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****** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden 15,582 posts (16,603 including aliases). 171 reviews. 4 lists. 1 wishlist. 45 Organized Play characters. 5 aliases.


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Sovereign Court

shroudb wrote:
Ascalaphus wrote:

The reasonable thing is to check when the suppression ends, whether the original cause for the effect is still valid.

If your friend was immobilized by being stuck under a boulder, was Sure-Footed, and walked away, then they shouldn't become immobilized again. Because the boulder can't do that at a distance.

If your friend was immobilized by magical goo, got Sure-Footed, walked away, but the goo is still on them, then afterwards they get immobilized again.

But then you are basically rulling that you fully counteracted the effect and not merely suppressed it.

Especially since the suppression effect mentions that the condition reappears without time having elapsed.

Not precisely.

Suppress it for long enough, that with another action, you can indeed get out from under it. So there is a cost, it's not free. But the pricing is indeed attractive.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

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Pirate Rob wrote:

No intention. You're not supposed to know the specifics before applying.

You're supposed to apply where you want the xp, not have to carefully boon plan. If you do want the boon rewards somewhere specifically you can always move around with Bequeathal later.

I think that's exaggerated.

For PFS scenarios you're not supposed to boon-hunt to try to play a specific scenario with a specific character because you know the reward.

But these are APs we're talking about, you don't play them with a PFS character anyway, so that reason isn't relevant.

I think this is more a side effect of just habit/technical limitations, than the result of a specific intention.

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Laughing Fit (previously: Hideous Laughter) could be an interesting one.

Unless the enemy critically succeeds, this prevent the enemy from using actions as long as you keep sustaining it. That could be useful against an AoO-happy enemy that's harassing your spellcasters.

In general I'd be looking for Will save oriented spells, because enemies that you get close to in melee will often have good Fortitude or Reflex.

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The reasonable thing is to check when the suppression ends, whether the original cause for the effect is still valid.

If your friend was immobilized by being stuck under a boulder, was Sure-Footed, and walked away, then they shouldn't become immobilized again. Because the boulder can't do that at a distance.

If your friend was immobilized by magical goo, got Sure-Footed, walked away, but the goo is still on them, then afterwards they get immobilized again.

Sovereign Court

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They should all work the same.

Keep in mind that hardness is quite rare on monsters. Hardness is something objects have, monsters would usually have resistance. There is one monster that does have hardness that you run into in quite a few adventures, and that's the Animated Object. But you can imagine why that one has hardness.

You can sort of see behind the curtain that the devs were trying to balance all these abilities. They all focus on characters that hit often, for smaller amounts of damage. As compared to someone with for example a greatsword or a polearm that hits fewer times, but for more damage at once. For both of those kinds of characters, weakness and resistance should matter, but not be too good or too awful. So if you hit more often, you don't get to trigger weakness more often; but you also don't get punished by resistance more often.

So you can draw that RAI forward to hardness: it makes sense that for hardness they'd want things to work the same.

Also of course, hardness is done all the way at the end of the damage process, after the damage had already been merged. It would be extra work to un-merge it for hardness, and what would be the point of doing so? Punish some classes for no reason?

Sovereign Court

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Yeah, shield block happens very late in the damage sequence, after the damage has already been merged for processing weaknesses and resistances. At that point it makes no sense to split it up again into separate pools to use shield block against one or the other or both.

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Well, the GM is sorta right, that the writeup of Free Archetype in the GM Core is written in that vein.

GM Core p. 84 wrote:

If the group all has the same archetype or draws from a

limited list, you might want to ignore the free archetype’s
normal restriction of selecting a certain number of feats
before taking a new archetype. That way a character can
still pursue another archetype that also fits their character.

But the writeup in GMC takes up just a bit more than a quarter of a page, and is mainly concerned with use cases such as "you're all apprentices at a magic school", but requiring everyone to spend class feats on multiclassing into wizard would be a bit hefty for people who want to play a rogue or fighter. So it's very much a sketch for what the GM might do, not a full and hard rule system.

This means on the one hand that the GM can't really say "but RAW says I must handle it this way" because it's very much up to the GM's own decisions. On the other hand, you're already getting more freedom in archetype selection than the GMC is suggesting.

---

In practice, most groups that I see on the forums talking about Free Archetype fall into two main types:

- People playing the Strength of Thousands AP where everyone is supposed to have a dash of primal and/or arcane magic flavor in their character. This one suggests using the "specific archetypes list" approach.

- People playing free archetype "just because". There might be some combinations of archetypes that the GM bans for power reasons, or to avoid monotony of everyone taking the same strong choices. But apart from that, the restriction of branching out into the next archetype for the free archetypes is generally considered to be in a separate silo from any archetypes you take with your "paid" class feats.

In other words, most groups using Free Archetype don't seem to be doing it exactly RAW.

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Personally I think the RAW rules are a good common ground for starting a discussion, but especially in these kinda sketch-like rules, I think as a GM you shouldn't actually hide behind RAW. You should own your preferences.

Sovereign Court

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
Ascalaphus wrote:

There's the procedural element - Force Barrage says to combine damage for missiles aimed at a single target, so that you can't for example get an absolutely massive boost on a single target from bardic music or unleashing psyche. So the damage is already combined for that, you shouldn't split it up again.

