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The poison offered to the OP's PCs is supposed to "give them an edge," not outright kill anyone... Because that's generally what poisons do. They contribute a bit of damage over time and probably inflict a nice debuff like clumsy, but if poisons were as sure fire a death sentence as people are acting then alchemists wouldn't be considered underpowered.

Well, the poison will definitely be a death sentence to any non-combatants or low level random guards who get a dose, but yeah, will just deal some damage and (significant) status conditions to the main nobles.

If you wanted this operation to provide to present a moral dilemma, here's what I'd do: have the cleric overhear a guard say this whole party is awful, celebrating the death of a good man. Maybe another guard indicates the disgruntled guard better keep those opinions to himself lest he join the good man. Suddenly, the cleric is aware of a repentant creature in the mix.

I may add that in too, but (assuming the party investigates at all, basically) the party will already notice that like 10% of the guests are from noble houses who had been loyal to the king, and the party can likely determine those good nobles are essentially being forced to attend as a show of dominance.

So if the party poisons everything, there are going to be some innocent casualties. But maybe they can try to alert the good nobles or arrange for them to leave the room at the right time.

Of course, the enemy, if they get the chance, will undoubtedly use those good nobles as human shields. And/or lob Fireballs of their own not caring if the good nobles get caught in the blast.

Next session should be interesting.

2. If killing the bandits is the only way to keep the town safe, there's no real moral differences in doing so by poisoning their food and death by the sword. Especially if the former increases your odds of success and reduces the odds of you or the other heroes dying.

I'm thinking over what you said, but let me ask you this:

Let's say an adventure presented the party with an overwhelming enemy and the only possible way to stop the active and impending evil threat was to poison their food. Too strong to fight, no diplomatic options, nothing else possible. And doing nothing will result in hundreds or thousands of innocents dying the next day or something else awful.

This poisoning could be done with stealth, by bluffing, using magic, etc (multiple skill options to succeed per James Jacobs's comment above).

Would this be morally good?

Do you think anyone but a paladin (with the honor thing) would reasonably object on moral grounds?

It's all about HOW you use it that determines if you're being evil. (Poison, of course, lends itself very well to evil acts, of course...)

I suspect part of it is natural attacks vs applied to weapons vs applied to food, for example.

A good aligned snake with a poisonous bite is just doing its thing.

A heroic archer who poisons his arrows and slays the evil dragon in an epic battle running up and down a mountain could be a thing.

But you generally never hear "heroic" tales of Bob the Poisoner who slipped into the bandit camp and a few hours later the nearby town was safe as all of the sadistic bandits died after eating poisoned food.

If the infiltration isn't about going in to prevent an evil or do a rescue or the like, then the Sarenite could still go along but wouldn't feel comfortable on the mission

The exact context is the paladin king got killed by a demon and three demon-worshiping nobles have taken over the kingdom. The three nobles are having a big party to celebrate the death of the king and to lord their new power over the region.

An ally of the party suggested the PCs crash the party since it's a really good opportunity to kill all three nobles at the same spot without letting one or more go into hiding upon realizing they're being hunted.

The nobles are bad people, legitimate combatants, and have lots of guards.

So this can definitely fall into the "fail to strike down evil" bit.

The ally also gave the PCs some powerful poison and suggested they try to use that on food or drink in the party to give them an edge. I'm curious to see what they wind up doing in that regard and I suspect the Sarenrite will not be comfortable with it at all.

One of the anathemas for followers of Sarenrae is: lie.

So say the party wants to a Mission Impossible style mission where they have to infiltrate an enemy fortress. This might be to try to rescue a prisoner or effectively assassinate an enemy leader (even if the enemy leader is APL+2 with multiple guards protecting them that's still effectively an assassination mission...even if the enemy leader is 100% definitively a very, very bad person).

To do so, the party probably needs to bluff their way in and/or disguise themselves (mundanely or with magic like Veil).

