So it makes use of the same ancestry feats as in Pathfinder 2nd ed? If so, do any of those feats need to be updated or slightly changed to fit with Starfinder 2nd ed?
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Or it might be interesting to consider what it means for a sorcerer to be weak, in terms of cautionary tales. Sorcerers too concerned about the impact they might have on others that they never had any impact at all, or ones too uncertain of themselves and thus incapable of growing. On the flipside, those who subsumed themselves in the identity that their blood provided them, without examining what they were beyond that. Funnily enough, dragon bloodline is definitely the one that comes to mind for this. Most of the draconic bloodline sorcerers I've seen have been fixated on it to a degree that overshadowed other characterization, but it wasn't really something that was examined.
Paizo's forum architecture isn't exactly bleeding edge in terms of moderation tools, bots are better at getting past sign-up verification steps these days, and Paizo doesn't have a huge incentive to hire 24/7 moderation for stuff that will be cleaned up on Monday. I just note down the more entertaining spam for Starfinder inspiration, and then flag.
People get hung up on "willpower" because of will saves, but charisma is about one's external influence, while wisdom is about how the external influences one's self. Sorcerers' power coming from charisma is the ability to impose their own desires, or "self", on the world around them. Hmmm... it might be interesting to play a sorcerer who leans into that a bit, representing how the bloodline is in some way the origin continuing to exert influence through the medium of their inheritors. Or it might be interesting to consider what it means for a sorcerer to be weak, in terms of cautionary tales. Sorcerers too concerned about the impact they might have on others that they never had any impact at all, or ones too uncertain of themselves and thus incapable of growing. On the flipside, those who subsumed themselves in the identity that their blood provided them, without examining what they were beyond that.
One quick question though? Will caster classes like Technomancer and Mystic have access to spell levels higher than 6th? I can understand the need to cut down on the sheer power 7th, 8th, 9th, and even 10th spell slots can give but maybe there might be a way to limit that (aka make 7th, 8th, and 9th spell slots usable only once a day and even 10th level spell slots a powerful ritual perhaps)? SF1 casters didn't only go up to 6th level spells because of power, but because of space. 1st through 8th got re-scaled to 1st through 6th and 9th became capstone abilities.
Thanks for the write-up! I'm relieved to see the Technomancer section addressing some of my big concerns. It's been a while since playtesting has had a "requires significant changes", so I was a little worried that the changes needed might be low-balled. I'd certainly enjoy less feat-intensive drone customization too, but minibots (... Please stop autocorrecting to "mini boys"...) sound like a great addition. The low accessibility of a robot-controlled camera was one of the things that felt off in SF1, and being able to offload some drone jobs to minibots will help!
SF1 skill DCs tend to be 10 or 15 + 1.5*level. Since those are formulae, you can convert them using that.
Welcome to the Paizo forums in that case! Sounds like this would be a good fit for the homebrew forums. Some thoughts on the first-rank focus spells: Antipathic Tether refers to both "target" and "targets" in a rather vague manner, and is a bit of an odd effect in how it scales the impact to allies based on the save of an enemy. Insightful Echoes is in a weird spot. At low ranks, it's not giving enough, with its low AC bonus. Lay on Hands is giving a bunch of healing instead of +1 damage, Protective Wards is protecting allies in an area and sustaining, and there are several sustained +1 status bonus to AC. On the flip side, the only way to get a +3 status bonus to AC in the game is more than a focus spell would normally give, although rank 9 and one round mean it's not unreasonable. It's just going to be rough playing a focus caster who is using a focus point to toss out a single-round buff on somebody who might not be targeted, y'know? Essence Shock is fun- a damaging emanation from an ally is a nice little trick to have up one's sleeve, especially if they're getting flanked. Soul Wave's target and area are confusing. By default, a cone comes from you. If you target an enemy more than fifteen feet away, how does the cone hit them? Should this say that the cone comes from the target?
They grow into their power, much like dragons do. Or their soul becomes more in tune with the spiritual power it contains. Or they refine the essence of their blood. Or they draw strength from the blood of those they defeat. Or they succumb to the dark influences granting them power. Or they study diligently to uncover the deeper mysteries of their own self. Or they gradually master subsequent aspects of their own magic with each building on the last. ... Also, Paizo answered this in the Sorcerer description. "Self-reflection and study allow you to refine your inherent magical skills and unlock new, more powerful abilities."
