BigHatMarisa's page

Witch of Miracles wrote:

Most of the time, if a crit can take out a PC, so can a MAP strike + a MAP -5 strike. (The exception is for things with deadly, fatal, etc.) That's still pretty unstable.

Yup!

To give a concrete lvl 1 example:

Dire Wolf. Has +12 to hit, D10+5 damage.

I wanna take umbrage with this example specifically because it uses a PL+2 monster, when a PL+2 solo monster is listed as "a moderate- or severe-threat boss" under the "Choosing Creatures" table for XP Budget. Just the page before, Moderate and Severe threat encounters (what an encounter would be labelled as with one PL+2 creature) are defined as:

Moderate-threat encounters are a serious challenge to the characters, though unlikely to overpower them completely. Characters usually need to use sound tactics and manage their resources wisely to come out of a moderate-threat encounter ready to continue on and face a harder challenge without resting.

Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters have a good chance to defeat. These encounters are appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Use severe encounters carefully—there's a good chance a character could die, and a small chance the whole group could. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open.

Bad luck is explicitly used as a warning against Severe threat encounters - which, I will stress again, PL+2 solo encounters lean towards more than Moderate. PL+2 encounters are ALWAYS going to be swingy simply due to the nature of "action economy versus relative stat difference." This does not change at higher levels - there are level ranges with which you are less likely to be knocked down immediately by bad luck, but the threat with PL+2 is almost always there. We have been knocked down by a bad crit plus a hit from PL+1 creatures at level 12 before. This specific example is an encounter-building problem.

Unless you want your level 1 characters to have a REAL chance of dying, you should NOT be pitting them against a PL+2 creature with High Strike Attack Bonus and only 1 less than High Strike Attack Damage (via the Building Creatures rules). And, in this one instance, I can say that the books ARE forthright about this. Their only sin here is having to demarcate the Moderate part of the scale at a clean 80 XP and then also putting PL+2 monsters at 80 to make the math as clean as it could be, meaning it's easy to look at a single PL+2 creature and go "that's my Moderate encounter!" when in reality the party is more likely to be walking into something closer to Severe 80% of the time.

It's a poor "concrete level 1 example" to use a Severe boss battle (Likely wouldn't even be a very fun one, being effectively a boring stat-stick without Pack Attack, but that's an unrelated tangent) where characters are expected to die to argue that they're gonna die easy.

Carrying creatures has basically always been the territory of "yeah, if you plan on doing this often, figure it out with your DM", because the Bulk system is just not made for that scenario.

Bulk is primarily intended to deal with an individual PC's personal "carrying convenience", which is why it's a measurement not ONLY of weight but also of size and shape simultaneously. In that context, most of the rules make enough sense if you don't try to squint at them too hard.

I imagine this was at least partially intentional to allow room for GM interpretation on case-to-case bases rather than having a hardline situation of "Yeah, sorry Jennathan, you're 1 Bulk too many for Himbotaur to carry because of your Alchemist Tools so he'll need to Interact to remove those from your dying body." I can just look at the table for Creature Bulk and then kinda eyeball the situation from there, which seems to be Bulk's schtick - it's not logically rigorous under scrutiny, but it's just reasonable enough to be quickly referenced and adjudicated from there in the moment.

While I agree it probably isn't really unbalanced, a Champ's Aura is an "effect that you generate" by any stretch of the defined term.

An effect is the rules term for anything that occurs in the game world. Effects might have limited range, and you may need to designate targets or create areas for your effects. Areas include bursts from a single point, cones blasting out from you, emanations surrounding you or another creature, or straight lines.

Effects that last for a period of time list a duration. These can last a set increment of time, or can end if certain requirements are met. Many effects apply conditions, which measure advantages or impediments like being blinded, frightened, or invisible.

While the examples given in the text for the text for Mirror's Reflection do mention Strikes and spells, anything that you passively do also counts as an "effect". Naturally-occurring difficult or hazardous terrain is an effect, even.

If there's going to be a reliable source of in-combat healing (and that healing isn't temp-HP-based), then Con gets even juicier, as you have a "bigger battery" to hold more potential "charge" and you theoretically waste less potential HP.

By the time that in-combat healing becomes relatively cheap, you should have an armor that maxes out your AC for your level or comes really close, anyhow, so any extra Dex will only help you with your various Dex-related checks and DCs (Acrobatics will be impacted if you don't have the Strength for some potential armor choices).

If you plan on going +1 Dex, +3 Con, you also might look into Sentinel Dedi for scaling Medium armor proficiency. The Strength requirement isn't really achievable for your stat allocations, but hopefully you wouldn't be doing the checks your Armor Check Penalty affects anyways? And the Speed reduction can be mitigated by being a Dwarf or a Wand of Tailwind, among other methods.

BigHatMarisa wrote:

The way I've "solved" it? Just don't do as much direct combat in early levels

That's a solution for a home brew campaign. Not great for APs.

However...

That is why I said it came with experience. Notably, Season of Ghosts also follows this approach, having fairly few actual direct combat encounters before you hit level 2 - and the one Severe encounter in Book One is warned against and given a way to bypass it. The book's encounters take place in open space, giving plenty of opportunity to run. And the enemies are... well, I won't spoil much further, but the early enemies aren't supposed to be all that smart.

I think there's a way to write adventure paths to not be automatically deadly to level 1 adventurers and still be fun - and Season of Ghosts proves it. But, as I asserted in my post, I agree that a new player isn't going to necessarily "get" all these tips and tricks.

Again, I don't think the math is inherently "broken", since you can still make interesting and non-deadly Moderate encounters by following the guidelines in GM Core. But I wouldn't mind a 1st level health bump either; it's not like it hurts me or anything. If the Paizo designers don't deem fit to change it themselves, then I wouldn't mind a common houserule wisdom for new players to be "start Level 1 with (2 x class HP + Ancestry HP)". That gives your average Elf Wizard player 20 HP or so to work with - you're still squishy compared to your Fighter friend, but even a PL+1 crit isn't likely to down you from full.

Of course, actual changes would be nice because new players aren't going to be checking for colloquial wisdoms online necessarily, but changes to the game are gonna be slow and steady regardless, so having stopgap houserules to help them is still in good faith, I think.

It's interesting to hear how different everyone's experiences are with PF2E. In the groups I've played with, we haven't really run into the "rocket tag" issue beyond the first few sessions, once we got a better feel for the system. I wonder if it might come down to playstyle or how the GMs are running encounters?

It's a multifaceted issue, really. I've personally never experienced a "rocket tag" game beyond... well, the early APs. Specifically, Extinction Curse (yes, I will complain about it forever, thanks for asking). After that, I came away with an understanding of my own: more, lower-level enemies (to a point) is better design for low-level combat encounters if you don't want to experience as much swingy-ness.

