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QuidEst's page
Organized Play Member. 7,157 posts (7,344 including aliases). 20 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 1 Organized Play character. 13 aliases.
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I think the difference between internal and external stuff is stacking. Fighter gets +2 and so does Gunslinger, but PF2 devs don't need to worry about someone getting both Fighter and Gunslinger's bonus. They also don't have to worry about it stacking with Flurry Ranger's untyped reduction of MAP.
If Envoy really does get an untyped AC penalty to hand out, and that's Starfinder's standard, then the game design has to worry about what thingslook like a couple years down the road when five party members all have "it's their class's special thing" untyped buffs and debuff s, on top of the usual status, circumstance, and item bonuses and penalties. If a buff or debuff is external, there needs to be something it doesn't stack with.
As for a status penalty, I'd definitely rather have their ability stack with frightened than with flanking. Envoy should be able to intimidate enemies to full effect.
Driftbourne wrote: QuidEst wrote: We know that Solarian has strength as their key attribute in SF2.
Precog was an Int-based caster, so Witchwarper has a chance of inheriting that in SF2, at least as an option. Precog in Starfinder 1e says it is a Dex-based class, Class features use Dex but Precogs use Int for spell casting. If Precogs get rolled into the Witchwarper, and Witchwarpers already use Cha for casting then adding Precog abilities would likely still be Dex based is my guess. That would be really surprising to me. The PF2 remaster just got rid of casters using multiple stats at the same time (Cleric's channeling got moved from Cha-based to a fixed amount). Precogs in SF1 were able to use Dex as a key stat on an Int-based caster because they had a tailored spell list that made having weak save DCs fine, something SF2 can't do. They were originally pure Dex, but that didn't go over well in the playtest.
I could be wrong about that, though, so we'll see.
We know that Solarian has strength as their key attribute in SF2.
Precog was an Int-based caster, so Witchwarper has a chance of inheriting that in SF2, at least as an option.
YuriP wrote: About the Envoy class I liked the concept but I still think it's laking of something for itself in combat. I understand that the concept is to help your allies but I still missing something. Well, you've got an action to give an enemy -1 AC and give yourself a little bonus damage. It's kind of a light version of Operative's aim action, but then you share it with your teammates. So long as you're willing to look at the buffs you give yourself as buffs (instead of ignoring them because your allies get them too), then you're getting something.
But yeah, it's definitely more focused on team play than personal combat tricks.
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The_Corvus_Rex wrote: I really want to Know if they're going to be any massive changes to the lore in the new edition or is it likely to stay the same
Depends on what you mean by that. There's going to be eight years of the timeline advancing, and maybe just a bit of touching up things here and there because of leaving the OGL. Notably, Aucturn is "hatching" during the playtest and at least one world of the Veskarium is fighting for independence. But the same history that SF1 had will still be part of the history of SF2, the rest of the planets in the Pact Worlds are the same planets, Golarion is still gone and will stay gone, etc.
All right, let's figure out what Mr. Sir my undead deadly gameshow host looks like at 5th level.
Level 5 Human Borai Icon Envoy (Look, I'm just assuming we're getting an Icon background.)
Charisma primary, Dexterity secondary; Int and Con tertiary
Leadership Style: In the Spotlight
Skills: Performance, Deception, Diplomacy, Intimidation, Computers, Crafting, Thievery, Medicine, Society, Acrobatics, Nature
1st: Quip (Very in keeping with his attitude, and I'd like to think he does it in the show when somebody gets hit by one of the show's traps, with a little GM indulgence)
2nd: Suppressing Insults (Ups the stakes for his barbs)
4th: Search High and Low (for trap spotting)
I'd definitely want to take another directive at 6th, since Spotlight almost entirely relies on that and Search High and Low will come up in combat maybe once or twice in a campaign.
Diplomacy *can* be swapped out since Impressive Performance allows using Performance on impressions at least and he'll have a reason to focus on Intimidate, but I think it'd feel off for him to not have Diplomacy. Really wish we could drop Thievery for disarming traps, though- I'm investing in Computers, Crafting, *and* Thievery all to cover one theme. It's seriously cutting into his ability to make the knowledge checks that a deadly trivia gameshow host should be able to, but I can always rely on the flexible skill feat to get a maxed out lore for the day on the relevant topic. If we're running Free Archetype, it's gonna be a very difficult choice between a traps-based archetype and something like Loremaster.
I really appreciate that the class can focus on being oppressive to an enemy or enemies, rather than just being a cheerleader. Because Demoralize only works once per enemy, I can just keep rotating my Get 'Em target, and keep trying to hit enemies with that double debuff. I do wonder if that's investing too heavily in a skill that can only be used within thirty feet, though...
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Kudos to Paizo for hitting such a big milestone! There's also a nice sense of closure, wrapping up the OGL with #200. I remember the big #100, so it's cool to be around to see this as well.
Things like poison and bleed are more balance concerns. Changing them for an ancestry can impact multiple fights, and even just something like an ancestry with low level poison immunity existing can pose problems for adventure writers.
Something like immunity to skeleton-based attacks, though? That's not gonna come up more than once, and it's not going to be an important plot beat.
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Just wanted to chime in with a ratfolk familiar trick. Uncanny Cheeks gives you Prescient Planner and Prescient Consumable for negligible bulk (unless you have Cheek Pouches). At tenth level, one level after you get Uncanny Cheeks, that means you can pull out whatever Familiar Morsel you need at the moment. (Anyone else can spend two general feats for the same, but one ancestry feat is a lot cheaper. Sadly, Thaumaturge lost this trick after playtest.)
