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We've been having arguments about whether wizard's talking raven familiar is stealing the rogue's niche since D&D 3.0.

Flying out of reach of a lot of enemies, and looking like a natural animal is such a vast advantage in many scouting situations that it's only the extreme vagueness of what PF2 familiars can do on their own that's stopping them from completely outclassing rogues for scouting. Well, that and door handles in dungeons.

Scouting is basically broken right now. Just purely by the numbers, it doesn't work; boss monster perception is too high.

But that's why I think there's design space for a class that has special abilities that let it do so. If the ninja is really able to ghost into a place, get into rooms without alerting everyone by opening doors, and able to get advance intel without alerting bosses, that's a class-defining ability right there.

Then in combat, give them a completely different way of fighting dirty than rogues. Don't give them anything that looks like sneak attack. Flanking should be no better for a ninja than it is for most other martials; nice, but not the thing that turns your engine on.

They're going to need some kind of damage booster to be reasonable, since we kinda imagine ninjas fighting with weapons that usually don't have really big damage dice, and we've already given away dex to damage to rogues. But maybe ninjas are more defensive/slippery than high damage; hard to pin down in melee. So more on the side of defense-heavy classes like monks and champions than on hard hitters like rogues and thaumaturges.

It would be a huge mistake for any new class to be better at scouting ahead than a rogue or a ranger. This is, at heart, a pretty classical fantasy RPG. It would be very confusing and counter intuitive for “sneaky” to be the niche of a non-core class, and especially not the rogue.

I don't think the current rogue/ranger actually do a good job of scouting ahead. Like, against the Perception of a boss monster, you might at best have 50% odds of not getting spotted. And if you do get spotted you've probably made the situation worse tactically, than if you didn't scout at all.

Also, the ninja needs *something* that other classes don't have. And sneaking and infiltration is pretty much the essence of what ninjas are about.

My take is that the rogue *says* they're about stealth, but actually they're very much about flanking/gang up. Those are waaay more efficient ways to trigger sneak attack than continuously spending actions trying to get stealth going.

And rangers are not that much about stealth either; they're about focusing on one particular enemy. Perhaps with some tracking thrown in, while you're trying to deduce what kind of creature you're about to face next. Not a whole lot of the ranger's combat plan is based on stealth.

If we compare kineticist damage to bow and gun users, I think it's sort of in the same ballpark? With maybe more flexibility in areas and damage types, but less pure single target damage?

Compared to melee it doesn't look so good, but guns and bows also don't look good compared to melee. You pay for the benefits of ranged (not needing to be close to enemies that are strongest in melee, and not needing actions to move to enemies).

moosher12 wrote:

...

Wikipedia describes a ninja as having functions in infiltration, ambush, reconnaissance, and espionage. So these are points we can pivot on. I believe skirmishing would fall under the ambush aspect.

Here's the key problem with the entire class concept: Most of these functions just don't work well in a typical PC party because they fundamentally require you to leave 'non-ninja' party members behind and play solo...

Ninjas in most media tend to operate solo or with other ninjas, which is a fundamental issue with a group-based game like Pathfinder.

On a side note, skirmishing is probably a horrible idea for a Ninja as your foe running away from you and raising an alarm is probably your worst nightmare: You need to kill your foes quickly and quietly, which is basically infeasible in a hit point based game.

I think there could be room for a class that's good at scouting ahead, figuring out what's there, deciding it's too much to handle alone, and coming back to the party. Then, the party as a whole goes into the fight knowing what to expect.

Compare this to all the complaints about why prepared casting isn't as good as promised because you often don't have enough advance intel on enemies to actually bring the perfect spell selection.

But it would require really clear class design that communicates to players very clearly what you can and can't do. If you give players the impression they're gonna take out all the sentries quietly alone, it's not gonna turn out happy.

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I think figuring out "what does the ninja do that other classes don't already do" is essential to design. And scouting ahead is something other classes don't actually do great, even rogues and rangers. Any on-level or higher level enemy is going to have enough Perception that scouting is problematic. And of course you have a lot of enemies that are inside rooms with doors. Can you get into the room to see what enemies are there without them noticing the door opens?

So this could be a niche for ninjas. The class that gets you advance warning of what's in there. The class that before combat sneaks around so that when the fight breaks out you have someone standing behind the enemy wizard in the back ready to shank them when they try to cast.

I think there's three broad ways to design a ninja, one of which I think is a poor choice compared to the others.

Option 1: class archetype
I don't like this option very much, because there's a lot of classes that could be ninja foundation, and only one would get served. A class archetype also gets in the way of taking other archetypes.

Option 2: archetype
This means your fighter can be ninja, or your rogue, ranger, swashbuckler or magus. It's a good solution for players who feel existing classes already can do a lot of the job of a ninja, but perhaps miss a few abilities here and there. It could be a "cultural" archetype like Red Mantis or Lion Blade. It's also a bit like the old Dragon Disciple archetype, which also shows the downsides; not all of the archetype feats are going to make a lot of sense for all of the classes that want something else from the archetype. It would be easy to make "magic ninja" optional though. It could be as simple as giving them the option to take typical archetype spellcasting.

