I was talking about the feat with someone and they said "If you take two reactive strikes on the same other creature's turn, MAP applies. I think it's in the errata. MAP is per turn."
I've looked through the errata for anything about "Reactive Strikes," "Attacks of Opportunity," and "Multiple Attack Penalty," but haven't found the section they're referring to yet.
Could anyone point out where this was clarified? Thanks!
My level 18 Rogue player wants to cast Darkness from an armor rune (like Invisibility from an Invisibility rune, though he'd be fine with it taking the normal spell actions). I think the main goal is to avoid having to pull out a wand, trick the magic item (which takes three actions), stow the wand, and regrip his Elven Branch Spear. So a worn item that could cast Darkness would also work as well.
Problem is I don't see either of those (runes or worn items) on Archives of Nethys.
Any items I'm missing that would be applicable?
Would creating a custom rune for him cause any balance issues? I'm slightly worried about it stepping on the spellcaster niche and being very strong against foes without Darkvision (the rogue has it)
He also has the Shadowdancer dedication already and Shadow Jump so I'm also comparing this to Dance of Darkness which is two actions, is a smaller area, and requires a Performance check (crit success is 1 min, success is two rounds, failure is one round). So basically a custom item would be saving him a feat and giving him a better version of it.
He could alternatively have spent two feats on a spellcaster dedication and then basic spellcasting to cast Darkness twice a day.
But again, he's also level 18, there's a lot of powerful magic items available, so this probably wouldn't be too big of a deal.
"Because of the magical power inherent in your blood, your spells that hurt or cure are stronger than those of other spellcasters. When you Cast a Spell from your spell slots that either deals damage or restores Hit Points, you gain a status bonus to that spell's damage or healing equal to the spell's rank. This applies only to the initial damage or healing the spell deals when cast. An individual creature takes this damage or benefits from this healing only once per spell, even if the spell would damage or heal that creature multiple times."
So you toss out a Fireball, it does extra damage equal to its rank, simple.
But what about Weapon of Judgment which creates a weapon that attacks only when a specific trigger condition is met?
Does the first strike from the Weapon of Judgement deal extra damage? The first strike that HITS? Or does it not benefit at all due to "This applies only to the initial damage or healing the spell deals when cast?"
And what about Blessed Boundary that only deals damage if/when creatures move through it?
Does that deal damage on the first time an opponent tries to move through? Does it matter if the first move is a critical save? Does Sorcerous Potency not even apply due to "This applies only to the initial damage or healing the spell deals when cast?"
As far as I can tell, it's a core class feature of Thaumaturges and not available via Archetype or anything else.
So...
1, am I missing anything here?
2, if not, if I want to let it happen anyway, what might be a reasonable way to do it? Seems like it'd have to come at the cost of something else significant.
Looks like most places you'd be taking somewhere between 4d6 and 6d6 fire damage per round (lowering to 1d6 to 2d6 in "safe" areas which probably means something like the City of Brass).
So a Charm of Major Fire Resist would keep you safe in the city but how would one venture further out? This is a level 17 party with a lot of gold and some favors that can be called in, so they have resources.
Level 12 party, fighter/rogue/cleric/druid. I'm a polearm focused fighter.
And, as the title suggests, I've been swallowed by an Elite (+2 to most stats) Purple Worm. His jaws strike of +30 hit me (unsurprising) and then it was his Swallow Whole check of +27 against my Fortitude DC of 32. Yes, that means the Elite Purple Worm has an Athletics of 32 baseline.
The rest of the party is fighting the worm, though more of them may be joining me in the worm's stomach pretty soon. The question is: besides kill the worm, what can the party do to help me and what can I do?
I can't use my +2 greater striking polearm with extra damage runes while swallowed (I'm grabbed and slowed: 1 and can only use light bulk weaponry). I also can't use my +2 greater striking longbow. I do have a +1 striking short sword for this exact situation, but that's only going to do 2d6+7 damage per hit, or 14 per hit. So if I crit I'll probably rupture and escape, but it's +22 vs AC of 32 (34 - 2 for being off-guard to me) so I'd need a natural 20 to crit.
How about Escaping? I do have 12 level + 5 strength + 2 item + 6 master = 25 Athletics, which seems pretty good. I even have the Slippery Prey skill feat so subsequent escape attempts only go down by 3 each vs 5. But the Athletics DC of the worm is 42, so I'd need a 17 on the first roll (20% chance) and even with Slippery Prey I need a natural 20 on the second.