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It's hard to say... I certainly have my aesthetics, but they're not really things I live up to or believe in sincerely. It's just fun to come across as a trickster or someone who makes suspicious bargains- in reality, I just tell jokes and commission artwork.
The more realistic, down-to-earth option is:
Areas of Concern: Patronage, bargains, and luxury
Edicts: Commission works of art, find mutually beneficial arrangements, enjoy life's luxuries, engage in mischief
Anathema: Mistreat someone doing work for you, exploit an unfair agreement to its full extent
Domains: Creation, Indulgence, Trickery, Wealth
Spells: 1st: Invisible Item, 2nd: Humanoid Form, 7th: Planar Palace
... Which would make me a pretty niche deity. I think most people are going to be better off with the broader focus of Abadar or Shelyn. The spells are more what I think my faithful would enjoy- making stuff invisible has all sorts of fun potential, everyone deserves a little shapeshifting as a treat, and of course you should spend your spells living in magically-provided luxury that you can customize daily.
And as far as that whole "luxury" thing goes, I feel like it's important to appreciate the fact that for less than two bucks, I can go to the gas station and get a plum soda slushie that would have absolutely blown the minds of kings and emperors through the centuries. The Planar Palace food is going to include all sorts of modern dishes that would be difficult to replicate or otherwise impractical in Golarion's setting.
Captain Morgan wrote: All of these would be pretty easy if you got yourself. They seem to have too strong a social safety net to let anyone starve, they have magical refrigerators, and a generally high level of magic with a community focus thanks to the Magaambya. I can't remember if kitsune are found much in the Mwangi expanse, but kolo and catfolk are, plus anadi and goloma for rare ancestries. Anadi are an interesting choice of base race for a furry, because while the spider form isn't to your liking they have one of the best longterm shapshifting options in PF2 with friendform. If you aren't sure which ancestry would suit you long term, you can swap between them as long as you can find a "donor" willing to let you wear their face. (I'm working with an assumption that much like a gender transition an ancestry transition might be something you gradually feel out.) Yeah, definitely considered the Magaambya Institute. I'm avoiding spoilers for Strength of Thousands since I'll probably be playing it at some point, but my one point of caution would be that it's an AP with long amounts of downtime, so the area/school could have an adventure "queued up" rather than "recently resolved" just based on how the setting timeline works.
Like Absalom, it's a place with a lot of different ancestries due to the school, so I wouldn't be too worried about showing up as a kitsune. I don't think I'd go with anadi because spider is a very different form- managing a different number of limbs, eyes, a different type of mouth, etc. is more of a new experience than I'd be keen on. With kitsune, I'm expecting color blindness (foxes only have blue and yellow photo-receptors) with better vision in near-darkness (low-light vision), probably alongside mildly better smell and worse taste. (Maybe magnetoreception, but wouldn't expect that to be something kitsune share with foxes.) All in all, similar enough that access to a human form would be more like taking off a coat if it gets too warm or putting on glasses to read, rather than needing it to go in public or even do basic tasks I'm used to. And while Friendform is very cool, Shifting Faces is more flexible. I can make up who to be, rather than needing to find people willing to give me very personal permission to use their form as my own, and befriending somebody in part because I want to be them is a creepy thing to have hanging over social interactions. At the end of the day, I feel like a fox-person form is something that would give me more confidence, and a spider-person form is something that would give me less.
Y'know, I'd allow the bonus information on a knowledge crit (or a regular success when rolling against the DC for an individual) to be something sure to draw the enemy's focus. Usable personally, or by anyone to whom it can be communicated secretly.
"You know or determine something that will enrage this person" is much more convincing than "you are persuasive enough that enemies focus on you".
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Bluemagetim wrote: If a player wanted to stride raise a shield the spend an action taunting a npc. How would you handle them saying i want to spend my last action taunting them and they describe the taunts to you? "Taunting is a free action; just choose what you want to say. They're free to act on it as they choose. You can spend an action to make it a demoralize check if you want, though."
If they want it to be a more serious thing, though, what I'd do is let them Demoralize and voluntarily forgo the penalties on checks against themselves. It makes a nice, neat mechanical solution that isn't any stronger, and still has feat support.
If they want more than that, I'm gonna ask them what they're envisioning. Running up to someone and hunkering down behind a shield isn't going to make them want to attack you, or cause them to be more receptive to any taunting. You taunt someone by throwing your shield aside and putting your hand behind your back, not by raising it.
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So, this isn't rules advice, but you can just taunt enemies. Insult them, challenge them, threaten things they care about, blaspheme their gods, act overconfident, use magic or mundane disguises to look like a more tempting target, etc. You can move into positions that tempt flanking, you can grapple, you can hang back and shout, "Keep them off me while I complete the ritual!", and you can place hazards if there's time- even just marbles or caltrops can discourage enemies.
Outside the character, you can act overconfident about not being hit in OOC talk, you can discuss tactics with the party, and you can discuss what you're hoping for with the GM.
The party can use stealth or Invisibility, use illusions or disguises to make themselves less tempting targets, cast less flashy spells, shout lies like, "That's all the magic I can manage, you're on your own!", spend actions falling back from the fight, take defensive or punishing reactions (e.g. evil champion, metal kineticist), or back up your own lies.
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Assumptions:
1. This is 2e, given the forum. The answers are very different if it turns out to be 1e. (Probably Silksworn Occultist for tons of daily magic and passive buffs for free, aim to pick up necromancy for spammable doll familiars. Get Protection from Evil as a long-term effect ASAP, given how nasty mind-affecting effects are.)
