Bluescale's page

Cordell Kintner wrote:

Lets take a spell like True Strike

I really wish we wouldn't... Every time someone tries to point out why something would be an issue, they point to True Strike... I think that spell might be the biggest problem child the system has. :P

True Strike is kind of like a black hole: it's so powerful that it creates a gravitational field that warps the spell attack math, even for Primal and Divine casters (druids, most clerics, about half the sorcerer's) that don't get the spell.

If casters are fine at late levels I'm not sure how you patch the early ones without overturning the former. granted I've never seen late lvl casters so all I have firsthand experience with are ones lvls 1-10

I'm in the same boat, my group rarely gets above level 10 (heck, we rarely get above level 8), so talk of things like, "you may suck at first, but your caster will get Legendary Casting at level 19" ends up sounding like "you may have financial problems now, but they'll all be gone once you win the lottery."

SuperBidi wrote:

Ascalaphus didn't talk about Wizards. Also, the discussion is about spellcasters.

Well, as a prepared caster without full proficiency progression (Warpriest) I can assure you that my attempts at counteracting are not especially successful, even if I actually happen to have the correct spell in the correct spell slot.

In general I think that the currect system heavily favours spontaneous casters, that can simply repeat / spam crucial spells like Dispel Magic or Slow and take full advantage of the 4 levels of effect, e.g. successful save effects.

Well it definitely favors bards, healbots, and support builds. On the other hand, playing an offensive sorcerer (focusing on evocation) often feels like I'm fighting against the game system.

Verzen: *spends entire playtest demanding Evolution Point system back*

Also Verzen:

Verzen wrote:

I just want individualism and uniqueness that I can't change on a moments notice.

Wanting a point-based system and having a unique eidolon that cannot be changed constantly isn't a contradiction. While I wouldn't like a system like this, a point-based system where once a point is spent it can never be changed would fulfill both those statements. It would be annoying because I wouldn't be able to recreate my first PF1e summoner, but I can't do that with the current playtest summoner either (my first summoner was a "devil summoner" who would make temporary contracts with progressively more powerful devils, mechanically done by rebuilding the eidolon to match a different type of devil as closely as possible every few levels).

To me it seems that a lot of things in 1e that were permanent buffs (or at least very long lasting) are made to only be very short buffs in 2e. I'm not sure exactly what the purpose of that is, I guess just another way to keep casters in check, but it's definitely something I've noticed. While its still in playtest mode, look at magus and its magus potency - it only lasts a minute where in 1e similar effects were constant.

So I think that evolution surge is being looked at as a bandaid solution for a character that wanted an eidolon with whatever kind of movement, without it being constant. Like if your eidolon was a griffon, it can fly at early levels with help from the summoner, otherwise it wouldn't be able to until 16th level. Paizo is again steering away from 1e's constant buffs. In some ways it's a good balancing factor, other times it's a little annoying and brings the game down to a slog (has it been ten minutes?).

Personally I like evolution surge. It could be made into a feat, like rangers animal aspect, pretty easily.

The thing I would be concerned about if it were to become a feat is that it provides so much of an advantage that it simply becomes a feat tax. It would have to be weakened. Maybe it would have to give a lesser version of a permanent feat (such as having Alacritous Evolution changed to give a permanent +20 to speed, while Evolution Surge gives a temporary +10) and not be able to stack with permanent abilities/boosts granted by feats. If it were to become a feat as it is, you would be hard pressed not to take it.

You already know my views. Correspondingly, I feel like an Eidolon who can't do most of the things you listed (even if its a choice) fails to meet the bar.

Eidolons really should be the best companion not just the one with most damage.

Agreed, if your entire class is built around having a companion, said companion should not be upstaged by the optional companion of a non-dedicated class. A druid is just fine without a companion, but a summoner is barely functional without the eidolon. If the animal companion is superior to the eidolon in many situations, then the summoner has to ask why they didn't just hire a bodyguard instead of learning to summon.

Suddenly, my Eidolon doesn't seem so customizable; suddenly, the Summoner becomes the "Evolution Surge" class.

The Summoner already has a dull routine of expectations every encounter.

Again, i like Evolution Surge, it is very effective, efficient, and powerful...it just kinda makes the class more dull because i know with how good it is and how insignificant the feats that grant permanent options are in comparison.

It almost sounds like i'm trying to make a call to nerf Evolution Surge but that's not really what i'm trying to get at.
It's not broken, it doesn't trivalize other classes, the problem isn't how powerful Evolution surge is.

Looking at it like that, Evolution Surge seems like the True Strike of Summoners: a spell that temporarily patches a mechanical/mathematical hole in the design. The spell then crowds out any attempts to actually fix the hole.

