Ascalaphus's page

I don't think it's gonna break your game to allow it, but I also don't think it's something that NEEDS to change for everyone.

Personally the thing I'd like to see changed is giving access to uncommon ancestry weapons to characters of that ancestry automatically. Currently it's hinted that the GM could allow that, but that's not definite enough for PFS.

Like, most elves that would really care about using a curve blade are already proficient in it (post-remaster rogues, in particular). They don't actually need the feat. But if you want one in PFS you have to pay the tax to gain access.

This goes back to a lot and I mean a LOT of forum/rules discussion about Battle Medicine and how many hands it needs. Use the search feature if you really want to read several thousand posts arguing about it :P

What it came down to was that way back in the first print run of PF2, you needed two hands to use a medkit, presumably one to hold stuff and the other to apply. Or maybe none, because how some traits were printed or items were listed or not listed as needed. It was all a bit vague and caused a lot of arguments.

Needing 0 hands to use Battle Medicine seemed a bit implausible. Needing two hands to use it seemed so harsh that it was basically unusable because it's so expensive in action economy. Because it would mean:
- dropping or stowing a weapon and maybe a shield
- grabbing a medkit
- using it
- putting it back
- getting your weapon/shield back into action

Eventually they narrowed it down to needing only 1 hand if you were wearing the medkit instead of holding it in your hand. Basically, you grab a bandaid from your shirt pocket and slaw it onto someone. Done. So you don't need to spend extra actions stowing your medkit anymore, because you're wearing them ready for quick access.

However, you do still need to spend any actions re-gripping two-handed weapons and all that. That's part of the balancing of different weapon usage styles. On the one hand a two-handed weapon hits harder. On the other hand, going one-handed leaves you more flexible to do stuff like battle medicine or using potions.

With normal Grab, yeah, you could use Liberating Step after the damage, before the monster can take its next action to Grab, thus putting the ally out of reach.

Liberating Step is a pretty good reaction. It's not as obvious how good it is compared to say, Retributive Strike, but it's intended to be just as awesome. Working as intended :)

Baarogue makes some more good points about Improved Grab. It does mean that Liberating Step is still quite good against it, but that it doesn't completely foil it like it can foil the weaker ability. Again, looks like working as intended to me.

Agree with Baarogue. The Quick Capture ability is a bit different than regular Grab/Improved Grab abilities.

Grab/Improved Grab trigger after a hit, and then then you can as a normal/free action try to grapple. Quick Capture on the other hand includes an automatically successful grapple as part of the strike's effect. Also relevant is that this is when the strike hits, so before even getting around to rolling damage.

Now, there are two triggers that you could use to use Liberating Step:
- the fighter becomes grabbed, which happens as soon as the hit result is announced
- the fighter takes damage, which happens after damage is rolled (so, later)

But one of them is a much better choice for the champion to use than the other.

If the champion reacts to the grab, the damage still happens, because we already know the hit happened. But he doesn't get resistance, because you only get the resistance if the trigger was taking damage.

On the other hand, if the champion reacts to the damage, then the fighter does get to try to Escape & move, because there's no "if the trigger was" clause limiting that. So this is a much better choice in this case.

What makes innate spells better than traditional spells? What makes them worse? How do they differ from traditional spells?

They're, extremely literally speaking, spells you were born with; not spells you learned by practicing a class. That's not precisely correct in all cases, but it's a good general mental model for what a normal vs an innate spell is like.

Aside from the "Innate" designation, I'm not seeing any practical difference and so am beginning to wonder why the distinction exists at all.

Largely using the same mechanics as all other spells is a good thing! It means you don't need to learn a whole new set of mechanics just because gnomes know some tricks without being a spellcasting class.

Do they not provoke reactions? Do they have the concentrate and manipulate traits? Does the mere act of casting them generate observable effects?

They have the same traits as regular spells, provoke in the same way, are just as observable.

The main differences are:
- default ability is Charisma unless stated otherwise
- it doesn't give you the "Cast a Spell" or "Spellcasting" class features that you need to use various magic items.

A lot of the things I've enjoyed have already been mentioned, but there's another one I want to highlight: shared experiences.

If I'm playing a scenario with my friends over here, and later on I talk with someone on the far side of the world who's played the same adventure with their group, we get to swap stories. Which side did you pick in the dispute? How did you beat the dragon? And so forth.

You have some of that with adventure paths as well of course, but I get a lot more of it with PFS. It's one of the social side bits that I really like.

Maybe a good perspective to judge these things is: how many feats will the Before and After character differ in?

As opposed to: how many edits does it take to get from Before to After? (Which is what the book rules focus on.)

I value the first comparison more. If the Before/After builds are very similar it doesn't seem right to make someone pay through the nose for it.

Okay, I knew it was clunky but hadn't considered that it was that clunky.

Maybe because in practice I've never had to do it "the hard way" like that - in home campaigns my usual GM was far more relaxed about retraining, we didn't really count downtime days since nobody cared much about Earn Income and such anyway. Also, because in a campaign like Agents of Edgewatch you're going from level 1 to 20 in the span of one summer festival.

And in PFS, on the face of it, retraining would be this hard. But in practice there's been several campaign-wide rebuilding opportunities because of the remaster and such. Also, there are some boons you can buy with achievement points (points you get for playing/GM, with more points gained at conventions), that let you do it more often/faster.

Re: Abjurers.

What about an excorcist or banisher?

I think there's a niche for sort of the spellcaster counterpart to the champion. Yeah, a lot of classes have something a bit like it (thaumaturge amulet implement, counter performance etc) but there's enough to it to build a full class around it.

Fair reason. I am partially in agreement. I'm not a fan of how Paizo does prepared casting. It never gelled with me back in 1E. It never gelled with the people I played with. I even scrapped it in the games I run in favor of a buffed version of the flexible spellcasting archetype where I made it the default casting method to work more like 5E casting.