2. This is a "vanilla server". No free archetype, no ancestral paragon, etc.
3. I'm functionally a PC, and "NPCs" (i.e. everyone, or nearly everyone, in the world) don't run on PC rules. If they did, the setting wouldn't look anything like it does.
4. For starting level, lets go with level 3 for the sake of "having actual options" and with a justification of "that's my highest level PFS character"
Goals:
1. In the short term, survive. Obviously. It doesn't matter how fancy my grand plans are if I just. This breaks down into water, food, shelter, and a way to deal with a fight because this is Golarion.
2a. Reach a modern level of comfort. Look... I'm used to air conditioning, meat not being something saved only for special occasions, easy entertainment, and modern mattresses. By Golarion's standards, that's probably "fine living", a whopping 130 gp/month. There might be some shortcuts, though.
2b. Surpass my modern level of comfort. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty happy and comfortable, but if I'm getting isekai'd, I want to thrive. An extravagant cost of living is a whopping 430 gp/month, but I don't need to go full rich noble.
3. More magical life! Look, there's magic. I want in on it. I don't normally play casters because I'm used to 1e's unrealistic standards of utility, but if it's actually real? Anyway, I at least want a familiar I can talk to, the ability to at least cast Prestidigitation, and if I'm a caster, I want at least one spell swappable at least daily.
4. ... Yeah, I'm a furry. Hey, if I'm getting a new body anyway, I'm gonna pick something fun for me. Admittedly, there's a difference between something fun in pretend and in reality, so kitsune is probably a good compromise. If I find having a tail or fur is actually a huge pain, it's not one I have to put up with.
Go!
So, the good news is... "Comfortable living" is achievable from first level, so long as you can reliably succeed on your Earn Income. 4gp a month is 20 days of successful level 1 tasks, 14 days of level 2, or 8 days of level 3. On a failure, though, you make almost nothing, and on a crit failure, it's enough reputational damage that finding more work might get tough. Let's assume that, if we focused on it, we could reliably earn income at our level. That'd be 8 days of work for room and board, and if we work twenty a month, we have six gold leftover. In six months, we could afford three purifying teaspoons- now we can make the main course of every meal delicious. It's a little worse than using the Cleanse Cuisine spell, since it only works on one container, but it's a nice improvement to quality of life if we want to go the safe route. Dropping in any decent city in a non-terrible nation is probably fine for basic survival as a PC, even at a level slightly beyond subsisting.
So... what about class?
- Charisma is definitely tempting. It's nice to be liked! It's the most convenient stat for daily life, especially since having a bit of outside knowledge goes a long way in terms of needing knowledge skills or not. Bard and Sorcerer are tempting here, as is Summoner to have a more serious bonded ally.
- Wizard is a really tempting class, since the ability to swap out a spell with ten minutes of work is very seriously powerful. That said... spells are expensive. There's no GM being nice and handwaving nothing happening to your spellbook, and the rules for making a backup spell book are undefined.
- On the other side, there's the full-access casters. Cleric and Druid. I don't have it in me to be a Druid, but Cleric... I know a lot of people discount the class for these scenarios because it's externally reliant power, but Nethys doesn't really care what you do so long as it's pro-magic. As somebody from a world without it, I'd have plenty of appreciation for it! (Although I should probably refrain from "inventing" mundane air conditioning.) I don't really care much for the divine list in games, but having access to all of it... But, alas. While Cleanse Cuisine is a great low-level spell for luxury purposes, it's also relatively cheaply available. Occult and Arcane have the real heavy-hitters for comfortable living, and I'd be sad needing to rely exclusively on kitsune for illusions.
In the end, Wizard means needing to protect a book with your life or probably spend a fortune on a backup. Between Sorcerer and Bard, Sorcerer doesn't actually get more freely chosen spells known and is less survivable and skilled. I'll go with Bard, picking Polymath so that I can get eventual access to a spellbook, taking the sting out of limited spells known. That's not something needed immediately, so Familiar Master dedication means having a talking raccoon pal.
(Brief aside: Kineticist is really cool too, with its at-will abilities and no longer having the painful burn to endure. I'd absolutely love getting isekai'd as a wood/air kineticist; it would just be a very different time- probably a lot more casual.)
So, what's the plan for getting more luxurious living? "Fine living" costs 130 gp a month, which means being level 11 to earn it on 20 days a month of work. That's way too much! Delicious food and drink is easily handled with some inexpensive magic items, but that's still not exactly making the most a whole new magical world.
A little more achievable, Architect's Pattern Book as a 6th level uncommon grimoire used by architecturally-minded wizards. Once a week, it allows casting Cozy Cabin with an add-on, 10 ft to a side per rank. At third rank, that's 900 square feet- already quite sizable. It lasts for the spell's twelve-hour duration, and is outfitted "with the accoutrements for a particular type of recreation, determined by you when you cast the spell". It's iffy whether that includes video gaming, but we have seen that areas of Tian Xia having something approaching a magical equivalent. A very exclusive arcade only open one day a week might be able to start bringing in some more serious cash. If that's stretching the bounds of what magic on Golarion can do (or if there's simply no way to get 120V, 60Hz electricity to the devices if the spell doesn't provide it), then a spa is possible. At higher levels, the size of the room grows past "mansion" and reaches "Walmart Supercenter, but it's one gigantic spa room".
Hopefully some investigative work or backline support-healer adventuring will do the trick for those three levels and starter capital... Along the way, one of the perks of kitsune is getting proper shapeshifting, good for an hour per day!
