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Hi everyone. I've been playing through Abomination Vaults with a new group and we're having some serious issues with the difficulty of some encounters.

So far we've TPK'd twice:

- Once to some Blood Haunt at level 1 on the first floor that is at the bottom of the lighthouse stairs. It went first and immediately crit half our party dropping them to dying. Also the doors shut themselves when the encounter started, so the rest of us were unable to drag our teammates to safety, resulting in us all dying.

- The 2nd TPK was to the wood golem on floor 3. It used its splinter volley to hit all 4 of us at once and was critting us about 50% of the time. We tried to run away thinking that maybe it only guarded the room, but it followed us out into the hall and killed us all.

Is this normal for this AP? Is it just crazy hard or are we missing something that should be making these fights easier?

Hey for Order 36533410 it is not showing my Paizo Advantage discount.

Hi, I checked my orders and noticed that my Paizo Advantage does not seem to be applying to my sub order # 36369430. It is showing the price slashed through as if it was discounted but the new price is the same as the List Price.

Any idea what is going on?

An item can be destroyed if it takes damage enough times. An item reduces any damage dealt to it by its Hardness. The Hardness of various materials is explained in the Materials section on page 354. If an item takes damage equal to or exceeding the item’s Hardness, the item takes a Dent. If the item takes damage equal to or greater than twice its Hardness in one hit, it takes 2 Dents. For instance, a wooden shield (Hardness 3) that takes 10 damage would take 2 Dents. A typical item can take only 1 Dent without becoming broken. A second Dent causes it to become broken, though it can still be repaired. An item that would take a Dent or become broken while already broken is destroyed beyond salvage. Some magical or especially sturdy items can take more than 1 Dent before becoming broken, as noted in their descriptions.

So there appear to be 2 equally common interpretations of the rules for items taking damage and the text is vague enough that either could be correct.

Position 1: An item takes a dent if the total damage before subtracting hardness matches or goes past it's hardness.

Example: A fighter hits a wooden door for 11 points of damage. It is reduced by the hardness (10) to 1 point of damage, denting the door.

Position 2: An item takes a dent if the total damage after subtracting hardness is equal to or greater than the objects hardness.

Example: A fighter hits a wooden door for 11 points of damage. It is reduced by the hardness (10) to 1 point of damage, which does not dent the door because the damage actually given is not "equal to or exceeding the item's hardness" of 10.

This has come up in multiple threads and is especially important for how shields work. The sooner this gets a clarification the better.

Thread 1
Thread 2

So when my group first ran the playtest we couldn't find any rules or guidelines on the DC to break down doors in the CRB, but I just recently managed to find it on Page 7 of the Bestiary of all places. And what I found was definitely......concerning.

For one, the DC to break open a locked door is equal to the unlock Thievery DC+5 which just doesn't make sense. Regardless of how fancy of a lock you put on a wooden door, it's still a wooden door. The DC absolutely should not be based on the Thievery DC at all, but the size and type of material of the door.

However, this page also held something perhaps even stranger. It also provides DCs for climbing up walls of various materials, and they absolutely do not seem to match up with the CRB. On page 338 of the CRB we can see that climbing a cliff is a level 2 activity, which when we check the DC chart makes it DC 15. Now the bestiary puts climbing wood slats as a level 5 activity which is a whopping DC 21 and is harder than climbing a Masonry Wall apparently. Something is definitely wrong when climbing wood slats is significantly harder than climbing a cliffside and even slightly harder than a masonry wall.

Overall, it seems that quite a few of these DCs were decided without it being considered whether they logically made sense. I think it would definitely be a step in the right direction to revisit these rules and change the Break DC for doors to not be based on Thievery, and make the climb DCs more sensical for what surface you're climbing.

I'm talking about things like climbing a cliff with a rope, having a wall to brace against, swimming in calm water vs stormy water, breaking a wood vs metal door down, etc.

Tables 10-3 through 10-6 list the level some of these ordinary tasks should be and at what level they become trivial, but make no mention of their starting Difficulty, just some factors that can affect their difficulty.

Also, the table is completely missing any guidelines on how to handle using Athletics to Break Open doors, chests, etc. It would be really nice to have example DCs or at least level/difficulty for things like "Flimsy Wooden Door", "Solid Wooden Door", "Solid Iron Door", "Adamantine Lockbox" etc.

Am I reading this correctly that all magic items require 1 hour to identify now unless you take a feat? We didn't even bother identifying any of the magic items we found in the playtest because it didn't make sense to stop for an hour.

Overall, I feel like the time for Quick Identification should instead be the normal time, and Quick Identification should instead allow you to do it in 1 minute or less.

In the Adventuring Gear table of the Equipment chapter the Grappling Hook is listed, but is not actually detailed anywhere in the chapter. Instead, it skips directly from Formula Book to Healer's Tools.

It's fairly important that we have it's description as we need to know it's range and what kind of roll is required in order to land it somewhere when swinging it from a rope.

Upon reviewing the rule for climbing under Athletics, I realized that climbing is by far the biggest challenge low level characters will face.

