Aristophanes's page

For Performance, I love the Orchestral Brooch talisman myself, especially for the simple to crit success effect : "You receive a +1 status bonus to your Performance check. If you roll a success, you get a critical success instead."

There are also effects like the Pocket Library spell that help change a crit fail to simple fail (here for RK checks).

Effects that allow you to reroll, or roll twice and pick the best, are great too,

Ooooo! That's nice!! Thanks!!

Congrats on getting to such a high level. I hear that's difficult to do in Society sometimes.

Elixirs and mutagens will sometimes give higher item bonuses than the norm.

If you haven't already, check out the Skills pages of Archives of Nethys. Under each skill there is a set of collapsed menus that show all the skill boosting items for that skill.

For example, a silvertongue mutagen or theatrical mutagen can grant up to a +4 item bonus to Performance checks.

Thanks for this! I had no idea this feature existed!

Would it make sense for the Guardian to have access to a feat that lets them count as flanking with an adjacent ally? *just spitballin'*

One night in Changdo makes a hard man humble.

Not much between despair and ecstasy.

shepsquared wrote:

Cayden Cailean: The drunken adventurer god that's been around for way more than I ever remember. He's fun but I wish more emphasis was put on his adventures with other gods, whether its Trudd, the Prismatic Ray or someone like Irori. No adventurer is going to last long solo.

I would eat those stories up. CC hasn't really got much of a holy text, IIRC the whole thing is intended to fit on a plaque on a wall and boils down to "Don't be a dick," but if he had any sort of extended canon or a series of parables I could totally see them taking this form, like a cross between scripture, tavern tales, and Pathfinder Chronicles.

shepsquared wrote:

Erastil: God of the Hearth, Home and the Hunt, he mostly loses points for how little emphasis is put on his family. I feel like they should be as important to him as Torag's pantheon is to him.

Wait, has Erastil even got a family? I don't recall one now.

Now I really want a "Buddy Cop" movie with Cayden and Irori.

The plight of Dou-bral brings to mind Angel after being 'cursed' with a soul.

Add me to the chorus!
Or, at the very least, it should not cost 40 ACP to replay a Quest.
Make it 10 for 1xp or 20 for 2xp.
But repeatable would be ideal.

I just realized that the first Earth Kineticist I ever saw in pop culture was Pigpen from the "Peanuts" comic strip. He was constantly surrounded by dust, but was too young and inexperienced to control it.

There's a reason PF2 doesn't have Sunder rules.

I just had to "Favorite" and reply based on the sheer volume of work and dedication this post took...plus it was a fun and informative read!
I sincerely hope at least a couple of your recommendations have made it into Monster Core.

I'll eat my hat if they raise the level cap or release monsters above CR 25. I'm fairly certain mythic rules will just be strong thematic archetypes

OK, but no cheating! The hat has to be made of straw or felt. No Tortilla nacho hats!!

All my PFS casters invest in Silver and Cold Iron gauntlets asap now, thanks to Needle Darts.

And no, they are not damaged in any way by casting the cantrip.

*Face Palm*

I just re-read the spell, and it says the tree appears in "an unoccupied square". I guess the question then becomes, what counts as 'occupy'? Every square on the planet is occupied by something. If we assume the statement only counts in encounter mode, does a former Protector Tree 'occupy' the square it's in?
"Is a puzzlement"!

CorvusMask wrote:

Anyhoo I'm back now that I've slept and sulking less about feeling being ignored upon x'D

I think one thing 2e goblins could use more of is reminders of their cultural hatred of dogs and fear of horses. Like, since people love dogs and goblins are now supposed to be likable, while dogslicers and horsechoppers are retained, we don't actually get much of references to that anymore. Like we could at least have references to goblins eating dog meat or something.

On the other hand, we've previously had at least 1 example of a Goblin that doesn't hate dogs, and even reads . . . .

My first PFS2 character is a Goblin Bard. He was raised from an infant by a Taldan Linguistics professor. Goblin is his second language, which he speaks with a thick Taldan accent.

Page 215 (Spellcasting Archetypes):

Expert Spellcasting Feat: Typically taken at 12th level,
these feats make you an expert in spell attack rolls and DCs
of the appropriate magical tradition and grant you a 4th-
rank spell slot. If you have a spell repertoire, you can select
a second spell from your repertoire as a signature spell. At
14th level, they grant you a 5th-rank spell slot, and at 16th
level, they grant you a 6th-rank spell slot. Archetypes refer
to these benefits as the “expert spellcasting benefits.”
Master Spellcasting Feat: Usually found at 18th level,
these feats make you a master in spell attack rolls and DCs
of the appropriate magical tradition and grant you a 7th-
rank spell slot. If you have a spell repertoire, you can select
a third spell from your repertoire as a signature spell. At
20th level, they grant you an 8th-rank spell slot. Archetypes
refer to these benefits as the “master spellcasting benefits.”