Fallbacks:
Things don't work out? There are a few options drawing on external knowledge.
- Anastasia. There's somebody from Earth serving as the ruler of a nation. Admittedly, getting to Irrisen isn't fun, and it's not a first choice of location, but being a hundred years ahead (an assertion verifiable as believed by you via truth magic) is probably enough to get some sympathy and a sinecure in exchange for information about it. The timeline has probably shifted, but it's also potentially a route back to an earlier earth. At the very least, a message can probably be sent back.
- Shyka the Many. Fey Eldest deity of time travel, they've seen it all. Reincarnated from a future, alternate earth? That's novel enough to get their attention, possibly even without seeking it out. (Unfortunately, without seeking it out, that attention could come at any point in one's life.) Shyka has been shown as willing to give boons to interesting people who manage to capture their interest.
I'd be interested in other people's suggestions for useful tidbits that could make life on Golarion easier.
Ravingdork wrote: Captain Morgan wrote: Disclaimer: This is all academic. Everyone but Ravingdork agrees figment can't be used to illuminate more than a five foot square, and illuminating a single five foot square is pretty much never going to be relevant. We all agree you can't just hack your way out of learning the light cantrip. But this still fun. Personally, I'd probably rule that it can illuminate things out to the spell range (30 feet), but that it would not stand up to ANY magical darkness effects (which would always overwhelm the illusion) nor could it create any other mechanical effects beyond visibility (such as blinding someone or burning a light-sensitive creature). That one is confusing to me, because that's the range from you that the illusion can be. If I make a torch at the edge of that, is it only casting light in one direction? Or are you making a separate thirty-foot range around the torch?
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Gradba wrote: My cleric leveled to 6th level and gets a skill feat, but there AREN'T any 6th level feats. The highest level feat that I can select is 2nd (or 3rd, if I can sub a General feat). The next level that offers skill feats is 7th. Can I defer my selection until my character reaches 7th level? If not, I'll have to take a 2nd/3rd level feat that is really not needed at all.
Thanks
Despite some messiness caused by uncommon skill feats from setting books that have things like fourth-level requirements, [I]most[I] skill feats are effectively trained, expert, master, or legendary skill feats. The level requirement is just there for easy sorting. Your skill feat at 14th will probably be a 7th level skill feat, because "7th level" is the stand-in for master proficiency, and you don't hit legendary skills until 15th.
One good thing to take at those levels are skill feats that are about to scale their effects more when you increase your proficiency. Cat Fall, Group Impression, Ward Medic, etc.
Ravingdork wrote: Light would need to leave the cube, otherwise no one could perceive the visual illusion unless they were inside the cube.
An illusion that doesn't interact with light is not an illusion at all.
Reflected light needs to leave the cube for anyone to see it. What you're asking for is more ambiguous: illusion emitted light.
Options for handling illusion-emitted light include:
- Illusions can't emit light. They still reflect it just fine, but an illusion of a torch is very unconvincing in the dark.
- Illusions can emit light, to reasonable degrees. Use various low-level light source rules.
- Illusions can emit arbitrary amounts of light. Ask players to not create illusions of miniature suns.
- Something complicated.
Which one will depend on the GM.
I'm in the complicated camp, because I would homebrew "illusory light" as something loosely based on video game rendering. Illusions only run reflection on any emitted light within their sphere of influence, and beyond that, the illusion-emitted light stops reflecting off of things, although it can be seen since that's not reflection. And if the illusion isn't a torch or something that gives off its own light, there's no difference. That's entirely homebrew, though.
"Illusory light" is the kind of thing that is a GM call. It's just not covered by the rules, so far as I can tell.
But, here's my take- just the way I would run it. The various light spells that do provide illumination aren't illusions. This a Watsonian explanation, but if illusions provided illumination, I'd expect at least something to do that. But, obviously, you can make an illusion of a campfire, and it's clearly evident in the spell that even a cantrip illusion can be seen from a distance. My approach would be that a custom illusion can give off illusory "light" that can be seen, but which only illuinates surfaces within its area. So, for Figment, you could make an illusory to campfire, and it would be visible at a great distance in the night. But everything outside its square would remain dark. It might be a little surreal, and if you got close, it would be obviously fake. If you get fancy and bust out Illusory Object, that would light up a much bigger area, but still be visible from the same distance. That would provide a handy in-world reason for why people just create real light.
In any case, you don't go blind when you cast Invisibility, so illusions aren't interacting with conventional optics and sight normally.
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Honestly, if players don't mind the lack of simplicity, it's nice to have multiple valid options for condition removal.
James Jacobs wrote: Captain Morgan wrote: QuidEst wrote: Domar wrote: Hello,
Does anyone know if Paizo will be releasing an official 2e version of Rise of the Runelords? If so, any idea when?
Thanks in advance!
No one knows, no. Since it hasn't been announced, that means it definitely won't be happening this year. But also, it doesn't really sound like they're especially interested in doing more conversions- the Kingmaker one took a lot longer than initially expected, and it was a lot of work.
There are fan-made conversions available, of course! Yeah, James Jacobs mentioned they didn't really have enough room to spare to do Kingmaker right. I don't expect them to do any others.
Not quite what I said or meant—Kingmaker had, if anything TOO much room to do right. It's hundreds of pages longer than it would have been had we done this one in the same way we did Rise of the Runelords, but since it was a crowd funded project, it grew in scope. The problem with creating the 2E Kingmaker was that we didn't increase the number of employees working on it to match that increased scope, tried to pull it off at the same time we were launching a new edition of the game (which is the main reason it lacked the employee count—most folks were working on 2E and couldn't really help on the Adventure Path side), and then the Pandemic hit right in the middle of development. Sort of a perfect storm.
