Bobson's page

If you fail the save against seize skin, you become staggered and also receive 1 Con drain per round, which if you're just looking at the ability, is not listed as bleed.

So technically they would stack, since one is bleed and the other is just an ability that drains 1 Con (until you get a heal or regenerate). It doesn't call out the Con drain from seize skin as 'bleed', even though it is mechanically and functionally similar.

Ooh, I hadn't even registered that it was not called a bleed in Seize Skin.

RAW - they are 2 separate effects, both proc from the rend ability.

RAI - i believe they are meant as one effect which happen when the rend proc. The seize skin is explaining how the bleed effect is changed from normal bleed effects (it has a save and can only be stopped by 'heal' spell or regeneration)

RAI probably was to have the bleed dependant on the successful use of Seize Skin, but RAW is very different.

I do think you're right about the RAI here. For whatever it's worth, it looks like both PF 2 and DnD 5 have their equivalent persistent effects only on the Seize Skin and not on the rend itself, so other designers seem to agree.

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All that said, I have a better handle on how it works now. I think I'm going to plan to run it as actually written (two separate sources of ongoing drain) - after all, it's nominally supposed to be the same level of challenge as an Astradaemon (up to four negative levels per round and a save vs instadeath) or Bythos (save vs permanent aging). Odds are good it'll only manage to take one skin before being splatted anyway, given how high level fights tend to go. I'll see how it plays out and adjust on the fly if needed, though.

Thanks!

I'm going to be running a fight with an ecorche later this week, and I've got a question about its stats that I just can't figure out or find any previous answers for here. I'm hoping someone has some insight to offer.

Special Attacks bleed (1 Con drain), rend (2 claws, 3d6+11 plus bleed and seize skin)

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Seize Skin (Su)
Whenever an ecorche damages a target with its rend ability, the target must succeed at a DC 25 Fortitude save to resist being skinned alive. Those who fail the save become staggered and take 1 point of Constitution drain per round. Both of these effects are permanent but can be removed with a regenerate or heal spell (or 1 round of regeneration). ...

The rend damage says it does damage, bleed, and triggers Seize Skin. Seize Skin also has a Fort save against bleeding. Is it supposed to cause the bleed only on a failed save (i.e. rend itself doesn't trigger any bleed)? Are they supposed to stack on a failed save (despite bleed not normally stacking)? Does it just always cause the one point of bleeding, and just have staggering as an extra effect?

My suspicion is that, given how deadly bleeding Con is, that it requires the thing to actually take your skin (rend and you fail your save) before the bleeding starts, and that the mention in the Special Attacks line is just a reminder. But that's not at all clear.

Very quick one - Sensuret the Tribe-eater, being a spinosaurus, should it have grab on it's bite attack? Noticed it was missing, figured it was an error, but curious if it was deliberately excluded.

I'm pretty sure it's an error, and I wish I'd seen this question two weeks ago. I just ran that encounter, and wondered during it why it bothered having swallow whole - it makes no sense for a creature like that to spend a whole standard action trying to "grapple" someone (read: bite without doing damage) just to be able to spend another action the next round to swallow it. But if it has grab on its bite, it makes prefect sense for it to gnaw on someone one round and then spend the next chewing and swallowing. I realized that it was missing by checking back in Hero Lab at the end of the fight... But at least I'll get another shot at it when the party comes back out of the tomb. :)

drsparnum wrote:

Has anyone prepared a handout of the false map (area A3, p13) that they would be willing to share?

Instead of a “map”, I used an image of several pictograms that suggested other rooms in the complex. The images included things which could be of interest, including treasure vaults and secret paths that the PCs were expecting to find. I then used connector arrows with markings that the PCs interpreted as measurements and angles, allowing them to calculate the locations of these rooms within the Five Pointed Sun. Of course, all were fake.

If you’re still interested, I’ll re-post the image I used, assuming my players didn’t destroy it after they learned it was all fake...

Two years later... I'd love to see it, if your players didn't destroy it and you haven't otherwise gotten rid of it since then.

My players were happy to help the pharasmans in wati when the call came. Overall the people of the town left a mixed impression on my players but my party liked the 3 phrarasims. When the church trusted the party with the mask and dispatched them to tephu with the support of a letter from sebti it won the church a lot of credibility with my party.