That's pretty insidious, adding spam links in the quoted text of replies. Just giving a heads-up to the person responding to the flag because I almost missed it.
Would that even work? Esoteric Lore is a spell class feature granting a special Lore skill. Can a Skilled Familiar even pick it up and even if they did it would just be normal Esoteric Lore not the super special one Thaumaturge gets...Am I even wrong but if I am not wrong then Tome is a great implement for Recall Knowledge checks and other items which grant Item bonuses to Lore/Recall Knowledge.While potentially more contentious overall, there is nothing preventing anyone from taking "Esoteric" lore as a lore skill in general, but it will only allow them to RK on anything the GM deems it to, it won't be able to mimic the Thaumaturge class ability. There is something preventing it, though- "Esoteric" is much broader of a category than is allowed for a lore skill, even if you're taking it as a general lore skill.
That doesn't always track. Look at The Witcher and where it started, and Cyberpunk before 2077 and Edgerunners launched. If you have a product that stands out from the crowd, you can get it made into something special. Good point about Cyberpunk! But I don't think it holds for The Witcher- my understanding is that it was the very first thing the game studio made themselves, rather than localized. So the book series probably was better known at the time, although I could be wrong.
Is it possible to use a Collar of the Shifting Spider with a juggernaut mutagen on a bonded animal ? Other alchemical items also ? A Collar of the Shifting Spider requires a manipulate free action to activate, which the bonded animal can't perform. The bonded animal isn't an animal companion, so there aren't rules restrictions on feeding it elixirs as long as you can convince the bonded animal to accept them. Anyone who has had to give a dog medicine will be aware that this is probably going to require a more difficult check than a basic command, but Bonded Animal does mean they're helpful, improving the degree of success by one.
Fetters rules. You are correct that the check to handcuff someone after grabbing or restraining them doesn't take a penalty, and that it's another action to affix the other end to a stationary object. I think you're asking about forcing the opponent to hug a larger object, and handcuffing both their hands together around it? A tree is already given as an example of something a person can be handcuffed to, so I wouldn't worry about it. Fetters do not have rules for applying them in combat at all. Since they're put on prisoners, it's pretty reasonable to assume you need to have taken someone fully as prisoner.
What do you mean did something happen? Larian Studios said they're not doing DLC or a sequel for BG3. Around the time the game launched and started getting awards, WotC laid off a lot of people, including the ones who had coordinated with Larian. (It's worth noting that Larian has said that it wasn't something that WotC did that made their decision- they need to start work on the next game, and they tapped out everything they could get from 5e with BG3.) With D&D licensing out to gambling companies now and trying to bring video game development in-house, though, they're certainly not making it as appealing for another company to come along and license for something like BG3 as it would have been otherwise.
My entirely amateurish understanding is that a game studio is usually licensing something if it's bigger than themselves. You get more customers by licensing something more widely known and popular. If Larian Studios wanted to make another video game, I don't think paying to use Pathfinder's setting and rules would actually help them because of how famous they are. BG3 sold at least 15 million copies. I don't have good numbers for how popular PF2 is, but Wrath of the Righteous sold over a million copies. That's a good enough proxy for me. So I guess in terms of expectations, maybe temper them to game studios with no more than a fifteenth the notariety/funds that Larian Studios had before BG3 came out. You can check the Kickstarter progress on Dragon's Demand here.
A solid "ask the GM" from me. Personally, I would probably allow it on the basis that the text says "When you invest this aeon stone, it slowly starts healing your wounds, restoring 1 HP every minute." The way it's worded is that the stone is doing something, rather than the stone granting you something. I refuse to defend or argue the position any further, though, because it's very semantic and it's entirely reasonable that somebody would choose to interpret it differently.
The CRB/APG remasters aren't helpful to judge off of, because they were full new books. Guns & Gears and Inventor are the better example to look at for what to expect in this remaster. But fortunately, number of slots, rounds of unleash, etc., aren't changes that use more space.
