AidAnotherBattleHerald's page

WHAT. BUT WE KILLED HIM. IT TOOK 4.5 YEARS TO GET THROUGH ALL SIX BOOKS BUT HE WAS FINALLY DEAD.

oh dear.

Thank you.

I think actions to make Take Cover easier should be discouraged honestly. Especially as all the places you can Take Cover in already give you at least lesser cover by definition.

One of the most tedious parts of "roll to hit" / "pass or fail" games with any more complexity than a Mork Borg clone is frequent misses. One of the best appeals to 2e here is the +10 is a crit system. Good cover doubles down on miss chance and erases most of the extra crits.

Cover is thematic for ranged combat but also boring in practice for this kind of game, imo, if the enemies are doing it, and to some extent if the players are doing it.

Teridax is right to experiment with all of these different ways of addressing that, honestly. I do think it's interesting that "off-guard from exposed angles" becomes enough motivation for people to get behind the target when removing their cover to me would be enough for me personally.

I love the idea of more covering shots and assisting shots and more of those actions being basekit, potentially requiring automatic weapons, etc. More things like athletic maneuvers but working from range to adjust to the ranged meta. Suppressed is a good start.

As far as compatibility goes, the message of "compatible but different metas" makes me feel like they've got more room to push boundaries than they're using so far.

Is there a way to get on a "no future re-release books" list for subscribers? Or is the expectation that we make a new customer service request every time y'all re-release a book?

I still need to find a good place to donate my current remaster books after finding out my local library doesn't take book donations.

The wording on Ready Reload changed to be more confusing and I'm no longer sure what the feat is doing. I want to clarify that my goal is to write my confusion as clearly as possible, which is a difficult task, but I am generally happy with the playtest and trying to be helpful here rather than pedantic.

Where the Field Test 1 wording and the playtest rulebook wording agree are the requirements, action cost, and flavor text:

- Must be a 2h ranged weapon
- Must have a reload of 2+
- Your last action must have been an attack that used ammo
- Takes 1 action to do this activity

The Field Test is very clear:

- "You Interact and can reload your weapon twice."

The Playtest Rulebook is very unclear:

- "You Interact to reload your weapon, reducing its reload cost by 1."
- "Unlike most Interact actions, you don't need a free hand to reload your ranged weapon this way."

Now, there's a couple ways to interpret the Playtest Rulebook's version.

1. You Interact to reload your weapon, and "reducing its reload cost by 1" is a clarifying clause to remind what reloading is. This is certainly what the grammar suggests to me, but it means the feat does not let you reload twice, which renders it fairly pointless.

2. You Interact to reload your weapon, "[and reduce] its reload cost by 1" as a separate thing you do. This grammatical change would make it two separate things: a reload and a reload cost reduction. How long the reload cost stays reduced by 1 is very unclear in this interpretation. It presumably would not stack, and maybe presumably would not last after another firing or after the combat ends?

That compounds with confusion over the next line.

"Unlike most Interact actions, you don't need a free hand to reload your ranged weapon this way."

A: While that is true, a 2 handed ranged weapon, which you are definitionally required to be holding in order to Ready Reload, always allows you to remove a hand, reload, and replace your grip as normal. So in the vast majority of cases, this doesn't do anything a basic Interact to reload couldn't do.

B: Was there a design intent to no longer allow that part of reload? I don't think so, honestly.

C: Okay, so maybe it's meant to work with Damoritosh's Grip (18th level feat), which lets you wield a 2-handed melee weapon in one hand and a 2-handed ranged weapon in another hand. Okay, but then how does one reload a Reload 3 weapon with Damoritosh's Grip or a Reload 2 weapon when you're slowed and unable to use Ready Reload? How do you reload a Reload 1 weapon when Reload 2 is a requirement of Ready Reload? Is the only way you're expected to reload while using Damoritosh's Grip through Ready Reload or through dropping your 2 handed melee weapon?

D: Okay, so maybe it was reworded to prevent Operative from taking the Soldier archetype for two free Steps/Strides because Mobile Reload is a passive benefit that always works when you Interact to reload a ranged weapon. But it was already originally one Interact to reload twice, not two Interacts to reload once each. If that seemed a little confusing, are there better ways of phrasing it to make the singular Interact more explicit?

E: Do they no longer want to allow you to Reload twice like the original Field Test, but didn't have a clear vision for what the feat would do anymore? That seems like it would make the most sense to me honestly.

Anyway, if you're like me and trying to read it without the context of Field Test's Ready Reload, it's extremely confusing. My interpretation of the RAW is 1ACD, which unfortunately makes it nearly indistinguishable from a regular Interact to Reload until you reach level 18 and take a specific feat.

