Ascalaphus's page

The rules for who it affects are pretty clear (everyone).

And yeah, it's a burst and if an enemy is right in the middle of your party that's awkward. But it also means they're vulnerable if you make them visible cuz they're probably about to be flanked.

If you're having difficulty targeting because it's hard to figure out where the enemy really is, it's maybe time to check if the GM is doing the stealth rules correctly for invisible enemies. Because really keeping your location secret requires a lot of ongoing action investment in Sneaking.

I used to be firmly in the camp of "I like wizards, I want to learn all the spells". But gradually in PF1 with psychics I realized that if you know enough spells, the limited repertoire actually wasn't really that limiting. (I was up to about 6 spells known per level though.)

In PF2 I think that's even more the case. It's much less common that that one niche spell is really game-changing. The core, simple solid spells take you very far. Monsters don't have nearly as many immunities/resistances as in PF1 so more spells actually work in most circumstances.

What also matters is that the repertoire of a spontaneous caster really isn't all that limited, because you learn 3-4 spells per rank as well as signature spells. So when you're doing damaging spells (usually from your higher slots) you'll often have 6-8 spells worth choosing between.

For utility magic, scrolls are surprisingly good for spontaneous casters. "Written magic" sounds like it should be a wizard thing, but it's at least as good for sorcerers. They do a lot to fill in the gaps for things you only occasionally need (but then are really useful).

If a player finally gets to pull out the perfect tool for the job, let them have the moment.

Some quick examples. Anyone can Ready:Shove upon a foe with the trigger of "they begin an attack" and the Shove will fire after the action(s) are spent, but before a potential attack lands.

This means a successful Shove can nullify the swing due to pushing them beyond reach of their target.
If it was a Ready: Trip, then the foe would be able to finish the swing as there's no reach issue, but that Prone penalty would affect the roll.

And Ready:Leap has no roll to make, if the Ready creature can predict their foe's incoming attack, they can spend 2A +1R to avoid it.

There is also the requirement that the trigger must be perceptible to the PC, not the player.

This comes up now and again, and as far as I know there's no official word on this. It's a possible interpretation that you can invalidate the conditions for the strike that way. But there's no specific clear example of doing that in the rules. Just a logical inference that you might be able to do that.

There exist several player and monster reactions to "someone tries to strike you" that give you a bonus to AC and after the strike let you step away. So the AC bonus basically represents you moving away, and it being harder to hit you because of that. But invalidating a strike entirely (instead of making it harder) is a really really precious ability.

To me that's cause to go for a different interpretation: that a ready action (which you didn't have to pay a feat for) shouldn't be more powerful than that, and probably less.

Shoving an enemy away as a ready action, or leaping away yourself, shouldn't be able to cancel an enemy strike. That's a bit too good. But a +2 circumstance bonus to AC would be okay.

Just to be a bit off-beat, but if you want excellent spellcasting and armor, what about a druid? You're not really a weapon-warrior but you're among the best protected casters: medium armor, shield block, good saving throws for a caster, and you can place ability scores well for defense too.

The primal spell list certainly does buffing and healing well too. You have runic weapon/body and heal at level 1, and get the good stuff like haste, slow and fireball. You can also get some focus spells so you can keep going through the day.

I guess the question is if that feels "godly" enough for what you want to play. You could certainly use the druid class to play a priest of a nature-god.

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I've also played a cloistered cleric and taken rogue dedication. It got me light armor proficiency to get through the lower levels. I worshiped Cernunnos (rest in peace) so played with a longbow, which gave me the occasional third-action shot. Mainly I was doing spellcasting, but with the occasional weapon attack and light armor, I felt like I wasn't missing too much of the stuff the war priest got.

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Nowadays I'm playing Reverend Sunshine, a tanuki conspirator dragon sorcerer (occult) with champion dedication (Sun Wukong). Although I'm high-strength I do less and less melee because the spells are now just better. Still do the occasional Athletics maneuver though.

I play a thaumaturge with weapon implement, and it's definitely fiddly. You only get the reaction if you've marked the specific enemy before they provoke, so when fighting a crowd it often doesn't work.

Amulet looks pretty good. Alternatively the shield implement is also good defense, with action economy modifiers to make it work. I have champion multiclass (for sanctification, heavy armor, and the reaction) so I didn't go for these.

I got good use out of the wand as well. It doesn't look like much, but it's a ranged option that doesn't depend on dexterity so for a strength-based heroes. It got a bit of a boost in the remaster.

Mirror looks fun and tricksy. And got some quality of life improvements in the remaster as well. In a long-term campaign I'd be looking at combining it with a rogue dedication to pick up Deny Advantage, because being in two places gives enemies more chances to try to flank you. Also, it has some nice other feats that fit a more trickster style thaumaturge.

You're up against one of the pitfalls with geeks: a tendency to read too deeply into accidental tiny differences in wording.

RPGs are more enjoyable though if you take a step back and add a few more text-interpretation tools to your toolbox to do a more balanced interpretation.

