So I had a player almost just quit on me because we couldn't divine an answer to this issue. How do you access uncommon formulae? Example from our issue today:
Inventor wants to craft an uncommon item--deployable cover. Finds the book it's from, uses achievement points to purchase access to it. But the boon only references items, not formulae, so we're not sure if they also gain access to the formula to craft it so the player figures they can reverse-engineer the item per that feat and those rules. Player purchases the item, makes the checks. Do they now have the formula? Did they already have the formula? Can you even reverse-engineer in PFS2? AoN and the Resources and Options page don't seem to indicate differently...
Also, the Guide to Organized Play says the player has to spend 4 days preparing before making a craft check. Is that 4 days per craft check, or 4 days of preparation before the usual 4 days or however long to make a craft check? Would a player with 8 days of downtime be able to roll one craft check or two?
Sorry if this has been asked and answered already, just couldn't find any straight answers.
So the above-referenced reward puts a hard minimum on the result of a Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, or Knowledge (Nobility) check. Overlapping identical rewards Does having this reward on multiple seasons:
A. provide no overlap bonus unless selecting the same skill on both?
B. provide the overlap bonus even with two different skills chosen?
C. force you to choose the same skill for both?
So the shadow barbs spell states that "The chain radiates darkness in a 10-foot-radius spread around you, reducing the illumination level in this area by one step, but not below the level of dim light." Deeper darkness lowers the light level by two steps. The former does not indicate that it doesn't stack with other darkness effects, while the latter only states that it does not stack with itself.
What happens if these two spells meet in an area of bright or normal light? Shadow barbs drops the ambient conditions to normal and dim respectively--fine so far. But then deeper darkness lowers the lighting from there to dark and magically dark, respectively. So would that cancel the effect of shadow barbs and put the light back up to dim and dark respectively, because shadow barbs doesn't lower the light levels below dim? Or do they stack because shadow barbs isn't actually lowering the light level below dim--it's deeper darkness doing that? Or is there RAW that explains all this away that I just missed?
One of my players wants to make a cartomancer and is setting up her starting inventory. She asked me if the witch would start with a harrow deck item. Now, the archetype doesn't specify that like wizard does with its spellbook but a 100 GP/trait tax on this archetype to use its abilities seems kinda wrong. Should she start with one that has a resale value of 0, maybe?
A deity's alignment determines their portfoilo and actions, not the other way around. Deities are as powerful a personality as can exist in the setting, and as such, they are not bound by their actions. Their actions define reality.
Pharasma judges souls because she's probably as close as any of the Pathfinder gods get to omniscience. When a soul stands before her, she can see in both directions—what it has done in the past and what it will become in the future. Whether or not she actually has agency in deciding where a soul goes, or has no agency at all and is merely the embodiment of fate who reveals a...
See, that makes a lot of sense to me. I'd still be curious to hear about how being Unaligned works in relation to being Neutral, especially at the deity scale (thinking Potentiality and the Maelstrom here)! Thank you very much for your answer and for this wonderful pastime that has brought my friends and me such joy. :)
This has resulted in discourse between me and my friend for some time now: Alignment.
Since 2e, Lawful is balance, consistency and stability. Should that not make Pharasma a Lawful Neutral deity? Her goal is to judge all souls fairly and be *consistent* in her judgement, always find the right answer for any given soul. The Aeons have been changed from True Neutral to Lawful Neutral, will we see the same with Pharasma? Or why would she stay as a True Neutral deity?
No, because Pharasma is not a deity about balance, consistency, and stability. She's the goddess of death and birth and fate, all very different concepts/themes than balance and consistency and stability.
She's still true Neutral.