Option 3: full class
Advantage is that you can have multiple ninjas that are different from each other by picking different class feats and customizing with archetypes like Lion Blade or Red Mantis.

Difficulty is that you need to find a class gimmick that's distinct enough, you can't just give them sneak attack. You're competing with an already busy field.

I think there's some design space though: an occult gish with emphasis on stealth, scouting and infiltration. Both historically and in fiction, being able to infiltrate well-guarded places is a hallmark ability of ninjas. It's also something that other classes still struggle with, because the enemies you'd care most about scouting, tend to have special senses and just sky high Perception.

The occult spell list gives you a lot of mobility, illusions and invisibility. It helps set you apart from rogues and rangers when it comes to being a stealthy martial. And being a martial sets you apart from other occult casters.

You'd need a stealth/combat gimmick. Rogues get sneak attack whenever the enemy is flat-footed; for a ninja it would have to be something different. Maybe less damaging (dial it down a notch from rogue to the level of the swashbuckler?) but more focused on your ability to use stealth even in circumstances where it gets hard for other classes.

I think the "general archetype that works on a lot of classes" is probably the most promising approach. We have a lot of classes that have the right chassis for one particular take on what a ninja is. But they can all use a bit more help really adding the finishing touches. So an archetype that's a bit of a grab-bag where different classes are more likely to pick one feat or the other, could be the most "make it YOUR version of ninja".

---

Aside from the rogue, ranger, laughing shadow magus, monk, we have more classes that could be credible ninjas. I think you could also do it with a a swashbuckler. If you reinterpret panache not as "flashy" but present it more as extreme stealth, deceptiveness, confusing footwork, dirty tricks and so forth, well I think a lot of the finishers definitely feel like they could be presented as ninja moves too.

Some of it is definitely a people problem. For your character's build to really pan out, the other PCs need to adapt to your mechanics. But you're the only one they've ever met using those mechanics.

You're a bit like a champion; champions also work better when the other PCs don't run ahead of them. (The heavy armor tends to slow champions down.) But once people know the concept of the 15 foot service area and how useful the champion reaction is, they can use that knowledge again the next time they're playing with a champion.

---

Also yes, PFS scenarios, and many adventure paths as well, have the players as pro-active going to new places where the enemies already are. Enemies are actually very likely to stay where they are. You know, in their own separate encounters. Even if they're oddly close to another room in which they can surely hear the sounds of fighting. Boy, it would be a really ultrasevere encounter if they got into the habit of investigating strange noises and combining encounters. But it would make snares work better...

---

So yeah, I'm afraid snares are a bit of a solution in search of the right problem. And not having that much luck finding the right problem.

Yeah, when you Spellstrike you commit to casting that spell. How well the spell works depends on the Strike. full text here

It's good to keep in mind what kind of a spellcaster a magus is. You don't get a lot of spell slots, but you do get the normal amount of cantrips. You typically have 4 spell slots that you could put offensive spells in to use with spellstrike, and the rest of your spellstrikes would be powered by cantrips.

But it might be better to actually use those spell slots to prepare some non-offensive spells, like Haste, or Jump, or Time Jump, that help you deal with other problems. Maybe keep one slot for a big offensive spell, but mostly use cantrips for the spellstriking.

I think Pathbuilder is great for calculating all your numbers and helping you make sure you picked all the things you're allowed to pick (open feat slots, spells etc).

The built-in diceroller also does a lot of math for you. If you like rolling a lot of dice for a fireball, it's fine to use physical dice of course. But give it a try at least; maybe you like it.

What it isn't as great for is remembering all of the things you can do, or what spells you should prepare if you're starting from scratch.

Writing those down is classic. It sounds school-ish, but that's because it's a technique that's been proven across centuries. I'd keep the following lists:

* My feats, abilities and important items. Make a list of the most important ones at the top, and then list all the others. Maybe with one sentence explaining what they do or the key numbers you otherwise have to look up all the time.

* A "trunk" spell selection. The typical prepared caster such as a druid, is still likely to prepare at least 70% the same spells every time. Because some of them are just good reliable spells like Fireball or Haste which are always nice, and some you need occasionally but then they're really important like Dispel Magic.

* A good default spell selection for the remaining 30%. With decent spells that aren't bad to have, but you could live without. If you know that day you're having a specific challenge that there's a great spell for, you replace one of these spells from your selection with it.

* A list of "things you've learned", like "oh, I really need to have this spell prepared, because when I need it I really really need it". For example, an enemy drops a rank 4 Darkness spell and you're thinking if you'd just prepared the Light cantrip, this would be a trivial problem. Before each game session, review these notes to see if there was something from last session that you should remember.

If this is specifically about mounted combat though, there might be a different problem;

You can ride some creatures into combat. As noted in the Mount specialty basic action, your mount needs to be willing and at least one size larger than you. Your mount acts on your initiative. You must use the Command an Animal action to get your mount to spend its actions. If you don't, the animal wastes its actions. If you have the Ride general feat, you succeed automatically when you Command an Animal that's your mount.