But there's also the fuzzier "too extreme to be true" argument - there's no good reason why this spell should be far far deadlier than other spells in the same level band. If it was supposed to be super deadly, it'd have the Death trait. Since the designers didn't put a "this should be extra deadly" signal on it, we should choose the more moderate interpretation.

Nah, there are enemies immune to effecra with the Death trait, so putting it on a spell like Force Barrage when a spell like Disintegrate doesn't have it falls under TBTBT.

Disintegrate doesn't need the death trait because it says "A creature reduced to 0 HP is reduced to fine powder; its gear remains."

Creatures with immunity to death effects are mostly undead and constructs which are destroyed at 0HP anyway, so don't interact with Dying rules at all.

I don't buy that force barrage was intended to be far deadlier than other spells. If that was the intent, there would be flags and sirens on it saying so.

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There's the procedural element - Force Barrage says to combine damage for missiles aimed at a single target, so that you can't for example get an absolutely massive boost on a single target from bardic music or unleashing psyche. So the damage is already combined for that, you shouldn't split it up again.

But there's also the fuzzier "too extreme to be true" argument - there's no good reason why this spell should be far far deadlier than other spells in the same level band. If it was supposed to be super deadly, it'd have the Death trait. Since the designers didn't put a "this should be extra deadly" signal on it, we should choose the more moderate interpretation.

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So, I can see you used the GM guidelines for monster creation, the numbers are overall in the normal ranges. Let's look at some details then.

Nitpick: You wrote Initiative instead of Perception.

AC is moderate, HP is low, and saves are high/moderate/low - overall this makes the creature a bit fragile.

As for attacks, you used the Moderate to hit and Moderate damage.

The buzz-by attack is probably supposed to work with its fly speed, but technically speaking, a Stride is only land movement. You might want to look at the Zephyr Hawk for how you could word the ability for flying.

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Overall, I think you might have lowballed this monster a bit. It has only moderate offense, and is a bit weak defensively. You can probably afford to make it a bit more powerful in one area.

You could use the Base Roadmaps (GM Core p. 115, or GMG p. 59) to figure out a good combination of strong and weak points.

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Yeah, the roadmaps based on creature type (undead, demon..) and role (soldier, spellcaster, ambusher..) are basically the new templates.

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Kerry Allen wrote:
The background from PF1 was also helpful in this regard. The idea that PCs and NPCs aren't really the same thing is true in terms of what we all see on-screen. Perhaps there is a half-measure that will satisfy both desires at once! And, thankfully, as I have no intention of creating anything new in my initial campaign and am not merely re-writing racial stats, I have some time to consider it. The idea that "yes, I am merely constructing an illusion, and you know very well that's what I'm doing" doesn't sit well with me at the table. Of course that's always what we are doing, but we don't say it, and we do pretend otherwise for the sake of immersion. I shall ponder this deep and hard and to much excess and eventually come up with a solution that I will probably hate but which I'll go along with anyways!

Yeah, I've found this is pretty important.

As a player, I know that low-level NPC "rogue" that we're fighting isn't built with the actual rogue class. But if he turns out to have both sneak attack and attack of opportunity, I'm still going to feel like he's breaking character.

In RPGs, immersion is being willing to be fooled, for your own entertainment. The whole game is make-believe. But willingness only goes so far.

If an NPC wizard starts casting a whole lot of divine spells, there had better be some story behind it, such as that she's actually a priest pretending to be a wizard. Of course, under the hood, the NPC is actually neither a PC wizard or a PC cleric. But that doesn't matter as much as the consistency.

Sovereign Court

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It's a bit more niche than the others, true. You need to actually have a plan to exploit the debuff, such as:

- You want to Feint and the lower Perception helps. I'm not sold on it because Feint is okay but there are just so many even easier ways to achieve flat-footed.

- You or a teammate is gonna target their Will save, probably with spells or Intimidate. This can be good especially against mooks. If you have an enemy where Will wasn't their best save to begin with, you debuff it, then it becomes quite likely that a spell like Fear or Calm Emotions can really wreck them. Given how quickly mook HP goes up at higher level, Will spells can be the fastest way to remove them from the fight for a while.

Another point is that it's relatively cheap. It's just a skill feat, it doesn't commit you to a class or archetype. And Diplomacy is one of the more useful skills to have for other things already. And Bon Mot doesn't require a free hand or a particular kind of weapon. So it doesn't really interfere with the rest of your build very much.

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Sometimes as a player I grumble a bit about "so they have that rogue thing and that fighter thing as well, isn't that convenient for them..."

And yeah, that's partly because NPCs don't truly get built like PCs. They're just a sort of hollow outer shell that looks like a PC class, with just enough class ability sauce to be convincing stand-ins.

But on the other hand, that's also part of the brilliance. It saves heaps of time, and guarantees that you get to a much more on-target balance result.

One of the tips in the monster design guidelines I particularly like is this one:

GMG p. 68 wrote:
Avoid abilities that do nothing but change the creature’s math, also known as “invisible abilities.” These alter a creature’s statistics in a way that’s invisible to the players, which makes the creature less engaging because the players don’t see it using its abilities in a tangible or evocative way. For example, an ability that allows a creature to use an action to increase its accuracy for the round with no outward sign (or worse, just grants a passive bonus to its accuracy) isn’t that compelling, whereas one that increases its damage by lighting its arrows on fire is noticeable. These both work toward the same goal—dealing more damage this round—but one is far more memorable.

