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I see this more as a tradeoff of realism vs both practicality and fun.

In your typical action movie, do you see people go to the bathroom at realistic frequency? No, not a lot. Any time they do, something "happens" (a conversation with someone, or a murder attempt). People going to the bathroom and nothing out of the ordinary happening is not interesting, so it's left out of the movie.

Dungeon maps also make choices like that. There's not a lot of dungeon maps with toilets on them. Or broom closets.

On the other hand, if you want a fight that's an enjoyable difficulty, you maybe don't want to have the monsters from the other encounter joining in (that'd be unenjoyably hard).

You can do a couple of things as a writer:
- come up with a reason why they don't, such as "there's a lot of noise so they don't hear it"
- put in a lot of empty rooms in between rooms with monsters
- make each fight a lot easier, because you often trigger multiple fights together

All of those are fine, but they're also a hassle. You get tired of having to come up with excuses why monsters don't hear anything. You want the dungeon map to fit on the gaming table. You don't want to use only weak enemies.

So you can also just say "well eff it, let's just be a bit less realistic so we don't have to work so hard to have some fun".

Yeah, the comparison with laughing shadow is pretty relevant. This should be different enough. Which does cause some challenge because if both of them deliver a spell into a flank, one of them adding weapon damage through spellstrike and the other sneak attack, how big of a difference is there really?

I really like the idea of making off-guard also help against saves, because that makes this feel like "still a rogue, still obsessed with off-guard". And that gives you a definite bias toward melee, without absolutely forcing it.

If we go the class archetype way, we could do something like:
- pick a tradition and a key stat (maybe with some restrictions, no arcane-wis?)
- there are basic spellcasting feats etc, using the standard caster multiclass archetype building blocks
- there can be some unique archetype feats as well
- there may be some things you lose from the rogue chassis (perhaps slowed weapon progression) while your casting progression pulls close to war priest/magus levels

So you're not taking a "bard" or "cleric" archetype, you're taking "occult" or "divine".

Compared to a magus, you're not getting the high-level spell slots, but you might get a lot more of the mid and low level ones, emphasizing the utility/trickery aspects. You're going a bit broader but not as tall.

Some ideas for unique feats/chassis things:
- once per day pulling a scroll out of nowhere that "you'd been carrying around all along" with just the right utility (arcane).
- getting sanctified and a top-rank Heal/Harm font (divine)
- a better version of the usual "breadth" feat that gives you a lot more slots of your lower ranks
- getting some kind of critical specialization effects on your spells
- easily adding subtle traits to spells (occult?)

Well eldritch trickster is definitely an itch people want to scratch. There's a legitimate theme here to design with.

The problems I see with it are:
- Your proficiency will start to fall behind your proficiency with weapons. Why are you using spells when your weapons are more accurate?
- Applying sneak attack at range takes considerable work, especially if you want to be able to do it reliably.

On the other hand, you have a lot of stuff casters would envy; the rogue class chassis with its saves and perception is really good. It's like on a line from cloistered cleric, war priest, harbinger - the eldritch trickster is another step further toward full martial. If you want to raise the quality of the caster, maybe you need to pay for it with a reduced chassis.

Maybe this is a good case for a class archetype, in the sense of actually trading out some class features? (I am in favor of making class archetypes non-blocking tho.)

I feel like this book could also cover oozes.

I imagine chapters about...
- the algollthu family
- the Dominion family
- oozes
- aberrations from spaaace
- aberrations from the darklands
- squicky things you can play
- tools against squicky things

You can quietly drop most measurements anyway.

One square is just one square. A speed of 25 is a speed of 5 squares. A range of 60 is just 12 squares.

We stopped measuring weight in pounds or grams, switching to bulk. De facto, we only care about distance in squares anyway.

I do think there's room for more Tian flavored archetypes, which could definitely scratch the itch.

Instead of for example making ninjas illusion-gish types (and disappointing the people who were hoping for a nonmagical stealth class), make two archetypes. One of them could be an "Shenmen disciple" that goes the more supernatural route. Another one could be a "Gokan dagger" that's focused on more urban parkour kinda stuff. And a "Songbai samurai" could focus more on being an honorable warrior while a "Chu Ye disciple" could be more of a grim warrior with supernatural backing kinda type.

A big advantage of going the archetype road is that it combines well with existing classes. You could already make a "ninja" with a rogue or monk, you just might one or two tidbits of stuff extra to get it complete.

Why should that be a reaction, and not just a free action? You're not really reacting to any particular thing.

I do think some kind of "Aha!" reaction could fit on the investigator, but then it should be something where you respond to the opponent's action. I do think most classes, especially martial ones, should have a reaction of some kind. Usually they're defensive ones (shield block) or aggressive-defensive ones (reactive strike, champion reactions). Of course for investigators they should be a bit brainy.

Another thing: on the one hand it makes kinda sense to lean heavily on Recall Knowledge for investigators. But on the other hand, the Thaumaturge is already there doing that. Whatever investigators do, should feel substantially different. But on the other hand, I do think we need some of the same things thaumaturges do: not caring about creature rarity. In particular, I think investigators should not care about the creature being Unique. Maybe their flavor of RK should be much more about "what I pieced together about this individual" while other classes focus more on "what we know about this kind of creature".

When I played an investigator I was sometimes annoyed, but at other times I was kinda enjoying that the class really pushes you to focus very much on paying attention to clues and plot, because you really want to make sure you're on the right Case. If you have a good sense of "we're now trying to figure out this bit" then it becomes easier to pick the right kind of Leads so that you can get the free action DaS.

