Ajaxius's page

Out of curiosity, what would making Fleshwarp into a versatile heritage accomplish that giving them a heritage, call it Ancestral Echo Fleshwarp, wouldn't?

You could ask the same about Elves/Orcs and Aiuvaran/Dromaar.

Easy, obvious, and possibly weakening the daredevil's theme. In order to seem daring, the daredevil needs to seem vulnerable. We discussed in the thread Daredevil defenses (other than AC) seem very, very bad many ways to made the daredevil better at surviving combat besides piling on enough hit points that they can soak up damage like a barbarian. On the other hand, to soak up damage like a barbarian, the daredevil would need 12 hit points per level like the barbarian, so the daredevil still is vulnerable at 10 hit points per level.

I know I'm a bit late to the party on this, and maybe this is discussed elsewhere, but I feel this gets easily solved by letting the Daredevil get an absolutely bonkers amount of temp HP. Way more than it already gets from its class features. Maybe a free action on rolling initiative that gives you temp HP equal to your missing HP, like some sort of adrenaline surge to fit with the theming (a term that shockingly comes up nowhere in the playtest, at least according to my CTRL+F.)

It solves the "trying to be tanky without breaking the verisimilitude of being fragile" problem pretty well. It also solves the "60 minutes of downtime as the medic patches up just the daredevil every combat" problem. It also lets spellcaster healers feel cool for "overhealing" the Daredevil at the start of combat who otherwise, effectively, starts at full HP. Make it only last a few rounds (1-3?) and you encourage the daredevil to get in right away and use their Temp HP before its gone, which feels thematically appropriate. Give it a 10 minute cooldown, and you've also prevented abuse from just barely not chaining combats together.

The problem with that it's that the amount of skills isn't even between attributes. There's even attributes without skills at all!

Right, but there would also be a completely different skill system (implied by my addition of "Mercantile" as a skill in my example.) This is really a ground-up redesign for a 3rd edition of the game, as per the theme of the original post. My apologies if I didn't make that clear.

Maybe some universal way of altering spells by adjusting the amount of actions required. Most spells are all 2 actions which kinda left casters using the same action economy as 1e. Perhaps something trading actions for one of the spell variables. e.g. range, damage, number of targets

Really, I'd just like to see way more 1-action spells.

My proposal for a attributeless/scoreless variant is...

To have an attribute-based, score-based variant. I know, I know, I'm saying, "The best way to jump off a cliff safely is to not jump off a cliff," but hear me out.

Rather than a system in which you use primary attributes to determine your secondary skills based off of them, why not have a system that does it backwards? One wherein your secondary skills determine your primary attributes?

You want a character who can pick locks, make deals, and sneak around? You use your inherent skill point buy to buy the Pick Locks, Mercantile, and Stealth skills, which each contribute to Not-Dex, Not-Int, and Not-Dex respectively. From those skill points, you determine your characters' main attributes of 2 Dex and 1 Int. This relates to how a person truly builds up skills in real life, where adjacency can sometimes determine how easy it is to pick up a skill and become good at it. Then, add in something like Skill Focus from 1e to represent hyper-specialization for the folks with obsessions that don't bleed off into adjacent skills.

Now, this is a simplified version for the sake of example. You don't need to have Dex and Int specifically; you don't need Pick Locks, Mercantile, and Stealth to be skills specifically; it doesn't need to be a 1-to-1 relation with skill & attribute; and a PC would likely have more than 3 points to throw around; but I hope it serves as an example of what I'm suggesting, since one of our end-goals is to find a non-essentialist system, and I think this does a good job at it.

It's wild to me how many people want to ditch Vancian casting. I hope Paizo realizes not to listen to the vocal minority asking for that. It's a fun way for casters to interact with a dungeon-delving fantasy tabletop game. I do think room could be made for other spellcasting styles, going so far to make sure that Vancian isn't the default for all classes, but if a future edition doesn't have at least Wizards with Vancian casting, I'd probably drop the system.

And removing attributes? That seems absurd to me. The system is a fun way to show a character's innate strength and weaknesses. I could see them getting shifted a little, and I could definitely see them fixing up partial boosts, but outright removed? Absolutely not. It's a part of the DNA that makes Pathfinder what it is.