I genuinely do not know what the RAI is anymore because the language went from so clear to so confusing.

Thank you James for bringing Our Lord in Iron into the world! Looking forward to the many planned adventures where we may stay iron-tongued and covered in blood, not rust.

Just because it didn't seem to be mentioned previously, flurry ranger pairs well with athletic maneuvers like Trip and Grapple. Start off with those, then use your reduced MAP against the off-guard enemy. Unfortunately there's not a ton of feat support for it in the class, but the basic actions are strong enough.

One of the bummers about Outwit imo is that it doesn't include a bonus on those athletics attacks, even a +1 at the start alongside AC could've been nice and still fits the theme.

Shocking Grasp and Thunderstrike still allowed, side-by-side, for those who were worried.

re: Bluemagetim.

If you assume everything hits hard without critting, then up to [16, 160] from 8th rank disintegrate, plus [9, 54] from a scorching ray, plus some kind of hasted weapon that does likely 5d6 so [5, 30]. Okay, so, 244 from range against any target within 60 feet, which means not having to put yourself at risk or feel committed to a single target by adjacency.

Anyway, yes, like I stated earlier, in the top ~15% of luck for the barbarian, it wins out DPR against True Strike Horizon Thunder Sphere. I included that in my initial reply here. The caster wins with those two spells for the next ~50-60% with equal luck. They both whiff the rest.

(What I mean by top 15% of luck is that if you reduced the barbarian's two strikes to a single d20 roll, it'd win on an 18 or better. The specific example caster round would win between roughly 6 and 16. For that single specific level that I have calculated the data for.)

Please stop comparing against the barbarian.

What have I done.

Yeah. I feel bad for introducing a red herring to chase down. The idea was "Holy crap! It can even reach barbarian levels!"

The idea that a caster should be able to consistently sustain multiple rounds of single target damage above a barbarian wielding its strongest possible weapon? I'm firmly opposed to it. It would mechanically annihilate any ranged martial, all without committing to using any hands to manage weapons.

The ranged monk are more clearly where the comparisons should be made, sacrificing power for their array of other abilities. And even solid focus spells compete with their melee 2 Strike rounds.

Re: "it's some idealized situation favoring the caster"

Thunderstrike vs. middle save is not idealized. It's far less idealized than a barbarian's Improved Knockdown + Reactive Strike. Even the ability to cast True Strike + Horizon Thunder Sphere is less idealized than assuming a Reactive Strike will happen. And that Thunderstrike vs. Middle Save roughly stays competing from rank 2 onward. So does True Strike + Horizon Thunder Sphere. It's not just some rank 8 thing. Rank 8 is just interesting because it's when casters get master proficiency and barbarians get their class damage boost. And caster vs. barbarian is so far from idealized in the first place!

Anyway, I was mostly intending to make a case for Unicore, that spell attack spells in pf2e have a place in the toolbox.

This makes things look even worse since a barbarian can keep on swinging why you used a level 8 spell which you have 3 to 5 of to do 5 more DPR than a fury barbarian (weakest of the instincts).

To do that 5 more DPR, you have probably a 100 less hit points at level 15 and much weaker saves.

And you had to use a true strike on top of it just do that DPR.

That is sad.

Hard disagree that it's sad.

Ranged damage is intentionally lower than melee damage and a barbarian is basically intended to be the hard hitting class. And two handed weapons are nothing to sneeze at as a mid-combat investment, especially one that's balanced around having nearly no traits for versatility.

The ability to beat the barbarian from range several times a day is fantastic. Especially while a good handful of focus spells compete with two strikes from the same 2-handed melee weapon (without rage) while being ranged and AoE or having rider effects.

The fury barbarian's 12 bonus damage at level 15 is basically the same as everything other than the giant (which comes with clumsy) and dragon (which may be stuck on a resistance or immunity). Dragon instinct only bumps the 36.8 to 39.8. Still a bit behind Thunderstrike. True Strike Horizon Thundersphere is about 5 or 12% ahead. True Strike Polar Ray due to drained 2 is about 20 or 49% ahead.

And it's basically just an extra action to cast True Strike by level 15. The first rank slot will hardly matter.

When I set out to do my calculations, I thought casters would be on par with ranged Ki monks due to the similarities in versatility and conditions as power, the lack of hand requirements, the range, and lack of damage boosts. I think that's a vastly more appropriate comparison to make generally, honestly.

But the fact was that their single target DPR against +2 enemies competed with maul barbarians when casting Thunderstrike against a middle save, and True Strike spell attacks often pull ahead of that. The caster pulls further ahead against +3 and +4. Below that, you're probably using AoE anyway.