That's on the one hand kind of an aggravating high-pay-attention playstyle, on the other hand that's kinda the attraction of the class. You're really trying to think ahead about what, based on everything you've seen, you think is coming next.

I think investigators need more "things to do" in combat, beyond merely striking. Defense stratagem is an interesting concept, but if you can't do hostile actions, then you're not left with very much to do that combat round.

I also think if you're not going to be Striking, you need a very VERY good plan about how you contribute to the party in combat. Classic answers are "cast combat spells" or "do kineticist blasts", but both of these still deal damage. In order for the party to defeat enemies, they need to deal damage; anyone not doing damage should be doing something extremely useful instead. A cleric casting Heal to make sure the barbarian stays in the fight is a good example. A wizard spending one action to move out of danger, another to recall knowledge, and a third to cast Guidance, is just a waste of space.

The RAW investigator struggles with this, because if you really lean on DaS/Strategic Strike, you're neglecting the regular to-hit stats for Intelligence, but only for one Strike with a middling damage bonus per round. That just doesn't cut it.

I do think investigators could be a class that's a bit less about dealing damage than others, but then the class should in itself have really good valuable ways to spend your actions. Doing the odd Demoralize or Recall Knowledge isn't enough. Having to take an archetype for Electric Arc isn't good either; it should be more significant and it should come from the class itself.

I do like the symmetry of Defense Stratagem: if you roll the d20 and it's good, you attack, and if it's bad, you don't attack but force the enemy to have a bad turn too. It might need some more polish but the seed idea is interesting. But you do need something else to do during that turn with your actions.

Just dumping some thoughts on this;

Investigator as an archetype is a reasonable idea It's a bit like the Vigilante: that was a PF1 class that became an archetype and I think that was a good move. It makes it easy to say "in this masked superhero campaign, everyone gets vigilante as free archetype" for example. And it makes it less of a "this class mimics other classes, but you trade out some power for a cape".

I think the investigator is similar: a lot of classes can fit it in their flavor to "investigate". A wizard can be a researcher. A cleric can be a wise woman who knows just what questions to ask a troubled soul. A bard can be a schmooze who tricks hidden traitors into betraying themselves. A ranger can search for forensic evidence.

So I think turning it into a big archetype that lets any class focus more on investigation, would also be a realistic path.

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"Meta" feats are not everyone's cup of tea like That's Odd. It's jarring to some GMs. I also think that sort of "plot power on steroids" is actually overkill for most written adventures, since they're basically already doable with regular abilities and regular players asking the right questions from time to time. Often to the point where villains will just reveal themselves, even without much investigation at all from the players.

Those sort of meta investigation abilities feel like they belong more in an indie style game that's more built around narrative co-control.

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I don't think investigators should dominate all skills at the same time I think it's much better if they're very good at a limited set of skills. Sherlock needs Watson for medical expertise, Sherlock isn't also the best doctor in the world. This is also why I'm not a fan of these "trained in everything" sort of abilities. You're in a party of about four PCs, so as a skill monkey if you're really good at about 40%, that's probably about as much of the pie you should be taking.

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I don't think Intelligence *has* to be their key skill You could be a wisdom or charisma based sleuth too, plenty of fictional examples.

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"Attack roll preview" has been tried and isn't really great It looked interesting on paper but it's kinda annoying in practice. And with the recent errata taking away bombs, it's even less interesting. I think we might as well just come up with something completely different.

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I feel investigators should tend toward light weapons which can be tricky to implement, just look at how much people try to find a way to let Implement's Empowerment count with weapons that it isn't meant for. But there should be some way that investigators have a decent combat contribution that just doesn't really gain that much from Strength.

It could be something somewhat odd, like:

Mastermind Strikes (class feature)
When using agile or finesse weapons or unarmed attacks, you use your highest mental attribute as to-hit bonus instead of strength/dexterity, and your second-highest mental attribute as damage bonus instead of strength (on any attack where you would be allowed to add strength to damage).

Deceptive Maneuvers (feat)
Through misdirection you get your foes off-balance. You can use Deception instead of Athletics for combat maneuvers.

I like the overall idea, but somehow it reads a bit complex to me. Maybe that's just in the phrasing though. But we don't want to get back into 3.x stereotypes of a 2-page flowchart to explain grappling, when it actually wasn't quite so dramatically complex if you understood it.

Maybe the initial paragraph should do more to explain what you're trying to do and what will sort of happen, instead of having to reconstruct it from the success/failure entries. I realize that IS Paizo's style for writing these things, but I think that works best only for really simple effects. For something a bit more involved like this, it can be obscure.

For something that doesn't come up very often, but can be life-or-death when it does, you really want the rules to be easy to intuit on a quick reading. Otherwise it'll (at best) kill the momentum of the scene.

I've been thinking about this change and at first I didn't like it, but I've come around a bit.

We're a small lodge, we usually run 1-2 tables. Some players have been there from the start and although they GM from time to time, they've been a player far more, so by now they've played almost everything. But, some of that was back in season 1 and it's not super fresh in their memory. We also get new players who haven't played anything yet.

This new policy makes it a lot easier to do something like "let's do a Season 1 metaplot series" without a lot of puzzling about who needs to use replays for that.

I think it's significant though that this change is coming now that we have a significant back catalogue of scenarios that we ran so very long ago, that they'd be fresh enough now if we ran them again.