Having recently brewed up a Shisk that will forever sit on the "Some day" shelf, I was pretty disappointed in how her special interests wouldn't stay special interests without significant investment. One the one hand, I dislike the common homebrew of "Your background lore gets Additional Lore for free" because it doesn't make sense to me that you would continue to get better at the life you left behind to become an adventurer. On the other hand, Shisk are unique in that they have this knowledge-hoarding obsession. That being said, getting Additional Lore 4 times seems like it might be a bit much.

As a middle ground, you could have them scale sequentially. Shisk Lore benefits as per Additional Lore, but then Lore 2 scales one behind it (becoming Expert when Shisk Lore becomes Master), Lore 3 scales 2 behind it (becoming Expert when Shisk Lore becomes Legendary), and Lore 4 stays at trained.

You effectively get two Additional Lores worth of total skill boosts split across four lores for your ancestry feat, which seems reasonable to me, especially given the limited scope of Shisk Lore outside of a particularly-relevant campaign.

It's probably already been mentioned at this point (given that we're 10 pages deep), but it couldn't hurt to talk more about it since I'm seeing so much excitement for mechanical expansion in Impossible Magic.

I'm super excited to see some more Impossible Lands lore, especially since the impact(s) of Godsrain. I want to see if there's more detail to the Living Plague or if it's just an adventure hook, if they expand any more on Holomog (I know it's not technically part of the Impossible lands, but I can dream!), and what kind of wacky unethical monstrosities Nex is cooking up while waving its hand saying, "At least it's not undead!"

I'm still a huge proponent of the idea that they're a Thassilonian automaton. Xin was a prolific clockwork artisan, after all. And New Thassilon coming back is still relatively fresh in the lore.

What could be more iconic than a Thassilonian using Runes for the Runesmith?

I'm of the opinion that negativity bias is a natural byproduct of people being invested in a thing for long periods of time.

Opinion? It's practically fact. It's the hedonic treadmill in action. The peaks of your experiences become expected and so normalize into the baseline. Now the troughs, instead of being a return to baseline, become detractors.

Agreed. I've definitely had more moments of frustration and doubt lately, but I'll avoid listing those to turn this into a place of complaints.

At the end of the day, I really like Pathfinder, and I'm still happy with a lot of what's both been and about to be released.

I believe that anyone can study a grimoire when preparing at the start of the day, but it doesn't give them the spells in the book unless they're a prepared caster that uses a spellbook (like a wizard, magus, or esoteric polymath bard.) It just gives them the other benefits.

So, if a spontaneous spellcaster prepares with the book at the start of the day and also just happens to already have one of the listed spells in their repertoire, then they can end the duration of the spell to boost their save against a coven spell.

That's still a lot of hoops to jump through for an absolutely garbage effect, so I changed the hunter's hagbook's "special ability" to the following:

(Reaction)Hag Hunter's Heroism

Trigger: A monster from the Hag family uses an effect on you or an ally that requires a save, and that target is effected by a beneficial spell you cast on it that has a duration.
Effect: You end the qualifying beneficial effect, and the target improves the degree of success on their save by one step.

It helps it feel like an actually effective tool that Drusilla gives the PC's without having a wizard around, and while it's powerful, it also requires you to jump through some hoops.

Give summoner a good in class reaction as well. Eidolon’s opportunity isn’t bad, but it’s not enough. Give em something that mitigates damage so they don’t have to go champion to protect their own eidolon.

Honestly just make Protect Companion not cost health. Just make it "Shield, but you can target your eidolon and shield block for it." It was always weird to me that you have to spend health to shield block with Protect Companion, when you share health and the whole reason you're doing it is to not take damage.

Tandem Movement should be free, not a feat.

I don't really see why. I'm GMing for a summoner right now, and it doesn't seem mandatory. Yeah, it's always helpful, but it doesn't seem like he would be lacking without it. He'd just have to think about movement a little more carefully and sometimes not have to cast a cantrip.

I'd go so far as to say Tandem Movement could be removed entirely to give 4th-level summoner feats some breathing room, but then again, I've always been a contrarian.

I am concerned with their quality, but I feel it's misattributed to the remaster. Early remaster products were pretty dang good by my measure, and it's only here, towards the end, that we're seeing quality issues crop up heavily.

But hey, maybe that's just me being starry-eyed from when the remaster came out and I went from having a couple core books on my shelf to actually playing the game.