But, while I do dislike prepared casting. when I imagine a mesmerist, I don't want them to be someone with a limited bag of tricks like a bard. The same way a necromancer is a prepared caster, due to its versatility in their field, I'd want Mesmerist to be one. It quite frankly does not make sense to me for a mesmerist to have such a small learned spell list. It simply does not feel thematic to me.

Granted, my home rule system makes prepared casting very playable. So I have a form of bias where a prepared caster is not seen as a detriment at my table.

Though that raises the question: If Spontaneous is always better than prepared, then what's the point of Paizo making prepared casters? I feel like I find more people who espouse their intentions to refuse to play a prepared caster than those who actually defend it.

I feel like classic prepared casting is a bit of a passé concept. It happened to be the thing people came up with decades ago, and then just stuck with. And I mean, I like the vibe of wizards. I like the greedy idea of someone who wants to learn ALL the secrets.

But since then, spontaneous casting has evolved:
- first bursting onto the scene in D&D 3.0
- PF2 being much more liberal with retraining spells as you level up
- Some classes having mechanics to swap out one spell per day from your repertoire with a spellbook

I think that last one is the way forward. Not that many prepared casters really swap out their whole spell selection every day. Swapping out one or two spells would be plenty. Maybe some should be a bit better at it than others, or have a wider repertoire of alternatives to choose from.

I feel spontaneous casting is a better play experience, if you just have that bit of wiggle room to adapt.

Ascalaphus wrote:

I've got a PFS thaumaturge with champion dedication (liberator) and I've been really satisfied with it. The reaction has prevented massive amounts of damage because it often lets my allies take a step back from a monster, getting them out of reach of a second attack.

Wait. How does it let them take a step back? I’m missing something.

It works like this:

Trigger An enemy damages, Grabs, or Grapples your ally, and both are within 15 feet of you.

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You free an ally from restraint. If the trigger was an ally taking damage, the ally gains resistance to all damage against the triggering damage equal to 2 + your level. The ally can attempt to break free of effects grabbing, restraining, immobilizing, or paralyzing them. They either attempt a new save against one such effect that allows a save, or attempt to Escape from one effect as a free action. If they can move, the ally can Step as a free action, even if they didn’t need to escape.

So a pretty common situation is:

Monster moves up to ally (action 1)
Monster strikes (action 2)
You react with liberating step, your ally steps away
Monster can't strike with action 3, because your ally is now too far away.

So you've prevented damage with the resistance, but also by avoiding a second attack.

I've got a PFS thaumaturge with champion dedication (liberator) and I've been really satisfied with it. The reaction has prevented massive amounts of damage because it often lets my allies take a step back from a monster, getting them out of reach of a second attack.

Well you could - plenty of other RPGs do. You could go further, too; why do different classes have different feat lists? Why can't my fighter take Gang Up as level 6 feat? Other game systems just give you a pile of build points to select all your stats and abilities with.

Ultimately Pathfinder uses limitations on what you can't do, or what only some classes can do, to give them identity. And it works pretty well.

The problem for wizard is that their identity is pretty much "the arcane spell list" except that several other classes also use the same spell list, and wizards don't really get significant tricks with it that sorcerers and witches don't get.

Maybe the problem is that they mixed up "the wizard list" and "the arcane list" too much.

To me at least, one of the key themes of a wizard is someone who studies the fundamentals and tries to get around the apparent limitations. It's part of the class identity that they're doing things no god intended. Wizard magic should be a bit outside it's appointed lane.

So they could have kept the arcane list a bit more pure, but let wizards color more outside those lines specifically as their class trick.

An arcane sorcerer would be practicing more purely arcane magic, and a wizard through hackery can do things the sorcerer won't have access to. (And an arcane witch gets some lessons from the patron to color outside the lines too..)

I think some campaigns need other things than others.

I played Dead Suns (Starfinder) and we were playing on weekdays, we only had about 3H play sessions. And nobody really cared deeply about loot. Also, we were supposed to be backed by the Starfinder Society because we were saving the universe (then again, who isn't). At some point we said to hell with this and switched to resetting everyone's wealth to benchmark WBL every level, which coincided with visits to home base. Basically, you book successes, bureaucrats take you more seriously, and you get better requisitions to deal with your conspiracy against life, the universe and everything. Side effect: loot tracking becomes unimportant. Not quite the same as ABP but kinda in the same philosophy.

But we also played Against the Aeon Throne, and in that one the GM definitely didn't want to do the thing that had worked SO well in the previous AP. Because in that AP a big story driver at the start of one book is that you're kinda cut off from supplies and have to negotiate to get access to new stuff. Automatic reset to WBL, or ABP for that matter, would have really taken the wind out of those sails.

This is for sure interesting.

Just as a side note: I think a lot of caster builds tend to "leave money on the table" by not even bothering to buy a weapon. Because now and then, you have some actions you can't really properly spend. It might be a Hast action that can only be spent on a Stride or Strike.

Yeah, a caster might not be the primary target of Haste. But at some point the R7 Haste comes out for the whole party. And there's money on the table. And at level ~13, a +1 striking returning thrown weapon costs peanuts. Sure, it's only a chance at minor damage, but it's a cheap bonus.

So that's also something to consider when evaluating these kinda weapon feats.

One thing to be a little wary of. At least one AP (Quest for the Frozen Flame) is notorious for how bad it is in giving out the "basic" magic (+1 runes, striking runes, armor runes, etc). In that AP having ABP would be a huge boost to that particular character.

I think that's a good AP to just use ABP for everyone. I did the same in 1E with Iron Gods because half the loot was technological items like a 18,000gp life raft that didn't inflate half the time because it was 9000 years old. I mean, that's thematic and cool, but not as good as a +3 shield. Moving to ABP meant that I had less work as a GM worrying about whether the PCs were on the right track with gear.