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I think it's good that a fair bit of leeway is allowed to organizers how they want to handle things. Sometimes PFS has had policies handed down that seemed very tailored toward some problem that was happening in some lodges in the US of a certain scale, that weren't an issue for us. Or a policy made sense there but it caused problems on our scale. In particular, the new narrow level bands are more problematic for a 1-2 table lodge because you might very well have a situation where half the players have a level 2 character, and half have a level 3 character.

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I'm also looking at what this means for PFS Tracker. Originally it was made to help set up tables when replay rules were really strict. Over time more evergreens showed up and more ways to replay showed up, and I've adapted the ranking algorithm to that.

By the time season 8 rolls around I'm aiming to change the ranking algorithm/UI again, to make it easy to see how "fresh" a scenario is for players.

I was thinking a bit about how I'd go about it. I'd want to just make a big split between "combat effectiveness" stats and "skill challenge" stats.

For the skill side, we could maybe just keep the current attributes, dropping constition since it doesn't affect any skills. That means you'd have left over:

Strength
- bulk capacity
- armor penalty
- Athletics

Dexterity
- acrobatics
- stealth
- thievery

Intelligence
- arcana
- crafting
- occultism
- society
- lore
- extra skills (maybe not anymore?)
- extra languages (maybe move to Charisma?)

Wisdom
- perception
- medicine
- nature
- religion
- survival

Charisma
- deception
- diplomacy
- intimidation
- performance

The attributes aren't totally equally valued here, but they're not miles off either.

And on the combat side, you'd have Aspects, which you pick completely separately from Attributes:
- melee to-hit bonus
- melee, thrown and propulsive damage bonus
- ranged & finesse to-hit bonus
- spell attack, spell DC, class DC
- hit points
- fortitude
- reflex
- will

You could just give people a sack of points to spread over aspects, but I think you want to ensure that people have to spread them a bit. You can do a diminishing returns setup, where a +4 in one accent costs more than +2s in two accents. It could be tied to Ancestry/Background/Class, where each of those gives you some hardwired accents that you can't move, and then you get more accents to flexibly place where you want them.

Oooh that's interesting. I do really like the idea that wands and staves see a lot more use.

I'm not wild about the term "trait" since that's already widely used for another key game concept. How about "accent" or "aspect"?

Re: Intelligence. It's already the case that high intelligence sets you up with a bunch of skills, but those depreciate in quality because at higher level you do need some expert+ upgrades to keep up with DCs. Now, some classes also get low base amount of skills because they're expected to have high intelligence (wizard). Can we do something useful in this area?

It'd be interesting if you can define it as a Strike, so that it's compatible with Haste.

Aren't you making things really complicated by trying to link a premaster thing (components) to a remaster thing (subtle)?

Premaster: the book explicitly says you don't need a free hand for somatic components.

Remaster: nowhere does it say you need a free hand for spellcasting, not even in the manipulate trait. Quite a few other manipulate actions do say they require free hands, so it's reasonable to conclude a manipulate action only requires free hands if it says so.

There are some spells that clearly wouldn't work as intended if you invent a requirement for free hands that isn't actually in the written rules. A classic sword and board champion would have a hard time using Lay on Hands for example. A wizard holding a staff would have a hard time using a scroll.

And this isn't limited to spellcasting. Can you use Interact without free hands? You might think at first, no, you need a free hand to open a door. But do you really? Haven't you ever wrangled open a door while holding some dinnerware? And remember that Interact is also used for stowing stuff. It'd be crazy if you couldn't stow a weapon to free up a hand because some overly strict reading of the rule said that the hand needed to be free to do that manipulate action.

Something that I think is worthwhile to strive for, is to break out of the trap of some attributes (or their replacements) being too dominant. Right now, that's dex/con/wis for AC/saves/HP and your to-hit stat (varies by class, not always actually your key stat).

If people could pick five out of ten widgets, but three of those widgets are seen as essential to survival and the fourth as essential to just being effective, then there's only one really free choice.

I think this relates to the difference between point-buy and class based RPG systems. A problem that point-buy systems always have to watch out for is people just putting all their points into a few "essential" things. A vampire campaign where one PC puts everything into Fortitude has a problem, because anything that can scratch that PC will just turn the other PCs into a bloody smear. In Pathfinder, we also have this a bit (because current attributes are a bit point-buy-like): a party where some PCs take Dex and wear armor and others ignore it, isn't gonna work that well.

But PF2 does go further than a lot of point-buy systems in limiting the damage here. You can't just say "I'll take no skills at all so I can take more strength" for example.

It's pretty hard to convince people that you don't have to put boosts into dex/con/wis because at some point you're gonna have to make some hard saving throws and failing them is gonna feel bad. But it makes it hard to make a diplomatic wizard you know?

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A variant I've been thinking about is when your attributes don't apply to saving throws / AC / to-hit / spell DCs and such. If they were mainly there for skills, and some other sub-critical stuff like bulk limits.

Then for the combat-y things you could maybe give people 2-3 picks from:
- emphasize melee offense
- emphasize ranged offense
- emphasize save X
- emphasize HP
- emphasize AC
- emphasize spells

So a barbarian isn't asked to choose between Will save and Occultism and a wizard isn't picking between HP and Diplomacy.

Hello, I have question about stance and "natural" unarmed attack.

For example, if a character with an ancestry has a Tail 1d6 bludgeoning (sweep, trip, unarmed, brawling group) as unarmed attack.

And with an archetype thlipit contestant, the character gains a lash melee unarmed attack that is in the flail weapon group, deals 1d4 bludgeoning damage, and has the grapple and reach traits.

Is it cumulative or only one of both ?

They don't stack. You have two different ways to attack, with different stats.