At what point along the line is Sarenrae going to say "This is too deceptive/untruthful/etc" and be significantly unhappy?

And I'm not exactly convinced that letting the other PCs do all the talking, for example, is really in the spirit of Sarenrae's anathema.

On the flip side, I'm not sure Sarenrae would say "The only allowable course is to march up to the entrance of the fortress, declare a challenge, and defeat the entire enemy army in open and honorable combat." That seems very lawful stupid.

But Sarenrae really doesn't like lying either.

So...what's reasonable?

They both exist technically, but Restoration is kind of absolete spell now.

As mentioned, one of the biggest differences is a level 2 Restoration spell can reduce the condition of a level 20 monster.

Is Restoration supposed to be phased out in favor of the new remastered trio of spells or are they supposed to coexist?

I could also see a scenario where even if the disguises are successful, the guard doesn't let anyone through. I have heard stories like that from military settings IRL - the low ranking soldiers ordered to guard a particular building, a higher ranking officer comes by - one that the soldiers even recognize - but doesn't have their ID on them...

Oh absolutely. In such a case IRL the "officer" would be told they need to go get a new ID then or something, or have a superior officer override the lack of ID.

I don't think ID cards like that, though, let alone electronic codes are typical in fantasy settings meaning trying to do this sort of thing is a lot more plausible.

Impersonate only triggers a check in 3 cases:

1. If someone specifically used a Seek action to inspect you.

2. If you directly interact with someone.

So all you NEED is one secret check from the PC who is doing the talking. But if the guard is going to specifically inspect the party to make sure nothing is off, it is kind of up to you how many checks they make. If he's just looking at the lead person closely, it is probably one check.

It would be 1 and 2 in this type of scenario. A guard they directly interact with at the perimeter and then potentially one or more superior officers further in.

If you decide everyone gets a check, don't forget everyone gets the +4 status bonus and can add their level if untrained in Deception. And if you've got someone with expert+ proficiency in Deception, the party can follow the leader for an additional circumstance bonus.

Can you elaborate on this?

If a Tengu or something definitely not human uses Veil to disguise as a human...the observer doesn't simply do a perception check against the caster DC to notice the illusion itself?

It seems there's two layers here:

1, does someone realize the "human" is actually something else entirely?

2, does someone realize the "human" is acting oddly (especially if the PC is trying to pretend they're part of a specific group or even a specific person that the observer is familiar with)?

I assumed the impersonate stuff applied for the latter part if someone was suspicious...but being good at acting wouldn't help with the whole "Yeah...you've got feathers and a beak" part if the illusion is seen through.

Just making sure I wasn't missing anything.

So you can easily fool the privates, the captain probably won't see through it, but it's unlikely to fool the general (in other words, don't try to use the spell to talk to the enemy general unless you're prepared for it to have a fairly high chance to fail).

Is it one perception check per party member who is veiled or once for the entire spell?

The former makes it a lot more likely to be caught, period, while the latter means it's a lot less likely every illusion is seen through.

I'm guessing it's once per spell, though, otherwise the odds of the illusion failing for at least one person get extremely high and that's often enough to blow it.

Speaking of dice rolls, in terms of practical impact this seems to mean that getting past low level flunkies basically is guaranteed, getting past slightly threatening enemies is high chance but not guaranteed, and getting an equal level or higher level enemy is basically a coin flip at best.

Let's say the party wants to infiltrate an enemy camp.

They walk up out of the forest to a perimeter guard and are like "Hey, we're totally one of you and also we're hungry, is dinner ready yet?"

At this point two things might happen (I think).

1, the party may need to roll an Impersonate check to convince the guard they're legit, and they'd get a +4 bonus from the Veil spell.

2, if the guard is highly suspicious and is wondering if this is some kind of weird trick, he gets a perception check against the caster's DC to see through the illusion. This is due to the guard engaging with the illusion and trying to figure out if something is off here. On the flip side, a guard 50 feet away who's watching this out of the corner of his eye but otherwise not really paying attention would NOT get a perception check to see through the illusion.