If the party manages to Frighten the creature in theory that means it's a 25% and 10% chance, but still not great.
Also each turn I struggle (attack or escape) I lose two rounds of air, and after 4 rounds of struggling I'll be unconscious and die shortly after.
So potentially there's an argument to be made that I should just wait and not struggle to buy time for the party, but if a party member gets swallowed each round that goes out the window pretty fast.
The rogue and cleric both have nice rapiers that are highly enchanted...but those won't be usable if swallowed and I don't know if they have a backup weapon specifically for this scenario.
The DM might also decide to have the worm spit me out as an attack but that kind of feels bad and like a cheap way of not dying.
To be clear, I know that a level 14 creature is supposed to win in a fight vs me at level 12. It's supposed to be twice as strong. But it feels like it can win initiative, walk over, bite me, swallow me, and then I just die 4 rounds later after doing 48ish damage to it by swinging my sword from inside its stomach.
If I try to escape, I have a 0.8^4*0.95^4 chance of not escaping, which is still a 33%ish chance (20% chance of not escaping if they manage to always keep it Frightened 1). So one third of the time I never succeed at escaping and die from suffocating...and even if I do escape, it can just easily swallow me again to repeat the process.
For the longest time, I've run PF2 like it was PF1 movement rules where you couldn't move diagonally if a corner was in the way but could move diagonally when creatures were involved.
Now someone has me questioning this and I'm struggling to find clear rules. So, let's reference this diagram where a PC (or NPC) is trying to move from S(tart) to F(inish).
1, can the PC move diagonally between W1 and W2? I think everyone agrees the answer is no.
2, if W2 is removed, can the PC move diagonally from S to F or do they need to go through the W2 square?
3, can the PC move diagonally between C1 and C2? Or is it blocked/would it require a tumble through check?
4, if C2 is removed, can the PC move diagonally from S to F or do they need to go through the C2 square (or tumble through the C1 square)?
I am looking for actual rules references if possible to settle this disagreement.
If you're a melee attacker, then you could hobble at half speed to the sound of combat and attack in a square if you think an enemy is there with a 50% miss chance (plus you're off-guard).
A ranged attacker trying to shoot from a distance seems unlikely to be reasonable.
A spellcaster targeting any spells from a distance seems unlikely to be reasonable.
Do they basically need to switch to melee weapons and hobble to the fight to do anything other than just stand around?
Do they need to try to fire arrows or cast spells essentially point blank range so they're confident about targeting?
Anyone had experience dealing with this sort of thing?
First of all, I want to be clear I am asking for what the rules say, hence why this is in the rules section. However, I'm aware there might be some grey area here where this is no clear RAW.
I was Player 1 (P1) in this scenario and we had an enemy caster boss (B) who was at the front of his group of minions. I had rushed in (so had P2) to try to catch him while he was out of position in the front. I also had a reach weapon and Reactive Strike.
The DM then said four things when it was M2's turn:
1, since M2 was an ally of B, M2 didn't need to roll a check to reposition B
2, since no check was needed, M2 got the critical result of reposition
3, M2 could chain two repositions together to move B 20 feet south
4, since M2 was moving B, B did not provoke a Reactive Strike from me
Is that all correct?
All of the minions are large creatures, so is the boss.
Mobility seems to say you can move at half your speed (so presumably at least 15 feet in essentially every circumstance as an elf, likely 20+ at mid to high levels) without triggering any reactions.
Elf Step lets you Step twice as one action, which has a maximum distance of 15 feet if they're both diagonal.
Is there ever a circumstance in which Elf Step would be worth using over Mobility?
Obviously any elf (or half elf etc) can take Elf Step while Mobility requires a class or multiclass feat instead of an ancestry feat, so Elf Step is often "cheaper" in that regard.
I'm planning on making a fighter with high dex (to still be reasonable at ranged combat and acrobatics checks among other things) which means Full Plate isn't that helpful.
So I'm looking at Splint Mail or Half Plate.
They seem effectively identical (except for a minor cost difference) except for the armor specialization.
Splint Mail would resist 3-5 piercing damage.
Half Plate would resist 3-5 slashing damage.