This sounds really reasonable and obvious when you read it like that. But when you start putting it into practice, you notice it's really powerful advice. Compare this to a lot of PF1 monster design that actually had a lot of "internal" creature design just to satisfy getting to required numbers, but that was pretty invisible to players.

This also pairs well with another part of PF2 monster design philosophy: think about how much the monster has to show off. Most monsters aren't going to last more than 5 rounds in combat. Giving a monster more abilities than it can possibly have time to use, is a waste of design time. And it makes the statblock overly complicated for the GM to use. Harder to see what's important.

Some abilities don't need to be in the statblock at all. Basically anything the monster does that won't happen during combat, doesn't need to be in the statblock. It can (should) go in the description as flavor. But it doesn't need to be mechanical.

To contrast that to older design: in PF1, some of the bad guys in Iron Gods had a quarter page devoted to item creation feats that they had, and tech items that needed multiple rounds to draw and use. But they lasted for two combat rounds because they just didn't have level-appropriate stats.

The "hollow" design of PF2 monsters means you don't have this problem anymore. If the description says they can craft tech items, I'll believe it. I don't need to see them spend feats on item crafting. And I don't want their combat stats to not actually match the threat level they're supposed to be because it was all spent on item crafting feats.

Once you decide that the statblock is just for combat, not for what they can do off-screen in their own villain downtime, it's massively simplifying and liberating as GM.

Sovereign Court

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I like the champion reaction and Bon Mot as "taunt" options because they don't prevent the GM from making choices, but you do get to put weight on the scales.

AoO/Reactive Strike can also be one of those. "Walk past me and I'll hit you."

Another one is tripping/grabbing. "First you have to get away from me before you can hit my friends."

Notice that with the right polearm, you can do most of these.

Sovereign Court

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A big difference between PF1 and PF2 monster design is that PF2 design is really focused on the end result, while PF1 design is more concerned with the process of how you get there.

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In PF1, you'd take a base creature, add templates, add levels, and calculate where you end up.

Then you could compare that to a table of "what numbers should a creature of this level actually have?" and you were probably off from that by a lot. So then you could invent some "special abilities" to give you a bonus or penalty of some kind to get closer to the table.

---

PF2 monster design is much more to the point. "My party is level 14, I want a Moderate difficulty challenge here, so the XP table says I can do that with a level 16 solo creature. Okay so now I want a level 16 ogre/warrior flavored monster". You look in the creature design tables and they give you the numbers you need. You add a couple more abilities. And done.

The numbers are pretty much automatic. They're just the numbers that are appropriate for a monster of that level, with the kind of style you asked for (bruiser, soldier, ambusher etc.) The abilities is where you do most of the creative work.

That also means that a lot of the boring work of looking up numbers can be automated, and it has been. I like to use this website to do that for me: monster tools. You start out by telling it:
- the level of the monster
- creature type
- roadmap (soldier, spellcaster etc.)

From that, it can fill in a lot of numbers for you with "typical" values. Saves a lot of work, and the result is pretty good. You get a monster that is exactly as powerful as you asked for.

Sovereign Court

The side to this that hasn't been mentioned yet is spontaneous casters.

Restoration solves some problems. So does Neutralize Poson, Remove Fear, Remove Paralysis, Remove Disease and Remove Curse.

Because many of these rely on counteracting, a say divine sorcerer would have to either devote many high level / signature slots to them, or accept that they can't be relied on to make everything better. As opposed to a cleric, who can at least prepare the right spell the next day in a high slot.

In the remaster this list is at least somewhat consolidated.

Sovereign Court

As a GM when selecting monsters from the Bestiary, or designing your own, it's important to not overdo it with attacks of opportunity / reactive strike.

It's supposed to be a somewhat uncommon ability, that only some enemies have it truly suits their theme. And that doesn't mean "they should be difficult", because then you're gonna end up with every boss monster having it.

Typical enemies that have it are those that have a very "military trained" to fight theme, or that emphasize reach and area control.

For designing bosses, I think it's reasonable for most bosses to have a reaction of some kind - bosses should be a bit more dynamic than average monsters.

But it shouldn't always be AoO. Because then if you're a class that has more trouble with AoOs like a magus, you're going to feel bad in all of the boss fights. Which is bad - boss fights should feel hard, but it shouldn't feel like boss fights are the category of fights that your class is particularly bad at.

Sovereign Court

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ComradeCanuck wrote:

I'm going to be starting my first Pathfinder 2e campaign sometime next month, and I was looking for some input/advice from people more familiar with pf2e than I am. I'm heavily leaning toward the Kingmaker AP right now (though I haven't made a final decision) but I think my question would apply to a lot of APs.

Specifically, one of my players wants to run a Champion character. I'm concerned how well that will work with the current state of the champion in the Remaster rules- while I don't have the Kingmaker material to read though yet, my understanding from what I have read online is that it doesn't really have a lot of Unholy enemies. (I know we're getting the remastered champion in July, but that's well after the campaign is going to start, so we're stuck with it as-is for now)

So good on you for trying to handle trouble ahead of time.

As you've seen in other responses, there's a lot to the champion that should work fine in a campaign without many unholy enemies. Of course you'd want to warn the player that "super specializing in fighting demons isn't gonna do that much in this storyline". But champions have some other mechanical options to take that work fine with fairly neutralish enemies.