We'll keep doing compilations. We just need to be more responsible and realistic about how much work they take. Thanks for stepping in, as I had misunderstood or misremembered the exact nature of the problems it ran into.
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I'm very interested in seeing the updated rakshasa lore. I particularly enjoyed the old lore, but I know a lot of that was made up by D&D.
The new dragons are great, and conspirator dragon is my new fave. It'll be nice getting more in-depth and fleshed-out dragons as the standard going forward.
The new hags sound interesting. I like that they're getting back to fairy tale roots for them, and I hope we eventually get new changeling options as a result.
Kobolds as a more universal minion is a cool change that lets them show up more, and following a wider variety of monsters means more options.
Normally, I'm not too keen on bestiaries, since I'm mostly a player. But in this case, lots of lore updates, more mythology, etc... I'm curious.
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Domar wrote: Hello,
Does anyone know if Paizo will be releasing an official 2e version of Rise of the Runelords? If so, any idea when?
Thanks in advance!
No one knows, no. Since it hasn't been announced, that means it definitely won't be happening this year. But also, it doesn't really sound like they're especially interested in doing more conversions- the Kingmaker one took a lot longer than initially expected, and it was a lot of work.
There are fan-made conversions available, of course!
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The fact that belief doesn't make a god- or even directly empower them- is one of the things I greatly appreciate about the Pathfinder setting, alongside the lack of concrete prophecy. I do like the idea of Cayden faking it, with the Starstone having granted him a unique situation.
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25speedforseaweedleshy wrote: do they keep all the piercing when transform into humanoid ancestry
there are going to be many fan art
I don't think fortune dragons are the shapeshifting sort. That's more a conspirator dragon's thing, and presumably mirage dragons can fake it as long as there aren't too many small doorways. Nothing really gave the impression that dragons all had humanoid forms, though.
The image underpinning "oracle" is a robed woman high on natural glue fumes delivering cryptic prophecies of Apollo. It's about as far from intelligence-based prognostication as it gets. The original class then mixed in a bit of Cassandra, and others who received less-than-ideal attentions from the gods but lived in some changed fashion. Its current iteration focuses more on tapping into the divine power behind the universe directly, but that's still very much a charisma thing, not something one carefully plans and works out (intelligence) or a matter of intuiting some external will (wisdom).
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PossibleCabbage wrote: One of the main issues with Nethys is that if your character is super into magic, and you want to learn more about magic, so you can do more things with magic, and that magic is exciting and you love learning... your character is a Wizard who might worship Nethys, not anyone who actually receives divine power from Nethys.
It's just kind of weird to me how Nethys's clerics are not wizards. It's sort of similar to how if nature is your thing, it probably makes more sense for you to be a Druid or a follower of the green faith than Gozreh worshipper.
I mean, a big portion of his priesthood probably is made up of wizards. Gods don't exist just for the cleric class. But learning to be a wizard is generally hard and expensive. If someone deeply wants magic but can't afford the schooling to learn it, they could pray to Nethys, who might grant it. They might also care more about Nethys than abstract magic- just because Nethys cares more about magic than himself doesn't mean his followers have to. On the opposite side, someone might care deeply about the duality of creation and destruction, something that divine (with heal and harm) embodies better than arcane, or particularly focus on the healing aspect of creation. Someone might be blessed by Nethys first, or saved by magic that they can't perform themselves, and become a priest out of gratitude.
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"Killing off a god of magic because the new system's magic works differently" is a very WotC move that I'd be surprised to see Paizo pull. Nethys is a god of magic but not the only one, and he's very, very new as a god on the timescale. Treating him as the god of magic in a cosmic sense doesn't really work. He's popular in the setting because he's local.
It's really easy to say that "He maintained his somewhat Osirian view of magic that focused on divine and arcane magic" or "He grants arcane spells because that's what he used in life". Arcane and divine cover material, mental, vital, and spirit aspects between them, so it still works fine as covering "all magic" in its own way.
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Yes, you will still feel it. The auditory tag rule is there for spells like Suggestion, which depend on something being heard. If you can't hear, you are immune to it. If you can't hear an illusion that has sound, tactile feedback, and visual effects, then the rule about only invalidating the relevant sense comes into play.
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Themetricsystem wrote: I think that it's Nethys that's getting the axe. Their function and theming got MAJORLY disrupted in the switch to Traditions with PF2 as they weren't from a sort of universal God of Magic that was painted with a dualistic form and somewhat mirrored existence as a kind of oxymoron and now that things are divided into four Traditions plus a handful of alternate access methods that poach from multiple the whole dualistic approach of being half Arcane and Divine just ... doesn't really work anymore, or in the least, if interpreted in a direct manner Nethys lost more than half of their dominion over Magic as a thing.
Besides, I can't really imagine there is any Deity in the setting whose death would be more likely to create a global (or universal?) "godrain" where their magical essence is dispersed and leeches into the land and people of the setting since his mere existence is constantly at war with itself, full of contradictions and narratively speaking he is just about always ready to explode due to the constant internal conflict between creation and destruction which, those two themes alone would almost perfectly describe the consequences of the death of a God in the setting that both destroys and cuts off the power to the domains provided to his followers as well as randomly effusing the material plane (and probably others as well?) with RAW deific magical energy.
