3Doubloons's page

You might be interested in looking up Knights of Everflame. The first few sessions are right after the party joins the Knights of Lastwall; while there are many volunteers, there are also plenty of conscripts with varying level of scruples. In fact, one of the players actually is a Spirit Barbarian Dwarf, so your idea not only fits the lore, there's an example of it happening in a Paizo-affiliated production.

Aenigma wrote:

Why hasn't Absalom, City of Lost Omens not been released yet? It was supposed to be released on March 30, 2021. Surely it would have been finished a long time ago, right?

TL;DR: It's taking longer because we want you to have a perfect and big book instead of an imperfect little one.

Is there any truth to the rumours that Absalom City of Lost Omens is being delayed because Paizo hasn't yet perfected the technique of cloning a tiny Erik Mona who can gush about Absalom for all eternity?

They won't be, for the reasons that have been brought up, and no Player's Guide could remedy that. That's not a PF2 issue, that's an "All games with an experience system" issue.

High level characters innately rely upon skills learned by their players at lower levels, either with that character or with other characters, and expecting a single 15-18 page document to distil that down over a few pages is asking way too much.

Yeah, instead of hoping Paizo somehow manage to fit such a guide inside the Player's Guide when it already has to introduce the AP setting, theme, recommendations, etc. Everyone would be better served by a community-made "So you're starting at higher level" guide.

We decided it was best to link to the free PDF directly and remove the friction of needing an account to get a watermarked PDF. We want Player's Guides to be accessible.

Much appreciated. Luckily, it's never been an issue for me before, but it always felt awkward anticipating the "How do I download the guide" question. I'm glad from now on it'll just be as simple as giving them the link to the pdf directly

My party has finally reached this book. I'm wondering if anyone's party resurrected Deadmouth? The AP says his memories might return. Did anyone cook up a good story for the tale of how he ended up a Darklands ghast? It's supposed to be so tragic that "he's gone to great lengths to forget it."

I'm planning on making him one of Ilgreth's apprentices. Both Droskar's Crag and Saggorak are in Five Kings Mountains, so I picture he might have been on an errand for his master when Mengkare shattered the orb of gold dragonkind. He was spared the brunt of the quaking and erupting, but as a result got lost in the Darklands where he eventually gets ghasted and captured by gugs (the adventure mentions he might be someone whose disappearance baffles historians, so I assume 700-ish years is survivable for a ghast; the gugs can keep him over generations if they don't live that long).

This ties him nicely, if only tangentially, into Mengkare's backstory.

The last time this happened was with the sword cane being mentioned in the Investigator playtest, so... odds are pretty good we get rules for a cutlass in G&G.

Last time was in the actual rules, though (i.e. the Investigator was trained in sword canes). This is a lore sidebar

Actually, since a hand cannon is thematically changing damage type by what you load into it, I don't think Modular is appropriate. There's no reason loading ammo for a different damage type for my next shot should take an additional action.

One might make the argument that the action to change damage types represents you switching around your pouches of ammo so that the chosen type is easily available. That said, I wouldn't be opposed to a "Modular reload" trait that lets you switch damage types like modular does, but when you reload instead of as a separate action

Lightdroplet wrote:

Maybe the Magus fighting styles could be renamed to Synergies instead? It keeps the whole idea of these being combinations of two different skill sets but changes the name to be distinct from Summoner's Synthesis.

While I do like the thought, circumstance bonus and conditional bonus were considered to be too close in the base playtest, so I suspect you'd want to look at a non-S word.

Circumstance and Conditional were too confusing because players would often interact with both at the same time. I think it's fine that two separate classes have feat(ure)s that both start with Sy

Castilliano wrote:

As intriguing as Geb & Nex are, how does one make such an AP about the heroes rather than Geb or Nex (the entities)?

Party takes them both down? What are the unknown factors to make things interesting?

Geb is especially awkward because if the party disturbs the balance, they may unleash undead that are pretty quiescent as issues stand. Or maybe the Whispering Way is already trying to do that, seeing a second undead uprising as good for their business.

Not every Adventure Path has to be about heroes. And not all adventure paths that aren't about heroes have to be evil Adventure Paths.