PF1 Magus had no subclasses That's fair- I shouldn't be discounting the archetypes, since that's where so much of PF1's class variation came from. If I'd actually seen any of that variation in practice, I probably wouldn't have disliked the class so much. But since I did only see the same thing again and again, I was left with a biased impression that has lingered to this day. It could easily be that the problem wasn't all that bad, and I was just one on the far end of the bell curve for experiencing repetitive Magus builds. My subjective experience in PF2 is a broader variety of what a Magus looks like in play. The class no longer gets under my skin, and that's all I can ask for. It's definitely a biased and unreasonable thing, but pet peeves are like that. I should be clearer about that being the case, though!
If I install a Stellar Cannon or Machine Gun on my drone with an Integrated Weapon Mount, am I able to use Area/Auto-Fire? If so, what DC do I use? There is no DC defined, so drones probably can't area fire right now. I submitted feedback about that, but the difficulty is that if drones could just use the Mechanic's DC for area fire, it would give an option for them to attack that doesn't care about their advancement feats, since it's only reliant on the Mechanic's stats and proficiencies.
PF1 Magus had no subclasses, and I only saw builds with very cookie-cutter metamagic cheese. With PF2 Magus, right now I'm playing alongside somebody fighting with magical cloth who has grapple and trip options for variety. Sure, it's still very focused on Spellstrike, but they even addressed the "Magus with a staff of half a dozen Sure Strike castings" business. And yeah, I've also enjoyed the ancestry paragon games I've played, in addition to the free archetype ones. That's a little less important to me in terms of customization, but still nice to have.
Yeah, Greaer Masquerade Scarf is infinite two action casts of Illusory Disguise to look like a generic "not me" person. It's only (error?) heightened to rank 2, so it still only functions the same as rank 1 and would only really matter for the purposes of not getting pinged by the very lowest levels of Detect Magic.Yeah I don't know if that's an error or not at this point. It's weird for an item to heighten to a level that doesn't actually change how it works from its base version, but the item is still useful at least. It's carryover from the pre-master version of the spell, which heightened to 2nd to provide smell and voice. Voice is now part of the base spell, and smell is no longer addressed.
Oh yeah, I'd love for the other shapeshifters to get brought up to astrazoans' level. I hope we get an SF2 version of kitsune some day!They could also just fix some of the default PF2 options. We don't really need an "SF2 version" .. I mean it's the same system. There are just certain things that are undertuned that could use some quality of live improvements. Do we need an SF2 version? Nah, of course not. But I know one of the devs enjoys them, there's precedent with android, ysoki, and human, and it seems likelier than an overhaul of PF2's shapeshifters this late in the game. It'd also come with some interesting lore, whereas I'm well-supplied with PF2 details.
Oh yeah, I'd love for the other shapeshifters to get brought up to astrazoans' level. I hope we get an SF2 version of kitsune some day!
The quote is directly from the general Retraining rules in Player Core. The Retraining guidelines in GM Core are also useful to read for making the decision for the character (especially the guidelines for allowing Extreme Retraining).So before I made this post I tried asking chat gpt to search the rules to see if you can retrain that weakness. It's reply was no because it's like choosing a barbarian instinct or a sorcerer bloodline. The conclusion was the only option would be to retcon the decision with the gm. Does that sound right? ChatGPT is always going to be pretty useless for this sort of thing; I'd use the Archives of Nethys search instead. Barbarian instincts seem plenty reasonable to retrain normally? It's definitely on a similar level to a Sorcerer's bloodline, but that falls under the rules for Extreme Retraining. (Basically, a retcon is sometimes the easiest, but you can come up with in-world was to justify retraining.)
To speak specifically to the at-will face change thing, I remain kind of annoyed by Astrazoan in SF2e given how... Oppressively limited most shapeshifting in PF2e is by comparison? Astrazoan is getting to just do nearly everything I might have wanted from something like Kitsune, plus a couple bags of chips and some soda, far earlier and for less investment. Sure, "Starfinder 2e has different balance assumptions" and "just homebrew it", but that feels like kind of a copout given how heavily compatibility is touted. I can understand that feeling, sure- I had a similar initial reaction before I got to actually read it myself. But I would much rather have Starfinder 2e thrive on its own terms, and give me somewhere to play an at-will shapeshifter in fun ways. I don't need to feel bad about astrazoans getting to do it just because kitsune can't; I just need to come up with some fun astrazoan characters, like an operative that shapeshifts into a drone to make another member of the party look like a mechanic instead of whatever their real class is. I think they also struck the sort of balance I want- an astrazoan can look like somebody, in the same way that there are hundreds or thousands of people that look like, say, Brad Pitt. People aren't going to assume that they're actually Brad Pitt, though. Then there's an uncommon feat to be able to reliably imitate a specific person with fewer required checks to fool people. If I ever really need to, it's trivial to go to a GM and ask to reflavor an astrazoan's kitsune disguise as their "true" form, or even spend a feat on getting access to kitsune feats. As for compatibility, I don't consider that a copout. The big point is that I can go find a PF2 GM or PF2 players for an SF2 game. Grabbing something cross-system will have balance issues, and "shapeshifting alien starfish are much better shapeshifters than mystical foxes" is a fair balance difference.