Level -1 or 0 enemies will very VERY rarely one-shot you at level 1 unless you have heavily tanked your HP. Many of them have negative strength or are plinking away from range or are designed to not really be swinging at you much with low to-hits. If you have a 6 HP ancestry with a 6 HP class and a -1 Constitution... I think a new player will rarely make this kind of character, but if they did, I think it's easy to understand the repercussions of "I picked the lowest possible HP". Perhaps it's still a problem that somebody CAN make a character like this, I suppose? But it's a fairly corner case. And even then, plenty of -1 enemies won't even kill these kinds of PCs.

But the thing is, that's the primary point of the thread: that's AFTER I've already experienced the oopsies I had. The early APs really kinda soured a lot of people off of low levels because it presented them with Severe/Extreme encounters fairly regularly, and the Moderate or Low encounters it did put them up against were typically single-threat encounters (which are still notoriously swingy even past low levels, you just have more obvious cheats to swing the math in your favor by then). If I'm not hallucinating it (correct me if I'm wrong), there should be a blurb in the Encounter Building rules that mentions single-enemy encounters being something to be wary about, but it's true that even two PL+0 enemies at level 1 can be closer to Severe than Extreme, and are still quite swingy. But even then, is a new GM gonna know what that means? They're a new player too, after all; we can't expect there to be an experienced GM for each group of newbies.

I can see why Trip and such have an issue with the early game math, and honestly I wouldn't mind if there were a sort of "Health Buffer" variant rule that was prominently displayed in the GM Core (or even part of Playing the Game in Player Core) to convince beginners to experiment with their basic tactics early and let the people who want less squishy early game have it.

The way I've "solved" it? Just don't do as much direct combat in early levels. Your characters are neophytes at this point; just getting their boots in the ground for this whole "adventuring" thing. Give them hazards to bypass, locks to pick, social encounters to maneuver. Give them a "taste" of danger with stealth or chases. Combat should REALLY be an "oh shit" moment if it's with intelligent creatures - not a last resort or punishment, per se, but a climactic moment for green adventurers. If you wanna have combat beforehand, it should be against slow or uncoordinated creatures - something that really gives the new guys a chance to stretch themselves, or to run if things do take an unlucky turn. "Live to fight another day" and all that.
You could call this sidestepping the issue, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but I think it also happens to mitigate the "Encounter Mode = Combat" misconception that a lot of new players might have from those early APs as well, which I personally think is a bigger problem, so it's my preferred.

But that came with experience. New players don't have that, and I think there are some things that could help mitigate that (though I disagree that the HP math is "bad" at early levels; I just think the encounter guidelines should be a little more clear as to the expectations). I actually really like early levels, to be clear; but I do see why it puts others off sometimes.

I mean, Blessed Shield gives Champions one of the most reliable and cost-effective Shield Blocks in the game - it really stretches out the HP pool of Champion and makes it more tanky than you'd think at first glance. Doubly so if you can make a Tower Shield work - you aren't as hard-pressed as other melee martials to Strike your targets since almost all of your chassis' power is in your reaction and your Blessing at that point, so if you need to take an extra Step and skip out on Striking so you can Raise your Shield, that's completely fine. If the enemy goes for your flanking buddy you can (usually) react to them and almost nullify their damage, and if the enemy goes for you they either miss or hit an HP pool that isn't as threatening to them as, say, a Fighter's.

If you have a different Blessing, you likely aren't as focused on being as tanky as Shield Champs are, though there's plenty of argument to be made that a Swiftness Champ could potentially be tanky by virtue of removing enemy actions with their kiting movement speed.

Loreguard wrote:

I think I want to mention that my suggestion would be that people should not feel like they should let themselves get hung up on the specifics of the Iconic characters.

I would go so far as to say that a big part of their existence is to give new players a starting point, and that for the ends of Enabling you to have the most fun you can, you shouldn't worry about playing the character 'as cannon', so you shouldn't feel like you make a mistake about playing it because you don't own its nature.

I think this advice is worth much more than a few copper pieces. I'd give a gold for it. ^_^

You can have my electrum pieces; they're hard to spend but I've heard they conduct electricity well!

One of the things that might help you divorce the idea of Occult magic as "the spooky magic" is by remembering what the traditions represent.

It's theorized by magical scholars in the Pathfinder universe that all of existence is made up of four base "essences". Combining and manipulating these essences together is what gives you the different properties of the traditions.

Occult casting and bards are described as such in a different sidebar: "The practitioners of occult traditions seek to understand the unexplainable, categorize the bizarre, and otherwise access the ephemeral in a systematic way. Bards are a fundamental occult spellcaster, collecting strange esoterica and using their performances to influence the mind or elevate the soul."

Effectively, Bards are using their intense connection to whatever inspires them (their Muse) to manipulate the essences of Spirit and Mind. Looking at it from another way, they use their performances to affect the minds and spirits of the world around them.

This tracks fairly well to how people in the real world sometimes describe experiencing art as a way of expression - it can move your very soul, and it can be extremely thought-provoking, sometimes to the point of being able to shake one's very worldview.

At level 20, a Fighter's Will modifier sans ability mod or other bonuses should be +24, since they become expert in Will saves by level 3!

One of the core tenets of PF2's math is that "everything you have proficiency in adds your level, and you get better proficiency at different tiers of levels". This is meant to provoke the feeling of challenges that once seemed super difficult becoming not only possible, but a breeze when you have more experience and training under your belt.

Your AC, your skills, your attacks, your spells, all of them care about proficiency, and proficiency is effectively the same calculation almost everywhere in the game, meaning that you can easily extrapolate a lot of things. Proficiency mod + relevant ability mod + other bonuses, and Proficiency mod = 0 if untrained, or = level + 2/4/6/8 for trained/expert/master/legendary, respectively. That means that creating reasonable challenges for parties to overcome is a fairly smooth "treadmill", almost - as you level, you'll get gradual boosts to your nearly everything, and the challenges will typically follow suit if you prefer to keep things on the Moderate+ difficulty for encounters.

The only exceptions tend to be the levels proficiency increases for your various things - for skills, that's at levels 3, 7, and 15 for every character - which can feel like a bit of a "surge" in effectiveness as your bonuses increase by 3 instead of 1.

Meanwhile, others twist themselves into knots over the possibility of a boomerang coming back after every strike for free. Ugh.

I mean, I don't think people are twisting themselves into knots for power level reasons, really. They're twisting themselves into knots because that's just not how a boomerang works, there's nothing in the description of it that suggests it works any different to a boomerang, and yet it has text that could imply that it works like Ty the Tazmanian Tiger's boomerangs, which is just odd for a weapon that costs silver pieces.

If the weapon was some kind of special magical boomerang or an advanced weapon that was some kind of gadgeteer's invention, then I don't think people would be nearly as out-of-sorts about it. But it's just a regular boomerang, and those are basically aerodynamic throwing knives. They stick into their target or bludgeon them and then fall to the ground like any other thrown thing.

