BretI's page

Use your regular character if it isn’t yet 7th level.

Is Dawn of Frogs one of those that can be applied to any level of character?

I don’t know. I will ask her next time I see her.

Should be +8 by my count. I fixed it out on the drive.

+2 trained +2 Strength +3 level +1 item potency

So we have:
Red Agnes, Human Barbarian
Kyra, Human Cleric
Faehild, Orc Viking
Nilaglade, Sprite Druid plus wolf

Sounds like good healing and front line capabilities!

Looks like they could use a little love. Several of the pregens are missing.

Pregen BB Code project

I always look in GM HMM’s profile to find them.

Kyra level 3

So far it looks like we only have two players for Chitterwood Walks part 1?

I believe Bitty is a rogue with a pet dinosaur.

Barak Blue is a fighter with a Sorcerer dedication, but it looks like they are only level 2.

Forgot we have a Druid. Primal is one of the better spell lists as it includes healing and blasting spells.

I think I'll bring a pregen as my lvl 3, I don't have anyone currently in that range I feel like playing. Is there a particular role we need?

Ever play Head Shot the Rot? I always thought Doc Featherton was an interesting Pregen.

Otherwise I’m not sure who we have for magical support. My character certainly isn’t!

Force Fang being a conflux spell is severely limited in how often it can be used. A feat with the press trait could be used after any spellstrike.

I wonder how much of an improvement it would be if you gave Magus a variant of Certain Strike? It would allow them to do some damage with a followup strike after the Spellstrike, but have problems with crit failed attacks because of MAP. Maybe make it so it depends on Arcane Cascade and the bonus damage is from something that Arcane Cascade gives?

Weakness triggering is a valid Magus build concept, but the Thaumaturge sort of took over that space. Runic Impression can help with the triggering of weaknesses.

On my melee magus I do find the provoking of Reactive Strike to be a significant danger. A magus does really poorly against a creature with Reactive Strike.

The posture changes? :)

Not sure how to interpret the Oil.

Riftcarver acts as +2 greater striking.
Type +2 weapon potency; Level 10; Price 935 gp
Type greater striking; Level 12; Price 1,065 gp

1065+935=2,000 which makes 1500 a reduced price. The problem is some might already have a +2 potency rune on their weapon. Still likely great for a second weapon since it is unlikely someone would have two weapons at near or maximum power.

I do not envy the developers trying to write a clear description of this. It sounds like quite the challenge.

I can’t be sure, but it sounds like we will be totaling by damage type, applying immunities, applying resistances, total the remainder, then applying weaknesses. I’m not sure that is the plan.

I will say that generally if someone is doing a small enough amount of damage that they can not get through a resistance (such as Flaming rune vs Resist 10 fire), I will generally have the player not even bother rolling the fire damage on a normal hit. That can speed things up quite a bit. I do hope that the final version will allow for that sort of thing.

Does this mean that a flaming sword could potentially do less damage against a creature with Resist Fire 10 than a creature immune to fire?

Say the hit is 9 slashing and 3 fire, combined they are 12 damage less the 10 fire resistance is 2 damage.

If I understand immunity correctly the same hit would do 9 damage since the immunity would apply before combining damage.

Time for what I expect would be a very simple change.

I would like a link in the new store’s “My Account” to either my profile on the old forums or better yet my Campaigns on the old forums.

Got a e-mail about a flash sale.

Clicked the link in the e-mail and got:

Sales

There are no current sales at this time.
Check back in for details and updates about upcoming sales!

So I went searching for maps and was shown a countdown for how long the sale would last. It happened for multiple maps, here is it for Ambush Sites Multipack.

I see a way to add it to my wishlist, but no way to add it to my cart.

Right now it looks like I can not buy any of the items on the flash sale.

Back to suggestions for new boons for SFS2.

A boon to be one of Fitch’s grandkids. She had several kids and at least some of those kids already have mature children such as

Not sure if it should be a background similar to the Greengold background from PFS2 or just a boon, but I suspect it would be popular. If a background, it should probably give Piloting as the skill given who Fitch was.

They don't want you bringing vehicles to scenarios they haven't planned for you to have vehicles in.

Who is they?

Vehicles were allowed in Starfinder 1. The writers managed to figure out how they work there.

Right now in many of the SFS2 scenarios on Akiton they are lending you hover vehicles (D-Vees) just so the travel time isn’t insane. Doesn’t seem unreasonable to allow people to have their own vehicles rather than always having to get them from the motor pool.