Hi, Mr. Jacobs! I'm Nirvon's friend. So then is a deity's alignment determined by their portfolio rather than their actions? Your answer references the former rather than the latter. If not, then how does Pharasma judge souls? The descriptions of alignment in the CRB describe Neutrality on the Law/Chaos Axis as "obeying the law or following a code of conduct in many situations, but bending the rules when the situation requires." Does she bend the rules or are her standards "consistent"? Is it maybe more of a deific intuition? I get that the Gods know and understand things we don't, but she *is* still aligned.
EDIT: Also, please forgive me for sounding like one of those super-fans Shatner was always scared of at conventions... I swear, I have two lives! One of them just happens to be Pathfinder. :)
So the Plane-Hopper's Handbook introduces some eidolon types that my players wanna use in Organized Play. One of them wants to evolve a radiant eidolon to be a mount. This is troubling because the radiant eidolon isn't listed under the mount prereqs. In fact, none of the P-HH eidolons are listed under any of the unchained evolutions, likely because they came afterward. Who gets what?
Player's making a character, picks a background and a class feat that give him the same feat. Is it just useless at that level, or does he get a general feat or something?
Within any tier (a four level range), the lowest level of the tier is worth 2 points; second level within tier 3; third, 4; and highest level within tier 6 points.
The tier refers to the levels the adventure is written for, and the lowest level (for PC level bump purposes when playing high tier) is the lowest level allowed to play the adventure, not the lowest level in the party.
Could anyone explain how the challenge points work with respect to party members of equal level? Let's say it's five first-level PCs. Are they all the lowest? All the highest? How's that work?
I'm not sure what's going on with what you're seeing. It sounds like a technical issue may be involved. I have moved this thread to Website Feedback so that the tech team can have a look!
@Aduait Assuming a scenario is not an Evergreen or Repeatable, in most cases you can only GM it once and Play it one (and GM and play in Core). If you spend a GM Star replay, you can Play or GM it (either, not both) only ONCE.
Other sources of replays (SS Jadnura, some strange chronicles, and the special replays that they have just granted us) bypass these restrictions.
You're a prince(ss)! In that case, how do I report it on Paizo.com? GM prestige zero, of course, but do I just apply it to a random character or leave it blank or what?
Forgive me for asking what I'm sure has already been clarified numerous times, but my search-fu is off today. Is it only once that you can GM a scenario and apply credit from it, or can you do that multiple times according to GM stars, or is it unlimited, or what?
Hi! So I just reported a session and found that my only prestige on any of my characters was for that session. It looks like becoming a three-star GM erased the rest of it? Sessions page is intact, but the characters page has a bunch of 0-XP characters... Oddly enough, "Show Sessions" for each character displays their sessions and credit, but it says Fame: 0 for each one with no Prestige counter.
Yo, know I'm a couple of years late to this one, but one of the items on the Chronicle sheet seems not to match the price I found in the Ultimate Equipment book. It's the
Gold-clad mummies have mummy rot referenced in their SQ section and the blurb about it only being curable is in the entry for aurum death. So do they have both, or can their aurum death only be treated like mummy rot, or what?
Finally got around to running this, and it was brutal... on me, the GM. Players figured out the twist immediately and nailed the knowledge checks to bypass that challenging encounter. Still fun! But not a challenge for my party at all.
"Changing a bardic performance from one effect to another requires the bard to stop the previous performance and start a new one as a standard action."
"Fascinate (Su): At 1st level, a bard can use his performance to cause one or more creatures to become fascinated with him.:
"Suggestion (Sp): A bard of 6th level or higher can use his performance to make a suggestion (as per the spell) to a creature that he has already fascinated (see above). Using this ability does not disrupt the fascinate effect, but it does require a standard action to activate (in addition to the free action to continue the fascinate effect)."
Both Fascinate and Suggestion are listed as Bardic Performances. RAI seems quite clear, but I was hoping for official clarification or at least strong group consensus. Is Suggestion used as part of the Fascinate performance, or is the "fascinate effect" distinct from the performance itself?
See, that's what I'm wondering as well. Campaign mode is outlined as distinct from scenarios in the Guide, well after the stipulations about legal table size.