For example, if you are mounted on a horse and you make three attacks, your horse would remain stationary since you didn't command it. If you instead spent your first action to Command an Animal and succeeded, you could get your mount to Stride. You could spend your next action to attack or to command the horse to attack, but not both.

Basically, if you're mounted and want to move anywhere, you must command your mount to move. Doesn't matter if the companion is mature or not. You're not getting free movement by being mounted and offloading the action cost to the mount.

However, when you Command, the companion gets two actions, and mount companions tend to have high speed. So you could get really far for that action.

Also, since you share your multiple attack penalty with your mount, that mobility and the specific support benefits are really the main thing you'd be using the mount for. (A mount being mostly for mobility? Groundbreaking.)

The PF1 adventure path Iron Gods has three gargoyle NPCs, named Gruethur, Rayaldach and Ophelia.

(...) For instance, when you see text that says prey, is it related to Hunt Prey or not? You have to make a judgment call and use context clues since prey isn't capitalized. If flavor was clearly distinguishable from rule text, it'd be easier for everyone involved on what's meant to be a mechanical effect and what's meant to be evocative as a possible outcome of the effect.

As a nitpick, lots of mechanical keywords aren't capitalized, such as "attack", "spell", "feat", "anathema", "trained" or "light armor".

I think "Hunt Prey" would be capitalized because it's an action (like Strike or Cast a Spell), but "prey" or "hunted prey" isn't capitalized because it's not the action itself but the aftereffects, just like lowercase "damage" is an aftereffect of a Strike.

Here's a timeline of events for anyone not as familiar with the happenings.

Wow that's such a fractal of crazy. Any one item you read deeper into turns into more crazy things.

I think there's a reasonable middle position.

If we're having a fight because we want to do research in a library and the enemies don't want us to use their library, I would be disappointed if we'd all just throw fireballs without any consequences.

But I don't want to go so far that we start tracking damage to every item every time someone throws a fireball. Because at that point you've made fireball unplayable.

It seems like there's a design consensus to lock down casters quite a lot. The druid is pretty similar to the bard and cleric for proficiencies, and of course a lot ahead of the wizard/sorcerer/witch/psychic. I don't think there's really a whole lot more proficiency that you can give the druid.

But thinking about the way Divine Font continues to scale well at high level, more so than the druid's early start feat loadout; maybe the Font design is something that could be adapted to druids.

Another thing I think isn't quite working out for druids compared to 1E is that summoning critters is pretty underwhelming in 2E. But what do we really want from summoning critters? Is it 100% the critter, or do we just want a few specifics? The "incarnate" method of spell design allows you to design a critter-flavored spell that's still just clearly a spell.

What if druids had a font for incarnate spells?

Maybe paired with a couple of incarnates that slant towards either "hit my enemies with a stampede", "provide a temporary flanking buddy", or "put a lot of beast in between us and the monsters, buy us some breathing space".

There might be something to tinkering with proficiencies to help keep up the class identity. On the one hand you could go wildshape, but you could also focus on shield block and feats like Pristine Weapon which are cool but it doesn't help if your to-hit doesn't keep up.

Maybe one of the orders should focus on keeping up with melee in a more war priest like fashion, perhaps at the cost of some feats. After all, wildshaping (the other melee path) also requires feats to keep going.

I also wonder if there's some wiggle room in the "absolute" wall between battle forms and spellcasting. Maybe as a moderately high level druid spellshape feat you could cast spells during wildshape? Basically, slapping an action tax on it, which has the side effect of making it not so easy to cast spells while staying totally airborne.

I'd still like the Animal Empathy/Plant Empathy feats to have more of a progression in later levels. Where having a druid in the party means some encounters just have completely different outcomes, like the druid talking down or even recruiting what were supposed to be beasts blocking you.

I don't love that these depend hard on Diplomacy; clerics no longer need Charisma for divine font and thaumaturges get a Charisma-based Esoteric Lore. I feel druids should either not depend on Charisma for this at all (why not use Nature?), or there should be a lot more Charisma oriented druidy things, so that this becomes a full-fledged build path to choose.

I feel like cleric and wizard have much the same malaise, at higher levels you don't get all that many class features. Just better numbers and bigger spells.

The general efficiency of the druid chassis isn't really flashy but it's very viable. Most of your abilities may be poachable but not as cheaply and as efficiently as you can pick them up.

There's also a "soft" dimension that's more based on how your campaign plays; do you spend a lot of time casting rituals to improve the harvest, communing with the forest, awakening animals etcetera? Meanwhile the cleric is off shepherding a congregation, communing with angels and all that. I think a lot of class identity is also supposed to be based on those kinds of things. But if you're mostly dungeon crawling those things don't have as much impact in making classes distinct.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I think it would be more helpful if the people supporting this viewpoint provided a reason why the flavor text is part mechanical text. What are they looking to do that a DM isn't letting them do because they are focusing on the mechanical text?

I'm not sure what the point of the post is myself.

