QuidEst's page

Given that the same or comparable effects can be achieved with other magics that are not considered "evil" or "Unholy" I question the moral judgement that gets thrown on there. I reject the idea of absolute morality being derived from a divine being, given divinities in this universe are not infallible.

I definitely see necromancy as a quick and dirty way to accomplish things other magic can do with less effort but serious drawbacks.

It's by far the easiest path to immortality (just get a ghoul or vampire to agree)... but it's pretty corrupting. Not insurmountably so, but in a way that capstone feats or sun orchid elixir aren't.

It gets you tireless minions capable of versatile labor much more easily than an equivalently versatile construct (level -1 skeleton warrior vs. level 2 animated armor)... but they will cause dangerous accidents around the living, and always try to kill if freed.

I think it's plenty reasonable to play a necromancer who isn't doing anything worse than raising corpses and using them. I do think you need to adjust the setting from its defaults for that to not be worse than animating some objects, though. Greater risk to people, a problem if the undead outlast you or your control, and credible (but not infallible) claims that it causes the equivalent of more pollution. And, like I said early in the thread, it's not so hard to justify using existing undead.

I do also think it's very reasonable to make those adjustments! It's fun to play in a setting where necromancy is less of a boogeyman. Pay for corpse rights before death, or have the body considered a natural part of an inheritance. Definitely something I've thought about for worldbuilding stuff.

And, finally, I certainly encourage enjoying playing a scumbag necromancer. Not every character has to be good, and wanting to use people to further your own ends even after they're dead is an easy start to an enjoyable evil character.

Ethical on Golarian as it's presented now? Ehhh... At the least, I feel like you've got a lot of hurdles to overcome. I'll be very interested to see if there are any changes to the lore with the move away from the OGL and the class's introduction, though.

Ethical in Starfinder? Definitely a lower bar to clear- Eox's corpsefolk seem a lot more chill than most of Pathfinder's undead and synthetic food works well enough for them unlike ghouls. Zo! certainly seems pretty keen on lethal entertainment, but it's on a volunteer basis. Better shipping means it's much easier to have mindless undead doing useful work away from the living, even if animation and control techniques haven't improved, which they might have.

QuidEst wrote:

I think the Book of the Dead did a pretty good job of why necromancy doesn't ever really get a good reputation.

It's easy to imagine what sort of things could create normalization of undead: the business incentives could make undead labor commonplace, or charitable necromancers could use undead labor to repair natural disaster damage or protect towns. Book of the Dead covers why that doesn't work: even controlled mindless undead work worse around the living and cause more accidents. Between that and undead slipping free of control and killing or injuring people, enough attempts at using undead in a pro-social way would be marred by deaths and injuries that it would never be able to turn its reputation around. The businesses would always be breaking reasonable safety laws for an advantage over their competition, not just following normal practices. The undead helping do repairs would cause accidents, or a natural undead would come along in the disaster aftermath and nobody would believe it hadn't just gotten loose from the work crew.

Except this isn't true. Kaer Maga has a large mindless undead menial workforce. There are dangers, but aren't there always. Is there a significant difference between a necromancer losing control of a zombie vs a living employee just "going postal"? I don't see evidence that losing control of the dead is any more common than a living person flying into a deadly rage. At least in the former case we know who is responsible and can exact vengeance. Kaer Maga is proof it can work. In a more ordered society than Kaer Maga it might even be safer.

... I think the fact that in "the city where almost anything goes", there's only one district out of twelve where controlled mindless undead are allowed, and it's noted that the people there are ready to drop them at the first sign of any independent action, says that it is a notably higher risk than a living employee going postal.

I guess when I talk about the ethics of necromancy, I'm mostly talking about it in the sense of "how ethical is making mindless undead to accomplish good that outweighs the externalities (environmental impact to universe)". Book of the Dead makes it clear that any attempted good done near living people comes with non-trivial risks.

There's also the ethics of extending someone's life through undeath, which it sounds like is more what you're discussing. That's where "sapient free will" intersects with "undead tend towards evil". It's something else Book of the Dead does a pretty good job of addressing. Void-based vital essence gives a bias towards things being made dead similar to the vitality-based bias towards things being left alive. It's something that can be overcome, but it's notable enough that it gives undead their typical alignment in a way that fantasy ancestries don't have. "That person you make into undead is probably going to be a more harmful person" isn't the only reason for it to be considered unethical, but it's not really something you can just remove as a factor of how undeath works. And I guess, personally, I'm chill having intelligent undead be a category that falls between "humanoid" and "fiend" on the sliding scale of moral flexibility.

The setting has a vested interest in undeath being a bad thing. (Nowhere to get away from powerful immortal characters is a stifling setting, lack of mortality makes a setting harder to relate to, undead in mythology and popular culture have a tendency to be evil, etc.) Its creators have taken steps to make it that way. I think it's fair to question some of those reasons, and I'm with you on disagreeing on some points, like undead hunger being inherently worse in all cases. Even then, though, there are some cases where there's a difference- ghouls do need the flesh of sapient creatures in a way that regular predators don't, and zombies prefer the meat and brains of sapient creatures over non-sapient ones. With some other undead, yes, the hunger isn't worse than a living creature's hunger. But it's easy to see how if someone is looking at a vampire (can probably find an ethical food source that doesn't even kill anything) and someone is looking at a ghoul (loses their mind in a violent rage if they don't have humanoid flesh for a week), it's easy for them to end up talking past each other.

I thought this was a discussion about the ethics of necromancy in universe. I didn't bring up our real world first in relation to this topic or taboos first, I responded to the concept that was posed to me.