So you can either strike with your d6 brawling tail, OR with your d4 flail reach "tail". But you don't get d6 together with reach and both brawling and flail at the same time.

Probably a holdover from an earlier draft where the tail was the vorpal part?

It really irks me that the ranger has so little support for unarmed weapons. A lizardfolk ranger sounds like a cool idea until you realize your class isn't going to give you a cool feat to double claw-swipe or anything.

I think attributes are fun IF there's enough varied arrays that are all viable, so that there's really something to choose from. I like my high strength sorcerer-champions that enjoy tripping enemies, and my high-charisma druids that make friends with all the animals and are fun at parties.

The main problem I see with attributes is when you get nudged to focus on the same array all the time (key stat + dex/con/wis) because it feels like anything less than maxing your defensive stats is going to be too painful.

I used to pooh-pooh that more, but after taking a wail of the banshee to the teeth and realizing I needed to roll a 10 on the die not to critically fail and die, I had to admit that freedom here is limited, and that you have to start making the "correct" choices early. I don't like that.

Starfinder lets witchwarpers decide if they'd rather be intelligence or charisma based. I think that's an interesting design direction. If you think about it, attributes are really working on a couple of different things:
* accuracy and damage (strength, dexterity, casting stats)
* defense potential (perception, saves, HP)
* skills
* character vibes ("my barbarian is sociable and wants to be a chieftain")

Feels like the first two categories can dominate the third and fourth two much.

Huh? At low level detect magic just says "there is at least one magic thing you didn't know, somewhere within 30 feet of you in any direction". At higher levels it goes to "somewhere in that 5ft cube". But that cube might have a corpse in it with lots of pieces of gear. And only after you fully investigate that magic item can you ignore it and use detect magic to pinpoint the next most powerful one.

But yeah, I think it's kinda outdated that these are two separate spells. And I think it's still too much tied up in 1E panics about "detect magic breaks the whole illusion school" or "breaks my whole plot".

Currently the Detect Magic exploration activity does almost nothing because it can't find hazards that require some level of Perception training (which I think is almost every magical hazard). It would have been fine IMO if Detect Magic allowed you to try detecting them with Arcana/Nature/Religion/Occultism instead of Perception.

Well the really easy thing would have been if spells used levels, and I mean actual levels. So you'd have level 1, 3, 5, 7,...19 spells. It wouldn't have worked in 1E because classes had totally different tables for what level they got access to a particular rank of spell, but in 2E that's all quite consistent.

Well Detect Magic doesn't really help very much in figuring out if a pile of defeated enemies contains any magic loot. The best you can get at rank 4 is saying which 5ft square has the most powerful magic in it.

Read Aura is then the fastest way of sorting the magic from the mundane.

We did do the air strike in SF1 once. There was this critter lairing in an acid lake and it had nasty mind control. But it was on a god-forsaken asteroid nobody cared about so we just used our ship's tractor beam to pull it out. Then found out that the tractor beam also did damage. Then found out that ship damage against ground targets is x10. The critter didn't stand a chance.

It's a tactic that you normally don't get to do (and Eox air traffic control didn't let us do it during the next adventure...) but for this one occasion it was glorious.

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As a note to the article: I agree with the approach (hazards instead of regular combat), but I think you might want to do not even 1 round of regular combat (to showcase the danger). A level 2 PC going up against a level 13 monster might die from massive damage on the pretty much inevitable critical hit.

It's like being a priest of Aroden. You can hold a mass every week and there might be some old potions in a cabinet lying around from the good old days. But you don't get to prepare spells anymore.

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I'm sad about Cernunnos too. I had a very enjoyable cleric following him in Age of Ashes.

@exequiel759: I'd say the way that a caster doesn't risk their whole turn on one dice roll is by throwing spells that target multiple enemies (electric arc, fireball, divine wrath) or that still do something significant on a success (slow, synesthesia) or something that doesn't even require a roll (haste).

I do think there's more ways that martials and casters can help each other. Tripping or grabbing makes an enemy off-guard to ranged spell attacks too. Dirty Trick does actually debuff Reflex. Anyone could learn Bon Mot to help against will saves but also Feint. And Demoralize is pretty popular for good reason. But yeah, there could be more; Dirty Trick feels a lot less powerful than Bon Mot and there's nothing like that for Fortitude.

Your examples about Sudden Charge etc. make me wonder if spellshapes shouldn't be free action feats actually. I still believe we should be leaning on "cast a spell and do something else" as the main paradigm, not "spend everything to cast one spell" or even "cast a spell and a small spell".

Nowadays I think the emphasis is on fighter who uses a shield, not on fighter who uses a shield. For example, you might go play with a falcata to get those delicious d12 fatal crits, and hope to use the Swipe feat with it, and you use a shield to be more durable than other fighters. Or you're aiming to be a free-hand warrior with a shield who's really focused on getting deep into enemy ranks and harassing their spellcasters with combat grab, reactive strike and disruptive stance, and the shield is for surviving being in the middle of enemy ranks like that.

Fighters can do more of these very offensive-with-durability builds than the others, but the others definitely outclass the fighter on tankiness.

"When you have to make a roll, something should always change" is a good concept. Even when it's a bit indirect.

Now, a lot of mechanics are on the basis of "success - something happens; failure - nothing happens; critical failure - go backward". That seems to conflict with this idea.

But often, it works fine:

- In combat, you're trying to Disable Device a complex hazard and fail. Nothing happens directly, but the hazard gets another turn to attack you. So indirectly, there was a consequence.

- In a skill challenge, if you fail, you don't get a VP for your action. Which matters, because you usually only have X rounds to get Y points. Call it a "clock" like Teridax if you will.

