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Just got my order email and #19 is listed. Order #8081898. I replied to the email to get #19 removed, and posting here in case it's more visible. Thanks!
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I'm not interested in Pathfinder 2 content at this time, and I have a backlog of Starfinder APs to run at some point, so I'd like to end my subs after the current run is complete. Thanks.
Yes. I imagine they designed this thinking your ability to store up the max level of damage was limited by your spell slots, but if cantrips work with it then that's not the case.The Elemental Tempest wizard power needs to clarify that it doesn't work with cantrips, which are "spells" cast at your highest level, so they provide a really offensive boost if they work with this. You're still limited by your spell point pool, and elemental tempest burns 2 points per use.
So far, we've only one run game (the 1st level adventure) and while the final encounter wasn't truly a solo monster, the minion did not play a significant role. The boss was the real threat and felt like a true threat (knocking 1 PC unconscious, seriously threatening the others). That said, I think the primary reason for the threat was the party had already expended most of their resources before the fight, so they were running on their last bit of resources (1 spell, 1 potion, roughly 90% max HP). Higher levels with more resources or solo encounters earlier in the adventuring day will probably feel pretty different. The lower level solo monster at the beginning of the adventure didn't feel like a threat at all.
My wife made her animal totem barbarian last night and I didn't have a good answer for what she's supposed to do when she's not raging (every 4th round at least) or if an enemy is flying/across a chasm/whatever. It seems like not being allowed to use any weapons forces her deer barbarian to resort to headbutts (nonlethally) on off rounds, and run away from flying enemies?
I think I'm missing something. I'm looking at the Drow Noble Cleric. Its AC and TAC both note the default and ACs with shield raised, and the reaction references "Shield Block." If you look up "Shield Block" in the Ability Glossary the requirements state that the shield has to be raised, and the "Raise a Shield" action is a standard action available to anyone that has a shield according to the core book.
Not sure if this is an error... Bard pg 64, spell repertoire states that they begin with one first level spell and gain spells as they gain spell slots. However, this leaves them with less first level spells known than any other level, 2 (gained from 2nd) compared with 3 spells known (starting at 2 and gaining another the following level) for every other level.
I kept reading and found that you gain a 1st level spell from your muse. I'm guessing that's where the missing spell comes from?
"Balanced" in the sense that it's dissapointingly weak along with the other options. I like the idea of being able to build a healer with more than just a cleric, but if I have to devote most of my spells per day to healing to fill that role as a sorcerer, that basically means I'll never try to play a sorcerer healer. In PF1 the 1/day ability options for things like oracle revelations or rogue tricks were among my least liked class options and I pretty much never chose them.
Since Aroden's Spellbane specifies that it acts as antimagic field for the spells chosen, Mage's Disjunction should still have a 1%/CL to dispel it and then get everything underneath. It does open up your contingency for other purposes, or contingent AMF for a second layer of protection if it's really important to avoid getting dispelled.
I disagree about plot armor, as it tells the player that their choices don't matter and they're just sitting there for GM story time. An alternate solution: Contingent Anti-magic Field if targeted by Mage's Disjunction. There's a nonzero chance that Disjunction can break the AMF, and if so I would rule it would unravel the underlying spells, but there's a good chance it will effectively absorb the disjunction and the dragon can dismiss the AMF later (or not, cause he's still a dragon and probably has the advantage in AMF).
For something that takes 2 actions are we going to see a description like: [[A]][[A]] Skewering Death The dire stirge makes a single strike that targets all targets within a 15 ft. line dealing proboscis damage and causing each target to bleed for 1d8 damage. The dire stirge gains hit points equal to any bleed damage inflicted this way.
I have a few questions before I decide to dig into character development, and they may be related to "secret" information depending on character concepts, so I'm going to spoiler them for now. Spoiler: I'm unclear on the slant/theme of the story. Would a scholar (likely arcanist, possibly brown fur transmuter) that's interested in researching the transformations and abilities of creatures like werewolves and vampires with the potential to harness those transformations be a good fit for the campaign? Depending on tone, I imagine he would fall into the LN or LE category (mostly depending on if he captures specimens for research, or just observes "in the wild." I'm not tied to any particular alignment, and am perfectly happy molding the character to fit whatever alignment is appropriate.