This should probably go under the Homebrew forum.

Ascalaphus wrote:

For the rest of the party, yeah I'd just remove one share of loot drops as a GM.

I'd push back quite fiercely against any player option that would reduce options for the rest of the players at the table.

Removing a share of loot drops does not maintain balance. It weakens it. Before, the Vow of Poverry player joined, the party had a bigger pile to choose from which meant more versatility of options. When you make that pile smaller, you might maintain strict numerical balance, but having less choices is a hit to versatility.

Versatility of choice is powerful boon. Just look at the popularity of pick-a-tradition spellcasters, like sorcerer, or the Free Archetype rules.

Well, if ABP is a decent compensation, and one PC isn't using any of the loot, then in a typical party the other PCs just got a 33% increase in wealth. That's quite a lot.

It depends a lot on the GM if the loot you get is just "well, this is what it says on this page of the AP" or if the GM does a lot of tailoring exactly to the party.

If the GM was already kinda manipulating things so there'd be a decent amount of items that fit noticeably well for each particular PC, well then it's easy enough to just leave out the VoP loot. Everyone could clearly tell which item is "your" item already.

If you're more in the "well, this is what fell out of the pinata monster", then maybe a 25% loot cut is too strict.

What you [i]could[i] do is say that you do get the whole pile, but that the VoP character donates their share of it to some charitable cause. So everyone else does still get a lot to choose from, but the overall party wealth stays normal.

Well it would allow you to support character concepts like "my monk doesn't want to be laden down with material attachments" without becoming unplayable.

I think as-is, it's a moderate downgrade, instead of a crushing downgrade (not using items and not getting ABP either). For a couple of reasons;

1) ABP bonuses arrive "on time", while loot tends to be slightly "early". An ABP character is gonna get Striking at level 4, period. A regular character might find a Striking weapon at level 3 according to the loot table, just on time for the bossfight at the end of the first AP book after which you level up to 4. The loot tables give you above-level items as a way of making adventuring THE best way to get shiny stuff, earlier access than crafting or buying. Risk reward and such.

2) ABP bonuses aren't very flexible. Items allow you to prioritize more.

3) A true vow of poverty would go further than cutting out the items that ABP covers.

4) ABP is more geared towards the needs of martial than casters, it doesn't cover staves etc.

So it might be desirable to give some kind of extra boost beyond ABP alone. On the other hand, is it really "poverty" if it doesn't hurt at all?

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For the rest of the party, yeah I'd just remove one share of loot drops as a GM.

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Overall I like the idea though. It allows another range of character concepts that would otherwise conflict with the "items are power" ethos of the game. And it could also cater to grumpy old geeks who want to play the game, but don't really want to play the equipment game.

You must use the Command

an Animal action (page 242) to get your mount to spend its
actions. If you don’t, the animal wastes its actions.

So for example, if you had a mature animal companion, it normally gets an action even if you don't Command it. But the mounted combat rules specifically say that the mount will waste those actions if you're mounted and not Commanding it.

That rule's been in there since the start of PF2 (CRB, p. 478).

Basically, you're not supposed to get free movement without spending an action.

Well, there are a couple of points to consider.

* When you're mounted, you share MAP with your mount (PC1, p. 437), and bows are not agile. So you're probably using the mount more for mobility than for attacking.

* When mounted, the mount only moves if you Command it, even if it'd normally get an independent action (PC1, p. 437).

* However, when you Command it, it'll take two actions and can Move+Support or just Move+Move. Also, mounts typically have a good base speed. So a mount's single Move is about as fast as that of a character who's spent several feats/items on Speed. With a double Move, a mount can really outpace most opponents.

* The amount of free space matters a lot. Being really mobile only does something if there's somewhere to go. And the range of the longbow only matters if there are firing lines longer than 30 feet to begin with.

So about the least powerful situation for a mounted archer would be an indoor dungeon crawl where it's hard to get around the longbow's Volley trait, and if you actually move far away from enemies, there'll be walls in the way when you want to shoot.

The most powerful situation for a mounted archer would be riding a flying mount, or a mount on a vast wide open plain, where you can always use two mount-Move actions to stay far enough away from the enemy that they can't close in and melee attack you, but you can still attack them.

Another thing to consider is: what is the rest of the party doing? If one character wants to fight on a steppe map that's a lot bigger than the typical gaming table, and the rest of the party is melee and 30ft range spell focused, this might not work that well too.

... So. Under some circumstances, it'd be pretty powerful. But there are a lot of drawbacks. For many encounters, it won't be that powerful. If enemies can't get to just one PC, they can just harass the others instead. But once in a while it'll be gloriously powerful.

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Another thing is that this rule might just be a holdover from past editions that just kinda gets copied over each time. A bit like wizards and rogues had this really specific weapons list that's been more or less the same for the last thirty or forty years. If you compare all the points I just made about longbows to some of the long-range crossbows or even just a shortbow + ranger using Hunt Prey to not take penalties in second range increment, you can see that it might just be a legacy thing.

I felt the end of Age of Ashes was too much

Issue: What is an "instance of damage", for the purpose of applying multiple weaknesses/resistances?

Can one attack do multiple instances of damage? For example, a flaming cold iron axe, would it do an instance of cold iron slashing + another instance of fire damage, or is all of that one instance? If the enemy has weakness to fire and slashing, are both of them triggered or only the biggest one?

I've played a cloistered cleric with rogue dedication in Age of Ashes from 1-20. Even without free archetype, I felt the rogue feats were well worth paying for. In particular, learning the Mobility feat can be pure gold.

Rogue dedication ships with light armor proficiency. It doesn't scale up at level 13, but in Abomination Vaults you don't care since it only goes up to level 10. So for a cloistered cleric, it solves a big problem for you: how to get your AC to an okay number.