In this case, the argument seems to be that because you can just cast Evolution Surge at the beginning of combat and give the eidolon improved abilities then, there is no need to give these abilities to the eidolon permanently. Of course, if you follow this to the logical extreme, why not just make all eidolons the same pregen blob and have Evolution Surge give the eidolon everything: type, attacks, ability modifiers, etc.

In the end, bards are just better. About the only thing that occult sorcerers have over bards is one additional spell slot per spell level and a set list of spells from other traditions. Bards focusing on casting can eventually draw from any tradition, can get more powerful unique cantrips, and at 20th level bards can get the holy grail of spontaneous spellcasting, making all of their spells signature spells.

There is non. The whole thing is balanced because casters can target all 4 defenses (AC and all saves) and often do SOMEthing on a successful save, while a martial character does nothing on a miss.

Also, all (serious) casters go up Legendary, while most martials are stuck at Master.

Legendary at Level 19, something probably 95% of caster players will never see...

I'd like to see an AP about a quest through the planes, as well as a "Journey to the Center of Golarion" type AP. In the past, we've had APs that went to another plane or to a vault for a single book, but I'd like to see the entire AP focused on it.

Temperans wrote:

KrispyXIV wrote:

andreww wrote:

Ubertron_X wrote:

I think we might be up to something here. And while a certain table variance is expected from any RPG this massive variance could be a major reason for any perceived or not perceived balance issues.

Again, how does PFS handle this?

I have never had anyone ask what a creature level was nor seen it happen. If I was asked by a player I would not give that information. If they made a recall knowledge check I might give them an idea of how they might react to an incapacitation based spell.

Why would you withhold it, knowing that its a fundamental part of most game decisions a player (not character) would make?

I'm genuinely curious. There are significant game subsystems that rely on this information for informed decision making.

One of the biggest draws of TRPGs is the ability to immerse themselves. Usually that is done by limiting the game elements as much as physically possible, that includes level and metagaming knowledge. Giving away the level is a direct contradiction to immersion and helps break the illusion during play.

In other words this is one of the debates over Simulationism, Narrativism, and Gamism.

I mean, I suppose I personally don't have an issue separating those elements in a game like Pathfinder. I suppose that is an obstacle here, which exercervates peoples issues with feeling like they're being penalized for choosing incap spells if they don't know what theyre going to get when they take the action.

Incap is a game element, so its important to understand the related game elements in any case imo.

It's the same with the table culture in my area, the GM never tells the players the level of a monster or exact numbers on a monster's AC or saves. Telling players a monster's level is just seen as too metagamey.

On a related note, the group also sees the incapacitation trait as a trap, as we always have to assume the monster we're facing will succeed on its save, and thus incapacitation will make it a critical success.

NemoNoName wrote:

Personally, I really dislike Magic Missile, much like I dislike Fireball. If you want to be doing damage in this form, play a Sorcerer.

I want to do damage in this form, but I wanted to play a high Int scholar instead of a high Cha face. Which is why I am playing an Evoker.

As an aside, I hope the new APG will give us something like the 1st Edition Sage Bloodline, something that lets sorcerers cast from Int instead of Cha. I always have preferred spontaneous casting over prepared casting, but I hate being the party face.

I'd like to take a step back and look at the summoner on a fundamental level. What is the intended draw of the class? What kind of character concepts does it seek to fulfill that can't be fulfilled by other classes, both narratively and mechanically?

If I had no idea what a summoner was or how it worked, how would you sell me on the class?

Really quick answer, you're a Pokemon Master with one pokemon.

Bluescale wrote:

Something I'd like is more support for sorcerer bloodlines.

Same.

One of my big hopes before PF2 launched was that they'd make Sorcerer Bloodlines and Wizard Schools as interesting and involved as Oracle Mysteries were in PF1.

Yeah, when the oracle first came out, I thought that if Paizo ever did a new edition, the sorcerer bloodlines should be set up to work more like oracle mysteries. It would have made the class feel less like most of the important decisions were made at character creation. I was disappointed that they went with the PF1e approach to the class.

Something I'd like is more support for sorcerer bloodlines. Not just new bloodlines, but support for existing bloodlines. For example:

Feat: Basic Bloodline Mutation (enter bloodline name) - Replaces a sorcerer's level 1 focus spell with the alternate focus spell provided.

There would also be feats for the level 6 and level 10 focus spells, so that you can get more choices for a sorcerer beyond level one. I'd like to avoid the PF1e trap of giving other classes post-first level options but only giving sorcerers yet another bloodline. It was annoying that wizards got discoveries, but sorcerers got nothing comparable.