Then there's the fact that TV items had a habit of saying more than they meant, and now you've got people confused. It really is that simple; very few people, I imagine, are worried that this will break the game. It just... doesn't follow with the rest of the expectations, and that's weird.

So an ability that is only useful when the GM specifically sets it up to be useful, and not otherwise. It is a terrible concept.

Yes, yes, and mental effects are only useful when your GM doesn't set you up against constant mindless encounters, and linguistic effects are only useful if you're facing off against intelligent enemies. Precision damage is useless if you're facing off against oozes all the time! We've heard it all before.

This game requires effort on both sides to make sure you're getting the most out of it. If your GM isn't running social encounters deep enough to get use out of the social skill feats, they should let their players know beforehand so they don't take feats that won't get any use.

Much like in-game, out-of-game truly everyone at the table should be expected to work together. It's a game you're playing together, after all - the GM is simply a player with a different role than the party. With everyone taking small chunks of responsibility (usually tracking everything that their own characters have affected is enough) the actual overhead on combats is fairly low.

In pretty much any system, this can (and IMO, should) be the case. Any group project would seem like a pain in the ass if most of the work was dumped onto one member, after all.

I distinctly remember a funny session of a Hell's Vengeance conversion into PF2, where we had an enemy Frightened, Stupefied, Clumsy, Grappled, Prone, taking persistent damage, and just generally not having a good time. We were all keeping track of what we personally had done to that enemy (I had him Frightened and Stupefied, barb had him grappled and prone, rogue had him clumsy and bleeding) and were reminding each other "oh, you might wanna use something that targets Reflex or Will, and go ahead and use your exsanguinating ammo," etc.

When everyone is invested at the table, things run WAY smoother than they seem on-paper. Now, of course, since it's crunchier, it will still run a little slower just because the tactics available can sometimes be tricky to puzzle out.
Automation on Foundry is nice - and is undeniably helpful - but it can also sometimes be taken a little too for-granted and, if its problems are caught, can sometimes be even slower, since corner cases will crop up a lot more often than you'd think for an automated system to realistically have accounted for. It can also occasionally facilitate some real bad gamey habits (second screen distractions, anxious behaviors like clicking doors impatiently or opening loot containers before prompted) that I sometimes even catch myself perpetuating.

The real fiddlyness tends to come in the form of figuring out what information you'd like to reveal at your table vs. keep hidden, and Foundry can only help so much with that. If you don't like to keep much info hidden, then the game runs even more buttery-smooth as more things are known, but it then leaves a lot of the games' options feeling superfluous or slightly more "meta-exploitable". Whereas if you want to keep more things mystified, the onus then comes to the GM to keep a closer eye on your players' sheets and keep in mind situational bonuses/penalties/abilities. Because nobody wants to have to be the player to constantly prod their GM with "hey, so I have this thing for this situation... is it that situation?" like a kid in a car constantly asking "are we there yet?".

Much of this can be resolved by setting expectations at the table, after all, but the work still needs to be put in by all parties to ensure everyone at the table is having a good time. We're partially responsible for our own fun AND for the fun of the others at the table - GM or player.

I will say, Pathfinder's particular brand of "religion" is something that's not quite mappable to the real-world - at least, not if you view it as a singular denomination of "religion".

This is all not even mentioning the various non-god-related faiths that exist within Golarion, many of which are closer (but still not exacrtly) mappable to IRL asceticism or animistic approaches. They focus more on seeing the big picture around your communities or your own personal ecosystems and, while many don't eschew deity worship outright, they narrow the scope of their edicts and anathemas to those that are more immediate to the self and those living beings around you.

Aye, kitsune have had this snag for a long while now - if you try to claim that either form is considered "the polymorphed form" then you run into weird bits where being in "the polymorphed form" is this nearly get-out-of-poly-free card, which is almost certainly unintended regardless of what we consider the "true form" of a shapechanging ancestry/heritage is.

So the only way you avoid getting a near-poly-immune kitsune is by saying only the "action" of Change Shape is a polymorph effect. Sure, that means the kitsune can try and counteract any poly effect that doesn't shut out their ancestry abilities with one action, but that was still true even with the above problem, so that's not really the issue.

It's hard to say on the Dire Form issue, though. While being IN hybrid shape alone clearly shouldn't be considered a polymorph form, Enlarge's effects still have the Polymorph tag on them - it's not a tag just applied to Enlarge's Cast a Spell activity, it's a tag applied to its effects as well. But if we read it that way, any shapechanging ancestry that uses "the effect of pest form" (again, kitsune, yaoguai, etc.) now has the same issue as paragraph one where now they're just super hard to poly, willingly or not.

The reading that has the least amount of conflictions and snags within itself happens to be the most permissive one here, I think, with Gortle's reading? If you're afraid of it becoming a little cheesy, I don't think there's a problem with bringing said concern up with that player, just in case.

It's possible that the NPC had a template or level modulation applied to it? The Elite template on a creature increases the damage of all of its offensive abilities by a flat +2 - unless they are limited abilities like dragon's breath or spell slots, in which they are increased by +4.

Was the Canker Cultist in question an Elite Canker Cultist? Foundry does automatically apply template changes, and this is the only way I know that enemy could possibly be gaining extra flat damage on a ranked spell.

It's interesting from a purely game mechanics standpoint that Containment doesn't have a listed AC, because there could be ANY number of valid readings, even if they're in hindsight ridiculous due to being Too Good or Bad To Be True.

-It doesn't list an AC, therefore its AC is 0 and you auto-hit. Not necessarily Too Bad to be true? 40 HP and immunity to crits means it'd take at least two Barb-level Strikes to get through a fully-formed one.

-It's a misprint, and so we should look to the Premaster version to see it's still AC 5. Much the same as the above reading, except there's now more room to Fail a Strike against the barrier, which is funny in a sad way.

-It doesn't list an AC, therefore Strikes cannot target it and only Area damage that can damage spell effects/objects can damage it? Seems Too Good, since that means without VERY specific "lockpick" spells (not even Disintegrate anymore lol) you're boned even if you Succeed the save.

-It doesn't list an AC, so you use your Spell DC as the AC. Almost certainly Too Good, especially given the Premaster version. But man, imagine poor mooks literally unable to even touch your immaculate charge coated in your glittering invulnerability field, and even the Big Bad has to waste an action or two to break it.

I mean, the fact alone that at least four of us can very confidently say four different rulings and talk past each other for an entire page about it because "it's simple!" very much proves that it is, in fact, not quite as simple as we believe.

I'm not "creating" a headache by pointing out that, as written, emanations could probably use some kind of specification to make some kind of concrete answer, because as it is, there isn't one. I'm simply pointing out that the current state of how things are worded CAUSES me a headache.

The way that I work with bard's emanations in my games isn't how rules are written - because I think the Rules, As Written in this case aren't fitting what my mind's eye is imagining.