You can start with a Wis +4 / Dex +3 and studded leather. You might not have enough strength, so take a -1 penalty to Dex skills from the armor. But IMO that's the lesser evil compared to missing out a point of AC for taking only basic leather armor which needs less strength.

Well the DC to fix the shield is based on the shield's level, so it does get higher as the shield/rune gets more potent.

However, the damage on a critical failure to Repair never goes up, and is reduced by hardness. So with say the level 7 shield/rune, it's really quite hard to accidentally make things worse.

The Quick Repair feat can then make the repairs a pretty trivial thing.

Aside from the GM maybe having to dial encounter difficulty down to "remedial" for a while, what about actually really leaning into "okay, so what would your character do?" part?

Instead of arguing out of character about it, you could also talk it out in character.

What just happened? You (the character) were in a fight and you were counting on your buddy to help out. But he hung out in the back and didn't do anything useful. Why? Is he a coward? Is he green and doesn't know what to do?

What are you gonna do next time? Ask him what he thinks you should do next time, if he doesn't come and help you. Should you also stay in the back? Run away?

Maybe what you need is a mock fight, to figure out your teamwork? Look at Bob the fighter, sitting there, eating his lunch, looking a little wary now that we're talking about him. You and the new guy are gonna fight him together, just fists, trying to work together to see how it goes. There's no monsters really trying to kill you, although Bob might give you a black eye.

Another view on what might be the case:

What the guy literally said doesn't have to be what is actually the case. We sometimes get into the weeds here because we take things at face value too much. (What, us nerds, taking what people too literally? No...)

Imagine that you're new to this game and you don't really know that much which abilities really really matter. You've looked a bit here and there and you see that Bon Mot and Demoralize can help weaken enemies. Great! You've found a cool way that your character can contribute! There's even synergy - Bon Mot makes Demoralize easier.

And then you're getting into a fight and doing your stuff to contribute, and other people keep yelling at you that you need to do something different. Well, you read about Feint as a thing rogues do to get their mojo going. You do that and people yell at you again. At this point you're telling them to back off.

It's very possible that "it's what my character would do" actually means "stop telling me what to do".

Even when other people really are more experienced than you, it's not fun to be constantly told what to do. Just because technically they might be correct doesn't mean it feels good. "Metagaming" can also mean being too busy with the mechanics of the game - even when correct - for someone's feelings.

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I think Quentin has a point - this is a game where all characters have to pull their weight to match against the difficulty of the adventure. Otherwise people are going to have a bad time. You (Ravingdork) are in a worse position because you're bearing the brunt of the encounter difficulty because someone else isn't living up to the level the GM is expecting.

But maybe the GM should also tone down the difficulty of the adventure to the level of the players (not just the level of the characters)?

Having a "To look at" list would be extremely easy and not labour intensive, and shows they're looking at stuff. It doesn't necessarily need to be or mean "this is up for errata".

People already start "errata maybe" threads for new books all the time, so half of this is covered. Although they have a tendency to involve some bickering, they're still a good place to trawl for a dev who's preparing a seasonal errata batch.

The other side, acknowledging an issue is being looked at. I don't think it's the time it would take that's stopping them. It's that it doesn't really help. You just change from "why won't the devs acknowledge my issue" to "why haven't they fixed the issue they acknowledged" or "why did they look at it and then not fix it the way I wanted".

Guntermench wrote:

Counterpoint regarding Arcane Cascade in particular: the polite option was taken for several years before Arcane Cascade was fixed.

A lot of the feedback on these forums in general is like that where a problem is identified and outlined and then f$%% all is done about it and it's extremely rarely acknowledged.

This is why I'll keep chiming in about a public-facing website for "known issues/bugs/___"

Just the Paizo admission of specific "player dissatisfactions" could radically reduce the amount of negativity that gets posted to the forums.

I think the problem with that is that collecting all problems in one visible pile only helps if you then actually work on that pile to try to fix it. If you just collect problems and let the collection get bigger, that will actually just make people more unhappy.

The fact that Paizo *will* respond when community posts seem to hit a bulls-eye / threaten to go viral, like with their immediate response to the Dying rules situation, only proves that they are watching, and choosing to willfully deny these problems / bugs via omission.

Again, every reader with a brain can recognize this subconsciously. Once people see that responses *do* happen for critical, "mask-breaking" problems so they can save their precious face / image, said reader understands that if they stir up s$@& that *looks* toxic / disastrous enough, it can spur Paizo to do a fix. Which is as bad as it sounds.

I don't read that situation the same way you did. I think Paizo considers some problems as being not so important as you consider them. That's not the same as pretending they don't exist - they just value them less than you do.

The Dying rules were deeply problematic, because they hit a couple of criteria that any helpdesk person would see when triaging a problem:
- impacts a lot of people
- impact is severe
- no workaround available

Anything that kills a character is severe. The "no workaround available" came because it was a mostly consistent rule where it's hard to argue that the book doesn't mean what it says.

Now compare that to the arcane cascade:
- impacts few people
- impact on those people is severe, but,
- workaround available

Why is the workaround available in this case? Because it was obvious to everyone that this rule was just wrong on a technicality, which people could just ignore in actual play. If your GM really wouldn't let arcane cascade not work because of this technicality, the GM is broken to begin with. We had a workaround in the form of the "dealing with ambiguous rules" meta-rule which tells you that you should pick the interpretation of a rule that's less problematic.

So while the arcane cascade thing is a bit ugly technicality, it's not something that should be a problem in actual play and therefore not nearly as crucial to fix.

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There's a difference between what you seem to be expecting (Paizo aims to fix all issues) and what Paizo seems to be expecting (they will fix some issues, mainly the important ones).

