JulianW's page

pauljathome wrote:

AlastarOG wrote:

Unicore wrote:

Anyone upholding the 3.5 wizard as a standard of "balanced" is never going to be happy with anything that gets made within the mainstream RPG industry today, unless someone makes an RPG called Wizard: kneel before me or die.

They did, it's called Mage: the awakening and it's actually quite fun !

I prefer Ars Magica for my Wizards are Gods games.

Custos was such a good concept to put these uppity martials in their proper subservient place.

In Ars Magica, martials knew their place.

They still had choices though, they could choose if they wanted to say "Sir! Yes Sir!" or "Ribbit!"

You dont actually know that all of these people have that stance though. For example I'm not interested in paid GMs because I think its against the soul of the artform and collaborative effort of cooperative storytelling. I also have a heavy disdain for people like critical role because they've sold out on their platform and in many ways misrepresent the hobby to thousands of potential players.

If you're making money off of something you WILL approach it differently than if you do it solely for the love of the craft.

I have to challenge this one a bit.

Shakespeare, Mozart, Michelangelo, Dickens were all very much in it for the money - their art was their profession. Pretty sure that whatever the art-form there are examples of true greats who got paid.

Legions of actors, musicians, authors,scriptwriters, painters, sculptors, dancers, storytellers, poets etc etc are superb at their craft and use it to make a living.

Every artistic field has enthusiastic people doing it as a hobby whose fondest dream is to ditch the day job and become a professional practitioner of the craft they love.

They're already irrelevant at level 1. Ray of Frost (+ Liquid Ice) and Acid Splash (+Acid flask) are infinite-use cantrips, that do ~3 damage (1d3+1), compared to the ~4 damage of such an ability (1d6 +1/2 per level). And the cantrips can be strengthened by bloodline arcanas, traits, equipment, feats, ...

Or take a simple ranged weapon.

Well I found splintered spear does a whole lot more than 4 damage on average and is a lot more accurate than crossbow, given it uses int as the attack modifer and does d6+int+bleed 1 for damage.

I usually just go for direct damage spell-like abilities. Dealing 1d6 + 1/2 levels of fire damage, or acid damage, is pretty low even at 1st-level, but it's a touch attack. A crossbow does not ignore armor. In addition, this accuracy is important because a wizard probably does not want to waste feats on Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot.

I have a newfound respect for the little blast powers some schools and domains (playing a wood elementalist wizard currently). Yes, they become pretty irrelevant after a few levels, but for the early levels they are a nice cushion against not having many spells.

Cavall wrote:

Keep scrolling down for nethys

Got it now - was looking under spells not classes - thank you!

According to Ultimate Magic and the PFSRD, wizards with the wood elemental school specialization can take Sirocco as a 4th level spell.

Herolab and Archives of Nethys don't recognise this however.

There doesn't seem to be any errata or FAQ on it I can find.

Has there been any kind of errata or comment on it I've missed?

Can my wood elementalist wizard use it in a 4th level slot?

I wish there was something between "challenging" and "hard" difficulty (I've noticed enemies having 4 higher AC on hard). I find that there's a few encounters that aren't really doable on hard difficulty.

I've been playing on challenging, which I agree seems about right.

You can toggle a lot of the individual challenge options in settings to get something between the two

I do absolutely love having a turn based mode

more cantrips

more backgrounds

Bloodrager.

But Daring Champion cavalier is a close second.

Temporary bar staff required for cover while owner takes extended vacation

I guess the real question is if we made gun reload times somewhat historically accurate (even an expert would take 15s to reload a flintlock, which would be roughly 7-8 actions), but guns were powerful enough to consider still worth using, how are we going to get around the "it's best to just carry 6 pistols like Blackbeard" issue?

Or do we want "once you can afford 6 pistols, just do it" to be a thing?

Totally support that - have flintlocks take that kind of time to reload - generally not reloaded in the average fight, if you can afford the cash and bulk to carry several, do so.

You can finally have an arming montage the makes sense then!

What I'd love to see is the black powder firearms taking a decent time to reload. Being more of a one shot per gun per fight thing.

Ratfolk - hard working, loyal and industrious, the ratfolk are the backbone of many a human kingdom.

When young they are highly nomadic and/or adventurous explorers and travelers - they long to see more of the world to seek out opportunities and to find a society they like enough to want to live in.