The way I imagine it, the bard is strumming a tune that evokes powerful, magical emotions for two seconds (the equivalent of an action), which is about enough to get a line or two of a limerick off. Then, six seconds later, he says another line or two. That's why it currently functions like a "pulse". But plenty of people imagine it as though it acts more akin to a sustained spell (much like PF1's bard and their swift action songs), and depending on the vibe of the party I can change between these as I like.

When the rules of the game are insufficient to create a ruling that people can agree that is what is written (regardless of how much we like that ruling or not), then it's not "no issue". See: "when does an attack make an attack roll?" from Pre-Remaster for another headache caused by not-quite-so-rigorous wording that made ambiguous rulings. Just because it doesn't come up every session doesn't mean it shouldn't be looked at.

PFS sticks about as close to the rules as written as you can get, so it VERY MUCH MATTERS that the rules are able to be arbitrated as clean as possible at the table for as many GMs as possible and consistently, since characters need to be transferrable from table to table without issue.

Frankly, for our home games? Who gives a shit; run Dirge of Doom as a sustained emanation centered on an enemy within 30 feet for all I care. See how funny you can get with it. But for PFS, "pedantics" are necessary to keep the tables consistent with one-another.

checks notes 1

For Runelords, they're drawing their power from the ancient art of runes, which were adapted later by the original seven Runelords into what's commonly known as "sin magic".
Basically, there's seven fundamental runes that serve as the building block to all of their magic, and using one draws a specific emotion from its user, which ended up becoming associated with the Azlanti virtues of rule/Thassilonian rewards of rule: the seven sins.

Basically, by focusing your practice on a single base rune, you end up embodying the sin it brings out from you due to constant exposure. It's less "someone else is imposing this rule upon me and will take away my powers if I don't listen" and more "I find the idea of doing this repugnant and it goes against what I am slowly embodying and it will weaken my connection to my sin if I do it."

One thing I've not seen mentioned yet, and might be extremely helpful to your players:

Do you know the rules for Aid, and are you using it? The Aid action/reaction pair is such an extremely helpful tool for parties to deal with creatures that have particularly hard-to-hit defenses.

Note that in "Choosing Creatures" (GM Core pg 76), a Party Level +2 enemy is considered a "Moderate- or severe-threat boss" despite its encounter XP being rated at only a Moderate encounter. These kinds of single monster encounters can be somewhat dubious at any level (but especially early levels), as one monster needs to have inflated stats (relative to the party) to even stand a chance against the quadruple-or-more action economies they typically face, and as such are WAY more susceptible to swingy dice rolls than Moderate encounters with at-level or lower enemies, especially if the party isn't using their tactical toolkit to its fullest benefit.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't run them, of course, but be wary when an encounter is a PL+2 single enemy and rated as "Moderate".

Bringing it back to Aid; it's a great action/reaction pair to use when you need to really pierce a tough enemy's defenses, either with skill checks or attack rolls - all it requires is some sly thinking on the players' parts and convincing you, the GM, that their actions would be suitable to Aid, and if they succeed at Aiding they give the other player a +1 (or scaling +2/3/4) circumstance bonus to their roll. I would clue your party in on this action and urge them to find ways to use it, because it not only encourages good tactical thinking, but also immersive roleplay while they try to find in-universe explanations for their actions. You can even use the suggested DC of 15 most of the time and only change it if they try to do something repeatedly or something a little outrageous.

Helm of Zeal, notably, is only really useful for Champs (or archetype Champs) as it only lets them use the reaction for their champ reaction. Getting a second reaction usable with Strikes (they seemed to be looking for more offensive options) is relegated to late-game stuff mostly.

If you want, TTP, it might be easier for you to be a Fighter that uses a lot of their feats for Barbarian dedication feats instead if what you want is to be able to react multiple times but also be a Rager. It'll still be until midgame before it comes online, but it's way easier in that configuration.

Like with most edicts and anathema, the rules are expected to be somewhat table-dependent and adjudicated case-by-case. Depending on where you are in the world, "the elements" might change, though if you're likely within the Inner Sea (where Runelords typically are), the philosophy of the Four Elements is most common: Air, Water, Fire, Earth.

If you want to be as broad as possible so as to not run into a theological impasse (and probably be PFS safe), then I'd suggest using the Elementalist spell list as a baseline, with all spells with the Fire, Water, Earth, Metal, Wood, and Air tags off-limits, regardless of where you are. It's a concrete framework within the game's rules that serves as a good bouncing off point for individual tables.

The lightning-but-not-air spells seem somewhat dubious, and you could avoid those if you wish to be even safer, but one could make a case that creating a big static shock or even a full lightning bolt from scratch is more like creating and firing pure plasma than pulling from the Plane of Air or something.

There's wiggle room, and I think that's on purpose.

It's true, but also very generic advice. And it can't go much deeper, without getting specifics about each party and build.

Again, I'll stress that this is what I want in things like Player Core and the Beginner's Box. Generic tips are valuable for newer players, since this is a dense game and it can be hard to grasp for a starting seed of knowledge to work from. Once you get that seed, generally the flow gets a lot easier and you start to discover things, but providing non-prescriptive knowledge can prevent forming misinformed habits.

I really am not seeing how you can claim that it "clearly" states they "always, always, always" emanate from the caster. I'm literally looking at the rule right here.

An emanation issues forth from each side of your space, extending out to a specified number of feet in all directions. For instance, the bless spell’s emanation radiates 15 or more feet outward from the caster. Because the sides of a creature’s space are the starting point for the emanation, an emanation from a Large or larger creature affects a greater overall area than that of a Medium or smaller creature. Unless the text states otherwise, the creature creating an emanation effect chooses whether the creature at its center is affected.

That's it. That's the WHOLE RULE. Unless there's some other rule about emanations moving with the caster in Player Core that I'm missing, this is all that's said about the area type "Emanation".

"Issues forth from each side of your space" is no more clear than lines and cones saying they "shoot forth from you" and "shoot out from you" respectively. All it describes is what happens when the spell effect is created. Does Pave Ground move with the caster? After all, a line ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS "shoots forth from you". That's clear in the rules, at least according to the same logic put forth for emanations.

The only text here that would suggest anything of the sort is the last sentence, which isn't as clear-cut as I think you're making it out to be. "The creature at the center" of an emanation spell when it is cast is usually the caster, and they get to make the choice here. It wouldn't matter if they moved afterwards, since they chose already whether or not they were affected by the spell or not. But it's not exactly so clear. That's my point.

Personally? A lot of emanation spells seem like they should move with the caster, so I can just give them the Aura trait to make them work as they should. But Rules As Written? They're wonky, and until we get an official FAQ for them, they will remain wonky RAW.

If emanations followed you, then the rules of emanations would make that distinction, and individual emanation spells wouldn't have to specifically mention it. It's as simple as that. Lines, Bursts, and Cones don't say they follow you, and neither do emanations.

We can argue which individual emanation spells are "supposed" to move with you, but all that means is that they should likely be put up in the errata thread to add the Aura trait, which is supposed to be for emanations that follow you.