Is that all correct?

I think you did fine, and I'm interested to see how it plays out. It should make for some interesting RP with the brother dead once the sister wakes. I assume finding someone to resurrect him isn't impossible either, especially at that level.

The sister was none too happy and assumed the party was trying to pry information out of her before killing her on behalf of the infernal duke. So she didn't want to say much initially. The oracle claimed he followed Sarenrae. She said to prove it. He couldn't think of a way to do that. Another party member tried to use diplomacy to make an impression and rolled like a 2.

Eventually the party had a long conversation in front of her whether to take her to the duke or leave her behind with her dead brother or what. She eventually relented and extended some trust and explained what she and her brother were trying to do.

The party decided to take the soul back to the duke (as otherwise the party was on the hook for failing to fulfill their contract) but leave behind the sister and her dead brother. But as the party was leaving they were intercepted by agents of the rival infernal duke and combat broke out again, which is where the session ended (with the sister back in the cabin and out of the fight).

How that turns out and what the long term ramifications are of all of this are yet to be determined/revealed.

Unlike 5e, nothlethal attacks (that lack the nonlethal trait) inflict a -2 penalty on the roll. That's a huge shift in PF2 math. You're gambling that you'll hit anyway despite the penalty. Letting the player apply it after they know the result doesn't make sense. I'm very tolerant of retconning actions, but not if the tactical situation changed or dice have been rolled.

That's nearly word for word what I told them. I said I'd allow it this one time but not in the future for those exact reasons.

I'd expect to see stabilize used, or other approaches once someone reaches dying rather than just hoping they stabilize on their own, or the combat ends in time to save them.

That too. If I had said the man fell over dead and the party was like "Wait, we want to use death and dying rules" I'd have been a lot more sympathetic...but that was only brought up after they had killed the woman.

I also wonder about non-lethal damage in these circumstances. I dunno.

That would seem to make non-lethal mostly irrelevant, yeah?

I'm not saying that's automatically a bad thing, just that it means taking someone alive isn't at least slightly harder.

The party is level 14 and part of a coalition between celestials and devils to stop a demon lord.

Prior to the remaster, the Barbarian was LN and everyone else (Bard, Oracle, Fighter, Rogue) was NG or CG.

The infernal duke who is their main contact in the Hells offers them a job. An unknown party broke into a vault of his with infernal aid and stole a damned soul for unknown reasons. He's tracked the guilty party to a spot on the mortal plane and will pay the party to retrieve it (rather than needing to use his own forces) and the party agrees to his terms (gold for retrieving the soul, bonus gold for the head(s) of the thief or thieves).

The party winds up in a forest near a remote log cabin.

They decide to send the rogue to go investigate the area.

He rolls a critical failure on stealth when approaching, then tries to cover it with a deception check to imitate a bird...and also critically fails that.

This alerts the occupants of the cabin and a man wearing leather armor and holding a scimitar comes out along with a woman dressed in robes. They start searching the area.

The rogue uses his cloak to go level 4 invisible and makes a perception check to notice anything unusual. Critical success. He sees a black jewel on a metal chain around the man's neck.

He tries to sneak up and steal it before the invisibility wears off. Success on the approach. Fails by 1 on the Thievery check (which had a -5 penalty because the man was on guard and was only possible to attempt because of the skill feat the rogue had).

Man grabs gem with free hand to protect it and initiative is rolled. The rest of the party is still like 150 feet back hiding.

Man manages to spot rogue and attacks twice but misses.

Rogue books it back to party as invisibility wears off.

Bard starts singing with inspire courage and party members start running to attack with weapons drawn.

Woman opens up with long range AoE spells as the party charges and the man stands next to her to protect her.

Party gets to melee range and fights. The rogue tries to stab the woman a few times and when he does so he's almost overwhelmed by feelings of guilt as visions of angels and redemption play out in his head. I say he can resist the visions but it'll make him miss his attack or he can power through but become enfeebled. He decides to power through both times, but his strikes also do a lot less damage as a chunk of it gets resisted.