Many sign on as ship's crew or caravan workers or simply professions that could suit a wandering lifestyle - tinkers, doctors, couriers etc

As they mature, having seen a few cities or even countries they eventually choose a place where the values most fit their own and settle down there. Their willingness to do mucky or low status jobs and their enthusiasm for their adopted home usually makes them pretty welcome immigrants.

They are very much lawful but run the full gamut of alignments from good to evil. Their approach to life tends to give them family connections scattered across the world (and plenty of young ratfolk willing to carry letters and parcels in exchange for a chance to visit relatives abroad). Family visits can often turn to arguments however as relatives have often developed very differing political or religious views.

One thing that unites ratfolk however is a hatred of pirates, brigands or any thing or group that threatens travelers. Societies that block people coming and going are abhorrent to them.

next - Oread

JulianW wrote:

Yep

So is it an assumption of 2nd that casters were too powerful and should be punished?

Should those of us who don't see an imbalance skip this edition then?

Yes, Pathfinder 2 and D&D 5 are both pretty much predicated on the near-universal assumption that the magic system in d20 were horribly irredeemably overpowered.

I wouldn't tell you to skip the edition since I'm not in the position to tell you to do anything. But I wouldn't go into any D&D game written the last twenty years expecting anything even close to the d20 caster experience.

Best regards

Worth mentioning my views come from our groups focusing almost entirely on play at level 1-12 - doing very little beyond that.

JulianW wrote:

So is it an assumption of 2nd that casters were too powerful and should be punished?

Punished is pretty loaded language. Part of PF2's design goals though were to have fewer egregious balance issues than PF1, if that's your question, yes.

There does seem to be a balance issue with wizards being too weak now for sure.

Temperans wrote:

No one said the caster divide did not exist. You are the first one bringing it up in this discussion.

The person directly above themetricsystem who they're replying to said exactly that.

Yep

So is it an assumption of 2nd that casters were too powerful and should be punished?

Should those of us who don't see an imbalance skip this edition then?

To those who feel wizards are still a balanced class.

If I want to
1) play an arcane caster
2) not be the +1/-1 guy*

What build should I make and why is it cool?

I admit I'm a tough audience - I saw NO caster-martial disparity in 1E and I need to stress I normally played the martial character there.

* I don't give a damn how epic and awesome a +1 bonus might be in the incredibly miserly maths of 2E - it just does not feel fun and will never be exciting to me. You might as well be playing the fighter's talking magic sword or shield.

Yes. This. Psychologically, it's a different experience. Don't get me wrong, I'll still feel awesome that my action lead to a cool result but it is a different awesome than the fighter awesome.

Thanks for highlighting that, it definitely puts into words a chunk of what wasn't sitting right with me.

There's another part that aligns with this in terms of how things feel emotionally.

Buffing and debuffing are supposed to be major roles for casters now.

We all know in our heads that with the tight maths of PF2, that a +1 or a -1 is a big deal.

However in my heart I can't ever imagine myself thinking "Wow I'm looking for to next week's game night so much. Giving my buddies +1 to hit last time was epic!"

would it be absurd to want a necromancer class?

Would be great - a nice differentiator to 5th's warlocks...

It has been the case since first edition. Fighter, Cleric, Rogue and Wizard is kind of the basic party.

Feels like its become Fighter, Cleric, Rogue and Bard now

I've used the pre-credit sequence as a way to start games before (its a great change to meeting in a tavern)

For example
start with putting a map and monster minis down

Give the players a very light background comment "you've come to this temple to recover a holy artifact stolen from the temple of Sarenrae - you crept past the outer guards without issue, put yourselves wherever you like near one of the map edges - but now you see the cultists doing a dark ritual and the artifact you want is on the altar there"

roll for initiative

Oh man, my old playtest party wanted to see if an all-martial party worked. That's how we did our lv17 playtest.

<SNIP>

It's a wonderful way to go. But I'd stick with a more balanced party ;)

Sounds awesome fun and perfectly demonstrates the point about very specialised parties - which is more effective - a party that curb stomps 9 encounters and dies gloriously in the 10th or one that scrapes to victory in 10 encounters?

Certainly seems like its fun to try the 9 curb stomps and a TPK option once in a while!

Or you could do it the other way around to - +to hit a target with a weapon if you've just landed a spell on them.

Maybe its 'targets under the effect of one of your spells'

That way even the reduced effect from a successful (non-crit) save means you've still buffed your attack against them.