TO BE CLEAR I am not trying to imply that anyone here is anything-phobic, or that these things are the same, I'm poking holes in the logic being presented to me.

Pharasma declares it: Appeal to authority, and similar authority is frequently wrong or biased

They are dangerous: Yes, So are a lot of things in Golarion that aren't treated with near this level of stigmatism

Taboos about Death: Appeal to tribalism, and as I pointed out taboos are not always a good thing.

Similar practices and effects are done in all forms of magic and (from an in-universe perspective) what is the difference between binding a spirit necromantically and binding a fey, fiend, or elemental? What is the difference between making a construct and a mindless undead? What is the difference between an undead's desire for flesh/blood and any living omnivore or carnivore's desire for meat?

I think that there are some useful distinctions to be made, and I know these are just points made to poke holes.

Citing Pharasma is actually very specifically not a case of Appeal to Authority, because she is an expert on the cycle of souls and what it takes to keep the universe running. Appeal to authority would be citing Iomedae's opinion on whether undead are bad for the universe- she may be a deity, but she's not particularly qualified to weigh in on that. Gods may be wrong and biased, but they're usually pretty solid in their areas of expertise.

Other, less stigmatized, things also being dangerous is certainly true. I do think that undead frequently represent a particular unpleasant sort of danger, one in which a person can often be made into a part of that danger (zombies, ghouls, vampires, etc.). I think other cases of that are actually treated with very similar levels of stigma- mind control, demonic possession, etc.

I think the taboos about death part was brought up as a matter of people's perception. As far as it relates to the ethics, it does lead to "raising somebody as a skeleton or zombie defaults to being a violation of their bodily autonomy, rather than being presumed okay unless they said otherwise".

As for the difference between making a construct and an undead, that's what I was mentioning before. Even a mindless undead defaults to hostility with such a strong bias that even control to the contrary doesn't entirely remove the effects of that bias. While adventurers certainly encounter plenty of hostile constructs, those are usually narratively intentionally made to guard something or are exceptions, rather than universal hostility as a default.

Undead hunger vs. a living creature's hunger- honestly, if this were the only issue, it would be pretty reasonable to chalk them up as not that different. It varies by type of undead, of course. It's something that is largely a solved problem in Starfinder, at least as far as Eox is concerned.

I think the Book of the Dead did a pretty good job of why necromancy doesn't ever really get a good reputation.

It's easy to imagine what sort of things could create normalization of undead: the business incentives could make undead labor commonplace, or charitable necromancers could use undead labor to repair natural disaster damage or protect towns. Book of the Dead covers why that doesn't work: even controlled mindless undead work worse around the living and cause more accidents. Between that and undead slipping free of control and killing or injuring people, enough attempts at using undead in a pro-social way would be marred by deaths and injuries that it would never be able to turn its reputation around. The businesses would always be breaking reasonable safety laws for an advantage over their competition, not just following normal practices. The undead helping do repairs would cause accidents, or a natural undead would come along in the disaster aftermath and nobody would believe it hadn't just gotten loose from the work crew.

I have been finding in my adventure my GM tends to take the damage from Iron Command almost always. How can I have him more likely to fall Prone? Would Iron Repurcussions help with that? Or do you still see the GM just eating the dmg? I should clarify I am playing a Sorcerer and also have this effect at times:

Blood Magic—Retributive SpiteMalice and acrimony take physical form around you. You deal 4 mental damage per spell rank (basic Will save) to the first creature that deals damage to you before the end of your next turn; if no creature damages you in that time, you consume that spite to gain temporary Hit Points at the beginning of your next turn equal to the spell's rank. These temporary Hit Points last until the beginning of your following turn.

So effectively if he attacked me he would take not only Iron Command damage but ALSO Retributive Spite damage on the first attack. Perhaps this would be enough for him to choose to Fall Prone?

I would recommend the Command spell for this- a low level spell to force someone to kneel.

There's a reason that the reaction gives a choice- only offering the prone option is too strong for a reaction.

Iron Repercussions is certainly worth taking, because even if the GM decides to pick the damage option, it's going to make that damage option better.

This is normally when the playtest for those classes would be wrapping up. SF2 forced a very early playtest, so while it's been a while since we got any news, we aren't actually too behind on news- mainly the book name.

As for the Order of the Eclipse and angels, we do know for certain that (Era of the Eclipse spoilers):

I think it works best as two groups using superficially similar methods with different motives and degrees of how far they'll go. Angels feeling that the "evil power-grabbing censorship" of the Order gives their "holy and benevolent management of knowledge" a bad reputation.

I'll also just leave a suggestion - one that may prove wrong, but I don't think so.

If you're at the point of "This seems like something Hasbro would do, not Paizo", you might be thinking of it in terms of how Hasbro would do it rather than how Paizo is doing it.

Paizo's made enough not-Hasbro decisions for me to assume this is another not-Hasbro decision, unless we see otherwise when it comes out. Like Cori said, you're still getting 15% off under the new system. Better to draw that line if that stops being the case.

Yep, it's for that near-guarantee of a mythic roll and reroll, generally in thematic areas.

It's worth noting that mythic points are cheaper than hero points. You start every session with three instead of usually one or two, you don't need them to stave off death, and they can't be used to reroll attack rolls.

If that's not for you, then don't worry about it, and you can just think of Mythic as giving you different hero points and gentler death rules until level 6.

I like the idea of the Wandering Chef archetype, but I suspect I'd be better off just taking the Alchemist archetype and learning the Alchemical Food recipes first?