By my calculations, Unicore is ultimately right, and I think it's ultimately a communication issue perhaps caused by limited print space.

If you have a True Strike available at level 15 against a level 17 monster, the raging, +2 flaming frost greater striking maul-wielding fury barbarian only beats your rank 8 Horizon Thundersphere roughly 15% of the time in DPR. You win that roughly 50-60% of the time. (The other 25-35% is bad luck for both of you.) The range depends on your usage of Shadow Signet as well, which nets you 44.7 DPR.

However, if you don't have all that, a Thunderstrike vs. the middle save's average DPR (41.1) is going to beat that barbarian's (36.8).

Now, 44.7 vs. 41.1 DPR doesn't tell the whole story. Horizon Thundersphere's success damage and sustained likelihood through fortune effects is what carries it to 44.7. Thunderstrike's 9 possible die results that still do half damage is what carries it to 41.1. As Unicore has been saying, if you need to make sure you meet an amount of damage caused by a hit or an enemy failing a save, the fortuned attack will be the best move there.

Though, I'd guess the drained 2 (34 damage in and of itself adding to 45 average from 10d8) of Polar Ray makes it even better than Horizon Thundersphere (average of 59.5). Presumably that ratio holds true, making fortuned Polar Ray peak at 59.3 DPR.

(Calcs are vs. AoN's non-unique level 17 creatures.)

Perhaps it's true that True Strike (attainable by all traditions through a Staff of Divination) and/or Shadow Signet (the way to target AC while potentially hitting a lower defense) shouldn't have existed. (Even though I like them both!)

But to adjust for that, the base damage for each AC-targeting spell would have to have higher scaling. And the higher scaling would attract more people to use it without realizing it was high-risk. And then they'd be even more disappointed when it missed, which would happen very often even if it were given an item bonus.

Perhaps 3e will make AC spells do half damage on miss instead of more damage and other spells would roll against DCs instead of trigger saving throws. But I'm satisfied with what we have now for the predictable future. I like the variation in tools.

I would still pay more if each of those extra dollars went straight to the workers.

Me, the one player that uses snares, pouring one out for my homie.

These are all good changes though, and I look forward to the improved snarecrafter!

It will only ever go in circles.

We're already clear on where the disagreement is.

Trip.H: The duration of the item and effect last until next daily prep. With quick alchemy, the duration of both the item and the effect last until the start of your next turn.

Most other people here: The duration of the item and effect last until next daily prep. With quick alchemy, only the duration of the item, not its effect, are specifically overridden to last until the start of your next turn.

Re: "This item has the infused trait, but it remains potent only until the start of your next turn."

I firmly believe the "it" in this rule refers exclusively to the item, and that it's an extra insertion to assume it applies to both the item and its effect. To assume "it" refers to both the item and its effects asserts more than is written.

For extra context, the duration of how long infused items last, rather than their effects, is specified not in the Infused trait, but in advanced alchemy and quick alchemy. The infused trait just allows for both. The ", but lasts until the start of your next turn" seems more likely to be an artifact of the fact that this text is written in a book. So you would read the advanced alchemy section, see that those infused items last until your next daily preparations, and then read the Quick Alchemy section immediately after, and see it clarified that these only last until the start of your next turn instead of what we see in the section immediately prior.

Perhaps that's also an assumption, but it seems like less of one.

Part of the trouble of referring to things as a cheat or exploit is that you're essentially offering up a "too good to be true" alongside your rule reading, which is why you are frequently getting people saying the other reading is "too bad to be true".

I agree with others that there's a separation between item duration and effect duration.

I think poisoned weapons are an item effect, and therefore wear off at the next daily preparation. They can't be used to poison weapons across days.

Toxicologist has access to more than one perpetual poison and aren't limited as much in their selection of poison. Their advanced poison also scales with their class DC instead of just the quick alchemy ones. So I don't think the Perpetual Breadth feat replaces the need to be one.

I think the confusion is still worth pointing out, since clarification would be good.

So.. I'm still trying to get used to the more granular math of 2E, but... Thunderstrike doesn't look.. all that good.

It's extremely good. Against a party level +2 target, it competes with a raging fury barbarian striking twice (once with MAP) against a +2 creature for most levels of the game, accounting for accuracy and middle saves and the existing bestiary on AoN. While being at range, without taking up your hands, but also while costing a spell slot. (Thing is though, this tends to mean upper half rank slots compete with ranged Strikes too.)