The bold sections should be removed, since proficiency in spell attacks / DCs is no longer linked to a specific tradition.

Wouldn't this still apply to someone who takes a spell casting archetype that doesn't start out as a spell caster?

After reading scallywag's post, I was going over my old damage data. I added up one of my sheets that was 20 random fights in Extinction Curse between 5th to 15th level.

This was prior to the implementation of my house rules.

It was a five person group:
Evil Eye Witch: 504 damage over 20 fights

Witch used occult spell list and was engaged in debuffing. Overall, this was one of the reason I implemented my caster house rules. Prepared casters with bad weapon choices really can be outdamaged by quite a large margin, especially when they can't use top level spells when needed.

Storm Druid with Archer Archetype: 1533 damage over 20 fights

This is the campaign that made me go, "Damn. Druids are powerful in this edition."

The druid was built with a bow, tempest surge, wild shape order explorer, primal blasting, and doing this much damage while healing and being the primary medic with occasional debuffs like slow.

Druid's damage was a combination of bow weapon damage, wild shape martial damage, blasting, and use of focus spells.

Precision Archer Ranger with Wolf Animal Companion: 1192

Ranged damage is usually less than martial and less than magic. Ranger has scaling issues with Hunt Prey and the majority of damage done at higher level is multitarget fighting lots of high hit point equal to lower CR creatures.

Wit Swashbuckler with Rapier: 1383

Swashbuckler did better than I thought. He really started to improve his damage at higher level with Perfect Finisher. This led to almost a crit every fight for huge damage. He really closed the gap in the last few battles. If you can get to level 14 as a Swash and pick up Perfect Finisher, you will go from feeling pedestrian to really powerful.

Giant Instinct Barbrian with a Heavy Pick: 1586

They hit things for a lot of damage. Crits were pretty insane.

After looking this over, I agree more with Scallywag to some degree:

1. Some casters, specifically 6 hit point prepared casters can fall really far behind martials for damage...

This is interesting.

Squiggit wrote:

AestheticDialectic wrote:

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I wonder if people realize how facetious this turn of phrase is.

Like the idea that you can have a cake but you're not allowed to eat it is not a commentary on trade off it's a description of insanity.

The whole idea that you need to be 'punished' to somehow counterbalance having something good in your life is absurdly toxic nonsense.

No, it means that after you eat your cake, you don't still have that cake.

Exactly! The actual saying, which most people get wrong, is "You can't eat your cake and have it too".

AestheticDialectic wrote:

Temperans wrote:

It is better, but that is still not addressing the issue of spell attacks.

Its like saying "This chicken is undercooked" and then instead of fixing it they go "okay fine we are removing all chicken from our menu and only selling ham". Yeah there is no longer undercooked chicken, but you it was done in the worst way possible.

Thunderstrike being good does not diminish the fact that spell attacks are either badly designed and/or under supported.

Being vegan and reading this analogy is amusing to say the least

Here is an example just for you:

"Hey there is dirt in my vegan meal" and they go "okay fine we are removing all vegan meals, we now only sell tomato slices".

Oooh! Fresh tomatoes...off the vine? Maybe with some fresh basil? and some EVOO? YUM!

Actually, in the early levels, if you have a melee Kineticist, a 2 action blast can be quite strong.
My Water/wood kinny does 1d8+7 with a 2 action melee blast.
I know that as I go up in level I'll use it a lot less often, but it's nice to know I can be effective in melee if necessary.

So...Spirit damage will work on Angel, but not Drusilla. Hmmmm.

Thankfully alignements are going away, so this debate won't be relevant anymore.

(Prerecorded andience laughter)

Did you miss the announcement before this thread started?

Action economy system.
Ancestry system.
Proficiency system.
+10/-10 four levels of success system.
Character creation system.
Multi-classing/Archetype system.
Skill system.
Encounter creation system.

10 AM PST time.

PDT. The U.S., or most of it, is currently in Daylight Savings Time.

Any way we could pin this thread to the top?

Alphabetically:
*Alchemist
*Barbarian
*Bard
*Champion
*Cleric
*Druid
*Fighter
*Magus
*Monk
*Ranger
*Rogue
*Wizard

I'd make Swashbuckler a Fighter subclass...and maybe the Ranger as well.
The only class name I would change is "Fighter".
All the others are evocative and poetic to me.
Perhaps change it to "Warrior".

I have been playing PF2 since the original playtest. Mostly PFS, interspersed with a couple of modules and the first two volumes of EC, and have just started AV. I have only played two full casters, Bard and Storm Druid.
I have read this entire thread, and both "sides" have made compelling arguments, so I am still squarely on the fence.

