Arcaian's page

Interesting to see the comment suggesting avoiding picking aquatic ancestries because the presumed focus of water in the campaign is incorrect! That makes me more interested in this one :)

I think many people miss the mark when it comes to Cheliax. First Cheliax may be the largest imperial empire in the world. Sure Quadira may be bigger but that is speculation and on the other side of the world. Cheliax is the world power of the inner sea.

Second, Cheliax is the kingdom of men. Always has been. Cheliax was the chosen of the god of men, Aroden. It was KNOWN that Aroden would return to Golarion to usurer in the golden age of men and he would do it in the capital of Cheliax, Westcrown.

The death of Aroden shook the world but nowhere as much as Cheliax. By the time Aroden died Cheliax had converted ALL government functions over to the church of Aroden. Why do you need mortals in government when a god is going to do it. So when Aroden died the government collapsed and civil war broke out.

The civil war lasted 30 years. During which house Thrune made a pact with Asmodeous. This pushed Thrune to win the war. As a part of the pact Asmodeous became the state religion.

Hell Knights should be given an even more close look as they PREDATE the rule of Thrune and are not beholden to it; unless you count the Order of the Glyph, which most do not. To become a Hellknight one must kill a devil in single combat.

This I believe is the reason Tieflings are considered lesser than man. Add to this and the enslavement of any Halfling they can catch and you get a society that views all races less than man.

In my campaigns I envision Berlin 1936-1939. I believe this is the historical moment that inspired the look and feel of Cheliax. Especially the imagery of the banners of Thrune prominently displayed reminds me of images of Berlin 1936. I use this period as it is the time between the 1936 Berlin Olympic's and the Feb 20,1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, New York where over 20,000 Americans attended. Of course that all change when Germany invaded Poland Sept 1, 1939.

Cheliax is also the de-facto colonizer. That is until Andoran sank their navy. You can add all the colonial history to...

It's not speculation that the Kelesh empire is larger, it has been concretely canon since the original campaign setting book. Qadira on its own is maybe half the size of Cheliax, and that's just one of many satrapies in the Kelesh empire, which is itself larger than any of its satrapies. It's also not on the other side of the world; the holdings of the Kelesh empire border Taldor and are part of the Inner Sea. Cheliax is also not particularly large for Tian-Xia either; Xa Hoi, Lingshen, Minkai, and Nagajor are all comfortably larger than Cheliax. Cheliax is the largest state in the Inner Sea, and is clearly one of the major centers of power in the region, but is not a world-defining power, and is not without rivals in the Inner Sea - any two of Taldor, Andoran, Osirion, and Rahadoum would at least be able to seriously hinder Cheliax, and any three of them would certainly win. Cheliax is not in a position where it is clearly the sole dominant power in its region.

I also think it's unfair to say that Cheliax is the definitive kingdom of men - yes, Aroden was prophesized to appear in Westcrown and rule from it, but Aroden has always had a very Inner Sea-centric definition of humanity, neglecting the humans Tian-Xia, Casmaron, and Arcadia very thoroughly. I see no reason to expect that to change upon this return of Aroden - he'd had plenty of time walking the surface of Golarion and leading people previously, it's not like this would be his first time doing this.

Taja the Barbarian wrote:

Honestly, I'd be shocked if a lawful evil human society didn't have a bunch of laws/customs set up to preserve the position of humans from 'outsiders' (in any sense of the word) that might have the gall to try to get ahead in 'their' society...

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This is what I did for Molthune -- in order to separate Molthune from Cheliax or other 'evil' societies. I decided to make Molthune this Nazi or aryan-like bad-guy state that was equally against Orcs from Belkzin and human ethnicities other than their own. They war against Kyonin and 5-Kings-Mts and push a pogrom of ethnic cleansing from all 'non-Molthuni' humans. .... Back in the day when the campaign setting was brand new, it was my way of really telling the difference between Molthune and Cheliax. So for me, in Molthune they'd be very racist against any Tiefling, Orc, Ratfolk, Halfling, Half-Elf, Ifrit, even an Aasimar if the Human-side wasn't Molthuni. .... So far I've only run one game in Molthune, where the PCs are tasked with liberating a 'concentration camp' to rescue Nirmathi, Druman, and Elven people from the Molthuni.

Ultimately, the Molthuni for me are kinda like the Zhentarim in FR (at least how I see the Zhents.)

Interesting, my favourite aspect of Molthune in the canon is that they're almost the opposite of this interpretation! The two-tier system of residency where those who serve in the military can go from labourers/foreigners to the well-supported citizen category, as well as the roman aesthetics in some of the art giving some direction as to where the citizenship inspiration is drawing from, gives rise to a very interesting society to me. There's a core of old-money citizens who are very prejudiced, but also an increasing influx of newer citizens from very diverse backgrounds - they just had to be willing to serve for years in an imperialistic military to join. I think it justifies the old position of Molthune being LN rather than LE, and sets up an interesting situation - regardless of almost any inherent aspect of who you are, it seems like you can become a citizen in Molthune, but the cost is that you'll need to be complicit with their military. I find it a really interesting place in the setting.

This RL horror show, still ongoing in 2025, is outright what Paizo presents as what the "atheists" would do if they had a country of their own, execute people for the crime of non/belief.

I don't think the argument that "Rahadoum is presented as the natural outcome of atheism" stands up to scrutiny. I find it particularly strange to say when you're approaching it from a literary analysis perspective - it seems very clear to me that the critique happening here is of the authoritarian response, not the atheism. There's nothing about the rest of the setting that seems to imply this is the only possibility for atheism - there are other polities that are predominantly atheist (e.g. Druma) which don't have this authoritarian response, and there are certainly individual atheists who stand in stark relief from the authoritarianism of Rahadoum - including figures from Rahadoum. I don't see why "Rahadoum's authoritarian and violent response to the Oath Wars as a state, of which there are differing opinions even within the state, is a tragically brutal response to a real problem that metatextually works to invert the typical assumption in fantasy of violent theocracies (of which the Lost Omens setting has many)" isn't a valid reading of the text.

There's interesting space in Rahadoum to expand on - the Sword of Man of the Pure Legion has very significant authority and seems like they're in a position of comparable authority to the legal head of state in many ways. Tension between the Sword of Man and the Council of Elders, especially with the Keeper of the First Law typically being an insecure position, has the possibility for some interesting tension there. But right now, we don't really know almost anything about the state - in nearly 2 decades of the setting, we've not yet had anything that focuses on it to a meaningful degree. There's a lot of space for them to take Rahadoum in different directions, and I think there's some tension between those directions in published books. There's Rahadoum as an authoritarian but not horrific state, filled with intellectuals and the pursuit of human development, with questions about the cost of the violent anti-theism on this state. There's also a Rahadoum that's almost cartoonishly repressive and is basically acting fully as an inversion of your evil theocracy, but this time an evil anti-theocracy. Both of these are present as far back as the Inner Sea World Guide, where we're first really introduced to the nation, but I think the first seems to be a little more where PF2 is taking it; but again, with the lack of detail we have, both are still present. The fact that both of them are present without clarity as to which is more correct is a little unfortunate, I think - it does lend itself to some stereotypes around atheism. When we get Lost Omens: Golden Road, or whatever book fleshes out the area a little more, I think the lack of clarity will go away.

On top of that, I don't think there's a fundamental moral issue with telling a story about an oppressed group who gain power and react to their past trauma by violently imposing restrictions intended to prevent their past troubles happening again. It's a complicated story, for sure - one has to be careful in how one tells it, but I see no reason why this is fundamentally a bad story to tell. It happens in the real world, all too often - exploring how and why is important, I think. Perhaps a little out-of-tone with Golarion as a broader setting, but it's not necessarily a bad direction to take a story.

Honestly that just sucks.

Because that's very conflicting with the earlier published information I linked.

Actually, looking into this more, the world guide was published before Lost Omens Gods and Magic, which I cited.

Since they are in direct contradiction of one another, I would say that your source has been....redacted isn't the right word...overwritten.