I'm tempted to go with Splint Mail for resisting things like arrows and bite attacks (especially from dragons or devils/demons) but I'm really not sure. On the flip side, anything using a claw attack, Greatsword, or Greataxe (among other things, obviously) will be doing slashing.
Say someone is afflicted by a sleeping poison that knocks them out for a minute each stage.
Then someone else uses a spell to counteract the poison (like a 3rd rank or higher Cleanse Affliction) halfway through a stage.
1, it sounds like the poison is just gone if everything goes correctly with the counteract (like say it's a rank 5 poison vs a rank 4 spell and the counteract check is a success), no more rolls or anything
2, do effects of the poison (like the sleep) also immediately go away? In other words, would the person immediately wake up or simply wake up when the current stage wears off since the poison is gone and there's no more saves to make?
A tale of water and stone, or how we got destroyed by
Spoiler:
the River Drake
First of all, I like the DM and I think he's doing his best. I don't think he's trying to screw over the party or anything weird/malicious and he has seemed very reasonable overall so far in the campaign. I think two things can be true at the same time:
1, our party did not handle the encounter properly
2, the enemy in question seems very overtuned for its level
Our intrepid group, which nearly had someone die the second session due to
Spoiler:
the Giant Scorpion's venom,
consists of a Warpriest, a Swashbuckler, a Rogue, and of course a wise/smart/stunningly good looking Sorcerer (myself, naturally).
Here begins my tale (and I will do my best to recount things factually without editorializing)...
Spoiler:
We found the room with the frog carcass and were able to deduce a River Drake had been eating it. Through some Arcana checks on my part we knew it would be hostile and had a AoE acid spit attack. We were worried it would attack us later when we were engaged with something else or low on resources, so we elected to set a trap for it.
Literally, because we found a Spike Snare.
Our plan was to lure it to a chokepoint where there was a hole in the outer stone wall of the structure. The Swashbuckler would try to block the entry, the Rogue would be hiding behind and walk up to flank/sneak attack, and the Warpriest and I would unload all of our magical might (three Force Barrages on my part would deal an average of 33.5 damage over three rounds if I could free cast with no save/attack roll required).
Unfortunately, we were having trouble getting the River Drake's attention. The Warpriest decided to walk down the ramp of rubble and move some 50ish feet to the northwest near the water's edge and make some noise (about 70 feet from the rest of the party IIRC).
That got the drake's attention. It emerged from the water. Roll initiative.
The Warpriest fired off a Divine Lance. Natural 20. Critical hit. Dealt 11 damage.
River Drake spat acid at the Warpriest. Warpriest rolled an 8 total on his reflex save, critical failure. Since we knew the spit did 4d6 damage (14 average), this meant the 20 HP Warpriest (Dwarf) was essentially dying right off the bat. We suggested he burn a hero point to reroll his save, he did, and actually succeeded. Took 10 damage (rolled damage was like 6/5/3/6 so much higher than average and then halved).
Drake then swooped in to stand next to the Warpriest.
Rogue runs to try to get near the Warpriest and help.
Swashbuckler runs down the ramp and is just in range to fire an cantrip of Needle Darts. Miss.
I run down the ramp as an action, but the drake is still around the edge of the building at this point for me. If I move again I can't cast a two action spell. So I use Runic Weapon on the Swashbuckler -- not great on a d6 weapon, but I don't seem to have other good options.
Warpriest is up. He casts Runic Weapon on himself and swings out at the drake.
The Strike triggers the reaction of the drake. The drake rolls a 16 I believe for total of 28, critical hit. Deals 20 damage. The Warpriest drops before his strike goes off. Would have dropped even without taking any damage from the acid spit. Also average hit (rather than a crit) would also have dropped him since he did take 10 damage from the acid spit.
Drake's turn, regains reaction. Does a Draconic Frenzy at the rogue. Misses on all three attacks. Flies about 20 feet up into the air with its last action.
Rogue fires his hand crossbow at the drake. Hit. Deals two damage. Draws a dagger and throws it. Misses.
Swashbuckler attempts another Needle Darts since he can't melee the flying drake. Miss.
I Force Barrage for 9 damage (3d4+4). We have 22 damage dealt to this thing and it's still >50% HP. And I only have one Force Barrage left.
Warpriest continues dying.
Drake swoops in and savages the rogue who is now dying.
Swashbuckler retreats back up the ramp and into a position to hit the drake with the trap.
I follow.