Same here. Wati is the only place they've been that my party thinks positively of. Tephu is the horrible city where everything tried to kill them, even the libraries, and while they were mostly friendly with the right groups in the desert, none of them really clicked. But they'll definitely come running when the Pharasmans in Wati call for them. Maybe they'll even stop making plans to just take the mask off to Absalom and hide it there. (We're just finishing book 4, and they've been discussing that since Tephu.)

And for a question of my own: Is there anything special involved in removing the Sky Pharaoh's Curse (from A11), or is it just a standard remove curse spell (DC 22)? It feels like it ought to be at least somewhat more involved than that, but it's a potentially deadly enough effect that I can see why it wouldn't be.

Any advice for someone with a party determined to head off to Sothis and see what's underneath that spire? They got the "clue" info that someone had already gone down there and has gone missing, but it seems they figure its too important not to check out.

Looking into Azgaad's Spire a little closer, I've come to realize that its in a restricted area in Sothis, in the massive temple complex to Nethys.

So...should I rail road them a bit to head back to the parched dunes (they're just leaving Tephu), let them head to Sothis and persist in trying to get under the spire only to find there's nothing there, or create a new hook/plot line from whole cloth?

What would other folks do/have done?

My party did the exact same thing at the same point in the AP (five years later). I let them wander around, gather some information about Serethet - including that she'd found something below the spire and then went missing - and had the priesthood tell them that the area was off limits. Since that area's Nethysian, not Pharasman, they couldn't use their "hero" status in Wati to help gain access, and they most definitely didn't have that status in Tephu.

The Dark Depository research rules say that it's only possible to reduce its kp below certain thresholds by researching in different sections. Does this mean that it takes at least four rolls (probably four days) to fully research the library, no matter what? Or should hitting a threshold early mean they still have time? And if they clear the whole place before doing any researching, can they clear it in a single check (presuming really good rolls)?

Related: I have six PCs, and they've been forming two teams of three for research - one primary and two assistants. I've been letting them add their progress from these two "attacks", but that's led to them doing 15~20 points per research period, which feels fast to me. Is this about the intended speed, or are we doing it wrong?

So, there were 400 people at the banquet with 4 sets of 100 spoilers handed out, right?

Assuming each individual person had a 50% likelihood of not submitting due to laziness, trusting others to do it, disdain for gamified things, forgetting to take theirs, or just losing it.

That's a ~6.25% for each spoiler number to be totally dead. Over the whole 100 spoilers we would expect to see about 6 missing.

If that 50% likelihood number was correct, we don't deserve the bonus spoiler dump.

It's looking like this math is roughly correct, just based on what's still missing. It might be informative, though, to go through and see how many different pictures of each card got posted. There'll always be the people who didn't post because they saw it was already up, and people who took multiple pictures of their card, but it could provide some constraints around that 50% estimate.

I'm reaching out to different sources I know, but no luck so far on the last few cards. 6, 20, 26, 50, 51, 72, 85

transcribed list

I believe the text of 13 and 84 have been provided, but without pictures. So pictures of those two would still be useful.

Jason just posted Spoiler #69 to his twitter: here.

Undead | Sorcerer Bloodline
The touch of undeath runs through your blood. Your family tree might contain powerful undead, like a vampire, or perhaps you died and returned a bit different.
Spell List divine (page 309)
Bloodline Skills Intimidation, Religion
Granted Spells cantrip: chill touch; 1st: harm; 2nd: false life; 3rd: bind undead; 4th: talking corpse; 5th: cloudkill; 6th: vampiric exsanguination; 7th: finger of death; 8th: horrid wilting; 9th: wail of the banshee
Bloodline Spells initial: touch of undeath; advanced: drain life; greater: grasping grave
Blood Magic Necromantic energy flows through you or one target. Either you gain temporary Hit Points equal to the spell's level for 1 round, or a target takes 1 negative damage per spell level.

A clearer picture of this can be found here.

Same person also posted #36 (recently found), #58 (new), and #25 (also recently found).

By my count, between this dump and this one, the only ones still missing are:

6, 10, 12, 13, 20, 25, 26, 36, 40, 50, 51, 58, 69, 72, 74, 76, 84, 85, 92, 93, 99

I'm running my group through The Harrowing, and even though we haven't gotten very far, I've already run into a few things I can't figure out. I'm hoping someone has either run into these, or can point me at some examples.