Anyways, based on the most recent published item (just looking at these two) I would go with the description from Gods and Magic. It also makes a lot more sense to me than the first.

I don't think this is a case of a change in the lore - for one, it was only ~6 months between releases, so their development was happening at the same time. That always makes it difficult to figure out which was the intended one. Secondly, I don't think there's necessarily an out-of-universe contradiction here - and it seems too far-reaching (to me) to say that the edicts/anathema of a philosophy being released overrules recently-published specific lore about a part of the setting. There's an interesting almost-contradiction here, but it entirely could be in-universe. Especially when an even more recent source (Divine Mysteries) continues to reinforce the World Guide information.

The general edicts and anathema of the Laws of Mortality can be to challenge religious power and to resist religious aid, and Rahadoum can allow specific non-deific faiths to operate in their borders. Does the Green Faith count as a religion, and so it is against the edicts of the Laws of Mortality to receive aid from it? There's a strong argument to be made - and I imagine it is being made by many members of the Pure Legion. Others will disagree, and yet others will be acknowledging the assistance of druids of the Green Faith in stopping desertification and view that as more important than fights about what does and does not qualify as 'religious aid'. Is astrology a faith? Many will argue it has no deity involved, and is not necessarily based in faith - especially in a setting like the Lost Omens setting, where it is provably real in some ways. Others will disagree, and that conflict makes Rahadoum more interesting, not less. Rahadoum should not be a monolith, and the possibility for multiple perspectives for characters from the region (as well as the potential for stories like a power struggle between the Pure Legion and the main government over this sort of decision) is something I'd like more of in the setting, not less.

James Jacobs wrote:

So here's the thing: Pathfinder, and by extension Golarion, is a made-up world where the gods are real, and magic is a fundamental part of existence. That sort of thing changes how religion and faith works on a deep, fundamental level, and it gets worse if you approach it from an omniscient perspective as a writer of a fantasy world or a reader of a fantasy world.

Keep in mind that no one who lives in Golarion exists in a reality where they can pick up the books we create about Golarion. They don't have those resources, and it's not really appropriate to assume everyone who lives on Golarion has read every book about Golarion that has been published.

As for Pharasma... the key there is to remember she's not human, nor does she have a human mind. She is, as are many deities, unknowable by human minds, including those that invent her. That's part of the mystery and terror and beauty and problem with matters of belief and mythology when they're presented as fantasies by a content creator, and not presented as guesswork from an in-world author.

My own personal take about the OP's question (and this, I MUST STRESS, is my take alone and IS NOT MEANT to be "canon" for Golarion in any way):

** spoiler omitted **

Have you considered creating a faction to represent these people? Because, if you ask me, the problem isn't so much Pharasma herself, but the fact that every alternative to her is evil—like the asura, the undead, or the sahkil. Maybe if there were a neutral or chaotic neutral faction to represent people who feel this way, others would side with them and champion their cause, much like how some people play the Bellflower Network.

There's no longer alignment in the setting, so TN/CN isn't a meaningful distinction any longer, but you might be interested in The Lady of the North Star, a Tian deity who is a huge enemy of Pharasma's - to the extent that Pharasma and her servants go out of their way to remove all evidence of her existence. She allows her servitors to become Holy, but not Unholy - closer to the good end of the spectrum under the old alignment rules, she's pretty upstanding morally IMO - and her entire thing is about gifting immortality to mortals. I think she's an example of the setting moving away from the idea that Pharasma's justice is unquestionable.

After having read a lot of these discussions, I figure I'll jump in here and mention that many of these discussions about different ways to add content/rebalance existing content have been thought about and 3rd party products have been developed in (partial) response to these sorts of frustrations. I'm over on Infinite, so that's where I know the products best, but if anyone wants to look at already-published additions to the Wizard class, here are 3!
- Wizards+; there's a good chance people here already know this one, it's recently released by Team+ and adds a wide variety of new content to the class. As typical for Team+, it's mostly not focused on rebalancing existing content, but instead about adding new ways to play the class. This includes new feats, theses, and schools - but also a class archetype to introduce some almost animist-like casting to Wizards, and Deliberations, which replace your arcane bond. There are also some rebalancing changes at the end of the book. It's a really fun introduction of new content!
- Arcane Accoutrements; the debut book from Three Rooks Books, this one also focuses on adding a variety of new content for the wizard class - I really like the sword binder arcane thesis, personally. It's got more of all the normal wizard options, as well as some magic items, plus an extra Deliberation using the rules from Wizards+!
- Wizards Refocused; this is the one I wrote, which has a slightly different focus than the other two. There's still new content - a bunch of new class feats, especially focused on trying to introduce some of that academic flavour into wizard, a new thesis, and a Deliberation, but then there's also an archetype to let other classes get some of the nerdy stuff if they want to, and then pretty substantial rebalancing of existing content - I introduced a new ability all Wizards get (Expand your Education) to try and add some academic flavour, as well as to make up for the less flexible schools in the Remaster. I also rebalanced all of the existing theses to try and ensure they each have a fun niche and are more comparable in power to the strongest option available at the moment.

If 3PP isn't the stuff for you, feel no pressure to look at them - but if you're invested enough in wizards to be 3 pages deep into a forum discussion, you might also be interested enough to give a read of how some 3rd party publishers have given the wizard class a bit of a revamp.

I do agree with people saying not to try to interrogate this too closely. In this particular case, I'd also point out that you can move 3 times/turn now, not 2 like in PF1 (barring running in a straight line) - so the average move speed of ancestries tends to be reduced 25 to account for the greater number of times you can move that distance.

Kalaam wrote:

One step worse on a critical hit might work but damn that could be very, very strong.

How strong are we talking?

It's like I'm missing something in P2E entirely...

Do critical successes happen like 9 times out of 10 or something now?

Back in P1E, you had to roll from 17 to 20 on the die to get a critical hit, as a reminder.

Right now, it's like almost all of your attacks, as a Magus at least, are critical successes.

Lets go for level 5, you've just got Expert proficiency and have a +1 weapon, giving you a +14 (+5 level + 4 expert + 4 ability mod + 1 item) to-hit. A level 7 with a high AC has 25 at base. You can then flank them for off-guard, make them frightened 1, and you now need to roll a 8 to hit/18 to crit. If you combine that with spellstriking Slow at the same time, you've now got a 15% chance to almost guarantee the boss (again, they're 2 levels above you!) is Slowed 1 for the fight (they'd need to crit succeed to only be Slowed 1 for a round), and a meaningful chance of making them Slowed 2 for the fight. If you have a reroll (Sure Strike, a hero point, etc) that's a 27.75% chance of happening. I think it's pretty clear that a character shouldn't have a more than 1/4 chance of trivialising the boss on round 1 from full health.

If you optimise your to-hit further - lets say a status penalty of -2, and you're picking up Spellstrike from the magus archetype as a fighter to give yourself a +2 to hit - then you're going up to critting on a 14: a 35% chance, or a 57.75% chance with a reroll. The only way these odds can make sense is if the spell can't do anything approaching a save-or--suck, even on a crit fail.

GameDesignerDM wrote:

Hey, can we stop assuming what Paizo is doing, has done, or has 'lost', or whatever? It's all mostly speculation, anyway.

It's unproductive, and its stuff like this that makes ANY dev not want to engage with the community.

Paizo, aside from scheduled announcements at conventions, already doesn't interact with the community anyway so it's not like we're losing anything here.

They literally posted in this thread.

Witch of Miracles wrote:

There are multiple benefits:

-You are doing spell+strike in two actions instead of three, and can hopefully recharge with some kind of action-compressing ability like magus's analysis or a conflux spell. The action economy on this is better than just casting the spell and then striking.

-You get access to interesting targeting options if you are Starlit Span or have a reach weapon

-You are able to deal fairly serious AoE while performing a single-target strike

-Your spellstrike can still do something if you miss

I'll ask again: why use a save spell instead of an attack spell for Spellstrike?

I use Ray of Frost, it automatically hits with my strike.
I use Frostbite, it can do less damage than expected and/or miss, even if I critically hit with my strike.