I think it boils down to:
is Pack With Flavour [https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=7058] sufficiently better than Alchemical Power [https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=6189] as to be worth the loss of flexibility?

Or are there some other benefits that only the Wandering Chef archetype has?

The main benefit of Wandering Chef is not having a +2 Int requirement. If you're taking the archetype on an Int-based class, it's hard to argue with Alchemist.

I love me some villain options, personally. Hellknights are just have too much "knight" for me to enjoy, regardless on how much Hell has taken over their management.

But, that could also be why I always saw them as Hell's flunkies- there wasn't any benefit for me to them actually being independent. They're mostly just knights either way.

The Ronyon wrote:

I only know them from class related game material,but to me , Hellknights are just the Church of Policing.

If you expect a bunch of fanatical cops to not be corrupted by power,run them that way.

To me, the controlling nature of most policing and most religion makes a holy order of knights that emulate the lawfulness of hell becoming outright evil after countless millennia seem surprising only in that it took that long for them to fall only this far.

Falling to evil, or even most orders being evil, isn't that surprising.

But becoming servitors of Hell is frustrating, because Hellkngihts weren't Hell's lackeys before this new publication. Honestly, to me it makes Hellknights worthless if they're just aligned with Hell and serving those ends as mortals rather than devils.

I think the Hellknights staying perpetually independent of Hell just makes the devils look too laughably incompetent. A group models themselves after you, uses your kind to train, bargains for passage with you, worked for a government you influence, and you still can't make them lapdogs after thousands of years? Who could devils corrupt if not the "Hell is making a lot of good points" Hellknights?

Not working for Hell always seemed like a self-deluding fiction to launder their reputation, at least to me, not something that was actually true in a functional "the Hellknights aren't furthering Hell's agendas" way.

Especially in Starfinder, where they have had Helldrives and devil advisors since SF1. That's not new.

I interviewed for an Amazon warehouse manager position when I got out of the Army, and one of the interviewers positively seethed when I said I'd follow whatever policies were in place, but lacking any information on that I'd pull a guy for medical treatment or assessment if he claimed he had a sprained hand/arm while working the packing line. I guess he'd be a good candidate.

Yeah, that sounds like it exactly.

I could see some manager who expects to spend the afterlife climbing the ranks of Hell, carving out his niche of power in the hierarchy, only to end up in Ksedahl's domain because of all the broken promises used to keep people working a few more months.

I'm not sure what the sin is here and what kind of people end up in this realm. Tech bros demanding (and providing) 80 hour work weeks for s+#*cos in the delusional pursuit of valuable equity that obviously isn't ever going to happen?

Fast food assistant manager who keeps getting turned over for his general manager franchise ownership application but doesn't quit?

Ununionized game developer who works long hours for subsistence wages for the love of the game?

I guess the special action that activates the mental damage would be something like spending an action doing nothing at all.

Managers who run companies to trap workers with tactics like emotional abuse, unreasonable expectations, false negative references, blacklisting, low wages, holding immigration status hostage, etc. Anywhere people are peeing in bottles because they can't take breaks.

Possibly also people who throw themselves into work in order to avoid their families.

I can appreciate undeath as a form of "divide by zero" error, where using the natural state of decay as a fuel source gives you something in the ballpark of a perpetual motion machine. This has imperfections and side effects, but that "free lunch" is what's so unnatural.

Just now realizing that it's very straightforward to just put the cost of the "free lunch" on the universe lifespan. It's always phrased as disrupting to the cycle of souls, etc., but I think treating it as where the proverbial battery is hidden makes a lot of sense.

I was on board right up until "Ksedahl, the demon lord of ceaseless employment." It's about the eye-rolliest epithet I've heard in ages.

The description of the realm was cool.
Oh well.

Hmm. A few alternatives, then.

It's certainly a demon lord that's useful to reference. I've got an Eoxian gameshow host who presents risking your life for fame and fortune in a deadly trivia competition as an alternative to the crushing anonymity of working for one of these companies and dying of stress before retirement. Giving him a demonic boogeyman makes that pitch all the more legitimized.

Where exactly are armor resistances listed and how does it work in 2nd Edition?

Here. Or at least, probably! I'm not entirely sure what you're asking; you might need to give a little more context if that's not it.

There's also the similarly-spelled resilience value, which is the bonus the armor gives to saving throws.

Remember the sacredness of one's body/bodily autonomy. Most cultures, presumably even more on Golarion given the metaphysical ramifications, place high value on the ethical treatment of corpses of one's kin, often including those of one's enemy. The ethics differ drastically in practice, yet few consider a human body a mere resource (even among cannibals).

Plus killing someone in self-defense does not give one rights to their body (well, except in the finders-keepers, possession is 9/10 of the law kind of way). RPGs have kinda made this feel like the norm; looting the body has often included its parts, especially if a magical component. But the bodies of formerly sapient creatures in actual practice? That feels like a fairly universal anathema among pro-social (or just un-antisocial) groups. Whether this is reasonable or not is secondary to the powerful emotional revulsion most will then use reason to justify.

Sure- and if that's taken as granted with no possible exceptions for permission, forfeiture, or outcome, then nothing like ethical necromancy is possible, since even using existing undead is wrong. Which is fine, just a very short discussion.

Undeath has three big issues with it:

- It's environmentally bad, just on a cosmic scale rather than a local one. This is why Parasma herself is against it. The other reasons are much more useful arguments for her church to make, because people don't even care too much about stuff that affects the planet they live on, let alone 'reality as a whole long after all life on the planet is long dead anyway'. I'm going to lump in "it's just wrong (Pharasma says so)" into here.

