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So as written, the Spellguard Blade does absolutely nothing for anyone who uses Twin Parry, which means it's weirdly ineffective to anyone with it instead of a standard main-gauche. Should it work with Twin Parry (or any other future feat that does a similar thing)?

So this has come up in a discussion, but what should happen by RAW if you use 3-action Heal on a dhampir?

A dhampir is not undead, but has negative healing, which states: "It is damaged by positive damage and is not healed by positive healing effects. It does not take negative damage, and it is healed by negative effects that heal undead."

Heal states: "If the target is a willing living creature, you restore 1d8 Hit Points. If the target is undead, you deal that amount of positive damage to it, and it gets a basic Fortitude save."

So a dhampir, as written, isn't undead, and thus doesn't take damage, but also can't be healed from positive healing, and thus gains no health. Is this intended, or an oversight?
If it's an oversight, should things like Holy Cascade or Searing Light also treat the dhampir as undead?

(I am aware that by RAI it should likely be taking damage.)

So I've been looking at making a snare-based Ranger.

Assuming the Ranger has Snare Specialist, you can Craft one with 3 Interact actions. You'd likely need a snare kit for this, but how many hands (if any) do you need to leave open?

Does a square with an undetected snare in it count as hazardous terrain for the purposes of forced movement? If so, does a trap that no one knows is there also count?

So I was working on rebuilding an old character of mine, and picked up Supernatural Charm. And then I went back and thought about it.

It's always going to be a 1st-level charm. And it has the incapacitation trait.
And you can first take it at level 5.

Isn't it going to be useless in the vast majority of situations you find yourself in, even at the level you pick it up? And it's only going to get worse from there. In order to get good use out of it, the target really has to be level 2 or lower.

Archwizard's Spellcraft:

You gain a single 10th-level spell slot and can prepare a spell in that slot using arcane spellcasting. Unlike with other spell slots, you don't gain more 10th-level spells as you level up, though you can take the Archwizard's Might feat to gain a second slot.

Arcane School:

If you specialize in an arcane school, rather than studying each school equally (as universalists do), you gain an extra spell slot for each level of spell you can cast. You can prepare only spells of your chosen arcane school in these extra slots.

I know these probably aren't supposed to work together, but I can't find anything that stops it from happening. Same thing with Drain Bonded Item:

During your turn, you gain the ability to cast one spell you prepared today and already cast, without spending a spell slot.

Edit: Nothing stops this from working with spell blending as well, for 5(!!) 10th-level slots of your school. That's 5 Wishes for divination wizards.

Am I completely and utterly blind, or is there no listed ability score for ki spells? No ki spells state an ability score, and the sidebar is similarly blank.

Does this mean they're a Str/Dex caster, is it an unfortunate omission, or am I just blind?

I like the changes to Brutal Shove from the playtest version! Thanks for the blog!

I decided to be insane today and transcribe basically everything visible for the alchemist from the UK Games Expo video. Some of it was literally illegible - Elastic Mutagen being the big one that couldn't be referenced elsewhere - but I filled in what could be read for most of it.

Here it is.

Mega Bomb remains completely unreadable.

So I was curious to see how the new DCs matched up with the goal for each section in Doomsday Dawn. Here's the results for Lost Star.

A2. Mudchewer Central - “DC 8 Perception.” Context: searching the room for items. Easy level 1. Assuming everyone rolls, "You can usually skip rolling and assume the characters succeed against easy DCs unless it’s necessary for everybody to try the check." In this case, only one person needs to succeed.
A4. Motivation Room section - “DC 13 Medicine.” Context: finding details about the dead bodies. Medium level 1. Assuming everyone rolls this, there's very little challenge here.
A5. Fungus Bloom section - “DC 14 Nature.” Context: requirement to identify the fungus and its details. Medium level 2. Not really that much challenge, and really only level 2 because the fungus is.
A6. Purification Fountain section - “DC 16 Thievery.” Context: opening the locked door. Hard level 2. I originally had this as Incredible 1, but switched it after referencing the other key-related sections.
A9. Choking Sands section - “DC 8 Religion.” Context: Identifying Pharasma. Easy level 1.
A11. Pharasma’s Sanctum section - “DC 16 Thievery.” Context: Getting into the room without fighting Drakus for the key. Hard level 2, but really, this should never come up.
A12. Drakus’s Lair section - “DC 17 Thievery.” Context: Opening Drakus's chest without the key. Incredible level 2.

These are the changes. What didn't change in Lost Star?

A6. Purification Fountain section - DC 12 Thievery to remove the idol. This doesn't align with the table at all, which is kind of weird.
A7. Goblin Headquarters section - DC 15 Athletics/Perception/Thievery for all things related to the secret door, which is technically Hard level 1, but is weird given all the other Drakus's key checks appear to be level 2. Also a DC 12 Perception to notice the goblins beforehand, again not aligning with the table.
A8. Room of Ruined Repose section - DC 15 Perception to find the corpse pile's gear. Hard level 1. Noted as 50% for someone who's strong in the skill, which aligns with the numbers. 18 Wis and trained has a 50% chance here.
A10. Befouled Shrine section - DC 12 Athletics to open the door without Drakus noticing. Medium-Hard level 1. Probably going to be slightly over 50% for the first shot, but you only have one try at it. Still doesn't align with the table. Also a DC 15 Pharasma Lore check (Hard level 1), which is realistically only coming up for a cleric of Pharasma.
Post-game: DC 15 Society - Hard level 1 to know more details about Necerion.