Oh, and I don't need an extra feat to use Frostbite with Spellstrike.

Because it does something other than single target damage - it is objectively a worse choice to use it for a spell that just does single target damage. It opens up your options - it allows you to debuff an enemy at the same time as Striking them, or it allows you to do multitarget-damage at the same time as Striking one target. It's a very powerful option as-is, and I don't see any way within the vague confines of the magus class to turn a crit on your attack roll into a crit fail on an enemy's save without it getting very imbalanced.

Personally, the set of themes and narratives I'm most interested in exploring (at least that the setting currently supports - I'm not going to suggest a Darklands AP until we get a little more information about them) is related to the Sarkoris Scar. I've been really glad to see Paizo making some changes to how it is presented over the years - the people of Sarkoris have a really interesting culture, and at times they were presented as almost entirely dead and gone, with the focus being on the Crusades and on the crusaders themselves. It has been lovely to see the Sarkorians get more narrative agency over the end of PF1 and the bits we've seen of them in PF2 - and I think it'd be a good time to do something more with this plot thread.

The obvious route for a Sarkorian AP is to focus on reclaiming the Sarkoris Scar from demonic infestation, and I do think that has to be part of the AP. I think it would be very interesting to explore the different ways that Sarkorians survived an apocalypse, and how that shapes their desires and methods for a new Sarkoris. Between the small groups who survived within the Scar itself, those who survived in neighbouring lands that faced threats from the Worldwound like the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, and those who went further afield (like the clan we know most about afaik, the Farheavens who fled to Iobaria), it seems like there would be pretty substantial differences.

Thematically, the narrative could focus on how one resolves the conflict between these different visions for a new Sarkoris, how (and whether) one should try to reclaim the previously-important, now fiendish settlements and locations of interest, and importantly I think how much to involve both Mendev and the ex-crusaders in this process (and the associated topics of how to handle the outright genocidal practices performed by the cursaders). I think it would be an AP that makes sense for the Wardens of Wildwood-style level 5-15 range - you start off powerful enough to be involved in reclaiming the Scar directly, but don't get so powerful that the most terrifying creatures in the Scar become trivial to you. Also on a purely straightforward level, the God Callers are very interesting and we've got new (and very well-written) lore on that front in the War of the Immortals, so that's an interesting part of the setting to be able to explore further. I imagine you could do it as a new take on Kingmaker - you become the head(s) of a new polity centred in the Scar, but I don't think that would necessarily be the most interesting way to do it. Pivoting you away from being the central decision makers into being one of a diverse group involved in making decisions seems more fitting for the themes being discussed - it's not about a small group of Sarkorians forcing their idea of what Sarkoris should be onto the rest, it's about a collective decision of the Sarkorians as to what their new polity should look like (and that's another reason I like the level 5-15 3-book AP range, it's more grounded in terms of the power the party will have).

Arcaian wrote:

That's a really interesting idea - I know it's not normal for Paizo to lock your PC's narrative in too much from the AP premise, but when they've done it before it has really worked for me. Without spoilers, Strange Aeons has a pretty restricted set of narratives available for the last several years of the PC's lives, and I've got a lot of positive feedback on that from people. In this case, saying all the PCs start off working for - though not necessarily agreeing with - an exploitative group that is harming nature gives you some really interesting room for different possible character arcs. Especially with how common 3-book APs are nowadays, it's much less of a risk than it used to be.

The tricky bit would be that it's still an AP - so they need to change their mind at the 'right' time - which is why I think your idea of them ending up opposing something as messed up as fiends is a good way to do it.[..]

I think the real triky thing here is that historically, AP were the PC morality is meant to shift within the story is difficult to pull off, since unless the player know what's expected of them and are really on board, they risk to either "switch side" before they're supposed to, or to refuse to do so when they should (Second Darkness being the most blatant exemple). It's going to feel really railroady if the narrative force them to work for the bad guys for a while, and then to switch at a specific point. This kind of story can be great, but work way better in movie, books or videogame.

Another (better, or at least safer) way of doing so in tabletop roleplay would be to bake this "side switching" in the basic synopsis of the AP itself, that is, to announce to the player that this is an AP where they play people that used to work with the bad guys but switched side. But this really limit the amount of "pre-switch" content the AP can include, because if this is announced in the player guide itself, then it's going to be limited to the backstory of the AP and maybe the...

Yeah, it's definitely a tricky one to pull off - and definitely safer if it's something everyone knows going in. If you wanted to extend how much pre-switch content there is, you might be able to have the PCs coerced into continuing to work for the 'bad guys' side at the start? They've already realised the problems of the people they work for and want to leave, but they need to do something to get the freedom they need to work against the people they work for. It wouldn't hold up for a whole volume of an AP, I think, but you could probably do it in an interesting way for a level or two - and it'd be a good way to get the major antagonists with a lot of screen time early on, plus it establishes a very personal reason for the players to care ("I remember when that villain refused to let us leave before we got him the McGuffin, I'm not just going to let him get away with this").

So, maybe a reverse WoW, where PCs start as believers in progress and taming the natural world and end up protecting it and fighting the daemon-inspired profiteers who just want to increase their power and wealth, no matter who suffers.

That's a really interesting idea - I know it's not normal for Paizo to lock your PC's narrative in too much from the AP premise, but when they've done it before it has really worked for me. Without spoilers, Strange Aeons has a pretty restricted set of narratives available for the last several years of the PC's lives, and I've got a lot of positive feedback on that from people. In this case, saying all the PCs start off working for - though not necessarily agreeing with - an exploitative group that is harming nature gives you some really interesting room for different possible character arcs. Especially with how common 3-book APs are nowadays, it's much less of a risk than it used to be.

The tricky bit would be that it's still an AP - so they need to change their mind at the 'right' time - which is why I think your idea of them ending up opposing something as messed up as fiends is a good way to do it. Book 1 could be setting up the expectation that you're fighting some group that are being 'too extreme' in their protection of the wilderness against your employer's encroachment, only for the twist to be that your employers are doing some real nasty things that you can't work with - like your fiend example. Then the next two books can be about working against your former employers, potentially alongside the extremists you thought you were going to fight. It'd need a well-written player's guide - you'd need to make sure that everyone going in had a reason to distrust or dislike their employers to some degree. If it was pulled off well, I think it could be a very compelling narrative, and it could have a lot of interesting themes - the way that what might seem extreme can be a reasonable response when you're fully informed, the obvious 'nature vs exploitation' themes, but also some more subtle themes about getting yourself mentally to a point where you can change sides and oppose the exploitation, about the conflict between two groups who are on the same side but have a conflict-ridden history, and more. I think it could be really fun!

The Forsaken initially planned to use the power of their worshippers' souls to escape the Netherworld, but before they could do so, they disappeared in an enigmatic calamity.

If the Forsaken disappeared like the Osirian and Hag deities, why are they not listed in In Memoriam (Other dead, missing, or unaccounted for gods)?

Where can I learn more about the Green Man Faiths? They look interesting. Thanks.

The recently-released Wardens of Wildwood book 2 has a 6-page section on the Green Man Faiths! :)

As a forever GM I find anybody who needs a simpler game must either have a group that is extremely difficult to GM for, is lazy and doesn't want to spend time on game prep, or is simply a poor GM. It isn't hard to have a rule zero, set expectations for the kind of character power levels you're comfortable GMing for, and then fix any outliers as they pop up in play. This forum makes it seem as if Pathfinder's player base can't communicate with their fellow players and nobody has friends to play with and has to resort to PUGing with the dregs of the earth who live only to break the game and make the GM's life hell.