A round or two later the fighter strikes the man at low health and I say the man falls over dead as a result.

The next round the rogue uses Opportune Backstab to finish off the woman and I say she falls over dead.

Then the party goes "Hmm, wait a second, should we have taken one alive? Maybe that would have been a good idea," the bard goes "Yeah, especially since one of them was using Champion reactions," and the rogue goes "Can I retcon my last strike to be non-lethal?"

I say fine, but in the future you need to actually use non-lethal.

The Oracle following Sarenrae (in terms of ideals, not literal class powers) then wants to heal the man to keep him from dying and I said I already stated he died a round and a half ago when the fighter smacked him.

I said if he really wanted to try to preserve the man's life that I'd let him use his Shock to the System spell (https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1320) with a 50% chance of it working (since it normally only works on someone who died within the last round and it had been longer than that). The oracle said he didn't want to use significant magic like that and he was fine with the guy being dead in that case and I double checked that with him before moving on.

The party discusses whether to cut off the heads of the man and woman now to take back to the infernal duke. The Barbarian bounty hunter is all in favor, the Oracle is uncomfortable with killing the woman they deliberately didn't kill (with a retcon) in combat. And at a minimum the Oracle wants to look around first before doing anything.

The party leaves the dead man and the unconscious woman (for the moment) and went into the cabin where they saw it had been set up as a small shrine to Sarenrae.

Some additional information below in the spoilers for those curious, but my main question at the moment is this: should I have used the death and dying rules for the two soul thieves in this scenario? If so, why? If not, why not?

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Edit: Wait, what gives it fire damage every round? That exceeds even Incredible Heat under temperature rules.

Plane of Fire general info: https://2e.aonprd.com/Planes.aspx?ID=6

Planar rules: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1172

Planar Essence of Fire:

"Fire: Planes with this trait are composed of flames that continually burn with no fuel source. Fire planes are extremely hostile to non-fire creatures.

Unprotected wood, paper, cloth, and other flammable materials catch fire almost immediately, and creatures wearing unprotected flammable clothing catch fire, typically taking 1d6 persistent fire damage. Extraplanar creatures take moderate environmental fire damage at the end of each round (sometimes minor environmental damage in safer areas, or major or massive damage in even more fiery areas). Fire magic is enhanced, and cold and water magic are impeded. Water creatures are extremely uncomfortable on a fire plane, and any natural resistance they have against fire doesn’t function against this environmental fire damage."

Environmental damage: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=591

Moderate environmental fire damage is 4d6-6d6 a round combining all of the above.

Yeah, I improvised in the moment and said they could research and devise some kind of ritual if they wanted to go there. Good to know I apparently wasn't missing something obvious.

It seems like most places on the Plane of Fire deal 4d6 fire damage each round outside of a safer haven like the City of Brass.

The best fire resist spells and gear seem to only have 15 fire resist and 4d6 each round would obviously wear a PC down within like 10 minutes in most cases (average is 14 but you'd have rolls above the 15 resist mark at a reasonable rate).

In game turns, if you pass the check, you get what you want; if you fail the check; thats when they'll keep their mouths shut or attempt a deception check (or maliciously comply and give you the bare minimum). Punishing a player for passing is against the spirit of the rules.

Exactly, the players get what they want. Or more specifically, what they ask for.

If they think person B did something at X location, then they can intimidate person A into "admitting" that person B did something at X location.

The PCs might very well be trying to frame someone incorrectly or just be bad investigators. Browbeating happens all the time.

But if they intimidate person A into answering "Who did the bad thing at X location?" then A will answer truthfully as long as A thinks doing won't harm themself.