I think we interpret that question differently, because my understanding of what it was asking is "How do you make that AP focus on the PCs rather than Messrs Geb and Nex"

Animayor wrote:

I'm curious how other groups did against the ice devil. Looking at the stats for it compared to my group's I didn't think they could take it and skipped it (I just said that they saw it fly away after causing some mayhem and praising Nidal). The ice devil seems pretty brutal and unless I'm missing something most martial characters have less than 50% chance to hit it on their first strike (10 for level + 4 for proficiency + 4 or +5 for stats + 1 or +2 from runes = +19 to +21 vs 34 AC).

The ice devil is indeed rough, but my party's five players plus Nolly were able to drop it without a death. What I liked about it as an encounter was: a) the ice devil killed bystanders indiscriminately (especially with its cone of cold), creating a clear and undeniable tragedy atop Kite Hill that hooked the players in -- after the torture of Hundy, Kite Hill, and later the massacre at Long Roads, it's an impossible threat to ignore, and b) it establishes the power of the Scarlet Triad generally but Barushak the summoner specifically.

Well now, I think I have to add bystanders to my Kite Hill scene :)

Grankless wrote:

That epic postal service idea someone had in... one of the various clones of this thread was also genuinely cool. Fighting to get a package to increasingly powerful locations.

We've been kicking around a plot like this for a bit, although it's more a "Establish a trade route through various regions" rather than delivering a single package. I could see it starting as deliveries and escalating from there to trade route creation, though.

Ooh, that sounds quite interesting. ut my vote down for the Golarion Post AP

As a general rule, the person who closes into melee range might get the first hit in, but the one who got charged gets the second, third and fourth. Every action you spend moving to a melee opponent is at least one action they don't need to spend on their turn.

My rule of thumb (that granted I came up with because of this thread and hasn't been battle-tested yet) would be to make sure you have 1.5 to 2 actions' worth of useful things to do once you've finished moving. So Stride-Stride-Flurry would be a good use of a turn because Flurry is 2 actions in one. Or Stride-Stride-Strike in the case of a Fighter who considers threatening an AoO to count for that half-action in my rule of thumb.

So then the question becomes what should you do if you don't have the movement to close into melee and still be useful. In that case, you still have options. Obviously getting into stance is probably your number one priority, but after that, you can still move to a more advantageous (one that might reduce your risk of getting flanked, or that blocks the path to your casters) or enticing (close enough that the enemy will want to close into melee) location. You could get yourself a crossbow, sling or cantrip to punish an enemy that's not getting into range (It doesn't need to kill them, just do enough that they move in to stop you getting free damage). And if you have nothing else to do, readying a Strike on the first enemy that gets into range can be a better use of two actions than Stride-Strike, since you would still get the first hit but also make the enemy spend the movement.

And lastly, as others have pointed out, this only works if you can get the long-legs to cooperate. If they charge in right off the bat, then yeah there's little you can do to make the enemy come to you instead of you to it. However, if you can convince them to force the enemy to make the first move, they can still use their superior speed to outflank the enemy once they're closer in, while getting support from their slower companion

....
Access: Having ancestry X; or encountering someone who has it that teaches it to you, or encountering a scroll with it.
....

Strictly speaking, the last two are redundant. Tautologically, you have access to things your GM gives you access to

The scene you're referring to where Iomedae "wrecks your face" is an error in our writing, not in her personality. We mistakingly leaned into the idea that PCs would be antagonistic toward her, and should have focused instead on how she can help you. It's the one thing I wish I could go back in time and fix about the storyline of that adventure path, because it's flat out wrong in how it presents Iomedae. I've said this before on these boards, but our lack of a process by getting story errata out means that this clarification and admission of error gets lost soon after each time I point it out or admit to it.

Are you keeping (or have you kept, if that part of the development is already over) an eye on how Owlcat are handling that scene to try and update how this encounter plays out?

That's an interesting suggestion. I hadn't even considered that. I know we don't have existing art of that situation, so it's harder to simply slot into the schedule, but I'll keep it in mind.

What I hear you say is that whichever book you guys are currently preparing art orders for will inexplicably have a picture of Valeros and Kyra fighting at a checkpoint.