What a dismissive perspective. For one, you're wildly underestimating the time issue - I still have the notes from when I was in university and turned Serpent's Skull into a 20th-level mythic campaign instead of 17th level non-mythic campaign for PF1. I think I had about ~100-150 pages of statblocks I created for only book 6 of the AP. It took an immensely long time, and was only possible because I was in university - I'd never have time to do something like that now that I'm working full-time and have other responsibilities. A rulesystem that allows quick, effective, and fun creation of new content would allow me to do that in a fraction of the time it took in PF1, and with a better experience for players. That's very valuable, regardless of your assertions that this is only needed if you've got a terrible group, you're a bad GM, or you're "lazy and don't want to spend time on game prep". I'm happy to spend time - I can spend an hour sometime in the week getting the next session's content ready. I'm not happy to spend 10 hours in a week getting ready for the next session - especially as I GM Pathfinder twice a week; I'm not looking for a 20-hour/week part time job creating content for my campaigns just because someone is theoretically interested in maintaining parity between PC and NPC options. If I had 20 hours/week to spend on ttRPGs, I'd far rather do much more interesting work than laboriously making sure that they fey creature I'm making has enough hitdice to get the BAB they need, but not so many that their Will save is completely out-of-balance, and that's not laziness or lack of GMing skill, that's desire for better design. I don't even know how the "group of players that are extremely difficult to GM for" is relevant, as this is far more about 3.x making a GM's life difficult when trying to make custom content that fits the rules of the game than anything about a player's reactions.

P.S. you can still play a monster in PF2 if you want to. I can just give you the stat block for a dryad and you can play them. Does that mean there's almost perfect parity between what monsters and players can have? No it doesn't - as in PF1 and 3.5, the rules for how a human fighter and a dryad's stats are constructed are fundamentally different.

This trend of further distancing NPCs from PCs regarding how they work and their abilities is a blight on the industry. It kills any sense that the game is anything but a game and doesn't even attempt to obfuscate the various tricks that have historically been used to make NPCs seem closer to PCs. At this point why even have the same core stats for NPCs/monsters? Surely we could make the stat blocks trimmer by cutting anything that isn't specific to their role in the game.

This trend of further distancing enemies from PCs by giving them 'natural armour bonuses', 'special abilities', and 'monster exclusive feats' is a blight on the industry. It kills any sense that the game is anything but a game, and doesn't even attempt to obfuscate the various tricks that have historically been used to make NPCs seem closer to PCs - they're not even trying to rely only on giving monsters huge ability scores to give them the power level they need, instead they're just giving them arbitrarily abilities that PCs can't get for no reason. At this point, why even have feats and bonus types for monsters?

(the game is in fact a game! it's good to make game design decisions that make life easier for the GM, especially for making custom content! this is not reflective of the mythic rituals discussion, but neither is your post!)

Witch of Miracles wrote:

Errenor wrote:

Witch of Miracles wrote:

I've seen this error several times now: Sneak and Hide are always against perception DC. You don't roll perception against sneak.

Error here is absolutely yours. Look up Seek action.

Search and Seek are not the same action. Having someone need to effectively stealth twice to succeed is obnoxious.

What? You haven't been writing about Search or Avoid Notice. You've wrote 'Sneak' and 'Hide'. They go along with Seeking which absolutely rolls Perception. Or have you just meant that Sneak and Hide themselves don't roll perception? That is true (and obvious as there's no such thing in their texts).

Witch's original point here was that you don't automatically Seek someone when they Sneak. If you're trying to sneak past a bunch of people cooking food at the campfire, you just role your Stealth against their Perception DC as you Sneak. They're not Seeking you out if they're chilling at the campfire, so you don't end up having to roll twice and fail most stealth attempts. In the situation where there is someone actively observing - their Seeking takes as much effort as long distance walking does, it's not a casual glance around every once in a while from the campfire - then they can make Seek checks against your Stealth DC to spot you, but only if they include you in the correct area of their Seek. If you're sneaking in the air grate and they're looking only out the front door, they can't spot you at all.

See? That's my problem: you essentially have to rely on archetypes to make the Magus more appealing, because it fails at this on its own.

Good lord the exaggeration here - you absolutely can spend your focus points on more efficient recharging of your spellstrikes on off-turns and then spellstrike with cantrips and the occasional slotted spell to get a fully effective martial with interesting and unique gameplay. Yes, magus is one of the few classes for PF2 where you can somewhat significantly raise the power level of your base class abilities through archetypes, but implying that the magus fails to be appealing on its own says more about ones need to be maximizing white-room DPR than anything about the magus itself, I think.

TLocke95 wrote:

Just cross-referencing Arshea's entry here with their recent remaster write up in Curtain Call - their level 1 cleric spell is listed here as jump instead of mystic armour and they've lost their alternate change and repose domains - can someone help me make a call on which is well 'more' official so I can guide any Arsheans at my table?

AP stuff is where Paizo gives freelancers the opportunity to scribble with a crayon for rules additions in the backmatter of their book, and the developer only checks only to make sure it’s not an obscene drawing before they publish. Everything is more official than AP rules stuff.

What a dismissive and hurtful way to describe many people's hard work.

I strongly disagree that the systems can be used to tell all the same stories. The general design ethos swung hard from simulationist to gamist. The balance and math changed radically. Swaths of characters can't be ported because of the system's aggressive niche protection, even if we only restrict ourselves to non-splatbooks with 2E equivalents. All of this adds up.

I also think you're already sort of looking at narrative in a 2E-friendly way. Most of the people I know who are still attached to 1E take every action in the game to literally be a part of the narrative. The fact you can't hold down the caster and keep them from casting does, in fact, mean you can't tell the same story to them. Most people who disagree sound more like they think that entire way of viewing game narrative is wrong.

On a larger scale, 2E is also just pretty bad at some game types and narratives 1E had no issue with. Hexcrawls are probably the most prominent example. Higher level hexes in the middle of lower leveled areas are a staple of hexcrawls, but tightly bound range of acceptable encounters in 2E makes those a deathtrap. The travel system isn't terribly functional for hexcrawls, and you're better off making a unique subsystem to handle how much you can explore in a day, ala some APs. Survival gameplay also isn't terribly interesting in 2E, nor is it well-supported—especially resource management. But 1E handles these things fine.

I think the thing that makes differences most obvious is trying to port APs in either direction. In every AP, there are loads of underlying assumptions about what characters, NPC allies, and enemies can and cannot do; how players will approach problems and spend their in-game time; the kinds of encounters that're acceptable to present and those that aren't; and even something as basic as the reliability of a skill check. There's a reason the worst 2E APs and modules, mechanically, are the earlier ones made with a 1E design ethos; they're grueling, overly lethal, and don't take great advantage of the things the system has to offer.

===

N.B. For what it's worth, there are narratives that 2E is better at than 1E, as well. I'd rather try to simulate a JRPG-styled game with 2E (though, admittedly, I'd prefer to go out of the DnD lineage entirely if I wanted to do that).

I do agree that people who are attached to PF1 tend to view the game engine as a more literal description of reality - the classic argument I saw back in the day was "does falling damage actually only increase in-universe every 10ft, or is that just an abstraction made for easier play? do people in the universe know there's something special about a 10ft fall that means you're no longer immune to any damage?" Which is a position that I seriously doubt would have substantial support from the PF2 player base. However, to say that means that Paizo gave a commitment to those details being the same in PF2 is just not a reasonable reading of the sorts of statements Paizo made at the time. If one requires that level of detail be maintained, PF1 wouldn't be able to tell the same stories as D&D 3.5 - why are people now automatically equally well-trained at spotting and listening?

I think it's very clear that when a game company that routinely publishes adventures says "the same sort of stories can be told in the new edition", they mean that there won't be a meaningful change in the capability of the engine to tell the sorts of stories available in the adventures they're publishing. I do think that was very true on PF2's release - as evidenced by the vast majority of PF1 APs that people liked being converted to PF2, and even some people converting PF2 APs back into PF1. With the presence of the Remaster, that's no longer as true - it's still true that the vast majority of adventures Paizo published for PF1 work fine in the PF2 Remaster, but there is a meaningful chunk of stories which are now complicated to tell. I've been GMing PF2 since its release and always had at least one converted PF1 adventure going since then, and never had any issue with the narratives being incompatible.