Emanations are distinguishable from Auras when used, because otherwise spells wouldn't have been errata'd with the Remaster to include the Aura trait if the Aura trait didn't mean anything.

So Level 18 enemy bard casts Voracious Gestalt. PC takes 14d6, then moves out of the emanation. Next round, Bard sustains. But poor PC continues to take 14d6 again because, according to you, "The area serves only to determine who's affected originally". Is that how you would play it?

Hey, uh, friend? Voracious Gestalt has the Aura trait; it already moves around with the caster. It's irrelevant to this conversation. It LITERALLY reads: "When you Cast the Spell, the gestalt deals 14d6 negative damage to all living creatures of your choice in the area, with a basic Fortitude save. Creatures you choose that end their turns in the area take 6d6 damage, with a basic Fortitude save."

Sustaining it is clearly meant to refer to the to keeping up the area of the Aura, not the 14d6 void damage. Because the creatures AS STATED take the damage only on cast or when they end their turn in it. Use your context clues.

There is an argument to be made that Sustaining an emanation "snaps" the emanation back to you for the purposes of calculating certain effects, for example Luring Wail. But, then again, there ARE non-Aura emanations that SPECIFICALLY mention they move with you, like Poltergeist's Fury. Antimagic Field mentions that summoned creatures within will reappear "if the field moves or ends" but has no in-description way of doing so, possibly supporting this theory. Both Diamond Dust and Overflowing Sorrow, from Gods & Magic, have the specification of being emanations "centered on you" which would suggest that emanations DON'T normally do so, even when Sustained.

But it's extremely clear that Emanations with a set duration that DO NOT have the Aura trait do not move with you. That's what the Aura trait is for. If it don't have the Aura trait and doesn't otherwise say it moves with you, then it doesn't move with you.

No, Raven, the difference between Bursts and Emanations is that Bursts originate from corners, and Emanations originate from your square.

:)

That's it. They originate from your square. Also, like, you can move Bursts plenty? There's lots of Burst area spells that move; that's not exactly much of an argument.

If they wanted Emanations to automatically move with you, then why would they need the Aura trait? The Aura trait exists explicitly to allow effects to move with the origin of said effect.

An aura is an emanation that continually ebbs out from you, affecting creatures within a certain radius. Aura can also refer to the magical signature of an item.

Emphasis mine.

I was just about to post an appreciation for BigHatMarisa’s comments about removing the stumbling blocks with small sidebars here and there and how we definitely don’t need Paizo to repackage advice as a freakin’ gouging Strategy Guide.

This is mostly what I'm vouching for, yes. We don't need exact strategies or anything, but there are fundamental, base-level tips that can be doled out in relevant sections via sidebars - where it won't eat up more pages and fits in with all the other minor info that makes it into sidebars.

For example, a sidebar on Rogue can give a small (clearly stated to be nonexhaustive) list of ways that a creature can be rendered off-guard. It's the most common and oft-useful condition in the game bar maybe Frightened, so it's a good starting point to pull from.

Clearly labelling that some skill actions are meant for Encounter Mode, not Exploration Mode (Climb, Pick a Lock, Disable a Device) and reminding players that, if a situation is tense and every second matters, they can use Encounter Mode even if it's not combat!

Things like these, which are fundamental tips that all players (including the GM) can find helpful, and they aren't necessarily prescriptive, just helping bridge some knowledge gaps that the Player Core tends to have.

I don't expect these products to make experts out of new players, but it should be proficient at getting people familiar with the game's systems at a base level, and right now there are gears that could be greased to help that process along.

Pathfinder Society I believe has a rule that allows players to choose to have willing allies worsen their degree of success by one, but it's not an official rule and I would talk to your GM about it.

This should be the list of all 1 (or 1-to-3) action spells in the Occult list, as long as the link doesn't expire.

Aqueous Blast and Scorching Blast are "fake" 1-action spells, since casting the spell doesn't actually make an attack, it gives you the ability to make their attack for the rest of your turn (effectively turning them into 2-action spells).

Magic Missile Force Barrage is a classic. It's variable-action, so you can choose how much unavoidable damage an enemy (or enemies) takes.

Shield is great if you find yourself a little too close to enemies for comfort.

Guidance is a great cantrip for if there's not much else you can do on your turn, as long as you have an ally within 30 feet you haven't used it on today.

Gravitational Pull could be a good low-commitment repositioning option, but I'd not start using it often until you get more low-level slots.

Timely Tutor is pretty damn good if you want to be the person who's Recalling Knowledge in your party. Hypercognition is in a similar boat, allowing you to use 6 Recall Knowledge actions for 1 action.

Winning Streak is just good value - 1 of your actions to give someone else another action is fine enough if you find your action would be better spent that way, and it can occasionally just start jumping around and getting even better value.

The funny thing about this reading is that this makes the Bard faster than the speed of sound, if you think about it. They're supposed to be playing/singing/dancing something so dreadful that is enough to send shivers down the enemy's spine.

The way I see it, it's kinda like the sound bubble that Hunting Horns put down in Monster Hunter Wilds. A bubble of echoing music isn't exactly all that strange when we're talking magic, here.

Though, after reading through the other Bard compositions, it's fairly clear the Frightened is likely supposed to be an "semi-instantaneous effect" like the others, though I disagree with SuperBidi on why.

Only creatures at the time of casting are affected. When an effect is supposed to happen when you enter an area, it's always specified when it takes effect exactly (on entering, ending turn or starting turn). If you change that you affect a lot of area spells with a duration (Calm for example, that has the same wording than Dirge of Doom).

Noxious Vapors seems to adjudicate its concealed condition just fine without specifying "any creature within the spell's area when its Cast, or any creature that enters". In fact, it specifically only does so for the Fort save. I don't believe there's a reasonable reading of the spell that makes the concealed condition it gives "snapshot" upon casting. If you're in the cloud, you're concealed. If you're out of the cloud, you're only concealed to those in it.

I would honestly argue if Dirge was an Aura it would actually be a WORSE rules nightmare, considering we still don't have good guidance on when you actually "enter" an Aura timing-wise (does a creature moving the aura to you count? Is forced movement entering?) that cause even more issues and also has twenty-seven different rulings for twenty-seven different tables.

As it is now, it's very obviously (to me, anyways):
-When you use the action, it slaps down a static 30-foot emanation. This emanation lasts one round. It's not an Aura, so doesn't follow the Bard.

-If a creature is ever in the area for any reason, they're Frightened 1. If they're still in the area when their Frightened value would decrease below 1, it doesn't.

-If a creature walks entirely through the area (from one end to the other), they would gain Frightened 1, which they keep as they walk out of it, and then lose that Frightened at the end of the turn.

I'm not sure that PF2e itself should be attempting to teach players at lower levels.