I guess what I want to know is what affect would a spell attack bonus item, lets say +1 at 5th level and +2 at 13th, have on the math, and would the increase of success make anyone playing a Martial "feel bad".
I mean, in all honesty, I have never felt bad if my attacks do less damage than my compatriots, and I do feel a tiny bit sad if I miss. But, if my position, or a spell I cast enables someone else to succeed, or even crit, I feel I've succeeded too.

As a DM, I wouldn't make the Paladin fall for one lie that saved a life, but I would make the PALADIN seek small "a" atonement, by confessing to a Cleric of Saranrae and accepting appropriate punishment, possibly a significant tithe.

Shout out to Matsya Das for their gorgeous planar illustrations and to
Ivan Koritarev and Wayne Reynolds for their artistic contributions above, as well!

Unicore wrote:

The point of PF2 is to have fun playing a game with your friends. The stories you tell might draw on themes of war, but the purpose of encounters in the game is not the exercise of overwhelming power and force to assert one person’s will over this fictional universe, but for a group of people to face a diverse array of challenges that are reasonable constructed to be achievable and to be arbitrated by another player who’s goal is that everyone enjoys the experience.

Saying balance creates a “video-game” feel is a little misleading. All games have thought about how essential both chance and predictability are to the experience they offer, but video games only really build to balance in multiplayer modes, usually designed around balancing tens to hundreds of players experience at once. TTRPG balance is about setting expectations for players, including GMs, about mechanical concepts of things like fairness, chance, strategy, role playing, and tone. These are easily modded by individual tables but good mechanics create repeatable, consistent baselines that can then be modded in intentional ways.

“Combat as sport” vs “combat as war” is also a problematic spectrum to focus on when talking about a game played with friends. We are only actually talking about the simulation of combat and only for the purpose of everyone involved having a good time. Values that don’t really overlap with militaristic constructions of war.

Yeah, the whole "combat as war" thing has always seemed weird to me. Of course it's combat as sport. It's a game. The whole thing is essentially sport.

It ain't "sport" 'til we see Buhlman or Seifter on an Olympic podium gettin' a Gold medal while the National Anthem plays!

Hasn't affected me so far.

I wonder what H. Walsh is up to these days.

Ruzza wrote:

Yes, this sucks, but what can you do? The options in which Paizo is not open to litigation are limited when it comes to the drow.

Taking the safe route is one thing, but they aren't doing that wholesale, given that they're open to litigation with numerous things, not just the Drow. They are willing to put in the work to change things like Dragons and Otyughs and Ankhegs and...you name it, to make it still function in the setting (and it still be legally distinct enough to not warrant lawsuits). But not the Drow. And the only explanation we got, really, is "We don't have time for it." So, we had the time to fix all these other things to be legally distinct in the timeframe they were given, whatever timeframe that might have been, but not enough time to adjust for the Drow? I can understand why people feel that's not much of an answer, since it feels counterintuitive to what's been going on for everything else. Is changing the Drow (which shouldn't be called that anymore anyway) really that impossible or that complex of a task that they cannot do so at all? Apparently. But I personally don't feel convinced, and I imagine others don't, either.

Even though I don't have a horse in this race, I can't blame the people feeling betrayed by being the odd ones out with that consideration in mind. It explains why there is infinitely more posts on this thread compared to the other ones.

I could be wrong, but I believe they are "replacing" every original OGL monster, like Otyugh, Ankheg, Mimic etc., any creature that has no Mythologic or Folkloric antecedent, with something new that will fill a similar ecological niche. Drow are an extraordinary case in that they kept the D&D version mostly intact, including, thankfully, the "Sensually dressed" trait. Now they can't publish this stuff under ORC. I, for one, am looking forward to the new beasties, which are always fun!

Thematically, the only thing that Bards get that I think doesn't fit, is Expert in perception. It feels kind of "meta". "We want the Bard to support the party with IC, so let's help them get a better chance to go early in initiative".

I always enjoy level 1.
I like getting to know my team mates.
I'll be starting "Abomination Vaults" with a group of players experiencing PF2 for the first time...including the GM! I've been mostly playing PFS2 for the past 4 years, so am the only one with any real practical expertise.
I'm playing a cleric for the first time in this system: A Grippli Cloistered Cleric of Atreia, my fellow party members being a Sorcerer, a Fighter, 2 Alchemists, and a Rogue.
We'd been playing 5h ed. and AD&D for the past year.
Anything other than starting at 1st level would be madness in this situation.

What's everyone's favorite dinosaur? I'm partial to the ankylosaurus

Ornitholestes!

Bards are fine. Leave them alone.