On the topic of Hexcrawls, I think you've provided a description of both systems being bad at the sort of stories you're trying to tell. Higher level hexes in the middle of lower level areas are put there with the intent of giving you something to get back to - initially you find the evil temple that's too scary for you, so you back off and come back when you can deal with it. PF1 is arguably worse at that - barring your party having some magical options for escape, it's so swingy that you might well be dead before you get a turn. But neither PF1 nor PF2 are good at giving you the opportunity to escape from a situation where you're clearly out of your depth - you can choose to initiate the Chase rules in both, but it's really up to GM fiat. What PF1 allows with these hexes and that PF2 does not is being so optimized that you can overcome an area that you weren't intended to be able to overcome. That's not engaging with the story element of "temple in the centre of the forest that's too scary for you to fight, so you must come back later"; that's engaging with the story element of "there's a very difficult fight in the centre of the forest at this temple", which is entirely a narrative you can tell in PF2.

From my perspective as someone who GM'd but not played the original Oracle multiple times, the Remastered Oracle is substantially more powerful than the pre-remaster one, and I don't think it's particularly close. However, it lost a great deal of the uniqueness it once had - playstyles that it previously enabled are not enabled anymore. When comparing mysteries that hewed closer to the classic casting playstyles - Cosmos, Time, Flames, Ash - I believe it's not quite a straightforward upgrade, but it's a pretty compelling rework. When comparing mysteries with more unique playstyles - like Battle, Ancestors, or Life - the Remastered oracle is more powerful but less interesting.

Functionally having two focus pools is very strong, being a 4-slot caster is already very strong, and you've still got some fun and interesting focus spell options, like Debilitating Dichotomy. If it was the original release of Oracle I imagine people would mostly be OK with it, but it's disappointing to lose those unique playstyles.

So with the Focus Point Refocus changes and both the classes of Animist at level 10 and beyond, also with Oracles now receiving 4 slots of spells each rank can Psychics get an Errata to be come 3 slot-casters? Instead of this odd focus point master which sits along side Druids and Monks.

I think they could definitely do with a bit of a look, but I'd much rather they make the rest of their kit more powerful than make them a 3 slot caster. That'd be a power boost in the most generic way, I think it'd be a lot more fun for them to keep their current identity instead.

Wands of Tailwind are, and first became, so absurdly "meta" because of the actual mechanical reality of the benefit they offer. They really are specifically "problematic" from a power PoV. I only have some game dev experience, while that GM is a full time professional.

For what it's worth, I've not seen Wands of Tailwind actually become meta anywhere I've played - back in the old PF1 days, the meta items were very real in my experience. Everyone had a wand of CLW to ensure they could get up to full health in-between combats, for example. Wands of Tailwind are objectively a boost in power for very little cost, but I've never seen one in a game - it's just not that relevant a boost to care that much about for most of my players. That isn't to say that they're not meta at the tables you're playing at - these things vary across a wide number of factors. But I wouldn't make recommendations for others to change their gameplay on the assumption that wands of tailwind are absurdly meta personally.

Wait... I thought playing a Cleric/Champion of a cause was ALWAYS a thing. One can have faith in something besides a deity, after all.

It sat in a spot that caused a lot of confusion historically - because the RPG line had no setting content at all, quite strictly, until about 2017-2018 (whenever Adventurer's Guide released), the rules differed from the Pathfinder 1 Core Rulebook to the Lost Omens setting. To maintain compatibility with 3.5 (I think), the PF1 CRB explicitly allowed clerics of a cause. However, the Lost Omens setting has always disallowed it historically, with pantheons being the beginning of walking this back, and covenants seemingly pushing that even further :)

Do you also penalize characters with average charisma for rolling too well on charisma skills? If not, why wouldn't you treat that character giving a great speech about something they know well as that character rolling high on said check?

That's just a completely nonsensical comparison. The criticism is that the player is not roleplaying their character; if you're playing an 8 CHA character with no training in any social skills, they might know the subject matter very well but they can't give a great, convincing speech on the topic. That's what an untrained, minimum-stat character means. If they're lucky they can still give a solid one, and I'd be tempted to give a nice circumstance bonus on the check if it's a topic that the character knows well and cares about - they might even break DC 20 on a good roll with a circumstance bonus. Good roleplaying isn't about giving a convincing speech, it's about playing a character well. The mechanics of the game mean that if you want to be good at influencing people, you should either be charismatic, well-trained in the area, or both (with some fun exceptions letting you use something like Society, which I think honestly should be more common than they are now). If that isn't your character, you're not just not embodying the character with your masterful speech, you're actively neglecting the character's established traits. That is bad roleplaying. Penalizing a character with average charisma for rolling too well on cha checks is a complete non-sequitur - it has nothing to do with roleplaying, which is what the comment yu're replying to is about.

There's a fair critique to be had for Pathfinder centralising all social interactions behind CHA without using specific subsytems - nerding out to the engineer with a Crafting check, or convincing the cleric with your knowledge of their Religion are interesting ways to embody a character, good roleplaying, and are a reasonable way of befriending those NPCs. The Influence system helps here, but given it has to be GM-applied, I can see people being frustrated with their character being locked away from these interactions. That's not what people are looking for here, people are looking for the ability to succeed at an in-game skill check through out-of-game skills. Wanting your players to be more engaged with the game, and rewarding them for being engaged, is also reasonable - but don't pretend it's about roleplaying if they're being wildly out of character to get those rewards.

Claxon wrote:

I mean thankfully were aren't use the gold standard anymore, so what it means in more practical terms is that "precious" metals will become less precious and thus less costly. Which will hurt some businesses, but won't destroy the world economy (probably, I'm not an economist) compared to suddenly getting an influx of gold if our currency were still based on it.

Clearly you're not an economist. As for going off the gold standard meaning the price of gold goes down, exactly the opposite of that has happened. You need to read [i]What Has Government Done To Our Money by Murray Rothbard. It wouldn't hurt to go on and read Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action by Robert P. Murphy, either. The first book is free at that link, the second is $21.95, or 0.262 grams of gold at current prices.

I don't think this is a helpful tangent to keep going on for the second time in this thread, Ed. I also suspect you're not going to get much support for Rothbard on these forums, given who he was - deeply misogynistic right wing ghouls with a love for KKK members aren't the most popular here, I suspect. I certainly can also say that I found What Has Government Done To Our Money to be a waste of perfectly good paper and ink, from an economic perspective.

I'm with Kobold Catgirl here - it is profoundly difficult for a human to realistically portray a completely alien perspective, but I don't think that a completely alien perspective is what Pathfinder is going for in its ancestries (and in fact, where it is with creatures like the Sekmin, that's where some creatives involved in the setting are trying to stop those creatures becoming ancestries). In the media that Pathfinder is drawing from, the creatures that we have as ancestries are much more often explorations of different perspectives about the world, exaggerations of real-world thoughts, and so on. In this context, I don't see why them being a different ancestry is too important - to continue Kobold Catgirl's excellent example, if the Vulcans were not a different species but were instead a group of humans who were isolated on another planet for long enough to develop the culture we see in Vulcans, would that change anything about how difficult it would be to portray them? I do not think so. I think it would be just about as difficult to accurately portray a halfling as it would be to portray a human society whose culture was very similar to that of the halfling's.

Sigh. I hoped there would be a school in New Thassilon or Xin-Edasseril in this book.

Is the University of Lepidstadt a magic school? I have always thought it is a normal school, albeit very knowledgeable about the Elder Mythos and undead.

It seems that among the six schools in this book, none are from Absalom, Cheliax, or Varisia. This is quite strange, considering that Cheliax is the most powerful country in the world, and I have always thought that Varisia and Absalom are two centers of attention for Paizo developers. Does this mean that the Arcanamirium, the Egorian Academy of the Magical Arts, the Acadamae, the Order of Cyphers, and the Twilight Academy are not as prestigious as those included in this book? I'm also surprised to learn that there is no magical school in Magnimar at all.

It is confirmed that the remastered runelord archetype will appear in this book. But I heard that the ancient Thassilonian wizards actually didn't use the runelord archetype and they instead used the Thassilonian specialist archetype. Will the Thassilonian specialist archetype appear as well?