Thanks for the reminder about Deceiver's Cloak! I have a habit of forgetting it because it's on an intelligence-based class rather than a charisma-based one, but spending one focus point for an hour of third-rank Illusory Digsuise is really quite good. Mechanically, Quick Disguise at Master proficiency does what I want. Mundane disguises just feel like they're more limited in what one can reasonably ask to attempt, and like there are more bits of evidence to worry about.
There is no way officially published to do it. There will probably never be one, either. It's replacing a character's ancestry with something that doesn't interact with the character creation rules. Companions don't advance their stats the same way that characters do. And it also lets you dump your physical stats, and then replace them with the companion's stats. If you want to do this, the GM will have to make up something for your game. The GM will also need to decide how it should work.
As someone who joined with the Remaster and was very not on board at the launch of the edition, I am kinda happy that I joined just a year and some ago. I missed a lot of the jank of the initial release. For example, I would have been quite unhappy with the Swashbuckler in its released form and now I even wrote a guide to the Remastered Swashbuckler, because it is such a good class now and hits all the spots I've always wanted from the class concept. I tried a Swashbuckler early on, and the remaster really helps address all the issues I had when I played it, yeah. I don't mind having been around for the full journey myself, but it's certainly convenient to get in once things have gotten a few coats of polish.
Yep, absolutely. I do expect I'll eventually play out enough variations of it to be done with it, but it looks like it sets a great standard for future skill classes.
The quote you provided is that from the standard rules somewhere? I'm not familiar with the actual rulebook and don't have any to read through.Once you have selected your cursed weakness for the warrior of legend archetype can you retrain or change that cursed weakness? Archives of Nethys has got you covered. I just searched up retraining, and it was the first result. Hope that helps!
Once you have selected your cursed weakness for the warrior of legend archetype can you retrain or change that cursed weakness? "Your GM determines whether you can get proper training or whether something can be retrained at all." Finding someone who can retrain your fated doom is going to be a doozy. That sounds like doing something for a Norn, an off-the-books favor from a powerful psychopomp, or some other similar thing.
And with an extract brain ritual ? Let's see... You remove a creature's brain, and the GM might allow you to put it in various pre-remaster golems. So you could remove the construct companion's brain (Lepistadt Surgeon gives you one that expressly has a brain), and if the GM allowed it, put it in a golem instead. I think it would be subject to the usual restrictions, but it would mess with the stats in a weird way. It's not clear what level and attack proficiency look like with it, though, or how they would advance. Like before, putting a PC's brain into a construct companion would require the GM to homebrew anyway, so it's up to them. It would probably be easier to run than the golem option. Sorry to give so many "just ask the GM" answers, but turning a companion into a player character mid-game isn't something that the game normally does. In practical terms, I would give the player a somewhat flexible rebuild with Fleshwarp. Is there anything in particular you're asking about this for?
Yeah, Gang Up is exactly the sort of thing that addresses my issues with getting off-guard. It makes it easier, and helps allies out at the same time. The wait to 6th, and not having anything that speaks to me for 1st and 4th levels, is what keeps me from taking that as the fix. I don't want to be spending feats on building up a dirty fighting style or slipping around in combat, but that's what Rogue is for. (Relatedly, I'm really looking forward to Envoy in SF2, since that has double skills with flexible skill feats, more out-of-combat features, a less conditional combat style, and feats more in line with my flavor of choice.)