Both of those mechanisms work quite well. It's the kind of loose, unstructured exploration mode checks where it can break down. You need to get through this door, so you need to pick the lock. It's a hard check but it takes only 2 actions and you have an hour, so you can try 600 times.

Or: you need to Track the BBEG for the adventure to continue. You fail. But the adventure absolutely requires it to be successful. So... now you just get to try again? Or a lame NPC comes to rescue you?

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I don't think we can really solve these just with a standard rule to follow in all cases. It's more about teaching the pattern and showing the GM a variety of tools to pick from to handle a situation. It's more about somewhat abstract styles of "how do we go on from this impasse?" than that the outcome of for example failing to pick a lock always has to be the same.

If the PCs fail to overcome a challenge, the adventure can move on by...
- paying a cost; they need to use an expensive scroll to passwall
- losing out on a reward; the GM says "eventually you get through, but by now they've evacuated some of their treasury"
- losing an advantage: the party had to noisily break down the door, so now the enemies heard them coming
- gaining a disadvantage: the party didn't get through the jungle well, so they start out sickened in the first fight afterward
- losing a strategic choice: because the PCs can't open this door, they have to explore the other corridor first and hope they find a key there
- losing time; they get a round less in the next skill challenge

... and many more. All of these do fail "wish we did better there" without causing the adventure to crash.

I'm not convinced. I think "I can do this thing to do damage" has a strong psychological tendency to capture people's attention, to the detriment of doing other things. Martials are strongly pushed by MAP to do other things than spend all their actions on striking. Spellcasters have only a few 1-action damaging spells and I suspect with the same design intent. You're supposed to do other things than just try to deal damage with all your actions.

Also, yeah there's a fair bit of dud caster feats. For the Cha casters at least there's solid skill feats you can look at for third action usage. It would help a lot of there were more Int skill feats that had combat applications.

That said, as a high level caster you really do end up with a lot to choose from. Playing a level 14-17 sorcerer in Prey for Death was an interesting look into just how much you got to work with. While I'd taken some spellhearts for extra cantrips I never really needed to. Spells from slots and the excellent dragon breath focus spell was enough for substantial adventuring days.

I'm starting to think that the ideal progression as a caster really is to:
- start out at level 1 using mostly offensive cantrips
- pick up a really good damaging focus spell, and other things to grow your focus pool
- take the feat for fast recharging your pool if possible
- from level 5-6 onward, you lean mostly on using your focus spells and slots for combat
- by level 9, you might have only 2 cantrips left for "mopping up" but the rest should be utility cantrips instead.

I feel like casters do already have decent 1A options: recall knowledge, demoralize, bon mot, spellshape feats, moving to a better spot, stepping away from a bad spot, raising a shield, drawing a scroll, bonking someone with a staff, just to name some obvious ones. I think it would actually be bad to create a 1A damaging cantrip because if it's any good, it'll really crowd that space and promote a "stand and blast" more boring fighting style.

Damage cantrips do seem like they curve rather poorly; a spell-from-slots or a good focus spell heightens by about 2d6 per rank and a cantrip by 1d6 per rank if you're lucky. For combats that are usually decided in three rounds, at some point you can just start out with slots and focus spells and cantrips are just for mopping up. They really do measure out more like simple weapons.

I think electric arc is a good power level for cantrips, and maybe the floor could rise a bit for others. But I'd be bored if they were all just elemental arcs. Comparing electric arc to for example timber (15ft line), you're much more likely to hit two enemies with electric arc. If timber allowed you to drop a 15 foot line anywhere within 30 feet, that'd be more competitive. (Scatter Scree is so close to being good enough.)

I've always been a fan of a front row of the party consisting of a champion and a fighter working together. Punishing absolutely everything enemies to trying to get to the back row casters.

The website I maintain, PFS Tracker can do some of that. You can:

- filter by adventure type (scenario, standalone module, adventure path, etc.)

- read the description and click through to the webshop

- filter by level

- filter by author

- filter by game system (Pathfinder 1, 2, Starfinder 1, 2)

It doesn't list them by genre though.

For adventure paths, Tarondor's 2025 guide to the Pathfinder Adventure Paths is also a great resource.

This is a pretty good discussion, the idea of failing forward clearly has a lot of nuance to it. After all this my thinking stands like this:

* Failing on something and the adventure grinding to a full stop is bad.
* Failing on something and having to just try again and again until you succeed is also bad. Even if there's no cost/consequence to it.

"Failing forward" is trying to avoid either of those (somewhat opposite) extremes.

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Thinking about lock picking, we've established the mechanic works okay at the time pressure of an encounter. The rogue getting a potential ally out of manacles while the fighter keeps enemies busy, that's fine. If you fail too many checks, it'll take longer and be a harder fight, or you might have to flee and leave them behind.

Or maybe the room is filling with lava and you need to rescue someone chained to the wall. If you can't pick the lock in time, you can... try to melt the chains? But that's gonna leave some burn scars. Or (grisly) chop off their hand to get them loose. Or maybe the lava weakens the wall (but everyone takes fire damage). If rescuing this person is required for the plot you can still fail forward here.

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Now we wanna move the lockpicking to an exploration scene. We'd be using a better lock that's harder to crack than the one we chose for the encounter scene of course. We're not in "every second counts" territory and breaking a pick isn't severe enough to stop you. So you could roll a few hundred checks and get it open. Or maybe calculate the probabilities and how many checks on average it would take. But those aren't really fun solutions.