Does a GM running a full Adventure Path in campaign mode need to stick to the party size for which the AP was built? What's the leeway on how many (or few) can join?
I don't see the big revolt against non-CE goblins. Golarion's a massive place with incredibly diverse groups even within races, after all! My players have loved these little guys in recent scenarios. Besides, fantasy's a genre where one of the most popular and well-known characters is a Chaotic Good drow, y'know? Sure, we're a long way from We Be Goblins in several cases in this season, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a retcon.
Well, I ran it! Angazhani went down in a good three turns, the golem instantly breaking grapple and not even dropping to half health. The first golem. Of four. My player still had fun with the role, but felt it to be almost anticlimactic. "Like putting Gurren Lagann in Pacific Rim." Frankly, the wraiths were a larger threat... Still, suppose the final note is that my players had a good time and felt the intensity of breaking an epic siege.
The spell mad monkeys states that the "monkeys attempt one disarm or steal combat maneuver each turn as a free action against any creature that begins its turn in the swarm," which confuses me. Are they doing it when the creature begins its turn in the swarm? If so, that would have to be an immediate action, not a free action. If it truly is a free action that occurs on their turn, wouldn't it just say they attempt one check per turn for free on any creature within? Or is it meant to say that the swarm attempts one free disarm/steal check against any creature within the swarm once the swarm's turn begins?
Apologies if this has been answered before! So I just ran a tier 3-7 with my players, one of whom played a 4th-level pregenerated character. The PFS guide says that he "may apply credit for an adventure once [his] Roleplaying Guild character reaches the level of the pregenerated character." So that means that once a character of his reaches 4th, this chronicle can be applied to that character, if I understand correctly. Two questions.
1. Does it have to be applied to his first character to hit that level, or can he hold onto the chronicle until a character he prefers can take it?
2. When reporting the event on Paizo.com, how do I address this? Could put down a random character number for him, could leave it blank, could come back and add it in later, could create a new session later on specifically for this character... How does this work?
Just ran S02-02 (Rescue at Azlant Ridge) with my home group.
Spoiler:
Forgot that we have a shaman who, in his backstory, is explicitly terrified of statues. So when they get to the Azlanti keep and wander into the statue room, the shaman immediately charges straight past into the complex and ends up with all four wraiths on him. Oddly enough, he shell of succors himself and ends up lasting without a hitch. The party's shouting at him. "We have to lure them into the sunlight!" "Shugur, we're coming!" He just hangs out in the corner, shaking his head. "These I can handle, but I'm not going back in there!"
Would you believe it? Once they dispatch the wraiths and the Angazhani starts to charge the camp, the party retrieves the control device and heads back outside. Whose consciousness is instantly shunted into it? Who picked it up while dancing around a bunch of wraiths? Shugur, of course, has now become a statue. I then had to rule on whether an iron golem could, in fact, have a panic attack.
Running it tonight, and I'm just not sure how the Angazhani is supposed to match even one monolith! The golem automatically hits unless rolling a 1, bypasses the boss's DR and has crazy damage, while the gorilla has a decent chance to hit only because its stat block seems to have been improperly calculated? At the very least, it has a maximum amount of ~16 non-crit damage on the golem per turn if it hits all attacks with maximum damage rolls for each.
Anyone else see an issue with the boss's statblock? The math in no way checks out.
Spoiler:
Seems like the advanced template wasn't applied, Dex mod is +3 but only 2 goes to AC, attack bonuses for bite and claw are identical even though it has weapon focus (claw), so on. But the numbers all get lower when you run the math from scratch, which makes it basically incapable of taking on its foe--an advanced iron golem with 15 DR who bypasses the Angazhani's DR with +36 to hit against ~25--let alone four of them in succession...