The "as long as they aren't likely to harm the target" is really only based on player behavior. If they have a history of executing/torturing/etc people even after they get what they want, then yeah, they'll lie or whatever if that'll help, but otherwise they'll work with you. Even the most wicked parties I've been in let people go after intimidation specifically because letting people if they comply is a great way to get more people to comply in the future

Like Sanityfaerie said, the person who committed the murder (or whatever) is still not going to fess up (unless, of course, they think the punishment for fessing up will be less than not talking at all).

People keep mentioning coercion but it literally says:

"The target gives you the information you seek or agrees to follow your directives so long as they aren't likely to harm the target in any way."

So that doesn't appear like you can force a suspect to confess.

Also, it doesn't say the target tells the truth. If you try to demand that person A admits that person B was at X location, then if you intimidate A they'll give you the information you seek...even if it's a lie. Because they're scared of you and will agree with your incorrect conclusion to protect themselves.

https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=379

Seems like there's a lot of debate over how exactly it works, particularly in reference to whether the caster knows the save result of the people in the area.

But it could possibly have an extremely large effect on the world and how justice systems work (or evil kings forcing potential rebels/traitors into such zones constantly).

For those who have allowed it, how did it work out?

For those who didn't allow it, are you happy with the result?

It also seems like other effects like Dominate (also Uncommon) can have similar effects -- dominate a suspect and order them to tell the truth about whatever happened. If the suspect perceives it as a self-destructive order and doesn't respond, then that'd be evidence of at least some kind of guilt presumably (or at least a path to investigate down). Obviously rife for abuse, of course.

Mage Armor, for example, is quite obvious.

Huh. Apparently it does actually say shimmering energy in PF2.

I guess I'm still thinking of the Neverwinter Nights implementation where it was an invisible buff (unlike Shield, Stoneskin, Resist Energy, etc).

In this case I am the GM.

What if someone was under, say, a infernal contract or geas or something?

Assuming it's not something that gives explicit indications of visible stuff like https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=931

Can someone who's Legendary in Religion literally just walk up and go "Huh, I see you've bound yourself to an imp" with one action? That just feels a bit off, but maybe the problem is me here.

I guess I was thinking of stuff like Arcane Sight in PF1 where it was clear the NPC would be scanning for magic and identifying it. Or conversely, of course, the PCs noticing effects on NPCs.

As a side note, you don't need Detect Magic to identify magic.

What other methods exist to spot effects that otherwise would presumably be not visible?

Something like a Fire Shield would be obvious.

Say a PC casts Heroism or Mage Armor on themself and walks into a room with an NPC wizard/cleric/bard/whatever, someone with high magical ability.

What would be the quickest and/or most reasonable way for the NPC to figure out out effect(s) are on the PC?

Baseline seems to be Detect Magic plus 10 minutes of trying to identify each individual effect which obviously isn't great, especially if there are multiple such effects.

Considering this outcome requires me to suffer Drain 4 from a lower level encounter and then go directly into a much more difficult encounter without recovering, then survive that encounter with only getting Drained 1, I feel like this corner case is sufficiently out of my line of sight.

Reverse the order. You'd get a relatively minor Drained 1 from the tough encounter, recover health (but not Drained, too difficult to remove), and then get Drained 4 from the next. That's why I put it in that order :)

If it ever comes up anyway, and waiting 4 days for the drain to go away wouldn't work for the circumstances.

Or waiting one day would definitely make it just Drained 3 from the weaker creature and thus much easier to remove.

I code for a living, though, so I'm mentally translating all this stuff into how a computer program would be instructed to handle this type of condition removal. Figuring out logic switches and all that.

I would go with the highest.

With the idea that a counteract strong enough to get rid of the stronger source will get rid of all the others too.

That does mean you could have a situation like this:

A level 8 PC gets Drained 1 from a level 11 creature (so high DC and rank 6 counteract).

Then they get Drained 4 later that day from some level 6 Wraiths or something.

In order to remove the Drained 4 from the lower level Wraiths they need to be able to beat the much harder to remove Drained 1 from the level 11 creature.