One of these is that you should assume good intent on the part of the writers. The writers aren't out to "gotcha!" you by making an ability that seems fine until you find the trap in the fine print.

Another one is that extraordinary effects should be explicitly pointed out. If this ability was really intended to be different from all the others, they should have said so clearly. If it would only be maybe different because of a comma, it's reasonable to think it's just an accident.

It's also good to keep in mind that abilities aren't all written by the same people and aren't all proofread by the same people. Quite a few of the people who wrote PF2.0 don't work for Paizo anymore. So subtle differences in wording are really normal.

For a more RAW angle on this, one of the key rules is the [url=https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2266]Ambiguous Rules[/ur] rule:

Sometimes a rule could be interpreted multiple ways. If one version is too good to be true, it probably is. If a rule seems to have wording with problematic repercussions or doesn't work as intended, work with your group to find a good solution, rather than just playing with the rule as printed.

Fixating narrowly on the text even though it makes an ability dumb and unenjoyable is breaking this rule.

You're overthinking it, reading 1 is reasonable.

I support having more cool fox monsters.

Yeah, looks legit to me. It says "your weapons" and bombs say they are martial weapons.

It's a good effect, but it's fairly priced.

I think this is a case where you need to look at "what was this rule even trying to accomplish?"

Basilisks and medusas are basically the classic creatures that Avert Gaze was intended for. There are others, but if you shoved someone against the wall in the back of the game store and asked them point blank, those are the monsters most people would name when you talk about gaze attacks. There should be *a* clear way to use it against them or Avert Gaze might as well just not exist at all.

Gang Up + someone with Reach is a cure for 5ft corridor fights, yeah.

I think the "bomber suck" reaction is a bit similar to "war priests aren't really a full martial" reaction. Alchemist and war priest (cleric doctrine) are both a kind of in-between class where you're not getting the full power of a martial because you're getting so much more flexibility than a typical martial gets.

If you manage to leverage that flexibility into good plays, then it doesn't suck. If you don't manage to really squeeze the juice out of that flexibility, then you look bad compared to a normal martial because your raw numbers aren't going to be as high.

Well the key point really is that nowhere in the manipulate trait does it say you need a free hand. Whereas other actions like climbing and grab a ledge do talk about how many free hands you need. So if it was intended to require it, the text would say so.

It doesn't help though that many manipulate actions do require a free hand. Interacting to draw a potion for example would require a free hand to hold the potion. However, there's also many manipulate actions that are about using something you're already holding in your hand.

Oil of Potency for example has "Usage: held in 2 hands" and "Activate: Interact (manipulate)". If you needed a free hand because of manipulate, then nobody ever could use this item.

You could say that clearly in that case the manipulate should be fine because you're manipulating an item you're already holding. But does that also go for potions that need only 1 hand to use? Or is the GM gonna require one hand to hold it and another to pop the cork? If the GM is going to start inferring extra requirements that aren't written down, where do you draw the line? How can you know it's fine for oils and potions but not for spells?

You must physically manipulate an item or make gestures to use an action with this trait. Creatures without a suitable appendage can’t perform actions with this trait. Manipulate actions often trigger reactions.

All it really asks for is "gesturing". I can gesture with a staff, pointing at where I want my fireball to go.

The PC1 text is a bit annoying though;

Casting a spell requires the caster to make gestures

and utter incantations, so being unable to speak prevents
spellcasting for most casters.

It's kinda odd that it says not being able to talk prevents you from spellcasting, but doesn't actually say anything about being able to make gestures. The sentence is asymmetrical.

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TL;DR - It's annoying that the book doesn't just clearly say you can gesture while holding things. It would have been very helpful. But when you reason it through I think it's clearly the best interpretation.

I'm generally a big fan of rogue dedication. Some of the things it gets you as an alchemist:

* Surprise Attack: maybe your Stealth is better than your Perception? Take advantage.

* Mobility feat: a great way to just walk away from monsters with reactive strike.

* Dread Striker feat: one of the simpler ways to get flat-footed for ranged attacks.

* Skill Mastery: one of the few ways in the game to get extra master skills. Take this one multiple times if you like.

* Uncanny Dodge: laugh at minions trying to surround and sneak attack you.

(Rogue dedication is pretty good for all kinds of back line characters.)

Another thing that makes Gang Up very good is that you don't have to "mingle" with the enemy to get flanking. You can just keep a tight front row, protect the squishies in the back, and still get flanking.

Yeah I think Tridus has the right of it. Alchemist is an unusual class because you kinda get the large number of "spells known" of a wizard combined with the flexibility of a spontaneous caster. But the price you pay for being very adaptable is that you don't hit as hard as some of the more "rigid" classes.

It's also unusual because more than a lot of other classes it really rewards you for reading lots of items and having a big list of "if this happens... use that formula" prepared. Compared to a "barbarian smash!" playstyle, this one is definitely more complicated. So it's a good class if you like having an intricate character, and not so good if you want something low-prep.

What advice can GMs familiar with both systems (1E and 2ER) share with me so I can learn how to understand the basic assumptions, “game math”, and key conceptual differences between them? (I have started reading all the “2E” and “2E Remastered” tagged Paizo Blog articles, but I have not finished yet.)