A classic example of this is fireball, where a lot of people assume that you're tossing a big ball of fire at something and would thus be stopped by, say, a window. In reality, the spell states:

Fireball wrote:

A roaring blast of fire detonates at a spot you designate, dealing 6d6 fire damage.

So the fireball explodes specifically at the spot where you want it to explode, allowing you to cast it so long as you have line of sight, window or no window. One could argue that this isn't really flavor text because it's mechanically relevant in this particular situation, but that is the point. Although some text is meant more for flavor than other text, all text is part of the rules, and there is very little value in trying to compartmentalize individual bits of text from one another as if they were separate.

There's nothing in fireball saying it's excused from the normal line of effect rules. So a window (or wall of force) would still stop it.

But it did change a bunch compared to first edition (and D&D editions before it) where it had a lot of extra text:

You point your finger and determine the range (distance and height) at which the fireball is to burst. A glowing, pea-sized bead streaks from the pointing digit and, unless it impacts upon a material body or solid barrier prior to attaining the prescribed range, blossoms into the fireball at that point. An early impact results in an early detonation. If you attempt to send the bead through a narrow passage, such as through an arrow slit, you must “hit” the opening with a ranged touch attack, or else the bead strikes the barrier and detonates prematurely.

Which, when you think about it, is kinda odd. It's an area blast that needs a line of effect, just like any other area blast really. But for example Flame Strike didn't have any special mechanics for trying to cast it through a small hole.

Of course in D&D 2ish, fireball was volume-based, not area-based, so if you used in a narrow corridor you could get blowback. It's a case of a spell that had it's rule/flavor text refined every edition to be more practically usable at the table.

But the "glowing bead" flavor is kinda burned into people's memory I guess.

There's some rough edges on the druid that could use improvement, but I think at the core it's a really solid class;
- good spell list
- armor proficiency at level 1, which really helps you over a hump
- solid durability through the rest of the game: decent HP, saves, armor proficiency, can now use metal shields & reinforcement runes are a thing. Also, your key ability requirements are very compatible with keeping wis/con/dex high.
- battle form allows you to not worry too much about strength or spending on weapons (for those fights where melee seems better than spells).

Things I'm not that wild (pun intended) about:
- not all of the orders are exciting. The elemental ones feel a bit like a "ok we now have to write stuff for every element and there are sooo many elements now".
- companion creatures require a LOT of feat upkeep and the endgame is not that great. Late game companions should be more durable and probably also more mobile. Just getting them into the fray can be tricky in the higher mobility late game environment. If you have to spend too much time fixing your companion's problems, they end up left behind.
- abilities like talking to plants and animals nudge you a little bit in the direction of charisma and social skills, but there's not quite enough there for a social druid to really take off as a build.

Thanks, you all. I was confused to start because I was looking at ranger from the archetype perspective and had to really dive in to get the full picture.

As someone whose been playing TTRPGs for nearly four decades, the concept of flavor text not being rule text has been a thing for a helluva lot longer than it hasn't. I didn't realize there was a new standard adopted on PF2. So thanks, again.

I view it a bit more subtle than that.

In a game like Magic, flavor text and rules text are really strictly separate. They're separate areas in the layout, using a different font/italics. Flavor text really has no impact on mechanics in Magic.

Pathfinder, like RPGs in general, have more edge cases where you need to do a bit of interpretation on how to use a rule than a game with really really tight rules like Magic. People play Magic tournaments for money; people play RPGs to let their imagination run wild. These games need different things from their rules.

Sometimes people argue that the flavor text in Pathfinder abilities should be treated strictly as flavor text only, and ignored when trying to figure out what a rule does. But when you're wondering about how exactly to interpret a vague rule, the flavor text can be really helpful to see what it's supposed to do.

In one particular case about 10 years ago now, there was a feat where the flavor text talked about doing stuff with unarmed strikes, and the requirements for the feat also talked about unarmed strikes, but the actual effect didn't mention it was limited to unarmed strikes. So there were people arguing that by strict reading you could use the feat with weapons too, and that trying to bring in the flavor text to limit it to unarmed strikes was really bad. But in the next printing of the book the feat was rephrased a bit to apply only to unarmed strikes.

So I think it's good to realize that flavor text isn't quite rules text, but it's also not totally disconnected from it.

On the topic of Hunt Prey, you'll find prey used elsewhere in the rules so it's not quite as clear as seeing prey as a reference to Hunt Prey. For instance, the Slippery Prey and Prey Mutagen aren't referencing Hunt Prey and the Lion Claw talisman says "When you activate the claw, you learn to pounce on your prey in one fluid motion" which isn't a reference to Hunt pray either even though "your prey" appears. So it takes reading the whole item/ability and using context clues to figure it out. Even though it IS pretty easy to figure out, It'd be nice if prey was Prey when referencing Hunt Prey abilities since they do use prey often enough in casual fluff text/names to make it relevent.

I think the problem is not in the book, but in other mediums that reproduce the book out of sequence.

If you read the ranger class and see "prey" come up a lot it's obvious that it's about Hunt Prey.

If you then see "prey" show up much later in an alchemical item that has nothing particular to do with rangers and isn't in the ranger section of the book, it's also clear that that use of prey is not about the ranger class feature.