A big part of why is that it now targets reflex, which means half damage on a "miss". Which means your spell slot is unlikely to feel wasted, and it bumps the average damage up.

Analysis is available on the Starstone forums.

Outside of PFS, which seems to be in an uncertain fate, it really seems like y'all are deciding for yourselves that you're not gonna use premaster stuff and then getting mad that you're not able to use premaster stuff.

Definitely wait this stuff out y'all and see what's comin'.

re: acid splash

`weakness_raw:acid` / `weakness.acid:*` only turns up 4 creatures, but `weakness.splash:*` turns up 85, same number as `weakness.area:*`

There are at least 29 creatures with regeneration deactivated by acid, according to a `regeneration AND "deactivated by acid"` query. Wasn't sure how to search the regen line exclusively. Some things are deactivated by 2 energies, but most of those are alphabetical.

Good stuff! Thunderstrike is extremely strong now that it's reflex. Definitely a solid single target damage pick for its casters.

So if I can't completely cripple enemies, or lock them down HARD.... Then as far as I'm aware we're about to die.

I think that's a rough experience to go through and a rough experience to unlearn and recontextualize. I can totally see why that would lead to a lot of stress around not feeling powerful enough on your own.

I wish you better GMs in the future!

I will clarify that avoiding the strongest save is the balance point, and hitting the weakest save is typically better than off-guard.

The spell effects you've listed as happening are all very powerful to me from the perspective of a GM.

The most important thing in a fight is the flow of action economy (with higher level actions being worth more)--everything hinges on this, damage, healing, everything. The difficult terrain essentially wasted two actions from a creature who didn't get to attack, which means you and your allies functionally get an entire bonus round compared to that creature who is now closer and likely in range of all your allies, reducing how many actions they have to spend.

I think it's very difficult to appreciate the impact you are making with more nuanced effects until you GM, and I have seen some frustrated casters move on to become GMs frustrated by new frustrated casters.

So when you say "I want my spells to work", and I see spells working, it's tricky to navigate. It is going to be the case that the higher level monsters resist, the same way that higher level monsters are harder for martials to hit. It's just that you'll likely have some effect, and sometimes have a strong or rarely have a critical effect.

If it were balanced then people wouldn't be complaining about it consistently for 4 years.

I mean, a large part of it is that people are complaining *because* it is balanced. There have been a lot of complaints for a lot of different reasons over the years, including "casters are too balanced so they're not fun".

Even in this thread, it's "elitism"(?) that a more skilled player isn't able to do *enough* better with a class that offers a higher skill ceiling than a less skilled player playing other classes that offer low skill floors. Rather than just having an interesting way to play the game where you aren't just nearly exclusively targeting AC and get to adapt and adjust and get rewards like weak saves typically being more vulnerable than off-guard AC.

My sorcerer player complains about the fighter class being too good continuously, even immediately after real fights where the fighter had to switch off their legendary weapon to bow and really struggled to contribute much, even though she's largely a support fighter who sets up everyone else.

Even when the sorcerer spends 3 rounds doing support and only 3 rounds doing damage and still did 2nd most damage in a party of 5 (swashbuckler only winning because of an early bleeding finisher that never stopped bleeding), against a single target boss.

Consistently one of our strongest damage contributors in fights even when straight blasting with focus spells and still complaining because it wasn't even more. Shining in AoE and in boss fights with damage, still complains cause 15d6 came up 5 points below the average or whatever.

Complaints just... aren't really evidence that something is imbalanced. It's just evidence someone doesn't like how something feels. Which is totally okay.

I like the burst feat! Anything that encourages and enables allies to Shove and Grapple is tons of fun.

I definitely thought this preview post would be bigger and more detailed but now that my expectations are in-line, I'm looking forward to the rest of them.

I'd be wary of anything that boosts spell attack damage specifically because it will likely funnel even more players into the high risk high reward spells like acid arrow that struggle to hit at higher levels. Best to have that kind of thing maybe boost cantrips or this alternate 1-action zap attack. My players tend to have to learn the "high risk" part of attack spells the hard way, unfortunately.

I'm pretty sure Shadow Signet is typically better than Gate Attenuators overall, I'll have to test that out vs. the AoN bestiary. But it does require still engaging with the defense targeting stuff between AC, Reflex, and Fortitude. So I have offered players who are less about that the option of a gate attenuator equivalent as long as it's incompatible with the Shadow Signet.

re: 1-action attack activity.

One thing you can already use within the system from a flavor perspective is Foxfire, from the Kitsune, as an alternative reload 0 magical ranged unarmed attack that is fairly well within flavor. It has dex accuracy though, unfortunately.

re: Casters shouldn't compete on single target damage.