Some things that are quite different compared to 1E:

* Scores and DCs for attacks, AC, saving throws and skills are now all on the same scale. You can for example roll a skill against an enemy's saving throw DC and the numbers will make sense. As a GM, this allows you some flexibility if someone wants to try something and you have to make up a ruling. "Roll your X against their Y" will usually work out.

* Characters start out a bit fragile compared to enemies. As they level up, PCs and enemies both get stronger, but PCs grow a bit more than the enemies. Leveling up really means getting more powerful. On the other hand, level 1 is pretty scary.

* A Moderate encounter can be tough enough to be entertaining. Extreme encounters can feel so tough that they're not fun anymore. That's a shift compared to 1E where you often needed CR+3 opposition to make things interesting.

* Solo bosses are really tough. It's often better to do a boss plus some mooks or hazards.

* Players often get bummed out when their first attempts with incapacitation effects fail. That doesn't mean they're broken; it means they're not meant to be used against bosses. At some point minions have so many HP that it all starts making sense: you use an incapacitation effect to take them out immediately instead of by spending a lot of actions whittling them down with regular attacks.

* The monster building guidelines are really good. They focus on what you actually need to make good monsters that are effective on-stage without taking needless work. A monster doesn't need the same rules as a PC does because a monster is meant for different things. There are also good tools that make the math less manual.

* When the game asks a player to make a check, there's always a chance to succeed and a chance to fail. You can't really become so good at something that you'll always succeed. But as I said before, characters get more powerful. Sometimes you have to tell someone "you say you don't think you hit, but what did you get?" And then it turns out a fighter can hit while rolling a 6 for example.

* You need to tell players whether a check succeeded/failed/critted before they decide to use a hero point for a reroll. Sometimes players think they failed but actually they succeeded. This is a deliberate change from PF1 where you usually had to guess before deciding to use some reroll ability.

3) How does a PC go about upgrading their weapons, armor, and gear with Property/Potency Runes (and their equivalent) if they have enough treasure to do so? Is 2ER magic treated as a commodity where you can find magical upgrades, consumables, and magical items as long as you have the cash, know the right people, get the correct licenses & permits, and are in a settlement with access to a trade network? Or is it more of the “magic is rare and hard to find” school of thought prevalent in many OSR TTRPG systems?

It is definitely assumed that PCs have an appropriate amount of gear. The difficulty of enemies and various DCs are built around that expectation.

The Treasure By Level chart is one of the most important charts in the game. It tells you a couple things:

* During the adventures that take you from level X to X+1, the party should find about 2 level X items and 2 level X+1 items.

* Some of these items the players might sell because they're not useful, but many of them should be useful to the players. It's fine if many of these are things like weapon and armor runes that the players can flexibly put on their favorite weapon and armor. Compare that to 1E where you often were specialized in a really specific weapon and most other magic weapons you looted were destined for sale at half price.

* Crafting and buying are both capped at your level. So adventure rewards (loot) is basically the "big risk big reward" path to gear. Also, finding a level +1 item can be a really powerful thing. In particular, a level 3 character getting early access to a striking weapon is a big boost.

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So, getting the right gear is important, but how do you make that work in a campaign? There's several ways I've seen people do this:

* Make sure enough of the loot is useful to all of the party members, so they don't really need to take a break from adventuring to sell it and get different stuff. (This does require more GM prep work.)

* Encourage the party to craft some of the stuff they want themselves. This requires enough downtime, but doesn't require them to leave the region of the campaign to go to a metropolis elsewhere.

* Give them a traveling merchant contact that they can place orders with.

* Aim for an opportunity to visit a town where they can shop at least once per level. This is easy if the campaign happens to be city-based to begin with.

* Use the Automated Bonus Progression optional rule. This is useful when it just doesn't make sense in your campaign for the characters to go away to shop. This one's popular for example in Quest for the Frozen Flame which is mostly about trekking through the tundra while protecting your tribe. It doesn't make sense to leave them behind to go shopping.

I don't think either the retracted or the floated-for-spring version said anything about persistent damage. They came back saying clearly there were some edge cases they hadn't thought through and they still need to do more wordsmithing for the new version. With all of that I think it's premature to infer that persistent damage works differently now.

For RK it comes back to the classic question of "can you get the lower DC for coming up with the name of a specific lore that you don't actually have?" I don't think there's consensus about whether you should be able to do that.

But if the GM lets you, it's definitely worth it. Or maybe you can agree on a compromise, a homebrew "Sage" familiar ability that gives say, half of your spellcasting modifier to all RK checks.

Because an independent familiar doing a RK check for you at the start of combat is quite good. Casters routinely have an action economy crunch where you want to RK to optimize spell choice, move to a better position, and cast a spell. If your familiar can take a stab at the RK that's neat.

