Allirog's page

We are eventually going to be playing Zeitgeist, so the party is going with a weird theme of support casters.

We are having a vanilla cleric, psionics tactician, and either a fighter/barbarian or blaster caster (class unknown). The first two are pretty set in stone, the last isn't but is a newer player and the party veto'd him getting a PoW martial if he wanted to play martial.

I'm probably going to be the most front line of the two supports, the tactician focusing on Int/Cha and maybe grabbing some Dex for ranged attacks. The cleric is the opposite of a min max optimizer and I don't want to say will be useless, but likely won't be bothering with a weapon at all.

I was wondering if giving up spells for martial maneuvers would be worth it. I'm not sure how much the Bard spell list overlaps with the Clerics, so even if we have the full martial to buff, I'm not sure how much of the Bard spells would be "useless" compared to the cleric buffing.

I know that Golden Lion is basically it when it comes to Ally buffing, with some in Primal Fury and counters/protection in Iron Tortoise. Are there any other disciplines that should be considered?

I would say Sleeping Goddess probably has the second most options which can be used to support the party.

As another alternative, the Zealot is a pretty cool full martial support in Path of War worth considering. As far as power compared to a spell bard, it's pretty good for supporting and lots of fun, but at higher levels the caster will be better. This is pretty much always the case, as magic just has so many more options in the end. Don't count PoW out though, rubito is great for long duration adventuring, you just don't run out of daily resources.

While looking at options for creating a Wild Shaping character I ran into this weirdness.

Situation one: Level 6 Druid selecting Wild Shape focused feats.
Focus pool: 1

Situation two: Level 6 Fighter selects Multiclass feats for Druid.
Level 2: Druid Dedication (wild order)
Level 4: Basic Wilding (Wild Shape)
Level 6: Order Spell
Focus pool: 2

Situation three: Level 6 Fighter selects Multiclass feats for Druid.
Level 2: Druid Dedication (wild order)
Level 4: Order Spell
Level 6: Basic Wilding (Wild Shape)
Focus pool: 1

This doesn't seem right. I'm pretty sure rules wise it's straight, but it shouldn't be. The order you select the feats shouldn't alter your character statistics. And gaining the same abilities through multiclassing shouldn't give you more focus points than gaining the abilities through your class.

Opening the conversation further to the general focus pool rules, I think this section of the book could strongly benefit from Errata, as it is currently it is very confusing. All of the abilities which say "If you don’t already have one, you gain a focus pool of 1 Focus Point, which you can Refocus" granting the player an additional point in their pool is not at all obvious from straight reading. This caveat in theory helps for when players are multiclassing, to remind them they gain a focus pool now but doesn't directly state anything about increasing your pool size, yet from the sidebar example we know that it does. But on the flip side a feat like Wild Shape, which doesn't include this reminder line about gaining a pool also doesn't grant a point in your pool if you already have one, but due to general focus spell rules does grant a point if they don't have one. All of this despite the "If you don't already have one" wording, which STRONGLY implies that you get nothing if you already have pool. It all seems very circuitous and wrong.

Suggestion: Currently the rules for Focus spells and Focus pools are written in a very, "I before E except after C" sorta general rule which is than caveat'd in most of the abilities and feats which grant focus points. That is, they are assumed to not give you another focus point unless there is a line that says they do, however, I think by far most of them do, wouldn't it have been easier on word count and less focusing to put in the general rules for focus spells and pools a few line for this and let specific feats/abilities negate the general rules instead.

For instance under the "Focus Spells" section on page 300:
1. All characters which gain a focus spell and don't already have a focus pool gain a focus pool and can use the refocus activity.
2. All characters which gain a focus spell and already have focus pool from another ability/feat increase the size of their focus pool by 1, unless that abilities says otherwise.
3. No character may have more than 3 focus points in their pool.

After this change you would simple have to add "This ability does not increase the size of your focus pool" to any abilities you are intending to have such a limitation on, while removing the "If you don't already have one" lines. I think this would alleviate quite a lot of confusion.

PS. A Storm Order druid starts with 2 points in its focus pool. The Wind Caller feat requires Storm Order and increases your pool size by one. The Invoke Disaster feat requires the Wind Caller feat and also increases your pool size by one. Every Storm Druid which takes these feats overcaps their Focus pool despite the feats being limited to them. Just seemed funny.

I spent a little time looking for a specific character I was making (level 9 rogue) and found that my assurance athletics "roll" was a 25, which looked to be more than the reflex DC of all the creatures I looked at in the bestiary from level 7 thru 11 with the exception of maybe 3.

That doesn't mean the GM can't modify things, but it looked like its just going to work most of the time.

It is meta information to know that I guess, though I didn't memorize the monster or their reflex saves but I know in the majority of bestiary entries I saw that I'm going to succeed.

You are probably calculating the DC wrong. It's 10+REFLEX save mod. I spent 2 mins looking at monster before posting and found many even level monsters in the low 30's for their DC. I'm sure there are some applicable targets, but not the high percentages I've seen others claim. I didn't check exhaustively though, so maybe I'm wrong.

No, as per the Transmutation rules you only gain the benefits of circumstance and status bonuses and penalties while transformed. Your strength bonus becomes irrelevant to your melee attacks, your dex bonus becomes irrelevant to your AC. They still exist and affect any statistic which is not mentioned in the transmutation spell. For instance you still use dex for determine reflex saves.

Given that the primary benefits of STR is your attack hit chance, attack damage bonus, and athletics skill, all of which are altered by the spell, you will have almost no benefit from STR while transformed.

Does Synthesist count as a new class?

I think there is a decent amount of cool theming and design in the synthesist, which is heavily hampered in 1e because its' built out of a class which was trying to do something very different. If designed from the ground up, I think it could be both balanced and unique.

I had an interesting idea. What if they kept the dedications at 2nd level, but added a ancestry feat for humans which gives you a 2nd level dedication feat, but was available to a first level human?

This would allow players who wanted to get rolling on a dedication a little earlier would have an option, and this would help better express the adaptability of humans.

Hmm, I don't see any real mention of spells. Are paladins no longer casters proper? Do they rely only on Powers and Lay on Hands?

Hmm, wait it seems to mention Litanies as spells. Still I find it odd no mention of caster quality is mentioned. Do they still delay spells till 4th level and are they still 4th level casters?

Is the weapon trait on the bastard sword called "two-handed" while at the same time normal two-handed weapons also called two-handed? Please consider changing that. I can already see the future ruling, "no that ability works on the bastard sword because it's a Two-Handed sword but not on the greatsword because it's a two-handed sword"

One of my most hated custom rules in PF1 was critical success/failure on skill checks. So often I have found players playing with such rules and not even knowing that it's a house rule. It creates non-sense problems in PF1, such as my expert horse rider who spends their life horse riding and has full ranks in ride and skill focus still falls off their horse every 2 mins(20 rounds) because of a 1 on a die roll.

Now with critical success/failure being codified in the core rules I'm rather concerned some similar situation could occur. Please please be careful with how you handle skills with regards to failure/success, especially with non-single instance skills like ride. I ride my horse for hours at a time, not seconds at a time. It's not compelling, interesting, or fun when an expert fails regularly. Comparing a game with wizards and magic to reality is often silly, but for skills at least I think it can be valuable. A real world expert horse rider would only fall off a horse when many many unusual situations are arising simultaneously (Circumstance penalties).

Neat, I think. Not sure really. I just can't understand the classes and game at large until I see an actual class chart, any one of them really. It's my base frame of reference, until then it mostly reads as gobbledygook to me. I am excited for the action system though.