The thralls should just not take up space and not hinder movement.

I feel as though this might negatively impact class fantasy for Necromancer players. They were already complaining that thralls were "totems" instead of undead because they couldn't move (despite moving being a trap option when you could instead summon them to where you want to move them.)

Goodness gracious minionmancers are hard to balance.

It's essentially the everything attribute. Swarms? Force goes through. Incorporeals? Force goes through. Elementals? Force goes through. Fiends and Celestials? Force goes through. Lifeless constructs? force goes through.

Having the option to choose between Slashing and Bludgeoning with Imaginary Weapon meant that you could trigger what were, in my experience, somewhat common weaknesses while avoiding somewhat common resistances, with the risk that you'd have to try one, then try the other if the enemy turned out to be resistant to the first you chose.

This change means that you lose the ability to trigger weaknesses and you lose a damage die size in exchange for only overcoming enemies that are resistant to both slashing and bludgeoning.

This seems like a net loss to me.

All my commentary here is from the point of view of Magi getting Imaginary Weapon, not Psychics.

Unfortunately, the people you're discussing that with didn't get the memo.

But here's the thing. If you miss Imaginary Weapon, just get Gouging Claw

Gouging claw is not on the occult spell list.

I mean, Thaleon's Iconic Encounter even shows him with hovering Imaginary Weapons, and references that he "shot" the blade toward the woman as if it was a projectile.

...

But I do like the idea of miming, painting, etcetera-ing a ranged weapon in addition to melee weapons.

I always thought this was a primary use-case of the Warp Space amp. Even though Imaginary Weapon is a melee spell, if you warp space such that the spell "originates" from a square adjacent to the target, it effectively makes the feat into the Reach spellshape feat. You could even get flanking by making the "originating" square appear on the opposite side of a target from an ally.

But maybe that's just a ruling I made at my table.

I'm betting the Runesmith iconic is a (New) Thassilonian clockwork automaton, rather than a Jistkan automaton, given the class is the Runesmith. That might explain the aesthetic differences.

Honestly, I'd prefer to return to the old store at this point. I know that's not a feasible option, and Paizo would likely be out a lot of money to whoever they paid for this site, but... man this blows.

Every single feature of the old store was sacrificed solely to make automated subscriptions mildly easier to manage.

Was there no world in which this new store became the "physical" storefront, and then the digital storefront stayed the same?

I'm surprised I didn't find this one here already, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

The site doesn't watermark/copyright protect my PDF's when downloaded through the new site, which I understand is intentional. However, the Draconic Codex has the watermark for a team member at Paizo (Lyle Borders.)

I especially dislike that it's redirecting to an AWS-hosted version when I try to open it. I know hosting is expensive, and AWS is the service "everybody uses," and Paizo have been apparently using it for a while, but man it sure makes supporting Paizo less ethical.

I've been pretty interested in the draconic codex for a little while now, but this one has tempered some of that interest.

The vorpal dragon looks really cool, but I kinda dislike it being "vorpal," as if "vorpal" is some inherently-existent identity that can be impressed upon dragonkind in some way. It's not awful, but it's definitely off.

And while I love the coral dragon and think it's cool, knowing that it's going to be in both books makes me a little anxious about what other duplicates we're going to be getting.

Still cool, though!

JiCi wrote:

Huh... if the Vorpal Dragon doesn't have a breath weapon, what's gonna be the alternative for any class feature and spell that usually grants one :O ?

I think mechanically it will have a breath weapon, that will deal void damage.

Yeah, the way I read it, they have a breath weapon. It's just that, unlike most dragons' breath weapons which blow, this breath weapon sucks.

but all you've done is add a weapon to the game that 99% of characters wont use.

Ah, yes, the thing that already happens every time a new book comes out with 10 more weapon options ;)

Or you've added a weapon to the game that is so good, that you'll suddenly see a rise in certain ancestries being played just to get access to that weapon (which is bad game design).

I agree that it's hard to find the balancing point between, "Everyone uses this or no one uses this." However, I do think an interesting balancing point between these two extremes is, "Gnome fighters use this. Other fighters do not." And I don't think that's an unrealistic goal to hit.

But sure, if you're dead set on literally 0 concessions, we could also just do nothing.

I think we should stop asking for realism in TTRPGs.