Yeah the faith tattoo is considerably easier than other ways to get sanctified

So Premaster actually had a clear rule about this:

Somatic

A somatic component is a specific hand movement or
gesture that generates a magical nexus. The spell gains the
manipulate trait and requires you to make gestures. You
can use this component while holding something in
your hand, but not if you are restrained or otherwise
unable to gesture freely.
Spells that require you to touch the target require
a somatic component. You can do so while holding
something as long as part of your hand is able to touch
the target (even if it’s through a glove or gauntlet).

In the remaster spell components were done away with and those spells now just have the Manipulate trait, so this text no longer exists.

I don't think the intent was to quietly start requiring free hands for spellcasting though. Especially for a class that's designed to be very Sword & Board like the champion, that wouldn't work with Lay on Hands.

I also can't find anything in the new Player Core saying manipulate actions require a free hand.

While you might think that Manipulate does sound sorta like having a hand free might be necessary, I think that's taking things too far. They could have very easily put that in the description of the manipulate trait, but they didn't.

I also think 9 is way too much, but there are more possible ways you can split things up.

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Using PFS is an option. There are plenty of simpler adventures (quests, bounties, and some scenarios) that are good for a less experienced GM to get started with.

The episodic nature of PFS also helps with players who can't always make it. Each adventure takes one session, so you don't get stuck with people who played only the first or second half of something.

It also enables people to have more than one character, try out different classes and ancestries.

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Aside from PFS, you can also do what's called a West Marches style campaign. Original Article

You don't have to follow that script exactly of course, but it's something that works well in college like settings.

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Back in college we had yet another variant. There was one head GM who was sorta in charge of main setting lore and overall plot. But each game day there'd be 1-3 GMs running one-session adventures. Players would get a "cert" with XP, gold and special treasures after the adventure (these were coordinated with the head GM to keep them reasonable).

It's similar to PFS, but we used a different game system (a sort of lightweight D&D 2E with some 3E ideas thrown in). And of course our own setting with our own plots. Unlike PFS, if you missed a session, well there's no re-runs.

What I liked though was that it encouraged a whole lot of people to try out GMing a couple of times, and making up their own adventures.

It's alive!

I just did a major update to the session tracker. You can now also track per-character, and track your XP and gold. (But you can also just keep tracking per-player like before.)

Find the tracker here

I feel like PF3 really should have it so that each class is designed with at least 3 built-in subclasses for combat, then 3 picks for exploration, and 3 picks for social encounters. Ideally, there would also be a choice for class-based downtime activities as well. It's really hard to say, "These are the 3 pillars of adventuring", when some classes get nothing that natively interacts with one or even two of these pillars.

This would solve the Ranger/Investigator problem and ensure that each class feels complete within itself.

I don't know if I would go so far as to say as to say that you should do all of that with subclasses per se. But a bit more broadly, I agree that every class should have some budget set aside for combat, for exploration and for social.

One of the big advantages of class/level-based game design is that it makes it easier to prevent players from (accidentally or intentionally) taking all build points from one of those areas and putting them into another. In point-buy game design that's a big thing to watch out for. You can end up with characters with such good defenses that anything that challenges them would automatically hit the other characters. Or characters that can only fight.

So I think keeping these budgets separate is important. Just because you're a barbarian, doesn't make it a good idea to let you build only for combat so you're twiddling your thumbs if you can't solve a skill challenge with Athletics. PF2 does a decent job at this - you can't get rid of all your skills, and ability boosts spread across 4 abilities.

Skills also give you a start of an answer of "what do you do outside combat". They're also class-agnostic. You don't need to write new skills when a new class launches, or new archetypes to opt into skills otherwise reserved for a class. I think subclasses for exploration/social could play a role too, but I'd like to keep the focus on game pieces that can be used by many classes. It's fine though if each class has some clear obvious choices.

Making these separate budgets more explicit could be good though, because it steers new class design away from "this class is light on combat and heavy on exploration" incidents, which I consider unhappy.

The only real issue I see with this is the interaction with Thaumaturge.

It's not just the thaumaturge.

You also have for example the champion whose strikes are always sanctified, who then doesn't really want a cold iron weapon to fight demons anymore because most fields have at least as much weakness to holy as to anything else.

It's a problem as soon as some damage type is very often a weakness (so, holy if your campaign has a lot of fiends; cold if you play a fire-themed campaign like Age of Ashes).

It also affects the magus, at least in their current design. Arcane cascade doesn't have much going for it, but at least you can use a spell with the right damage type, switch it to that and then go on using different spells but keep tagging the weakness.

Your bucket approach handles this better than just applying one weakness per attack, but it seems like a bit of an unnecessary complication.

"Every weakness applies only once" is a really simple rule to apply. Sometimes that does a bit more damage than the old situation, but not as much as the errata version.

I think the goal is that a battle form gets you 90% of the melee power of a martial with far, far less investment. You can be a druid that ignores strength but turn into a gorilla that still hits just as hard.

The change I'd personally like would to to make Untamed Form a 1-action spell. It feels like right now it just takes a bit too long to get started in combat if you decide to brawl it out, compared to slinging spells. Making it 1-action would allow you to transform, move and strike in one turn.