So what's noticeable here? The Hard+ level 2 checks, for one, are definitely not designed for a PC group to easily do. What the change does mean, though, is that it's going to be significantly less likely for a rogue to break their picks or undo their progress, given a 18 Dex rogue now needs a 2 on the die to crit fail the locks, and a 3 on the chest.
The other thing I'm looking at is the weird DC 12 checks scattered throughout, which don't seem to align with anything.

I'm doing 1, 7, 9, 17, with the other GM in our friend group handling the other three.

Party:
Goblin Sorcerer (dragon), 10/16/14/10/10/18. Spells of Color Spray, Fear, Burning Hands. Focused on blasting.
Halfling Rogue, 8/18/16/10/14/12. Focused on stealth and spotting traps.
Human Paladin of Iomedae, 18/12/12/10/10/16. Focused on sword-and-board, with Warding Touch and Deity's Domain (zeal).
Human Druid (animal), 16/12/12/10/18/10. Always prepared burning hands and heal, using scimitar as main weapon.

Encounters:
A1: One person was damaged by slime muck, dealing 1 damage. Slime then died, having only done that (as it had to Stride twice to reach the party).

A2: I did mess up Goblin Scuttle for a second, but overall it went quite well. Sorcerer tried burning hands (rolled min of 3 damage), but managed to take out one goblin and deal 1 damage to another. Sorcerer went down to 1/3 HP, and the paladin and rogue were hit once. Paladin used Lay on Hands post-combat to patch up the sorcerer a bit, along with a minor potion of healing.
I played the goblins as eager to get into melee, with only two bow shots going off before the full melee started. They never managed to get a flank off due to good placement on the party's part.

A3: Ignored.

A4: Crit success on the Medicine check from the druid.

A5: Both the rogue and druid succeeded in pre-planning, so the sorcerer used Produce Flame from outside the room to solve it.

A6: They spotted the idol, and the rogue used his fishing net to
fish it out and dumped it in the corner. They then moved on.
Since the rogue spotted the alarm while checking the door, they managed to sneak up on the goblins.

A7: Early part was the rogue rushing ahead, with the druid and paladin taking up the middle...right under the trap. Goblin Pyro got off a burning hands on the frontline trio, and another set off the trap. Druid moved up to retaliate with their own burning hands, and another burning hands from the Pyro took the druid unconscious. Commando got off one solid hit to take the rogue unconscious (despite the first Retributive Strike of the game taking him to 1 HP), and both the Commando and Pyro were finished off simultaneously with an Electric Arc from the sorcerer. Paladin used three Lay on Hands in this fight - one to keep himself up, another to try and keep the rogue up, and the last to pick the druid up for an area Heal at the end.

Decently injured, they decided to grab the idol of Lamashtu to dispose of and head back for the day. This lead to...

A6, Revengeance: The quasits got a good ambush off, poisoning the sorcerer and starting on the paladin (despite a Retributive Strike). It then went downhill for them from there, as the rogue eviscerated one in a single turn. The other didn't last long afterwards, though it triggered the only Shield Block of our game.

After some rest (with the paladin preemptively burning two Lay on Hands the next day to put himself a little higher on health), they found the purified fountain and drank from it. This put everyone to near-full.

They proceeded through the eastern exit, moving south to...

A8: This was basically a comedy of errors where almost everyone refused to roll above a 6. One skeleton natural 20'd a crit for 4 damage, and that was the only hit they made in 3 rounds of swinging. Players had much the same dice issue on attacks. Heal and Burning Hands wiped out four of the skeletons in the end, with the other two going down to the rogue tripping it into a sneak attack, and the paladin shield bashing the other one.

A9: Had drank from the fountain earlier that day, so bypassed the trap.

A10: They took two attempts to get in, so Drakus was alerted. Paladin managed to beat his Stealth, and went in with Weapon Surge into a Strike that missed. Revert Form let Drakus crit the poor paladin for 19 damage, so he started after the rogue. Paladin would have died after crit failing his recovery roll, but used his Hero Point and Lay on Hands with his single remaining action. Took him another turn to get up and grab his sword again, but he got back into the fight.
Drakus proved pretty challenging for them, taking the rogue down to 3 HP as well through solid hits. I did try using the claw as a primary weapon for a bit to start up a Grapple, but my player's Druid spent all three actions to get out (crit fail on the first, hitting DC 19 on the dot on the third). He attempted two AOOs, one on the druid trying to grab a scroll to heal the downed paladin, one to try and hit the retreating rogue (fortunately, this one missed -
it would have been really bad for them if this had hit).
The biggest turning point was probably the sorcerer, who forgoed blasting this fight to control instead after the paladin dropped turn 1. Drakus failed his save against both Fear and, two turns later, Color Spray. The frightened condition saved the rogue from going unconscious, and blinded let the rogue come back in for a set of 21 damage sneak attacks.
Drakus ended up going down to a Retributive Strike from the paladin while blinded. He successfully Seeked out the rogue, but the flat check ate his first swing, and the flat-footed from blinded let the paladin's Retributive Strike connect, taking him out.

Overall, I feel they enjoyed it. Paladin did feel the death/dying rules were a bit too punitive - he pretty much lost two full turns even after he'd recovered.
Druid felt Wild Claws wasn't worth it in comparison to his scimitar, with two actions to get a worse weapon.

Druid healing: 20 damage over two Heals.
Paladin healing: 41 damage over seven LoH.
Sorcerer burning hands damage: 21 damage over two castings (most targets saved)
Druid burning hands damage: 18 damage over one casting (all targets failed)

What stops Control Construct from being cast on an android, upon which the caster commands the android to coup de grace themselves?

If you Force Punch a person grappling you and they fail the Fortitude save, what happens?

Do you get dragged along with them as they move back, maintaining the grapple? Do they get force-moved back, breaking the grapple?

I suppose this applies to any other type of forced movement on one of the parties as well.