Also, at the moment, from a math perspective, part of the reason spellcasters get to Legendary in spells is to make up for missing out on magic weapon enhancements.

Just wanted to comment on this since I've seen this argument before. Getting Legendary spellcasting at level 19 doesn't really make up for a lack of enhancements before then. Given that most at home campaigns tend to die out by the mid-teens in levels, getting a math fix at level 19 is kind of academic, as almost no caster will ever be around long enough to see it.

Recently there have been discussions about what some see as deficiencies in casters (focused on wizards, but sometimes including other classes). Unfortunately, these discussions tend to get mired in arguments and genuinely interesting ideas get buried in the ensuing flood of posts. So I wanted to create a thread for ideas people have on *how* they would like to have casters improved in the future, be it errata, feats, archetypes, new classes, new items, etc. I'll start it off with a feat, and archetype, and a class I would like to see:

(Note that I primarily play spontaneous casters, and the archetypal caster in my mind has always been the NES/SNES era Final Fantasy Black Mage, a spontaneous elemental evoker who is the living embodiment of a glass cannon, so there is an obvious bias in my examples.)

Feat: Focused Spontaneity - Metamagic, Free Action - A spontaneous caster with this feat can spend a focus point to treat one non-signature spell in their repertoire as a signature spell until the end of the turn the focus point was spent in. (The wording would need to be cleaned up.)

Archetype: Specialist Caster - Can be taken by any caster, prepared or spontaneous. The caster gains a bonus to attack rolls (and maybe DCs) for spells of one tradition, but loses the ability to cast spells from a different tradition (I'm not sure if the different tradition should be hard-coded or chosen by the player).

Class: Summoner - I should note that while I said Final Fantasy had my archetypal caster, in my mind the archetypal summoner is a pokemon trainer. This would require a new system for eidolons, as the eidolon would be more important than the summoner and thus the current minion/animal companion system wouldn't work. The summoner's purpose would be support for the eidolon, not the other way around. I wouldn't have the summoner be a full caster, but instead use a system similar to multiclassing where the can take an "introductory" spellcasting feat at level 2 that grants them 2 cantrips of their choice, then basic spellcasting (feat 4), expert spellcasting (feat 12), and master spellcasting (feat 18). Also, taking a page from bard composition cantrips, there would be special spells specifically to support eidolons that the summoner takes feats to gain, with the exception of a Summon Eidolon cantrip at would be automatically received at level 1. It would be nice to also be able to have a secondary eidolon, though a summoner could only have one out at a time, and they would probably have to share a common HP pool so you couldn't abuse swapping out.

I look forward to seeing other ideas.

Fumarole wrote:

I wasn't thinking of mechanics so much as monsters. So far in both Age of Ashes and Extinction Curse there are monster stat blocks in the Adventurer's Toolbox that don't show up in the adventure.

When you (casually?) mentioned on the forums that the tarrasque would be in Broken Promises some people (me included) got excited. When we ultimately learned it was simply as a stat block in the Adventurer's Toolbox that excitement deflated.

We were still figuring it all out in Age of Ashes, and even a little in Extinction Curse. You'll note that the presentation format for the Adventurer's Toolbox changes a few times, for example, as we go forward, with the intro turning into a full page illustration and the NPCs moving to the back. Going forward, we're getting better and better about all the toolbox options actually having representation and "screen time" in the adventure itself. I suspect that we'll have some things now and then that show up in the Toolbox and won't be in the adventure, but they'll be less and less common events, assuming it all works out the way I thought.

The "deflated" element you cite about the Tarrasque not actually playing a part in the adventure is a great example of feedback that helps us course correct things, but we can't make those decisions until folks actually see the product and interact with it, by which time the next several volumes are already off to the printer. There's a time delay between what we print and what we change, for example. As I write this, for example, we're only a month away from the writing deadline for the Adventure Path that starts 2021.

I actually preferred the old style with the NPCs right after the adventure, then various articles, then the bestiary at the back. With the Age of Ashes Adventurer's Toolbox, I spend a lot of time flipping through the back trying to find what I'm looking for.

I do like that Asmodeus only allows LE clerics.

Does it say why he only accepts LE clerics? I would think that the god of lies...er Law would want LN clerics around for plausible deniability at least.

Rysky wrote:

While you might not get the physical book before street date you’ll still get as you note the PDF before street date and also for free, which are the main benefits for subscribing. Not so much getting the physical before street date.

Not necessarily, from what I understand the PDF doesn't become available until after the physical ships out. If it doesn't ship out til after street date, you're just SOL.

Correct, the PDF does not become available for download until the physical book ships. If the book ships a week after the release date, then the PDF becomes available a week after the release date (trust me, it's happened to me many times).