I hate to constantly have to bring up 5e, but unfortunately it's prudent in this instance: 5e treats its first few levels as "introductory levels", even moreso now in the 2024 redesign now that all the classes get their subclasses at level 3. And, honestly? That's why I don't like 5e's early levels at all. They just don't give you enough tools between characters (bar casters, I guess) for it to be interesting to play.

PF2e's first few levels aren't so much introductory to the GAME as they are to your characters. The game gives everyone a wealth of generic tools you can start with at level 1 alongside your class's (and sometimes "subclass's") given toolkit. Some classes even get to choose what their level 1 toolkit will look like, like Fighter/Monk. Then, at level 2, everyone gets to choose a couple things that let them experiment. Then, at level 3, your general feat allows you to branch out further, and so on and so forth to the races.

However, I will level some criticism at the products designed to teach new players the game, like the Beginner Box and the Player Core duo, for not properly signposting a lot of important play concepts.

The Beginner Box focuses a lot on straight front-to-back encounters, and the pregenerated characters don't list any of their (EXTREMELY HELPFUL) relevant skill actions, nor does the player book really signpost using them. It doesn't give the (presumably new) GM running it a lot of guidance on some obvious alternatives to those encounters that even new players might come up with ("hey, what if we talk to the kobolds?"). It doesn't do a great job delineating between Encounter Mode and Exploration Mode (10-foot-cliff anyone?). And, obviously, there are the multiple errors it makes in the game rules itself, but those aren't really design issues more than just basic mistakes that should be errata'd.

The Player Core really should be better about spelling out things along the lines of "Hey, we expect you to use your skills in this game as a part of your regular toolkit both in combat and out of it. You're expected that you'll work together with your party to achieve victory together, not half-connectedly just kill monsters by yourself until the encounter is over." The Rogue should have a sidebar that spells out just how much Rogues will get out of helping the party and receiving help in-turn. Things like that.

The game is generally not that hard to learn, it's just that there are lots of precarious stumbling points that people can fall off of that could easily be smoothed over with the products that are designed to teach you things.

Fun little related fact: Assuming two non-agile weapons, one from within Fighter's chosen group and one from without, if you Double Slice, there are two options - you can either Strike with your chosen weapon then non-chosen weapon, or vice versa.

Compared to standard martial proficiency, that would be either making your attacks at +2, then -2 (non-agile, remember), or +0, then +0.

The first outcome is is the same accuracy as Striking twice with an agile weapon (though not necessarily damage, since non-agile weapons will likely do more), but the second is something interesting, as there are very few other ways in the game to make two Strikes in two actions, both at full MAP.

If you use an agile weapon as your chosen weapon, then weirdly your second attack is MORE accurate than your first, with an effective +0, then +2, which is something entirely unique to Fighter.

While I do enjoy that enthusiasm, I wouldn't pin my hopes THAT high. Books that aren't in the "Core" lineup often have full pages' worth of Golarion-related lore within them that would be remiss if they were replaced with just character options. Not to mention the reason we only get 2 new standard-complexity classes is because we also tend to get lots of content for older classes that fill up a bunch of space as well.

A remastered SoM would have to contend with a lot of the lore implications that changed between its release and the Remaster, which is the biggest hurdle. SoM mentioned, explicitly: positive and negative energy, the seven schools of magic (in depth), aligned energy, and a whole host of implications of those things that any decent Remastering of the book would look to alter to fit the current state of the game.

Oread! It's a versatile heritage, but can't get anymore "rock and stone" than being touched by the Plane of Earth itself.

The new Mauler/Archer verbiage also allows access to properly-scaling Advanced proficiency for their respective niches, which otherwise you'd have to be level 12 and knee-deep in the Fighter archetype for.

But, as both me and Teridax agree, a Magus shouldn't be able to use save spells as well as it uses attack roll spells. I think the way it is currently (where you have to sacrifice damage and stats to do so) is completely fine. If you want it all, you should be MAD.

I mean, maybe adding some way to give the Magus "If you crit, they treat their save as one degree worse" for people who love gambling; like, say, a feat. But otherwise, I think this aspect of magus is currently satisfactory.

Arcane Cascade is probably the thing to change if we really wanna ease up a little on the clunkiness of Magus. Turning it into a regular stance as Teridax suggested doesn't reduce the action costs at all, but it does allow you to freely move those actions around wherever you want to. It would even give synergy to fighters that take MC Magus and allow them to use their free action go-into-Stance feats on it. Edit: damnit; Magus MC doesn't even get access to ArCas; sadge. It's pretty elegant, gameplay-wise.

Correct, attack spells are what I am referring to. Bypassing spell attack rolls with weapon attack rolls is central to the Magus's gameplay and one of their biggest advantages, which is why it's always the point of comparison when people refer to spell save DC accuracy. And again, to be clear: I'm not saying the Magus needs to be accurate with spell saves; I think it's actually a good thing that they're not necessarily the best at applying crowd control and debuffs on top of burst damage. I'm just saying that building to make their spell DC less crappy imposes a prohibitively major cost on most Magus subclasses that you can't just handwave away.

Ahh, a misunderstanding on my part, then; my bad. I've had this discussion with lots of people IRL so I'm quick to the trigger with it at this point; hah~.

...you’re asking players to limit themselves to about half the builds available to them and pick weapons with much lower damage dice just to be less inaccurate at a thing their core class mechanic normally lets them bypass.

But it doesn't? Nothing about Spellstrike lets you bypass saves. Magus only bypasses being reliant on Int for spell attack rolls specifically, because the conceit is that you're trading it for your full martial progression instead with a Strike stapled on top. For other spells, Spellstrike is pure action compression - a Strike+Spell for 2 actions, which is still something entirely worth building around. Just because Spellstrike signposts "hey, you can make GREAT use of the Spell Attack Rolls that other casters generally find only good or okay" doesn't mean it's saying "stay completely away from saves forever". If it did, Expansive Spellstrike (and the current errata to base Spellstrike) wouldn't exist as a concept.

I really do think just making Arcane Cascade work like a regular stance and let you change the damage type with every damaging spell you cast while in it is the simplest solution here...

I think my only real gripe with this idea is that it no longer feels like an "arcane cascade" to me, a la your excess magic flowing over from your casts and spellstrikes like a waterfall into even your regular hits. A simple name change and fluff text change would fix it, obviously, but then now we've mucked up a bunch of existing characters' visions... not that the Remaster hasn't done that plenty already, I guess.

After all, {ranger and swashbuckler} don't depend on Focus spells or burning an action to use their stuff.

Uhhhh, did we forget that we need to spend panache for finishers, and need to spend bravado actions to regain panache?

Proficiency is only part of the formula; your spellcasting modifier will also be lower even if you start with a +3 Int mod, a costly investment for any Magus. For a Starlit Span Magus, boosting Int isn't too big an issue, but a melee Magus will want to put points into Strength, Dex, Con, and Wis, so boosting Int will come at the expense of those stats and make the class MAD, no matter which way you slice it. Cutting Strength when making Strength-based attacks means sacrificing not only damage, but accuracy, which is not something you want to give up when your signature ability rides on one attack roll, and is counter-productive when the intent is to improve accuracy.