But if you were to read up about some ranger abilities by stumbling on them via the Archives of Nethys search console for example, it can be much more confusing. You're not getting the context of "where is this located in the book".

I don't think it's unclear. When you read the class from the beginning, the "prey" concept is introduced before any of the class features/feats that reference it.

It's very much a case of "what ELSE could they mean with 'prey' and 'hunted prey' other than the creature designated with Hunt Prey?"

Squiggit wrote:

...

I find this especially true in groups that aren't especially consistent. I've been in plenty of PFS games (in 1e) where nobody had knowledge skills.

This feels less common to me now, partially because my groups are more consistent, partially because I tend to focus know the RK skills, and partially because the RK skills are split across Int and Wis which makes it seem more likely that someone covers at least half.
But sometimes our Cleric or Ranger can't make it, and we feel the missing RK on those sessions, even if we still have 4 or 5 people.

However, if your group ends up with a CHA caster as your only finger wiggler, it's pretty realistic that nobody adequately covers RK. So how are you ever supposed to engage with targeting the correct save? Guess? Metagame?
Spellcasting, imo, is too dependent on successful RK without otherwise ensuring that all spellcasting characters are engaging with that system in some way. Besides the ancillary expectation (which I think is mostly only known by the forum and reddit dwellers) that spellcasters are intended by the devs to be using RK to his the requisite saves.

I think there's an area in between successful RK, and real metagaming. The area covered by "educated guess" or "reasonable inference".

Is it behaving like a spellcaster? You can bet that Will is not their weak save. Is it doing roguelike stuff or sneak attacking? Probably don't want to focus on Reflex. Is it animalistic? It's probably going to lean toward Reflex/Fortitude over Will. Is it really big? It'll probably have Fortitude as a strong save.

I don't think this is any metagaming; you don't need to have read the actual creature's Bestiary page to make any of these guesses. And this gives you enough information as a caster to narrow down your spell choices.

I like Iotrotk's ideas for justifying the expedition into Drootorca cavern & engaging with the coalition, as well as the seals. I think I have an idea to add a little cherry on top.

Put some more notes in Narseigus' journals, or maybe a lot of academic notes in his apartment, of him studying the military exploits of ancient wormcallers. And him noticing that the big worms were great at causing terror during wartime and breaking through fortified points, but not really good at occupation. Simply, a worm can't be everywhere at once. You need ground troops if you really want to persistently conquer a place.

So his plan is to use the worms to crack open Rolgrimmdur and fight any mid-level heroes that could give his army trouble, and use the army to actually take over the city.

This makes it clear that defeating the army is a valuable goal because it undermines his overall strategy, but not enough to defang him completely because he could still go and rampage.

I'm mostly satisfied with the way things are now. But yeah, giving a monster a weak save so balance out something strong, but then making it immune to most things that target that save, is lame.

It's worst with Will because practically all Will saves get blocked by mental immunity. Fortitude covers a wider range, both poison/vitality/void/disease stuff but also various concussive effects, Divine Wrath, Slow, and Grab/Shove.

They're very unlikely to unify implements into a single item, because "that dude from The Mummy juggling all those amulets" is kinda the fantasy they were aiming for. Implement's Empowerment is basically a compensation you get for doing less damage because you're stuck using only a single-handed weapon.

The swapping implements rule is clearly meant to let you swap to an implement to use a reaction. While you're technically right that the phrasing doesn't work nicely with the rule about using free actions with/without triggers, I think your conclusion is wrong. You're reading RAW too fine to the point where it gets in the way of how the rules say they want to function.

Claxon wrote:

It's easier to adjudicate, but it's a big nerf to implements with reaction abilities.

Mmm... No, actually.

Thaumaturge: Second Implement wrote:

you can quickly switch it with another implement you're wearing to use an action from the implement you're switching to. To do so, you can Interact as a free action immediately before executing the implement's action.

The swap is a free action, but it does not have a trigger.

Free actions without triggers can't be used when it is not your turn. So you can't swap Implements before a defensive reaction such as Amulet's Abeyance.

It has been discussed before - the example that Second Implement gives is bonkers levels of incorrect. While you could swap to a Chalice implement, it isn't to use a reaction. Chalice Implement doesn't have a reaction. And the rule doesn't support swapping to an Implement in order to use a reaction.

Eh. It's worded messily, but it's trying to say you can swap to an implement, even to use a reaction. It would be better to rewrite this:

While you're holding an implement in one hand, you can quickly switch it with another implement you're wearing to use an action from the implement you're switching to. To do so, you can Interact as a free action immediately before executing the implement's action. This allows you to meet requirements of having an implement in hand to use its action. For example, if you had your lantern implement in one hand, a weapon in the other, and a chalice implement you were wearing, you could swap your lantern for your chalice to use its reaction.

to this:

For example, if you had your lantern implement in one hand, and a weapon implement you were wearing, you could swap your lantern for your weapon to use its reaction.