I do think Paizo is honest when they say they play to do errata on a regular schedule. But I also work in a company and I also know that what companies think they're gonna do, and what companies end up actually having time and priority to do, are not the same. Companies make plans with the best of intentions but then something else comes up, and it becomes a matter of priorities. Was their prior plan really important, or is the other thing more important?

This is where we get to why some errata happen, and some don't. Sometimes you get lucky and there's time to fix your favorite issue. Sometimes an issue is too important and has to be fixed. And sometimes an issue is not really that severe and it gets snowed under.

I think you'll have a better time by changing your expectations of what will get errata, instead of trying to change Paizo.

If you can easily see what the correct way is that a rule is supposed to work (arcane cascade), don't get worked up about it being technically wrong.

The NASA video Trip linked was pretty interesting, but I think there are fundamental differences between Paizo and NASA.

Such as in the stakes of the missions and the resources available. If Paizo prints a few mistakes people will be unhappy with a book - but pilots won't die on prime time television. Likewise, they don't get the kind of resources allocated to print a book that you'd use to race the USSR to the moon.

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My own favorite analogy for RPGs is programming. I think RPG rulesystems are like programming languages meant to run on human brains.

A lot of the big classic programming languages were first designed, using formal grammars to specify them. And when you're just specifying a language on paper, it's possible to forget something, or leave something unclear. And you can still print your specification, because paper doesn't care if what you're writing is correct or complete.

But then someone goes and tries to actually implement your language. Make a compiler for it that takes code written in your language, compiles it to machine code, and run it. And they then have to make up their mind on what to do with oversights or ambiguities. They have to do something with it.

Sometimes there's multiple implementations for a programming language, but one of them becomes considered the "reference" implementation. Others might have technically executed the implementation in a different way, but aim to produce the same behavior in the ambiguous cases.

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I think that's a good way to look at the Paizo/Foundry situation. At some point Foundry has to pick an interpretation of for example how to apply resistances to attacks that deal a smorgasboard of damage types against an enemy with multiple resistances. Paizo's not managed to give a definite answer to that in five years, so by now people are saying "well, Foundry does it like this..."

Tabletop play is more permissive. Humans are much more flexible at running not-so-strict code than computers are. Just because Paizo's left some questions unsolved doesn't mean we cannot play in that corner of the rules at all. We manage it all the time, the game is not so flawed to be unplayable.

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That doesn't mean I don't want some errata for this and that, but I do think it's useful to maintain a sense of perspective on how problematic the problems really are. As well as a sense of realism - Paizo wants to put a big book on the table every GenCon. Quite a few of us are also looking forward to that book. But the book requires a production timeline, and if Paizo has to choose between that timeline and noncritical errata, they're gonna choose the timeline.

Noncritical errata? I mean, really, most errata is noncritical. I think the Dying rules are one of the rare exceptions. Something has to make the game abruptly and deeply unplayable to be critical. As much as I'm irritated that the rules for getting stunned during your own turn are so bad, I can't say it's making the whole game unplayable for me.

I think you shouldn't try to do the job of 2-3 PCs and also hold yourself to the standard that you'll do it excellently.

If some of the players want to play weak characters, or if some players absolutely don't want to coordinate builds, the party is going to be weaker. At that point either the campaign is going to be really hard mode, or the GM decides to make it easier.

Which can be fine! The default difficulty of the game is just a default, it's not sacred. Some people like the idea of "we took the adventure as-is and beat it", other people don't find that important. They care more about being able to play the character they wanted to play. So then the adventure should be made easier, so that there's less pressure to play an optimal character choice.

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That said, for yourself: if I were you I'd talk with the GM about a bit more drastic rebuilding, like shuffling around some ability choice decisions. You can leave the core idea of the character the same (human, sorcerer, ..) while changing the numbers a bit to work out better.

In particular, I wouldn't wait until level 7-8 to get your armor class right. You're going to have a bad time until then.

Personally I'm a big fan of just taking a decent Dexterity and getting light armor proficiency. Even as a backline caster you're likely to make some reflex saves against area attacks, so Dex is good to have anyway, and it helps with some skills too.

Another option might be to go dragonblooded heritage, and take the scaly hide feat at level 1, and move to the wings feats so that by level 9 you'll be able to fly all the time. That would help you stay out of melee more, because you can't rely on your teammates to protect you all that well.

To expand on Claxon's point -

If a dhampir got hit with an effect that did vitality healing (and nothing else), the dhampir would not take damage.

Void healing doesn't mean "you take damage from every vitality effect"; you don't invert vitality healing into damage. Only if the effect did vitality damage, would it hurt you.

Some vitality-healing effects also do vitality damage, notably the Heal spell. But for example a healing potion, does not. A dhampir that drinks a healing potion only takes damage in the wallet.

⬛ = Solid Wall
⬜ = Grid Space
Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️ = Monster
⭕ = Red Mage
⚫ = Black Mage

Consider this situation:

⬜Ⓜ️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️️⬛⚫⬜
⬜⬜⬛⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬛⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬛⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⭕⬜⬜

There's this monster on one side of the wall, Black Mage is on the other, and Red Mage is in between. The GM has decided that in this case the monster has some cover from Red Mage, but is visible.

The monster is Observed to RM. The monster has also just belched loudly after eating another PC, so to BM the monster is Hidden, because BM could hear where it was (using an imprecise sense).

The monster now decides to Sneak two squares south, and rolls really well on Stealth. After this, the monster is still Observed by RM, but to BM it's become Undetected.

If instead the monster had first used Hide, using the cover to be allowed hide from RM, then the monster could have been lurking undetected from RM as well.

Occasionally a high level caster will be included in a rank 7 haste, and not really have all that much to do with that extra action that can only be used to Stride/Strike. I don't think it's worth spending tons of money on, so maybe not runed up to your maximum. But a +1 striking weapon is dirt cheap at that point and it's a few points of bonus damage for a leftover action.