Warpriest and rogue are dying.
Drake uses a speed surge, moves 100 feet, and walks right into the trap. Critically succeeds on its reflex save, no damage. Still has two actions due to the speed surge so Draconic Frenzies against the Swashbuckler. Swashbuckler goes down.
I run like hell closing doors along the way since there's no way I'm winning this fight at this point. Thing still has 23+ HP and I have one Force Barrage left.
------------------------
Like I said originally, I think we could have handled the encounter better but the River Drake also seems very overtuned. Things like...
1, the reaction of literally "Anytime a PC uses a melee attack (reach or not), I can use a Reaction to Strike back." The only way to avoid this is...to not attack in melee. Ranged attacks from 15+ feet away or spells only. Even a Fighter with a Reach weapon who gets a Reactive Strike as the drake approaches has a 25% chance of just going into dying without the Reactive Strike going off. Fighter thinks he's getting off an attack on the approach and is dropped instead. The "solution" here seems to be really making sure you launch a bunch of attacks in a round if anyone is going to melee the drake, but it still seems incredibly punishing. Now, a Fighter with a shield raised would reduce the odds of being crit and could survive a crit on average, but that also requires the chance to raise the shield. And standing there with a shield raised has problems because...
2, the drake can fly and has a ranged attack usable every 2-7 rounds that deals 14 damage in an AoE. So you can't group up to protect each other without the thing just hovering up above and AoEing you. 14 damage, incidentally, has a very good chance of dropping a wizard/sorcerer if it rolls very slightly above average (or the wizard/sorcerer is an elf or has lower con).
3, the Draconic Frenzy coupled with Speed Surge means this thing can move from 100 feet away and attack three times in one round. So even trying to engage from extreme range with 100+ reach spells and ranged attacks is extremely difficult.
Just one of those is already very dangerous and it has all three.
Anyway.
I think this fight was technically winnable with close to ideal tactics but man it would be rough and can easily destroy a lot of groups. Felt like a level 4 encounter at a minimum (Severe), arguably an Extreme encounter (pretty even fight, reasonable chance of TPK).
I'm basically being relied on to be the party face and the party knowledge bot.
Combat optimally, I'd start with 10 str/14 dex/14 con/10 int/12 wis/18 cha I believe.
But in this case I'm planning on starting with 10 str/10 dex/12 con/14 int/14 wis/18 cha.
Boosts are another problem. Normally at level 10 I'd have something like 10 str/18 dex/18 con/10 wis/16 wis/20 cha. But in this case it'd be 10 str/10 dex/16 con/18 int/18 wis/20 cha.
So now I'm 4 AC behind optimal and still a con modifier as well.
And obviously if I bump up dex instead I'm left with lower HP.
The campaign will end in the early teens I believe so there's no "catching up" later on by leaving int and wis at 18 and bumping dex and con more at that point.
Obviously you have things like staying back and general basic caster tactics, but any other thoughts on trying to survive in this scenario?
I've been running this as the rogue in the party can just always make a stealth check in the middle of an empty room and try to Sneak -- if he succeeds he isn't noticed, if he fails everyone still sees him.
But the failure condition of Sneak isn't being fully spotted, it's being hidden. Which made me re-examine the rules.
I *think* it's supposed to be the rogue can try to Hide at any point. If he succeeds he's now hidden, if he fails everyone still sees him.
THEN he has to Sneak and make another stealth check. If he succeeds he's undetected. If he fails he's hidden. If he critically fails he's observed.
"This ranged weapon is less effective at close distances. Your attacks against targets that are at a distance within the range listed take a –2 penalty."
So if something has Volley 30 then...
1. if you're 25 feet away then you get the -2 penalty
2. if you're 35 feet away then you do NOT get the -2 penalty
3. what about 30 feet exactly?
I'm thinking it does get the penalty because otherwise volley 5 wouldn't mean anything, but I wanted to double check.
Obviously this is not the optimal way to heal, something like a cleric with Healing Hands and Divine Font for Heal would be much better.
But this character would probably be a follower of Asmodeus.
I originally considered a cleric but with the unholy sanctification I'd only get a Harm font. Cast Down seems to be the main helpful rider, but 1d8 damage per spell level for a single target Fort save doesn't seem great. Maybe the goal is using Selective Channel with Cast Down? But that also doesn't come online until level 6.
