BishopMcQ's page

Mindslaver Mold -- I would start with a Myceloid and add the Weak template.

Cerebric Fungus -- I would start with a Glimmervine and add the Anguished cry and Aroma from the Ghoran manipulator. Then reskin them to be more in line with the fungus. But those would be level appropriate for the scream and aura that the fungus has.

I'm getting strong Green Knight vibes from a fighter with a Draconic Oath to a Vorpal dragon.

From an art standpoint, the despair dragon has a creepy aspect and a crazy look in their eyes, that really speaks to me.

There's also the Quick Repair Skill Feat. At Trained, it becomes 1 minute which lets the character fix their shield and make other quick repairs while the healer sews them back together.

At Master, it can be done in 3 actions. Legendary, 1 Action. So to use the Tank bottlenecked at the door, you could have someone behind them who takes 3 actions to fix the shield if that heavy crit comes through. Is it the best strategy all of the time? No, but a single skill feat is a low entry point, if you already plan on taking Crafting. My Inventor (free Archetype Medic) got really good at playing "fix the leak," whether that was the equipment or the person using it.

Desperate Repair is also a nice "oh crap" spell for if you take a hit that wasn't planned on.

I would love to see a Remaster or errata of the Kineticist to allow it to better interact with some other aspects of the game like the Mythic rules.

Kinetic Activation and Voice of the Elements are functions that I really wish were baked into the class chassis. Having a Class feat that gives you the bonuses to Diplomacy with elementals or ways to use your impulses to shape the spells would provide a design space to build from.

Gain the ability to speak the language of one your elements at first level, and each time you reach a Gate's Threshold you can learn one new language of an element that you use. (So if you go dual gate at 1st level, there is a choice of which language you speak and you get the second one at 5th level)

Thanks for this. I will look at those. The characters are 15th level, so telling them that this will be a Custom level 7 magic item and then they have to go through the steps of finding someone to make it, or reconnecting with the contact that does custom formulae would be an easy narrative element.

How does the character feel about the others? If the others have all fallen and stabilized, it would be easy to threaten them. The commander orders the invisible PC to lay down their weapons or the others will be killed. Lower level enemies move into position and Ready to stab -- Making it clear that they will kill the rest of the party.

Is the one character enough of a team player to negotiate or will he let the others fall? Now the stakes are quite real and fair, with agency. Maybe the one PC could win, but he has to know that everyone else in the party is dead because of his choice.

Mechanically, all of the party is probably between Wounded 1-2, attacks against the unconscious AC are far more likely to Crit putting them straight to Dying 3 or 4, following round a few more stabs for good measure and the others are dead.

The Party is traveling across planes frequently and one character would like to keep in contact with an NPC. Sending and similar magic that I've seen all appear limited to the planet.

Is there an item that allows for sending mail across the planes to a consistent location, write in one book and it appears in the other, et cetera? If not, what do you think a reasonable item level or cost would be for that? Postal service in Golarion has generally been handwaved, but there are base line items to work from.

As a GM, I've swallowed a few PCs in my day with Cave Worms. Some strategies they've used:

Air Bubble is great reaction spell that the players learned to keep on hand.

Unfettered Movement as a buff when the recall knowledge says that the monster swallows fighters was also a bonus.

Dual-Handed Assault lets you increase the short sword damage die, Double Slice and similar feats let you add the damage of the strikes together before resistances so I'd say they count as one for the Rupture point.

Also, if a few rounds go by and the party doesn't have the ability to get the fighter out, as the GM, I have had the worm Regurgitate and aim at the wizard or other ranged combatant. This does damage to the target, gets you free, but you take some falling damage and land prone. Then a quick Thrash to keep up the attacks. This gives the party a round to buff before I target someone else to get Swallowed Whole. It's a little bit of failing forward that keeps the pressure on the party.

To touch on the argument on Buying a Scroll + Paying to copy into the spellbook - Nothing says that you have to have a scroll. That is certainly one way to do it, but you can have access to the spell from other means. Academies, pathfinder lodges, adventurer halls can all be places to trade information. As a GM, characters have spent downtime looking for specific spell knowledge to trade. Their adventures have earned them gold and allowed them to find Uncommon spells that can be bartered with or they just strike up conversations and collaborations. Magical Shorthand is great for this.

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One change that I do think could make Wizards more Versatile is if they could Drain Bonded Item for either casting a previously prepared spell without a spell slot (current ability) or to cast any spell in their spellbook using a spell slot even if it was not prepared. Being able to do that once a day as a clutch for when you don't have 10 minutes would provide versatility without stepping on the Sorcerer's toes.

I'd +1 the Focus Spells and Magical Schools being so widely varied that some are awesome and some feel like they need a Dev pass to bring in line with the others.