Thunderstrike has tipped the single-target damage scales in a big way. A max rank Thunderstrike cast's average accuracy-damage vs. a creature's middle save is on par with a raging fury barbarian swinging a maul twice's average accuracy-damage*. Thunderstrike is a little behind against on-level creatures and very slightly ahead against +2 creatures, pulling even further ahead against +4 creatures.

Granted, you are limited to "I cast ranged 2-handed raging barbarian double maul strike" to ~3-4 times per day, but if you choose comparisons that are ranged, even good focus spell selection tends to keep up as well.

Upper half ranks (like, 4th rank when 7th rank is available) of Thunderstrike compete with a lot of martials' ranged average accuracy-damage. Solid damage AoE focus spells still do better here as well, at range.

*based on the data of every combination of d20 rolls at max proficiency vs. every non-unique creature in Archives of Netyhs at the target level, and average damage (property runes included), and accounting for crit immunity, MAP on 2nd Strike, and +1 status bonus to saves vs. magic.

Part of the trouble is that we already have a baseline for how Paizo views the value of martial weapons.

It's roughly like:

d12?
- two handed melee.
d10?
- two handed melee + reach.
- two handed ranged + reload 1.
d8?
- one handed melee.
- two handed finesse.
- 2-1+ handed ranged + volley or inhibitor like reload 1.
d6?
- one handed melee + agile + finesse.
- two handed reach + finesse.
- one handed reach.
- 1+ handed ranged + reload 0.
d4?
- free-hand melee + agile + finesse + modular.
- one handed ranged agile + repeating.
- free-hand ranged + reload 1.

One of the bummers about weapons is that they all have opportunity costs even in ABP: a lack of access to a hand or two hands, a need to release or stow or draw, etc. Very few spells have that, with Slashing Gust being the only one I can think of. But, almost all spells do cost 2 actions, and so sort of imply some kind of draw/reload requirement by their very usage.

Repeating Heavy Crossbow, the two handed martial reload 1 bow (with 5 shots before needing to spend 3 interacts to refresh the magazine), is roughly sandwiched between Needle Darts (~7.5 - ~30) and Telekinetic Projectile (~7.5 - ~42) even with 3 property runes (~5.5 - ~32.5) (analysis of accuracy's impact pending).

Anyway, all this I guess is to say that a 1d6 (H+2 +1d6) one-action attack cantrip should probably cost a hand, maybe a wand to amplify a base cantrip. The base cantrip probably ends up needing to be 1d4 (H+2 +1d4).

Yeah, basically attack trait defines a relationship to Multiple Attack Penalty, but Grapple is still an athletics check rather than an "attack roll", which has its own definition in the rules. Makes Song of Strength not completely eclipsed by Inspire Courage, and I think it's how the "finesse for dex-based athletics actions" interpretation was removed.

This one, sadly, isn't true. You take a -2 circumstance penalty to attack rolls, and Grapple has the Attack trait.

Wildly, attack rolls are a special kind of roll that isn't defined by having the attack trait.

All attack rolls have the attack trait, but not all attack trait actions are attack rolls.

Came up in an early errata.

I was excited today that I figured out how to taunt. It's only one action and fits in unexpected builds.

Dump charisma. Keep deception untrained. Don't take Untrained Improvisation. Feint.

By mid game you'll be critically failing against every foe's perception DC, and making yourself off-guard to the target of your feint!

Good at deception? Don't worry! It's a bit more action intensive but you can manage just fine.

Drop Prone! Become an irresistible target! Even works to bait ranged targets and multiple creatures at once.

Got 3 actions and a reaction on hand?

Ready a Stand! Aha! Now they don't even get to take advantage of your -2 penalty.

Have a shield? Ready a Raise a Shield! That way you don't have to waste an action to Drop Prone next round.

Have master in Acrobatics? Finally make use of that Nimble Crawl skill feat and Ready to Crawl away and out of range of any enemy that tries to target you!

Legendary even lets you fake having an AC penalty!

Extra deceptive without deception! Meta-deception!

Anyway, hope this was fun for you reading it. It was definitely fun for me thinking about it.

Got any other ways to "taunt"?

Is it too much to ask to be a hot enough demigod to flirt with Nocticula at her house again? That's the true mythic goals.

I'll gladly take a class feature at 6th, 12th and 18th level, where you add an extra damage die on your favorite weapon ON TOP of runes.

THAT's something unique and THAT's something that would make sense as weapon masters...

Kind of a Power Attack or Precision Ranger deal already though.

Definitely would take the accuracy, which boosts crits and enables press feats.