I also maintain that a free-action Arcane Cascade would be a far more significant buff than removing its requirement of casting a spell or making a Spellstrike. Again, a free-action Arcane Cascade means you can just cast shield in lieu of entering the stance and get the benefits of both the stance and the cantrip for a single action. Not only that, but the damage type for the stance would be force, making it a direct upgrade to just activating the stance with no requirement of casting a spell prior. The stance is valuable for its theme of cycling spell power, but I do think that is something better-achieved by having the stance's damage type dynamically adjust to whichever spell you just cast, rather than basing it on a prior requirement.

Melee magi who want to use their Int mod can absolutely bump out of Strength - Finesse weapons exist. My 0-Str. Aloof Firmament magus does this. He decided to also can a couple points of Wis for Cha, but that was for flavor; those could've gone purely to D/C/I/W and been perfectly fine. Remember - your job isn't to deal pure damage as a utility magus, it's to use your action compression to get okay-to-good damage on a target while affecting a bunch of people incidentally with a powerful utility spell, then picking off stragglers. Starlit Span has the easiest time with this because it's ranged, but any Magus looking to do this with enough investment in mobility could achieve a similar result - Laughing Shadow and Aloof Firmament are good starting choices.

You did totally bring up Shield in the previous post and I completely missed it - whoops! Yeah, for it to be a free action it'd have to be restricted to 2A spells, really, and at that point just rework the ability. The fact that it already had the snag with how stances are formatted and needed special errata to fix it probably should have clued in that it being a Stance action is kinda jank.

Hmmm. If I wanted to keep it close to its current iteration just for simplicity's sake, I guess I'd... keep it a single action if they just Cast a Spell, but make it a free action if they specifically Spellstrike or use a Conflux Spell, maybe? That way it'd incentivize you actually using the magus's own special things to their advantage, but not completely lock you out if you need to just raw-dog a spell every now and then?

I can partially agree with the OP’s criticism — the Magus is generally going to lag behind in save DC accuracy, even with the effects on a successful save, and melee builds are generally too MAD to comfortably accommodate boosting Int — but I think the proposal may also need a bit of refinement. You wouldn’t want enemies crit failing often on crowd-control spells like slow, for instance, and being able to do so would give the Magus the added strength of having the best accuracy for any spell, which I don’t think should be the case. It may be better to limit this to basic saves only, and if you want to get fancy, perhaps you could even add a mechanic that decouples damage from other spell effects, so that a creature takes damage based on the attack roll but still makes a save against other effects.

Beyond that, I do agree the Magus could use some more adjustments. Melee Magi really don’t need to be vulnerable to Reactive Strike IMO when Channel Smite removes the manipulate trait from its spell, Arcane Cascade could stand to be made less clunky, and the class could be pushed to be less MAD overall, so that it’s not just Starlit Span that can easily opt into Int for better spellcasting. It doesn’t have to be an overhaul, just a few targeted changes that could bring some easy, but significant wins.

Magus only lags behind in save DC proficiency compared to a legendary caster for 6 levels total from 1-20: from 7-8, 15-16, and 19-20. You can absolutely make an Int-focused melee Magus, as long as you're willing to sacrifice some points in Strength - and if you're trying to use the offensive utility spells so much, then a couple points of damage lost from cutting Str a bit is absolutely worth getting more accuracy on your Slows and other, better example save spells.

Even if you aren't Starlit Span, your magi typically take on two flavors - one that eschews some damage in favor of DC for utility spells, and one that eschews save DC almost entirely for big damage. Flavor to taste between the two. It being "MAD" is only if you want to have everything all at once.

Reactive Strikes are so uncommon on monsters now that it's genuinely a surprise when I get hit by one by Spellstriking in melee, and I can count on one finger the amount of times I've been interrupted from a crit because of it.
Honestly, the Manipulate trait shouldn't even be on Spellstrike itself - most Spells Cast into a Spellstrike have the Manipulate trait already, so they'd provoke anyways from the subordinate action. I don't see why a Magus shouldn't have a cool moment where they cast a rare non-Manipulate spell into a Spellstrike because they know a monster could react to them. Is it because a crit ReStrike would only interrupt the subordinate cast if it weren't this way or something?

I would also vote for a free-action Arcane Cascade. Or at the very least allow Magus to be one of the exceptions to the "as little between-turn tracking as possible" rule and let them ArCas as the first action on their 2nd turn. It's not hard to remember "my last two actions were to Spellstrike last turn"

The thing is, even if the Fighter were legendary in every weapon at level 13, they'd still favor certain weapons, because that's what their feats push them to do. The entire point of the Fighter's feat selection is to let you build around a specific weapon or weapon set and do really cool techniques with those, so the Fighter is already encouraged to specialize, on top of the broader consideration of runes favoring the use of one particular weapon over a plurality.

Stepping back in after a break to argue against this - most of Fighter's building block feats and plenty of its subsequent ones do not specialize you into a weapon or weapon group - most of them care more about the configuration of weapons in your hands.

For example, Dueling Parry's "one melee weapon and one free hand", Brutish Shove's "two-handed melee weapon", The Ranged Ones' "wielding a ranged weapon" (which, for the classic cases like bows and crossbows, tend to not be in your hands at the same time as your melee weapons).

Most of them get a little more specific than that, like saying "a thrown weapon", "a shield", "ranged with reload 0" but a majority of Fighter's feats are not akin to Haft Striker Stance or Spear Dancer. Tangentially, many of the specific-weapon-group feats are actually newer; indeed, both of the latter examples are from War of Immortals.

This is an important distinction, because it still allows you plenty of room to use your feats even if you're using a weapon outside of your chosen group. You can curate your feats and weapon choice such that you can have a panoply of feats that work with a good few chosen weapons, not just a single one, which can include weapons outside of your chosen weapon group. Ultimately, most Fighters (like all martials) will specialize some due to runes, but their feats are actually what enable them to swap weapons and still be way more effective at doing so than other martials.

I will say, I don't necessarily agree with OP - I think if you don't want your Magus to have a great Int score you should do what Warpriests have done and don't try to force a square peg in a round hole with save DC spells in the first place.

But YuriP's comment gave me an idea. I'd like to see Magus get a similar version of the Maneuvering Spell feat from the Sixth Pillar archetype, but coded specifically for Spellstrike. I've adored it on my Aloof Firmament magus, and I think all magi should be able to feel the thrill of doing the PF1 "cast touch spell THEN move to touch" knowledge check.

The Bow Staff isn't "an ordinary staff" man, c'mon. That ain't a gotcha and you know it. You know what I meant.

Nor is your insistence on this "golf bag" as though I'm suggesting it? Obviously five or six weapons is absurd. My point is with Fighter you only really need two weapons to cover most bases, and you can comfortably have three without leaving anything behind at all.

You have versatility already; it's just not all in on a single omni-weapon.