- Rogues definitely aren't treading in Operative's shoes. Getting off-guard is still just too annoying for me to bother with the class. Thaumaturge and Operative are more enjoyable skillmonkeys for me.Excuse me but pardon? What do you mean getting Off-Guard is annoying as a rogue? If you are using any melee weapon which qualifies for sneak attacking then all you need to do is flank with your allies. Not only are you triggering Sneak Attack but giving the Monster a nice -2 to their AC state which is very, very useful for everyone involved rather that be a Rogue, Barbarian, Fighter or even a Magus. They all benefit from the penalty you provide to the enemy. Perhaps I am just confused and do not fully understand it. Hmmm... definitely put that poorly; let me give that another go. "The feeling of obligation to always get off-guard is annoying to me." I dislike having additional stakes tied to off-guard. For the other classes, I'm fine moving up and attacking without flanking, knowing I'm doing my part in setting up an ally to get it. As a Rogue, I'm not just missing out on the lower AC, but a decent chunk of damage too. The result is that getting off-guard goes from a nice thing to a necessary chore. I dislike feeling like I need to constantly be sneaking around so that I can get off-guard even on a good initiative roll, or delaying initiative so that I'm the one attacking with flanking instead of my ally. At the end of the day, sneak attack feels like damage I'm owed, not a bonus. Thus, not getting it is disappointing, but getting it isn't rewarding. The class's feats really lean into underhanded combat rather than anything impressive out of combat. Thaumaturge with broad knowledge checks, Tome to specialize in whatever skills I need, the reliability of Implement's Empowerment, and the out-of-combat versatility of free scrolls, does what I want from Rogue better than Rogue does. Extra skill feats are nice and all, but I'm already usually taking some skill feats that never actually come up. Rogue is a dirty fighter first and foremost, and a trickster as a distant second. I've only really got any interest in that second part.
I recently came across my old PF2 playtest thread again, and I figured I'd pull out some of the thoughts and take a look at things a few years on.
Free archetype has proven to be pretty important for making characters feel properly customized, but it's also a lot more common than I would have expected at the outset. With that in place, I'm much happier with the level of customization available. Versatile heritages pull a surprising amount of weight there for me.
- Degrees of success helped a lot with not worrying so much about will saves. I'm fine dumping wisdom because a crit-fail is usually required to end up in a situation as bad as a regular PF1 failure. - Free archetype to the rescue! I was able to build Yelis and Waya just fine.- As expected, the content caught up eventually. Once we got Dark Archives, I finally stopped missing PF1's breadth of options so much, and Rage of Elements helped settle me firmly in PF2 by giving me some variety. The huge range of playable ancestries in PF2 is amazing, especially including how much more fleshed out some options are. - Occult classes is still a bit of a rough patch. Psychic is a lot worse off in terms of flavor and power in PF2, and there's nothing meaningfully like the Mesmerist or Spiritualist (sorry, the two occult eidolons do not cut it). Thaumaturge is a worthy thematic successor to Occultist, fortunately! Kineticist stands on equal footing. (And sorry to Medium, but post-playtest, it wasn't really worth much consideration.) - We got a "bloodrager", and it's interesting enough, but it's definitely not the cool range of character options that PF1's bloodrager represented. If PF2 suddenly got a lot cooler about releasing a wide range of monstrous Barbarian instincts, we'd be getting somewhere, but we only got two new non-bloodrager ones. - The remaster did a lot for sneaky casting, and I really appreciate it! Two feats cut down to one, no skill check, and some spells are inherently subtle. Huge win for PF2.
At this point, I'm far enough removed from PF1 that these magically appearing wouldn't move the needle for me. I would absolutely read the full Harrowed Medium list for old time's sake and character inspiration, though.
- No rakshasa options of any sort so far. They've been remastered to something very different, so I'd be curious to see what those options would look like now. - Can't say I care for Clerics at all still. Sorcerers having a broader range of skills is nice. The... less narratively powerful casting means I don't play them too much, but I had a blast with one in a one-shot.- Rogues definitely aren't treading in Operative's shoes. Getting off-guard is still just too annoying for me to bother with the class. Thaumaturge and Operative are more enjoyable skillmonkeys for me. - Thaumaturge is the big hit from the new classes for me. Exemplar really fumbled it by dropping the domain spells. I'm hugely excited for Commander at the end of next month! - PF2 Magus feels so much better to be around. Night and day. I even played one for a one-shot, and had a good time of it, reach reactive strike combat aside. - Being able to get a talking familiar is huge. It's still hard to keep them present in a roleplay, but it makes a big difference to at least be able to have them talk. They're less impactful than familiar archetypes from PF1, but that's okay. - It took for the remaster to get solid sneaky casting, but as mentioned before, it's good to have these rules baked into the system now. - Skill balance really is a lot better.