3. The missing stat blocks is eaisly delt with now that AoN has a feature that lets you download all the stat blocks for a scenario with one click as a single printer-friendly PDF or that can be used on a phone or tablet.

Except that the AoN people do not get the scenarios until street date. This means if you are running something before the street date you have to do it yourself.

This happens for GenCon and PaizoCon where there are scenarios that are exclusively available there before anywhere else.

To be fair, it also causes problems for RPGChronicles since they are dependent on getting the scenario before being able to support it.

This could be solved if Org Play recognized certain tools (AoN and RPGChronicles currently, but I am not ruling out the possibility of other tools) as needing the scenarios before street date for the cases where an event has permission to run it before street date.

Super cold and a big winter storm heading through many of the US this weekend. Hopefully everyone keeps their power and avoids too much of the ice. We're so far looking at around a foot of snow on Monday up here in the north.

-11 degree F here and way too much ICE.

We will manage.

Starfinder 2 boon.

Was looking for equipment for my character and started looking at the vehicles. Then I went to the Character Options page and saw this line:

As Starfinder GM Core primarily contains tools for GMs, new subsystems, and rules variants rather than direct player options, all content from this book is of Limited availability. However, Organized Play will be drawing from the rules options in this book in creating future adventures, boons, and other content.

I would either like the above to change to give Standard availability to Vehicles (GM Core pg 234-239) or a boon to allow purchase of vehicles from there.

Starfinder 2 boon.

I would like a boon that gave access to all the Pathfinder Player Core and Player Core 2 spells. Call it something like ancient knowledge, it would greatly increase the number of spells available. I’m limiting it to Player Core and Player Core 2 as those spells have the smallest chance of balance problems.

Enhance Weapon spell should give Tracking like Enhance Body does. Right now the target weapon does not give a bonus to DC for Area Fire like an Advanced weapon improvement would.

I know that what I am hoping for in the remaster of Magus is:
1. Support for an Enhancer style, where the spells cast as part of a Spellstrike require neither a saving throw nor attack roll. Allow someone to cast Resist Energy or Haste as part of a Spellstrike,
2. Spontaneous caster for Magus.
3. Ability to choose the tradition (so you could have one using primal, divine, or occult spells).

I also hope the Arcane Stance is better worded. The current errata wording is clumsy.

Not gonna lie, Under Command still feels like the obvious choice for a commander as its effectively +1 to their squadlimit and that whenever they give a troop squadmate a strike they instead get to use 2 action aoe's instead. And that this is a bonus that every troop in the commanders squad gets to enjoy.

But then again so does Inescapable Troop for a fighter or Ambush Troops for a rogue.

Overall I think the bonds do give good choices for each class. That is why the original post was all about when there is no bond.

Given the rule I had missed allowing a Commander to take a troop as a squad mate, even the commander might choose to take one of the other bonds depending on their build. Under Command is going to be the obvious choice for the class, but not always the optimal choice.

BretI wrote:

The Commander loses much of his ability to use the tactics class feature if someone is not a squad mate. Without the bond, a troop can’t be a squad mate.

...

As noted earlier, that is not entirely true. You can have a troop be a squad mate as a single ally using the normal squad mate assignment process. Under Command gives additional benefits that make the class feature work better.

As I said, I had completely missed that sidebar. It changes things quite a bit.

You also seem to be cherry picking your examples. Not only is Bard going to have trouble getting their ally's troops inside the class feature emanation area, Champion is going to struggle to get their own troop entirely inside of theirs - which will make one of their main class features rather useless.

And you still seem to be stuck in this rut of listing out detriments of squad combat rules and thinking that doing so proves your thesis.

What disproved it was the sidebar I missed.

In the future rather than assume someone is arguing in bad faith (accusing me of cherry-picking examples) why not just point out the things I may not have considered.

Note that I didn’t try to list every possibiiity because it would have become much too long.

Saying that Sorcerers, Oracles, or other spontaneous casters might have no spells that work when fighting against a troop is not supporting that conclusion. At best that is just showing that many classes struggle to be more than generic characters when using troop combat rules ... meaning that Commander is not an outlier in this.

Sorcerers and other spontaneous casters choose what spells are in their repertoire. If they are completely lacking any area of effect spells that was because of a choice that player made. It isn’t something required by the class chassis.