Tertiary thought -- Functionally, what are the differences between a mindscape and a demiplane? Duration is different, size?

A mindscape sits on the edge of the Astral Plane. A demiplane sits on the edge of the Astral or Ethereal planes. It's tricky to get into either one.

Beyond Rule Zero, there is also a specific call out in the book that allows for Mythic Destinies to be high level archetypes for non-Mythic characters. Just remove the Mythic tag and proficiency.

As a GM, that feels like the easiest solution to me. Or just use the non-mythic version for non-mythic characters.

Timmy the Talented can get a cabal of friends together to create a demiplane for use as their secret base. When a Mythic Max the Miracleworker does it, his is bigger. End of problem.

Have you looked at an Obedience Champion? Here is a simple build that I put together to punish the unholy.

(This is by no means an optimized build, it was simply a thought experiment.)

For the GMs, did you make any special player handouts for this AP, specifically book 3? I'm planning on incorporating some of the notes from the openings of each book on the lab tables and library. If I have time over the next few weeks, I'm thinking about trying to do that with some of the points from the sidebar on p 17-18.

Thanks for the clarification.

I have not been able to find any threads on this part of Battle Medicine. Within Battle Medicine, it says "The target is then immune to your Battle Medicine for 1 day."

My understanding has always been that each character gets one Battle Medicine per day, but the "your" in that statement reads that it's not Battle Medicine in general that they are immune to, but rather the Battle Medicine of that specific character.

Could a character therefore, do a quick Battle Medicine on themselves and still have the ability for another character to also Battle Medicine them within the same day?

I would go by the same guidelines as Mythic destiny archetype. While they are intended for Mythic characrs, they can be used as stand-alone high level archetypes. Just remove the Mythic trait, proficiency, and Mythic Points.

From there, if there is a narrative reason for one of those rituals to come into the Campaign, and the characters aren't Mythic, then story wins and it comes into the campaign. If there is a compelling reason to not have it in the campaign, then Rare or Mythic, either way as a GM, I can say "not this time."

The Library structure in Kingmaker did this on a broader scale.

Effects While in a settlement with a library, you gain a +1 item bonus to Lore checks made to Recall Knowledge while Investigating, as well as to Researching checks, and to Decipher Writing checks.

I think a book doing it for a specific Lore is fine, but I would have it be a 10 minute thing not a 1-action thing. If it was measured in actions, the mechanic would step on class design and some magic items.

Bag of Holding + Portable Hole = Astral rift

https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=2195

The Bag of Holding was remastered into the Spacious Pouch. I would guess that the Portable Hole if it is ever remastered will not have that functionality.

The Daywalker ancestry feat can also do it, if you are in sunlight.

I made a NPC human fighter, rebounding toss, ricochet stance, quick reversal and combat reflexes. All in on Athletics and fun skill feats with same.

Most of the time it was shield tossing, and shoving or disarming folks. Was he the biggest damage dealer around, no. Was he a ton of fun to play for a few sessions without outshining the BDH in the group, definitely.

It gave me some ideas on how I would remake him if I was going to play as a long term character.

Someone is disarming a trap. An ally is pooling their knowledge on how to disarm traps (aiding them). The person disarming the trap is taking extra effort to be clear and descriptive of what they see and what they are doing to try and help the person who is sharing their knowledge be able to share said knowledge (aiding the person who is aiding them).

Thanks! That helped me see.

Can someone layout an example where that would be feasible?

Other than a double bounce on a trampoline (and even that's not quite there) I am having trouble picturing a scenario where I set you up to help me, and my reaction to help you help me doesn't distract me from the task at hand.

A scenario that I could see:

Two characters are running from the guards and turn down a dead end alley. Character A gets to the end first and Aids another to boost their friend over the wall. Character B still running, gets to the wall and starts to scramble over it (reaction triggers). When Character B gets to the top, they pivot and reach down to offer their friend a hand up.

One character aided another and was aided on the same task, but they both independently had to complete it.

Could they both have just run, climbed the wall, and kept going? Probably.

Does this route guarantee that both of them get over the wall so the guards don't catch them? Yes.

Feels like a good story, I can see it play out in my mind's eye, doesn't feel cheesy.

Buy 4 - 10 foot poles, 100 feet of rope and a repair kit. Be Trained in Craft.

Frame them into a 5'x5' square, do some lashings, use the wood working tools in the repair kit to trim off the excess lengths. Spread the portable hole over the framing. Positioning one person on each side, you can now stand the hole up, align it on the floor, or with some scaffolding place it on the ceiling to appear through the floor into a room above.

Fun and hijinks ensue, much of which is not outside the realm of other 15th-17th level characters, which is where we would be to have the hole in the first place.