I'd be a little curious to try a change in formatting first. Perhaps "Pathfinder Bestiary 304, 6" would at least make it more obvious that the 6 is a secondary page reference and not part of the book title

This is actually really helpful, thank you. I had not read the adventure is significant detail yet, and the notes from Laslunn do help shed more light on this aspect. It is a shame the authors of the AP couldn't put all this info in a single spot, but I get it, these things are not the easiest to write and pull together.

I am toying with an idea that creates a little bit more of a link between Laslunn and Dreamgate/Ravounel for the PCs early in the adventure.

What if Thropp is sent to Breachill to look for Eclipse? Rather than his proposition to join Laslunn, he offers these two options:

1.) A significant amount of gold for Eclipse
2.) The option to keep Eclipse, but join Laslunn and the Scarlet Triad

Its one of those things where I would tailor it so that Laslunn knows of the existence of Eclipse, but is only guessing the PCs possess it.

That is more or less what I did in my game. Thropp didn't mention Eclipse specifically, but he was sent to Breachill to secure the other end of the portal, as Laslunn felt the Ravounel end of the portal is a bit too close to her HQ for comfort. My PCs didn't immediately put two and two together and used one of the captured sneaks as bait on a trip to Elidir, where a couple more sneaks tried to steal Eclipse (They did, but were killed before getting away). It's only then that they realised they could use Eclipse to get to the Triad and deal with the problem at its source, rather than wait for Laslunn to send more assassins after them.

As for the captured sneak, they brought her with them through Dreamgate, but when the tree statue attacked she panicked and fled while the PCs fought the thing. Unfortunately, the only place she could escape to was the chamber where Senna and Coalgnasher were and the nightmare had eaten a good chunk of her by the time the party found her again.

Inquisitive Tiefling wrote:

I'm guessing that "OP" refers to "Organized Play" but I still have no idea exactly where someone is supposed to look.

The text is a link, click on it to go to the page.

It's a link that for some reason has a paragraph tag in its url. Here it is fixed

A lot is being said about the trait's protection for BBEGs, but it's equally as important that it protects the PCs as well

How is Colette? Anyone have any news?

He was very present in the playtest... When he/she killed every party! Lol

They're still active in the Arcane Mark and PathfinderRPG Discords, based on some identical posts made there and here in the forums

The Rot Grub wrote:

Not seeing any answer to this question.

I'm just going to run the indigo pillar so that the 3-creature limit applies against party members. (So, in effect, a *7-creature* limit) I think that's the intention of the hazard.

Clear oversight by the designers. I’d probably just adjust it to a total of 3 gripplis by dropping 1 archer and giving another an Elite adjustment to bring it to same or similar xp. I think the intent is that if the pillar ends up controlling a PC then one of the gripplis can escape the mind control.

It seems more likely that the omission happened the other way around: Eleanor wrote an encounter with 3 creatures, wrote the blurb that said the pillar could only control 3 creatures, then when the devs chose to add a fourth creature, they didn't think to update the beam effect (very likely since it's in a completely different section of the adventure).

3Doubloons wrote:

Congratulations on your heartbond ritual with Kyra!

Were there any thoughts from Kyra that you weren't expecting her to think? (Over the mind bond, I mean)

Yay! Thanks!

It's not that detailed; it's like hearing someone whisper in your ear. Which is still pretty nice!

That sounds lovely. Do you ever whisperthink inappropriate things to her during important boring conversations just to make her blush out of nowhere?

Congratulations on your heartbond ritual with Kyra!

Were there any thoughts from Kyra that you weren't expecting her to think? (Over the mind bond, I mean)

Ellias Aubec wrote:

Hmm, if I were to run this I'd probably say the cost for the service would be double that to do it yourself, so 20% the price of the rune. Mostly because crafting gets down to half price (from what I can remember), so doubling that cost would seem appropriate and the easiest way to handle it.

Crafting anything costs full price, unless you spend lots of extra time, which still isn't a discount, as you could have been Earning Income instead.

Really, Crafting anything is worse than just buying it, because there's a chance you could fail and get nothing.

