BotBrain's page

Quote:

Most of what you could previously do with the Community Use Policy is still permitted under the Fan Content Policy except for making RPG products, which you’ll need to release through the Pathfinder or Starfinder Infinite storefronts (even for free if you want) from now on.

Well this gatekeeping feels harsh to me. Sorry I say this out of love but I cannot see a single reason why restricting free rpg works taking place on Golarion to PF and SF Infinite feels like a MASSIVE barrier to entry. If I wanna tell people about a custom side quest I made for Abomination Vaults where the PCs go to Absolom. And if I say "Find this NPC on Page XYZ of the Grand Bazzar" and say "Use these stat blocks from Monster Core." and just post it in a discord text message or a reddit post, this is now a violation. I simply do not wish to go through the effort to publish a fun mini idea I may have and I bet there are many people more creative and talented than me who feel the same. People who cut their teeth on free fan content and then work their way into the industry now have another hoop to jump through.

I hate to say it but this is extremely disappointing to me. If you had said paid or paywalled works must be on Infinite I'd almost see it as understandable. This however? It makes my stomach sink. Makes me a lot less excited for some of the releases I was planning to buy in August due to emotional bleed.

Yeah this is worrying me. Granted, again, my understanding is poor, but this seems like it could really clamp down on a lot of things. If I go on a subreddit for making magic items, and make a magic item that summons something from an offical product, would that be a no-no? Once again I get a lot of the OGL stuff is beyond Paizo's control, but limiting where things can be published doesn't seem like a good or fair idea.

I'm not trying to be mean or angry, I'm just unsure and a little worried . I appriciate all the work Paizo does (and especially has done over the last 18 months).

Basically. You could do a gazetteer of Aucturn that didn't contain any OGL-based rules set prior to the events of "A Cosmic Birthday" that would technically be a Starfinder First Edition product. But there's no easy way to eliminate the OGL and all the legal entanglements that come with it from the Infinite marketplace without also accepting that support for older editions that were based on that license has to end on the platform. As I said upthread, fans who want to continue making Starfinder First Edition material can do so using the OGL (and if they so choose, the Compatibility License), they just can't use our Product Identity (setting, storylines, etc.) or sell those products on Starfinder Infinite.

Luckily, this decision was made far easier by the fact that Pathfinder First Edition makes up such a small portion of the Pathfinder Infinite sales and product offerings that we feel confident that the bulk of the community will be moving to Starfinder Second Edition, just as they did for Pathfinder. So it might seem like we're cutting off a large stream of potential content, but the last few years have shown that there isn't a ton of interest or activity for older editions on the platform. It's just going to be a bit bereft of activity on Starfinder Infinite until the full Second Edition rules are out in a year and folks can start creating content for the new game without needing to use the OGL or ORC.

Okay, I think I understand.It's very disapointing as any loss is a real shame for those who will stick with SF1e, but the OGL situation is obvously untenable for you guys, so there's not much else to say.

Ravien999 wrote:

Are we actually saying that the community is not allowed to keep first edition Star finder alive through infinite? Or am I misreading this?

Correct. If you want to create new Starfinder First Edition (or Pathfinder First Edition) material after August 31, you can release those under the OGL and (if you choose) the Pathfinder Compatibility License, but can't sell those products on Starfinder (or Pathfinder) Infinite.

Starting September 1, only one license will be allowed to be in play on new Infinite titles: the Infinite License itself.

Unless I'm misunderstanding (which is possible) does that mean there can never again be starfinder 1e content on infinite? Seems pretty steep, though I'd imagine this might be out of your hands.

If you were to houserule Crossblooded Evolution back in, what new name would you give it?

Hot cross bloods

Does the Flames Curse specify that"fire damage caused to a flames oracle as the direct result of their curse cannot be mitigated through fire resistance or immunity."?

Bones specifies that resistance and/or immunity are bypassed, I think the Sky(name?) Curse does as well, but I dont think Flame says the same thing.
Even so, I think that it is a reasonable conclusion.

Moving on,what about healing and temporary hit points?
A low level Numbing Tonic would effectivly neutralize the damage from two levels of the flame curse.
That seems like a flavorful, but also powerful outcome.
Not balanced, but better than allowing any shmoe with Eat Fire to dodge the damage.

In the case of the numbing tonic, you are still taking that fire damage. So while functionally, yes, you could argue it's "mitigated", the effect is still going through.

The same would not be true if say a curse gave you sickened 2, and you dropped it to sickened 1 via some spell or what have you. That would be "mitigated" as you have prevented some part of the curse.

BotBrain wrote:

Oh how could I forget, simple injection weapons so toxicologists have an "out of the box" option if they so desire.

The injection reservoir was published in Treasure Vault and can be added to any piecing weapon...

No need to create new weapons.