With all that in mind, you could also agree that once the remaster lands, some rebuilding is on the table for everyone. And you don't necessarily have to do it exactly according to the downtime rules or such. You could just say "hey, we've had time to read the new book, next week I want to switch over the rules, so let's see if there's things you would want different in your character based on that".

I've found that campaigns can run a lot smoother if you allow some "under the hood" rebuilding from time to time. The essential theme of the character might be "I punish bad people". You could do that as a paladin, but also as a fighter who just happens to single out those people that deserve it. So if the new champion rules turn out to be a big disappointment for the player, maybe retroactively they've been a fighter all along?

Sovereign Court

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The manipulate trait is weird, actually. It's defined as:

Manipulate wrote:
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.

It does sound like raising a shield would have the manipulate trait, doesn't it? You're physically manipulating an item. You can't really use a shield without some kind of suitable appendage.

But the same goes for making a Strike with a sword, doesn't it?

It's one of those logic snags. All manipulate actions involve using "hands" to handle something. But not all actions involving handling something have the manipulate trait.

Actually, in the first printing of the PF2 CRB, the Parry trait used Interact action to use a weapon to provide a bonus to AC. Which is sorta reasonable - you're using an item, right, so that's Interact? But Interact has the manipulate trait, which means you might provoke an attack of opportunity by trying to gain an AC bonus. Like the current question.

In the second printing this "bug" had been fixed; the Parry trait no longer mentioned Interact. Similarly, Raise a Shield has never used Interact or had the manipulate trait.

So the better way to understand Manipulate is actually that you're trying to do some kind of complicated chancy handwork that potentially leaves you distracted for people to exploit. Which is different from more combat-minded handwork like Strike, Raise Shield, Parry, and combat maneuvers like Grab, Trip, Shove and so on which all require a free hand but don't have Manipulate.

---

Also, was this the first "don't take high stakes financial or medical (or tactical) advice from ChatGPT" question we've had here?

Sovereign Court

Errenor wrote:
magnuskn wrote:

The first check? Who exactly would get the idea to even try "pushing back spirits"? One in ten players, if I'm being very optimistic? How do I even get that idea over to the players without it seeming to come out of nowhere? There actually does not even seem to be a mechanic to make a recall knowledge check, as far as I have seen.

So, yeah, hazards seem to me to be often underexplained in as how to deal with them, especially haunts. I hope the upcoming GM Core spends a bit more time on how to have players get knowledge on how defeat them, because currently it is a bit of a crapshoot.

This quote is only an example, but it points at the way to deal with hazards: "Determining a magical hazard’s properties thoroughly enough to disable it requires either the use of more powerful magic or a successful skill check, likely using Identify Magic or Recall Knowledge." So to determine ways to disable hazards you need to Recall Knowledge or Identify Magic in case of magical ones.

As to why haunts sometimes use 'strange' skills - they are spirits or spirit remains, so sometimes you can interact with them a bit like with creatures. That allows 'normal', non-magical skills.

Okay, necromancy sure. But this is taking things out of context a bit. I'll refer to the AoN page because this text hasn't really changed between CRB and remaster GMC.

Every hazard has a trigger of some kind that sets its dangers in motion. For traps, this could be a mechanism like a trip wire or a pressure plate, while for an environmental hazard or haunt, the trigger may simply be proximity. When characters approach a hazard, they have a chance of finding the trigger area or mechanism before triggering the hazard. They automatically receive a check to detect hazards unless the hazards require a minimum proficiency rank to do so.

During exploration, determine whether the party detects a hazard when the PCs first enter the general area in which it appears. If the hazard doesn’t list a minimum proficiency rank, roll a secret Perception check against the hazard’s Stealth DC for each PC. For hazards with a minimum proficiency rank, roll only if someone is actively searching (using the Search activity while exploring or the Seek action in an encounter), and only if they have the listed proficiency rank or higher. Anyone who succeeds becomes aware of the hazard, and you can describe what they notice.

Magical hazards that don’t have a minimum proficiency rank can be found using detect magic, but this spell doesn’t provide enough information to understand or disable the hazard—it only reveals the hazard’s presence. Determining a magical hazard’s properties thoroughly enough to disable it requires either the use of more powerful magic or a successful skill check, likely using Identify Magic or Recall Knowledge. Magical hazards with a minimum proficiency rank cannot be found with detect magic at all.

As you see, the line about needing to Recall Knowledge appears in the context of finding some magical hazards just with detect magic, not using any kind of skill check.

I don't think that should be extrapolated to "you always need a RK check to determine the skills to handle any hazard". That's a big leap.

Instead I think the theme is:
- PF2 doesn't like people doing important things without taking a risk.
- Any significant hazard requires a check to "get to know". Usually that's a Perception check while Searching or Seeking.
- A few hazards can be found automatically with detect magic (usually during the Detect Magic exploration activity). That's great, it means that your poor-Perception wizard does something useful. But the game still requires an element of chance, so to know what to actually do with the hazard, you need a check. But that might be a skill check that the wizard is better at than Perception, so yay for them.

So if you found a hazard with a successful Perception check, I'd give you the information about which skills can be used automatically, because you've already paid the "must take a risk" toll.

Sovereign Court

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Yeah they're d20 checks, no problem using fortune on them.