In fact, a level 8 caster would need a natural 20 on their Counteract to be able to remove the Drained 4 at their level (despite the fact only Drained 1 came from the level 11 enemy).

Does that seem like a reasonable outcome to you?

When you remove the Drained condition, you have no Drained value remaining, whatever the sources.

What determines the counteract level and DC to remove the Drained condition when you have multiple sources?

My takeaway here is that the rules surrounding this issue aren't coherent yet with the Remaster changes. So I'll adjudicate as I see fit for now and check back down the line to see if things have been clarified.

I appreciate the discussion.

The bolded steps are incorrect. You can have Drained 1 and Drained 2 at the same time, but you can't be Drained 2 and Drained 2. You are simply Drained 2, which then may later advance to Drained 3.

And what happens if a level 4 Sound Body is cast with a counteract result of 30?

This would succeed against a Dread Wraith/Bodak.

It would fail vs a Warsworn.

If you remove Drained 3 entirely because it removes the weaker DC, you've actually made getting to Drained 3 by a weaker creature a way to remove a higher rank/DC Drained.

If you keep Drained 3 because you count the whole thing as the Warsworn's DC, you've now substituted the higher DC on a Drained value the Warsworn can't actually reach.

And if you drop to Drained 2, then you separately tracked the Bodak's Drained 3 and Warsworn's Drained 2 in order to remove only the Bodak's drained, which meant you were Drained 2 twice a moment before in terms paperwork/tracking, which goes against your logic above.

Frightened also doesn't have subtypes. You can also have multiple instances of Frightened 1 affecting you. And will sometimes have to track them separately if they have different durations.

In other words, they're in separate containers where one can end or be removed without necessarily removing the other.

So basically the PC walks in with Drained 2 from a Warsworn.

Then gets Drained 1 by a Wraith and still has Drained 2 from the Warsworn.

Then gets Drained 2 by a Wraith and still has Drained 2 from the Warsworn.

Then gets Drained 3 by a Wraith and still has Drained 2 from the Warsworn.

That unfortunately directly goes against Squiggit's earlier assertion of

"There's no such thing as 'separate type of Drained' you either have the condition or not, and neither the Bodak nor the Warsworn have any kind of 'container' effect that would independently maintain drained."

Both interpretations can't be correct in this instance.

I don't see why it would include the word "increase" if it didn't stack. Otherwise it would overwrite it instead.

But let's say you're correct.

Same question for a Warsworn and a Dread Wraith which does explicitly say

"When the dread wraith damages a living creature with its spectral hand Strike, the wraith gains 10 temporary Hit Points and the target must succeed at a DC 28 Fortitude save or become drained 1. Further damage dealt by the wraith increases the drained condition value by 1 on a failed save, to a maximum of drained 4."

So if a PC was already drained 2 from a Warsworn, what happens if they fail a save vs a Dread Wraith?

Understand them without changing them or accept that you lack understanding.

Walk me through the scenario.

1. Warsworn smacks a PC. PC fails save and is now Drained 2.

2. Bodak uses Death Gaze. PC succeeds. What's the Drained situation?

3. Bodak uses Death Gaze a second time. PC succeeds. What's the Drained situation?

4. Bodak uses Death Gaze a third time. PC succeeds. What's the Drained situation?

5. Healer casts a rank 4 Sound Body against Drained and gets a counteract check of 30 (Bodak effective spell rank is 4 with DC 26 and Warsworn effective spell rank is 8 with DC 35). What's the Drained situation?

What I am saying is that the stacking feature of the ability the bodak uses is not keying off of "if you're already drained", it's keying off of "if you've already been affected by this ability."

So are you of the opinion that...

1, there are two independent Drain counters (e.g., Warsworn drains, then Bodak drains, so you're at Drained 2 from Warsworn and Drained 1 from Bodak and the Bodak can increase that to Drained 4)

or

2, it's impossible for the Bodak to stack up Drained on a target that's already drained from any other source?

So you're disagreeing with Squiggit, then, just to be clear?