Huh? Nethys isn't about divine/arcane dualism at all, and never has been. He's about magic's power for creation and destruction. PF1 already had three traditions of magic, with psychic magic as the third.
I'd just treat it like the legal Fair Use test- you've got a few clauses that disqualify something from being a valid target. I'm skipping over magical, secured, and attended.
"Only natural forms of the element": is this in the form it was found in nature? If not, we're any changes superficial, or ones that left it still mistakable for being natural? If left in nature, would it be indistinguishable from the surroundings?
"Not durable, crafted goods": were tools used to alter the nature of the object towards an intentional design? Is more than 25% of the object's form the result of intentional shaping? Is the object "durable"? Typically an object is clearly durable if effort is needed to destroy it, and it clearly not durable if care must be taken to not break it. Could it be soldfor more as a result of the changes?
A chipped stone from mining is valid. It is the natural form, a stone. It was not crafted, i.e. intentionally shaped into another form with tools. It is not a good, something made for use or sale. It stops being a valid target once it's intentionally crafted as a good.
A bonsai tree intentionally skirts the limits of this, being essentially guided nature. The cutting directs otherwise natural growth. A useful tiebreaker here is the fact that the elemental plane of wood tends towards a bonsai tree nature, so it should probably be allowed. The elemental plane of earth does not tend towards statues. This one could go either way, though, and again, is intentionally ambiguous. Statues made to look like rocks would probably be in a similar spot.
I think part of the bonsai vs. statue confusion is because a carefully trimmed tree will grow naturally if left alone, but a statue will remain as it is. I would consider a carefully trimmed hedge to still essentially be natural form, where a chiseled stone cube wouldn't get the same allowance from me. I would not consider "gardening" to be "crafting", especially since there is plenty of crafting that can be done with wood.
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For practical game terms, "Is it an item?" and "Did it use Craft to make?" are useful shorthands. You'd probably get a different answer for the bonsai tree, but that's fine.
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OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote: @Quid-est: thanks for the answers in terms of your characters AND possible Paizo pivots! As a gnoll fan, a thaumaturge fan and and Lamashtu fan it was certainly nice to read all that. Though I must admit, my knowledge of Lamashtu beyond being the mother of monsters is a little sparse, so I'll have to come to grips with more of her lore. (I think a lot of my gnoll=Lamashtu stuff comes from older edition Yeenoghu/demon worship, plus maybe some vague recollection of Pathfinder Lamashtu and gnoll connections? I'm not really across Mesopotamian roots, but Wikipedia helped me out a little...)
I particularly like the feasting on gods lore...
Glad you enjoyed it! Back in Ye Olde 3.5 Days, Paizo had their gnolls frequently be Lamashtans because Lamashtu had (allegedly) given birth to the first gnolls. (For my character in the Bronze Age game, I had the story be that the first gnolls were distorted reflections of Lamashtu shaken out of the water by her thunderous footsteps as she walked by a lake, something that tied in nicely with his mirror implement.) I think that by the time we hit PF2, the understanding was that gnolls in a particular region were typically that way, but it was far from universal. If we go back to the region, we'll probably get an updated version of things with a bit more legal distinctiveness and the benefit of another fifteen years, but I enjoy taking some elements from the old version.
Lamashtu's big claim to fame is that she's responsible for one of the few deicide cases we know of, having killed the god of beasts, Curchanas, and ascended as a result. (Lamashtu's influence on the world is my go-to explanation for why wild animals in games seem to be a lot more willing to pick fights.) She also killed a few of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Regardless of what Paizo does, I do kind of expect Lamashtu to be a big player in any war of the gods as one of the few who's "been there, done that", outside the whole Rovagug thing.
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The Gold Sovereign wrote: I really love those new dragons and all, that I can't deny... But two things have bothered me since 2E "straight up bestiaries" were settled in three volumes.
The first of them is "outer and esoteric dragons, all forgotten". Are there plans to bring them back? I'm not even talking about Planar Dragons, for they are relatively "new"... But I really miss the "alien" dragons and I was really hoping to see them in 2E (1E Bestiary 4 was my favorite bestiary after all).
This is just speculation, but...
As far as the outer dragons go, we are getting Starfinder 2e pretty soon. I'd expect them to get moved over there where they will get more use, but if you're running a Pathfinder game and want an alien dragon, you'd be able to use the stat block. It'll also let them be more alien.
Esoteric dragons just sound like the occult category of dragons. We're getting a fate dragon already, and I had to look up whether or not it was one of the esoteric dragons.
The Gold Sovereign wrote: The other thing that bothers me is the fact that there are so many dragons in pathfinder, yet there's no dragon ancestry in 2E, net even a versatile heritage. How come? - There is a draconic ancestry: kobolds. It might not be what you're looking for, but it's very much a draconic ancestry.
- Paizo has avoided stepping on D&D's toes too much, and one of their distinctions is that they don't throw "& Dragons" everywhere.
But, here's some bigger speculation.
We know that Kobolds are going to stop being a specifically draconic ancestry. They're keeping their current design (which will be further away from the Monster Core dragons than from the Bestiary dragons) and revering various powerful creatures of their respective tradition, which includes dragons. But, draconic kobolds are popular, and a lot of the kobold feats are "dragon lite". We also know that there's a new undisclosed versatile heritage in PC2.