I believe it was really intentional, many of these used to be d100% dice checks in 1E, they standardized them all to d20 checks in 2E so they'd connect smoothly with the rest of the game system.

The section you quote talks about DCs. You never have bonuses or penalties to flat checks; then they wouldn't be flat. But they are sometimes harder or easier, so the DC can be changed.

But a fortune reroll isn't any of those things, so not bothered by the restriction. Using hero points to reroll a flat check is pretty common at my table.

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Errenor wrote:
Ascalaphus wrote:

This came up before and we do have a fairly official answer (at the time, Mark Seifter was still a Paizo game designer). Note also my earlier analysis in that thread.

Long and short of it is: you decide to use a hero point after learning if the roll was a crit/success/failure/critfailure.

Which thread though? I can't find it (quickly) even searching your posts for 'hero point'...

D'oh! I thought I'd put in the link.

here it is.

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This came up before and we do have a fairly official answer (at the time, Mark Seifter was still a Paizo game designer). Note also my earlier analysis in that thread.

Long and short of it is: you decide to use a hero point after learning if the roll was a crit/success/failure/critfailure.

However, no later than that. Once you decide not to reroll a failure, you can't listen to the effect and decide "gosh, that's a lot of damage, I'm going to reroll after all".

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My personal take on perspective 2 is that this should change over levels. A level 15+ PC is a bit like a Marvel superhero and we don't think the Hulk inflicting structural damage on buildings is wrong. If you're watching a Marvel movie and bad guys are holed up in their fortress waiting to ambush the heroes. They've got their guns trained at the door. Suddenly the Hulk smashes in through a wall from the side. Then we don't go complaining that the encounter was invalidated; we cheer because it's cool.

I also think there's some give and take here. As players we're used to monsters being wondrously static, waiting in their appointed encounter area, not reacting too much to noise from other rooms, and not moving up the timetable while the players heal up. And as heroes, we're not expected to tunnel through the walls directly to the boss room.

That's one particular "market equilibrium" for it. You could also have a campaign where monsters are more dynamic, but the players also try to come at the adventure from unexpected angles. If the players start digging tunnels to go through the dungeon diagonally, it's fair for monsters to hear all that noise and go move around as well. Of course then the players could also try to anticipate that and maybe make a lot of digging noise in one place, to distract monsters so they can launch a surgical strike elsewhere.

It's not for everyone, but it can be a fun playstyle for some groups.

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I think the problem in this discussion is that people are saying two different things:

1. "There are all these abilities that imply that striking objects is possible. And it's just absurd that you couldn't try to smash a table or door with an axe." Maybe with a side helping of "The rules don't really talk much about striking objects because it isn't expected to be that common, 99.99% of the time you're striking creatures. If an object is expected to be attacked, it probably has AC (traps, wall spells)."

2. "If characters could just attack any object, it would invalidate dungeon design because they'd go through the walls instead of dealing with expected encounters" with a side helping of "there is no mention of striking objects because you're not supposed to; therefore you can't, unless the object specifically allows it, like wall spells and traps with AC"

Because one of them is talking from a "what makes sense that I could do as a character" perspective, and the other from a "what do I need for my game to work well" perspective, it's really hard to convince the other side.

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I don't really worry about Strike so much. I think most people can agree during actual play when it's reasonable to Strike objects (effectively) and when not. Try to take down a castle with a dagger? No. Hack your way through a door with an axe? Sure.

Spells are a bit different. For some spells it clearly makes no sense to target objects (Daze) but for others it could make a lot of sense (Ignition, set something on fire). And for some it makes sense that they would affect objects, but actually tracking it for all the objects in the room would be tedious (Fireball) so we don't always do it.

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If you only run into material-resistant/weak enemies very rarely, you could also go for the alloy orb. It's a new talisman from the GM Core, which you can activate for 1 action to make the weapon count as cold iron/silver for a minute. So it's a bit less juggling held items than the silversalve etc, and it works for both metal types (and adamantine at level 12+).

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Gortle wrote:
Ascalaphus wrote:
They don't say you can't Strike objects, they just don't mention it.
Sorry that just seems false to me. Strike says it targets creatues. So it is up to the GM to be reasonable about it.

What I'm getting at is that people have read the Strike rules in two ways:

1) They only mention striking creatures, so you're forbidden from striking anything else.

2) They only mention striking creatures because that's the 99% most common thing to happen in the game. If you want to strike something else, the GM should figure out a reasonable way to handle that.

Obviously I think 2 is a better way to read it.

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A nuance: the Strike rules describe using it on creatures.

They don't say you can't Strike objects, they just don't mention it. Not mentioning how to do it shouldn't be stretched into "the rules forbid it". Especially since there are quite a few abilities that actually relate to Striking objects, such as the Razing weapon trait, wall spells with AC and HP, and traps often having an AC.

Lacking a central and formal description of how attacking objects works, the best general rule I can boil down from all the individual cases would be this:

- If you want to Strike something with an AC, you can just use the same procedure as when striking a creature with AC.

- Many objects are easy to hit (like a whole wall). These have AC 10, often some hardness, have a HP total. They're immune to critical hits and precision damage. Of course since they have low AC you'll crit them often. And because of how critical hit immunity works, fatal still gives you a bigger damage die, just not doubling the damage. Which means that picks are pretty good against walls. That seems like it's working as intended.