Per his post:

"There's no such thing as 'separate type of Drained' you either have the condition or not, and neither the Bodak nor the Warsworn have any kind of 'container' effect that would independently maintain drained."

There's no such thing as 'separate type of Drained' you either have the condition or not, and neither the Bodak nor the Warsworn have any kind of 'container' effect that would independently maintain drained.

So you're saying that if the Warsworn applies Drained 2 first and then the Bodak increased Drained twice, the result is Drained 4 on the PC (because you either have the condition or you don't and thus the Bodak increases the existing Drained)?

But if the Bodak Drains twice (so at Drained 2) and then the Warsworn hits the result is Drained 2 (because the Warsworn applies a flat Drained 2 rather than increasing)?

I'm completely fine with that interpretation, it's what I had been running, but I wanted to verify.

Not sure what you mean by DC here. I'm suspecting typo.

Counteracting goes against a DC:

https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=371

A bit more of a question is if the wording of the Bodak's ability would increase an existing Drained condition from a different source (such as that of the Warsworn that the character fought earlier that day).

If the Bodak is increasing the existing Drained condition, then it would only be one instance of the condition instead of two redundant conditions.

Personally, I wouldn't rule it that way. The Bodak has to create its own instance of Drained and then increase that one.

I had been saying Drained was Drained and creatures that can increase Drained repeatedly just all stacked (again, only if the ability said the Drained value kept increasing with repeated failures).

But yes, I think the correct way is the Bodak has a separate type of Drained than the Warsworn.

...though if there's multiple Bodaks I'd argue that's all in the same Drained pool, because it's the same ability (just from different sources).

Or wait a day or two for Drained to recover on its own. I don't see anything in the Warsworn stat block that overrides Drained being reduced by a full night's rest.

Yeah, I meant in the immediate sense.

No, Redundant Conditions says that if you remove a condition, you remove all instances and values of that condition.

Huh. So that's completely different to how Restoration used to explicitly reduce the severity of the condition by 1-2 at a time, depending on the condition.

You may need to track conditions separately if they have a different natural removal time or something like that. But not for removing them with a counteract check.

So it uses the higher of the DCs? I had assumed the PC would be drained 4 at that point, but it sounds like you're saying they'd just be drained 2 twice, which mechanically is the same as just drained 2. But you'd still need to track both because in theory the Bodak's could go up to drained 4 (while the Warsworn applies drained 2 and that's it).

So "Sound Body" appears to be replacing "Restoration."

It's a quicker cast time with no daily use limit but now requires a counteract check.

This leads me to two questions:

1, say someone in a level 13 party gets drained by a level 16 Warsworn. The drain is DC 35. It looks like the only way for the party to remove that drain with Sound Body is to use a rank 7 Sound Body spell and get a success or use a rank 5-7 Sound Body and get a critical success. Is that correct?

2, say someone in a level 13 party gets Drained 2 by a Warsworn and Drained 2 by an elite Bodak. Are the drained sources now tracked differently? Does the caster using Sound Body have to specify which drained source they're trying to counteract? And which drained would go away first when resting?

Appreciate the replies!

Visible creatures can't become concealed while affected by Faerie Fire, ergo they have to be in cover to try to hide.

Invisible creatures become concealed by Faerie Fire rather than undetected...does this mean they can still

1, hide to try to set up a Sneak Attack?

2, hide due to being concealed and thus becoming hidden (since they can't become undetected)?

It also feels like these questions about the river of souls and the boneyard and judgement and such would be something covered better by the Lost Omens Campaign Setting rather than game mechanics rules.

If there's nothing in the rules about it, yes. Originally the whole "You know the name/alignment/deity" bit was in the primary PF1 rules.

But the are also text that say if a petitioner is resurrected they don't remember their time there.

Do you happen to know where that text could be found?

Personally, I would say that mortal souls/petitioners have no ability to accurately judge the time they have been waiting to be judge, or how long they've been in their destination after judgement.