I can understand people taking offense if the only tribal culture with warpaint and shamans and witch doctors were always CE orcs. That paints that entire culture as evil. My point is that you should be allowed to have that burly, evil orc package, it just shouldn't be the only representation of that culture type. Otherwise, why shouldn't people get offended when any other culture that they identify with is painted in an evil light?
Maybe I'm just a bit confused. A humanoid species that lives in a tribal culture with warpaint and shamans and witch doctors and is mechanically less intelligent but stronger than humans, that generally (but not always) is evil and often worship demon lords or other CE entities is ok. But a humanoid species that lives in a tribal culture with warpaint and shamans and witch doctors and is mechanically less intelligent but stronger than humans, that generally (but not always) is evil and often worship demon lords or other CE entities and has a skeletal and muscular system closer to gorillas than humans is off limits. Why is making a nonhuman monstrous race more monstrous a problem?
So is having a brutish, warlike tribal species permanently off the list for bad guys in a fantasy game? Facing down a group of rampaging gorillas sounds pretty scary. Facing down a group of rampaging gorillas that are smarter than animals and have knuckle blades and makeshift armor? Terrifying. If that's off limits, then what about an evil species with a militaristic culture intent on purging the world of any other sentient life? What about competing religious groups that send armies against each other? Should gnolls be changed to be a culture of shrewd traders instead of feral slavers? Speaking to the original opinions on savage orcrillas, the Mwangi tribes are much closer parallels to real life cultures, and they have things like the Magaambyan arcanists as bastions of good and knowledge showing a different side to tribal cultures.
I think it should be easier than ever to have a troll multiclass into cleric or what-have-you.If monsters use levels instead of Hit Dice to try to determine CR, you don't even necessarily need to add class levels. It sounds like you could, of course, but all we'd need to do is add levels to the monster, and increase its traits according to whatever formulas they use. That is the beauty of the whole thing. Excellent. Beware the black dragon anti-paladin and his army of zombie-rogues.
I generally dislike NPCs having special rules, but I understand what you mean as far as building a monster from scratch and manipulating the numbers to make it work is pretty much the same as having its own rules. The most important thing for PF2 monster creation for me is the ability to take a given monster (ogre, dragon, whatever) and add extra class levels as a means to advance them. I'd rather actually add the levels as a PC would, including adding feats and skills and all that, than using things like the Starfinder "class graft" hand-waved class features kit. A notable example from my Hell's Vengeance game is a troll who is now learning alchemy as a means to help the party, as well as to exact revenge against a former lover who stole his heart (literally) and then left. As the party levels up (and brings him supplies and gear), the troll also levels up and can provide them with low grade alchemical items and extracts and having the ability to add alchemist levels with that level of granularity is really convenient. Adding class levels to monsters is also a really good way to scale up low level monsters to appropriate challenges while adding a fun twist that just increasing hit dice can't do. A cairn wight magus 10 with Dimensional Dervish plays much differently (and is likely much scarier) than a cairn wight with extra hit dice.
snip I feel like this may be due to the players and media you're exposed to. People take the time to write up "Beginner's Guide to X" so that someone with no experience and little knowledge of a class can just follow the steps and have a functional, powerful character. A lot of people want that option. Even in an imaginary scenario where PF2 has every single option and class balanced perfectly against each other and nothing more or less powerful than anything else, you'd see guides that list a specific set of choices, and people would follow those simply because someone did the work of choosing for them. Then you have the other side of the playerbase that loves to fiddle with all the different dials and buttons as they create a character full of mechanical choices to fit their idea. Sometimes that idea is rooted in a character or personality, sometimes in a specific backstory, and sometimes it's built off of trying to use a specific spell/feat/class feature that sounds fun. All of these methods are perfectly valid, and having lots of different options allows those players to tweak things to their liking. A few quick examples of my personal experience:
This became a rather long winded post, but the basic point is that the options are out there if you look for them, but if all you ever do is look at people claiming to have the "best build" then that's all you're going to see.
They may not autoscale with caster level, but they do start off with higher damage dice than your typical low-level spells. Magic Missile for example throws additional missiles based on how many actions you throw into it. So there's more ways than one to scale lower level spells.Yes but now spell don't autoscale with caster level, so the bigger DC for lower spells levels got balanced with the requirement of heightened. But that still leave us with fewer spells per day, so that stills looks like a nerf. So... at most 3 turns a game, then sit in the back and be worse?