And if you Earn Income, there's a chance that you fail and get a negligible amount of money. Besides, there are three factors that may make Crafting an item a better choice than Earning the Income to buy it. First, the DC is determined by the item you are crafting, so there is a possibility of an easier check with a greater chance of a critical success. Second, the progress you make is determined by your level, not the item's nor the settlement. Third, you only make one check, so there is no risk of failing further.

I was watching a video on foundry and realized something. I buy all the books on roll20 as well as the physical copy, but I use the roll20 compendium to look items/spells/monsters/conditions much quicker than looking them up in the books. Is that something that can be done on foundry?

Everything that's available through the PRD or CUP are either already in the game system or planned to be, no additional purchase necessary

I don't buy the argument that Continual Recovery becomes redundant - after all if you're rolling repeatedly your chance of failure also goes up, and Continual Recovery would allow you to keep on keeping on without a stop.

If Continual Recovery is baked in, you can use the feat you'd spend on it to get Assurance instead. Any 3rd level character with Assurance in Medicine never fails at the DC15 Treat Wounds check. With Expert at 6th level (Or trained at 8th), you can do the DC20 check.

The thing that cemented just how small the Small ancestries are in my mind was the Kingmaker character creator. As you switch from ancestry to ancestry, you first go through a whole bunch of similar height creatures—those are your Mediums—then you get one that's about shoulder-height to them—that's dwarves—and eventually you jump to this teeny tiny creature—that's either your gnome or halfling.

Until then, I was picturing dwarves at about shoulder height (so that was right), but for the halflings and gnomes, I though it was a similar jump (shoulder-height to a dwarf, and about chest-high to everything else), but they're noticeably shorter than that

Does Foundry support animated maps? Specifically .M4V format?

Yes it does

Nice to post 2 points of views without the supporting arguments and then just pile on...

Quote:

If you succeed at your check, you can continue treating the

target to grant additional healing. If you treat them for a total
of 1 hour, double the Hit Points they regain from Treat Wounds.

This does 2 things.

1. If I succeed at my check, I can continue treating them to gain additional healing. I have to make rolls to do this, as there is no other mechanic in the ability to grant additional healing.

2. If I continue to succeed on my checks, and I continue to make them for a total of 1 hour, I double the Hit Points they regain. If I only treat them for 20 minutes, they only gain the benefit of those 2 rolls, no doubling.

It does not make the countdown period pointless. If I treat you for 10 minutes, and then we have another fight, and you need more healing, we have to wait for the hour to elapse.

Also, if you fail you have to stop.

If it only used the original roll, it would say something like "You can increase the time this activity takes from 10 minutes to 1 hour to double the amount of HP granted."

Your reading is basically the same as the text not existing, as nobody would ever choose to do it.

I have in my Age of Ashes game a medic with Continual Recovery. I know from experience how much healing 6 straight Treat Wounds checks puts out (especially considering how trivial it is to have Assurance high enough for a guaranteed 2d8 healing per check). You say no one would ever choose to continue treating wounds for an hour and I'll counter by asking why anyone would take Continual Recovery if Treat Wounds already does it baseline (as per your interpretation).

If you don't need to support the alignment table, 5 is the perfect number of deities you should aim for. It lets you set up 5 sets of thematic conflicts and 5 sets of common ground, while being a small enough number that your players can keep them in mind (Think Magic's colour wheel. It wouldn't work nearly as well if there were more or fewer colours).

If you need more deities, you can branch off your core 5 with servitors or, my preferred approach, use epithets to explore different aspects of your core pantheon (e.g. Zeus Agoraeus might have the Cities and Wealth domains, Zeus Horkios might have Truth and Vigil, yet both are Zeus)

3Doubloons wrote:

Let's see.

Evidence that it's not intended:

• Page 293 saying it's only level 0 items
  

It does not say that. You are adding text that does not exist. The word only does not appear.

The exception proves the rule (In the original sense of the phrase). By only mentioning that 0th-level items are included in the book, that implies that formulae of other levels are not in the book.

3Doubloons wrote:

Bomber only giving you formulae for things in the equipment chapter (The only other bombs are uncommon so need GM permission)

You do not need GM permission for Uncommon things granted directly by a Feature. You don't need GM permission for this any more than you do for Focus Spells or Unconventional Weaponry, and again, the list will continue to grow with new content.