Recently, there has been much hay of the damage-dealing mage being, if not a trap, a choice that the system doesn't favor. But is this true? I'm not a CharOp person (as anyone who has seen any of my characters would agree), but many people here are. So my question is: can you make an effective evocation specialist? One that focuses on dealing damage, and casts few to no debuffs. Would it be able to help fight in boss battles, or would the evoker have to stay to the side and hope some below-level minions come along to fight? Also, would a wizard or a sorcerer be a better damage-dealer?

Kennethray wrote:

If it's about the true neutral god, a player in my group once had a discussion about how true neutral clerics suck for a few things. The way I see it, it is the same as any stat, yes you get less with a poor choice in alignment, same as if you make your Charisma and Wisdom 8's. There are poor options that most people avoid.

Neutral gods also tend to get other blast options. Lightning Bolt for Gozreh, Phantasmal Killer for Pharasma. Even Gorum, who is CN, gets Weapon Storm.

Too bad there aren't other options for divine sorcerers who worship no god or a neutral god yet are given Divine Wrath by their bloodline (and by RAW cannot cast it).

I think the fact that so many people prefer the sorcerer to the prepared options means something is being done right with it, even if other people don't care for it. Seems like folks gravitating to different classes is working as intended.

Of course, some people (like me) don't choose to play sorcerers because they love the class, but because the alternative is Vancian casting. I hate being the face of the party, but because sorcerers are forced to have a high charisma, the rest of the party feels free to dump the stat. I would rather play an intelligence-based caster, but all the int-based casters are prepared casters, so I'm stuck with sorcerer.

I don't entirely agree with your analysis, but watch the condition. What if you don't know what you're walking into?

A sorcerer is going to look really good if you get into an adventure where every monster seems to spam the same status condition. The cleric runs after the Remove That spell after two encounters, the sorcerer can keep going for a while longer.

The basic idea behind sorcerers is "what if I need a lot more of one particular spell than expected".

That only really works if the sorcerer actually knows the spell that's needed. Otherwise, both classes are in the same boat that day, and the cleric has the advantage the next day.

Lanathar wrote:

HeHateMe wrote:

The only problem I really see with Sorcerers is that they nerfed spontaneous casting. If it still worked the same way it did in 1e, Sorcerers would be great.

Otherwise I think Sorcerer is pretty well designed.

Could you help clarify for me how it has changed ? I clearly haven’t looked closely enough

In 1e, once you learned a spell, you could cast it and it automatically scaled up to your level. Take Fireball as an example. In 2e, you need to learn Fireball again each time you gain a casting level, otherwise it never scales up. In 1e, Fireball did 1d6 damage per level, so as long as you learned it once, you never had to learn it again. Alot of blasting spells were like that.

Now that I give it some thought, I think giving Sorcerers more spells learned per level than Bards would've been a good way to balance the classes. The general consensus is that Bards are better than Sorcerers, and I'd have to agree.

Also in PF1e, if you wanted to cast a lower level spell using a higher level slot, you could, but that's not allowed in PF2e (for instance, if you ran out of 2nd level slots, but still had a 3rd level slot available, you could "downgrade" that slot to cast a 2nd level spell. Now you can't do that; if you want to use a higher level spell slot to cast a lower level spell, you have to heighten the spell to the level of the slot.).

I can definitely see the argument being made that wizards and sorcerers are now the "jack of all trades, master of none" classes. They can do damage to the enemy, but not as much as a martial. They can buff and debuff, but not as much as a bard. They can AoE weak enemies in droves, but have a hard time with at-level enemies, and finishing off weak mobs feels like less important mop-up work. For many people, being the "backup damage-dealer," "backup buffer," or "backup healer" doesn't feel great.

That argument stating the Battle Oracle's curse is effecting even AC from armor seems very rules lawyery (which given the history of the game, is part for the course. It reminds me of a one story I heard about a passive/aggressive GM and his overly harsh ruling on a Fey Sorcerer's "Fey Disappearance" being virtually cancelled out by his class's blood magic ("You become invisible but immediately are surrounded by a technicolor aura. You're still concealed, but everyone knows about where you are.")).

We haven't talked about the dreadful class feat and focus spell "choices" for Sorc and Wizard...

Yeah, I just *love* my Undead Sorcerer's level 1 focus spell. After playing through to level 4, I have never spent a single focus point on it, as I've yet to encounter a situation where I would need to heal someone with a Harm spell instead of just using a Heal spell. If there was an archetype that exchanged the focus spell for something useful, like a cantrip from a different tradition, I would take it in an instant.

Filthy Lucre wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

that's the downside of not having to guess how many castings of which spell you're going to need in advance

Wizards don't have to guess either thanks to one Arcane Thesis option.