Cheliax quite literally pales in comparison to the Empire of Kelesh for one, it's absolutely not the most powerful country in the world. It also doesn't have that many institutions of arcane learning that we know about. They've also mentioned in the blog that over a dozen schools will be in attendance, so there's a good chance for other schools to be playing a more minor role.

It's the legacy ttRPG publishers that have primarily avoided changing to a digitally-focused business model, and I think that's for a key reason: as soon as you do so, you completely alienate the brick-and-mortar stores. They're guaranteed, reliable sources of income for legacy publishers, and they're currently profitable - it's a lot to ask to give up the reliable and profitable source of income for now in exchange for the hope of an improved outcome in the long-term from the pivot to digital works as the focus.

Arcaian wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I don't know why when prices go up, I always hear that some company is gouging people.

Presuming you're talking more broadly and not just about Paizo, I suspect it's because in this most recent bout of inflation corporate profit margins increased significantly (some estimates put it at a ~30% increase) across the period of inflation, and there's compelling evidence that a significant portion of the total inflation was directly caused by corporate profiteering (some estimates put it about half of the total inflation). There's good reasons to expect that companies are gouging you in these circumstances, but I do not think it's true for Paizo - ttRPGs in general are a hard place to get people to pay the price the work is truly worth, so I suspect that in general inflation has lowered margins, rather than raised them, in this industry in particular.

Do you have some proof of this? I follow business news and track earnings daily. I have heard no such thing about increases as expanding margins negatively impacts demand because of the way money works. This idea corporations can just increase prices and not have it negatively impact their business is a complete falsehood as money is limited and if price increases cannot be absorbed by consumers with increased wages you would see a massive concentration of money move into companies providing necessities while severe drops in companies providing disposable income items as all the money was sucked up by consumers keeping up with necessities from companies that expanded margins to the degree you are claiming.

One of the only companies I've seen severely expand margins was Nvidia, but that is because they are providing proprietary AI technology that commands a premium price due to its lack of competition.

Competition is a another thing that keeps companies from excessively expanding margins as a competitor that prices themselves out of market share has a harder time regaining that market share than...

I don't think this point is particularly relevant to the thread we're in, other than with regards to whether Paizo's price increases are driven by inflation or greed, which we all seem to be in agreement on. I'll not be responding further on this topic because of that, don't want to go too off-topic. But in response, the increase in profit margins is an objective fact (you can see it spike in the federal reserve's own data), with about a 70% increase in profit margin at the height of the peak, and a 30% increase in the last data point, with further decrease expected. For the impact on inflation, this report details the analysis which calculates it, but their figure is that about 1/3rd of the inflation in the pandemic (and 53% of the inflation in the latest two quarters with data available at time of publishing) was driven by corporate profits, compared to the 40-year average of 11%.

I also think you significantly underestimate the degree of abuse of market power in our current economies.

I don't know why when prices go up, I always hear that some company is gouging people.

Presuming you're talking more broadly and not just about Paizo, I suspect it's because in this most recent bout of inflation corporate profit margins increased significantly (some estimates put it at a ~30% increase) across the period of inflation, and there's compelling evidence that a significant portion of the total inflation was directly caused by corporate profiteering (some estimates put it about half of the total inflation). There's good reasons to expect that companies are gouging you in these circumstances, but I do not think it's true for Paizo - ttRPGs in general are a hard place to get people to pay the price the work is truly worth, so I suspect that in general inflation has lowered margins, rather than raised them, in this industry in particular.

JiCi wrote:

Maybe you guys can help me fill the blanks here...

ARCADIA
ANCESTRIES
- Syrinx
- Rougarou
- Wyrwood
- Deep one hybrids

HERITAGES
- Mitzenki catfolk
- Ningyo merfolk
- Sasquatch vanara
- Coatl nagaji

DARKLANDS
ANCESTRIES
- Sekmin (serpentfolk)
- Xulgath (troglodyte)
- Mongrelmen (could be folded into fleshwarps)
- Ulat-kinis (skum)

HERITAGES
- Sekmin nagaji
- Drathnelar gnomes (svirfneblins)
- Vegepygmy leshies

CASMARON
ANCESTRIES
- Panottis
- Harpies
- Cyclops
- Wemics

HERITAGES
- ...

So many of my players are going to drop out of Pathfinder because they can't remember or pronounce the names of all the new and revised things.

Even for those who will stay, they're not using any of the new terms; they'll simply say "skum" instead "uulat-kinis" for example.

Makes it much harder to immerse yourself when you don't keep the vocabulary relatively straightforward. I'm also going to have a much harder time recruiting replacements with the way things are going.

This is such a strange complaint to me - I understand there being a delayed time to get the new names, but I cannot understand it being this big of a deal. It's not like we've not had complex names in ttRPGs before, and they're a mainstay in almost all fantastical fiction. Why is charau-ka not an issue in these complaints when they could be more simply (and problematically) called "monkeyfolk" or something like that? If that's fine because they've always been that way, why would it be game-ending for them to be renamed to charau-ka in the 2nd edition change like most of these did? We've had complex names since the start, these are a few more of them (and often aren't more complex anyway, just new). Even ignoring that, if you get the name wrong for a while, what does it matter? If you struggle with the new names and just stick to the old ones, what does it matter? I just cannot fathom why this would be game-ending, and the idea that this will meaningfully effect recruitment seems outright unreasonable.

Arcaian wrote:

Frankly, I don't know anyone who gives the hyper-specific lore DC reduction with any ability that lets you make any recall knowledge check with a single skill. It's a pretty silly interpretation, both narratively (you're supposed to get the benefit for focusing your studies in a niche area, which you've done the exact opposite of if you've invested all your RK capabilities in one check) and mechanically (it's a huge boost, completely incomparable to anything else in the game). I don't particularly care if the wording on something like bardic lore or esoteric lore is that you make a check with those lores, whereas Tap Into Blood lets you make a specific check with your arcana modifier (that seems to be how people are treating it, I don't have access to the text). It's a nonsensical outcome, clearly unintended, and neither I nor anyone I know will be running it that way. I do not think it is an intended part of the power budget, to say the least.

I would allow it. Every monster lists multiple lore types. If the particular RK knowledge challenge allows multiple lore types, why wouldn't you be able to use the most favorable? Nothing in the ability says you can't say, "I access Undead Lore with my Tap the Blood ability." It would be GM Fiat disallowing it and a GM is fine to do so if they don't like allowing the favorable use of an ability.

I would allow it myself. I would consider that intelligent play and if Paizo intended otherwise, then it should have been written more clearly than to be exploitable in that fashion.

Monsters don't list any lore types at all actually - only Archives of Nethys does. I wouldn't allow the most favourable because, again, it's meant to represent the benefit you get from constraining your studies to a very limited set of topics both mechanically and narratively. If you're using only Arcana to make all Recall Knowledge checks, you have absolutely not done that. The wording from Recall Knowledge in Player Core is :

Using an applicable Lore to Recall Knowledge about a topic, such as Engineering Lore instead of Crafting to find structural weaknesses in a bridge, typically comes with a lower DC. Your special interests can pay off!

Using the applicable Lore usually has an easy or very easy DC (before adjusting for rarity).

Sure, if a mechanic says "whenever you recall knowledge, you can use your Arcana modifier instead of the modifier of the skill", there's a reasonable rules argument to be said that you should get the easy or very easy DC. But for one, it's much more up-to-GM-discretion than AoN makes it look, and two, it's actively working against the narrative that this mechanic is trying to do to give a huge boost that is pretty clearly (imo) not budgeted into the ability. You call it intelligent play, but it's incredibly straightforward - you just say "I want a free -5 to the DC when rolling this check please!" on literally every RK you ever make. There's no decision making there, there's nothing to be intelligent with - it's just getting a bonus. And the bonus is large enough that you'll have the same chance of success as someone who has +5 int and is a Legendary in the skill when you are only +4 int and an expert in the skill! And you only need to invest in one skill! It's clearly out of budget, IMO, and pretending that it's somehow intelligent play to exploit this seems absurd to me.