While normally you couldn't use free actions without a trigger out of turn, this is a case of specific overriding general. The alternative is that they'd write a really convoluted trigger along the lines of "you want to use an action or reaction of a different implement for which you'd qualify if only you were currently holding it".

My take on it is that it can be very okay for the players to know more than the characters. That goes a bit against established wisdom in RPGs for the past half century, but I don't think it's really that revolutionary. RPGs have been trying to clamp down on spoilers and metagaming with a ferocity that's completely out of tune with other media.

When you're looking at a book in the bookstore and you look at the back cover, they're giving you some information about what's coming. There's revelations on the back blurb of the book that the main characters won't know in chapter 1. If you watch a movie trailer, they're gonna tease you with snippets of big scenes that happen later in the movie too.

I think the movie trailer analogy works pretty well. You want to carve out juuuust the right slice of information to set some expectations, without actually revealing too much about it.

You might even frame it as a trailer. Think of a big turning point, like Quention gave as example.

You didn't make it to cover, and you feel the blast hitting you, ripping the life from you.
...
You're standing up, looking down at the gaping wound in your chest. You should be dead. You ARE dead. But walking. You've been fighting against undead for years and now you're one of them. Your friend managed to find cover and now he's looking at you.

"Are you one of THEM now? A slave of the Whispering Tyrant?"
"I... I don't feel like a slave. I feel... ANGRY!"

A thing to mention to the players is that this is a preview into what might happen, but not really an ironclad guarantee. It's really hard to force exact scripted outcomes, it tends to make people really unhappy. Maybe it ends up being that you are the one that managed their saving throw and got to cover, and the other guy became undead.

The point is: you haven't given out too much information here, but you've laid some groundwork for players to keep in mind that "this could happen".

Yeah, session 0 is a really useful thing. Imagine if you didn't do one, but just have everyone show up at session 1 with a character they made on their own, without discussing with anyone else;

Sally and Joe both made wizards specializing in the exact same spells, and they're booth bookish nerd types. Bob made a rogue who's a strict professional; doesn't steal from the party, but also doesn't believe in taking charity cases. He works for cash and cash only. Michelle built an occult sorcerer that's basically a scrawny goth kid and who's into frightening "the normies".

Meanwhile you as a GM had in mind a heroic campaign where the players defend the downtrodden because they're the Heroes Of Good. As the first session starts, you have a lot of trouble convincing Bob to actually take the quest, because there's no pay in it. Michelle's sorcerer and the quest-giver really don't get alone. Nobody in the party really wants to talk to normal people in the street to gather information. When they get into combat, Bob doesn't have anyone to flank with. There's also nobody protecting the two wizards and sorcerer from melee enemies. Although the party manages to flee, they don't have anyone with healing skill either.

So, a good session 0 is worth making time for. Imagine how it could have gone:

- Sally and Joe realize they were both about to make the same character. After some discussion Joe decides he's going to make a druid instead. The two characters will still not be the social life of the party, and actually bond a lot over introvert quality time. But Joe's bringing some healing abilities now, and they're both happier because they're not doing the exact same magic. Joe's also picking up a shield (druids can use proper quality metal shields now) and is prepared to do a bit of melee defending. Sally does some comparison of druid and wizard spell lists and makes notes of spells that are only on the arcane list.
- Michelle decides to bend her concept a bit. Instead of "freaking the normies" she pivots to "rebellious teen who dislikes authority figures", which actually works well because the campaign's authority figures are bad people.
- Bob decides that instead of a Rogue, a Thaumaturge might work a bit better because you can't really rely on flanking so much in this party. He's still going with the "strict professional" line, but you as a GM come up with the idea that there are a couple of people in the evil government who want things to improve, and are covertly funding rebel groups like the PCs. This also gives you an interesting new channel for feeding quest hooks to the party.

Notice that everyone made some compromises, but also everyone got to keep "identity" things that were important about their character.

There are a couple of good armor runes, such as Advancing.

And the energy resistance runes, although they're more expensive than the charms of energy resistance, don't cost you a separate investment slot.

And at later levels of course the Winged runes are good.

If your players are fairly new to Pathfinder, it could help to run one of the "Bounties"; those are very self-contained, and take a couple of hours to play through. It gives the players a chance to see the rules in action, and make more informed choices for what characters they're interested in playing in the long term.

You could pick Cat's Cradle for example, and use the PFS Pregens so the players have some ready to go characters for that.

For new games (RPG and tabletop) we've found it to be really helpful to just play one or two rounds so everyone can see the mechanics in action, and then reset and "play for real". That way you avoid a lot of unhappiness when people make big mistakes in the beginning because they were only going off what they thought on first hearing the rules.

I'm conflicted about those feats. I think it's part of the overall difficulty of making classes that use "out of control" abilities like Unleash Psyche and oracle curses. You need to thread such a fine line between making it powerful enough to be appealing, without leaving a loophole that's easily exploited while barely feeling the downsides.

I like the vibe of a psychic letting their subconscious run wild, lashing out roughly to anyone nearby. But this is also a game and it needs to be playable. Looking at clerics, spells like Divine Wrath, Divine Decree and particularly Summon Elemental Herald all talk about only doing damage to enemies. Particularly when summoning a huge elemental herald it's a bit hard to imagine that it only damages enemies, but it does make the spells actually usable.