Good luck in having 10 minutes to exchange a spell when fighting for your life...

Why assume that a wizard with Arcane Thesis wouldn't just prepare generic combat spells (the type a sorcerer would learn) and switch out to a specific spell needed (that the sorcerer couldn't afford to learn) in the 10 minute interval? And if you think about it, a universalist wizard is already partway to being a spontaneous caster, what with the Arcane Bond letting it spontaneously cast one of its prepared spell each level. Prepared "fireball" once but need it twice, just drain your Bond for that level.

As this has come up in several threads recently:

Can a spontaneous spellcaster's higher-level spell slot be used as a lower-level spell slot (ex. using a 4th level slot to cast an unheightened or unheightenable 3rd level spell), or can a spell *only* be cast in a higher-level slot if the spell has been heightened?

Basically, if you have 3 3rd level slots and 1 4th level, would you be able to treat it as though you had 4 3rd level slots and no 4th level slots and cast a 3rd level spell 4 times?

I just wish that Sorcerers had a way to change their signature spells outside of leveling up and "unlearning" the spell. The Sorcerer writeup says that you can change it in downtime the same as a spell (referencing page 481), but the downtime retraining rules don't say anything about retraining spells. The only way I see to quickly change signature spells is to multiclass into Bard and at 8th level take the (4th level Bard) feat that allows you to switch one signature spell per day when doing daily preparations.

Charisma as it stands is in a unique position, and can't be treated like the other stats without consequence. The only way to bring it in line is to formalize some alternative means to handling the narrative power of social skills and their interaction with ability scores.

That uniqueness is the problem in many cases. Every GM I have had in the past 5 years has subscribed to the "roleplay, not rollplay" philosophy of social encounters, meaning that charisma rolls never come up, and high Charisma is nothing but an ability penalty for my Sorcerer or Summoner (and even if they did do charisma roles, I don't want to play "the face"). So it stands out as the only ability that requires the GM to adjust their playstyle to make relevant.

Squiggit wrote:

MaxAstro wrote:

To be fair, the alternative - Wizards having to learn spells individually - is only a very minor inconvenience for the Wizard.

Yeah, but the alternative of letting a sorcerer heighten a spell without learning it five times would be nice.

They gave “heighten anything” a try. It wasn’t a good experience for a couple reasons. It pressured people into taking scaling spells over other ones. It also appreciably increased the time spontaneous casters took in combat vs. prepared casters. If I just take scaling spells on my Sorc, then by the time I hit third-level, I’m looking at nine or more options for my top level slots and for at least six of those, I’m then going to weigh if I can get away with just a second-level slot. I can already see the optimization guides dinging any spell without scaling for Sorc guides and bloodline strength being ranked heavily on its selection of scaling spells.

And, if you want that, that’s a really obvious house rule! You’re probably an experienced player and won’t have much trouble. But it’s not a great state for design or for intermediate player experience.

So, instead, give spontaneous casters enough to take advantage of spontaneous casting (always dispel efficiently, get the Fly line on a low-level slot) without encouraging clutter. And, if you don’t have enough scaling and need to learn Invisibility 2 separately from Invisibility 4 or move your Summon spells up, that’s no different than before.

Well, collapsing the spell lines did make things different - it meant Paizo could decrease the number of spells the Sorcerer was allowed to learn for each spell level. With the "Spontaneous Heightening" rule, they could say that you already know more spells, so you don't need more spells known, but whether that is still true will really depend on how the final version of the Sorcerer turns out. The Bard feat we've seen indicates that a signature spell is locked and can't be changed daily, which would mean that the Sorcerer is still being punished with fewer spells known.

QuidEst wrote:

Kyrone wrote:

Ngodrup wrote:

I'm a bit confused about how (we're predicting) signature spells work. Is it that, for every spell level you have access to, out of the spells you know, you choose one to be able to heighten, and can cast that one in any (equal or higher) spell slot, getting the appropriately heightened effect?

Think of a lvl 8 Bard:

Lvl 1 Spells: 3 Spells know, one of them is a signature spell
Lvl 2 Spells: 3 Spells know, one of them is a signature spell
Lvl 3 Spells: 3 Spells know, one of them is a signature spell
Lvl 4 Spells: 3 Spells know, dont have signature spell because they don't have acess to a higher spell slot yet.

My prediction is that you will also be able to undercast signature spells so that your low-level slots have options. So if you needed your level two slot for Dispel Magic, your level four signature spell could be Invisibility, allowing you to use the lower slot to cast the breaks-on-attack version when you don’t need the combat version.