I'd love a character focused on blood magic that trades hit points for magical effects, and then has methods to restore the lost hit points both in and out of combat. Sure you can release a wave of sickening blood, or animate a blood construct, but it will leave you vulnerable until you can heal yourself next turn. And before it's suggested, I personally can't stand the kineticist's burn mechanic. I'm looking for more of a rise and fall kind of feel, not "I used my emergency ability so now I'm useless, we should rest" situation. Burn felt like a band-aid for having CON be the primary ability modifier so kineticist hit points weren't too high.
This is exactly my experience in pathfinder APs.Anzyr, when is the last time you witnessed a martial actually 'win' any fight over level 12? Not the finishing blow, not the majority of damage, but to actually determine the results of the battle? This feels a lot like my experience. I like playing plotting wizards and clerics, with a variety of tools to turn the tide in battle and my wife likes to play burly front-liners that can tear a dragon apart in a single round. One of the greatest strengths in Pathfinder is that both of these playstyles can coexist and compliment each other well, so players with different preferences can all play together and have fun. If you find martials boring and unfun, maybe you should play a caster. And if you play a caster and make the game boring and unfun for others... that gets into player to player dynamics that I don't want to get into, but the short answer is the other player is probably playing a character that isn't really a good fit for them. One big thing I think is important for PF2 is that there still need to be characters like the current Fighter/Barbarian/Paladin and ones like Wizard/Cleric/Druid, but there also need to be more characters that bridge the gap, so that someone that wants to play a nonmagical character can choose a class that has fun and powerful options to solve problems. Recent experience anecdote: My wife and I were recently playing a game (I was using my Wizard with an animal companion, she had her Paladin), and we were facing off against a group of powerful assorted undead. After carefully examining the situation, the best option for my turn ended up being spending my actions and my animal companions actions carefully moving the paladin into advantageous positioning (throw into combat with telekinetic charge, let her take her turn, then readied action from animal companion to drag her out of range of the wights and devourer). I had fun carefully manipulating the battlefield, and she had fun dismembering the evil-doers.
They later added a swashbuckler archetype (Whirling Dervish) that gets a similar ability: Whirlwind Dance (Ex): At 7th level, a whirling dervish can sweep through her opponents’ lines like a cyclone. As a fullround action, she can spend 1 panache point to move up to her speed. She can make attacks against creatures with her reach during this movement, up to the number of attacks she’s entitled to with a full attack. Each attack is made at her highest attack bonus, and must target a different creature. This movement provokes attacks of opportunity as normal. This deed replaces superior feint and targeted strike.
Honorable mention since he's not core: Bladebound Magus, or really magus in general. I'm really hoping we get some mixed martial/magic support in the core book, and hopefully it's less penalizing than Eldritch Knight (you suck as a martial at low levels, then you fall behind in magic for minimal gain, then you get one cool trick at level 16+, but are overall weaker than an equivalent character).
Again I could go on, but the obvious point is martials depend on magic items to achieve these effects while casters just cast them. Now magic items has become a limited usage resource which disaportionately hurts martials. I think that's the problem. Fighter types are intended to depend on the casters to provide magic, and casters are dependent on fighters to hit stuff in the face. You suggest martial characters are heavily impacted by having a limit on magic item usage, but in my experience, the biggest users of small, consumable magic items (potions, wands, scrolls) are spellcasters, often in the form of scrolls and wands they use on other party members. Martial characters often spend a much higher proportion of their wealth on static items (weapons, armor, boots of speed), while the spellcasters fill their "utility belt" role by having niche items and planning for contingencies. That leads to a different discussion about player appeal. My wife enjoys playing barbarians, fighters and paladins specifically because of the reduced scope. She doesn't have to track a million different resources, or plan out spells and options. She makes decisions about her character when she levels up, and in the game she makes more limited choices like "Do I run and hit the caster, or full attack this guy?" or "Should I spend my swift action to smite the demon, or use it for a lay on hands?" For me, I love having a ton of different things, and when a combat goes completely sideways being able to pull out the perfect solution because I bought a random scroll 6 levels ago is an awesome feeling, even when my turn ends up being "I cast X, I'm done."