The strongest fighter I've seen is a one-handed agile fighter who always has snagging strike, hopeful rune, and greater fearsome rune, and uses agile grace and press attack feats to keep up the support.

If she hits, it's now off-guard for a round and her next attack is only -1 off her first.

If she crits, the whole party benefits from off-guard, frightened 2, and hopeful's +1 aura. That's a 5 point swing vs AC.

And with agile grace, her 3rd attack is better than most 2nd attacks. She gets to press and crit fish all day. Shatter defenses can keep the enemy frightened for rounds, if they last that long.

Dueling Dance for +2 AC and survivability.

She only does 3d6+4 per hit at level 14, but she's the reason so many other hits and crits happen.

This kind of build is rarely or never the comparison point against other classes, or part of the analysis of why the fighter is strong, which tends to focus on a damage potential that's marginally better than other classes.

I love the variety of character types that the feat spread offers. Many big brawly guys, some noble fencers, some scrappy shield soldiers. The blank slate is great.

Honestly I think the feats are stronger than the +2 (though they work off each other).

Anyway, good class. Those are my notes.

There's so few things I'd want to change to be honest. I'd be here porting nearly everything over except current alchemist and current mutagens.

If I had to pick, I would center more focus spells, more ten minute activities and fewer hour long cooldowns, keeping the balance tight, the limited but mostly relevant skill list, the scaling, the class and ancestry feat pools, the many ways to support/buff/debuff, etc.

I would make automatic bonus progression base kit though and probably diversify the caster resource types earlier in the life cycle.

PF2 has been my favorite system that isn't rules-light. I think many of its problems are still from growing pains and rather small. Early APs and class abilities that didn't yet know how strong or weak they were in the grand scheme until they saw a few years of play.

It really makes me excited for Starfinder 2e that they'll have already all this to work from.

That was another difference in our interpretations.

I largely viewed using wizard as an easy point of example about theme, specialization, and generalization to compare against the kineticist, rather than singling out wizard vs. all spellcasters.

I find a few things in this thread to be confusing.

Michael didn't say anything approaching "requiring perfect foreknowledge", he said "Since a wizard very much can have a spell for every situation that targets every possible defense, the game has to assume they do, otherwise you cannot meet the goal of balance".

The way I interpret this is "a wizard can and often does have enough spells for the day to be able to target every defense", and defense specifically meaning: AC, Will, Fortitude, and Reflex. After all, we know remaster spell blocks are changing to say "Defense" on every spell to highlight this expectation to help highlight the importance of targeting a variety of defenses.

And a wizard pretty much can do that after a few levels. That doesn't really require any foreknowledge, but foreknowledge can help for sure. And they do, from experience, often have enough spell slot resources to get through almost all encounters with the ability to avoid strong defenses and sometimes hit weak defenses.

Many of these responses about hours and days spent pre-reading APs and using divination spells feel disconnected to Michael's words. It's injecting a lot of stuff into Michael's words and then reacting to that injection.

Perhaps it's just differing interpretations of the words, but I would think that Occam's razor is much more on the side of this interpretation than "perfect foreknowledge".

I love Tabletop Gold. Their audio quality rocks from the start and they're a funny group. A few minutes of banter at the start of episodes, then an hour of real game.

There's some real surprises in their story telling and the host makes good music for the show from time to time. They do a decent job with roleplay and clarifying the rules, and correct their mistakes.

Just a good hat time all around.

How does Gleaming Blade compare against a Magus's Spellstrike? Or a fighter just using a greatsword twice?

Like, I understand that Gleaming Blade is tempting, as two big Strikes with one at only a -2 instead of -5. But it still needs to "reload", which makes me think that it behaves more similarly to how a magus needs to reload their spellstrikes.

The class also only seems to have bonus damage exclusively while it is using a Weapon Ikon, which is usually +1-2 per weapon die. There's no rage, hunted prey, thaumaturge's two damage boosts, etc.

If you have to do anything other than stand still and whack, you can't do Gleaming Blade two rounds in a row. And when I compare Gleaming Blade to a normal fighter attacking with a greatsword twice (at a +2, then a -1 relative to Gleaming Blade), it seems okay to get a little bonus damage in exchange for needing to "reload", but it doesn't seem too strong in a vacuum. Especially since, until you do reload, your damage per Strike is only on par with monk (who seems to have more benefits going on to balance that out).

I haven't had a chance to playtest yet, so I'm asking y'all who have tested it how it actually worked out.

Mostly, my suspicion is that it'll work out that people will over-value DPR again and end up with a selfish exemplar who traps themselves into a specific damage rotation.