However, a Diabolic Bloodline Sorcerer would still be capable of casting a bunch of Heal spells per day while also being able to flex into debuffs/buffs/blasting. Weirdly, this doesn't seem to offer sanctification, which really isn't a huge deal since if you're fighting "neutral" or unholy enemies then being unholy yourself doesn't really seem to help.
I considered trying to take a cleric dedication and then Healing Hands but realized that requires a healing Divine Font so that's a bust.
It basically looks like I'd get 3 (odd levels) or 4 (even levels) of max rank spells per day plus obviously some focus spells. Do Sorcerers have anything like Drain Bonded Item for Wizard to restore some spell slots?
I just started running a PF2 campaign with some people who are veterans to TTRPGs but new to PF2 (so level 1 characters, monk/ranger/champion/champion/sorcerer).
They had a combat vs a summoner style boss whose shtick was summoning creatures, with the idea being the party needed to kill the minions and render the caster not much of a threat.
The party monk wanted to try to grapple the caster to interfere with his summons (and casting in general) and was really disappointed that the result was only making the boss flat-footed, unable to move, and have a 20% chance to lose a spell (which incidentally never even happened in the 5ish spells the boss cast while grappled). Obviously if the monk crit succeeded he'd restrain the caster for one round hence the "5% lucky roll" comment below.
"If you have a clothie caster surrounded by 3 beefy dudes all grabbing him, it feels unreasonable to say 'oh well rules say you can't do anything further but mildly inconvenience him. Under no circumstances can you do more than grab his shoulders or waist no matter how big, strong, or trained you are - unless of course if you get your 5% lucky roll.'"
I remember Pathfinder 1 characters able to grapple and tie up basically anything in one round and I know this player doesn't want to go that far (and PF2 doesn't want that result), but he's feeling like grapple is unimpactful and that his supporting monk character concept doesn't feel very good as a result.
"You transform into a ferocious Large dragon, gaining the effects of 6th-rank dragon form except that you use your own AC and attack modifier, you apply your extra damage from Rage, and the Dragon Breath action uses your class DC. Add the temporary Hit Points from dragon form to any you already have from entering a rage (or any other action with the rage trait). The action to Dismiss the transformation gains the rage trait.
At 18th level, you gain a +20-foot status bonus to your fly Speed, your damage bonus with dragon Strikes increases to +12, and you gain a +14 status bonus to your Dragon Breath damage."
Legacy feat:
https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=172
The main difference seems to be the 10 minute cooldown on the remastered version.
So the Dragon Instinct Barbarian just hit level 16 and gets to turn into a dragon at times. That's cool. He can fly and has a better breath weapon. But he's feeling rather underwhelmed by it, mainly in terms of attack and damage.
He has 5 strength modifier and a +3 greater striking weapon with holy and flaming runes.
This means he has 16 (level) + 6 (master) + 5 (strength) + 3 (item) = 30 attack.
He's using a 2H reach weapon for 3d10 damage plus 1d4 spirit (holy rune) + 1d6 fire + 5 (strength) + 6 (greater weapon specialization), or 33.5 prior to rage damage (which applies to the dragon form too so I'm ignoring it).
So 30 attack, 33.5 damage with reach.
As a dragon, he gets 16 (level) + 6 (master) + 5 (strength) = 27 attack, which is already a very significant drop.
His jaws do 2d12 damage + 2d6 energy + 6 (polymorph bonus), or 26 damage. It might be 32 damage if Great Weapon Specialization counts.
So he's losing 3 AB, 1.5-7.5 damage, reach and the additional bonuses of the holy and flaming runes.
He could use his tail for reach at the cost of losing 5-11 damage (and the additional bonuses of the holy and flaming runes).
But it seems like a significant combat nerf for the ability to fly and an improved breath attack.
Are we missing anything here?
I think in theory he could invest in handwraps maybe for better unarmed AB but that's another big investment when he's already put a lot of money into a +3 cold iron weapon (fighting a lot of demons). Seems odd for a dragon instinct barbarian to suddenly have to do at level 16.
Let's say you had a Brimorak in the original PF2 release.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=1111
"Weaknesses cold iron 5, good 5"
If you had a cold iron longsword with a holy rune, the cold iron longsword would trigger the cold iron weakness and the good damage from the holy rune would trigger the good weakness.