To preface this: I don't agree with OP, and I don't think we need an overall template for "giant-sized weapons" to have mechanical meaning.

However, I have a couple of problems with how you've presented your counter-argument here.

First, it's the classic misappropriation of, "Ugh, realism? The game has DRAGONS!!!" The point is that people want a degree of realism so as to create a suspension of disbelief. They want things to make sense within the context of the world that they're experiencing. They want verisimilitude. The idea that an ogre with a club sized for ogres won't deal more damage than a pixie with a club sized for pixies breaks that verisimilitude for a lot of people.

Secondly, your argument is just as applicable to the opposing argument. "We should stop asking for realism" grinds against the point someone else brought up that weapons are pretty broadly effective based on design, force, and technique. Realism generally sides with, "size doesn't matter."

All that being said, I think some concessions could be made (and would argue some already have in Giant Instinct for Barbarian) so as to show kindness to the people who want to play the game and for whom this is a problem. You don't need fundamental, underlying changes, but could introduce a handful of weapons that are specifically for differently-sized creatures that have mechanical uniqueness to them in that way. Some weapons that are balanced from the outset to be a "large" weapon or a "small" weapon. You'd only have to thrown in a handful of weapons to create a sense of verisimilitude without overthrowing the entire game's balance.

Maybe Ogre Hooks could be specifically rebalanced to be a Large-size weapon for the Ogres traditionally known to wield them. Gnomish or Halfling ancestral weapons could be rebalanced to both come with penalties for larger-sized creatures trying to use them while providing some accommodation for the strength penalty inherent to the ancestries that are supposed to wield them.

Despair dragon is so incredibly cool.

I strongly agree. Slings are way better than the implication of this system. It's just that they're trying to ensure an aesthetic, such that slings aren't commonly used since most games take place in a pseudo-medieval-renaissance period rather than a bronze age period (where slings were king.) They're harder to use, so should be martial, and hit hard.

I don't know that I agree with the weapon groups otherwise, nor do I agree that throwing hammers should be gone.

That being said, if I can tack another "historical inaccuracy complaint" on:

Why are bucklers just wrist-shields? Bucklers are not wrist-shields. They're small, light, dueling shields. You still hold them in one hand. They should not be "free-hand" shields. If anything, they should just be a +1 AC shield with an agile shield bash (so as to ensure it still has a niche.) If they need more than that, then maybe they can shield bash and raise as a single action, but I think that'd be pushing it.

If you want to preserve the niche of a free-hand shield, fine. Just call it a wrist-shield or wrist-guard, not a buckler.

I can see we're keeping the last-minute tradition changes for dragons ;)

Teasing aside, I'm really excited for this book! Looking forward to it!

I have to say though, Kobolds adopting language of what their benefactor is tied to?
That's a golden ticket idea to BigBrainsville!
That sells the fantasy and culture of Kobolds way more than slapping Sakvroth onto the ancestry could ever do!
Brilliant take!

I appreciate the compliment, but I'm just extrapolating on what they previously did with draconic lol

Honestly, I'm of the opposite opinion. I want to see fewer niche ancestral languages. The proliferation that language is tied to race (rather than culture) is a bit of an outdated idea. It also creates this kind of weird idea that dwarves, regardless of where you find them, will speak one common language in Dwarvish. Really, there should be multiple dialects of Dwarvish, and off-shoot languages, and and and... I'm getting ahead of myself.

To address your specific examples

Tanuki maybe shouldn't be a language since the Tanuki are not a socially isolated culture. They're more or less pseudo-fey hanging onto other Tien cultures. They should, generally, adopt the language of the culture they latch onto. (Unless, of course, they expand on Tanuki more to say that there are distinct cells of Tanuki culture spread all throughout Tian Xia, a la halflings!)

Samsaran definitely shouldn't be a language since, by lore, they're just an offshoot of a Tian culture who happen to reincarnate in different parts of the world, then gravitate back towards Samsaran homelands. They should probably just speak a secondary language from where they reincarnated - or maybe even just let them be unique in that they are not restricted by language options at all in exchange for not having a single language to themselves. (Not that many people play with those restrictions in the first place)

Vanara are fine, being a pretty standalone society, and Wayang lived as their own culture in the plane of shadow long before coming to the material plane. But again, case-by-case, if you look at a lot of "ancestry languages," I think many are misplaced.