But they're not granted directly by a feature. If that were the case, the Uncommon trait on spells would do literally nothing, since spellcasters are "granted" new spells by a feature.

Unconventional Weaponry explicitly grants access to an uncommon weapon. Feats with focus spells directly tell you you gain the spell in question. "Go pick from that list" is not directly giving you an uncommon feature.

3Doubloons wrote:

Evidence that it is:

[list]

One line of description copied over from the Playtest where the items were not in the equipment chapter

It's more than one line. It's listed twice in two different Chapters. It is not contradicted by any other text in the book.

I did not participate in the playtest, so I have no way of verifying whether or not the text was copied over, or what was or was not in a given Chapter. Either way, that's irrelevant. We're not talking about the playtest.

If you choose to ignore what's printed, that's your choice.

Alright, two lines copied over from the playtest. It's relevant because it's evidence that the description is not a deliberate choice in the final rule, just a missed spot in editing.

---

I'll add one more piece of evidence to the fact that it is not intended: the Alchemist Kit includes a Basic Crafter's Kit. If it was intended to include all the Equipment chapter's formulae, the alchemist would not make such a big fuss of counting how many formulae they have in their Formula Book feature (since the equipment chapter contains all level 1 alchemical items in the CRB)

Let's see.
Evidence that it's not intended:

• Page 293 saying it's only level 0 items
• Chirurgeon only giving you formulae for things in the equipment chapter
• Bomber only giving you formulae for things in the equipment chapter (The only other bombs are uncommon so need GM permission)

Evidence that it is:

• One line of description copied over from the Playtest where the items were not in the equipment chapter

At this point, you're at best in Ambiguous Rules territory: if one version of an ambiguous rule seems too good to be true, it probably is

Themetricsystem wrote:

So your interpretation would have every Alchemist being able to buy a Basic Crafter's Book and bypass the need to learn or buy the Formulas any of the Alchemical items listed on page 292?

Yes, that's correct. That's why they're there. I'm not interpreting anything. That's what the Item says. I don't see how this could be a grey area.

If people are playing it another way, no wonder they think the Alchemist is so bad.

The basic alchemical items are in the equipment chapter because the Playtest survey revealed that people found it confusing that 1st-level Alchemists had to delve into the Treasure chapter for their basic gear.

The fact that 2 of the three research fields explicitly give you formulae that under your interpretation would be included in a basic crafter's book (and the Alchemist kit definitely has enough gold leftover to buy one), indicates that they weren't intended to be included in the BCB.

What probably happened is that the description of the BCB was brought over from the playtest where the alchemical items weren't in the equipment chapter and then they brought over the items after that survey without remembering about the BCB's description.

Joana wrote:

Erik Mona just let Adam Daigle spoil that you're writing a haunted house adventure for the spring! Anything you want to (and are allowed to) say about it?

Not yet, although I hope Erik approves my title for it 'cause I loves it! I will probably be able to talk a little bit more about it after Gen Con, which is I think when it was otherwise gonna get announced.

If Erik doesn't approve the title, will you be able to tell us what your idea for the title would have been?

Does Pharasma ever fast-track a soul through Judgement, just because they're too dangerous to risk they might be resurrected?

I had a similar near-TPK in Cult of Cinders, involving a random encounter I'd placed to finish bringing my players to level 6 before they started to encounter the written module's fights.

I'd put a Hydra in a pool of water with a pair of mosquito swarms (reskinned Wasp Swarms). Like most of the jungle encounters, it was a Severe encounter, but should have been quite winnable (knowing I'd planned this encounter, I'd made sure the Ekujae equipped them with plenty of low-level Alchemist Fire and Acid Flasks to deal with the regen)

The problem is that when the Hydra emerged from its pool of water, half of them decided "F#$~ that, let's run" and the other half stood their ground. This led to a complete rout that brought one player to dying and the rest very close to, while the hydra stayed at full HP for nearly the entire fight (I think the only damage it took was from the swarms who I'd decided didn't care whose blood they drained, so they didn't avoid hitting the hydra).