Granted, 10 gp is a bit steep at 1st level but doable.

This is true, but as I said, I'd really like an "out of the box" option, that doesn't take some of your precious early gold.

Realistically, I don't think it'd happen, for the reasons you noted, but it's still something I'd like to see. You have your probably 1d4 (or even 1!) damaging option for cheap with probably a couple mid traits, or you can splurge and get it on something able to stand on its own without the poison.

Oh how could I forget, simple injection weapons so toxicologists have an "out of the box" option if they so desire.

More guns* would be nice, I think. I certainly feel like there's untapped space for advanced guns that aren't ancestry-tied, since gunslinger does actually start with advanced profiency.
*Assuming starfinder doesn't provide some guns that could fit standard pathfinder play without too much effort.

Novadorio i love you

I think every field of study benefits from dabbling in the tools of every other field of study. Prepoisoning the fighters blade is often a good idea in exploration, everyone can use ranged bomb options with some AOE capability that can be applied improvements with feats, a melee chirurgeon healer may want a juggernaut mutagen with the physical resistance feat up, etc.

This is one of my fave parts of the alchemist. You pick a subclass, but you're able to invest in other areas, which gives you a great deal of customisability, even by pf2e standards. A lot of my fave classes do this, actually.

It's really awesome to see all the alchemist fans so excited about the upcoming changes. Not too much longer to wait!

Don't tease me, I have many dubious concoctions to make

Wait why are we assuming Elixir of Life has Coagulant? It doesn't have it in GM Core, and given how PC1 refers to PC2 with things like the monk trait being present, it's apparent Paizo would have given it the trait if they wanted to. There is zero reason to assume they've changed this now.

Just to be clear, with the "mascot" proposal, this would still allow a mount, right? The mascot just lets it work with animal companions in general.

I guess it's a bit of a silly question but my ability to parse nuance from text is pretty limited.

EDIT: Nevermind I actually spotted someone has already asked, and had the answer. I need new eyes. Maybe ones that shoot lasers.

Btw, completely unrelated, but I've just learned Toxicologists get to ignore poison (and Acid?) immunity/resistance. Not sure how exactly that works though, but it is available at level 1.

That's MASSIVE. As a toxcicologist you've always been severely crippled against undead/fiends/constructs in particular because with a handful of exceptions, you've just been unable to use a lot of your kit in those fights.

BotBrain wrote:

Blave wrote:

Quick Alchemy:

Is that "Limits to 10 minutes" a cap on maximum duration, or just the default duration of a QA item?

Duration cap. Basically, if you create an items with a duration of more than 10 minutes duration, it's limited to 10 minutes instead.

ty ty, makes complete sense now

Quick Alchemy:

- Limits duration of alchemical item effects to 10 minutes.
- Can turn one Versatile Vial into an alchemical consumable or your level or lower (must be in your formula book). Item is infused and lasts until the start of your next turn.
- Alternatively, can create a Versatile Vial that lasts until the end of your current turn and can only be used either as the Versatile Vial Bomb (Acid damage default, bomber can also choose cold, electricity or fire) or for the Vial option of your research field.

The last is basically a poor man's cantrip. 2 actions for a bomb Strike. Scales a bit with Double Brew at level 9 if you can spend 3 actions on it to throw both Vials.

Is that "Limits to 10 minutes" a cap on maximum duration, or just the default duration of a QA item?

NVM I worked it out, ty

BotBrain wrote:

Damn no Martial weapons.

Like sure, alchemist doesn't need them, given where their damage is coming from, but g@*#@&n are there some martial weapons I'd love to play properly on a toxicologist.

This seems like a good use for the various ancestry feats that peg weapon proficiency in specific weapons to the lower tier. Normally martials skip these unless there's an ancestral advanced weapon they want, but there are plenty of decent martial weapons with an ancestry tag. Want to use a breaching pike on an alchemist? Be a hobgoblin.

Oh yeah there's some fun ones I've spotted before, including breaching pike, actually.

My big gripe is injection weapons (all martial) [though I think treasure vault has an adjustment], as well as tethered weapons, as you'd be able to enjoy the benefits of ranged strikes without wasting a posion on every single miss as with ammunition weapons. Though now that I've said that "out loud" it has occured to me the returning rune exists...

Damn no Martial weapons.
Like sure, alchemist doesn't need them, given where their damage is coming from, but g!*@$$n are there some martial weapons I'd love to play properly on a toxicologist.

I will miss precog being on its own. All the various anchors were cool and really sparked my imagination. I hope the precog anchor has open-ended flavour so I can uh... "take inspiration"

Quadroupling, I guess.
It's such a good idea i'm adding that into any player guides I make for my homebrew games in the future.

BotBrain wrote:

HolyFlamingo! wrote:

>Clarification that you cannot use lethal grenades and missiles non-lethally

I love this community.