- Some objects are hard to hit, such as hazards with high AC. I would not afford these critical hit immunity. If the statblock doesn't list immunity to precision damage then they're not immune, however...

- Objects don't use creature conditions, such as off-guard/flat-footed. So you're not often going to be able to deal precision damage to them.

- Check the object's description (or for the category of object, such as structures/hazards/traps) to see if you need to deal enough damage to destroy it, or if just enough damage to make it Broken is already enough to achieve what you want.

- Not all objects have saving throws listed. Attended objects use the attender's saving throw, if they can even be targeted. Unattended objects with their own saving throw bonus listed would use those.

- For objects without saving throws listed, consider that most Will and Fortitude based effects don't apply to them anyway (charm, disease), or specify what would happen (disintegrate). The object can't move out of the way, but also can't stumble extra into the way. So for reflex saves, if the object has no stats for it, I'd rule it always has a normal failure, but not a critical failure. That seems most in line with how walls tend to have low AC but immunity to critical hits.

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For those low levels when skeletons are getting you down, remember two things:
- undead are not automatically immune to nonlethal damage anymore. It seems like only constructs get that by default.
- everyone is proficient with punch

Punching a skeleton for 1d4+STR can be more efficient than stabbing or slicing them for 1d8+STR but running into 5 resistance.

In other words: at low level, you already have your backup weapon. By level 6-7 or so, you can easily afford to get a +1 striking weapon just as backup for damage types. I often combine it with also going for cold iron or silver, in case I need that.

(I tend to rate silver slightly higher - it always feels like devils and such that resist non-silver attacks are more problematic than demons that can be hurt with any weapon but take extra from cold iron.)

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There's a fair amount of creatures where bludgeoning is a better damage type. At low level, skeletons that resist piercing and slashing. At later levels, oozes that don't take damage from piercing or slashing (but instead split, double trouble). And some constructs with various resistances to non-bludgeoning (-non-adamantine) damage.

There's also some creatures that take extra damage from slashing, like zombies and various plant monsters.

There's only one group of monsters where piercing is the best way to handle them (rakshasas, and they're not seen very often).

On the other hand, piercing weapons are better underwater.

Also, piercing weapons seem to do pretty well with base stats. Just look at ranged weapons, most of the serious ones are piercing. Also some choice melee weapons are piercing (rapier, picks). So maybe against standard enemies, piercing is slightly better because it has good weapons, but against some enemies it's a lot worse.

I think it's fine to have a piercing primary weapon, but I would make very sure I also had a secondary weapon.

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Yeah, the purpose of that FAQ seems to be to unblock those kind of abilities, not to completely overhaul RK.

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To talk about the original topic then: there have been various dev statements that anathemas are supposed to be an RPG tool.

If your character has to choose between two anathemas, RPing your character agonizing over the choice is certainly working as intended. But I think they don't really love the idea of trying to mechanistically determine the objectively correct thing to do based on anathema order.

We don't know how remastered paladins will work yet. So that rules question can't be answered. For cleric though we do have remastered rules:

PC1 p. 110 wrote:

If you perform enough acts that are anathema to your

deity, you lose the magical abilities that come from your
connection to your deity. The class features that you lose are
determined by the GM, but they likely include your divine
font and all cleric spellcasting. These abilities can be regained
only if you repent by conducting an atone ritual (page 390).

As you can see, it's actually pretty loose. "Enough" violations result in punishments fully determined by the GM, with some likely ones listed, but the GM is not compelled to stick to that.

If your cleric had to choose between two anathema and did the best they could, a kind deity might understand that and just not punish at al. A vengeful or unreasonable deity on the other hand might lay down the law severely. A more balanced one might not punish heavily (and let the party finish the current quest at full power) but afterwards demand that the cleric make things right (post-adventure sidequest).

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I like SuperBidi's analysis. But I think there's a few more points to consider.

Encounters per day is like adding salt to a dish;
- too few, it tastes flat
- too much, it ruins the dish, and you can't really get it out again
- not everyone like the same amount
- prepackaged food has more salt in it than health authorities would recommend
- even with all those caveats, we want recipes to give an indication of what is sort of the normal amount of salt to add

As you get more GMing experience you also get a better feeling for how much salt/acid slime monsters you want in your adventuring day, and how that'll vary depending on what kind of adventure you're running and who you're running it for.

I think there's an element SuperBidi didn't cover so much though - encounters per in-game day, and encounters per game session. Of course if your game session represents one in-game day then that's the same. That happens in a lot of PFS scenarios. But not always.

Sometimes the party is moving a 1000km to a different country for a different adventure, and that trip is going to take weeks of in-game time but only one game session. You do want some encounters along the way, to kind of paint the scenery the party is traveling through with blooooood.

Sometimes the party is exploring a dungeon, which has more than 4-5 encounters, but it does make sense to do it all at once. Actually, maybe the party can even guess there's more encounters to come. For example, there's all these claw marks and soot stains, but so far the party hasn't encountered any creature capable of doing that. So they'll be holding back some spells for a dragon or something. They don't expect the dungeon is done until the fat lizard sings. But this might be a two-session escapade that takes only one in-game day.

Encounter difficulty has to be balanced with encounter quantity. If you're doing eight encounters in a day, they can't all be hard things that burn through your spells. If you have one encounter during a week of travel, maybe it should be a bit on the spicier side, but not quite dip into boss-fight XP budgets. In both cases, the players have a bit of a ballpark idea about how many encounters they're likely to face that day. That's fine - informed players get to have the fun of trying to make good choices, instead of pure gambles.