My guess is that the "dragon lite" feats from kobolds are getting pulled out and put into a draconic equivalent of nephilim. Folks who liked draconic kobolds will still be able to build that. Folks who like kobolds more for the trap-setting minion vibe will get a fresh set of feats to round out the ancestry. Folks who want something more imposing will be able to make a draconic lizardfolk or human. And, it all fits Pathfinder's existing lore without a retconning in dragonborn everywhere: we already have draconic sorcerers and dragon-descended elemental scions.
Vin, gnoll thaumaturge necromancer worshiper of Zon-Kuthon: Vin worships Zon-Kuthon as part of the bargain for getting an off-the-books resurrection in Geb after an unfortunate accident. If Zon-Kuthon dies, in the game he'd be relieved at finally getting to relax again. He's definitely picked up a taste for some of Zon-Kuthon's principles, but masochism doesn't really mesh with his personal hedonism.
Bonus: I'll also do a rebuild of him as an exemplar who managed to steal a small piece of divinity from his god's demise, although probably not for that particular game.
Personally: I'll be a little bummed. Zon-Kuthon is a fun god to make work, and Nightglass plus Nidal, Land of Shadows 100% sold me on Nidal as a setting element. Fortunately, Paizo looks to be geared up to help mitigate the issues. Zon-Shelyn has already been mentioned for Starfinder, and presumably will be used in Pathfinder if Zon-Kuthon is killed. Furthermore, the author of Nightglass is involved in the upcoming godwar tie-in novel if I understand correctly. (And realistically, finding the right group for a Nidal game is tricky anyway.)
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Me if they kill off my personal favorite, Lamashtu: I'd definitely be disappointed if this happens. Lamashtu got some excellent improvements to her edicts/anathema/lore that allow her worshipers to embrace monstrous solutions to their difficulties. She's also one of the few chaotic evil deities with solid reasons someone would want to worship her, and I'd definitely lose some interest in the pantheon overall. Even if alignments are going away, having Rovagug, whom almost nobody worships, as the only major deity in that corner feels kind of hollow.
My Lamashtans are all using some older gnoll lore from before the kholo rework, and generally could still work because the actual ongoing blessings they receive from her are limited- it's mostly variations on being blessed with demonic blood. Maybe an exemplar or two, since feasting on the corpse of a god is only fitting for followers of Lamashtu who did the same herself.
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Ohhh, I absolutely love this! Seems like an excellent opportunity to get some mileage out of Perform now covering all the various types of performance, since opera requires several. I've got a character or two I'd absolutely love to play in this, given the opportunity.
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Personal preference that would be a bad idea to actually apply to a game meant for lots of people:
I'd personally be happy to see poison and disease dropped from the system entirely, as things better suited to classic fantasy than to a game where androids, semi-undead, and swarm-offshoots are all core. Sure, the medbay episode is a Star Trek classic, but there's usually going to be someone in the party that makes it a head-scratcher. If it's going to be weird and immersion-breaking anyway, better to just not have it come up.
But, that's solidly in the category of "things Paizo knows better than to agree with".
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Lias kb22c wrote: I hope it is also available in PDF as the shipping fees are killing me *points up*
Not only as a PDF, but a free PDF. It is a playtest, after all. The hard copy book is just available because some people prefer a physical copy of the rules.
Bluemagetim wrote: QuidEst wrote: Bluemagetim wrote: QuidEst wrote: Port over a Migrus Locker, ham it up a bit, and enjoy. I got good mileage out of it in PF1, and it's a lot more conceptual than mechanical. Is that about the same as giving them a free pet?
What level item would this be? About the same, with the notable difference of "it comes back the next day when killed". I'd probably use the pet rules for it, too, rather than letting them swap out familiar abilities on the daily.
As for item level, it's more or less a GM call on that since it's not really a power boost. It's more than a first level feat (daily replacement instead of weekly, like a Witch's familiar), and items are delayed. Somewhere in the six-to-ten range, probably.
It's something the GM can have some fun with too, since it's a bit weird in a way that can be played up, and it has a bit more personal interpretation to commands than normal minions might.
In my case, the barbarian player ended up with one. In the final fight against a witch, the character chucked the migrus at the flying boss. Rolled miss chance for a spell, and whoops, didn't quite make it. Follow the trajectory, and the migrus ends up behind the throne... where the witch's crow familiar was hiding, ready to pretend to be more powerful reinforcements if the fight went south. Yowling and cawing immediately commenced, and the familiar was flushed out of hiding. Lol That was a pretty lucky throw. I used the item myself on a drunken shapeshifter whose daily new form meant that Best Cat (who was terrible) had a face that was an unsettling skewed average of three or four different people.
Bluemagetim wrote: QuidEst wrote: Port over a Migrus Locker, ham it up a bit, and enjoy. I got good mileage out of it in PF1, and it's a lot more conceptual than mechanical. Is that about the same as giving them a free pet?
What level item would this be? About the same, with the notable difference of "it comes back the next day when killed". I'd probably use the pet rules for it, too, rather than letting them swap out familiar abilities on the daily.
As for item level, it's more or less a GM call on that since it's not really a power boost. It's more than a first level feat (daily replacement instead of weekly, like a Witch's familiar), and items are delayed. Somewhere in the six-to-ten range, probably.
It's something the GM can have some fun with too, since it's a bit weird in a way that can be played up, and it has a bit more personal interpretation to commands than normal minions might.
In my case, the barbarian player ended up with one. In the final fight against a witch, the character chucked the migrus at the flying boss. Rolled miss chance for a spell, and whoops, didn't quite make it. Follow the trajectory, and the migrus ends up behind the throne... where the witch's crow familiar was hiding, ready to pretend to be more powerful reinforcements if the fight went south. Yowling and cawing immediately commenced, and the familiar was flushed out of hiding.