Paizo's silence on this question has been the reason i've never been able to play starfinder. :P

I love that the fact that this rule exists means someone tried to do some straight-up shenanigans to make it work. I salute you, unnamed group!

I already know there was an argument about what parts of someone's anatomy you can explode without killing them.

>Clarification that you cannot use lethal grenades and missiles non-lethally

I love this community.

Paizo's silence on this question has been the reason i've never been able to play starfinder. :P

You have no idea whether there are (m)any new gods. Starfinder doesn't focus much on gods and doesn't pretend to give any close view of what's going on with them outside the core 20 and a handful of others. There could have been 1000 new Golarion gods who achieved apotheosis during the Gap, 900 might not have achieved any meaningful congregations off Golarion, and none of those might be important enough to have been mentioned in a Starfinder product yet. They could neverthelesss have ten million followers each scattered throughout the system.

That is very true, I hadn't considered that.

I always assumed the Gap is, both in setting, and from a meta level, incredibly fuzzy. Obviously this is handy when writing, as the gap can therefore have started/ended whenever it suits the story.

As for an actual start time, something I've always spotted is the gods. For the most part, there aren't many golarian gods that are "new" outside of Triune and maybe a couple others I can't remember. Given in-setting, mortal apotheosis is a common enough occoranse that it happens a few times every 1000 years. As there are no new acended gods, we can extrapolate that the gap started around "present-day" golarian.
(Of course, this assumes starfinder golarian had an identical history to pathfinder golarian pre-gap).

It's also just possible the gap represents time that never existed and the universe just started post-gap. It's the interpretation I favour when running starfinder anyway. Much more cosmic-horrory that way and mmmm do i love some cosmic-horrory stuff.

Dimension of Time stuff would be really cool, especially given that there's a wanderlust siktempora in the backmatter of SF1's Drift Crashers AP.

Oooh thats news to me, thanks for letting me know!

Fingers crossed for dimension of time stuff.

Perhaps it's one of those things that's cooler the less you know, but that's a problem for future me... or past me... or present me...

Precog has been made part of witchwarper (I think), which admittedly does sting a bit, as I adore precog and I'm going to miss being able to go all in on that theme, so i hope eventually we see more time based stuff (Dimension of time options mayhaps?)

I also reckon evoultionist might expand on pathfinder 2e's recent graft items, which seem like they're perfect for translating adaptions over. Perhaps as part of daily preperations you give yourself (or even others) X adaptations, a bit like an alchemist prepares their items.

We might even see biohacker and evolutionist converge, much like witchwarper and precog.

For a serious response, the players I currently GM for already have a bias to staying at range, so they're covered there. Staying out of aura of corruption is staying alive, methinks.

I would then imagine the Oracle is put on Holy duty to keep regeneration down, whilst the others try desperatly to keep the moisture in their bodies.

I'll be writing down the names of all who reply to this scandalous rabble-rousing post. Also I surely would never fight on my own, right?

You can write?

I'm genuinely interested in how some of the Starfinder 2nd Edition classes will play in PF2. Like the Soldier might not be a great match since it sort of relies on auto-fire and AoE stuff that might be hard to get in a fantasy world, I think there's certainly potential in like an Envoy or a Witchwarper in fantasy-land, just like how a Gunslinger or a Kineticist might be a hoot in your SF2 campaign.

I'm really looking forward to the chance to play some kind of energy-sword magus. I will make it as OTT as possible.

Question: how does Elixir of Gender Transformation and Serum of Sex Shift change differ from one another?

also happy pride!

The elixr is also alchemical as opposed to magical. Already I can see a character who took up alchemy to facilitate their own transition.

...weird lightbulb moment.

What does true seeing reveal as the true form for someone who's chugged one of those? I would presume they see whatever sex the person currently has, given it's instantaneous, can't be counteracted, and the alternative is some frankly yikes implications.

Since it's altering your biology rather than putting up an illusiory front, I think it'd just show what your presentation is at that point.

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Pretty sure there was at least one transgender shopkeeper in Grand Bazaar, too. I think I recall there being more than one, but I'm less certain of that.

There are a a lot of explicitly trans or nonbinary shopkeepers in Grand Bazaar.

Oh so many, of the shops with a double-page spread alone, there's eight either trans or non-binary characters, and there may be ones I missed.

Ignoring whatever issues there are with magus, I tend to take two directions with my typical vampires.

Normally, I tend to conceptualise vampires as the dominant, controlling types, which would fit something like a school of mentalism wizard, where you use magic and your vampiric charm to control your opponents. Depending on how hard you are willing or able to push reflavouring, a sorcerer with a bloodline like Hag or Fey could also achieve this.

The other option to me is some kind of stealthy night-hunter character, for which rogue obviously comes to mind, though monk or laughing shadow (even though magus is off the table for you), could fit this well.