Moral of the story: you can run away or you can fight, but unless you commit to one, you're not doing either

Come to think if it, that IS an aspect of goblin culture Torag would smile on: their knack for taking junk and making it into useful stuff. Sure, it isn't pretty to look at, but they're just starting down that path, so it's kinda like your kindergartner's macaroni art that you put up on the fridge to encourage them to improve. Torag does seem like the kind of god who'd regard entire peoples in a paternalistic kind of way...

Well, now I want to make a goblin cleric of Torag who crafts all kinds of things because he likes the pats on the heads he gets when the other clerics take his macaroni-drawing contraptions and put them to their beautifully crafted suits of armour

Scry and Fry should be a possible tactic. Because, even us mudane IRL use scry and fry techniques via satellites, drones, cameras, missiles, snipers, etc.

I don't think this is as strong a defence of your point as you think it is. The average civilian doesn't have easy access to these (except cameras and some drones). The average specialised civilian (aka an adventurer) might, if they put in the effort. That sounds suspiciously like Uncommon, or even Rare for satellites and missiles, rarity.

That Hazard you're referring to is level 8, it being really hard for a level 5 party is pretty much expected. Now, whether a level 8 Hazard should be included in that place in that adventure is another matter (I'm a little dubious on that myself), but that's very much an adventure design complaint rather than one about Hazards per se. I doubt fighting a level 8 monster would've gone much better.

Sporkedup wrote:

Funny thing about those pillars. The longer we've played, the more I've realized I've underplayed the defenses of these things.

First off, hardness 14 is insane at levels 6-7. The first fight, I forgot to apply hardness, so that pillar went down fast.

The second, I didn't realize they were crit-immune. Bad GM.

I let a few get Dispel Magicked, which is cool, but I mistakenly understood that spell to be a level 3 spell when technically they were needing a crit success to effect it at all.

And then there was a discussion on these forums in the last week about targeting objects with spells, and I realized I might have been remiss in allowing the players to cast spells like Magic Missile at the pillars.

Oops. I don't have a single player at my table, out of five, who is expert in either athletics or thievery. So these fights end up being the players battling whatever guardians a pillar has, then turning their attention to beat on the pillar. Sometimes that takes ages, and I don't think they find it satisfying either. Object rules are a bit harsh.

They've got one more pillar to go, so I'm not gonna enforce too much worse than they've seen.

A normal success works for dispel magic at a 3rd level slot.

"Success Counteract the target if its counteract level is no more than 1 level higher than your effect’s counteract level."

Also not allowing spells to target objects is generally silly and you should ignore it where common sense doesn't dictate otherwise. Magic Missile is a bad spell to use anyway because it would have a bad time getting past the hardness of the pillars.

My party has quickly dispelled every pillar they've found so far.

Yep. I made sure Nketiah gave my party a Wand of Dispel Magic (3rd level) to make sure they have a way to dispel the pillars. That said, most of them have gone down to a mighty shove so far (and once on the ground and out of combat, we've done the actual destruction of the pillar narratively rather than dealing with the hardness)

Even though the game was only an introduction and a single encounter, it took much, much longer than usual on account of all the laughing, giggling, and stunned expressions.

I think this part makes it obvious you're playing your gnome right. You've made yourself a quirky character that your party seems to enjoy.

Right before we were quarantined here in NYC, the battle cards made it to my FLGS. They are amazing! And huge! And heavy!

I am looking for something to store them in, I am not sure a sleeve approach will work since the card set complete is definitely Bulk 1.

I guess something like a recipe box that I can add tabs to?

I would love to know what you all are using to organize the cards. Also, what is the actual size of a single card?

Thanks!

I bought myself a pack of 1.5 inch three-ring binders and 3-pockets 4x6 sleeved pages (which answers your question of how big the cards are). The full set fits in 2 binders (Binder 1 has Archons to Krooth and binder 2 Leshies to Zombies), though I will note I optimised storage to keep related monsters on the own page (for example, some demons share the same slot because there aren't enough to completely fill the last page, some monsters are out of order because they would otherwise encroach on a monster group's page, and a few slots are empty on one side).