Port over a Migrus Locker, ham it up a bit, and enjoy. I got good mileage out of it in PF1, and it's a lot more conceptual than mechanical.
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I'm looking forward to seeing the new version of the rakshasa! Their old lore was something I really enjoyed for its own reasons, but it was definitely a weird case of telephone for how it got there. Curious if "The Rakshasa" as a harrow card still fits the theme!
Graylight wrote: I stumbled over a possible grammatical/editing error on page 254. The final sentence for the Dubious Knowledge feat currently reads as:
"This can occur as not knowing something is significant, but not whether it’s good or bad."
After spending a great deal of time mentally wrestling with this particular sentence, I came to the conclusion that the very first "not" simply shouldn't be there.
Oh, you know, that's probably right- I had been reading it as saying that the "don't know if it's good or bad" isn't allowed, but that would be a weird restriction to include when "there's something about trolls and fire..." is a GM's most common response for Dubious Knowledge.
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With "fiends" being a category specifically tied to Religion and divine magic, I'm happy to have things like oni and rakshasas no longer fall under it. That said, I'd enjoy having a replacement versatile heritage that can cover connections to them!
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Just chiming in to say, what you're asking for is definitely a Rahadoum setting book, not something that would go in Divine Mysteries.
But, just to rattle off some answers...
- The subject of how Rahadoum functions without deist divine healing to lean on is discussed most times the country comes up (you can see Lost Omens: Legends for some discussion on their advances in medicine). It's definitely alleviated by the clearer distinctions of occult and primal magic in PF2, and we've had discussion about the roles Druids play. But yeah, the Laws of Mortality would consider receiving divine healing from a cleric or champion to be anathema.
As for whether all adherents always stick to that, of course not- just like not all followers of Sarenrae never lie, or an Urgathoan might destroy an undead in self-defense. The Death's Heretic books follow an adherent of the Laws of Mortality that sought divine intervention in a moment of crisis, and are probably the best books for learning more about the philosophy. It's definitely one of the more difficult philosophies to follow in the context of something like Pathfinder Society.
- Monks can key off of divine or occult, but both of those have elements related to spirit. The elemental monk options are probably the least tied to spiritual matters, since that tends closer to primal? As far as "how do the styles of martial arts differ historically", I don't think Paizo usually gets quite that deep into the weeds.
- Citizenry of Rahadoum is definitely something for a specific regional book and not the divine book. I don't think siphoning power off from the gods is really something that Paizo does- the gods have pretty good control over that sort of thing. Accessing divine power directly is oracle's schtick.
- "Moral neutrality" isn't something that's gonna be covered much going forward, since alignment is being dropped.
Mostly, I'm looking forward to getting access to domain spells without needing to deal with the hassle of Cleric or Champion dedications. Getting some anathema cleanup on the gods will be nice too, making things a little easier for adventuring.
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Master Han Del of the Web wrote: Driftbourne wrote: Denny's in Space... The one place you can to get a full ysoki-style breakfast with your grandma and then come back at midnight to see a drunk vesk puke in the lap of his pahtra buddy. And really, at the end of the localized solar cycle, isn't that all what we're searching for in this wide galaxy?
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I was just looking over the list of what's in the playtest, and I'm excited to see what the prismeni versatile heritage will have. "Drift-born planar heritage!" is such a cool premise, and there's so little space for that to be expressed in SF1.
It does feel like there's a bit of an inherent conflict on the breathing thing even without getting to things like androids. It's a space game, so people need to be able to survive vacuum at low level, or else it doesn't feel like a space game. You can't survive vacuum if you need to breathe or have exposed skin. It's really hard to justify being affected by toxic gasses if you have no exposed skin and don't need to breathe it.
I like "being able to go for casual spacewalks without a space suit", and so my preferred solution is for "not breathing" to be cheap. If that means that toxic gas doesn't need to be breathed to work, or that toxic gasses just don't even get rules in SF2, those are compromises that let me do my fun character thing. Maybe some toxic gasses are archaic, and don't work around various protections.
But, because it's something that depends on how the armor rules are handling things, it'll be a lot more relevant to the full playtest than to the android sneak-peek.
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All the other stuff has me excited, and dang am I looking forward to new species more for SF2 because of the flexible customization! It's less pronounced with core ancestries, because the species versions had more alternates. Once we get to see things like barathu and the versatile heritages that didn't have the same support, and future books with even more ancestries? That'll be a really fun thing to look forward to in SF2 releases.
Mark Moreland wrote: QuidEst wrote: Internal Respirator is a bummer to see as a level 9 feat. Androids in SF1 could survive vacuum indefinitely from level 1 by default, while this is just giving an hour of breath-holding halfway through the career. This really feels like a first-level feat in terms of what it can do and how Starfinder should be valuing things as a game with space suits as armor. Sounds like some excellent feedback to provide when the playtest launches! Definitely why I'm very happy to be getting the chance for a playtest!
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Internal Respirator is a bummer to see as a level 9 feat. Androids in SF1 could survive vacuum indefinitely from level 1 by default, while this is just giving an hour of breath-holding halfway through the career. This really feels like a first-level feat in terms of what it can do and how Starfinder should be valuing things as a game with space suits as armor.
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Absolutely thrilled to be getting the Swarmkeeper archetype! That's something I've been hoping for ever since the PF2 playtest surveys about your favorite PF1 options. I had three or four characters in PF1 with various swarm-related aspects, and it'll be nice to have that around as an option again.
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