Thanks.

Would they use the character's level or the item level for the heightening?

Ed Reppert wrote:

Don't schools teach basic logic any more?

Weren't you reading? They got rid of schools.

I thought the Wizard blurb provided whole new schools of civic wizardry and fire pickles.

I think we just need to polish it up. Clearly the Kineticist's biggest issue is that it keeps moving around. The further it moves, the less energy it has. We can fix this with a little bit of polish and create the truly powerful, Potentialist.

The Potentialist doesn't need to worry about gates or composites. It has untold power, drawing that power from all that passes around it, even vast cosmic forces.

The Potentialist synergizes well with the Inventor, as the Inventor can truly exploit Mechanics to help the Potentialist spring into action. The Potentialist has truly explosive responses when combining with others. With a simple charge, the Potentialist can become electrifying to watch.

If the class is balanced around the idea that (within limits), the wizard will have the right spells prepared, how big of a change in power would it be to let Drain Bonded Item let you gain the ability to cast one spell that you know, rather than one that you prepared?

It's a once per day effect, you still need to cast it, etc.

If you are standing in a well lit area, with no cover, then the fighter is going to be more likely to hit. If the enemy is hiding behind cover, the Ranger is more likely to spot them and be able to attack at all.

Also, the fighter spends 2 actions to Double Slice or Power Attack. The Ranger spends 1 action to Hunt Prey, 1 action to Twin Takedown or Hunted Shot. Or the Ranger can give their party all bonuses on hurting the monster.

Level 2 - The fighter gets a new way to hurt people in well lit areas. The Ranger gets a new way to be in the wilderness, ignoring difficult terrain to be able to get away from monsters or close the distance on them while the fighter splashes through the muck.

Fighting on an open battlefield in the morning or in a well-lit tavern, yes the Fighter is going to hit more frequently. Good for them.

Fighting in the outdoors with factors like poor lighting, underbrush, and fog, then the ranger will do better.

Are you really going to sit here and use an anecdote to excuse the disgusting mess that is an Improve Knockdown Fighter? Show me any single action in the game as efficient as a Fighter knocking a boss flat on their back while dealing damage.

It is 2-actions and requires two feats. There are some other limitations around it as well.

Now, does that feat need to be rebalanced? Possibly.
Is a single edge-case proof that a class is entirely overpowered? No.

Having run games with a fighter and several other characters, the Fighter did not consistently outshine the other characters. Each character had time in the spotlight.

A bucket of sand is a finite object. A cup of water. Yes, it is made up of smaller parts -- but then again so is the tree. Pathfinder is not designed for us to get into the cellular level. The pedantic answer for measuring gas would be to do a volumetric analysis, understanding partial pressures. This would require some assumptions that Golarion's atmosphere is similar to Earth's.

If it was a sapling, yes, I would say that it probably could be done within the bulk limitations. Just not a tree large enough for a bridge (unless it was a bridge for ants).

Using base kinesis to weed a garden, where the phytokineticist looks at a weed and says "No" and it goes away, would be reasonable.

I would likely say that the Tree is one object, and can't have a portion suppressed. There are plenty of other ways to knock down a tree.

keftiu wrote:

The 1e Ninja was basically just a Rogue with a few Monk features; in 2e, a Rogue with a Monk Multiclass Archetype will be the closest thing by far.

Not quite. The ninja could do quite a few things a monk couldn't do and do some of them sooner. Someone said Rogues could turn invisible, yeah at lvl 20, far too late imo. Would I get more traction in the homebrew forum?

I do think you would get more folks who want to homebrew and come up with new things in the Homebrew section of the forum. In the General Discussion, most readers will likely point at how to do it within the current published rules.

I've also found the homebrew forum to be more responsive if you present a draft and ask for feedback, rather than ask for others to come up with the idea whole cloth for you.

Good luck with the conversion

Hello, there appears to be a minor layout glitch with the interactive map file for Dreamers of the Nameless Spires. The title page on the file that I downloaded from the store last night has the cover art for Dreamers, but the title says "They Watched the Stars"

The maps all align to the adventure for Dreamers, so it's functional. It just looks like the cover page needs an update.

I'm looking at items that can speed up overland travel.

Ring of the Weary Traveler is a 5th level item that temporarily blocks fatigue and has +10' movement for Overland Travel.

Hardy Traveler (9th level racial feat) has a similar +10' and another bonus.

Horseshoes of Speed are a 14th level item for the +10' version, 7th level for +5'.

If we made a new item say, Horseshoes of the Messenger, that just increase the speed by 10' for overland travel, would it be reasonable to be a 4th or 5th level item? I recognize that tactical movement is worth more than overland movement due to the combat applications.