What we need are interesting stakes, and a few checks. The stakes could be for example, "do they PCs get the lock open before the next patrol comes by?" And say every check takes 2 minutes, and the next patrol is gonna swing by in 10 minutes. On a success, the PCs open the lock and slip into the next room undetected. On a failure, they have to deal with the patrol. If the patrol doesn't report back, the facility will go on high alert ten minutes later. However, once you've defeated the patrol and your quiet infiltration is busted anyway, you might as well just kick in the door and leave heavy traces. So the adventure continues.

8. A better framework for subsystems that doesn't boil down to a handful of skill checks and a victory point track. I'd love some real meat on the bone, possibly prefabbed subsystems that are widely used instead of made up on the spot by a rushed AP designer.

9. Make rations not so easy and cheap to get, then add a rare "solves all survival problems for people who don't want to deal with it" item or spell that level 1 players can get from their sponsors if the GM wants to do it that way. Also add more items and prices for commoners to better enable low stakes play and interactions with everyday NPCs.

These are related points really. If overland trekking and exploration are a significant part of the adventure then they can benefit from more mechanical backing, with real choices to make for players.

I think how elaborate subsystem can/should be depends on how big a part of the adventure you want it to be. Combat is a minigame too, and it's very thoroughly fleshed out because it's really important to us. Influence, if you actually have interesting people to talk to and not quite enough time to sway everyone, becomes interesting. You have to make choices about who to spend your time with, what to promise maybe, and halfway through you might learn something that makes you re-prioritize.

Other minigames are rightfully kinda lean. Chases don't need to be too complicated, if you want the feeling of speed then a chase round should actually run fast. There's not really that much agency ("are you going to roll your best skill or something else?") but that's fine, it's more about what you see out of the window as your railway car races along.

Wilderness exploration feels like it wants to be one of the more elaborate games that's supposed to take a bit longer, involve more player agency and so forth.

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I do think these rules should grow from playtesting. Sometimes it feels like the rules were thought up in the lab and then published. Or that they were too insistent that all subsystems use the same VP engine as much as possible, to the point of clunkiness.

I think "enemies open the door from the other side and attack" is a decent way to get the party unstuck if it becomes clear they can't open the door. It should be obvious that this fight is then harder than it would have been if the players were able to quietly infiltrate and pick off guards one by one.

For in-person games I tend to run initiative by making a card for each player, and cards "Boss", "Lieutenant", "Mooks", "Mooks 2", "Environment", "Allies". After initiative rolls are done I sort the deck and then it's just going card by card.

Now, I've been sorely tempted to entirely dispense with rolling initiative and just to shuffle the deck, so that you can just START a combat with less ceremony.

I think GM Core does mention it here and there that if players can just try something over and over, you probably should waive the check.

Lock-picking is an interesting case. I think those rules were meant more for an encounter-time amount of time pressure. Can you get the lock open in the middle of a fight, or fast enough to stage an escape for the party? Then those rules really work.

But outside combat? They work poorly. You can argue that it's a statistical given that you'll get the lock open eventually. If there's no time pressure, you could just waive the roll. GM Core does mention something like that.

But especially for locks that's kinda unsatisfactory; it can also mean that unless a lock is absurdly high DC you can argue that "well, it'll cost a hundred replacement picks, but statistically we'll get through it in two hours so no need to roll". Sometimes you should just be able to say "well, you can't pick this lock, you need to come up with another plan". Or, maybe finding the key was actually intended to be a plot point this time while last time the lock was really just a lock that could be brute-forced.

Regarding chases: I think we actually regressed a bit on this, compared to PFS1.

See, PF1 chases originally were individual. The paladin might get stuck trying to climb a garden wall because he didn't have Climb and his full plate gave a big penalty. Forever stuck there.

Then in PFS1 they came up with a different chase mechanic, first shown in Kaava Quarry. The whole party is running, and every round there's an obstacle. Everyone makes checks, and every check except the best one counts as Aid towards the best result. If the best result is high enough, it's a victory point for that round. And then the party moves on to the next obstacle, regardless of the result. At the end of the chase, the party gets rewarded/punished based on whether they got a high victory point total or not. A side effect of this though is that the chase doesn't end early when you catch up to a prey, or that the prey can get away from you. It's basically set in stone that whatever is necessary for the plot to happen will happen, the challenge is about if you do it nicely. For example, if the next scene is a fight with the person you're pursuing, a poor result might have you start the combat with some damage or conditions already. Or if you did really well, you get more choice in where you set up the party on the battlefield, or the enemy didn't get to prebuff.

PF2 chases are a bit different. You don't get to move to the next obstacle until the party has dealt with the current one. It's still better than the original PF1 version because individual characters don't get stuck. But it's happened that an obstacle wants for example "Survival or Nature" to get past, and nobody has those. (Notice they're both based on the same ability score too.) And the chase stalls there.

I don't think this was necessary. I think PF2 chases could be more "fail forward" if you just move to the next obstacle regardless, like in the PFS1 version. If you want to make it so you can end it early, you can also say it ends early when you have X times the number of VP as the number of obstacles passed so far.

Ascalaphus wrote:

Cutting open a monster's belly from the outside to free a friend is definitely something I can imagine. I think it's well-attested in fantasy fiction and mythology as well. It's also a question that has come up in the past - the barbarian asking if they can rescue the wizard.

Cutting the monster's belly open from the outside is actually covered by Swallow Whole at the very end.

Swallow Whole wrote:

If the monster dies, a swallowed creature can be freed by creatures adjacent to the corpse if they spend a combined total of 3 actions cutting the monster open with a weapon or unarmed attack that deals piercing or slashing damage.