All that being said, I do agree on Kobolds. However, rather than just saying, "They speak Kobold unilaterally across the world," I'd like to see a small section of various Kobold languages, possibly based on the source of their obsession or locales. Again, dialects would be great, here.

I know all of this is a bit moot, since the core philosophy is, "The game needs to have common languages for the sake of gameplay. Overcomplicating that makes gameplay difficult for very little benefit." But I do still wish Langauge got as much consideration as other unplayed secondary subsystems, like Survival.

But I think the wise thing to do in a subjective case is to let the mechanics justify the description rather than letting the description justify new mechanics not mentioned in the entry.

That's definitely a strong point, but I generally consider the whole text to be mechanics. I don't think "flavor text" really exists, insofar as game options are concerned. Otherwise, Elixir of Life could heal undead creatures.

Yeah but zombies in movies and books don't fall for crude scarecrows.

Figment doesn't move so the zombie is looking at an unmoving statue

Wouldn't they? Nothing says it doesn't move, at least within its own space. In fact, Tangible Dream psychic explicitly does make it move to another space.

The way Figment is worded, I imagine it to have simplistic movements, like randomly jittering around. That's why it works to Create a Diversion. I see it more or less an uncanny, silent, dancing hologram, rather than a completely still statue like some others claim it is.

How about making it a very easy will save then? Spell DC -5 or something?

I do actually like this solution. Previously, I was having a zombie spend an attack on the figment, and the subsequently make a free Perception check to disbelieve (as I understand is RAW for interacting with illusions), but a +0 Perception modifier gave them only a 20% chance to bypass it, and them being slowed meant they lost half their actions doing so even on a success. The party was really smart, and it basically only worked for a round, but getting a whole round up on them made the fights a cakewalk.

Maybe a -5 makes it more reasonable... but then again, the perception check of higher monsters might not make that necessary. Can I generally expect higher-level mindless monsters to keep their perception high enough to make this a non-problem?

I propose that it's only convincing enough to fill them up close while they're distracted. If a zombie is flanked by the illusion, you flip a coin for which way it attacks. No more leaving zombies attacking it while the party snipers safely from afar or whatever, but it's still negating half the attacks.

Yeah, that might be the way forward, too - just an automatic success on the perception to disbelieve after a single attack.

If another player decided to carry a cardboard cut of a person, would you have the zombies attack that instead of the person? Because that's what Figment produces, a "crude and undetailed" thing.

Against something as mindless as a zombie, maybe with a solid performance check and the party was sufficiently hidden while somehow manipulating the cut-out from a distance.

As for how "intelligent" mindless creatures are, I'll reiterate my previous comment: You don't see them mindlessly wack on rocks while there are creatures around, do you? So they are "intelligent" enough to understand what's a creature, and what's not.

Rocks don't imitate creatures. Unless they do - then they're an elemental. ;)

Their unlife gives them murderous instincts, like animals have, but not exactly.

Something without a mind couldn't move. It couldn't make attacks. It couldn't distinguish between undead and non-undead.

Sure, I'm not going so far as to have zombies attack inanimate objects, but a figment specifically seems pseudo-animate to me. Even if it's just a dancing cut-out of a person, I've seen cats (more sentient than zombies... I think...) chase those little fishing-pole-like toys with something that looks sufficiently prey-like at the end of a rope.

---

All this being said, I really appreciate all the input on this. It's helped me to organize my own thoughts on the matter. Thank you all! :)

I get where you all are coming from, and I'd agree with a lot of this for most intelligent creatures, but less intelligent creatures, especially mindless ones like zombies, feel to me like they are more easily fooled, which is where I guess I'm getting tripped up.

Something looking "crude" is pretty subjective. I mean, the guy casting it is a poppet and already looks "crude" as-is, as he's a walking, talking, stuffed voodoo doll. The figment might not look all that different from him, if he tries to imitate himself.

And it being "crude" as a justification for ignoring the effects entirely within 15ft kind of takes away the efficacy of it counting as flanking as per the psychic amp, no? If it being "crude" is a justification for being able to ignore it, why is it enough to still flank?

I know I'm basically saying, "Please help me," and then when helped, I'm saying, "No, not like that!" and I know how annoying that can be, so I apologize. However, the "just don't let allow creative illusion use" feels like the kind of ruling that might lead to illusions just being bad in my game (as they are in so many others.)I'm worried about that as much as I'm worried about figment being a catch-all solution to every problem.