- It is antithetical to life. Undead have a strong bias against life that's hard to overcome, and may even have overwhelming urges to feed on life. Mindless undead cause injuries and accidents at higher rates around living people even when just ordered to do manual labor. This is the one that most people care about, because it endangers them. I'm going to lump in "it's just wrong (unholy)" in here too.

- Ethical sourcing of bodies and/or souls. Necromancy makes use of dead bodies, and the largest ethical concern is the expedient temptation of killing people for fresh bodies and/or souls. After that is using pre-deceased ones, which is a bit more philosophical when it's *just* the body. It's complicated by the damage to a soul that undeath can cause. This category is something that can at least be mitigated with permission or performing it on oneself. I'm going to lump in "it's just wrong (unnatural)" into here.

Plenty of other smaller ones too, but I think those are the major ones. The first one isn't outside what a lot of characters do, it just has a god that cares about it in particular. The second is between the player and GM to hash out how much it applies to a character. The last one is partly a matter of character philosophy. I don't think it's unreasonable for a necromancer to take the stance that they have a certain right to bodies that were turned into bodies in legitimate self-defense.

Now, in my case, it's easy. I'm just playing a selfish character who cares more about having mindlessly obedient undead than about what effects that has. If you want to make an ethical necromancer, it needs to be under an ethical framework that can resolve these or justify them, with the understanding that Pharasma and most of the holy gods will not agree.

"Two-handed Thaumaturge" feels a bit like "armored Monk" to me, but even more so. It's taking the class about holding weird stuff and turning it into the class that doesn't hold weird stuff.

The feat that allows reloading with an implement is fine because it's enabling an already weak style- reload and fire burns a lot of actions. Letting Thaumaturge take its large amounts of flat damage and dump them on a long-range weapon with no action cost and a d8 damage die is just too good. See also: Barbarian not having a way to get rage damage on bows, Rogues needing special setup, and Investigators and precision Rangers both being limited to bonus damage on one attack per round.

Thaumaturge is already more lenient than the other classes. If you're willing to pay the extra actions for what you want to do, you can exploit vulnerability and then put your implement away or drop it for later retrieval. At that point, you've got a custom weakness for your bow against the target. Tome implement is a good choice, since it provides you with most of its benefits while you're not holding it.

If what you actually want is a d12-equivalent (or d10-equivalent without volley) long-range weapon with no action cost using implement's empowerment, with exploit vulnerability on top... we all know that's not balanced, right?

---

Anyway, what I'm hoping for is mainly an extra slot on psychic. I think we might be getting the additional deviant feats we saw in the player's guide remaster for the X-Files AP?

The Raven Black wrote:

Creating undead will have zero impact on Pharasma's judgement. Unless you are one of her faithfuls I guess.

Just like having been an undead before her judgement has no impact either.

It is the existence of undead she abhors.

I'm confused, how would doing the thing she abhors more than anything else in the Universe during your life NOT impact her judgment of your soul? Pharasma's judgment supercedes all other authority in the Universe, so anyone who breaks her rules and is subject to her judgment would be punished accordingly, right? That's why your average necromancer begins looking to become undead no matter the reasons they got into necromancy in the first place, because they know Pharasma will make an example out of them if they die of old age or have an accident.

Here's the thing. Pharasma isn't actually punishing people for its own sake. If somebody is getting sent to Hell, it's not because Pharasma wants them to suffer, and if somebody goes to Elysium, it's not because Pharasma wants them to be rewarded. The universe continuing to run properly is reliant on souls going to the right place. Systematically giving necromancers the wrong afterlife would also cause universe-destabilizing problems.

Pharasma will absolutely sometimes send some psychopomps to deal with an undead necromancer, or in a lot more cases, she encourages her church to deal with them. That doesn't necessarily affect how she judges them. If she were human, it definitely would, but she's not.

Now, there's certainly some weirdness around all this- there's a protean who sometimes gets to judge some souls instead, and other weird exceptions. Presumably that's part of the whole process too. Realistically, it's a made-up setting and just having Pharasma decide for everyone is kind of boring.

QuidEst wrote:

Christopher#2411504 wrote:

The Spell Animate Dead was renamed to Summon Undead in the Remaster. It does not gain the Unholy trait either.

Pharasma didn't care about good or evil, and doesn't care about holy or unholy, though? The presence or absence of the unholy trait is irrelevant when it comes to her.

That is plain untrue.

Cleric Anathema:
"Casting spells with the unholy trait is almost always anathema to deities who don't allow unholy sanctification, and casting holy spells is likewise anathema to those who don't allow holy sanctification."

Pharasma:
"Divine Sanctification none"

She actually dislikes Holy spells as much as Unholy spells. But Holy spells often do extra damage to Undead, so you can get away with them more easily.

So Unholy is still a very good indicator what is okay for her.

Yeah, you're probably not supposed to go around casting holy and unholy spells as a Pharasmin- that's an issue of being insufficiently neutral in something you're supposed to be neutral in. I was definitely incorrect in saying it didn't matter at all to her. It doesn't follow that she's okay with an undead spell just because it's not unholy, or that unholy was removed specifically to allow Pharasmins to use it. That's the leap I'm not following.

The Spell Animate Dead was renamed to Summon Undead in the Remaster. It does not gain the Unholy trait either.

This is to make clear that using it does not violate any of Pharasmas edicts. So people stop overthinking things like this.
If those abilities aren't tagged Unholy, it is save to assume they work and are okay with Pharasma.