Storykin: If a storykin is destroyed "their essences float intangibly through the realm". Does that mean that the body dissolves/melts on death, or is it just the animating force that leaves it? Related: Can PCs tell that storykin are not normal humans or monsters?

Harrow cards: If a card is relevant, but has no obvious effects (such as giving the PCs a bonus to saves they haven't made yet, or penalizing the monster if the PCs do something they haven't tried), should I just tell the players, or make them figure it out (and thus possibly miss out)? I know either one could work, but I'm hoping that one or the other has worked better for people in the past.

Finally, any character references or advice for RPing Brambleson? I have a hard time wrapping my mind around how he talks and acts.

I entirely understand wanting to push the rules and see how far is too far, and where they are going to break. That said, my group was begging me to wrap up the playtest and go back to our Mummy's Mask game by the end.

I had high hopes for PF2 last summer, but the playtest burnt through a lot of my trust in Paizo's vision.

The rest of the design team and I are going to be a little quiet over the next couple of months as we finalize parts of the game and get it ready to go to the printer. Once that hard work is done, you can expect us to start showing off the final version of the game.

I think this is the worst thing you can possibly do for those of us who left the playtest with a bad taste. Instead of letting that opinion sit for the next several months, post about problems that were identified and the kinds of thing you're considering to fix them. It doesn't need to be a final "Here's what PF2 will have!" preview, but just insight into "Here's something that was identified as a problem, why we think it was problematic, and how we're thinking of fixing it."

I'm getting ready to run my players through Heroes of Undarin, and the rules for creating characters for this chapter are confusing me.

1) What is the 100 gp the characters start with for? That seems way too high for only purchasing mundane items. But the "Allocating Magic Items" section says "These are your options. Period."
2) Is there a reason for characters to avoid doubling up on ancestry or class? Or is that just a general "we want variety" line?
3) If there is a good reason, do the half-human heritages count as human for this purpose?

Last week my group started Mirrored Moon, with the DC changes from the 1.4 update. I have a party of 6, but the two who are doing the searching have perception modifiers of +14 and +16, and survival modifiers of +10 and +15. (Everyone else is lower.)

Under the old numbers (DC 25 perception or DC 23 Survival), they needed to roll a number between 8 and 13 (depending on player and skill) in order to succeed, which makes critically succeeding and getting the important clues to a location possible.

Under the new numbers (DC 30 Perception or DC 27 Survival), they need to roll between an 11 and a natural 20 (depending) in order to succeed, which puts critically succeeding almost out of reach.

Are my players just significantly less optimized than they should be? Am I missing some key modifiers? Or did it just get that much harder to actually do this?

Personally, I plan on ignoring the "Once every 7 days, reduce the party’s total Research Points earned by 1." line. If you do that, then everything works out perfectly fine.

* How, exactly, does the professor lock himself up every night to protect everyone - if he can free himself in the morning without help, his evil alter-ego can free himself at night.

- I gave up and just whimpered sadly in my GM chair.

I did the same thing. It's also unclear whether he just locks himself in the basement, or whether he chains himself to the cot... but either way if he can free himself, what's the point?

I resolved it as a reminder that they are on a clock, but not the specific number of days left.

They also ended up leaving the tomb the day before the Night Heralds even got to it, let alone got through it, so they were well away.

I spawned them as greater shadows, but I also realized partway through that I wasn't giving them full HP - I was just using whatever token they happened to be copied from.

Upon further review, I think you're right that they'd be regular shadows, but they'd also have the full 42 hp.

When trying to get to the Chessex page in the store (from this one), I get asked to log in even if I'm already logged in (as if accessing account information), and then it just keeps redirecting to the post-login page over and over.

Change Precise Bomb to a 1st level alchemist feat

//friendly fire negation is extremely important to how an alchemist functions, and it's unfair to punish them by making them wait until 6th level before they can actually use their main tool

What alchemist wouldn't take this feat at first level? What else could possibly be worth not taking it (to the rest of the party)?

Not that I disagree about it being needed far earlier, but I'd rather see it baked in somehow.