I'm currently running a Blood Lords campaign for some newbies, and I was looking for a little advice as to how to rule the Figment spell (and, consequently, other illusions) cast from a Tangible Dream psychic.

As it stands right now, the past couple of sessions, I've allowed Figment to basically count as more or less a summon to tank hits from the

I'd like some input and advice on whether or not the way I'm running this is reasonable or not. It's felt very powerful, but it might just be a matter of being good against the type of enemies they're facing. It's felt powerful enough that it might warrant a nerf, but at the same time, I don't want to disenfranchise the Psychic player for doing something that makes sense.

The link in my last comment broke, so here it is on imgur, until that link inevitably decays too... sorry UK folks

The big, glaring one is Elixir of Life.

Elixirs of life accelerate a living creature's natural healing processes and immune system.

Flavor text dictates that Elixirs of Life do not affect undead PC's. If that quote was not there, or if you say "flavor text is not rules text!" then undead PC's could use elixirs of life, and my Blood Lords party with an alchemist would be much happier :)

Thanks NorrKnekten!

Apologies if this has been covered before, but I wasn't able to find it from a cursory search of the forums.

One of my players had a question for me and I wasn't exactly sure how to run it.

The 16th-level Psychic ability, Constant Levitation states that you're under a constant Fly spell. The player who's thinking about picking it up asks if that's "just always on," and I said, "yes, unless you get hit with dispel magic."

But that made me realize that I'm not sure how those interact. The Feat specifically says a constant fly spell, so it can be dispelled, but nothing says for how long. For now, I figured I'd default to 10 minutes, as if the feat were a magic item, but is there a RAW answer for this?

If making the DC non-terrible means that players stick with older items, then that just shows that they were not excited by the new items' effects. So it is a good thing that they were not forced to change to them! EDIT: IOW, they will be selling them either way, even if only to buy upgraded versions of the items they already have.

1) But then how does the GM continue to provide treasure that interests the players? Shiny New Loot™ is fun. If players constantly get new loot only to find that they prefer their existing items, you begin to pavlov yourself into Shiny New Loot™ not being fun, because you expect the new loot isn't going to be worth swapping to.

2) What does the higher-level item even do in cases where you might not care about the item bonus it grants to a skill, or if the spell it mimics doesn't have a functional Heightened effect?

You've reintroduced a problem that was previously solved by static DC's, which you can now only really solve with sufficiently-power-crept items that overshadow lower-level items so much that it starts to impact balance.

Where are they getting the extra actions to activate "a bunch" of lower-level items?

I mean, that's the point. The lower-level items need to have some opportunity cost so that someone is disincentivized from using the lower-level item version. A low-level item with a good activated ability could cost as little as 50gp, which is roughly 0.25% of a fresh level 20 character's budget. Why would they bother spending the resources on a higher-level version that costs 2000gp when the effect already matches what they want to do and the DC scales? This means a character's power becomes directly proportional to how many low-level magic items that they can buy for essentially pennies.

Tying something valuable that doesn't scale to level (action economy) to this as a cost means that there's still a meaningful cost that doesn't cause the optimal gameplay to have your character be a walking magic item shop, and encourages people to buy higher-level items for a higher DC without making the lower-level ones completely useless.

Otherwise, you basically turn all activated items into better wands, because many don't even need to take up a hand.

Oh, but I do agree that Item DC's should probably be better!

Maybe +2 higher than the normal for their level so that they feel powerful enough when you first get them, and so that you can continue to use them for at least a couple of levels before they start to feel outclassed.

I feel this is the primary pain point with the activated abilities of these items, because you want to use cool magic items! Having them start out as more powerful than what you can do lends to that coolness factor and gives them some longevity.

My primary issues with item DC's scaling are that

1) In such a theoretical system, you get this issue where you can't really give players meaningfully new items. They'll just stick with their existing items, and sell the new items.

2) The wealth disparity between high- and low-level characters means that high-level characters are incentivized to buy a bunch of lower-level magic items that have very useful activated abilities.

Because of both of these reasons, higher-level items need to be much stronger to compete, leading to higher-level power creep, which damages balance, which leads to PF1e problems of level 20 games being mostly unplayable.