- Illusions are my favorite thing about PF2 magic. They're not automatically foiled by a low-level cantrip, and there's more interesting variety. - Six years in, I think we've hit a good point for cantrip variety. I wish we got another one or two on a caster by default, actually. Combat cantrips are a bit too mixed in "are they actually good or not", but I'm more concerned with the out-of-combat ones, and we're well-stocked with options.- I do NOT miss the Wand of CLW. - Three action economy kicks butt.
- I would not try to build Peter in PF2 at all. The incapacitation trait shuts any kind of charm build down hard. - At-will face changes just aren't possible in PF2. Ancestries cap out at 3/day on that. Being good at a lot of skills isn't really going to happen either. I've given Com a try or two in PF2, and it didn't work great.- Voror does work well in PF2. Alchemist does a good job of giving a variety of things, and picking up the Eat Fire cantrip does a better job of representing his schtick than anything in PF1. A solid win here! (Not a good character to actually play, given how antisocial he is, but that's fine. He made an NPC cameo.) In general, approaching PF2 with new character ideas or interpretations has paid off a lot better than trying to convert the greatest hits. I had a dream that a friend got a playtest copy. It included Spiritualist, which had an archetype called Bone-Sworn Mystic. The archetype traded out the phantom for a skeleton animal companion. Well, we've gotten skeletal undead companions as an option, so I think this could be built pretty solidly using Animist with Seer.
Eh... They're not always mono-element by Kineticist standards, though. Toph is earth/metal, Iroh is fire and either air or metal for lightning, and we encounter water/wood users. Even in mono-element fantasy, bringing in a second element can enhance that fantasy. I'm personally a lot more used to people coming in with a broader concept. Fire/metal chef or forge worker. Water/wood ended up representing a plant character better than mono-wood for my friend. Things like that are most of what I've encountered, rather than someone going for an earth-but-not-metal mage, or water-but-not-storms mage.
Mono-element is a deliberate self-imposed restriction and build Definitely not a trap, any more than dual-wielding is! It's something that is a popular desire, and needed some extra support built in. I was probably too harsh in my tone, so I'll drop it.
If I were running, I would generally assume that outdoors counts unless otherwise specified, while indoors doesn't count unless otherwise specified. For some personal answers, I'd count a dirt road as soil (just bad soil), and I'd default to a mountain counting as soil anywhere that doesn't require environmental rules or climb checks. If I have gone out of my way to say something is a dirt floor indoors, I'm probably allowing that as well. That's rare enough to be a nice treat, just like a stone surface outdoors is rare enough to only be an occasional thing. Part of this is that only one square needs to count as soil, so I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt even on a mountain, hill, or dirt road. Patchy plant life, weeds on the side of the road, all of that is fair game.
Mono-element is a deliberate self-imposed restriction and build, rather than being something like a subclass. Like a lot of things in PF2, there are some tools to mitigate a popular build that would normally be flat-out worse. Dual Slice, Deific Weapon, etc. At early levels, it's getting an extra junction. At mid-levels, it's a few exclusive feats and access to the composite impulses. But PF2 doesn't exactly go out of its way to reward giving up your versatility. If you want to go with one of the six mono-element instead of the fifteen duals or twenty trios, then that's your call. Single Gate and Dual Gate are a subclass choice of sorts, but the former can branch out later if the player wants.
If a construct companion made with body parts from the same ancestry that the character, is it possible to use mind swap ritual or mind-swaping potion between a character and a construct companion ? No. Why would it work? That's a construct companion, not a creature of the same ancestry. They are not a creature of any ancestry, so even the optional "different ancestry" option wouldn't work. A GM could house-rule that it works, but it's definitely not something the ritual does normally. The restrictions are specifically set up in a way to prevent turning into a non-playable creature, because long-term dragon possession has been an issue in previous editions. Even swapping to a different playable ancestry requires special permission and more money.
It means that they can... move their new body, normally? They control the body they are now in, and there aren't any special penalties unique to the ritual. Can the character possessing the construct companion use its skills, skill feat, use items or magic items ... ? As mentioned before, this ritual doesn't work on construct companions. So questions about getting around a construct companion's restrictions will not come up. If the GM decides to allow it to work anyway, it's up to the GM how companion restrictions apply.