The Thief rogue is generally regarded as the most straightforward and powerful racket. Dex to damage is very good. That said, the benefits of Thief rogue are at their peak at low level when that bonus from Dex is a big part of your total damage. At later levels Striking runes, extra Sneak Attack and weapon specialization also start adding up, and the Dex part of the pie is relatively smaller.

Also important is that the rogue overall is a really solid class, so all of the rackets are still playable.

One key feat is Gang Up (level 6). If you have 1-2 other melee characters in the party it makes flanking much much easier, which I think steals a bit of thunder from scoundrel. But shutting down enemy reactions can be a game-changer particularly for the casters in the party.

Rogues aren't the very best class for Athletics/Trip although it's not totally off the table. The obvious way is ruffian and go hard on strength. But ruffian weapon options aren't really better than the weapons all rogues can use anyway. And dexterity + light armor is overall nicer than medium armor, because you end up with better reflex saves and thievery/stealth skills.

So another option could be to go scoundrel, go mainly dexterity but also invest from your 4 boosts at level 1,5,10 into strength. You won't be the absolute best at athletics but you'll still be solid at it, and keep more of the traditional good rogue stuff (skills, defenses). You could use for example a kukri (finesse agile trip) and a shield and be really obnoxious to enemies.

I've played a thief rogue with bastion archetype to get more shield reactions and it was pretty effective, I was really hard to hurt.

Interesting that they also talk about Flurry. It seems like if you go with the "old compromise" approach where each damage type becomes an instance, but only one damage instance per different type, the amount of weakness/resistance applied is more or less what we're used to.

But if you go from two standalone strikes to a combined Flurry using the new errata, the amount of weakness/resistance procs changes much more radically.

@Trip.H: that might be the solution, although it seems a bit buried in the text. I don't like rules to be quite so subtle. Rules should be really clear and obvious.

You can have weakness to types and traits, and even to things that normally don't do damage. That's pretty clear.

You can have resistance to types, and then the text goes on to say that actually means "types and other traits". Then when it comes round to resistance to all damage, it's only talking about "types" again without mentioning traits.

I think a reasonable interpretation of that is that when you have a damage calculation, (almost) every ingredient of it has a type associated with it. That 2d8+4+2 damage from the sword + striking rune + strength + specialization would all be slashing. The 1d6 fire from the flaming rune would be fire. Most flat bonuses you can point to what base ingredient of the calculation they apply to.

There are a few odd cases. Some barbarian instincts change the type of their additional damage from rage, like Dragon. Others don't, so what was the type before? I think a reasonable default is to say it was the base thing you were striking with. So a dragon barb that chooses not to use their extra damage from instinct would just gain the +2 rage damage as part of their slashing sword. But if they choose to tap into their conspirator dragon aspect it becomes poison damage.

So if that barbarian was fighting a champion using their reaction, that would make the difference between resist all reducing damage once (just the slashing sword) or twice (the slashing sword and the poison rage).

However, when the champion is using their reaction against a rogue doing sneak attack damage, it'd trigger only once, because the slashing damage is a type, but the precision damage is very clearly listed in the book as not being a separate type.

That does create another odd case, if you had a monster that was resistant to slashing and precision damage it'd resist more of the sneak attack than if it had resistance to all damage.

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It still feels a little fiddly to me, resistance to all damage becomes quite different from regular resistance that way.

And I'm not sure then how you'd handle "resistance to attacks from demons". Would that trigger once for the demon trait, or for every type of the demon's damage ingredients?

Ascalaphus wrote:

Okay, I'm sort of convinced that this errata isn't really working entirely as intended. That said, getting all the intended things working was pretty hard.

If yall want to get to the platonic ideal of Mark's post on weak/res rules, I can get you there in 2 tiny steps. Creates no edge cases, legit butter smooth table play.

Define instance of damage as the impact, Strike, spell boom, etc. If an effect creates a new boom, like Fire Wisp, that's a new instance. If it adds additional damage (add dmg into what?) it's only adding damage into an existing instance.

Edit the "only the highest" rule, replacing it with:
"Each individual weakness only contributes damage once per instance of damage."
And mirror this for resistance.

And that's it, you've re-invented the weak/res rules into a better, less buggy state that what the community has been playing with for years. You still get some amount of explosive weakness damage by hitting multiple different weaknesses, but you've also added that "each only once" rule that the community pretended was there for 7ish years.

Foundry tried to get there, but didn't commit to inventing the fantasy community safety rule, so you could multi pop trait & custom weak/resistances under a lot of circumstances.

I like it in broad strokes, but I don't think this fully covers all edge cases.

For example, the cold iron slashing weapon. With the current errata those are a single instance, and that matches what the book is talking about; combining a type and a trait. So, should that trigger both weaknesses? on a fey plant critter that's weak to cold iron and slashing? It'd be one way to get a simple consistent system. It's still a change, but could be a change we don't mind so much.

Another one: how will "resistance to all damage" work? If you get hit by a flaming cold iron slashing weapon, should it trigger once, twice or three times? What about damage from some spell that happens to have ten different traits? Does resistance to all damage trigger ten times?