I think diseases in general only work in certain situations: As for poisons... I'm with you on the poisons with onsets being pretty frustrating, but perhaps they're designed more for different styles of games than my usual fare (intrigue and spy work perhaps). My biggest problem with poisons is that they are usually ridiculously expensive for a single try against an enemy, and the DCs are usually low enough that it's trivial, and then even if they fail the effect isn't very bad. Most of Pathfinder's poisons are only really penalizing for PCs. The monster took 2 points of DEX damage? Well, I guess his AC is one lower, oh he's dead now. If a PC takes 2 points of DEX damage, it affects his AC, Reflex, Initiative, Stealth, etc. etc. until he either heals it or rests. There's exceptions of course (looking at you, drow poison), but overall, poison is usually not worth using as a PC. I'd love for PF2 to incorporate poison as a viable tactic, via free, powerful poisons as class features for the alchemist, and if they want to keep expensive poisons anyone can use a thing, that's fine. Give the alchemist a poison focused archetype, possibly doing things like removing extracts for powerful poisons, and removing bombs for either poison bombs or something like sneak attack.
Please allow poisons to take effect, on one failed save, rather than requiring two failed saves in a row before effects are felt. What do you mean? Poisons always have effects when you fail the save (except for poisons with onset times)? EDIT: Poison Blog for reference.
I know this will echo some of the earlier opinions, but I need to make sure the message is heard. Alien Archive was disappointing. It was so disappointing that I cancelled my Starfinder subscription. After pulling it out of the box I immediately thought, "Where's the rest of it?" The content was interesting, but there was just so little there. More importantly, I go to my bestiaries to grab ready made stat blocks of monsters that I can run at the table. When I want to, I appreciate the rules for advancing monsters, or creating my own. However, the Alien Archive had very few premade stat blocks, and was primarily stat outlines that forced the GM to actually assemble the things, adding to an already heavy pre-game prep load. If the AA had no additional content, but triple the length made up of additional stat blocks that were ready to run, I would have been happy.
...Hmmm.... I mean, I'm still not a fan of SF's ability score generationYou should be much more able to build a 1st level barbarian with 18 Strength and secretly 14 Int that you pretend is lower, say, than doing that with a 1st level soldier in Starfinder (where you would run all 10s in the other stats if you did that). You'd still have some other positive stats in PF2 in that case.I personally don't terribly mind the SF leveling-up method (it just means you get your +1 to an ability a bit later, and get extra abilities as a bonus), so long as we keep PF-style ability score generation. I don't want an arbitrary cap on my limits- just make higher scores cost more and it works out fine. The 1-1 ability score generation just further encouragesWe are not using that generation method. As Logan hinted in the blog itself, the stat generation is more organically tied to your character concept and helps you spread around your ability scores if you like. As it so happens, you also wind up with slightly higher overall starting stats, than in Starfinder mainly in your less important ability scores that you're fleshing out for RP purposes, though I'm considering using the PF2 statgen system the next time I run a Starfinder home game as it's more generous to multi-stat classes at low levels, like solarians. That's why you have things like Empyreal bloodlines. Tools that you can use to tinker with your character and build the idea you want within the constraints of the game. Or embrace the character concept and don't worry about 5-10% differences. Or go all in with a ridiculous character. I may have a 2 hp, 2 CON wizard...
This also helps with rollover. For example, you're playing in a game that is fast at levels 1-5 (say 500 xp/level), then slow from there on (2000 xp/level). Your party is level 5 with 450 xp. You defeat an encounter and gain 150 xp (based on the relative challenge at your level). Now you are level 6 and 100/2000 towards level 7. If you were adjusting the other way, using the same percentages, you'd be at level 5, with 900/1000 to level 6. Defeating the encounter would yield 300 xp, still leveling to level 6, but now you're 200/1000 towards level 7. 20% complete vs. 5% complete. You can get around this by applying the multiplier separately, but then you have to apply your fast multiplier until you hit the level up, then back out that multiplier and apply the new level's multiplier. Way more math for the same result, and adjusting the level mark is easier for the players to understand how the levels will stretch or contract assuming that XP gain remains relatively constant.
Heaven's Leap: Heaven's Leap (Su): The shaman is adept at creating tiny tears in the fabric of space, and temporarily stitching them together to reach other locations through a limited, one-way wormhole. As a standard action, the shaman can designate herself or a single ally that she can see who is within 30 feet of her. She can move that creature as if it were subject to jester's jaunt. Once targeted by this hex, the ally cannot be the target of this hex again for 24 hours.
According to the description of weapon fusions, they can be added to ammunition for half the cost of a normal weapon of that level. According to the weapons chart, battery packs count as ammunition. Does this mean you can get cheap, easily interchangeable battery packs with specialized weapon fusions? Can you then recharge those battery packs using the normal rules for charging batteries?
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