Some of your ideas are interesting - I would actually like to see a Fighter feat that gives you an option for another crit spec, as well as a version of the Apocalypse Rider feat more generalized. I'm not saying Fighter is perfect and currently supports literally every conceivable playstyle under the sun. It has 112 feats, though, many of which a lot less restrictive than you're giving credit for.

After looking it over, I'm not sure what is so special about Warrior of Legend, either? The only special thing it gives to your spears for specializing so hard is... parry, and some additional doom-based damage. None of the other feats have anything to do with your chosen weapon group being spears/polearms, nor does it adjust anything to do with feat requirements to allow you to use spears/polearms for things they usually can't. I'm legitimately confused - this seems like EVERYTHING you were complaining about. This is just Twin Parry but for spears and polearms. I mean it's a cool archetype otherwise but I'm not sure what it has to do with our discussion. Could you please clarify what you mean?

Let's be honest, no one will invest in secondary equipment for a fighter that is not from the weapon group they chose to specialize in, unless they don't care about class optimization and actively choose to fight below their capacity.

Making a fighter fight with a secondary weapon outside of their chosen group is like making a barbarian fight with a weapon that doesn't benefit from rage or a rogue with a 1d10/1d12 weapon. You can even do this in a desperate situation where you can't use your main attack benefit, but not on purpose.

For example, a fighter player who invested in fighting with a 2-handed force weapon will very rarely have invested several runes in a backup bow. It will probably use any bow it found lying around, at most it will have transferred some old runes to it, and even then!

I'm not sure how to respond to "A fighter who cares about class optimization won't invest in a secondary weapon" followed in the same breath by "They'll probably use a bow that's just lying around or have old runes on it".

It's dirt cheap to keep a weapon one step behind in fundamental rune progression, and if a weapon is your backup option, it doesn't need to have all of its property rune slots filled. I mean, if you wanna be plinking at Erinys with a 1d8 bow, be my guest, but literally 100 gp woulda doubled that, which is pocket change by level 8. Not counting the silver arrows, but you get my meaning.

Actually, JiCi...

While in Haft Striker Stance, you can use feats and abilities that normally require you to be wielding two melee weapons each in a different hand, treating the haft as the second weapon, but you can’t use abilities that require you to be wielding a two-handed weapon.

And while you can't Spear Dancer with a staff specifically, it doesn't limit you to melee Strikes, so you could absolutely chuck a ranged Spear at somebody, then step, then whack with a staff.

Like, it's unfortunate that Spear Dancer doesn't work with long clubs, sure, but there is a limit to which a weapon cannot emulate another weapon. To answer your "5 weapons in a session" strawman with my own, at what point do you just want Fighter to use an ordinary staff to fire arrows?

Fighter can still be extremely flexible within its own weapon choice if it wants to be. No other class can Trip with a non-Trip weapon. You wanna Strike twice well without agile and even better with it? Swipe ain't quite Sweep, but it achieves similar purpose and even gives Sweep a bonus. Twin Parry gives... need I go on?

Fighter's feats already turn weapons you have into weapons they aren't quite in ways that no other class gets access to in this quantity, that you can either take or ignore at-will. You won't find a Rogue wielding the same weapons as a Fighter that's able to do the same things without archetyping. And there are plenty of weapons in the game that can support a wide array of combinations of these feats.

I mean, do you not love getting free shit? Didn't think so. Ever wanna feel like a master craftsman, able to create the tools for the job when you need them, even when you don't have the luxury of downtime while the BBEG is currently riding the moon into the surface of Golarion? All while not spending a bloody silver piece???

Did I mention it's free!?

I can't not recommend any of the archetypes that give access to daily consumables or versatile vials for people like me!

...Not convinced? Ah, I see. I understand that these may feel like... a commitment. Perhaps wielding a gun just isn't your style? Don't like pets running around? Sure, sure, I get it... weirdo. But, no worries, that's only what's on the Premiere Menu.

Oh, and, of course, a special mention goes to Weapon Improvisor, for making even weapons understand the concept of "consumable!"

Yeah, it's an important distinction to make that Fighter isn't actually "limited" to any weapon group in particular. They are more proficient than ALL other Martial classes are with ALL simple/martial weapons until they hit level 5, where they choose one group to continue being more proficient in while the rest are still equal with every other martial in the game. This is an important distinction, and it does make a difference!

It's a soft specialization - the only thing you get from your chosen group is the extra +2 to accuracy and crit spec for your chosen group (until 13 where it becomes crit spec for all). And while that IS a good boon, mind you, and not taking advantage of it is somewhat foolish, that doesn't mean that you're somehow a worse martial if you need to pull out a polearm because the enemy is scary at melee, or because you want to dual-wield one from your chosen group and one from non-chosen, or anything like that.

There is not a single feat in the game which explicitly cares about Fighter's weapon group choice for Weapon Mastery - in fact, Advanced Weapon Training can even choose a weapon group different than your Weapon Mastery group if you really want to.

That's the thing about Fighters - if you want to just build a guy who can Strike 3 times with the same weapon and get big number, you can do that. But if you wanna build a guy who dual-wields a Dwarven Waraxe and a Morningstar who occasionally two-hands his axe AND has a Composite Longbow on their back to catch those pesky harpies out of the air? You can do that too. How, in any world, is that not an embodiment of its flexibility?

I like using Hero Forge, as well, even if I don't plan on actually buying the minis. Very good tool for realizing your character concept, even if it doesn't have everything perfect I want (compromising is good practice in and of itself, I think).

For online VTTs, pretty much anything works, obviously. Meme images or official art, as long as you think it represents your concept properly. My Hell's Vengeance Oread Gnome named Chrysoberyl has a raw chunk of crystal as his token on Foundry.

If physically playing and money is a concern, Errenor's suggestion is pretty perfect, especially if you like to recycle old boxes you have lying around. We had a boatload of dice when I played 5e with friends a while back, and so we just used different dice whenever we had to pull out the battlemap.

Also important to note that Fighter still has the Combat Flexibility line as one of its core class features, too, further emphasizing that Fighter is incredibly flexible via its feat selection, able to fulfill different roles day-by-day if the situation calls for it (and I guarantee you in a large, open-world type game like Kingmaker that situation WILL come up a bunch).

I will say, compared to some of the more esoteric issues that cropped up in the rules (when is "an attack roll" different from "an attack" from Pre-Remaster, for example), at least this one is mostly cut-and-dry, which allows GMs way easier motion to say whether or not they'll allow something.

If I know something isn't within RAW, but I don't think it's that big a stretch, it's easy for me to say "Yeah, I can give that one to you, but if it becomes a problem we'll talk about it later". The only issues that crop up from THESE types of corner-cases are typically PFS games (or GMs who typically rule things as close to PFS as possible).

Would still definitely like more clarification, and am glad that Favoured Weapon: Fist got brought up in the Errata thread. PFS is still a part of the community, after all.