You can say problem #1 isn't a real problem because players can just stack non-invested magic items, but that sidesteps parties who would rather have more gold to reach up to higher-level runes early, exacerbating problem #2.

You can solve problem #2 by restricting investment slots more, and making the activated items require an investment slot, but that worsens problem #1 where the opportunity cost incentivizes you not to drop your level 3 item that gives you some activated ability that's unique.

There might be an elegant solution that solves both problems. I foresee a skill feat that lets you spend an action to upgrade an item's ability's DC for 1 round such that it can't be stacked with trick magic item, and makes the action economy less attractive at higher levels so that there's some opportunity cost to not upgrading. However, I get the feeling the people who want item DC's to scale wouldn't be happy with something like that since it still basically creates the incentive structures that they're chafing against in the first place.

I get that it feels bad to have to throw away old toys when they get outscaled, but getting rid of the system has a knock-on effect that removes a lot of mechanical incentives for character choices.

I think they're instrumental to the not just the mechanics, but the flavor of the classes that demand them, and are solid roleplaying incentives whether or not you're playing a class with mechanical features tied to them. I think it would be foolish to eschew them entirely.

That being said, your table, your rules.

That being said, the idea that they should be removed from the game at a base level is anathema to me.

They should be the default assumption, and you need to house rule them out, not vice-versa. Don't deprive the rest of us of a great creativity-breeding tool just because you blanket-dislike any and all restrictions.

I didn't think the Whispering Way was a religion, just a group loyal to Tar-Baphon, and eager to grant him more power. am I mistaken there?

If my experience as a player from our Carrion Crown campaign is correct, then you are mistaken, but not by much.

You're right that the Whispering Way is not really a religion, but it's not a collection of Tar-Baphon's lackeys either. It's more of a social club of necromancy-aligned people across the gamut of Golarion's societies, and Tar-Baphon just happens to be one of their very prominent members who they'd like to continue seeing around.

This was always my interpretation

I'm looking for a spoiler-free suggestion on a domain choice for a Spore War character.

I'm currently planning to play a champion of Findeladlara, and plan on taking the Deity's Domain feat, but I'm having trouble deciding between the Creation and Family domains. I'm leaning more towards Family, as I like both Family focus spells more than I like both Creation focus spells, though I prefer Creation's first focus spell to Family's first.

I'd just like to know if I'll get sufficient use out of Soothing Words to make it feel more worthwhile than just as a boost to my focus pool. With as few spoilers as possible, are there enough emotion-affecting will-saves to make it feel worthwhile?

Thank you both!

Now to decide if my theoretical Vanguard Gunslinger Guardian wants to spend a feat slot on long-range taunt, or if I'm comfortable limiting his taunts to just 30ft...

The 4th-level Guardian feat, Taunting Strike, states,

Make a Strike. Regardless of whether the Strike hits, you Taunt the target.

Note that it does not specify a melee strike.

My question is: Does this ability override the normal range of a Taunt? e.g., if I use Taunting Strike to fire, say, a Clan Pistol with a range increment of 80ft at a target 50ft away, does it still taunt them even though they are out of the normal taunt range of 30ft? Or does the activity simply fail the taunt part?

Anybody know how this works with the effects it has listed? None of them do damage, and are all just simple effects, like granting temp HP, adding spell weakness, etc.

For context: https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=2147

As far as I can tell, this would mean that a creature in the area takes a basic reflex save to... do nothing, and then is affected regardless of its save.

In Battlecry, Paizo included an archetype for the Iridian Choirmaster, belonging to the Iridian Choir, a splinter sect of the Iridian Fold.

The opening line introducing the archetype is, "When the Iridian Fold disbanded,..." However, giving a cursory flip through the book, I wasn't able to find any information about them being disbanded - why, how, or when.

Is there anywhere I can read more about this, or is this a lore-drop solely wrapped up in this one, single line that introduces the archetype?

You attributed my quote to TheFinish but I'm glad you find it interesting.

Woops! Sorry! I'm used to talking on forums that handle a lot of the formatting for me, and I kind of jump all over the place when I'm writing a post.

Since the exact phrase they use is "limit the blast" I would have you choose a square within the existing blast area

While that makes sense, that same phrasing could just be talking about how the size has gone from a 10ft burst to a 5ft square.