The Worn Ikon abilities were actually the ones that seemed most exciting to me, and seem to be perceived as very underwhelming by most other folks. I personally wish I could just cycle through 3 worn ikons instead of dealing with the others.

Not sure where to say this, but I would highly encourage y'all to focus on what makes Starfinder good rather than what makes Pathfinder players feel good. You're building a whole separate game on the core engine with a whole separate meta state, and it's going to feel weird to Pathfinder players who aren't grokking that.

A lot of Pathfinder communities seem to be treating Starfinder like it's going to be a Pathfinder expansion pack, and their feedback when polled in surveys is going to skew away from really honing in on what makes Starfinder a good game and toward critiquing these abilities from a Pathfinder-meta perspective.

I'm saying this as someone who has played tons of Pathfinder but very little Starfinder: please focus on the Starfinder fans!

(I guess it mostly seems like you are already so please continue to do so! Everything here sounds very exciting.)

I've played a Bomber to L11 so far.

Levels 7-12 are the best levels for an alchemist. Bomber is the least complained about subclass. Alchemical sciences investigator can use the same self-buffs (less splash damage but can precision d8 the bombs), so I don't honestly feel like access to mutagens is a justification for the late game nerf.

You're about to hit the levels where you miss more often than any other class. Creatures get +3 AC every two levels and you're gonna feel that lack of master, and you're gonna feel hard locked into quicksilver instead of being able to mix up something else occasionally. Maybe you'll be like me and miss with a 14 (after a +1) on the die against a PL+1 creature in the midst of a near TPK and just... lose interest. AC is the only thing you can really target with your abilities, you're not a caster.

I was about to ask to switch from mutagenist to chirurgeon because so many of my turns became quick alchemy 2 elixirs of life and chug or force feed someone. Funnily enough, an extremely powerful ability that I never had the class fantasy of doing so often. Maybe it and now skunk bomb (which nearly requires bomber subclass to not hit allies) and sticky bomb and mutagens together are the reason we're at expert. Mostly I think they thought alchemical items would scale harder than they did.

Okay so you've either spent money getting Collar of the Shifting Spider on all 4 party members, and you're lucky enough that they're all willing to use them. You're about level 6 or 7. You've got your action economy boost over ambushes. Or, 11+ when you've rebought all your formulas just so they can do again what they already did, but they last an hour now. Just a couple levels before the heroism scroll becomes cheap enough it might as well be a cantrip.

Being able to prebuff with a ten minute buff is something I've almost always been able to do. The majority of the games take place in dungeon-equivalents. In my experience, it's rare to be ambushed, slightly rarer to ambushed in the next 10-60 minutes instead of the next 10 minutes. But yes, you'll get more action economy value if you can't predict if you'll be in a fight in the next ten minutes.

Yes, heroism and mutagens stack. That doesn't really have relevance to a conversation about comparing the two. It seems to imply that, because they can stack, mutagens need to be second class because bards and spells are first class.

I've had a maestro bard without charisma item bonuses turn down silvertongue's +3 because they didn't want to deal with being temporarily untrained in a skill.

-1 AC mutagens turned down because people don't want to be on the receiving end of a crit. (Especially reasonable against a dragon.)

Quicksilver turned down by the sorcerer eldritch archer who stays in the far back because if they do get hit, they already don't have a ton of hp.

I've even had energy mutagens turned down. (Not really that reasonable but oh well.) I got so used to hearing no that I didn't even bother to offer while we were in a fire dungeon. Just announced I was using it, explained what it did, and no one asked for one.

(Meanwhile I have a bomber player who took ranger archetype just so he can Hunt Prey and Hunter's Aim, which doesn't combine with Quick Bomber. I gave him early expert proficiency and told him to retrain out of it after two sessions. He'll do all that for accuracy but won't drink quicksilver.)

Mutagens are so punishing that alchemist becomes the only support class where a large subset of players actively reject your class's support.

And their benefits are typically worse than a 30gp scroll of heroism. The free gold value is an illusion.

Tragically, the ideal high level martial alchemist already exists. It's just not an alchemist. It's an alchemical sciences investigator with the alchemist archetype.

You get 10 vials for quick alchemy elixirs at your level, enough to keep you and an ally topped up on your favorite mutagen. Int to accuracy for ranged or melee attacks once a round giving you lots of flexibility. Strategic precision damage on bombs, and knowing ahead of time if you're going to crit so you can hit them with the necrotic bomb for sickened 3. Knowing if you're gonna hit or miss so you can just drink an elixir. Accuracy with choker arm mutagen is higher than the alchemist's normal accuracy.