Success: You move 5 feet up, across, or safely down the incline. If your Speed is 40 feet or greater, you move 10 feet instead.

Critical Success: You move half your Speed up, across, or safely down the incline.

Critical Failure: You fall (see page 310). If you began the climb on stable ground, you fall and land prone.

For instance, climbing a rope that's hanging in mid-air is a level 1 task, so it's normally a high DC (14), but it might have a low DC (12) if you can brace yourself against a wall while climbing through a narrow area, and maybe even a trivial DC (10) if you can brace against two walls.

Let's say we're a human adventurer. We need to climb up a 60 foot wall, so we throw up a grappling hook tied to a rope and brace ourselves against the wall to start our climb. It's DC 12 and we move only 5 feet on a success or 17.5 feet on a crit success.

Now, there's pretty decent odds that we're going to roll a 1 at some point and fall. You would think this would be where the Assurance feat comes in, but it only lets you get a total of 10 until you become an Expert in a skill, which you can't do for Athletics until level 3 at the earliest. At that point, you could then use assurance to receive a 15 and be able to climb up.

Basically the issue is this: From levels 1-2 climbing any significant distance is near impossible and continues to be so for many levels onward for any character that does not spend a feat on assurance and skill increases to get Athletics to Expert.

So I've seen that the Lore, Religion, and Occultism skills have the Recall Knowledge use and monsters have a rarity listed.

However, is there an actual guide to which types of creatures are identified by each skill? Or what the DC for identifying monsters is based on?

I'm currently struggling to understand if Perception proficiency can be increased or not. It's not a skill, so it seems it can't be increased with your skill increases.

There's the Alertness feat which increases it's proficiency to Expert, but that seems to be it.

So does this mean that if you're not a class with inherent perception proficiency increases like fighter, then you can't increase your perception proficiency past expert?

I do have to wonder why monk only has 3 skill ranks while the paladin gets 4 and the ranger gets 6. It seems extremely limiting to put a class that was at the 4+ skill point level in PF1 to only 3 skill ranks while elevating Paladin from 2 to 4 and leaving Ranger at 6 in PF2.

I can't imagine it's an issue of balance since the Ranger (another full martial class) was left at 6 just like in PF1.

But maybe I'm missing something here. Thoughts?

You Stride, and if you move at least 10 feet, roll an Athletics check in an attempt to Leap horizontally in the same direction. The DC of the check is equal to 5 plus the total distance in feet you’re attempting to move during your Leap (so Leaping 20 feet would require a DC 25 check). You can’t Leap farther than your Speed. This DC might be increased or decreased due to the situation, as determined by the GM.

Success You Leap, increasing the distance you move
horizontally to the desired distance.

Failure You Leap the maximum distance allowed by the Leap
action.

Critical Failure You Leap the maximum distance allowed by
the Leap action, then fall prone.

So what I'm confused by is that we're told the max distance we can leap is equal to our speed, but a failure does that already? Is a success meant to override the rule on our speed being the maximum?

So one of my favorite things about PF1 was that it was completely feasible to make a strength based rogue rather than a dexterity based one. I found it fun to work against the assumption and play a burly half-orc rogue with a greatsword and power attack, sneak attacking their foes.

However, it seems PF2 is sorta doing away with this concept or at least discouraging it.

The enworld iconic character sheet preview for Merisiel lists sneak attack as only working on agile and finesse weapons and a redditpost from someone who had played a demo mentioned a class feat that expanded it to work for clubs as well.

I for one am incredibly sad that now you are pushed towards being a typical dex based rogue who uses lighter weapons if you want to be able to use one of the class's most iconic abilities. At best it seems you'll have to pay a feat tax in order to be able to use sneak attack with other weapons, but it seems likely that many won't be possible to use with it at all.

I'm just hoping this will change in the playtest so that strength based rogues don't simply become a thing of the past.

Hey everyone! Since no one else has posted an obituary thread I guess I'll start us off.

---Template---
Name:
Race:
Classes/levels:
Adventure:
Location:
Catalyst:
The Gory Details: (optional)

And now for my entry.

Name: Gillene
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Witch 1
Adventure: The Lost Outpost
Location: The Chapel
Catalyst: A (un)lucky crit by Silas the poltergeist with Telekinesis.
The Gory Details: Gillene had taken the lead in investigating the scene of a struggle in the chapel despite her lack of love for religion. Silas made his presence known as she found the hidden latch on the alter and his body tumbled out. I rolled randomly to see which of the PCs he threw the statue of Erastil at with his telekinesis and it just happened to be her. And then I rolled a 20. Follow by a 19. And with that Gillene was splattered underneath the statue by a 25 damage critical. An appropriately tragic ending for a tragic character.

So if someone wields two Fortuitous Weapons (assume they have combat reflexes) would they be able to get 2 extra AoOs a round?

So Ultimate Wilderness introduced the Tyrant Totem line of rage powers which end with the final power giving you the swallow whole ability.

Tyrant Totem, Greater (Su): While raging, the barbarian gains swallow whole as per the universal monster rule. A barbarian must be at least 12th level to choose this rage power.