---

I think another good distinction to make is d4 weapons as primary weapon, vs as secondary weapon. Feats like Double Slice nudge you towards agile weapons for the secondary weapon, so then you're only choosing between a d4 or d6 anyway.

I can see touch being imprecise easily enough. It's one thing to have caught hold of someone with one hand, but where exactly is the rest of their body relative to that, so that you can stick a sword in it? It's somewhat doable, but not as easy as when you can see them.

As for walking into the space of an undetected creature, I don't like the hard "you can't do that". I figure it's up to the sneaky creature to decide whether they want to block your path. Similar to how allies can pass through each others' squares. I mean, if a perfectly visible enemy wanted to walk through your square, you should also be able to let them do that. The rules just assume that you normally don't want to make things convenient for your enemies.

But what if you happen to end your move in the same space as an enemy that you don't know (undetected), strongly suspect (still undetected) or know (hidden)?

I think that's a bit similar to when you accidentally end up in an ally's square, for example when your intended movement gets disrupted by some reaction. At that point we have to remember the grid isn't real, that squares don't have hard walls. It's more like the grid is a convenient projection on the map to help us make sense of distances. You could re-draw the grid a foot to the left and now you're not in the same square anymore. (In practice we don't redraw the grid, the GM just says "okay you're in this square now".)

That said, I could imagine ending in the same square as an undetected creature helping to discover them (making them hidden), as you're very close and likely to bump a bit into them. But if you were just passing through, not ending there, and the invisible creature would rather let you pass than reveal their location - that'd be fine with me too.

I think the big thing is "just attack the other PCs".

The way PF2 works, it's hard for any single character to tank everything. Even very sturdy classes like champions will suffer if they have to take all the hits. Because monsters have good to hit and do a lot of damage. You kinda need at least two melee PCs to have enough HP to go around.

So if one melee PC is making themselves scarce as a target, life is easier for them but harder for the rest of the party.

Let's first focus on what the conditions mean, in normal-person language.

Observed: can see you perfectly. No miss chance.
Hidden: knows exactly what square you're in, but can't see you. DC 11 flat check to target.
Undetected: knows you're somewhere, but not where. So could guess which square you might be in, and then still needs a DC 11 flat check.
Unnoticed: doesn't even suspect you're there at all.

An invisible creature can't be observed with sight. So they're at least hidden, possibly undetected or unnoticed. If they just stabbed you in melee, they'd be hidden because they revealed their location by stabbing.

For a hidden creature to become undetected, they have to do something that makes you lose track of what square they went to. The most obvious way to do that is to succeed at a Sneak action.

If an invisible creature just walks away without Sneaking, they're not taking extra effort to be quiet etc, so they stay hidden and don't become undetected.

If a hidden creature is Sneaking but opponents have special senses, it's possible that they keep track of the sneak anyway, such as by scent, lifesense etc unless the sneaker is taking measures against those senses; but the Foil Senses feat of your rogue means that that's always the case.

Finally, the Legendary Sneak feat means you could Hide and Sneak even without cover/concealment. (And some stuff in exploration.) This doesn't really do anything extra if you're already invisible. But it can help if you're fighting enemies that can see invisible creatures.

---

In summary: the rogue is indeed hard to get Observed. But to become undetected instead of just hidden, the rogue has to take actions to Sneak and succeed at the check. Spending all those actions to Sneak means a lot fewer attacks.

So either the rogue is attacking less, or he's only hidden a lot of the time. Well, even when hidden he's still hard to hit.

What to do? Well you could just attack other PCs more. That's one of the big issues with abilities that cause monsters not to attack you: they're just gonna attack someone else, they're not gonna attack any less. If the rogue is trying really hard not to be a target, then focus fire on the tank, or go for the healer in the back.

Also, it's good to set your expectations: it's a high level game and the characters are going to become ridiculous. They're supposed to be, it's a reward for making it to high level. It's like a rollercoaster that keeps going faster and faster at the end. Enjoy the ridiculousness :)

Since the remaster we don't use alignments so that's clearly not the reason (anymore). And I don't think there was really that much of a push to keep all the alignments equal with each other anyway - there's always been sooooo many demon lords flooding the market.

I suspect part of it is actually to more strongly characterize deities. If there's a bunch of deities that all have eight domains, there's gonna be a lot of overlap between them, making them less distinct from each other.

I feel like the distinction between class DC and spell DC is mostly an artifact of "well, if you're not casting spells, it doesn't make sense to have a spell DC".

The remaster already started to walk this back a bit by using just a single proficiency for all of your spellcasting, instead of having separate proficiencies per tradition.

But I can imagine say, a fighter with wizard dedication getting a bit odd "spell DC" if it's based on strength. So maybe the attribute modifier should stay?

Or maybe casters could just get their equivalent of gate attenuators?

I played a campaign where the GM let potency runes apply to spells as well and it made casting a lot more interesting, even for my magus who didn't have to directly cast so much, could rely on spellstrike.

I also don't think it's fair to characterize Paizo's take on PC2 rebuilds as being that bad.

From the beginning they always said there would not be a second wave of rebuilds. And historically, they've always been really reluctant to allow rebuilds, so when they say they aren't planning to allow another rebuild, that's very believable.

So if a new player rolled up in that time window and made an oracle, AND played it for several sessions until it had become level 2 and couldn't rebuild freely anymore using the general level 1 rules - then something's gone wrong.

Was the newbie player playing only with other newbies for three sessions in a row? Didn't anyone else go "oh hey you're playing a class that could change a lot in a couple of months, you should be careful"? Did people think "Paizo said there'd be no rebuild, but I bet they're bluffing and they'll cave in"?

So yeah, I think "exasperated" is a fairer way to describe Paizo's reaction.