I would agree with "Lore skill from backgrounds auto scaling like the Additional Lore feat." I think that's a fairly minor change that would likely not impact overall game balance.

I also like the option to have more spells with variable action economy. Having spells with 1/2/3 action variants can take more space in the books, but has a nice flow with the 3-action system. I really like the choices with "do I power this up or should I use my feat to give it reach?" This again is something that I feel can be done without a balance swing for the game designers.

Many of the options feel like "make my favorite class a little cooler."

All of that said, looking at the survey structure disincentivized me from taking the effort to check each box and read through the vast number of options, much less weigh the impact of each change against the others and the overall impact on the game system as a whole.

I would roll my dice and just apply attacks from left to right. As long as you have a consistent routine that doesn't make anyone think that you are cherry-picking specific dice for specific modifiers, it should be fine.

I've also made index cards with my common attack sequences or placed trimmed index cards into a sheet protector designed for baseball cards or similar, then used a wet erase marker to add modifiers.

There are a lot of options. Play around with a few and figure out what works best for you.

Alternately, turn the grid off and break out a tape measure. 1" = 5' move your characters around freely. 5' reach, anything within an inch is a fair target.

Welcome (back) to wargaming, which in many ways is the grandparent of modern roleplaying games. This also allows for actual circles, lines and cones rather than the corner cuts you deal with on a square grid.

Provides for an equal level of tactical simulation to account for abilities that would require a grid.

Can anyone provide context as to what this is supposed to be? I got an email that there is a new download available but it appears to be a separate product that is not an update to the Dark Archive file.

With the Jistka Imperium, my understanding was that the transfer was a single time and then they stayed within the automaton. Many of them then left Golarion entirely. (Please jump in here if I'm misremembering)

I'm curious about the ability to switch between organic sleeves based on purpose and activities. Especially since the Androffans have shown the ability to create sleeves built for specific purposes -- having neural pathways pre-laid down for combat abilities, language, art, etc, so that the consciousness who joined in would have those basic functions. Similarly, the reincarnate ritual rewrites the ancestry abilities and modifiers.

While reading about the Androffan foundries, I thought about "sufficiently advanced technology" and the Reincarnate spell.

Reincarnate places an existing soul into a brand new body -- the ritual doesn't really delve into some of the psychosocial changes that could cause for an individual, their self-image vs the reflected image in a mirror, familial relationships, etc.

If the Androffans have the technology to create wholly sentient beings, then the technology likely also exists to create organic shells without a soul. These would be similar to clones or simulacra and serve as a vessel to receive a reincarnated soul or the use of magic jars. We've had spells which could mirror much of this in previous editions, so the Androffan technology feels sufficiently advanced to function as the magic. Having a premade vessel feels like it would be easier to stitch the soul back into, rather than needing the magic to create one fully within the ritual.

Obviously if this was being done to create immortality and prevent the soul from being judged, Pharasma and other powers would likely get involved. But for swapping one organic sleeve for another, how would the lore get impacted? My premise is from empty shells specifically designed for the purpose, not stealing another person's body.

Or it can viewed as the system reinforces the idea of teamwork--there will be some things you cannot handle all by yourself and no one person should be the BDH every encounter.

But what about Androids? Nothing. Do they need to eat? Maybe, maybe not.

Androids breathe, eat, and sleep like a human, although they're incapable of biological procreation.

That part was clear. I agree that a lot of the rest of this can get murky.

The Game Mechanics and LPJ Design had some for PF1. I haven't seen any for PF2 yet, but it should be a pretty quick adjustment.

Summoner/Wizard was a combination that one of my players had a lot of fun with. He went Conjuration specialist, and it was an Eidolon and some Summon Monsters from the Wizard side or if the eidolon was gone, long lasting summons from the Summoner ability.

I have a set of 12 sided D4s. They roll better.

I don't think a lot of 5e players care about rule design!

Some people like Cookies and Cream, others like Rocky Road, some hate ice cream all together and eat pie. There's plenty of options for the gamers of the world to eat their dessert of choice.

From the thread for the Product Discussion, it sounds like they were custom maps, not an existing map pack. One of the GMs who ran it previously offered to link a copy of custom minis they made (cardstock print outs) early on release date for other GMs who might want them.

Can we move the subforums for closed Playtest to the bottom of the list? Maybe do this 2-4 weeks after the Playtest finishes if there is still significant traffic into those threads in the immediate debrief period.

Another thought would be to keep the Advice and Rules forums up closer to the top.

Right now, if I come into the PF2 forums there's General Discussion, then Dark Archive Playtest, Dark Archive Playtest General, Psychic, Thaumaturge, then 4 more subforums for Guns and Gear, 4 more for Secrets of Magic, then finally Advice, Rules Discussions, and the products, 3pp, etc.