Pharasma didn't care about good or evil, and doesn't care about holy or unholy, though? The presence or absence of the unholy trait is irrelevant when it comes to her.

As for the main question, if I were to help somebody make a less-evil necromancer, I'd probably pick the ghost-focused subclass, and have them work by binding existing spirits. It's a lot easier to avoid them being created on the spot, since they don't have to take up physical space most of the time. When one is destroyed, it's just temporarily dispersed. No ethical concerns about making undead, and it's keeping them from being a problem elsewhere.

Fair enough! I guess it'd be replacing the former alignment section of nation entries if it happened.

PF1 had a spiritualist archetype where your phantoms were failed Starstone aspirants, so don't forget to include "a summoner's eidolon is what's left of somebody who attempted it" in your potential options.

QuidEst wrote:

As for the edicts and anathema, eh... most ancestries don't have that anyway, so I don't see a lot of value in spending the space for every country to do that just so humans have something to fall back on.

This argument makes no sense.

Literally every remastered ancestry in PF2 and SF2 has popular Edicts and Anathemas. Even the ones they added in SF2 Adventure paths. This is the default going forward.
And it is 2-4 lines worth of content. So claiming it is "too much content" makes no sense.

Ah, well, what you're missing is that I missed that section in PC2 when I went back to check and thought only the first player core had it. So yes, you're absolutely right that all the new/remastered non-humans have it.

Unless I'm misunderstanding it, though, it's "Humans are missing 2-4 lines, so add 2-4 lines to every country". That still doesn't feel like a good tradeoff? Or region, I guess, but I don't see Nex, Geb, and Jalmeray all sharing edicts and anathemas.

Take 10 was just not good for the game. There was a stark jump between "coin toss" and "100% guaranteed success", and tweaking Assurance up to the point of succeeding at an on-level DC just re-introduces the problem but under a feat. It may not be good in a lot of circumstances, but "no roll needed" shouldn't be the go-to answer. Similarly, on-level DCs shouldn't be the things that you can just handwave and ignore- otherwise, what's the point of it being the standard DC for that level? And that's exactly where Assurance sits- it handles things beneath your level, but not things at or above.

Now, I agree that Inventor shouldn't be rolling to not burn themselves like they do. But that's Inventor's problem, and the best place to fix the issue is on the Inventor side.

I'm of the opinion that a mostly irrelevant Assurance is better than one that covers a standard on-level DC. I could be convinced by a second feat at legendary proficiency that covers standard on-level DCs, since automatically succeeding at those does feel suitably "legendary".

I'm interested to see what kobolds will get in the book. I was surprised that they're getting an inclusion, given their remaster.

Mightyfall kobolds, full moon sarangay, and lashunta don't represent differences between cultures. Mightyfall kobolds are the result of kobold physiology (notable in how it picks up the ambient energy around magical creatures) being exposed to kaiju. Full moon sarangays are the result of being raised for a particular role in a manner shared across their different cultures. Lashunta evolved with significant dimorphism.

It's not really appropriate for differences in cultures, particularly when it comes to humans.

As for the edicts and anathema, eh... most ancestries don't have that anyway, so I don't see a lot of value in spending the space for every country to do that just so humans have something to fall back on.

Vesk is Starfinder though? Are there going to be options to play Vesk in Pathfinder in the future, as far as stuff like Pathfinder Society? Should have put this concept is for PFS play. That's honestly the only Pathfinder or Starfinder I ever get to play is org play.

Ah, PFS. Then I'd go with lizardfolk crabarian and the d10 bludgeoning claw, yeah.

For something like this, I would consider a lizardfolk base, Monk, Barbarian, or Exemplar (poison or acid damage), and then get the Alchemist multiclass and Advanced Alchemy by level 11 in order to get a free supply of feral mutagens. 1d8 agile claws with an item bonus +1 above what weapons have for a while, for four hours out of the day with four uses of ten-minute emergency vials. It hits your reflex/acrobatics/stealth, but... well, you're playing a deathclaw. It comes with an Atletics boost too.

You could also look at Vesk, since Lizardfolk is a little lackluster for claw options.

If you can figure out a reason for a deathclaw to be holding something in one hand, Thaumaturge is your best dice-based damage boost.

Of course, reworking the ape's fist is a lot simpler... Wait, I forgot! Howl of the Wild added new animal instinct options! Crab has a big claw for 1d10 with razing, and a regular d4 claw that's just there for the parry trait. Just ignore the little claw, and you're good to go. Razing feels great for this because you can tear through shields and walls. ... Ah, right. "Claw" rather than "claws" and it's bludgeoning. Well, let me just suggest that as maybe a little easier to ask the GM to change than the fist.

Pulled up the 18 Summoner and don't see anywhere listed where they can summon other than spells. According to pathbuilder, there are 3 level 8 and 2 level 9 summons. All 5 have "Duration until the end of your next turn". All of the summons have pretty poor damage, especially the level 8 spells.

Is it possible to summon by not using spells?

If my math is correct, I could only keep three summoned critters up if I'm spending 1 action each to keep them here.

AH. There's the problem. You're missing heightened spells. All of the "summon a creature" spells are lower rank heightened spells. All of the summon spells are at the bottom of the page.

At low levels, you can usually only have one summon up, because the spells cost three actions to cast. At level 16, you can take Effortless Concentration to allow sustaining one of them as a free action. That leaves you with three actions to cast a second summoning spell, and you can have two summons active only spending one action per turn thanks to Effortless Concentration.