(I'm on the fence about whether a PC2 rebuild would have been good. On the one hand, it removes a lot of pain. On the other hand, you get on a slippery slope where someone uses their PC1 rebuild to pick a PC2 class and then chains that into another rebuild. I think that's the sort of abuse Paizo was worried about. History have shown that at least some people would do that.)

The furthest I've gotten GMing is where I'm at right now - we're about two sessions away from finishing Iron Gods at level 17. That campaign's been taking a looooong time, due to life getting in the way but also because in the beginning I meandered the plot a whole lot. There's a fair bit in the base AP that I was so-so on and wanted to change or elaborate. At some point the campaign had basically stalled, and we decided to pick it back up again but this time stick to the core of it and speed things up. And that's helped.

The furthest I've gotten as a player is going the whole 1-20 on Age of Ashes and Agents of Edgewatch. The same GM for both of them, and I learned a lot about running a campaign a bit more in "getting things done" mode. Ashes we played every (other?) monday evening online, taking advantage of Roll20 and later Foundry automations to speed things up. Edgewatch was scheduled a lot more haphazardly.

I think a key driver for the success of those two campaigns and for the revival of my Iron Gods campaign is a focus on "what do I want to do this session". Trying to get a satisfying chunk of plot done in a session, keeping up momentum.

For Iron Gods, book 6 is basically one huge dungeon (starship) consisting of multiple decks. Each deck has a ton of fights in it. What has worked really well is aiming to clear one deck per session taking one in game day. We've agreed on the convenient fiction that as long as the party clears the deck in one go, we don't worry about the enemy being able to mobilize effective reinforcements from elsewhere.

So how do you clear a deck with as many 14 encounters in one game session (5 hours)? You abbreviate. I picked out two easier and two harder encounters to actually play out in full. I don't want to only do the hard encounters, to keep the palate balanced.

Then the remaining 10 encounters were ones where I thought the flavor was interesting, but it was just too much to do all of them in full. So I just described the situation to the players ("these enemies, like that, in a room like this..") and asked each of them what their main way of solving it would be, and to roll for it. So one player might be using a railgun to dissect the crowd, another one would be using stealth to sneak up on the leader and shank him, and so on. Add up all four results, and compare to the encounter's CR x 10. If the result is equal or higher, fine, the PCs wipe the encounter easily. If there's a difference, that's what everyone takes as damage. So if the players get 42+28+35+29=134 vs a CR 17 encounter, everyone takes 36 damage.

It's totally inaccurate of course. Laughably so. But it only takes five minutes to resolve, it keeps the flavor of the encounter and lets people come up with some creative tactics. Some resources are expended as well, but it's not completely routine and predictable. The damage taken per encounter has varied from 0 to 53. So this has worked really well for us.

It's crazy to me how often players presume that others know their intentions. Most places are going to have a ban on casting spells in public because the vast majority of people can't tell the difference between mind enslaving magic, light making magic and fireball. So you would likely react with fear or aggression when you see someone you don't know casting a spell.

When you live in a world where someone can take six seconds and kill a half dozen or more people with zero preparation to onlookers, your likely going to have many people that are on edge about such things.

I would have let you cast but not say anything until your initiative, so you'd likely have put yourself in hostile relations and then have a big hill to climb to get out of what you did.

Look at it from a bit different angle.

If in your world most people react with fear and suspicion to a stranger casting a spell - sure, that's reasonable. But the player characters would know that, because they've lived in that world all your life. And you as the GM know that, because you made up this world.

But does the player know that? How could the player know that, unless you told them?

So you basically have two ways for the player to find out:
- You tell them OOC "Are you sure? Since they don't know you, they might not trust you to cast spells."
- You teach them an IC lesson by starting combat.

But if you take the second approach, you're kinda punishing the player for something that you know, their character would know, but they don't know, because they didn't read your mind.

The books tell the GM the right time to ask for initiative is when one side does something the other side has to react to.

So if you just start casting a spell, and they didn't trust you, yeah that makes sense. They're not willing to wait and see if it's a fireball or not.

There can be a bit of a "gotcha!" element if you as a player didn't think this would seem hostile, and the GM surprises you with it. But that's a difference in expectations between you and the GM, it's not the game rules. That sort of mismatch I think is something that's better handled by the GM saying "are you sure you want to do that? They seem anxious and might misunderstand". If the GM thinks something is "obvious" and the players are totally unaware, more communication is good.

Then maybe you decide not to risk it, or to risk it, or maybe try to reassure them first with some nonverbal Diplomacy gesturing.

For me, I've come to feel that for some of the minigame systems, PF2 made changes compared to PF1 that haven't turned out well.

PF1 started out with a notorious chase system where everyone is in it for themselves, and if you got stuck at an obstacle you didn't have the skill for, you were just stuck there permanently. But eventually they came up with a new chase system where the party always stays together, and every round you pass the current obstacle. What the checks measure is how well you passed the obstacle, and at the end there's a reward/punishment based on how many obstacles were passed gracefully.

PF2 seems to be doing that - the party does stay together - but you're actually stuck at an obstacle until you eventually pass it. Except sometimes an obstacle wants two of basically the same skills, like Nature and Survival. If you don't have anyone with Survival, odds are, you also don't have anyone with Nature, since they're outdoors Wis skills that tend to go together.

PF2 chases seem to be a clever worker placement game, where you carefully figure out which PC should be doing which check, and who should be staying in reserve for the next obstacle. But it just doesn't really pan out. People don't understand, or don't really want to agonize over that kind of choice, or the GM isn't letter you look ahead to the next obstacle so it's a blind choice. All in all, the worker placement aspect of the minigame is a dud.

I actually don't think chases really need all that much clever choices and decision making. A very simple system that can be executed fast is needed. Because a chase needs to feel fast, and that just doesn't pair with tactics-by-committee.