[3rd] Research Field (replaces Empower Bombs)

At third level, an alchemist chooses a specialty field of alchemy to pursue. Each research fields gives the alchemist a free alchemist feat at 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th level, ignoring their usual level prerequisites, based on their chosen focus. The level a specialist gains the feat is listed in parenthesis, the level any other alchemist can select it is listed in brackets. The available fields are:

I like the idea of specializations, but to work with the rest of the system it either needs to replace the feat they'd normally gain at those levels (as bloodlines do) or just be a feat chain (as druids, bards, etc). Personally, I prefer the feat chain - that means that an alchemist who wants to primarily specialize in bombs, with a minor in poisons can take mostly the bomb feat chain, but drop back to grab the first one or two poison ones on other levels.

Honestly my biggest complaints about the Paladin are flavor-related. Like I do not like that Paladins are not compelled to protect the innocent (like explicitly the code says you don't have to) and I really dislike how we have to take a feat to be able to say literal devils, vampires, liches, and demons are not "legitimate authority."

Additionally, a paladin’s code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents

Honestly, I think the new code is much clearer about everything without sacrificing any part of the old code. Nothing in the old code says that the paladin has to go out of their way to protect innocents either. And the old code also would require treating the ruler of an area as legitimate authority, regardless of whether it's a devil, lich, etc. Unless, of course, you argue that no evil creature can ever be legitimate authority, and thereby trigger Yet Another Paladin Argument...

Also, I think you're misreading the new code. Try reading the second bullet with this emphasis:

This tenet doesn’t force you to take action against possible harm to innocents or to sacrifice your life and potential to attempt to protect an innocent.

In other words, if the head of the local thieves' guild tells you that he sent someone to burn down an orphanage, you don't fall because you chose to assume he was lying and not follow up on it.

Some from column A, some from column B.

I'm also in software, and while FangDragon's process is a really good and safe one, it's also overkill for a company with a team the size of Paizo's. However, a pared down version scaled for Paizo-size would be appropriate to have.

I'm not going to go into as much detail, but for a team of 2-6 people, I would expect the following as a minimum:

Especially Noteworthy Recurring Problem #6: Erroneous Knowledge is Not That Fun: Erroneous knowledge from critical failures might work for a beer-and-pretzels, light-hearted game, but it simply has not been a hit with any of my players thus far. Indeed, erroneous knowledge has sown nothing but annoyance, mistrust towards the GM, and feelings of resentment. Furthermore, I personally find it quite difficult to present erroneous knowledge that is actually plausible and actionable without it being too contrived

I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned this yet, but erroneous knowledge can be trivial to implement in a useless manner.

1) “The monster is vulnerable to cold.”
2) “The monster is not vulnerable to cold.”

By definition, one of these is true and one is erroneous, and there’s no way to differentiate which is which, so the feat is satisfied. It’s also useless information as-is, which makes the feat useless, but at least the GM doesn’t have to stress about making false stuff up on the spot.

Personally, my main gripe is that the +1/lvl very rapidly diminishes things like proficiency bonuses, ability scores etc. Just mathematically,these flat bonuses inevitably shrink in comparison to one's flat level bonus.

And since these are the things that come from character choices in class,feats, etc. the system actually diminishes the sense that a player has made meaningful choices along the way.

The level bonus makes other bonuses numerically a smaller percentage, but since everything (except static DCs) scales at the same rate, the fighter having +3 on attacks on top of his level will still be 15% better at everything than the wizard with +0.

If monsters didn't scale the same, then it'd matter. But since you get the exact same results from an equal-level encounter regardless of whether everything has +level or not, it doesn't end up mattering that the +level becomes a larger single bonus than everything else.

Tactic Problem #8: Why does detect magic get an exception to spellcasting being fatiguing? Why not all cantrips? Why can you repeatedly cast this one spell, but not concentrate on something like dancing lights, which only provides light until you stop concentrating? Why can you not use sigil to mark your trail, or continually cast guidance on the person watching for traps? All three have the exact same actions required as detect magic, so there's no logical reason to be able to cast one of them repeatedly but not the others.

Obviously, this is to make the "I walk around looking for magic" tactic viable, but it doesn't make sense for the spell to be an exception by itself.

Google doc?

Yay, updates!

This one doesn't cover the shield/hardness/dent confusion (my current biggest issue), but it does have a bunch of good fixes. It's good to see that the playtest isn't going to be a static "test everything, then we'll make all our changes" one. Looking forward to next week's update!

