

If anything, the +AC is the throwaway part because you already get the best possible value from a lv1 metal shield and it cna never improve from there.

Just the concept that is is the first RPG I've sever seen (and probably ever) where shields are not meant for blocking attacks is silly. This goes beyond game mechanics and more about the theme of Pathfinder: The most heroic high fantasy game with no grittyness, but shields break in one hit if you try to use them. I realize the shield mechanics were to make them more interesting, but it just doesn't mesh with the rest of the game. Everything should be breaking, then? Or maybe items should be used in the same way they are in any other game/movie/story.

ChibiNyan wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Shinigami02 wrote:

Spell Attacks technically have their own proficiency, but a spellcaster's Spell Attack proficiency and Spell DC proficiency for their tradition pretty much universally (so far) increase together. It's theoretically possible they may someday have a class that increases one but not the other, but it seems unlikely.

ETA: Also, since all main-class casters eventually get Legendary in their casting, that means that the only class they end 3 points behind is Fighter. Any other martial they wind up 1 point behind, thanks to the +2 from Legendary. On the other hand though, they don't reach Legendary until level 19, and get all other proficiencies (except Trained of course) later, so they do spend most of their careers a fair bit behind.

Anybody got a side by side comparison of the fighter attack modifiers, versus other martial modifiers, versus the spell attack modifiers?

Don't forget the Item bonuses at 4, 10, 16 that applies to Martials only. At level 13, for example, they're gonna be 4 points behind a Non-Fighter Martial, for example. non-Fighters already have like 50% chance to hit same-level enemies (or less), this puts Casters at 25-45% chance to hit (depending on level) any time after level 4.

Casters have a lot of save-based spells too, which martials don't. Comparing one segment of their arsenal (attack spells) to martials' attack rolls seems very incomplete. Casters probably should be less effective on their attack rolls, all things considered.

Yes and No. Save spells are indeed much better than Attack spells since they can actually hit enemies sometimes. This doesn't mean attack spells deserve to be bad. That'd be like saying that Fighters should get a -2 to range attacks because their melee attacks are good. There should be scenarios for a class to use all of their different tools at their disposal, and there is no scenario for spells that never hit and aren't even stronger than the saving throw ones.

Shinigami02 wrote:

Spell Attacks technically have their own proficiency, but a spellcaster's Spell Attack proficiency and Spell DC proficiency for their tradition pretty much universally (so far) increase together. It's theoretically possible they may someday have a class that increases one but not the other, but it seems unlikely.

ETA: Also, since all main-class casters eventually get Legendary in their casting, that means that the only class they end 3 points behind is Fighter. Any other martial they wind up 1 point behind, thanks to the +2 from Legendary. On the other hand though, they don't reach Legendary until level 19, and get all other proficiencies (except Trained of course) later, so they do spend most of their careers a fair bit behind.

Anybody got a side by side comparison of the fighter attack modifiers, versus other martial modifiers, versus the spell attack modifiers?

Don't forget the Item bonuses at 4, 10, 16 that applies to Martials only. At level 13, for example, they're gonna be 4 points behind a Non-Fighter Martial. non-Fighters already have like 50% chance to hit same-level enemies (or less), this puts Casters at 25-45% chance to hit (depending on level) any time after level 4. This is pretty silly since evn at 19 when they get legendary they are still behind martial chance to hit (+2 from proficiency -3 from runes). These are the same chars that are trying to land their one Disintegrate they prepared that day.

Hell, with good runes, there's a few levels where Wizards have equivalent chances to hit with a sword or arrow compared to the spell. (+2 from rune -2 from low prof).

Levels 19-20 are still kind of a myth compared to 4-18.

Thanks for the quick answer!. We will go ahead with using only the First Edition lore for them.

I agree with your reasoning to downplay them. Though a name drop somewhere wouldn't be bad for a GM if they wanna use Goblins as enemies.

Working on a new Lorefinder episode over here and I opened up Lost Omens: Gods & Magic to get the latest information on the Goblin Hero-Gods: Hadregash, Venkelvore, Zarongel and Zogmugot. Turns out they are completely omitted form that book, the book that is supposed to have all of the deities and even has some that are less relevant than the Hero-Gods.

I checked the old Inner Sea Gods to make sure I wasn't imagining those deities existing and they're still there, so this is a pretty glaring omission. I can understand not featuring some guys like Socothbenoth, but why would these be removed? With Goblins being a Core race now, one would think they'd be important to mention.

Are they just omited from the book or have they been retconned from the setting? An official answer would be very welcome since this is for an educational video and we don't want to add something outdated.

Scorching Ray but only if they fix the spell-attacks being impossible to land without True Strike.