Now the holy rune says "strikes made with it gain the holy trait" which makes it sound like the baseline strike is holy.
If that's the case, then does it no longer trigger both weaknesses? The rules say
"If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a creature is weak to both a type of damage and a material or trait, such as a cold iron axe cutting a monster that has weakness to cold iron and slashing."
Before the slashing from the cold iron weapon and the good damage from the rune were separate. Now I'm not sure.
Rank 5 and 6: body must be relatively intact
Rank 7 and 8: a small portion of the body must be present
Rank 9 and 10: "You can use resurrect even without the body as long as you know the target’s name and have touched a portion of its body at any time."
This seems to imply that if someone dies and leaves no remains that only someone who has physically touched that person at some point can resurrect them, even with rank 10 magic.
Am I missing something here?
If Bob falls into magma and is incinerated there seems to be no way for a level 20 NPC to resurrect him if the NPC has never made physical contact with Bob.
My players heard about a Wendigo (https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=409) terrorizing a nearby section of the world. The party consists of six level 15 characters.
Unfortunately, they didn't do the research necessary to determine it has Regeneration that is only deactivated by Cold Iron. And none of them have Cold Iron weapons. So when they caught up to it, they quickly realized they couldn't kill it (it tried to do hit and run attacks but with six characters and a few good rolls the Wendigo eventually went down in one round and couldn't escape easily -- was trying to do grab and abducts rather than stride + strike + stride).
At this point, I figured there were two main outcomes.
1, they try to retreat but slowly get picked apart and all are exposed to Wendigo Torment. The new problem becomes "How do we not turn into Wendigos before we regroup and return?" They have a level 15 caster who's already removed the Wendigo curse on a random person so they know they do have the means to cure it, but it might be dicey and they might need to take extra precautions. I understand that the group doesn't want this to happen, but I think it's the most realistic and reasonable outcome at this point unless they do something special and very on point. Also, I'd just hand wave this happening because I don't think they want to run a hundred individual hit and run combats or whatever.
2, they cast Interplanetary Teleport and get out of there and return later. This has a 10 minute casting time but AFAIK if they protect the actual spellcaster they can just grab his hand at the end of the 10 minutes, it's not a ritual where they all need to be participating the whole time or something. They realized this was a potential option near the end of the session. So the Wendigo could probably attack like 3-4 times in that window but if they all stay there and if the caster doesn't get interrupted then they're safe.
In the meantime, they were trying to control the Wendigo that was unconscious but that they couldn't kill and which was popping up every round. Their idea was to keep readying attacks to hit the Wendigo as soon as it wakes up. They wanted to be doing this while also trying to find the Wendigo's lair and see if there's anything there. Their tracker also failed two Survival tracks and had to sit there for two hours. While every six seconds the Wendigo keeps waking up.
They also tried to tie the Wendigo up with some rope but unfortunately the Wendigo has an extremely good Athletics score to use to Escape.
Even with the Wendigo prone, the Fighter only has a 70% chance to hit I believe. And everyone else has less. But even using the Fighter's hit chance that's a 2.7% chance per round for THREE people to miss their readied attacks (0.3 * 0.3 * 0.3) ...and they claimed they wanted to do this for over two hours, which is 1,200+ rounds, which means the Wendigo would escape 32.4 times over, statistically speaking.
I don't see a reasonable way the Wendigo could be held captive in this matter for that long. Not to mention the questionable result of making a strike every 6 seconds for 2 hours in terms of stamina/focus.
On another topic, the party also discussed trying to drown the Wendigo. They tried cutting off its head earlier and I just had the body regenerate (the hydra regrows heads, but I figured the Wendigo's seat would be the brain because of the fear/torment focus), and that might have been a mistake on my part to let that happen. It definitely wasn't realistic that the 10 strength rogue with a spear could cut off a large creature's head in <6 seconds, but I didn't argue about that because I figured it wouldn't matter.
But given that I (perhaps mistakenly) established that as being canon, it seems odd to say you can drown something that can survive without a heart or lungs.
TL;DR: I think the Wendigo should have realistically/reasonably escaped, I don't know if drowned makes any sense in this context, and I'm trying to not frustrate the players with 1,200 rounds of checks or something else ridiculous.
I would appreciate any insight/suggestions/advice.
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.
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.
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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Other Details:
The two thieves were a Redeemer and a Sorceress (Imperial bloodline with Arcane tradition), both following Sarenrae.