Now, it's definitely important to keep in mind that those summons are pretty weak- they're level 13 creatures in fights meant for level 18 characters. Finding useful special abilities, providing flanking, hoping for lucky twenties, blocking space- that's what they do.

The monsters the eidilon was trying to hit needed a roll of 14+. Pretty sure the the had around 300 hp.

Can't paste images so here goes:

Eidolon:

Fist: hit: d20+30 Damage: 3d8+7 +1d6 acid. (maybe his two hits were more than 10, but it was WAY below the Swashbuckler who was critting every round.

Wing: hit: d20+30 Damage: 3d6+7 +1d6 acid

Str +5, Dex +4, Con +5, Int +3, Wis +2, Cha +0
AC 40
HP 222 (shared)

Is there something better to use than pathbuilder?

All right, let's see: 18 from level, 6 from master proficiency, 5 from stats, 3 from weapon bonus. Even before casting any status bonus buffs, you're missing +2 to your attack. You're missing the eidolon specialization damage, so the damage should be higher too. This is for playing an actual Summoner class, right, not Bard trying to fight with an eidolon from an archetype?

If you were trying to use Bard, then I can say that that's definitely the problem- the eidolon from an archetype is really only going to be useful outside of combat.

Allies? You mean those non-Elven creatures that keep following me around? F those guys. ;)

Using pathbuilder, I built 5 summoners, 2 wizards, a sorcerer and 2 bards. On paper, the current bard has the best numbers.The bard seemed to have much more spell utility than the straight wizard. Doing the eidilon route was the only way to get a decent amount of hitpoints (222). My 1e summoner had almost that much as base.

We finished the campaign with this party years ago. The GM wants to bring those characters back but in PF2e.

As far as playing a straight summoner, you get 5 spells at 18th. Three 8 and two 9. The 9th level summons last until the end of your next turn. So you get 2 rounds with a 9th level summons? 10d10 being the most damage between the two. That's pretty weak for a 9th level spell. At best, I could summon 5 creatures for a total of 10 rounds of combat. Then be pretty useless after that with some 11d4 cantrips. Or, am I missing something?

Okay, yeah, it definitely sounds like you're missing some things.

Also, your eidolon should be hitting more than 1/6 of the time if you're playing a Summoner. I think you'll need to post some specific build stats to clear that one up, but it seems like you might have missed another key piece.

I'm someone who enjoyed the old broken casting of PF1. In PF2, I find I have a better time with classes like Thaumaturge or Commander - martials with a few interesting tricks.

The big exception is illusions. PF2 has great illusions that are generally much better than what I'm used to in PF1. Sustaining an illusion no longer eats up your whole turn, illusions all have built-in protections against low-ranl detection, there are specific illusion spells for faking creatures (although they do need a little work with the GM for various uncertain points), and turning things invisible is an incredibly versatile trick with a great duration off a low slot.

That said, I would definitely avoid converting characters. Whatever character you made was made to be as enjoyable as possible in a different system, so they'll almost always feel worse than a character made for this system.

And hey, if PF2 isn't for you, that's okay.

Glad folks like it! Hopefully it's useful inspiration.

Scent-blind sighted investigator through a comm unit translation: "Please describe the person you observed near the airlock."

Vision-blind smelling witness, having smelled a barathu: "They were a barathu."

Investigator, knowing roughly what barathu look like: "How big were they?"

Witness, having not smelled anything stronger than usual: "Not much bigger than me, in terms of overall size."

Investigator, writing down "medium size": "And can you tell me what color they were?"

Witness, not knowing what smells map to what colors but knowing some details of what they smelled: "No, but they were pretty old and had a strongly medicinal smell to them."

Investigator, not knowing what knowing what an old vs. young barathu smells like but knowing that older barathu tend to turn more gray, writing down "grayish(?) with manufacturer heritage": "Thank you, that should be enough to get started on."

But how would such a vlaka describe things because if they can't see what a person looks like, only smell them that could lead to some problems later on if they are needing to describe a person and they can only say what they smelled like.

They would still smell what ancestry the person is, what materials they are wearing, how large the person is, probably some other things like hair/fur length because that has its own smell, along with some other useful details like perhaps what the person ate- not as useful for picking someone out in a crowd by sight, but more useful for running purchase histories at the local diner. They would certainly be able to recognize the person later.

If they know in advance they'll need to relay a description to scent-blind people, they could take a picture with their suit comm.

If there's time afterwards to give a description, they can give it to a sighted vlaka artist, and use scent-based terminology that can then be turned into a black and white sketch. Communicate over the comm, even- the artist doesn't have to be there physically.

Or, an olfactory description might work fine on its own. It certainly would be more useful to other vlaka than a visual description, and they're not the only ancestry with a good sense of smell.

Good luck with the campaign!

Technically Blinded says:

Quote:

All normal terrain is difficult terrain to you.

But I think we all understand that assumes no other precise sense. Which Vlaka have.

That's the blinded condition specifically, which the rules call out as not being what you use for a character who has been blind for a long time.

Hey, I dunno what else to tell you. A precise sense is defined as "a sense that can be used to perceive the world in nuanced detail", and average eyesight is the example. If the vlaka in your head is missing major things like stairs and holes in the ground, then according to the rules, the sense of smell you're imagining for them isn't good enough yet.

Don't worry too much about edge cases. Vision has edge cases like "what if something is transparent", "what if somebody has a bag over their head", "what if there isn't a light source", and "what if the thing is around a corner".