I do wonder if it would have been easier if level ranges had been:
1-3 (centered on level 2)
3-5
5-7
7-9
etc.

By making all the tiers overlap slightly you'd be easing things. Also, you could assume a party of mid-level characters playing the normal difficulty. If you had mostly characters in the lower part of the range you could switch to the easy mode and if you had mostly higher level characters you'd switch to the harder mode.

The web pretty much has to be an unarmed attack because otherwise it'd be a weapon, and you can't use those while raging (which is the only time you could use webs). The missing unarmed trait has got to be a mistake.

I would read the line about the critical specialization as applying to melee attacks only, so the web wouldn't get it.

Okay, I'm sort of convinced that this errata isn't really working entirely as intended. That said, getting all the intended things working was pretty hard.

* It hadn't occurred to me that you could put multiple flaming runes on a single weapon. I'm skeptical that's really intended to be possible.

* It does seem intended that a champion using a cold iron sword should be able to trigger both weaknesses on a demon.

* I think abilities that create new weaknesses in monsters are a relatively new design niche that wasn't used much originally. But that design pattern now needs to be reevaluated for power against this new errata. When a rule "cuts" a lot of design space, that's a red flag; the rule might not be good. Basically, this sort of errata means we can't have shiny symbol things.

* Excessive weakness stacking isn't really desirable.

* Using the same weakness stacking trick against most monsters really isn't in the spirit of PF2. PF2 doesn't like one-trick ponies and leveraging the same tactic against everything. It wants you to try different things now and then.

I'm leaning more and more in the direction that Foundry allowing every weakness/resistance to proc exactly once might have been the right call, even though it's hard to perfectly square with the whole "instance" logic.

* That would allow the champion to hit both holy and cold iron weakness.

* That doesn't make the thaumaturge look stupid for bringing the actual right kind of weapon a monster is weak to, because you can benefit from both weakness and personal antithesis.

* It actually makes Arcane Cascade reasonably useful because you can keep tagging weaknesses without having to use the same spells every time.

* But, it prevents excessive piling-on.

I guess it's not expressly forbidden but I'd discourage it.

PF2 game design tries to lean away from doing the same rotation every round. Optimizers try to do the optimal rotation every round.

Chill out. You'll do fine with varied rotations :)

Nobody at Paizo on any let's play I can find has ever played it that way. And the creators have said that damage = per type.

Let's Play broadcasts have a bit of a reputation for the GMs just "deciding something" if an unclear rule comes up, or allowing things that aren't strictly correct but are cool in the moment. Which of course is fine, that's what you should be doing as a GM running a fun game. But it does mean it's not a great source from which to infer "what the rule really is".

Creators have said things unofficially, and really not even all that often, everyone keeps bringing up the same couple of instances from years back. And then other people complain that it doesn't count because it's unofficial or doesn't answer all the questions.

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I personally think the approach they ended up taking makes sense. It basically boils down to "can you clearly identify this part of where the damage is coming from? Then it's a separate instance".

Like, if you have a D8 cold iron slashing weapon with a flaming rune. You can't point to part of the D8 and say "that part is slashing and that other part is cold iron". But you can say "that D6 is fire damage and that D8 is the cold iron slashing damage". So you can tell apart the instances.

It does have consequences - being able to stack a whole lot of the same damage type against an enemy weak to it. I think that's generally not a problem, if there's enough variation in enemy weaknesses and resistances. It becomes a problem if you have a campaign where most of the enemies have the same weakness. Or if the party can actually cause enemies to gain a substantial weakness.

If this clarification had dropped earlier, maybe that would have caused writers to be a lot more cautious about abilities that cause weaknesses. So better late than never, but better early than late.

Reading this my impression is that Shining Symbol is strong, but it's kind of exceptional. The other ways to impose a weakness I've seen suggested so far don't give so much weakness that this really gets out of hand. I mean, yeah you're doing damage through a fun combo, which is nice. But you also have to put in work to switch the combo on, which could have also been used to do damage in other ways. So it's nice but so far looking reasonably balanced.

Am I overlooking something?

Although you could just simplify that to "how viable is exemplar multiclass" :P

Well I played a wolf stance monk levels 1-11, and Wolf Drag proved really hard to use. Because very often you're spending an action to go into stance, and an action to move. Or an action to move, and then you have to choose between a Flurry plus another action, or Wolf Drag. It worked out a few times, but I don't think I've ever managed to crit with it. (Yes, I'm really looking forward to stance savant.)

Slam Down also works with reach weapons, so a fighter could move up to a non-reach enemy, slam them down, hit them when they get back up, and then they'd still need to move closer to the fighter before they can strike back. It's a sweet deal. Also it works with d10 and d12 weapons which is nice.

Instead of telling you "these are the rules" which you've already heard, let me try to explain what I think is the "why". (This is just what I believe; I wasn't there originally when it was first conceived.)