The soul in question was their father, an evil warlord who was justly damned.
The siblings had a pipe dream and almost certainly overly idealistic hope of figuring out a way to somehow redeem their father and made a deal with a rival infernal duke for help breaking into the first infernal duke's vault.
In retrospect, I didn't make it clear enough that the visions of redemption were linked to the man doing something like channeling holy energy to protect his sister or something. I overlooked that in the moment and that was a significant mistake in retrospect. Got caught up describing the visions themselves. At least one person in the party still realized Champion reactions were going on, though.
The main enemy here was lack of information and confusion, which the party escalated when the rogue tried to steal the soul and then the party kept escalating into a fight. No one tried to calm things down and the rogue ignored the visions of redemption (or thought they were a trick, perhaps). De-escalating the situation would have been on the party.
From the siblings' perspective, an invisible thief tried to steal the soul and then when that failed several other people jumped out from the bushes and launched themselves to attack, with a 99.99% chance that the attackers are working for a lord of the Hells.
Ironically, if they had just knocked on the cabin door and asked to talk it would have become very clear who was what very quickly. That said, I don't really fault the rogue for trying to steal the item initially.
I was actually hoping the party would gain the two as allies to help with several matters, such as protecting an secluded Sarenrite temple the party is using as a home base for the forces they've been gathering. So in that sense the NPCs are "significant," but saying "This NPC is dying instead of dead" also tells the party OOC "Oh this NPC is actually significant and you just didn't know it."
The initial infernal duke has no idea who the thief or thieves are or why they stole the soul (other than a rival duke aided them). He figured it was probably some evil mortal(s) trying to do something nefarious with it. Which wouldn't morally upset the duke, but the thief or thieves still stole the duke's property which isn't acceptable, obviously, and that needs to be punished.
Edit: the Redeemer never wound up using his Lay on Hands which didn't help. I wanted to but never got a reasonable chance. If the sister had gone down first I would have let him try to heal her, which is the main thing that has me wondering if I messed up here.
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).
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.
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.
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?
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?...
"Immunity to critical hits reads “When a creature immune to critical hits is critically hit by a Strike or other attack that deals damage, it takes normal damage instead of double damage.” This means what it says: The attack deals normal damage instead of double damage. Other effects specific to a critical hit still occur, such as critical specialization effects and extra damage dice from traits like deadly and fatal. You also still have the option to use abilities that trigger on critical hits, like the vorpal rune’s reaction (though many creatures immune to crits also don’t need heads to live, lucky devils). Your GM can still say no to extremely strange consequences of this rule on a case-by-case basis."
The last line is my concern here.
My players were were level 11 and facing a Carnivorous Blob (https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=755) which is a giant flesh eating ooze.
First of all, I was confused about how it could split if it was immune to piercing/slashing so I ran that aspect of the encounter incorrectly (since I had seen other oozes that weren't immune to piercing/slashing and the idea of the two halves creature hitting just as hard and taking up just as much space individually despite being cut in half seemed weird to me). So whoops.
So let's review some crit effects.
1, the party had a number of Flaming runes -- it sounds like I should have basically had the persistent fire damage apply from the very first hit (because basically everything crits against an ooze).
2, the barbarian crit with a halberd. While it was immune to the damage (and should have split, whoops again), should the ooze have been moved 5 feet?
3, the fighter crit with a maul. This was the party's most effective weapon against the ooze, but should the ooze have been knocked prone?
I assume anything related to #1 (like a Frost rune or whatever) is the same.
I'm mainly concerned about #2 and #3. Both seem like they might fall into the "your GM can still say no" category given the opponent is an ooze.
No, this isn't trying to trap a player of mine or anything, if anything it's the reverse.
Say the party captures an extremely unrepentant, I dunno, Orc who has definitely done Evil things.
What would quality as failing to strike down evil in this circumstance? The Orc might have surrendered (just to try to save his skin) or been knocked unconscious by the party.
Obviously if the party woke the orc up and healed it and said "Go have fun killing more people" then that wouldn't fly.
However, if the party agreed to let the orc go in exchange for valuable information then Sarenrae really doesn't seem to be the type to go "No, you failed to strike down evil by not killing the orc." But if the party just decided to execute the (unrepentant) orc for his crimes I don't think that would bother Sarenrae either.