For offensive spells I'd love to see something on the lines of a bonus to spell effect if you cast a long range spell at touch range or through spell combat or spellstrike being around a spell being more effective after connecting with a weapon.

'More effective' could mean bonus to save DC, attack roll, some degree of heightening, tagging a metamagic effect on - I'm not too bothered what.

The general principle is that the magus' spells will normally be behind the wizards in effect - fewer slots, different proficiency, whatever, but the magus needs to get up into melee and/or land blows with weapons as the path to close that gap.

Fighter with Wizard dedication and vice versa are exactly the reason why a Magus class is needed. Those classes fail at delivering the most basic aspect of the Magus which is Gish at level 1. They fail to meet the core aspect of blending Martial and Spellcasting prowess. They fail to meet the playability demand of a Gish useful at all levels.

Exactly that.

The magus needs to be
- 50/50 fighter and wizard, not 80/20 or 20/80
- its role is combat - either a melee fighter or maybe an archer variant
- its spells support its role, it doesn't need magic outside of that

The 1st edition magus delivers this all perfectly well from level 1 up - no system mastery or cunning build needed to make a gish.

Somehow a character being an even mix of 2 classes has gone from something with lots of ways to do (classes like magus, the hybrids, multi-classing 10 levels of each class, prestige classes) to a real challenge.

If 2nd edition can't find a way to support this then the problem is 2nd edition, not the magus.

Moving back a level, here's what I want from a magus.

This is not to say I want to the class limited to this way of playing but for me it needs to support something like this =

1) They have a spell book, seeking out and learning new spells is part of their progression and which spells they memorise each day is an important choice. Casting is driven by intelligence

2) They get to spend a good percentage of their day casting spells or using arcane flavoured abilities without anyone* saying this is a waste of an action based on the system maths.

3) Their spell selection includes offensive spells and some self affecting defense or utility - choosing the right mix each day is important.

4) They can use traditional martial weapons like swords and bows and wear some armour

5) I can build them to have melee as a primary role without anyone* telling me they aren't suited to do that

Based on this thread that may all sound like a bit of a tall order for PF2 to accommodate, but bear in mind that's exactly what a PF1 magus does right out the gate at level 1, without needing any weird ancestry / feat / archetype choices to do so.

*when I say anyone I mean not one person in my regular group, no one at a PFS table, not one theory crafter on the forums...

Magus for me.

My answer to the question 'what do you give up if you want to be good at fighting and good at spells?' is high level spells. I don't mind casting 2nd level spells when others are casting 4th or 5th level ones. I do mind having to wait to 4th level to get 1 single spell.

I don't mind fighters doing a ton more melee damage than me, but I do mind ending up with a class / archetype where even one single person on the forums or at a PFS table tells me I shouldn't be in melee.

I don't want to see a Magus.

I don't want to see a game without a magus.

So I love the new iconic, Korakai. Awesome background, can't wait to play him next time I need a pregen in PFS.

But something struck me that's always a bit jarring about using most of the iconics as PFS pregens - even though he grows up in Absalom, there's no mention of any connection to the society.

As far as I'm aware only Ezren and Fumbus specifically have anything connecting them to the society.

Are there any other published bits of lore / background that explain how Kyra, Valeros, Amri and the others ended up as Pathfinders?

Love Korakai!

Never had an iconic grab me so much I want to find a PFS game purely to play them - he sounds awesome.

Love Korakai!

First time I've had an iconic grab me so much I want to seek out a PFS game purely to get a chance to play them.

Khakkhara confirmed? I hope so. I'd love to see more cultural player options delivered early on in PF2s lifeline. We have quite a few options already where weapons are concerned, like the katana or khopesh. But i fear with items like the tetsubo being seemingly phased out, no longer being Yamatsumi's favored weapon; it seems we may be backpaddling and missing opportunities where real world cultures are concerned. Maybe I'm over thinking it, but I feel with the new trait system for weapons and armor, the change and omission of the tetsubo as a unique weapon separate from the average two-handed club was odd. Could have had an armor breaking trait imo.

Rather than all having varied stats (and ending up as exotic weapons or rare options) I'd rather have fewer stat lines but plenty of varied art, names and background stories for the versions across different cultures

I quite like the idea of the all martial party being superstitious barbarians or determinedly atheist Radhadomi

willingness of the opposition to show mercy to the party (more on this later)

I think this is a big part of the problem in Pathfinder and similar games.

Normally the biggest incentive to show mercy is that word gets around and you might expect mercy in return.