If you can overcast, why would you ever learn a spell at a higher level that it is so you can undercast it?

Because Bards and Sorcerers get so few spells in their repertoires that they can easily be forced to learn a spell at a higher level.

Kyrone wrote:

The only thing that we have is this bard feat

tqomins wrote:

Here you go:

Versatile Signature (Feat 4)
Prerequisites polymath muse
While most bards are known for certain signature performances and spells, you're always tweaking your available repertoire. When you make your daily preparations, you can change one of your signature spells to a different spell of that level from your repertoire.

My guess is that for each spell level spontaneous casters have one spell that they can heighten at will.

I'd guess one per spell level. Which makes sense- one of the concerns was that you'd want to spend a lot of spells on scaling spells.

That's...not encouraging. Instead of 2 spells chosen daily, it could be 1 per level that is locked? Hopefully we will at least be able to choose the Signature Spells, instead of them just being the spells you get from your bloodline.

Malk_Content wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Well, we know what the minion trait does, so the issue is which of these three scenarios is most desirable-

1) Animal Companions have the minion trait.
2) Animal Companions are significantly less puissant and durable than player characters; they are likely to die in fights against same level opposition.
3) Animal Companion focused PCs essentially are twice as many characters as all the other players get.

4) The expected damage and versatility increase from Animal Companions is about the same as a similar feat or feature investment.

Or if we can't believe balance is possible, then outcome 2 isn't all that bad. I don't think ANY option should be viable all the time. If the level 12 Companion user has to be careful when stumbling upon an Adult Green Dragon, thats fine! Just like how a rogue doesn't get to sneak attack all the monsters in the book, or your choice of spells might fail against a monster with particular resistances/immunities etc.

5) There could be a pet class where almost all the power is in the pet (the pet can have 3 actions, and the "owner" gets 1). I call this the Lassie/Little Timmy solution.... The "owner" is pretty much there to talk to people (and interpret Lassie's actions).

If the "owner" dies, Lassie just finds a new one, the same way a ranger finds a new animal companion.

Based on my playstyle, I'd call that class the Summoner. My Summoners tended to cast a buff at the beginning of combat and then go hide, while the eidolon did everything. The eidolon was the important part of the class, the actual PC was basically an afterthought.

My biggest fear is that when the Summoner is eventually brought over, the eidolon will be too weak to do anything.

Bluescale wrote:

Is the only difference between the General and the Spymaster the faux-leather cover on the book?

Supposedly there will be later things added to spymaster/ruler if they are unlocked but we really don't know what any of them are yet.

If Spymaster/Ruler gets unlocks but General doesn't, I wonder if there will be a way to get Ruler but ask for the normal cover (I really don't like faux-leather covers).

Deadmanwalking wrote:

I'd never remove the requirement to spend an action commanding your companion. I could, however, see a dedicated Summoner Class having something to give your companion the full 3 Actions a PC has.

The distinction being that your companion doesn't have spells, while you likely do, making your third action a great deal more valuable than your companion's.

Extremely slippery slope to dance on IMO.

For one, most spells cost 2 actions, which leaves the Summoners third action as a very ripe and valuable trade off to get 3 actions.

If they did allow it at some point, the second half of the character life would be where it should live. 5 actions is insane.

Not even going to think about the whole possibility of Haste and the other buff spells. Or the fact that Eidolon could also utilize Skills.

It really ultimately comes down to what shape the Eidolon takes, but if that shape in any way resembles a PC, and the Summoner is also as valuable as a standard PC, it's going to suffer from all the same issues as before.

This is one of those classes that has a concept, but pretty much 90% of the original implementation needs to be scrapped in favor of a new approach.

IMO of course. The class has never added anything to my games other than headaches. Almost always chosen by players that wanted something ultra strong and rarely any actual role playing associated with the concept itself.

How about a rule that when the eidolon is in play, the eidolon and summoner have a pool of 4 actions, but any one of them can only use a total of 3. So the summoner could take 3 actions and the eidolon 1, both could take 2 actions, or the summoner could take 1 action and the eidolon 3 .

Perhaps it would be best for the PF2 corebook to specifically state (multiple times in multiple places) that "at level" combats are designed to be difficult, and if you want your players to feel like heroes, put them up against level-2 challenges. Many of the complaints I see here about combat (which really should be in the other thread) are about how ineffective characters seem against an "at level" threat.

It should probably be pointed out the bad optics of presenting this mediocre to bad feat as the only update to the sorcerers (not counting a new bloodline) in the same update as the wizard suddenly getting a feat for free (giving them another feat slot) and giving them the ability to swap lower level spell slots for higher ones. These class updates aren't looked at in a vacuum, and the comparison doesn't make the sorcerers look very good.