If it takes a whopping 3 actions for someone outside the corpse to free the swallowed creature from a dead monster, a single Strike from outside won't be sufficient while the monster is still alive.

But not having the means to Rupture the creature from within isn't the end of the world. Damage is still damage. Strikes from outside and spells from within will bring the monster closer to death, after which the barbarian can cut the wizard free.

Eh, I don't think that follows quite so strictly. Three actions without any checks is more reliable than scoring one hit (dice roll) that does enough damage (another dice roll).

I don't believe it would be good to force Pathfinder and Starfinder together in one book that way, I think game systems that try to be too generic often end up becoming a bit bland. Systems that pick a good middle between some specialization and some generalization can turn out really well though. *finder right now has a core rules engine that's easily shared between Starfinder and Pathfinder and makes it easy to adopt the other game as well as a player. Great. White Wolf used 90% the same engine for Vampire and Werewolf - great. Makes it easy to jump into a new game. But the specific stuff - vampires really care about being home before sunrise and getting enough blood to drink - matters a whole lot.

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But I did like how PF1 was a little bit more setting-neutral in the rulebooks. It had some deities in the core rulebook but it didn't depend on Golarion really. PF2 I think is still if you just look at core books, not that Golarion dependant. Starfinder feels like it's more tightly integrated with the setting actually.

Making it a bit more detached and setting aside a chapter in the GM Core with "essentials for setting up a setting" would be nice.

I'll still be getting Lost Omens books though because I do actually like the setting.

Cutting open a monster's belly from the outside to free a friend is definitely something I can imagine. I think it's well-attested in fantasy fiction and mythology as well. It's also a question that has come up in the past - the barbarian asking if they can rescue the wizard.

It does feel like you have to squint a bit to read it into that rule. But I think it should be allowed:
- Rupture values are often so high that doing it from inside with a light weapon is almost impossible. Only allowing it to be done in a nearly impossible way feels too bad to be true.
- Cutting open from outside is something that makes sense that it's possible, and this is the only candidate rule specifying how it would work.

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Regarding using spells from inside to cut yourself free: I'd also allow it. I read that clause more as meaning "there's no room to use big weapons" than as meaning "nothing other than a weapon/unarmed strike could possibly work". When trying to read the rules with a focus on RAI I think this is fine.

Of course, there aren't many spells that will actually do enough damage of the correct type to begin with. This is a case of "it wasn't probably, but the player had exactly the right thing to do something much better than normal". I try to let people enjoy that success instead of looking for a technical reason to deny it.

Ascalaphus wrote:

(intimidating glare: without it you can still demoralize a lot of people just fine, but now it also works dumb animals and foreign devils)

The problem I thihk Intimidating Glare has (which I forgot to mention in an earlier comment that also mentioned this feat) is that I don't see why someone needs a feat to have a way to intimidate someone without words. Like, the skill is called "Intimidation", not "Insult" or "Taunt". Its not even a matter of "its Cha-based skill so it should include talking" because Deception is also a Cha-based skill, one which arguably revolves more around talking than Intimidation is from a thematic perspective, but it has the Feint action which includes flourishes and fake outs as part of the bluff innately without needing a feat for that.

Well you can demoralize an animal you can't talk with, without intimidating glare. It'd be at a -4, but animals do tend to have low will saves. I'm okay with the idea that it's a bit harder to scare people if you can't communicate very well with them. Not impossible, but harder than if you could properly communicate.

I have a similar opinion with Quick Jump as well, mostly because jumping as 1 action makes more sense to me because a jump covers less space than a Stride and, when it could potentially cover a similar distance, requires a check and likely have a really high modifier on Athletics too. Also, because unlike Intimidating Glare which is an effective auto-pick for all characters that focus on Intimidation, jumping isn't nowhere near as common even for people that focus on Athletics, so it could very much result in multiple situations where you didn't take Quick Jump because it wasn't a priority and that ends up hurting your action economy in a combat where jumping becomes a necessity. For certain classes 2 actions can literally mean they can't do their gimmick at all, and that's not fun for the player.

I agree some restrictions have to exist, and that's why I think Combat Climber is a perfect example of a good skill feat because it solves a problem that characters should realistically have if they want to fight a foe while climbing, but Quick Climb solves a problem that only exists because Paizo made it into a problem, because jumping could have been a single action all along since I don't see a reason, either from...

Well the Leap action only takes 1 action, so yeah you can do that. And it does stand to reason that if you have to jump really far, a running start helps. Quick Jump basically lets you substitute a Long Jump for the same action cost as a Leap, without the running start. That sort of "everyone can do it, but you're less constrained than others" is exactly a good niche for skill feats.

I feel like Powerful Leap and Quick Jump could have been bundled into a single feat though. Just like Ward Medic and Continual Recovery probably could have been. They're a bit feat-chain-y. We'll take them because they're useful and because there's not too much competition from other skills. But really, we'd be much happier if actually there WAS more competition from other skills for skill feat slots.

Re: skill feats. I don't think it's a question of combat/non-combat. I think it's about player-created vs GM-created circumstances.

If you need to wait until a social situation where it's really important that you use Coercion against two people at once, that's more of a GM created situation. On the other hand, you deciding to do some jumping in combat because you know that you can Leap that distance with 100% certainty because of your feats, that's player-created situations.

I think it's pretty doable to look at which skill feats have become popular and which ones haven't, and extrapolate some ideas about how to design the next batch.