Also, when imagining a psychic, the first thing that comes to mind is not a massively armored, high HP hulk. Psychics shouldn't normally really want to be in the front row of melee.

What if a lot of those feats were redesigned not as emanations, but as cones (so you can point them at enemies) and triggered as a reaction to getting hit? So if your psychic gets whacked in the face, they can lash back out with a wave of pain in the direction of the enemy.

I'm imagining the sorcerer being questioned about how they practice and answering in the vein of

And then there's Ferrari and Le Tigre. Le Tigre's a lot softer. It's a bit more of a catalogue look. I use it for footwear sometimes.

I'm surprised they didn't remaster these critters more thoroughly like they did with golems.

The way the statblock is formatted,

Magic Immunity A will-o’-wisp is immune to all spells except force barrage, quandary, and revealing light.

I think the intended way of reading it is: a wisp has an ability called Magic Immunity and what that ability does is make it immune all spells except those mentioned. That's all it does. It doesn't make them immune to other kinds of magic such as weapons with runes on them. (It's already a pretty dangerous monster.)

To take that a step further: what if, when you're on the "hangover stage" of Unleash Psyche, you become better using powers at melee distance?

I think the concept of "dangerous hard to control psychic powers" is a cool niche to build from. Instead of junking those emanation feats, maybe the rest of the class should be engineered a bit more to actually make the psychic a caster that's good at being in the thick of melee and makes enemies regret trying to corner the mage.

Right now, imaginary weapon makes more sense for a magus that's comfortable in melee, than a psychic. But what if the psychic was comfortable in melee?

I think it's also a case of marginal return. One spindle makes a big difference if you don't have reliable out of combat healing. The second just cuts the time-to-full by half. The third cuts it down to a third, and so on. Basically, each one is less impressive than the one before it.

I feel like the power difference between cantrips and spells from slots widened a smidgen in the remaster. Not adding your casting stat to cantrip damage lowered the damage floor. And for heightening - a "real" spell heightens at something close to 2d6 per rank, while a cantrip heightens at 1d4 per rank, 1d6 if you're one of the spicy cantrips.

This makes psychics as the "cantrip masters" kinda meh.

And yeah, the feat list doesn't help either. Feats that blast everyone around you with psychic angst are super flavorful, but you don't have the HP or AC to wade into the middle of a group of enemies, and your fellow PCs aren't protected from your feats.

I think psychics being not 100% stable, dipping a bit into uncontrolled amounts of power is a cool theme. But it does need to be sufficiently ergonomic to work.

You could maybe rewrite Unleash Psyche to have an "up" phase and a "down" phase. In the down phase you're stupefied, except for cantrips: cantrips still count you as being in the "up" phase. And maybe you don't pay focus points for amping cantrips while unleashed.

I feel psychic needs a remaster treatment with about the generosity that the swashbuckler got, because the sorcerer is currently taking its lunch.

What the Bestiary/Monster Core maybe don't spell out totally explicitly, but is pretty obvious if you're paying attention: not all monsters have the same amount of "story power".

A big bear is still just a simple animal. You run into it and fight it, or maybe run away or have your druid talk it down. But it's usually not going to go "out of the box" in which you encounter it.

A vampire that can dominate people, turn to mist and recuperate in a well-hidden coffin, fly, create a horde of minions to zerg rush the PCs: that's different. Yeah, sometimes you really do encounter a vampire that's just... there, and you find it's coffin in the next room and put an end to it. But that does feel like it's doing a disservice to the whole idea of the monster.

Same with dragons, liches, wizards and so on. They're good as high-plot enemies.

You could say that fighting a dragon in the wide open is like fighting a sea monster at sea - if you didn't bring the right answers, they're going to wreck you with their home ground advantages.

For dragons in particular a tactic to watch out for is when one PC is much faster than the rest and chases after the dragon. And then suddenly the dragon just goes full-turn murder on the lone PC, while the rest of the party is too far behind to help.

Just to be clear - does dfinan know that you first hear how much damage you would take, then decide if you want to use Shield Block? Because that's how most (maybe all) people here on the forum understand the rule. However, the rulebook isn't quite so explicit, and you could have understood the rule differently.

If you think you have to decide on using Shield Block before hearing how much damage the enemy rolled, then yeah shields probably break faster.

For example, you have a basic steel shield (hardness 5, 20hp, bt 10). And there's an incoming hit for 8 damage. Okay, block that one, your shield only takes 3 damage, and you've protected yourself from 5 damage. Good deal.

Next round the monster is gonna attack you three times. First hit is for 12 damage. You realize if you block that one, your shield will break. So you don't block. Second attack is for 11 damage and by now you're pretty beat up, so you block. But your shield still has 11 HP so it still works. Third attack the monster is at -10 from multiple attack penalty, and the +2 from your shield helps prevent a hit.

The third round, you can still block one more time.

So by deciding not to block that 12 HP hit, you end up being able to block a total of 15 damage this combat, instead of only 10 damage.