Here's my initial thoughts after reading the thread:
Just spitballing-
D10
KA: Con
Trained in Perception
Expert in Fort
Expert in Ref
Trained in Will
Trained in Simple Weapons and Unarmed attacks
(I really like Temperan's idea of "Expert" in 'Shifted'
but, if it happened it would probably be at 5th level")
Trained in light and unarmored

Start with 3 forms: Ancestral, "Battle" and Hybrid
Feats which you ca mix and match that improve these forms or gain additional forms
Master Attack (Legendary with Shifted attacks)
Master in Unarmored when shifted
Class features to improve base forms with options to get better
without having to get bigger if you don't want to.
a 1 action "cantrip" to change form
A "Focus spell" to allow you to change as a free action up to once a round for up to a minute.

As I said...just spitballin'

I want a city in the Mawangi Expanse populated by Drow who worship Grandmother Spider. Their best friends are Anadi, whom they see as almost divine, because they are closer to perfection than the Drow. Some where in the city, a group of Drow priests and Wizards are trying to create a "more perfect Drow", the result of which are Driders, who are willing volunteers going through the process. The Anadi generally think the Drow are kind of weird, but since they treat each other with respect and dignity, and help each other, they all get along.

AnimatedPaper wrote:

In this age of cinema sins and TVTropes, I thought writing in something that lets you have concurrently developing continuities without having to continually reconcile those continuities was genius.

Genius? Or laziness?

Could be both. They're not mutually exclusive. ;-)

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Yeah, some deserts are natural, but desertification is this whole thing.

Just deserts are their own just desserts, and it turns out that alignment flame wars were really just the friends we made along the way or something like that.

Oh Great! Thanks a lot Themetricsystem! Now I've got "Dessert Druids" in my head, and thinking of Dessert themed spells. "Wall of Cake", "Ice Cream Cone"...*sigh* I'm not getting anything done today, am I...

"Sweeties" and "Meanies".
That is all you need.
"Sweeties" and "Meanies".

Guess I am the only one ok with both barbarians and monks.

Not the only one my friend.

I agree.

Will it also be available for Automotons and Poppets?

It's because GURPS handle it differently. Maybe the visible effect is the same in many cases but the behavior of fire and electricity is way different.

For example. Fire with some magical/alchemical exceptions (when the flames are magically sustained or alchemy is providing oxygen) cannot affect underwater and even some few amounts of water over a body can diminish or even block it's effects. Also fire make put things on fire more easily than electricity.
For other side electricity don't cares too much about water (except for pure distilled one) for the contrary a water way may potencialize the electricity effect, also some armors maybe also help with electricity while others not. An dry leather armor may diminish electricity effect while a metal one will not provide any protection against it (but a full plate or a full chainmail may do if it act like a joule cage and redirect all electricity way to the ground) while against fire it still damage but not go on fire while a leather and clothes may burn.
Also in body the affects differently too. A high voltage with high amperage lightning may burn but this the secondary effect. The primary one is damage many sensible organs like heart and brain and usually kills more for heart attack than for the burning effects.

In order to abstract and make easier many of these mechanics D&D and PF just makes them different damage types that creatures may have immunity, resistance, weakness, vulnerabilities for each one separately. These abstractions off-course are not perfect but address many of these cases and condition in a more simple way.

Fun fact: In the original D&D game, Fireball didn't work under water, but Lightning bolt behaved like Fireball would on land.(Also, a lightning bolt always traveled 120', so if you angled it right in a stone corridor, you could ricochet it to get more enemies. ;-))

You forgot that Metal is the only element with the "Power cord" trait.

Ed Reppert wrote:

Temperans wrote:

I wouldn't scale cantrips by spell level as that has the exact issue you are showing. Cantrips somehow being higher level and still the worse.

Instead, keeping them the same level and just scaling the damage based on your character level.

Seems to me scaling the damage is just what heightening does for damage cantrips. How would you scale say acid splash differently to what RAW says?

Acid Splash gets to about the right damage already given persistent. The issue is that it requires using a 9th level slot when it shouldn't.

It doesn't require any slots. It's a cantrip.

I see them as "Meat points". Primarily because there's also the issue of environmental damage. Sure you can describe damage from dragons breath or fireballs as "near misses", but what happens when the barbarian or fighter needs to pull a Grog and swim through a river of acid? Or they go through an unmitigated free fall 100 feet onto solid stone and walk it off.

And yes, this means on some level (and at some Level) everyone in the party is going to be superhuman. I understand some people have an issue with that, but personally I'm okay with it. I feel pure mundanity goes out the window when the barbarian can grow 20 feet tall and stomp an earthquake into existence.

George Carlin had it right: "It's not a near miss, it's a "near hit"! A collision is a near miss!