However, when you consult the swallow whole monster ability you're left with some questions as to how exactly this works.

If a creature with this special attack begins its turn with an opponent grappled in its mouth (see Grab), it can attempt a new combat maneuver check (as though attempting to pin the opponent). If it succeeds, it swallows its prey, and the opponent takes bite damage. Unless otherwise noted, the opponent can be up to one size category Smaller than the swallowing creature. Being swallowed causes a creature to take damage each round. The amount and type of damage varies and is given in the creature’s statistics. A swallowed creature keeps the grappled condition, while the creature that did the swallowing does not. A swallowed creature can try to cut its way free with any light slashing or piercing weapon (the amount of cutting damage required to get free is equal to 1/10 the creature’s total hit points), or it can just try to escape the grapple. The Armor Class of the interior of a creature that swallows whole is normally 10 + 1/2 its natural armor bonus, with no modifiers for size or Dexterity. If a swallowed creature cuts its way out, the swallowing creature cannot use swallow whole again until the damage is healed. If the swallowed creature escapes the grapple, success puts it back in the attacker’s mouth, where it may be bitten or swallowed again.

Format: swallow whole (5d6 acid damage, AC 15, 18 hp); Location: Special Attacks.

So the question is, what is the continuous damage that the barbarian causes each round? The initial damage is equal to the creatures bite damage, but the continuous damage isn't and is given in a unique entry for the creature which the rage power doesn't specify. So how exactly is this supposed to work?

Just curious, I'm not seeing anywhere specifically saying that the captain can only act once per round in spaceship combat. Can they just use encourage multiple times per round?

So the Spiral Rapier is a new exotic weapon from Adventurer's Armory 2. The text of it is as follows:

So my question is regarding the bolded portion. Rogues and Elves are called out as specifically being proficient with rapiers. Wouldn't this be considered an effect that applies to rapiers, effectively granting them proficiency with it?

So the Crimson Templar prestige class from Chronicles of the Righteous has the following ability

Shield of Wings (Su): At 1st level, a crimson templar gains fire resistance 5. This increases to fire resistance 10 at 3rd level, increases to fire resistance 30 at 6th level, and becomes immunity to fire at 9th level. As a swift action, a crimson templar can manifest a set of five burning wings from his back to gain a fly speed of 40 feet (average maneuverability) for a number of minutes equal to his crimson templar level. He can dismiss these wings as a move action, but any remaining duration is lost.

So based on the wording of the ability saying that "any remaining duration is lost", it looks to me like it was mean to be a limited use per day ability but that text was left off. I'm curious to see what the rest of the board thinks and how they would rule it.

My old highschool group is going to be in town over Christmas and we're planning on playing some mid to high level modules. The modules we've considered are Academy of Secrets, The Moonscar, and Doom Comes to Dustpawn.

However, one of my players suggested possibly linking some of them together instead of playing tham as individual one shots. After looking through them, I don't see what level they should be after completing them anywhere in the modules.

So thats where you all come in. Those of you who have either played in, or GMd these modules, what level were the pc's on completion?

So I've got an interesting quandary for the rules forum tonight.

Would the divine fighting technique feat Desna's Shooting Star and the Magus Arcana ability Arcane Accuracy stack?

You can add your Charisma bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls when wielding a starknife. If you do so, you don’t modify attack rolls and damage rolls with your starknife with your Strength modifier, your Dexterity modifier (if you have Weapon Finesse), or any other ability score (if you have an ability that allows you to modify attack rolls and damage rolls with that ability score).

The magus can expend 1 point from his arcane pool as a swift action to grant himself an insight bonus equal to his Intelligence bonus on all attack rolls until the end of his turn.

I'm of the line of thought that since Arcane Accuracy is not directly modifying your attack rolls with an ability score (like weapon finesse), but is instead granting you a insight bonus equal to your INT score that it would indeed stack.

However, I'm curious to see what the majority opinion of the board is.

I'm considering running one of these 2 modules for PFS the weekend before Halloween and was curious if anyone could give a rough estimate of how long they would take to run?

So quick question, if I have a 2nd level character who plays up in a 1-5 scenario, do I get the subtier 4-5 items?

Recently I was attempting to build a barbarian character using the "Deathless Initiate" line of feats along with others in order to stay fighting well into the negatives and I realized something rather shocking.

This entire concept can be shutdown by taking even a single point of non-lethal damage due to the following:

when your nonlethal damage equals your current hit points, you're staggered (see below), and when it exceeds your current hit points, you fall unconscious.

So diehard, deathless initiate, etc. are negated by taking even 1 point of nonlethal damage from anything. Additionally any creature with the Ferocity Monster Trait can be shut down the same way. Orcs become a lot less scary when they don't get to go to their negative CON.

I dunno, it just seems weird to me that a creature with the resolve to keep fighting well past the limits that would knock out or kill a normal being can be rendered unconscious by a light tap with a sap.

Anyways, I'd like to think this is not the case. So please, correct me if missing something here.