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I do agree with Witch of Miracles that it feels weird that blocking big hits with a shield is a bad tactic, while blocking smaller hits is a good tactic.

I feel like these sort of "gross errors" in adventures often come down to fine nuances of how you present them. Shade them a little bit differently and they make much better sense.

In this case:

* Law enforcement is not the same as pure (military) prowess. The chime ringers get much more training in de-escalation and solving issues civilly or nonfatally than a soldier or war-mage would get. The Magaambya prefers to let them do most of the policing because they're the experts.

* But, this is also an adventuring world and "levels" is something that the Magaambya is aware of at least on an intuitive level. They recognize that Froglegs is more than the neighborhood watch can handle, but unlikely to be a cosmic level threat. They estimate that the PCs are in fact more powerful than your typical chime-ringer and reasonably placed to do this.

In a way, the PCs are a pretty reasonable choice - the way most AP encounters are balanced, it's extremely likely that the players will win, so yes, the PCs are indeed a powerful enough supernatural SWAT team to send in there.

As for taking Froglegs alive - I would not interpret it as "it's okay to kill anyone else, just not Froglegs". You can read "survivor" also as "not knocked out".

Ascalaphus wrote:

I know quite a few people like FA, but I don't think the non-optional game design should be based on optional rules.

Even without it you can still have 9 cantrip slots by 4th.

You can have a lot more than that, if you're gonna sink Cantrip Expansion feats, ancestry cantrips and spellhearts into it.

But my proposal was to give a few more cantrips FOR FREE, because those feat slots should go to other things. We've been talking about making more exciting options for what you can do on turns when you're not spellstriking.

Just thought of another one.

Recharging Kata (2 actions)
Step or Stride, Strike and recharge your spellstrike.

I know quite a few people like FA, but I don't think the non-optional game design should be based on optional rules.

I rather like force fang, it's the only damaging magus focus spell that doesn't worry about MAP. I used it quite a lot. It's precisely as good as it needs to be.

Setting aside the psychic and their undue impact on the magus for the moment, just focusing on the magus.

I don't think I want to go so far as to say that magi should only use cantrips for spellstrike. It sure does feel good to occasionally throw a tantrum and just go for a true strike/disintegrate.

But painting cantrips a bit more as the happy path could be interesting. Spitballing some ideas:

- Make going into arcane cascade after a cantrip a free action.
- Increase the number of cantrip slots magi get a bit, so that you can access a lot of different damage types through arcane cascade + the right cantrip.
- A once per 10m ability to recover spellstrike for free if your spellstrike used a cantrip from a magus spell slot

And more indirectly, here's a feat idea:

Cascade Strike (2 actions)
Requirement: you are in arcane cascade
Make a Strike. For this attack, treat your weapon or unarmed strike as having the versatile trait with the damage type of your arcane cascade. Recharge your spellstrike.

I feel there's a lot of cool conceptual effects kineticists could be doing that don't have impulses yet.

As someone who enjoys hay fever a significant part of the year, I was looking for an air/wood composite pollen blast for example.

I don't think we're crippled and absolute need impulses, but there's a lot of cool design space still available.

I think Teridax has a good point on amping. If "Amp" was a free action spellshape, that would remove the need to say that you can't combine amps and spellshapes, since you can't do two spellshapes. And it would also prevent amping spellstrikes. So it prevents an out-of-class spell being better for the magus than an in-class one, by simplifying a rule.

That still leaves Fire Ray though, which is still a great spell for spellstriking. At some point I think the solution has to come from the in-class stuff being attractive enough that people's first thought shouldn't be to go shopping outside.

So about Arcane Cascade, my main gripe is that it's just yucky first turn experience. Combat starts, let's say you already have your weapon out. You move up to an enemy, spellstrike... and are out of actions to use arcane cascade.

I really like the idea of using arcane cascade to sticky a damage type that suits the current enemy to your weapon, based on spells you used. But you pretty much need to use attack spells to do that. And nearly all the spells with interesting damage types you can afford to prepare take two actions. So it's a really really rigid action economy. By making it a free action, this problem goes away. Compare to how barbarians can enter rage for free at the start of combat now.

I like Squark's idea of (1) not allowing focus spells on spellstrike, (2) beefing up the magus focus spells and really taking great care that they make a lot of sense to use on off-turns.

That would ensure every magus starts level 1 with at least one off-turn plan, but there should be more of them that you can choose from.

Take a feat like Magus' Analysis. You recall knowledge and IF you succeed you recharge spellstrike. If we take out that "if", it becomes a clean action compression. On turn two you recall knowledge and recharge spellstrike. Great for the magus that did prioritize Int.

Then, let's add a couple more different class feats that also do "X + recharge spellstrike". For example, Reload & Recharge, to lean into the desire for gun-magi (which has ghastly action economy).

Another one could be a two-action Recharge + Repair Shield (that deals with free hand issues). It's okay for recharge abilities to take two actions if they're pretty powerful; we want to make off-turns feel like you're getting real work done. But keep it at most two actions, so you can move or strike with the third.