That's a good catch, both in that that the essences are actually mentioned in the back of the book (on the Know Direction podcast, someone said they weren't actually printing that cosmology, so I didn't look), and that remove paralysis is misclassified.

Can you share your lists?

Off topic slightly:

As a GM, I found that unidentified items are a pain. When the party finally had time to sort the treasue, they asked me about the details, but their notes are terrible. What is the sword with an ornate hilt? Let me see your treasure list. Okay, the sword is listed between the gold idol and the seven blue potions, so let me page through the module until I spot the idol. The sword must be the +1 elven orc-bane longsword from the next room, B12.

I just tell them the room number whenever they fail to identify loot (due to time or bad rolls). Then they mark that down with the item, so i can look it up later. "Sword with an ornate hilt (B12)". The room numbers mean nothing to them, so it doesn't give away anything, but it makes tracking it down later much easier.

Jumping is not a good example here. The rules for that are covered by the Leap action (page 308) and the Long Jump use of Athletics (page 147).

You take a careful but short jump. You can Leap up to 10 feet horizontally if your Speed is at least 15 feet, or up to 15 feet horizontally if your Speed is at least 30 feet. You land in the space where your Leap ends (meaning you can typically clear a 5-foot gap if your Speed is between 15 feet and 30 feet, or a 10-foot gap if your Speed is 30 feet or more).

If you make a vertical Leap, you can move up to 3 feet vertically and 5 feet horizontally onto an elevated surface.
Jumping a greater distance requires using the Athletics skill (see pages 146-147).

So just about everyone can automatically Leap a 10 foot pit.

When you're trying to do a Long Jump, the DC is 5+distance.

Tamago wrote:

OK. I think I saw the rules about item damage at one point, but I assumed that a fungus was not an item, so I didn't think those would apply here.

So, how exactly does this work? If it has hardness 6 and I deal 6 damage, then nothing happens. If I deal 7, then it takes a dent? Or does it become broken, since there is no dent value listed? Or is it just destroyed outright?

If it's broken, what does that mean for a fungus to be broken?

If you deal 6 to 11 damage, nothing happens.

If you deal 12 to 17 damage, it takes a dent.
If you deal 18 damage or more (in a single hit), it is broken and the hazard no longer functions.

Take note that in the case of the Mindfog Fungus any fire damage m
does an additional 10 points of damage!

I think this isn't actually right. I think it's supposed to be:

0-5, nothing happens.
6-11, one dent
12+ in a single hit, it takes two dents and breaks.

I'll certainly agree that the item damage section is poorly worded, but I think the "shield takes 10 damage and 2 dents" example is showing that if it takes more than twice its hardness, it still only takes two Dents.

Some other ideas I had while reading this thread:

* Resistant to
* Shielded against
* Unaffected by

The one advantage Bolstered has over these three is that it becomes possible to just say "Bolstered" in the context of an ability and one can assume it means against that ability (even if it sounds a bit weird in context). None of these others can do that - they'd all need their prepositional phrase in order to not be confused with something else.

I'm having the same problem, it's not just you.

At least preliminarily, I would be in favor of making Untrained rolls be at half your level instead of level -2. If you really don't know anything about it, you'll get marginally better because you're that much more experienced, but it won't keep pace with everything else.

Ok, I can see what you're saying. But does that mean your premise is that a wizard should have to allocate spell slots between "useful in combat" and "useful out of combat" each morning? With the ability to make an out of combat slot an in combat one if necessary?

How is that fun? That's a large part of why I never wanted to play a prepared caster. I either didn't prep combat spells, and had very little to do in a fight, or I prepped buff and combat spells, and didn't have the slots for misc. utility ones.

What's so bad about letting the wizard be able to do both?

GRuzom wrote:

Joe Mucchiello wrote:

This is not really an issue. Just plan your 4 free boost around the boost. Wizards will want Int. Sorcerers will want Cha. Rogues will want Dex. It's not really a big deal.

It's not a "problem" - it's something I don't like. I don't always want to have Rogues based on dex, sometimes I'd go for Int or Str.

But it should be MY choice.

So don't put any of your free boosts (you get a lot of them) in Dexterity. You end up with a Dex of 8-14 depending on if your ancestry had a free boost or penalty in Dex.

But also I catch your point.