Also it'd be lovely if someone could confirm the actual text of the ability, as almost all the equivalent abilities in the game say 'You can Recall Knowledge with [x] skill check to Recall Knowledge about any topic', which does prevent all of this from coming up, as you're not rolling an appropriate Lore check for the difficulty reduction.

Frankly, I don't know anyone who gives the hyper-specific lore DC reduction with any ability that lets you make any recall knowledge check with a single skill. It's a pretty silly interpretation, both narratively (you're supposed to get the benefit for focusing your studies in a niche area, which you've done the exact opposite of if you've invested all your RK capabilities in one check) and mechanically (it's a huge boost, completely incomparable to anything else in the game). I don't particularly care if the wording on something like bardic lore or esoteric lore is that you make a check with those lores, whereas Tap Into Blood lets you make a specific check with your arcana modifier (that seems to be how people are treating it, I don't have access to the text). It's a nonsensical outcome, clearly unintended, and neither I nor anyone I know will be running it that way. I do not think it is an intended part of the power budget, to say the least.

I find this weird.

Secrets of Magic needs a remaster. Guns and Gears doesn't.

This feels like it's being done just because people will buy it, which is the first time in this whole remaster I've felt that way.

We gave them grace because WotC forced this remaster on them. The assumption was that things would return to normal afterwards. But has it instead led to a new business model?

It's a slightly larger errata to a book that is due for an errata because it ran out of print some time ago. Paizo typically would have already worked on getting it to the printer, but likely couldn't due to the remaster. Now that the remastering efforts have died down, they can take the time to remove the (very few in comparison to something like Secrets of Magic) WotC-owned OGL references, and publish it under the ORC license. They're talking about a small enough amount of changes that the page numbers for everything in the book remains the same, so they really aren't changing much. This is not them raking in money from a new version of G&G you're going to need to buy again, it's a slightly larger errata cycle that also removes OGL elements. At least from everything we've heard.

Given that elves and orcs can produce viable offspring with every humanoid ancestry, by most taxonomical models that I'm familliar with the collective humanoid ancestries of Golarion make up a single species.

Given that that we're including reptilian Iruxi and Nagaji with Mamallian Humans and Avian Tengu, I think it's safe to say biology on Golarion works differently enough from how it does in the real world that real world models are going to break down.

Interestingly, the term "species" is basically something that evades our attempt to define it. The classic definition you hear, a collection of population groups that can breed to create viable offspring, would classify meaningfully different populations as one species against our common sense. For example, polar bears and grizzly bears are separated geographically and have diverged substantially enough that almost everyone would call them different species, but now the melting of the polar ice caps are driving them to interact, and they can create viable offspring. There are also concepts like ring species - population group A can breed with group B in the next valley over, who can breed with C in the next valley over, etc, until you get to population group Z who are completely different from A in every meaningful way (and can't create viable offspring together), but it's not plausible to draw a dividing line between any two population groups and say that's where a species starts or ends. You've even got species that aren't geographically separated at all and can create viable offspring but do not and have diverged sufficiently to be considered different species - you just need a temporal separation. For example, one population group can be active during daylight hours and the other at night; if they did interact they can produce viable offspring, but they'll not do so naturally, and so differentiation has occurred to the point that we call them different species.

Tl;dr is that taxonomy is extremely complicated and the word species is fake and made up (all words are), and I agree that there's not a point in trying to apply our taxonomical understanding to Golarion

moosher12 wrote:

So only semi confirmed change I know of is apparently Michael Sayre said it's planned to remove Singular Expertise on the gunslinger and replace it with something that will "add an additional tidbit of differentiation between crossbow and firearm gunslinger..." and be considered "a little more spicy"

Was this mentioned in the GenCon stream?

It was from discord, the summary I read is available here.

It is correct to narrowly grant what the ability specifies.

There seems to be a disconnect where people are unaware/denying that by granting the manipulate actions, Interact is one of those included.

As Manual Dexterity unarguably allows the familiar to use Interact to retrieve a wand, what happens just after that? Does the wand fall to the floor? Does it explode?

As it grants them the ability to take manipulate actions, it does grant them the ability to use Interact action to attempt to retrieve a wand. As there is no explicit rules text as to what happens when you attempt to use this action, what happens next is a GM call; it is not rules as written that they can successfully do so. A standard level 1 human fighter is perfectly able to spend an Interact action to attempt to pick up the 50ft long marble column that once supported the roof to an ancient shrine they find themself in front of; they are entitled to spend that action all they like, it will simply have no effect. There are other creatures that even have the ability to take Interact actions that nonetheless cannot meaningful benefit from the action at all; a ghost is perfectly able to spend an action attempting to Interact with that wand, but its hand goes right through it and it has no impact on the physical world. I would agree with you that ruling that a familiar cannot carry any item with a bulk value would be intentionally working against a rule with a clear intent but missing mechanics if Manual Dexterity specified it could be used to hold items. It does not, and I don't think it's particularly meaningful to argue that you would be defying the rules granting the ability by saying they cannot hold items - the text of the mechanic and the narrative of the mechanic work entirely fine without the ability to hold items. You can have a monkey who runs over to the secret trapdoor lever and pulls it, or who knocks away a disarmed weapon, etc, without needing to be able to hold items. And that's allowing Interact actions - there's also all the other manipulate actions the ability can allow, as you stated in your last post about picking a lock. It does not counteract the narrative or function of the ability to deny holding items. There are even compromise positions, like if you allow items that would be negligible bulk for the creature's size and nothing else, that would absolutely play up the narrative of the prehensile familiar and still wouldn't allow the use to get an extra Draw action every turn for an alchemist.

Manual Dexterity 100% enables familiars to manipulate, pickup, hold, and deposit items rules as written.

It really doesn't - it allows a familiar to use Manipulate actions only. It's a perfectly consistent reading of the rules to say that this allows them to open doors, pull levers, etc, but due to them having an undefined strength score, they cannot hold an item. I think it's overly restrictive, and most often done because it feels like free drawing items makes familiars far too important for certain classes - but all Manual Dexterity allows is the use of Manipulate actions. Any decision about a familiar's carrying capacity is going off of undefined rules, and is a GM's call - there is no strict 'rules as written' that dictates whether or not a familiar can carry items in the manual Dexterity ability. By comparison, something like Toolbearer specifically allows your familiar to carry an item and use that ability to save yourself an action, and it requires you to already have taken Manual Dexterity.

Man, there's a lot to read, I had a headache and didn't understand anything, I understood that Alchemist is still bad and that Paizo once again didn't get it right, is that it?

IMO, the previous playstyle of "you get a wealth of items prepared at the start of the day, and you can give them out to party members or spam them so long as you guessed correctly what you needed for the day (and are above level ~5 or so)" is gone. I'm not surprised, given how much people complained about not wanting to be an alchemical item dispenser and not much else. In exchange, the new playstyle is much more normal for PF2, and features some really strong options that are very comparable in functionality to existing classes (definitely bomber, i'd say tox) and some that might be a little weaker then the other fields but are still comprehensively better than all but the best-played CRB alchemist (chirurgeon, probably mutagenist). I'd imagine for the vast majority of players, this new version of the Alchemist is going to be a significant improvement. It's a slight lowering of the power ceiling, and a massive raise of the power floor. I'd be pretty comfortable in saying Paizo got it right for most players of the game, but those who were operating at the top of alchemist performance are likely frustrated at having the entire class revamped.

Just to be clear--as someone who's not an expert on this stuff and hasn't been following along--what about the new license would prevent Foundry if not for Foundry's partner status? Is it the fact that it's not sold on Pathfinder Infinite? What does that mean, practically speaking? Could a version of "the next Foundry" simply be released via Infinite, or is that not tenable?

Obviously, "the next Foundry" wouldn't be allowed to host both OGL and Golarion content at the same time--no aboleths fighting priests of Desna--but would it go further than that?

Sorry if these are dumb questions! I'm not a lawyer, and I want to be sure I understand what we're really talking about.