I'll also give a shout-out to Extended Kinesis being incredible on Wood. Being able to rapidly make fruit, vegetables, flowers, herbs, and trees, as well as simple wooden tools, is some excellent versatility out of combat. Wood Kineticist is also amazing in any campaign dealing with undead, being able to hand out level or level + 1 void resistance to the party. Fresh Produce puts in work.
I would like more impulses, sure. But to say it needs them, or that none of the elements work as mono-element? I disagree. The elements are somewhat specialized, with some overlap. That means that going mono-element means being somewhat specialized. If you want stuff outside of the specialization, that means leaving the element. You're also ignoring that mono-element gets access to every composite to round out its options at levels 8+. If Paizo goes in and adds everything that every element is missing, then the threads are just, "Why is earth's healing so weak, and air's single-target debuff option weaker than metal's multi-target debuff option? If you go mono-element, you can't get the best stuff." I think want more options that lean into the specializations. Give me even more options for water battlefield control, give me more air tricks that don't fit into traditional buff/debuff boxes, give me more wood hitpoint support, give me more earth tankiness, give me more fire damage, give me- okay, for metal, I mostly want an impulse that can make an enemy count as wearing metal armor. Or, the class could get some additional fun general feats. That's a way to improve the options that mono-element gets without just increasing the menu that multi-element can cherry-pick from.
Just searching "druid" in Galaxy Guide turns up present-time druids elsewhere (park druids and urban druids), so I can very confidently say that "hundreds of displaced druids" does NOT mean "there are no more druids".
Partly, it's not knowing/remembering alchemical tools. Partly, it's because anything invisible can move out of the area and resume invisibility. (Mostly the former; I don't think I've come across the item before.)
Hmm thanks, I see benefits in using Hidden mind with Heightened Invisibility as opposed to Disappearance. Mostly because I can use a single casting of an 8th level spell and combine it with 2-3 Heightened invisibility's per day and get similar effects. Id rather not use 2-3 Disappearances as those 8th level spell slots are quite strong I could cast other spells. Yeah, if you need it for multiple uses throughout the day rather than one big stealth sequence, then it's hard to argue with the big discount of heightened Invisibility. Plus, leaving other senses unaffected is also less likely to cause a headache.
Good point. "Making sure the GM is okay to deal with super-invisibility" is still a good idea. Citation: my experience playing PF1.
Hidden Mind will attempt to counteract See the Unseen and Truesight, as they are both revelation spells. It's exactly the answer provided to your question, and uncommon so GMs can decide where they want the detection/counter-measure arms race to end. As mentioned, Veil of Privacy works too (with less advantage), and is uncommon for the same reason. If you're rocking high-rank spells, moving from Invisibility to Disappearance is a good idea, since other precise senses aren't rare then.
I'm looking forward to playing both, with pretty minimal crossover. SF2 could use some extra ancestries for a while, but I'm mostly looking forward to the two systems not requiring much extra learning from GMs or players. It will also be nice having updated rules. SF1 was fun, but it was really weird how they only ever released one player class, the Operative. There were plenty of NPC classes, like Soldier or Mechanic, but those just weren't the same.
Besides- getting enough turns worth of spells means that you can play a character who tips the scales a little further every single round- you can get an interesting enough character out of that idea.
I'm not going to bother with general damage buffs and debuffs. They're a pain to look up, and Barbarian is doing fine. I'm also not going to bother with any debuffs that don't make the Barbarian look better- slowing an enemy down doesn't make the Barbarian more accurate against them, for instance. Status, circumstance, item. Bonus, penalty. - Status bonus, covered.
- Circumstance bonus, covered.
- Item bonus, covered by expected equipment. You can push that further by taking Alchemist dedication and providing a mutagen for an extra +1 at some stiff penalties.
- Resistance: Resist Energy, Death Ward, Energy Aegis. From off-list, Mountain's Resilience.
- Flat checks: Cast Blur or heightened Invisibility on them, as well as True Target to negate miss chance against an enemy. - Quickened: Haste
That feels a bit too narrow- if somebody magically makes me feel unnatural fear, I'd definitely consider that "manipulating my mind" even if it's not a compulsion. The anathema isn't "controlling minds".
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