Trouble is, the game is so gear dependent that surrendering and probably losing all your magic items will utterly cripple many characters. If you get to roll up a new one with wealth by level when your character dies, surrendering and losing your equipment might actually be a fate worse than death!

A lot of this falls on the DM. If you make every prisoner try to wriggle free and murder the PCs in their sleep / steal their horse and ride off / is otherwise be a massive logistical pain in the neck - then congrats, you were the one that turned the players into murderhobbos. Even if it was in your last campaign, not this one.

Its the same as how DMs who have the PCs' families and NPC friends kidnapped or murdered start wondering why every new PC's backstory covers how they are an orphaned loner with ties to no one.

So the onus is on those of us running the games to have taking prisoners not prove more trouble than its worth.

Things to consider
- other NPCs of the same group more likely to surrender
- foes being more willing to negotiate with the party
- ransoms being paid
- ability to exchange captured NPCs for something else you want "release the kidnapped villagers and you can have your shaman back!"
- released prisoners being afraid enough of the party they don't want to fight again
- use of prisoners as hostages in exchange for safe passage through a group's territory
- prisoners who'll give their word and keep it - look up the Napoleonic history around captured soldiers giving their parole - e.g. give us your word you'll not fight against our country again
- willingness of the opposition to show mercy to the party (more on this later)

JEEEESUS. I tried a third time to type up a thoughtful response and it once again got eaten. I'm sorry Julian, I don't think I'm supposed to continue this conversation.

Fair enough!

JulianW wrote:

For the first part yes, but crits are far more likely on the animal companion here, which is what happened - rolled something like a 16, no confirmation roll.

It wasn't like he was sending it to tank a dangerous boss or anything - just moved it towards one of four goons that were attacking unarmed townsfolk.

Whoah, this sounds deeply wrong. A 1st level Cat should have AC 16 or 17 while one of multiple foes at 1st level should have a +6 or +7 to hit. If you're fighting four enemies with better to-hit than that and can do 11+ damage on a crit, you're lucky it wasn't a PC that died, and even then 1st level enemies max out at +9 to hit, so still not a crit on a 16 barring real weirdness. With a mere 11 HP a crit will usually take it out, but the odds of that aren't nearly as bad as you're implying.

JulianW wrote:

To answer the second question he was a ranger, not a druid.

Did he not have Medicine? This seems like what First Aid is for.

OK, maybe it was a roll of 17 or 18 and if he did have medicine he didn't get over there in time to use it.

Maybe he was unlucky, maybe he should have stopped fighting the guy next to him and walked over to do first aid, maybe he should have had more system mastery...

But the point being pets came across as so much more fragile the player who loved having a pet was very much put off.

Isn't that an issue of going from a higher level to level 1 than anything else? I mean most level one companions in PF1 could go down to a crit as well.

As for the Cat dying, unless there was persistant damage involved, or the GM just targeted the downed animal, why couldn't the druid just save it?

For the first part yes, but crits are far more likely on the animal companion here, which is what happened - rolled something like a 16, no confirmation roll.

It wasn't like he was sending it to tank a dangerous boss or anything - just moved it towards one of four goons that were attacking unarmed townsfolk.

To answer the second question he was a ranger, not a druid.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

It's very easy to annihilate animal companions.

It is in fact so easy that our ranger rarely uses his animal companion in combat. Negative powergaming at its finest.

I've seen this put at least one player off.

In our 1st ed Jade Regent game his hunter loves hitting things with a greataxe, casting snowball and having his snow leopard pounce on things. Prior to that in Skull and Shackles his druid liked casting snowball and having his sabre tooth tiger pounce on things. He's hardly what I'd call a powergamer unless putting your highest stat roll in strength and taking power attack counts as min-maxing.

One week when the ref can't make it we try a pick-up game of 2nd ed. No one is surprised to see a ranger with a big cat appear on the table. First round of first battle one of the regular mook brigands crits it and decks it. Cat dies very shortly after. It would be an understatement to say the player was less than impressed.

Well, it is natural to compare PF2 to perceived flaws in PF1 because that is why a new edition was made. If the things people complain about in first edition are not things that bother you, than there's actually not a lot of reason for you to jump ship. You might be like Claxon and want a game you can just tear through with the right build without difficulty, in which case this isn't the right system for you and PF1 is. And as long as you can find enough people to play PF1, I see no reason you shouldn't continue.