PFS grew out of Living Greyhawk which existed from around 2000 to 2008, and was probably based off earlier living campaigns. People definitely thought a bit differently about gaming back then, and LG had quite strict rules about replaying. I think it was very much rooted in a sort of "sports" kinda attitude, that once you've played a scenario you know what's going on and if you did it again you'd have an unfair advantage. In LG I believe you weren't allowed to play a scenario after having GMed it, so often people had to do some complex coordination to make sure they got to play, GM for people, then those people could GM, and so on.

PFS has over the years gradually loosened those rules, introducing a few replayable scenarios in PFS1, and a lot more in PFS2. I remember back in PFS1 days there was a very strong suspicion of replayable scenarios both from GMs but definitely also from Paizo. There was a big concern that it would cheapen the gaming experience. I guess times change, and the constant pressure of people being unhappy with not having scenarios to play also had an influence. PFS2 had a lot more replayable scenarios, as well as replayable bounties and quests.

With SFS2, everything is replayable by default AND you can start at level 1,3,5 or 7 as you like. So it's a very long way away from those LG days where it was like "no, a high level character is something you really need to EARN".

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Where does (re)playing for no credit fit in?

The rules don't actually handle non-replay for no credit. Sure, it does happen sometimes - someone shows up, gets a pregen, plays a session, but isn't long term interested in PFS and nobody needs to go through the rigmarole of setting up an account to report one game ever.

But there's "replaying for no credit", which basically means there's a table with not enough characters, and instead of a pregen, you bring a PC. Maybe your PC is better designed than the pregen, maybe you just like your PC more. You can't earn any gold or XP, but your character can lose money and get hurt and die. It's not a great deal.

But I think the reason behind it is that Paizo doesn't want some of the players to have something at stake, and others nothing at stake. If you're playing without taking credit, what happens if your character gets killed? Do you say "well if I don't get paid I also can't die?" What if there's a fight that's going badly, do you fight the rearguard action so the rest of the party can run away, because hey if you die it doesn't matter?

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I'm not saying these somewhat abusive feeling things really happen in practice. Maybe they did, here and there, but I've never seen it. However, I do feel part of the draw of PFS (RPGs in general) is that as a group you decide on some game rules and all play by them - play well and you advance.

If some people start saying "meh, I don't want credit, I don't want to do bookkeeping" that's one thing. But then if a couple weeks later there's some higher level scenarios, are they gonna come up with "well, I never got any XP, but here's my level 9 character" how does that work with the other players who had to "work" to get to level 9 the regular way?

So I think your VC was correct in strongly discouraging. Playing the occasional pick-up game with no bureaucracy afterward is a perfectly good way to have fun. But it chafes a bit with what Organized Play tries to do with having rules for leveling up your character from session to session and playing with lots of people all using the same rules.

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Oh, also, doing things like a module or AP where only some of the players are interested in getting a chronicle afterward, that's totally fine, that doesn't really cause any friction with the organized play system.

Also the new weakness / instance of damage rules are just dumb and exploitable as hell, lol.

I think Paizo forgot that players can add weaknesses to foes, which uh, yeah, that's as cracked as it sounds.

On the easy side, anyone with alchemy can throw an inflammation flask to add fire, acid, and slash weakness to the hit foe for 3 turns, no save. Don't even need to spend a class feat on a focus spell.

Once the Fighter tosses an opening bomb, everyone with a flaming corrosive slash weapon is already popping all three of those resistances. Before the energy mutagens, rainbow vinegar, etc kick in for even more.

Yeah, I genuinely wonder if Paizo is going to walk that back and errata their errata, rofl.

Meh, I think Paizo just picked the interpretation of instance of damage that a lot of people, and notably Foundry, had already converged on. It feels like a natural conclusion also with how the remaster distinguished damage types and traits on damage more than before.

It shifts the balance a bit but not really that much, because this was the interpretation that was already used in many places.

The inflammation flask is a bit much, but feels kinda typical for an AP item. A lot of APs have wonky alchemical items. It's on you as a GM if you allow players to shop around in the catalog of other APs than the one you're playing. (And note that the item isn't available in PFS.)

Apart from that - I think Paizo might have decided to just roll with it. As a player, actually finding a weakness on an enemy and exploiting it is fun. Getting high damage because you chose the right attack for this specific enemy, is more the style Paizo promotes than just picking a weapon with high general damage and using it for e-ve-ry-thing.

So I don't really expect them to walk it back.

I legit am struggling to actually navigate the errata (their search is hella broken on my browsers), but Firework Technician looks like it still has killed the Alchemist class by granting recharging VVials.

As far as I know, alchemy benefits still combine.

Guys, this is really bad. Recharging alchemy was the one chassis thing of significance exclusive to the Alchemist Class.

To be clear, F Tech alone cannot easily abuse their recharge. But any PC with another form of VVials, such as via Alchemist Dedication, will still gain recharging VVials from F Tech.

new Firework Tech wrote:

You gain the quick alchemy benefits (Player Core 2 174), creating up to 4 versatile vials during your daily preparations. Your versatile vials are pyrotechnic, so they have the fire trait and deal fire damage instead of acid. You can use versatile vials only for the Launch Fireworks action (see below) or with Quick Alchemy to create fireworks consumables, including doses or rounds of black powder, the sparkler item (Treasure Vault 55), and other items determined by the GM. You can replenish your versatile vials during exploration the same way an alchemist can (Player Core 2 59).