I never said read lips was powergamey. That's your assumption you came up with on the fly. Its not because you would still have to know the language being spoken and what happens if said creature doesn't have lips or their mouth is covered?

snip
Also no one answered about if you're deaf and then get the hearing aid at lvl 1, does that cancel out the advantages you got from being deaf?

You said that getting the benefits of being deaf while removing deafness would be power-gaming. The benefits of being deaf are the Read Lips feat, and I don't think that would be power-gamey; that was me answering the question. The other benefits come from being blind. If you're talking about a deaf-blind vlaka removing the deaf portion and getting to keep precise scent instead of precise hearing... I don't see that as a big difference? They're still range-limited and losing out on a more common precise vision, and they don't get the benefits of the Read Lips feat.

I'm not sold on deafblind vlaka being able to "see" things they really would have trouble with detecting. It's getting silly.

From a rules standpoint, it's a precise sense. If you're not making sighted characters roll to not walk into clear glass windows or to find a black object when the lights are on, don't do the equivalent for precise scent.

If we were actually being realistic, precise scent would come with a lot of benefits, like being able to tell who had been in the area recently, sensing things around corners, etc. There's some simplification going on in both directions.

Mangaholic13 wrote:

R3st8 wrote:

moosher12 wrote:

R3st8 wrote:

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "pinecone"? Are you referring to an open pine cone or a closed one? The spiky type or the smoother type? Yellow, brown, reddish, or dark? I'm a bit confused because not only is it hard to picture a pine cone dragon, but it’s also not exactly the first image that comes to mind when someone says "rune dragon." The first image that pops into my head is a dragon covered in glowing neon full-body tattoos, like magical runes carved into its body. I’m curious about what design they came up with.

bazelgeuse-like

Monster hunter dragons are quite unique but but so long as there is a classical looking dragon it will be great, maybe the cinder dragon will do the job, the iconic red fire breathing dragon is such as staple you can't really go wrong with it.

That's definitely gonna be Primal's area.

...Diabolic Dragon not enough?

technically speaking alignment is gone but when you put diabolical in the name, put its the will of hell incarnate in the description and give a skull face that looks like diablo its really becomes hard to roleplay otherwise, also that spike in the chest just look like its going to impale the neck and make it impossible to sleep laying down I cant unsee it, I want a neutral normal looking dragon just that.

There's a cinder dragon on the Shining Kingdoms cover. It's definitely a dragon-flavored dragon.

How would a blind and deaf Vlaka "see" things like say stairs?

An abrupt angling of the scents of people who've passed by, and probably a shift in the way the air moves their own scent around- a stronger concentration for an ascending staircase blocking its spread, and a weaker concentration for a descending staircase opening up more air ahead.

A hole in the ground they are going to fall into? Seems they wouldn't.

It wouldn't smell like the ground there. Their own scent would have more space to diffuse out into. And of course, how do people avoid falling into holes in the dark? By not putting their feet somewhere without feeling first. That, with a lifetime of practice.

How would they communicate? I mean they can't hear or see people, only smell and a person who has been deaf their whole life usually has trouble with speaking?

Vlaka are usually raised in communities that are used to a variety of senses. They can speak, sign, and communicate tactilely just fine. Other Vlaka would normally use tactile communication, and when dealing with people who don't know tactile languages, it's probably easiest for them to communicate via a comm using tactile or haptics output.

If something had no smell to it, wouldn't this Vlaka be effectively totally unable to sense it?

To the same degree that if something is completely black, you can't see it- harder to spot in the dark, but not somehow undetectable. They've got scent as a precise sense, putting it it on par with vision out to 90 feet. That means they can tell where the gaps are too- something blocking the flow of odors without contributing anything of its own.

ALSO does a deaf Vlaka who gets the very easily bought hearing aid lose their advantages they gained from being deaf? Otherwise seems a bit powergamey to take a flaw and then cancel it right out but still get the other advantages?

... The Read Lips skill feat? Nah, I don't think that'd be powergamey. It's unusual for vlakas to do, sure, but if they do, it's not gonna cause an issue.

Apart from some early growing pains as the AP writers adjusted to PF2, the biggest issues I've run into with APs seem to have stemmed from the limitations of the monthly format- bases and locations getting discarded because they weren't ready for the next author, abrupt shifts in tone or theme, important details not getting to the GM until it's too late, that sort of thing. APs are still going to frequently be multi-author, so I don't expect all the wrinkles to be ironed out, but I'll be happy to see the shift in action eventually.

That's interesting. I suppose leveling up speed also influences the appetite for this.

I recently started GMing Strength of Thousands and Sky King's Tomb and I've actually been startled at how fast they're going (at the beginning). We play 5H sessions and don't particularly rush the story, but after three sessions in SKT the players just hit level 3 (by chapter milestone) and in SoT they hit level 2 after session 2 as well.

So that's actually considerably faster than in PFS. I doubt it's gonna continue at exactly that speed, but I've also hit a stride of leveling up every 2-4 sessions as a player in Age of Ashes and Agents of Edgewatch.

Traditionally I think home campaigns tended to move really slowly, I know mine did. If it takes a long time to gain a couple of levels, then I agree you'd like more choices to make when you do level up. PF2 does a bit less per-level than before, but it makes sure there's something every level and the levels seem to come faster.

Let's see... the Season of Ghosts game I'm in is level 7 after a year, so that's a level-up every two months. The Depths of Fort Galest is two years in and level 9, so that's a level-up every three months on average. And finally, The Days of Revelle recently hit level 2 after four months of play. They're all weekly games, but scheduling around different continents and chronic conditions means sessions tend to be three hours.