There's definitely a line to thread with not making skill feats that take the place of things you should have just been able to do with the skill anyway. But we have other things that skill feats can do:

- reduce a reasonable penalty that stands in the way of using the skill more broadly (intimidating glare: without it you can still demoralize a lot of people just fine, but now it also works dumb animals and foreign devils)

- reduce some requirement (combat climber makes hand economy easier)

- reduce an action cost (quick jump, battle cry)

- boost an effect (terrified retreat)

How's this for an Unchained thing?

Let people decide whether they want to be spontaneous or prepared. You want a spontaneous wizard or druid? A prepared bard or oracle?

You'd need a couple of guidelines, like how to do repertoires for newly spontaneous casters, or what a prepared sorcerer might use as a spellbook. Maybe druid orders would have some specific spells in their repertoire just like a sorcerer does now. And wizards change one or two spells in their repertoire from a spellbook, just like arcane sorcerers can.

But overall, this would be fairly easy to implement and very compatible with existing rules. It'd be helpful for people who strongly prefer prepared or spontaneous.

* Really take a big fresh look at simple/martial/advanced weapons. The current setup just falls flat, because martial weapons are just the best cost/benefit in most cases. I can see that there's a kinda thematic difference between "easy" and "difficult" weapons, but martial characters will just use martial weapons and those without martial proficiency often aren't going to be very serious about using any kind of weapon.

* More skill feats. Every skill should have multiple expert, master and legendary options to choose from, that you'd be excited about having.

* A fresh take on how Intelligence relates to skills. Just getting more trained skills isn't good enough, because at higher level being trained just isn't cutting it anymore. So having a lot of trained skills becomes less and less shiny. Intelligence should also do something for your expert/master/legendary skills.

* Take a deep look at the question "how long should a combat actually take" and design from there. Be public about expectations. There's a bunch of abilities and spells that seem to think combat takes many rounds and damage-over-time stuff pays off a lot. But many combats are decided much quicker. This also plays into how good or bad poisons and persistent damage are.

I don't expect the majority of monsters to have true poison immunity, but you do have broad classes of monsters that are (undead, constructs). And add to that any monster of higher level than you with fortitude as primary save (which is really quite common) and poisons clearly aren't that good for PCs.

I think we can compare poisons to Spellstrike; it's something that you deliver on a strike, and takes actions to recharge after making an attempt. They're not the same, but comparable enough to draw some conclusions about poison use.

Compared to spellstrike:
* Both of them require a Strike
* Spellstrike requires either a hit (for spell attacks) or a not-crit-miss plus save (save spells). There might be partial effect even if the enemy gets a regular success on a save. Poison requires a hit AND a failed save, but isn't discharged on a regular miss.
* Poison only targets a single save which is often high, and is blocked by a frequent immunity.
* Both take actions to recharge, both have some ways to make that more efficient.

Overall I think poison doesn't have a great cost/benefit ratio here. I think it should be either cheaper or more rewarding. However, you have to be careful how to tweak that;
* You don't want non-poison classes to just start adding poison to everything because it's so cheap.
* You don't want poisons used against PCs to suddenly become a lot stronger too just because you were trying to make a PC playstyle work better.

Yeah you're free to use a record-keeping system of your choice. Paper records or spreadsheets are a common choice.

If you're looking for a convenient system you can try out https://www.pfstracker.net. It's a website I maintain that allows you to track your character's money, XP and level, as well as what scenarios you've played.

The main use of PFS Tracker is helping GMs figure out which scenarios to schedule, by making it easy to see which adventures people have or haven't already played.

Agreed with NorrKnekten. But to provide you with more references:

* Player Core p. 410-411 explains "Getting Knocked Out", Dying, and Recovery Checks ("death saves"). This is the default rule that would apply unless something more specific applies to your character.

* Player Core p. 452 (glossary) describes the Undead trait. That's the actual rule that causes ghosts to be destroyed at 0HP:

undead (trait) Once living, these creatures were infused after

death with void energy and soul-corrupting unholy magic.
When reduced to 0 Hit Points, an undead creature is destroyed.
Undead creatures are damaged by vitality energy and are healed
by void energy, and don’t benefit from healing vitality effects.p

* Monster Core p. 362-363 describes the Incorporeal trait. It doesn't mention anything about being destroyed at 0 HP.

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The Ebony Lens makes you incorporeal, but it doesn't say it makes you undead. So you're only "like a ghost" in some ways, but not in the way that causes you to be destroyed at 0HP.

Ascalaphus wrote:

Creator of Darknoth Chronicles wrote:

I appreciate everyone's response. When writing your own world there is a stopping point on what new or recycled content one can add in before the pages are no longer in order, so I was checking the opinions of others to get a feel of what people expect to see down the road for Remastered Pathfinder. Given that Player Core added more dragons are we likely to see more dragonblood lineages and if so how is Paizo likely to handle updating that content? In the previous editions how many dragonblood lineages have been available?

I think the trick is to try to avoid using exhaustive lists, and use thematic groupings instead.

Instead of saying "this is how each spellcasting class fits into my world", try something like "this is how arcane spellcasters fit into my world". It's more future-proof because when Paizo makes a new kind of arcane caster, in your setting people could just go "wizard, magus, that's kinda the same, one just spends more time in the gym than the library". And then when Paizo releases the runesmith (is that arcane? I don't remember) you don't really need to rewrite anything.

Runes, at least as portrayed with the runesmith playtest, stretched across traditions. Different runes were from different traditions and you sometimes got feats that gave you bonuses for using runes from complementary or conflicting traditions.

Interesting. I guess then I'd be placing them near the thaumaturge when worldbuilding.