Frankly, I would have preferred sorcerers be more like 1E kinetisists, drawing on and shaping raw inborn power instead of casting distict spells like the wizard. Barring that, if you want to give bloodlines more oomph, you could do like the Oracle from 1E and have a bunch of 1st level class feats for each bloodlines that can be picked across the life of the character, instead of three fixed abilities at specific levels.

The first example of Fireball vs. the Fighter’s Attack doesn’t quite capture the whole nuance of the situation.

Monsters save on a 9, which means they have 50% success rate and 10% critical success rate. They have 35% failure rate and 5% critical failure rate.

This means they take:
5d6 damage 50% of the time
10d6 damage 35% of the time
20d6 damage 5% of the time
0 damage 10% of the time

In total they’re expected to take: (2.5 + 3.5 + 1)d6 = 7d6 damage per Fireball. That’s 7d6 per target in the burst. Average 24.5 damage.

The Fighter gets to attack up to 3 times, with the following damage:

3d8+4 dmg 50% of the time
6d8+8 dmg 10% of the time
3d8+4 dmg 30% of the time
6d8+8 dmg 5% of the time
3d8+4 dmg 5% of the time
6d8+8 dmg 5% of the time

In the best case scenario, the Fighter is dealing about...
50+30+5 = 85% of 3d8+4 AND
10+5+5 = 20% of 6d8+8

Which is equivalent to 85+40 = 125% of 3d8+4
Aka 1.25 * 17.5 = 21.875 totals expected damage.

Therefore, the Wizard’s Fireball, even if it only hits 1 target, should do more damage than a Fighter attacking 3 times in a round. The Fighter can keep it up all day, but the Wizard still has the potential for much more burst damage.

So with this example, the evoker or universalist wizard (or sorcerer) can do slightly more damage than the fighter up to three times per day, if they only prepared fireballs in the 5th level slots. Meanwhile, the fighter outpaces them in damage on the 4th round of combat. This is quite possibly intentional, so that mages don't outshine martials, but it can certainly make mage players feel useless, which can (at least anecdotally) be seen in the various playtest posts saying that a group's mage character either dropped out or abandoned their character in favor of a martial.

I was hoping we would get word on remaining subscription shipments one way of the other today. Are you still working on shipping them? Just like last month, my subscriptions moved from "pending" to "in my sidecart" on Tuesday, and they're still there (I was paying closer attention this month because of what happened last month, and it seems like my subscriptions were put into the sidecart around the time the Comics thread said the comic orders were being generated).

For creature types, I would actually reduce the number of types. I don't really see a need for both humanoid and monstrous humanoid, for instance (why exactly are gnolls and mermaids humanoids, while hags and minotaurs are monstrous humanoids?).

Yeah, just use Magus with spells from the Bard list maybe? A Magus/Bard cross looks ideal really.

Actually, I'd say a bard with the magus spell list would be better. The bard's spell list is not very suited to the red mage, as a red mage can learn many different offensive spells (and mainly elemental ones at that). The bard's spell list, on the other hand, is mainly about illusion and enchantment, not offense (the first direct damage dealing spell a bard gets is the 2nd level sound burst, and it can't deal elemental damage until the bard is level 7, since the Elemental Spell metamagic feat raises the spell level by 1). With the magus spell list, you only need to add the cure spells and you've got it. The bard is a better fit than the magus for the red mage anyway, as in Final Fantasy, there are no prepared spellcasters; all the mages in the original version of Final Fantasy I worked their magic like sorcerers (the remakes switched to the more standard spell point system).

Recently, I noticed we still had a hole in one set of monsters: the nagas. We have LE, LN, LG, N, CE, and CN nagas, but we still need CG, NG, and NE nagas. And the epic Ha-Naga from the SRD.

Others that I would like to see are:
Infernal and Elemental Titans
the Abyss Gigas, Hell Gigas, and some new gigas (gigases? gigasi?)
Mist Dragon
new Weirds (there are some in the ToHC, but how about other ones like sand or shadow)
Mušḫuššu (aka the Sirrush)
Enenra (a good-aligned smoke elemental from Japanese myth)
Isonade (a type of sea monster)
Shachihoko (monstrous carp with tigerlike heads [often seen as statues and roof decorations in real life])
Ushi-Oni (minotaur-based oni)

Some others from the Epic Level Handbook SRD that haven't yet been brought over:
Ha-Naga (as mentioned above)
Anaxim (a CR 22 construct that could become a new type of Inevitable)
Atropal (reduced in power)
Dream Larva (reduced in power)
Phane
Xixical
Force Dragon (reduced in power)
Prismatic Dragon (reduced in power, I can see these and the mist dragon being used in an outer planar dragon sept, with two other dragon types)
Gibbering Orb
Gloom
leShay (reduced in power, becoming nascent archfey/Eldest)
Lavawight
Thorciasid
Uvuudaum (reduced in power, could be another inhabitant of Abaddon)
Vemiurge