Ok so this first part kind of proves my point. A response to a post specifically about maybe talking about the positives of 2nd instead of wailing on 1st, starts with a comment about how if I like 1st maybe its because I'm an min-maxing optimiser that just wants the actual game to be on easy mode.

What I will say is that our golden zone of playing campaigns is around 2nd-12th level - my hunch is this is why my position is that there's nothing wrong with 1st ed and that skills/magic absolutely did not need to be nerfed.

That being said, it has been getting harder and harder to find people to play
PF1 for years now and it is an a hard game to learn, so you may eventually be forced to migrate. :( Hopefully you have a table of folks who are sticking together.

This hits on an interesting point and its why 'edition wars' get so heated. There are lots of comments on the lines of no one is taking your books away / forcing you to play edition A or B. However RPGs are inherently social games - you need a pool of other players/GMs to play, which is probably why everyone gets so passionate about swaying others to support one over the other.

In the various play groups I see here in the UK, its much easier to assemble a 1st ed game than a 2nd ed one. I'm actually one of the most sympathetic, maybe it deserves another chance, viewers of 2nd in the groups I play with.

All that said, stuff I like about PF2 that doesn't require dunking on PF1 and hasn't already been covered up thread...

The 3 action economy and the way feats are usually abilities with narrative effects...

I'm interested in the narrative effects part however - tell me more (apologies for thread de-railing)

This thread seems as good a place as any to say this, because it seems the same conversation is going on.

I recently had a realisation on 1st vs 2nd. I've been unfairly judging 2nd and it maybe deserves another try.

However this came after a discussion in a Facebook forum when someone commented on all the cool things their party's druid was doing.

I realised that the primary thing that made me so averse to 2nd was so many people telling me it was great because of how much they disliked things in 1st. I love 1st edition and have spent countless happy hours playing it. The more people deride it to praise 2nd, the more I knee jerk dislike 2nd.

If you want to win us grognards over, stop telling us what you hated about the old game we love and focus on telling us about what's cool with the new.

Don't tell me how wizards desperately needed to be "fixed" (which sounds like taking a kitten or puppy to the vet to lose certain things). Tell me about how much fun your new wizard is having doing X Y Z now...

Maybe using 3d6 bell curves as the default might have been better for those who want skill over chance (I personally do love bell curve chances by the way). Critical success/failure would want some adjustments though (maybe somewhere between ±6 and ±8).

I think that would make for a very interesting game if attacks and skills were off 3d6+x rather than 1d20+x

JulianW wrote:

Interesting Character - Do you think it would be possible to distill it down into a few questions to define where someone's tastes and preferences put them on that grid?

Maybe eventually. I'm autistic, so communication is difficult. Took me years to get this far in trying to discuss the topic, and it has been something I've been analyzing for the past decade or so, especially after I got my minor is psychology.

Forming this into a set of questions is something I'll look into. Not something I'll be able to just put together with any kind of speed.

There is a germ of something brilliant here.

Your original post is as you quite rightly describe, an essay - the guidance I got given when I did my undergrad at Oxford was the weekly essay should be close to 3000 words, no more or less. Your post is 2879 - my tutor would have smiled at that. Essays are great for getting your thoughts in order and laying them out ready for an academic discussion. Ideally the outcome of the essay plus the discussions is then a shorter set of conclusions that can then be applied in practice.

My learning here is that this is all about communication.

You're looking to be able to get expectations about the campaign's play style more formally set upfront - its key information you want them to communicate to inform decisions on if to play, what character to play and how to play them with that group. Most groups don't take the time to spell this out formally, or if they are they aren't covering all the topics you want to cover.

The challenge is how to best communicate that request for information to the group, especially as most won't take the time to read an essay or if they do, they won't all draw the same conclusions from it.

I think what you need is to find the simplest way you can of explaining to groups how they can place themselves on the grid of your mental model without them needing to understand the full theory - whether its a list of questions, simple examples of what different points on the scale look like or maybe a flow chart.

Its designing a classification system, ideally one that is quick and simple to use.

Interesting Character - Do you think it would be possible to distill it down into a few questions to define where someone's tastes and preferences put them on that grid?

On the lines of "which of the following statements would you agree with?" (I'm not advocating any of these as right or wrong - several contradict each other)

- The GM should aim to make an interesting story. It is a player's responsibility to give their character a reason to be interested in it.

- The GM should aim to make an interesting world. It is a player's responsibility to give their character interesting objectives.