Now if Key Ability determination could be chosen by the player rather than decided by the game that would be interesting, especially for rogues. So you could be a Strong thuggish rogue, a Dextrous classic rogue, a street Tough, a rogue Mastermind, a roguish Savant/Master trapfinder or Charming conman.

That's really a failing of the Rogue class, rather than of the system. As written, the PF2 rogue pushes you very heavily into being a Dex rogue (agile weapons, stealth for initiative, etc), but there's hints of other builds possible (the four 1st level feats are Str, Dex, Dex, Cha).

I'm not sure there's any other class that doesn't either only have one solid choice or that doesn't gives you the choice between Dex and Str.

Shields are for fighters who want to help the rest of the party, rather than just do a ton of damage themselves. Aggressive Shield can make your attacker flat-footed, helping the rogue. Shield Warden will keep your friends from being hit, which is especially good if it prevents a spellcaster's spell from being disrupted. And so on. Plus, negating damage means less healing is needed, which leads to a longer day or more healing for other party members.

There's not great choices for a shield at every level, admittedly, but I'm moderately sure that if you put a boss or spikes on your shield, it counts as a second weapon for things like Double Slice, so you're not really missing out.

Leaving slots open is different from a wizard shuffling around already-filled slots, thus letting the wizard be prepared for any situation.

How is leaving slots open not still letting the wizard be prepared for any situation?

It's a single +2 to the stat you need to do your class well. Why would you not want it? If you turn it into a free boost, almost everyone who knows how to be effective will apply it to that exact same stat, and people who don't know how (because it's their first time playing) may choose something else and be less effective (and thus have less fun).

If you really want to play the 12-Int wizard who barely knows how to cast a spell, or the 10-Cha bard who just can't get anyone to like them, then you're almost certainly playing in a game where the GM can just let you do that.

Sorcerers have the same number of spells as wizards. Each class has a lot of flexibility in their spellcasting - it just takes different forms. Wizards are very flexible in what they cast (they can prepare a lot of different things and with a feat, even swap them during the day), while sorcerers are very flexible in how they cast (spontaneous heightening, casting any spell at any time).

And that also assumes you compare them to a wizard. If you want to take divine, occult, or primal spells instead, then you're far more flexible than any of those casters.

There's the Form Control feat at 10th level that makes them last an hour, at the cost of it heightening to one level less than maximum.

Also, the shapechanging spells or wild shape itself don't give you any ability to communicate with other animals, so the duration is irrelevant to that.

Rysky wrote:

Doesn't seem so bad, and each attempt takes 10 minutes.

It creates a paradigm where any event where the GM doesn't put the party on a strict timer the Wizard essentially has his entire spell book available to cast spontaneously. Wizards were pretty busted in PF1, but I don't think there were any level 4 options for the Wizard that limit the kind of stories a GM can tell that severely.

How is this any different from a PF1 wizard leaving a slot or two open every day? They could then spend 15 minutes and have any spell in their spell book available to cast.

The only difference I see here is that the PF2 wizard doesn't have to choose between "Do I stay flexible or do I ensure I actually have something to do?", which seems like a good choice to not have to make.

Meanwhile, I notice that Charm Person and Sleep still come online at level 1 for Wizards; those spells can end an encounter in one round and impose no penalty whatsoever.

Charm can end an encounter at first level if you're fighting a single humanoid foe... and they fail their save even with the circumstance bonus (and +4 goes further than it used to). Sleep only will end an encounter if everyone quietly walks away from the sleeping creatures, or you cast it as a 3rd level spell instead. Even given that, I'm not sure that being attacked won't wake them up.

It's better than animal. You _wield_ a weapon (not even attack), congrats, lose all totem benefits.

What the flip is an Animal Totem barbarian supposed to contribute against fast, far or flying enemies?

And on your non-rage rounds, you're reduced to punching. And even when you are raging, the animal totem attacks don't scale.

Animal totem basically makes your barbarian very monk-like. A monk is also useless against fast, far, and flying foes. A monk also doesn't wield any weapons. And a monk's fists also don't scale... but then again neither do weapons. (You can get magic weapons, but you can also get handwraps of mighty fists which will also help the barbarian.)

This. I just loaded up my current PF1 character and I have a 20 CHA (at level 6), so I do indeed have 2 bonus first level spells. If I'd had a sorcerer and was 10th level, I'd have 8, 7, 7, 6, 4 (32 spells total).