Just to be clear on this point, while I do agree with Roadie's statement that distribution of any software on Infinite being untenable (and seemingly against the ToS, or at least intent, of the website), the key problem being discussed is the lack of legal access to the setting for a future Foundry-like product. At least from my perspective, partially the concern here comes from the ambiguity that removing the setting always introduces - when all the proper nouns are removed, it's often difficult to communicate important mechanical information, especially about mechanical options like deities which are inextricably linked with the setting. But an additional concern is that a good deal of Foundry's success came specifically from the integration with Golarion - I know the thing that got me most intrigued with Foundry to start with was the way I could use the PDF2Foundry module to turn my AP pdf files into a pre-made module. It was a huge time saver, and was the big push to change from roll20. Nowadays, it's buying the pre-made modules for the APs, which only can work with a commercial license - but I suspect I'm not the only one who would have been less likely to get into Foundry in the first place if it wasn't able to use Golarion setting material. One that would definitely make it harder (and might be the case now, I think it's unclear) is that modules wouldn't be able to use Golarion setting material either - you can see on Infinite that products sell much better if they have Foundry integration, and that becomes more complicated to do if you need to strip the setting material from your product when you make the Foundry module. I think it would be fine with the Infinite license, but there might even be an argument to be made that you would be distributing non pdf/image files that aren't just providing access to your content for another program (because it's different content), which would be violating those terms. I suspect it's fine, but it all gets complicated when you start switching between two or three different licenses.

Several things here seem true to me:
- It'd be far too good if you had to tell the Investigator the full truth in a way that's super helpful to them or spend 3 actions to Lie
- There should be a difference between succeeding and failing at the check
- Narratively, you're needling someone to directly answer your question; if you fail they don't take the bait and don't engage

In my opinion, the bonus on seeing through people's Lies is going to be relevant out-of-combat; no-one in combat is going to take the 3 actions to lie realistically. However, interpreting it as you can only lie if you take the Lie action is also strange to me - you can say intimidating things to people as a free action without taking the Demoralize action, you're just not doing to for mechanical benefit. The issue here is that the mechanical benefit from the Lie action is that someone believes your Lie, so if you use the same logic, it should be immediately apparent that you're lying. I understand the challenge in reconciling that with the failure effect being "don't answer the question" - but realistically, how is that different from them just lying if it were out-of-combat? This is basically just letting them automatically Fail at the lie if they don't want to spend actions on it. For those concerned about the difference between lying as a free action and the failure effect, can you tell me what the difference is between lying as 3 actions a failure effect (outside of the combat ramifications of the actions, given this is also used out-of-combat)?

If a player of mine takes this option, my choice in-combat is going to be to primarily lie and let the players know, because it at least removes something from the list of possibilities; if the investigator asks "where is your master going?" and they obviously lie with something plausible like "back into the sewers", that does still give some information. On top of that, I think I'd fairly frequently directly engage with the question honestly in a way that isn't trivializing the problem but is useful - "where is your master going?" "he's returning to where it all began" gives you information, but still requires you to be engaging in the mystery and figuring out what is happening. That seems like a balance that feels Investigator-y, incentivizes behaviour appropriate for an investigator, doesn't trivialise mysteries, but also doesn't make the action less useful than it should be.

seems like dueling dance has been removed? I guess thats incentive to use a buckler but still, feels pretty weird

The free-hand riposte feat now gives you panache when the enemy misses you in addition to the normal benefits, so Dueling Dance would be a meaningful increase in power if it applied to that as well. It seems like they're trying to encourage bucklers being more defensive, with free-hand being more offensive.

Arcaian wrote:

A very cool story! Just letting the mods know that the link to Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar's Pathfinder Infinite work is broken, at least on my end - it has the https//paizo.com bit added in before the Infinite link.

Thank you everyone for the kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed the story. It turns out that writing an Iconics story is quite humbling... I definitely wanted to "do right" by the characters.

Also thanks Arcaian for noticing the broken link. If anyone is interested in checking out the novella series, here is a link to get you there (which still won't launch out of the Paizospace, for some reason so you may have to cut and paste):
Pathfinder Infinite - Age of Ashes Search

Fixed the link for you! :)

It's kinda wild to me that you bring up spontaneous casting's strengths, Deriven, and then when Darksol responds with an example of where prepared casting would've been a substantial advantage, you criticise Darksol for not talking about only wizards; you were the one who brought up the more general prepared vs spontaneous in the first place here.

Also arguing that spontaneous casting can't be criticized for that situation because the player should've already picked all the status removal spells is missing the point by focusing only on the top-tier of optimisation, IMO. I'm sure they could've picked them all, but that is often a substantial portion of the spells they could pick. Even if they were left with enough spells known to cover their other bases effectively, it's extremely limiting and encourages every spont caster of a given tradition basically always picking the same spells. That may be the most powerful choice - I honestly haven't looked into it enough to say - but my experience is that the vast majority of spontaneous casters also want to pick up some fun stuff. The last 3 spont casters at my tables have all been Occult by happenstance, and they've all got substantially different spell lists - one went for spooky spells to complement the Aberrant sorcerer theme, one went for a bunch of infestation-themed spells because they were a blighted fey, and one went for a wide array of offensive spells targeting different saves and/or buffs because they're a Warrior bard and want to primarily cast slotted spells when it's at the most successful time. All of those are fair approaches, they all contributed effectively in my games, and all of them had major areas of the Occult list that they were completely missing because of it. I don't know if you can narrow down your spontaneous caster spell choices sufficiently to effectively cover a whole tradition's set of niches, but even if you can that doesn't have to be the level of optimization that a prepared caster is compared to.

A very cool story! Just letting the mods know that the link to Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar's Pathfinder Infinite work is broken, at least on my end - it has the https//paizo.com bit added in before the Infinite link.

You could go up to a Greater Accolade Robe for a +3 Arcana bonus for your maths there, or arguably a Major Cognitive Mutagen if you've got enough to keep drinking them for the whole 24 hours, which would boost it by a further +1 or +2 respectively. I'm not sure what source of a status bonus one could get that would last the full time; an Amped Guidance might be the best as a reaction, giving you a further +2 if it would help. That's getting you up to 1d20+42/+43 vs DC 45, which is a pretty good check! But yeah, regardless of what you do, you're not going to be able to guarantee that critical success result.

Alchemists previously were weak in low level play, and required system mastery to make good in mid and high level play. Where they could shine really brightly but only if the player leaned into the class advantages.

Now they are quite decent in low level play, and fall off a bit for mid and high level play. I wager they will still be seen as the ugly duckling of pf2e and sadly this time there won't be any real system mastery arguments. But at least they won't be terrible in the hands of a newbie who wanted the flavour, just kinda subpar.

They change niche a little at higher levels, but I find it hard to say that a class with Master proficiency in their bombs, likely boosted to-hit from their mutagens on top of that, unlimited useful alchemical options, and 6-9 max-level alchemical items you can flexibly make in a fight and that regenerate faster than Focus spells as subpar. Some of the most absurd mechanics one could use to power them up have been reduced (it seems pretty clear you can't have unlimited poisons on your arrows anymore), but the floor has been raised dramatically and the ceiling is still plenty high. I am pretty confident that a Bomber is going to be competitive with martials for damage, it looks like ahead of the ranged martial options (except magus shenanigans, probably). Hell, even Chirurgeon which looks weaker than most of the other options to me still has some of the very best condition removal in the game (I'd confidently say the best) and at higher levels has 1-action administering elixers that heal more than an average max-rank 2-action Heal for that level. They're really not looking subpar, IMO.

Old_Man_Robot wrote:

Looks like Dangerous Sorcery was moved from a class feat to a class feature. So RIP archetyping for it.

Is it accessible through archetyping?

Anyway, I agree that with the release of PC2 and both the Sorcerer and the Oracle being buffed, the Wizard seems weaker than it has ever been.

It has been confirmed that the sorcerer archetype doesn't give you this class feature. A GM might still allow the old Dangerous Sorcery to be taken, but it's officially in a "your mileage may vary" situation now.