Back on the topic of Magus, I've played a laughing shadow before and I really struggle to see how it could "suck". It worked perfectly fine. If you think it would fit your character, it'd reccomend going for it.

Oh my god i've never related so hard to a character. I once responded to someone telling me that they had a spare ticket to something with "that's nice, i hope you find someone to go with you".

My knowledge of balance is ... average ... but on the handful of occasions across a couple sessions I got to use Plum Deluge (Alchemist's capstone from fists of the ruby phoenix) thanks to a very nice DM, it was disgusting. A dragon failed their save against tears of death, and that was it for them.

Have you ever seen the Mummy?
If so, do you remember the scene where the guy pulls out every religious symbol he's carrying in order to try and protect himself?

That's your esoterica. A bunch of tiny stuff with some symbolic meaning or minor magical importance. Because it can be whatever, even if you lose all your gear, any thaumaturge worth their mystic salt would probably be able to replace it in a reasonable timeframe. IDK they find some loose rocks and scrape holy symbols into them.

The vagueness does require some DM fiat in very specific situations, sure, but it gives both the DM and especially the player more freedom in determining how their thaumaturge operates.

Berselius wrote:

Wait, is the artwork we already have for the Commander and the Guardian not going to be the ones used for the Iconics? I ask as I was hoping the artwork for the Commander showed a female Dhampir (and that we'd get our first Dhampir iconic).

They are not. Those are previously commissioned pieces of art used as kind of placeholders for the PDF and blogs. I believe the "dhampir" commander is an Order of the Asp cavalier from Adventurer's Guide.

We are creating all-new characters for the iconics, with brand-new art!

Was nice to see Irabeth again. I hope she and Anevia are living their best lives.

An "evil" Justice Champion sounds like a cool idea. Like an honorable villain.

I can absolutely see this being an easy path to making a Hellknight character. They certainly enforce their own version of Justice, I'll give them that.

Nice, nice. This looks like exactly what I was hoping to see. A champion of a lawful monitor demigod is a character idea I've always wanted to play.

I can't wait for the next class (please be alchemist, I must lay eyes on my beloved again).

I do like the idea of the mesmerist. Can't really talk to the mechanics given how little "actual" PF1e I've played, but misdirections, hypnotism and so on sound like a fun thing to base a character on. Even if much like occultist, we don't see a "mesmerist", I'd love to see a character option that's drawn from the themes of a mesmerist somehow.

Definitely a reprint of the Ganzi and Aphorite options. I know we can just use them as-is either under Nephilim or as discrete races but it'd be nice to have a proper remaster version for 'em.

As I recall the answer was essentially "We've changed how profiency works, but without additional context, it won't mean anything to you." So it's not just straight up master scaling.

I'm somehow comfused how the "balor" is a dnd ogl thing seeing as it's almost an exact copy of tolkien's balrog.

Welcome to copyright law. It's stupid.

Grumbles aside, it's probably because despite being a transparent lift, it's still technically an original monster and therefore falls under the OGL's domain.

Yeah ancestry feats are probably one of my biggest gripe with the system. It's a reoccurring issue (at least as far as I'm concerned), that many ancestries have levels where there's either nothing, or functionally nothing, if you don't meet a certain prereq. I'm very much hoping for an "Ancestry Guide 2" (probably with a better name) that addresses this.

I understand there's probably logistical restrictions like time or page counts, but at least personally, I'd rather see less ancestries that are more fleshed out.

So it's much more likely we're going to see those themes divided between like 4-5 classes (including class archetypes) than stuffed into one.

Arguably, we've already seen this. One of the many things inquisitor dabbled in was teamwork feats. To me, the commander feels like it's targeting that niche.

I do also suspect we are never going to see an "inquisitor", but rather its chassis spread across multiple options. I'd bet my left kidney that the palatine detective archetype exists to fulfill the "Divine Detective" angle.

Out there one, but a planar scion equivalent to the dimension of time. I have absolutely no idea what it'd look like or be called, but it'd just be such a wacky idea I'd be all over. Reminds me of precog from SF1e, which is unsurprising because I love the flavor of that.

I feel conflicted. I like the idea of two separate pools in theory, as to reduce some of the opportunity cost caused by quick alchemy but without actually seeing how it's executed, it's kind of hard to form a concrete opinion.

At this point, I think I'm happy with the amount of classes, and I'd like to see Paizo go back to existing classes and give them more options in the way of feat lines, subclasses and just other options.

However, I'm never gonna say no to new stuff! Top of my list is Shifter, as I really like the vibe and I don't really feel the existing versions of "natural" fighters give me exactly what I'm looking for.

In terms of 100% original classes, idk. Maybe some kind of magic-cancelling martial who weakens magic effects nearby. Could be fun, albeit perhaps too situational for a class on its own.