Imagine the chase system ran more like this:

GM: there's a wall blocking your way. Everyone roll athletics against an easy DC. We count successes. Okay, 2/6 successes, this one slowed you down. Next obstacle.
GM: next there's a crowd, you see your prey weaving through, let's see how you do with Intimidate or Acrobatics. Okay, some critical successes, they count double, so you get 6/6, great, you're getting through faster than your prey did.

No need to track who's gone in this round during this obstacle, and who's still available in this round for the next obstacle. No need to figure out who should be rolling checks first.

Doing it like this should make the chase resolve much faster, and actually feel like a fast event in the scenario.

For what it's worth, pre-remaster you also didn't need free hands for somatic components. So not much has changed.

Previously "somatic" components had Manipulate. Now spells just directly have Manipulate. Somatic components explicitly said you could do then with the hand full.

But Manipulate doesn't require your hands to be empty, just that you can use them, so not paralyzed or restrained. So for example a paladin with sword and shield can still use lay on hands - which is clearly working as intended.

(But to be fair, a lot of manipulate things do also ask for an empty hand. Just not spellcasting.)

I think there's a line somewhere about how much collateral damage from area spells is reasonable. If you never let them do any collateral damage at all, it's silly. But if you overdo it, it hamstrings the game.

If you Breathe Fire on someone standing on the other side of a desk, burning some of the papers on the desk, I don't think is unreasonable. They were easily flammable and exposed.

You don't want to go too far - the desk itself is probably just a bit singed, and in general you don't want to go through a whole inventory of every room any time someone uses an area attack.

I think it's also important to never "gotcha" your players - it's fine if an NPC is dumb and does it. But if a player were to do it you shouldn't surprise them that this time it has bad effects when last time it was totally fine. If the PC had been arguing about paperwork on the desk and the player says they want to Breathe Fire, you should ask them "are you sure? you'd be burning the papers on the desk", not "haha, you forgot about the papers on the desk".

Also, it's something to take in account when picking NPC tactics and loot/plot things. You wouldn't want to stage a fight between a fire dragon and the PCs in the room and give it a fabulous hoard of scrolls and then halfway go "oh drat, I guess all the loot is burned now". The players never stood much chance of getting any of that loot with the way the encounter was set up. (There's interesting opportunities there actually if the dragon also doesn't want to burn the hoard, so attacking it exactly there is a way to get it to hold back from using its breath weapon.)

shroudb wrote:

You can directly throw/use it for Field Benefits the Versatile Vial for 1 action but that costs you the Versatile Vial.

You can make a Quick Vial from thin air to use as a bomb/Field Vial but that requires 1 action.

Making a Quick Vial isn't make from thin air. You make them from a Versatile Vial. Everything in Quick Alchemy costs you a Versatile Vial - it says so in the first paragraph.

So your choices are:

1) Directly throw a Versatile Vial for 1 action that costs you the Versatile Vial.

2) Make a Quick Vial to use as a bomb/Field vial but that costs 1 action and a Versatile Vial, and then you can throw it for 1 more action.

And why would you ever make a Versatile/Quick Vial bomb using option 2 if you could use option 1 instead?

You're having difficulty understanding why anyone would use option 2, because you've understood it incorrectly.

Your choices are:
- 1. Spend a normal versatile vial to make a bomb based on a formula in your book.
- 2. Create a temporary vial out of thin air and throw it. It doesn't cost you a regular versatile vial, but it's also not as powerful as turning a regular versatile vial into a "real" bomb.

If we're talking rules that need engineering, my main gripes would be:
- what exactly is an instance of damage?
- what to do when you get stunned 1 in the middle of your turn?

If we're talking more class design, I'd like some more polish on:
- make wizard schools actually exciting
- upgrade psychics to match the remaster paradigm
- do something to the thaumaturge so people stop stumbling over the restrictions of implement's empowerment

I'm hoping that a remaster thaumaturge refurbishes implement's empowerment. I don't think it's an absurd ask to want to use a shield as a class with a bias to melee. Or to be able to use a bow (hence the bias for melee).

The focus on having to hold your implement in hand works much better for some implements than others. Why do you have to hold an amulet in hand instead of wearing it around your neck? Why shouldn't regalia be a crown on your head? Much of the benefit of Tome is always on, which is good, because many skill checks you might be making with tome-skills would require free hands.

The original thaumaturge playtest made much of doing stuff with magic numbers, like three times three implements. But the final version doesn't lean into this so heavy. There could potentially be new implements in new books. Like a cloak, that you just wear. Or... a shield implement.

Maybe if a remastered version doesn't first clutter your hands so much, it can then not need implement's empowerment to make up for it anymore. If some implements just need to be worn to be fully operational, it opens the way for 2H thaumaturges, sword and board and bow and arrow thaums.

The way I see it, the thaumaturge pays a "hand tax" for using implements. Implement's Empowerment is intended as a sort of rebate on that. You need only one hand to do 2H amounts of damage because your other hand is presumed to be occupied with implements and esoterica.

If you're not actually paying a "hand tax" because you're managing to argue that your shield/other weapon/2H weapon is actually also an implement, then you don't need/deserve the implement's empowerment rebate anymore. Not doing 2H damage while wielding a shield is the normal world for other classes, too.

It's not that thaumaturges could never use a shield or 2H weapon implement. Pretty much all your other class abilities still work fine, just not implement's empowerment.

---

Another argument against allowing shield-mirrors: what even would the point be of the restriction in implement's empowerment if it just mean "you need to do your homework and contrive an argumkent that your other hand thing is an implement as well"?

It doesn't really stop at mirrors/shields then. Maybe your chalice is mounted on top of a stick and can be used as a mace? Regalia lists a "scepter", that could certainly be a mace as well. Could an amulet be a really big amulet and also be a shield?