I realize part of the whole point is that edicts/anathema establish boundaries of behavior rather than The One True Path, I'm just trying to get more opinions on what boundaries the "Fail to Strike Down Evil" sets.
P.S. Also obviously if an ancient red dragon landed and said it was taking the orc with him as his new warleader the party wouldn't be required to try to fight the dragon in a suicidal battle.
Does something like Leather Armor (4 hardness, 8/16 BT/HP), which has a reasonable chance of being broken by one Corrosive Rune crit, have the same hardness/BT/HP if it's +3 (and/or has other runes)?
Ditto weapons -- it looks like a +3 Major Striking Longsword would still have 5 hardness, 10 BT, and 20 HP and thus get instantly broken upon hitting a Balor once (Flame Aura does 20.5 average fire damage to a weapon striking the Balor).
Am I missing some relevant rules here? It seems like even a High Grade Cold Iron sword (10 hardness, 20 BT/40 HP) would still break after two hits.
"If forced movement would move you into a space you can’t occupy—because objects are in the way or because you lack the movement type needed to reach it, for example—you stop moving in the last space you can occupy. Usually the creature or effect forcing the movement chooses the path the victim takes. If you’re pushed or pulled, you can usually be moved through hazardous terrain, pushed off a ledge, or the like. Abilities that reposition you in some other way can’t put you in such dangerous places unless they specify otherwise. In all cases, the GM makes the final call if there’s doubt on where forced movement can move a creature."
So if someone is standing at the edge of a cliff, someone who succeeds at a Shove action could presumably push them off the cliff to their instant death.
What about something like the Polearm critical specialization effect?
"The target is moved 5 feet in a direction of your choice. This is forced movement."
And before you say "Ask your GM" I am the GM.
If the PCs were standing on a high bridge and an NPC got a lucky natural 20 with a polearm, I suspect they wouldn't be happy with the effectively instant death that would result (assuming it affects someone who can't Grab an Edge successfully).
Basically most things have traits that help determine what spells/abilities/actions fall into a certain category but I'm not seeming to find anything like that here (and searching this Rules Discussion hasn't helped either).
So I'm trying to wrap my head around NPCs lying to the PCs and how the PCs can try to detect it. And having to explain to my players that they can't be living lie detectors on every individual statement.
What's the expected way of doing this and which skills are involved exactly?
Say a level 3 Rogue has +11 Thievery (3 + Expert + Dex) who also is Trained in Crafting with a Repair Kit.
There's a Superior Lock of DC40 which requires six successes.
On a Natural 20, we get a 31 which is a Failure which then becomes a Success.
On a 19 or less the lockpicks just break and need to be repaired (10 minutes of Crafting).
So 5% of the time the Rogue gets one success, or roughly every 200 minutes -- call it 3.5 hours to round up.
Which means if the level 3 rogue has a week of time he could spend 3.5ish hours a day and unlock a Superior Lock after six days (on average) at no expense other than the initial purchase of Thieves' Tools and Repair Kit (though he needed to repair his lockpicks like 114 times total).
Is this correct?
The rules also say
"Locks of higher qualities might require multiple successes to unlock, since otherwise even an unskilled burglar could easily crack the lock by attempting the check until they rolled a natural 20"
So this conclusion seems odd to me...granted, taking 21 hours of work isn't "easily" but still seems the Superior level 17 lock should keep the level 3 Rogue out.
Is there a way to use Acrobatics to reduce falling damage taken without taking the feat [url]Catfall[/url]?
One of my players is a bit annoyed that a level 6 rogue with Expert Acrobatics can't drop 8 feet without taking damage and falling prone as far as we can tell RAW...though maybe we're both missing something.
How many actions would it take to unequip/drop a broken shield and equip a new one?
I'm guessing one action to unstrap, free action to drop, one action to retrieve the new shield, and one action to strap it in place? So three actions (plus a free action)?
If the party captures a prisoner and wants to bind them with ropes or chains or something, what's the DC for the enemy to escape?
I saw something about thievery DC but does that mean if a fighter untrained in thievery wants to tie up a prisoner the DC is 10 + ability modifier to escape or something? That's not going to hold anyone past the first few levels.
If a character with a bow is opposite someone wielding a melee weapon, do they automatically count as providing flanking because the bow user can make an unarmed strike?
I realize that the flanking bonus wouldn't apply to bow shows made in melee.