In PF2 it's 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 (15 total).

32 vs. 15 is a BIG difference.

It's not always 3, 3, 3, 3, 3.

Sorcerers get 3+1, 3+1, 3+1, 3+1, 3+1. They get one slot at each level from bloodline.

Clerics don't get any bonus spells, but do get channel energy so they don't need to prepare (or burn spells for) healing. So they can use the spells they do have for more interesting things.

Bards don't get any bonus spells, but they get composition cantrips and they were only 6th level casters before.

Wizards also get 3+1, 3+1, 3+1, 3+1, 3+1 if they specialize, or they get to recall a spell of each level (which works out to the same thing) if they don't.

Druids are the only ones that seem to lack something extra, although that could be buried in their Order and feats where I haven't seen it yet.

--------

20 vs 32 is still a significant difference, but it's not as bad as it seems at first.

I also ran Kingmaker with that conversion a few years ago, and I also recently started running this AP for the same group. I haven't seen one yet, though.

I'd like to think I'm capable of creating one, based on the excellent example and commentary in the Kingmaker version. But I barely have time to prep each week between sessions, let alone revise them in a fun and balanced way. So I'm just running the by-the-book version for now as a way to judge whether I really need to adjust it or not. So far, it hasn't made much difference either way.

Scribbling Rambler wrote:

Kickstarter really only helps if money is the issue, and every indication is that the issue is just workload.

And before anyone says "hire more people", realize that there are open job postings.

Not to suggest that I know about Paizo's specific hiring strategies, but there is a big difference between hanging the proverbial "now hiring" sign and aggressively recruiting targeted candidates to fill a particular role in your company.

I'd have considered applying if it was 3-5 years C#, with Java as a plus, instead of the other way around.

Also, I know there is something going on in the camp where there is no teleportation or spells of that nature near the World Engine. Is this only in the direct area of the World Engine? I have a PC who I know will be using Planar Binding and I want to make sure the spell won't be affected in a weird way. Thanks!

I was wondering what you meant, and I just read far enough ahead to find it. I think this is just applicable to the area inside the monastery once it's been called down by the world anchors. The H group of rooms. That has a forbiddance effect, which (among other effects) "seals an area against all planar travel into or within it. This includes all teleportation spells (such as dimension door and teleport), plane shifting, astral travel, ethereal travel, and all summoning spells. Such effects simply fail automatically."

So they can't teleport into H, they can't shift dimensions to get to H, and once they've entered it, they can't dimension door, summon monsters (unclear about calling spells like gate, but flavorwise they should be blocked too), or use other similar effects. An already summoned creature is not affected other than by the alignment-based damage on entering the area (same as the PCs).

If there's another spot that affects teleportation, I don't remember seeing it.

I think the answer is yes, the PCs should be eating shots whenever they're not behind cover. That'll make them nice and paranoid until they finally pass the check to notice where the shots are coming from (the snipers get stealth checks at -20 + distance bonuses (so net -7 + 1 per 10 ft) to remain hidden), at which point the PCs may be storming the cathedral.

I think the snipers are sort of supposed to force the party to go into that building before they bring the the "real" cathedral out of the First World.

Good point on the stealth checks and the reason. I'm probably going to assume that the snipers don't take notice until the PCs get inside the inner fence and that their shots don't alert the whole camp, though. There are a lot of things that are around to spot and kill intruders and would keep piling on. Has anyone compiled a list? I need to make listing out what forces are where and what they respond to a priority.

I kindof like the idea of making it a stealth mission until something goes wrong and it turns into a Charlie Foxtrot. Now, how to convey that...

Any tips on the types of answers he would give/conversation he would have before leaving?

My group just encountered him there - I just spread out his dialog a bit, and didn't have him really answer any questions.

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A question of my own: How far can the snipers in G1 see? Can they take potshots at the PCs anywhere in camp? Rifles have an 80' range increment, and can shoot up to 10 range increments away, so they can shoot 800'. Given that it's only 450' from their tower to the edge of the map, and given their elevation, it seems like they can attack anywhere that isn't directly behind a building.

How did you all handle this? Do the PCs have to keep dodging 1d10+6d6+6 potshots the whole time they're running around camp?