From the Psionics SRD:
Cerebrilith
Dromite
Thought Eater (with an appearance closer to its original form in the AD&D1e MM)

From the Modern SRD:
Leechwalker (from the Arcana Creatures SRD)
Doom Hag (from the Menace SRD)

Okay, let me try my hand at this (my katakana is a bit rusty):

* Adherer (アドヒーラ adohiira)
* Adhukait (アヅカイト azukaito)
* Asurendra (アスレンドラ asurendora)
* Azruverda (アズルベルダ azuruberuda)
* Baregara (バレガラ baregara)
* Ceratioidi (セラチオイヂ serachioiji)
* Crucidaemon (クルシデイマン kurushideiman)
* Vulnudaemon (バルヌデイマン barunudeiman [this one is hard to write in katakana])
* Coloxus (コロクスス korokususu or コロクス korokusu [I'm unsure of how to deal with the "x"])
* Schir (シル shiru or シーア shiia [the second one is probably better])
* Derhii (デルヒ deruhi [I've always pronounced the "h"])
* Dire Corby (ダイア・コルビ daia korubi)
* Aghash (アガシ agashi)
* Akvan (アクバン akuban)
* Doru (ドル doru, or maybe ドール douru)
* Pairaka (パイラカ pairaka)
* Sepid (セピド sepido)
* Shira (シラ shira)
* Festrog (フェストラーゴ fesutoraago)
* Flumph (フランフ furanfu)
* Ghorazagh (ゴラザグ gorazagu)
* Grodair (グロデール gurodeeru [I tend to put emphasis on the "air" part], but グロデーア gurodeea might also work)
* Kamadan (カマダン kamadan)
* Mobogo (モボゴ mobogo)
* Pukwudgie (パクアジ pakuaji)
* Dandasuka (ダンダスカ dandasuka)
* Raktavarna (ラクタバーナ rakutabaana)
* Sabosan (サボサン sabosan)
* Shae (シェイ shei)
* Tophet (タフェト tafeto or タフェット tafetto)
* Jotund Troll (ヨウタン・トロル youtan tororu)
* Voonith (ブーニス buunisu [emphasis on the "voo"])
* Yithian (???)
* Zuvembie (ズベンビ zubenbi)

Draconic is a good language, spoken by dragons of all stripes, lizardfolk, and kobolds. With run-of-the-mill lizardfolk and kobolds, it may be the only language they understand. And given the common hubris of dragons, even LG dragons may not be willing to "demean" themselves by speaking to someone who has not learned their language.

(Why Infernal? For the fine print, of course...)

Now that the "Big Three Evil Alignment" groups are done, I could see the remaining evil outsiders being grouped by their native terrain. Thus, the books could be as follows:

Book of the Damned W: Divs and Demodands of Abbadon
Book of the Damned X: Oni and Rakshasas of the Material Plane
Book of the Damned Y: Asuras and Devilkin of Hell
Book of the Damned Z: Kytons, Night Hags, and other fiends of the Shadow Plane

Personally, I would want to see more Books of the Damned in the order above (I'm currently most interested in the Divs and Demodands), but oni and rakshasas may be better for a fourth book, as they do fit more with the Asian-theme and they are natives of the Material Plane, making them the fiends in your own backyard.

Edited for using the wrong name in several places.

At the moment I'm preparing for a Planescape game in Pathfinder. I've laid out the basics of how the characters leave Golarion and wind up in Sigil, as well as some of the overarching plot, but I'm not starting this until the current GM's campaign is finished around the end of the year. I'm not being a purist (one reason being that I only have a few of the books/box sets that I have found at the used book store), so I'm also including things from "The Great Beyond." I haven't really dealt with the races in the "Planar Handbook" yet, as the characters will start in Golarion before finding themselves moving into the Outer Planes. If they wanted to replace existing characters with new planar ones, I was thinking of letting them just choose one with HD equal to or less than the rest of the party. There do have to be some adjustments (not that I'd let anyone play one, but the "Monster Manual III" version of the Ultroloth is just too weak based on the Arcanaloth in "Dungeon 149"), but I'm not going to do too much to the 3.5 stuff unless it really looks like it needs it.

If your looking for more planar monsters, I'd recommend Bestiary 2, Book of the Damned Vol. 1 and 2, and the upcoming Pathfinder #46 (which promises Lovecraftian goodness in its bestiary section).