The dragon pages are especially thick, because each colour/metal gets a single slot, often with another dragon family on the other side. It all fits comfortably, though

The monk in my AoA campaign has spent just 3 skill increases in Medicine and just a few skill feats into Battle Medicine, Continual Recovery and Ward Medic. The only other healing is from the bard with non-signature Soothe and a rapidly obsoleting level 1 Heal wand. With only that, I know from experience he can bring the party from the brink of death to full health in under an hour. Battle Medicine is good enough for emergencies, but in general is best left unused (so that in case of emergencies it's still available); making sure combat ends quickly so Exploration healing can be used

If that's good enough for a primary healer, it can definitely work for a backup

Rysky wrote:

The example from AoA is not, the characters have to go out of there way to get in there and ignore the actual adventure and requests currently going on.

When our party went to deal with the henchman and managed to apprehend them, we decided to beeline it back (because we thought this was a priority at the time), which we learned upon our return that the BBEG fled town, leaving us with the authority to search their quarters for any clues as to where they went and to bring them to justice. And having a PC who was a part of the Breachhill guard was able to persuade them in letting us in to investigate. Which is how we came across the trap so early.

You can infer from a quick mention in Part 4 that said BBEG shouldn't have left yet. Now, the book should probably have been a lot clearer about that and made sure to note that if the PCs visit their home before Part 3, they're present to keep the trap disabled and point the PCs towards the accomplice instead, but it's pretty clear it was never intended for the PCs to encounter this trap at level 1

Aratorin wrote:

The purpose of the Flaw is to allow any Ancestry to get an 18 in the Key Ability for any Class.

Is this stated somewhere?

Aratorin wrote:

You can get an 18 WIS on a Goblin Cleric, but no, you could not also get a 16 STR, as you would have to spend your 1 Free Ancestry boost on WIS to be able to get to 18 WIS.

A Goblin still can't get to 18 Wis because the flaw can't boost an ability that's already getting a boost.

EDIT: page 20, "when you gain multiple ability boosts at the same time, you must apply each one to a different score"

The best a Goblin Cleric could hope for would be 16 Wis.

The Optional Flaws rule explicitly mentions that doubling up the two free boosts onto a flaw is acceptable. Getting an 18 out of a flaw may not be the only purpose of that rule (getting a 16 out of a flawed non-key ability I'd argue is even more important), but it is one use that's explicitly called out as allowed

Prismatic sphere's sizing is so that 1 large or up to 4 medium creatures (including the caster) can be inside it and protected on all sides.

2 Large (with room leftover for 4 Medium) or 12 medium. A 10ft burst has a radius of 10ft, so it covers a 4x4 square with the corners excluded

This seems like a case where the corollary to the "Too good to be true" rule would apply. If it seems like it can't work, your interpretation is probably incorrect.

For prismatic sphere, since the spell doesn't seem like it would work if it needs a full unbroken sphere, then it's probably meant to work as a hemisphere when on the ground. As an extension of that, I'd personally allow a quarter-sphere if abutting the spell against a wall or an eighth-sphere in a corner, but unlike the hemisphere that's more GM-dependent.

I think the people on Reddit are indulging in wishful thinking.

PF2 clearly sets out not to have the same weapon die size madness that PF1 ran into.

A +2 circumstance bonus to damage was how the Playtest handled increasing the size of a d12 die. That part of the die size increase rule didn't make it to the release

How do you know what level the Breath Weapon is, let's say you have a level 5 Shadow Syphon and your fighting an Ancient Red Dragon.

If an effect is a spell, its level is the counteract level. Otherwise, halve its level and round up to determine its counteract level. If an effect’s level is unclear and it came from a creature, halve and round up the creature’s level.

Since the breath weapon is not a spell, we use half its level rounded up as the effect level. Since an Ancient Red Dragon is a level 19 creature, its Breath Weapon is a 10th-level effect. A level 5 shadow siphon can just barely counteract it on a critical success (the DC is either 39 (the DC for a 10th-level effect) or 42 (the DC of the breath's Reflex save), depending on your interpretation of the rest of the counteract rules)

Goblins love fire.
The Sun is made up of fire.
Sarenrae is the goddess of the Sun.
Sarenrae is the goddess of redemption.
Do the math.

Well, that was the justification for the tribe featured in We be Heroes? Their chieftain went blind from staring too much at Sarenrae's magnificent glory