I do think, comparing published adventures to these analytical figures, that they're kinda heavy on the salt. I'd rather see adventures have more obvious midway breakpoints, than dungeon floors with 11ish encounters that XP you a whole level.

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I've found the wand to be too expensive in actions to use in some adventures, but then the occasional long-range fight happens and it's a godsend for a strength > dex build.

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Dancing Wind wrote:
Themetricsystem wrote:

I think the disconnect here is that some people look at APs and Modules, to use an analogy like they're a finished and furnished home

[snip]
You're getting something like 80% of what you need from the published AP or Module and that last 20% that remains is supposed to be handled by the GM, be it through changes to the tone of the adventure, tweaking the treasure, modifying encounters, or spinning the plot "off the rails" to help deliver an experience that is unique to the group.
That's not how those work for Organized Play.

For PFS(2), all APs are in "adventure mode" which means the GM has a lot of freedom to change things up, as long as it's recognizably still the same story and recognizably still Pathfinder.

(You really have to know how to look for it though, in the current version of the Guide.)

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Abomination Vaults (hardcover) has a list in each chapter of what the permanent treasures in it are. That does make it a bit easier for the GM to consider any switches.

In general as GM I think it's healthy when preparing an adventure to analyze it to find:

- what treasure is there, and how does it square up against the GMC reward guidelines?
- where are good daily-rest break points
- where are good downtime break points
- where are encounters that should be done quite quickly after another
- where are encounters that may require a break after, for example to deal with hefty conditions?

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I disagree. I think captivated is not a generic condition, but that doesn't mean it isn't anything at all. It's a specific effect, caused by this ability.

Note that the failure effect doesn't mention breaking the Fascinated effect at all:

Quote:
Failure: The creature is 'Fascinated', and it must spend each of its actions to move closer to the harpy as expediently as possible, while avoiding obvious dangers. If a captivated creature is adjacent to the harpy, it stays still and doesn't act. If attacked by the harpy, the creature is freed from captivation at the end of the harpy's turn.

If the harpy attacks, going by this, when does the fascination break? There's nothing in there saying the fascinated condition works different than normal. So it would break immediately on attack. But the captivation effect explicitly lasts for the rest of the turn when the harpy attacks. So there's two possibilities here:

- Fascinated and captivated are chained together. You have to infer that the harpy attacking doesn't break fascinated immediately, so fascinated doesn't work the way it normally does.

- Fascinated and captivated are separate effects, fascinated breaks normally and immediately, but the captivated doesn't break until it says it does.

So if "captivated" is some kind of condition, what really "is" it? Well it definitely meets the definition for "effect":

PC1, p. 455 wrote:
effect An effect is the result of an ability, though an ability’s exact effect is sometimes contingent on the result of a check or other roll.

Is it a "condition"? It could be, by the definition:

PC1, p. 454 wrote:
condition An ongoing effect that changes how a character can act or alters some of their statistics.

Looking at the general rules for conditions (p. 426-427) the category of "effects" is totally open-ended. For conditions, there's a list of them. It doesn't quite say if that list is final, and no other conditions could exist. But it also isn't really important because there aren't really any abilities saying "remove any condition". They always give you a specific list of conditions they can remove. So just like a Sound Body spell isn't going to fix your Frightened or Fascinated condition, it's not going to fix Captivated either.

It doesn't really matter if Captivated is a "condition".

It's clearly an effect, because it's the result of an ability. It has a duration, traits, consequences for affected creatures, and defines other ways it could be ended. "Captivated" is just a shorthand name for "affected by the effect of the Captivating Song ability" which is a really big mouthful.

I think the Fascinated ability is mostly a side issue, which might matter a little bit because it causes a Perception penalty. So if another creature tried a Feint it'd be a little easier, because you're only paying attention to the harpy.

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I really like Teridax's analysis.

I also tend to be pretty liberal with retraining. In fact, unless a downtime/uptime cycle was really a part of the campaign theme (it might be in Kingmaker?) I would probably just kinda waive required retraining days and just say "okay, in between these two missions, feel free to make some changes".

There used to be this fear that players would abuse that, selecting stuff at low level that they would then switch out for different stuff, based on knowing it would only be good at low level.

But the way PF2 class feats are set up, that fear doesn't really manifest so much. Most of the low-level feats don't get replaced in function by higher level feats. For a fighter, stuff like Sudden Charge stays useful at all levels for example. Similar for a wizard with Reach Spell.

The Uncanny Acumen feat is really just the weird exception here as far as I can tell.

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I think this issue pairs with the "how many encounters in an AP dungeon before long rest" question.

APs often have long sequences where mechanically, the party really needs a break. To regain daily spells/powers, to go up a level if you don't like doing that mid-dungeon, or to change equipment (purchasing stuff, moving runes). But the story often sounds like all the trouble is happening right now, it doesn't make sense to put things on hold like that.

I think APs should include more explicit guidance to the GM on how to see these pacing needs, and how to handle them.