- The challenge of an adventure should be driven by what is there in the world. If the players have planned well it should be easier, if they are stupid they will suffer

- The challenge of an adventure should be driven by what will make an exciting session - the GM should dial it up or down based on the party's capabilities to ensure its both challenging and fair

- A character should have flaws and weaknesses , because they make for a more interesting story.

- If a character has flaws that is their look out. The player should plan to mitigate their weaknesses if they can.

- The approach a character takes to a task is as, if not more important than their skill roll - for example what they say to the NPC and how they say it, where they are looking for traps and how they attempt to disable them

- Its the party's responsibility to cover their bases - if they have no diplomat they should expect to struggle socially, if they didn't enough combat capability that's their risk

- The choice of which characters to play is a good indicator of what the players find fun. If no one wants to play a rogue the GM shouldn't use many traps, if they are light on martial characters then reduce the amount of combat.

- A character that has had hours of thought put into their design should be more effective than one that has not

- A character should be shaped by what happens to them from the story and the other characters. Its rude to your GM and fellow players if nothing they do will make you deviate from a plan you made before level 1

I'm sure you have a different list of questions but hopefully these illustrate what I'm getting at.

What I would if running giantslayer again, because some parts are excellent.

I would also like to play Iron Gods but our DM is not a fan of the "Sci-fi stuff" in D&D/Pathfinder.

What is the problem that people have with Giantslayer?

Having reffed it, Giantslayer delivers what it says on the label.

However that becomes problematic for several reasons

1. Its very easy for parties to specialise in killing giants. This leads to big set piece encounters becoming trivial but random wandering encounters nothing to do with the plot were the ones that killed people.

2. So much of a giant's CR is eaten up by their HD & strength there's little room to give them class levels, so they make very poor casters and generally are much worse at missile fire than melee. For obvious reasons they aren't good at sneaking about or social infiltration. This means most encounters turn into them trying to walk up and hit the party, maybe mixed in with some combat maneuvers. This can get very repetitive.

3. Giants live in giant buildings as makes sense. These give rise to huge maps, which is cool. However while the maps are two, three, four times bigger than normal maps, giants are only 10ft around faster than medium creatures. Giants also suck at ranged combat (see #2)- so the party often got to pepper them with arrows, cast any buff spells they wanted, maybe have a leisurely cup of coffee while the giants crawled across the huge maps towards them.

4. Its a pretty straightforward story. After the first couple of books there is very little in the way of roleplay, diplomacy, investigation or
similar - there are big obvious bad guys and you get to go fight them.

This probably adds up to a couple of ways people find books 3-6 get dull
- players that enjoy non-combat stuff may get bored by the lack of it
- players who are very combat focused will find the fights very repetitive

Its eminently fixable though if a referee wants to sub in their own content - I'll put up a separate post under a spoiler shortly

GM'ing Giantslayer

The Frost Giant stablehand of total badassness.

Starts off with a nat 20 and a good enough roll to confirm a crit flinging the huge bucket of soapy water with which he is washing the boss' war mammoth

Party front line charge in, he pulls his great axe and rolls 4 natural 20s in a row, sundering both the Paladin's divine bonded sword and the warpriest's sacred weapon polearm.

Finally he dies, let down by the fact the mammoth that was supposed to be the focus of the encounter proved totally useless.

He did achieve a victory however - unlike many supposedly tougher or named npc frost giants, he forced the party to retreat and rest up, with party members desperately researching if the cleric can fix things with the right level of make whole spell.

Shadette I think this is most rules lawyering argument, splitting of the finest of hairs I have seen in 40 years of playing RPGs

There’s no RAI, in character logic or game balance argument for your very strange ruling.

Your RAW argument has nothing you quote to support it - only you demanding we give you RAW text to prove you wrong on two separate obscure claims and then denying all rules quoted to you as not being incontrovertible enough in your mind.

You have nothing to positively support any of the claims that
- the bow isn’t the weapon doing the damage
- it makes a difference if the bow or the arrow does the damage
- ammunition doesn’t count as a weapon when used in a bow

This is the second forum I’ve seen you raise this on. On the Facebook group this got hundreds of comments. NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON on either forum has agreed with your bizarre logic - does that not make you consider you might be wrong?

Averaging a couple games of PF1 per week with a mix of groups, none of which has shown any appetite to switch.

Have played a few PF2 sessions - keep trying it and trying to like it but so far the jury is still out for me. Think that makes me the most pro PF2 person at any of those tables.