As an example of parallel logic consider the following argument:

I'm struggling to understand how the Witch class functions without the Troop Mascot bond.

Without this bond, your familiar doesn't have as much survivability and without your familiar your entire character's effectiveness is rather limited.

Might I suggest a Familiar Satchel at the lowest levels, or Familiar Tattoo at higher levels? There is also the Master Ability Absorb Familiar that any Witch can take provided all of their familiar abilities are not required for the base creature abilities. Note that these are also useful in other cases where AoE damage is a problem.

Worst case, they leave the familiar a mile back in a safe place and communicate when it is safe to come out.

At that point the Witch is just giving up the Familiar Ability and most of the Hexes. They are still a full prepared spellcaster who given head warning can customize their spells to the situation. They can adjust much more easily than any spontaneous caster.

——

In any case, the whole complaint was because I missed a rule in a sidebar. Given that rule, Commanders can be effective in Skirmish combat. They still need to be careful as not all of their abilities will work, but as you pointed out that is true to some extent for all classes.

Hi - I would like to see the product reviews left on the old site restored.

Not an ideal solution, but you could re-enter your reviews. They can still be seen by adding /reviews to your profile URL.

As an example:
https://paizo.com/people/cramtarWitclap/reviews

Alright, the sidebar on pg 164 Commanders and Troops does take care of it.

I had thought that the only way that a Commander could take a troop as a Squadmate was using the Under Command bond.

With that, the Commander is back on par with other classes.

I don't think you have made an argument that Commander is worse than other classes in squad combat.

To do that, you would need to show that all, or at least most, other classes have some beneficial interactions with squad mechanics that they don't have to pay for. That would show that Commander having to pay for their beneficial interaction mechanics is worse.

So what does a Thaumaturge have that interacts well with squad combat? How about a Magus? Fighter? Sorcerer? Swashbuckler? Gunslinger?

The Commander loses much of his ability to use the tactics class feature if someone is not a squad mate. Without the bond, a troop can’t be a squad mate.

The Thaumaturge can still use their implements. The magus can still use their spellstrike and weapons. The fighter can still use Sudden Charge giving them a better ability to move their troop than a Commander has.

The class that does have problems is the rogue as sneak attack now becomes more difficult. This is something that happens a lot to the rogue.

The bard also has a harder time getting people within the 60’ emanation (note that is twice the size of the banner aura) of their compositions.

It is also possible that a sorcerer, oracle or other spontaneous caster has no spells that work well against a troop. Prepared casters would presumably have time to prepare appropriate spells, a spontaneous caster is less able to adapt if they chose their spells poorly.

Note that spellcasters can also have a huge advantage if they have a lot of area spells that do damage since almost all troops are weak to area damage.

It feels like its a "this is a game and we don't want Commanders to just outshine everyone else in squad combat" decision.

Instead they have achieved “Commanders are just worse than everyone else in squad combat without a bond.”

Look at how much of the class revolves around the Tactics feature. Look at how many of the tactics and feats would not work in skirmish combat. You will only be able to affect the leaders of ally troops, not any of the troops themselves.

Look at the limited range of the banner and then consider that with squads every unit is four large creatures in size. A 30’ emanation feels a lot smaller in skirmish combat. In many cases it will only be your own squad and one other.

I am trying to understand how the Commander class functions without the Under Command bond.

I think that without this bond you can’t have a skirmish troop benefit from your tactics. PCs who are instructed allies can use them, but not troops. The reason is that there are too many creatures in a troop for a character to include all of them in your instructed allies.

It is clear that without this bond, a troop could not benefit from any strikes that a Commander might provide since a troop doesn’t have a strike.

Since a troop acts on a PCs initiative, the Commander using Warfare Lore and feats that improve initiative would also benefit the troop.

It looks to me as if any ability with the Banner would still be effective since it only specifies an ally, not an instructed ally. Unfortunately when using troops, the 30’ emanation is rather limiting. Technically not all of a troop would fit into this space with many formations.

It sort of feels like the Commander without that specific bond doesn’t provide much to troops under their command. I would love for people to point out things I might have missed

This is more of a long term suggestion, but I would like it if you allowed SFTP or failing that SMB access to the digital library.

I have been a long time user of GoodReader and would love being able to sync to my digital library rather than needing to download and then sync to a copy of it. I am sure there are others who would also appreciate this capability.