So I run this one with a group that has been invested OOC with the role of Valais Durant. Lining up the timing so they can all get their fifth-level characters through this at once is torture, but they won't have it any other way. So we come to this startling conclusion. Maybe I shoulda read it before putting them on this path. Why:
Entry:
is the only way for them to get into Heaven and gain the golden apple for everybody in the party to have Knowledge (Religion) trained?? This seems like a surefire way for one fighter or something to ruin an entire party's chance at not being treated like a piece of garbage by the archons from the get-go.
King of Strings:
is the combat with Laktharis so weak? He can get dropped by a bunch of tier 5s before they even get the message about Intimidation, Perform, etc. I played the halfling well, gave them every hint I could without outright requesting the aforementioned checks--even Akarah chimed in with, "Hey, that wasn't very funny!" and "The kids aren't laughing..." but she never got a third chance to speak thanks to our wizard's burning arc and our ranger's greatsword.
the Finale:
does every character have to roll Diplomacy at the end? I get that it's better than one party face removing any need for flexibility from the other characters, but DC 23 from everybody, and only one free miss before they never get to see Valais be reborn as an aasimar? Then our three charismatic characters whiffed, so all that work was for nothing and they were kicked out like mangy dogs.
Art:
is there so little art?? Neither of Valais's new forms, no puppet Laktharis, no Altha the Scrivener... Paizo, I'll commission your artists for you out-of-pocket if it prevents further missed opportunities.
Environment:
are the locales so underutilized? Granted, the Great Library of Harmonious Scripture can be a neat place if you describe it well enough, but giving the players a rowboat and forcing them to do the same stuff they do in a dungeon, just now it's on another plane and with bookshelves instead of caves, really underwhelmed my group.
This is the big one:
are the stakes. So. Low. Nothing short of murdering people in the pearly streets will keep this scenario from healing Valais. If the Pathfinders fail their ultimate checks, Kitarlo is forever BANNED from... vacationing in the market district of another plane? Granted, he needs those rituals for his arm, but there are plenty of divine beings who could help him out, and access to the library wasn't a regular thing for him either. The only real tragedy was the somewhat vague and never followed-up-on threat of the entire Society maybe being banned from teleporting to Heaven, a well-explored outer plane, which I'm sure they do not get the chance to do on a regular basis.
On this, does Swallow Whole require the damage to be healed before it can be used again as in 1e? Didn't see anything to that effect, but it was a bit sad when our alchemist popped his mutagen in the lake, kept getting swallowed, chewing his way out, getting swallowed, chewing his way out, and then at some point one of the two died.
So I'm making a spreadsheet of all treasure in the Playtest Rulebook and found that the adamantine battleaxe is on the 9th-level treasure list but has an item level of 7. Are these numbers separate elsewhere, is this just a fluke, did I miss something, or what? It doesn't make sense to me to have those levels distinct from one another.
Something that wasn't disposable wouldn't have a time limit.
Then again there's no penalty to not having a fire really.
See, I want to agree, but a time limit also means you can't turn it off until that time passes. That combined with all the items that specifically state the item is used up after the time period (lotta wondrous items, probably some gear too) really makes me doubtful, and I'll likely remain so until someone finds specific RAW or an analogous/direct dev ruling.
So two of my players bickered a bit over whether heatstones (20 GP, 1 lb, 24 hours of warm comfortable heat, etc.) are reusable. The more seasoned GM of the two insists that they shouldn't be because they're inexpensive and the gear description doesn't say they are. However, argues the other players, the description doesn't say they aren't. My take from a lore perspective is that Heatstones are described in Campaign Setting as needing replacement "every three years", with the alchemical treatment described in the entry allowing for 24-hour cycle activation rather than continuous radiation. I agree it seems a bit OP, but RAW needs clarification unless I missed something. Thoughts?
A noble of Cassomir, reduced to begging on the Paizo forums... Yet if need be, I shall supplicate myself to the overlords in exchange for sweet elemental flavor. Thanks, folks!