QuidEst wrote:

But if I'm sitting down to build out a character I'm going to be playing about once a week for the next two or three years, yeah, I do actually usually need both a bit of the class feats and something else to have a good time.

Note, I'm NOT trying to say you're wrong in any way. You get to decide what makes a good time for you. Just expressing my own personal opinion.

I have a significantly different opinion on this. While I agree that lacking Free Archetype can make a small (very small, in my view) number of character concepts unachievable (or at least not achievable in a fun way) there are still zillions of character concepts that actually ARE quite achievable.

If I'm playing in a non FA game I just choose one of the concepts that I CAN build. And there are still a great many concepts that are fun (to me) AND that I haven't played before. Heck, there are still classes that I've never played.
.

Oh yeah, definitely. That's why I initially said "I find" and "it helps". I'm kind of picky with my own classes, and when it comes to helping someone else, I want to have plenty of tools to help represent what they want.

I see, so it's like natural handwraps with natural runes. I like that they are getting creative, but I just hope they don’t go too far toward Disney-style dragons or silly cartoon dragons, like those from How to Train Your Dragon, with the goofy, googly, round eyes and huge, tractor-like lower jaws.

Barrage Dragon was probably the most like that. Definitely has the big tractor-like lower jaw, at any rate. It's not my speed, but my friend definitely appreciated it, and it looks like we're getting a nice variety.

Okay, so, that lovechild, raised on a steady diet of Lovecraft's nightmares, the works of David Cronenberg, and copying the look of a False Hydra?

Yeah, False Hydra is probably closer to the vibes.

I'm guessing the following dragons are in the following Traditions (feel free to correct me):

Arcana:
Barrage
Rune
Sage

Occult:
Despair
Time
Requiem

Divine:
Mocking
Delight
Cinder

Primal:
Bog
Rime
Magma

Also... DnD has Havoc dragons!?

Mocking is occult, and I think Requiem is divine, but I don't know. Cinder is primal. We didn't get all the dragons revealed. Mocking dragons have something of a court jester thing going on, relying more on "being a dragon" to not get in trouble instead of "having the king's personal favor".

D&D doesn't have Havoc dragons; they're PF1. Given all the other PF1-originals have gotten new names, I suspect that Paizo is interested in not leaving an loose OGL connections with shared dragon names, even with their own OGL dragons.

...Sounds like what you'd get if you crossbred a Seregios and a Bazelgeuse from Monster Hunter.

Which is a very terrifying idea.

I'm afraid I couldn't say.

Despair dragons sound like the unholy lovechild of Grand Fisher and that monster from the Spongebob Movie.

Not creepy enough; think creepier. Also fleshier.

Interesting. You know what we can expect for Primal and Divine?

Lemme go look it up, since I'm mainly here for occult and arcane, with an honorary shoutout to Starfinder's host dragon for catching my attention.

Requiem
Barrage
Mocking (previously Copper)
Delight (previously Havoc)
Time
Despair
Rune
Magma
Sage (previously Bronze)
Cinder (previously Red)
Rime (previously White)
Bog (previously Black)

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "pinecone"? Are you referring to an open pine cone or a closed one? The spiky type or the smoother type? Yellow, brown, reddish, or dark? I'm a bit confused because not only is it hard to picture a pine cone dragon, but it’s also not exactly the first image that comes to mind when someone says "rune dragon." The first image that pops into my head is a dragon covered in glowing neon full-body tattoos, like magical runes carved into its body. I’m curious about what design they came up with.

The rune dragons have oversized scales that don't lay entirely flat, each with a rune on it. They're a bronze-y color, and look distinctly like they shed scales individually. One is put in mind of pinecones and leg warmers.

QuidEst wrote:

Free archetype allows for a lot more character customization and options. Without it, it can feel like you're just picking from a few pre-fabricated versions of your class. Relatedly, it's also something that's more valuable for players who aren't new to the game- trying out PF2 Fighter or Thaumaturge for the first time, the new system provides some of the novelty. Once that wears off, I find free archetype helps keep things fresh and varied.

If the group enjoys free archetype that's fine of course. But I don't agree that it's required to overcome this staleness problem. I think the root cause of the staleness problem is people feeling that some of their main class feats are already locked in. That you couldn't take a "paid" archetype because you MUST take so many of your regular class feats.

Can't you live without them? Doesn't the "paid" archetype give you something comparably good?

I'm having trouble with the idea that on the one hand the archetype isn't good enough to take if you had to pay for it, but on the other hand that without it the game isn't fun enough. Is it valuable or not?

(I'm not against enjoying free archetype, but I'm skeptical of "needing" it.)

For some classes, sure. I can throw away every single Thaumaturge feat without a second thought- a quarter of their feats are already just archetype feats, and the class has plenty of customization with their implements. Trying to play a Kineticist or Summoner that way? Definitely not for me. So much of what their class is is tied up in those class feats. And, in fairness, those are classes with feats that provide more in-class variety.

It's also not really a matter of "is the archetype worth it or not". It's "without free archetype, it'd be several months of playing with a half-baked implementation for a concept that requires both". Starting at higher levels is also a very valid way to address the same issue.

Obviously, that's not the case for everyone. And I should probably mention that this isn't really an opinion I hold for PFS. The levels are a lot faster and it's not just one character. But if I'm sitting down to build out a character I'm going to be playing about once a week for the next two or three years, yeah, I do actually usually need both a bit of the class feats and something else to have a good time.