Then you have 20 reagents for level-5 items, many of which are pretty solid picks. You can even advanced prep insight coffee for d8s on your precision damage.

Hell, pick up Trick Magic Item with all your investigator skill proficiencies and cast a scroll of Heroism before every combat. Only 30gp, you can afford like 30 of those with just the recommended spare change for a level 13, master proficiency martial character. The wand is only 360gp. It's better than most mutagens that cost up to 4000gp if you don't have a source of status bonus and stays relevant the entire game, unlike the mutagens with their inflated costs just to pull off a relative +1.

Like, we can do powergame nonsense. We can start choker arm, Devise a Stratagem, free action Revivifying Mutagen, then drink a fury cocktail to get the relative +2 to squeak out the crit. You don't even need to use the maximum level choker arm mutagens (or many elixirs), the level-5 prepared ones are good enough.

And the main thing driving me toward switching to this powergame nightmare nonsense is that the alchemist can only target AC and can only do that poorly at high levels. Casters can at least pick which of the 4 defenses to target.

The alchemist archetype is stacked. Any martial can take it and get decent weakness coverage, moderate healing, slow burn but great late game utility. You can just get what ends up feeling like the whole class, just a little behind and for 3 or 4 feats. I don't run free archetype but with it that's literally free.

Master proficiency with unarmed, simple, and bombs at 13 (15 max) would really help late game. Recommend auto-heighten formulas as well. Don't need crit spec or greater weapon spec or big damage boosts or whatever, but at least hitting is important.

I really wish this class and alchemical items could get a whole fundamental rebuild in themselves but it's honestly too late for that.

Was hoping for a tactics RPG but honestly couch co-op Gauntlet/Diablo seems like cute fun. Gonna back for sure!

For those like myself who are hopeful for a premium module on Foundry, it looks like the teams are working on Gatewalkers and Kingmaker at the moment. I found this by searching the Foundry discord's Pf2e channel.

I hope this comes with at least a GM suggestion of how a follower of Arazni can get at least some betrayal in. I'm on board for the non-good alignment campaign,
it's hype, but I've always wanted to get some revenge in for my favorite evil goddess. I would die to haunt the Blood Lords in her name.

Part of the reason it's viewed as side stepping is because the claims weren't exclusive to a hotel room.

The claims included giving her a distinct contract for either unclear or discriminatory reasons and letting her go when she had an injury, hiring a cis friend of hers instead.

A single room per person policy is the only response to those claims.

The claim is that a trans person may have been discriminated against in at least 3 ways. The response is removing an avenue that such discrimination could be visible (it doesn't prevent them from discriminating in the other two ways or just not selecting trans people in the future, for example).

That isn't to say I know what would work to prevent discrimination, or what policies should be pursued, but it's fully reasonable to call it side stepping.

Mergy wrote:

People are upset because solving the hotel room issue in this way is very similar to "don't ask, don't tell".

That's an interesting analogy. In my lifetime, I've seen DADT go from the progressive and inclusive option to the posterchild for discriminatory ruling.

I'm too young (born 1990) and don't have the experience in the military but I got the impression that DADT was a compromise rather than *the* progressive and inclusive option.

I'm also struggling to reasonably map your elaborations (which are interesting and I appreciate you sharing your experience) back onto the hotel situation, as I don't think Paizo has a murdering trans people problem, or something similar that trans people need to be shielded from. The context for DADT being a compromise isn't a good mapping for the context of Paizo today. Although I can sorta see what you're saying with the reality of trans discrimination or prejudice still being present, I think we're supposed to be at a place now culturally where that should be unacceptable rather than compromised around.

While I generally agree that autonomy over room choices is good policy, the context for the switch to that policy is othering for sure. (For example: I like single stall bathrooms, I don't like single stall bathrooms being pitched as the solution to cis people realizing trans people pee like everyone else.)

I think it's been mentioned already, but if the allegation is "Someone in management wouldn't let two consenting women, one cis and one trans, room together at an event important to their job and career" and the seemingly just announced solution the company's president gave yesterday is "we made it policy for workers to be in separate rooms by default"...

Then the implication is that discrimination wasn't resolved, just worked around and accommodated at greater effort and cost. Maybe even to the detriment of all workers due to increased cost of attendance likely reducing number of attendees.

The message is you'd rather both change policy and pay more money than let trans women do their convention work like everyone else.

Framing that as an evolved approach is, well, very reminiscent of the bathroom bill debates in a bad way.

I would consider this to be directly "transphobic" in a way that's as fresh as yesterday, rather than "years ago".

It's a big bummer to me, as a fan, advocate, and GM.