Another way to read it is that if you wanted more flexible flexible vials, you should avoid firework technician like the plague because once you take it you can't use the vials for anything else anymore.

Think of it like this. The thaumaturge class got loaded up with a lot of stuff to hold in your hands that get in the way of holding a 2H weapon, dual wielding, or sword and shield. Like, you're holding chalices, amulets, lanterns and all that. As a result, you're a bit behind other martials who can devote their hands fully to weapons and shields.

Implement's Empowerment is a compensation for that. It gives a one-handed weapon about the same damage as a two-handed weapon. But if you could actually find a way to hold implements and also fully use your hands for weaponry like other martials, you don't need this compensation anymore.

Well, lines and cones not starting at you is pretty unusual, so if the spell doesn't call it out, I'd be wondering if it was a mistake too. Notice how Telekinetic Bombardment explicitly explains the unusual line placement.

That said, I agree that if it didn't have range, 15 foot cone seems absurdly small for a rank 6 spell. On the other hand, a cone starting out there at range IS weird and not super well explained by the spell why this specific spell can do that. "You launch a cone" sounds more like you'd have a cone starting at the caster.

If you want to house rule something more "sensible", you could go with a 10 or 15 foot blast at 60 feet range instead, or even a 60 foot cone starting at the caster. Those would not be out of line for a rank 6 spell.

Yeah it's unclear, but I also believe Tridus' interpretation best fits the intent of the class feature (making simple favored weapons just good enough to seriously consider).

Battle forms are confusing. The rules seem straight forward but anytime you try and add things to them things get shoddy. I have a couple questions for those of you who have more experience than me and/or just know the rules better then me.

Say I'm a Monk with Clinging Shadows. I use an action and focus point to assume the stance either by item (like Saurian Spike) or spell through a multiclass dedication assuming a battle form through Dinosaur Form.

The Dinosaur Form specifically says I can only make strikes related to the form I choose. Ok. Battle Form rules doesn't say I end effects currently on me so it does not make me leave my stance. Ok. Can I then use the reach grapple granted by Clinging Shadows and strike with a Jaws attack? Does Battle Forms lock me out of Monk class abilities like Flurry of Blows? If not, could I in this example, if I had the Flurry of Maneuvers feat flurry for 1 action to reach grapple with a shadow and bite with an unarmed jaws strike?

So, battle form doesn't end stances because it doesn't say it does. However, it doesn't let you make any strikes other than the ones granted by the battle form.

A grapple isn't a strike, so it doesn't prevent you from using the clinging shadow tentacles to grapple with. However, if your battle form granted you an athletics bonus, that is the one you have to use for it. This means that the grapple trait on the tentacles doesn't let you add your handwraps item bonus to it.

The reach from the tentacles doesn't apply to your bite attack, they're totally separate things.

Using flurry of blows/maneuvers with a battle form is generally fine because they're not listed as any of the special statistics that you can't modify. So grab with a tentacle then strike with a bite is fine.

In defense of the laughing shadow magus, I actually see the focus spell working out well quite a lot.

I wonder if sparkling targe should take a page from thaumaturge shield implement/champion defensive advance and compress raising shield with another action (entering cascade, striding a bit, or recovering spellstrike)?

My suspicion is that they're missing some optimizations for repeated images, like page border decorations. When I run ghostscript to optimize with medium settings I can reduce file size by around 80% consistently without it looking any different to me.

Regarding "does losing a space battle mean TPK" - a solution from SF1 forum days was making escape pods a standard part of any ship design. And they're not worth points, you can't remove the space pods to buy more guns or shields.

Also, escape pods are designed to be really hard to find with (enemy) sensors, but respond to the coded frequencies of allies. And they just put you in stasis or life support with virtual reality entertainment. So basically, losing a space battle might mean losing the ship, everyone going in an escape pod, and waiting a few days or weeks for rescue.

Waiting to be rescued could still fail you the current adventure, but it allows the occasional really dangerous fight.

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I also like the idea of making fleeing easier than catching, as a matter of rule design. If both you and the enemy are by default capable of escaping if it looks like you can't win anymore, then you have less battles to the death and more about achieving specific things.

An enemy might want to prevent you from landing on a planet and exploring it; you might have to drive off a patrol ship. Once you've "persuaded" them you're too tough to stop, they flee. Now you're on a clock to do your mission, because maybe they come back with reinforcement.s

Or you're trying to blow up some satellites and they're trying to make things rather hot for you. But if you blow up the satellites, they might decide it's not worth sticking around anymore.

An actual battle to the death would require both sides to have a reason not to flee when they're losing, which makes things more interesting.

I don't consider this an error needing errata. These aren't two character options that you're pushed to use together; if that was the case then it would really be an error and should get errata.

But they're just two standalone options that don't really go well together. There's a default outcome of "well that just can't be done" as well as the standard escape hatch of "First Rule, the GM is fine with it, go".