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You can look at this issue in two ways:

"It's weird that your initiative changes if you go down"

"It's normal that it always takes the same time from when you go down, to when you need to roll a Recovery check"

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yellowpete wrote:

There is a bit of a problem with the rule, and that is what happens when you have a large encounter with many players and multiple monsters. Since it takes so long to reach your next turn (as the downed PC), it is not unlikely that you will be healed and then dropped again before you get to act, force-delaying you even further. You could feasibly go for 3 or so rounds without ever having a turn. That's especially frustrating if you've got fast healing running but it never does anything because your turn keeps getting 'skipped' by your initiative moving back.

For this reason, I think it's fine to give players the choice of where they want to be in initiative after being dropped. Essentially, not forcefully moving them at all, but letting them Delay without having to make recovery checks or triggering any other ongoing effects, though at most until right before the foe that dropped them.

Well, that would be a problem, but I think it's a very rare problem. While the current rule helps you out with a much more common problem.

Why your scenario is rare:
- The typical party is 3-6 players, with 4-5 being more common. Going far beyond that in either direction is going to warp lots of rules. We can't balance the normal 4-5 player game for problems that mostly happen for 7+ player parties.
- Each time you go down, Wounded goes up by 1. It's really hard to get healed and knocked down three times in a row without ending up at Dying 4 and exit.
- Basically, if you keep getting healed up and knocked down rightaway, then something weird is going on. Is there environmental damage happening? Okay, then if you didn't get healed up, you would have gone down the Dying track further, due to taking damage while already knocked out. Also not good. Is it because enemies are targeting you because you just got healed up? Then maybe the rest of the party needs to do their teamwork differently, first clear away enemies from your body a bit before healing you. Or use the Delay action to heal you just before your turn.

The other, I think more common scenario:

- A monster crits you to 0 HP (Dying 2), and also inflicts some persistent damage effect. Quite a few monsters do persistent damage effects, some of them all the time, some only on a crit. Or maybe you already had some persistent damage from some other effect, which got you low on HP, and then a crit took you to 0. All in all, the chance of this happening is quite real.

- On your next turn, you're at Dying 2, need to make a recovery check which has 10% chance of just killing you, %45 chance of making you Dying 3, 45% chance of improving. Then at the end of your turn you're going to take persistent damage, which will increase your Dying value. So actually, you only survive in the 45% chance case that you succeed at Recovery; Failure that drops you to Dying 3 is already more than you can afford.

In this scenario it's really important that you get help before your turn.

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It would be particularly good for cleric and druid yeah. Maybe this should only be something that's available for prepared casters that don't automatically know their entire spell list (witch, wizard, magus)?

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Yeah, old spells need to be updated with discerning and good taste, not according to a rigid and unyielding algorithm.

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Secrets of Magic p. 170 wrote:
Spellhearts are permanent items that work similarly to talismans.
GM Core p. 263 wrote:

You must be wielding or wearing an item to activate a

talisman attached to it.

I think the "wearing" is intended to refer to talismans on armor, not to a weapon you're "wearing" in a scabbard. Otherwise you could get a whole lot of lightweight weapons and have as many talismans/spellhearts as you want. The design intent seems to be that you have just a few of them, but could switch them out with 10m of work.

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It's not a free Step. You're actually taking a Step. That's why it takes two actions: one for the Reposition and one for the Step.

The only free part is that you're permitting to reposition an enemy into your own square, on condition that you then immediately leave that square yourself with another action.

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Oh, that's an interesting way of looking at it.

Two actions is a serious price to pay for it, I think that does a decent job of balancing it. It's something you might do sometimes, but not very often.

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OliveToad wrote:

Alright, so this happened in session. It was a spur of the moment, and I told my players “Hey, I’m not sure about this. I’m going to rule it as X, I’ll give a firm ruling later.”

Alright Players are fighting an enemy, enemy is in the doorway, blocking them. Player wants to reposition, so basically they’d trade places with the enemy. I just ruled it as a normal reposition action.

Which seems extremely generous. So, going forward in the future: How can I rule/invoke this to be more fair?

I think you made a good in the moment call, to try it out but not promise that it would work like that forever.

OliveToad wrote:


My original way, I could see this getting abused to flank. Not to mention it steps on the toes for Tumble Through, Swap Reflections and Unexpected Transposition.

Unexpected Transposition and Swap Reflections are both quite long range effects, I wouldn't worry too much about stepping their toes. Those toes are 30/120 feet away.

Tumble Through uses a different skill so a rogue might prefer to use that, rather than Athletics (Dexterity vs Strength based).

As for flanking/off-guard: there's quite a lot of ways to set up flanking. Reposition is already good for setting up flanking actually, and that's just standard rules. At later levels it's not that rare for an enemy to be off-guard for three different reasons at the same time, but it doesn't stack of course.

OliveToad wrote:
I was thinking: The instigator triggers any movement based reactions, takes two actions, counts as two attacks for MAP and increase the DC by +5.

I think then you make it so hard, that you've effectively forbidden it. Compare it to repositioning someone to the side and stepping, or shoving them twice. Those are both easier and less risky, and only in a few rare cases is their result really worse.

I do think a Drag maneuver, basically the opposite of Shove, makes sense.

It might also be an interesting new Athletics skill feat to be able to swap spots with an enemy in fewer actions/checks than if you're doing it bit by bit with maneuvers.

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Atalius wrote:
nicholas storm wrote:
If the wand of longstrider is broken, just buy scrolls of it.
Lol ya I did that, he said "do you think I'm dumb?"

So just prepare the spell. It's worth a rank 2 slot.

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