Yeah, I've played the whole thing as being hazy with vague memories of waiting in a line but can't remember anything more than that.

In this case, you the GM (aka Pharasma) have the luxury of deciding if the cult leader knows its the PCs that just killed him that are trying to resurrect him (and whether he wants to wait for another person to resurrect him) or if its another entity that might be hostile to the cult leader.

Do people waiting in line at the Boneyard have any real sense of time? Would they even be able to say "It's been two weeks instead of one day since I died so it might be allies of mine trying to rez me vs those PC jerks that just killed me?"

Or does this all just go into the category of GM fiat?

My concern is that if Pharasma starts being like "Psst here's who's rezzing you" in some cases the players will take that as an expectation for all cases. Which is not necessarily an issue, but then that's then an established norm outside of the rules which I want to be cautious about.

If the players resurrect an enemy to do some horrible stuff to them...well I hope they were already evil because if not...well think again.

They could also be trying to resurrect a dead enemy for information and might be willing to treat the resurrectee well.

But in PF1 if you're a CE cult leader or something and a LG Cleric of Torag is trying to resurrect you...then you might very decide it's a trick/trap and refuse to come back.

But outside of that, as a GM it could honestly be a useful tool to direct or misdirect players in a way that you like.

Or you could have something like an evil witch hiding behind a benevolent facade who offers to help resurrect a party member in exchange for something (money, an item, help with a problem she has, whatever)...but she might want not the party to know who her patron is.

In PF1, there was no way to hide that. In PF2, it sounds like there's no information given.

Which alternatively means it can't be used as any kind of reveal either outside of GM fiat.

If the resurrectee didn't know anything about the caster of the Ritual before they died, after they are resurrected, that is still the case.

So they have no idea if it's a Champion resurrecting them as an ally or a demon resurrecting them to torture them?

In Pathfinder 1 there was apparently something along the lines of "the prospective revivee knows the name, alignment and patron deity of the cleric casting the spell to raise him and has to decide whether or not he'll come back on that basis."

I haven't been able to find any information along those lines in Pathfinder 2. Is that info specified anywhere or is it GM's call or?...

In order to trip a Gargantuan ooze as a Medium creature you'd need to be Legendary in Athletics and have Titan Wrestler. Vs being able to easily trip a level 13 Carnivorous Ooze as a level 8-9 fighter with a one-handed flail or something due to critical specialization and low AC.

Fair in regards to stuff like weapon runes, I'm specifically more concerned about Weapon Specialization crit effects, and in particular a medium creature essentially automatically knocking a gargantuan ooze prone every turn.

Incidentally they specifically call out arrow pinning not working vs some oozes:

"The creature doesn't become stuck if it is incorporeal, is liquid (like a water elemental or some oozes), or could otherwise escape without effort."

And of course, if you picture it like that, it seems reasonable that it would be difficult to shift the mass with a P/S pole arm.

Precisely.

And that such an ooze which is immune to crits gets affected more by critical hits (due to them happening far more frequently) than a creature non immune to critical hits is also weird.

That's a fair point that I hadn't considered with the volume due to the vertical dimension.

Still seems weird that a 20x20x20 foot ooze that literally can't be cut or pierced has its whole mass displaced 5 feet basically automatically by someone with polearm specialization.

Also odd that the 20x20x20 foot ooze can have a tiny piece hit by a mace wielded by a 4 foot fall creature and the whole thing effectively collapses. At least if it's against a dragon you assume they hit its toe just right or some other hit against a more vulnerable area (aka a crit).

I dunno. The amorphous creature flattened by a seemingly mortal blow which then takes a moment to reform into its original shape is a pretty common visual :D

If the whole thing was getting flatted by a titanic hammer I could see that I guess, but you'd have to smash a huge section of the ooze.

It also kind of bugs me that a crit on a ooze is basically MORE common than a hit so apparently EVERY blow would be that kind of mortal blow which seems...off.