It would be even better if we could customize the layout of the digital library so that we could adjust file names, what folders things are in, etc via manipulation of file links.

Although my comments are specific to GoodReader, I’m sure there are others who would find this sort of support useful. Just giving SFTP would allow me to mirror the library locally and reorganize it to fit my preferences although that would take some work on my side.

Starfinder 2 boon

I would like a boon that allows you have adapted to another planet’s gravity and/or atmosphere.

Season 1 has multiple scenarios on Akiton. Each scenario repeats the information about low grav and thin atmosphere. It would be sort to nice for you to be able to adapt to someplace where it is physically possible and we have a lodge.

Sorry to see you go, Michael. I’ve played with you in several games. If things change and you decide to come back later, I would certainly welcome you.

Ability to add items to a subscription order in order to reduce shipping costs.

We used to have the ability to hold an order for shipment until the next subscription order. If that is no longer possible, perhaps we could have a timeframe in which orders added will ship with the subscription or something like that?

A related products section for items. This would cover a number of things including:
* Different versions of the same product (special edition covers, pocket edition books, PDFs, etc)
* Related products such as the maps used for a particular Society scenario or pawn sets for an AP
* Figurines that are tied to a product

I am probably missing some obvious examples. We don’t need an Amazon style Other Customers bought with this product, but some products have others that are strongly related.

Even in the flipmaps, you would have things like Basic, Bigger Basic and Enormous basic.

Another option is in Starfinder GM Core, pg 252

By spending an additional week and paying half the base Price of the equipment, you could install the technology required to apply upgrades, integrate tech like comm units and environmental protections into armor, and add upgrade slots to shields and weapons. In the case of armor, you can even allow players to pay only half the base price by giving the armor the exposed trait, denying themselves the benefits of environmental protections. The end result would be a commercial grade piece of equipment with the tech trait and one upgrade slot.

Basically use modern materials and processes to make archaic weapons.

This would only handle being able to use the ancient weapons. It doesn’t handle the Plated Vesk nor Petrified Khizar who need armor runes.

Hopefully the tech book with Mechanic and Technomancer will have more ways to deal with this.

Will there be an e-mail once the new site is up to alert us the site is back up?

I am already getting e-mails from news@paizo.com and this seems worthy of notification. Promising to do something like this could also reduce the number of people mashing in the refresh during the downtime.

Hi everyone!

I’m completely new to Pathfinder and Paizo Organized Play, and I’m really excited to start getting involved! I’ve just started my first two adventures here on the forums and it's been a lot of fun so far.
I’d love to find a good beginner-friendly adventure so If anyone has recommendations for scenarios that are great for first-time players — I’d really appreciate your suggestions!
I’m still learning the ropes of Pathfinder and the online Paizo community, so any advice or friendly guidance is very welcome. Thank you so much in advance :)

For introduction to the Pathfinder Society and the various factions:

For raw fun in a quick game:
Bounty 4 Cat's Cradle (level 1 only)
Bounty 5 Witch's Winter Holiday (level 1 only)
Bounty 9 Fishing in Anthusis (level 1 only)
Bounty 10 Hillcross Roundup (level 1 only)

Series 2 Quest 20 The Dacilane Academy's Show Must Go On (level 1-4)
Series 2 Quest 22 Friends in Need (level 1-4)

I would add one piece of advice though if you go for a level 1-4 adventure, make sure there isn’t too big a gap in character levels. Being a first level character in a group where everyone else is 3-4 tends to be a lot less fun. The Pathfinder 2 and Starfinder 2 rules system doesn’t work well when character levels are too far apart. The low level characters can often find they are unable to be effective.

If you are using a published adventure and don’t like applying the Weak adjustment to everything, allow the PCs to be one level higher than the adventure calls for. It achieves about the same thing.

How often do you give out Hero points and under what conditions? Handing out more hero points can certainly help a group.

As the GM, you can also look over the group and come up with some items you feel would help them. I had already mentioned the Boots of Bounding and 2nd rank wand of Tailwind. If you have a group going up against 9th level threats, hopefully they are at least 7th level. At that point some interesting runes and interesting staves can come in.

Assuming you are not using automatic bonus progression, you should also review the players equipment. Has anyone not had a chance to get an armor potency rune? This is the time you could start giving them armor resilience runes. Has everyone who uses weapons got a striking weapon? Has everyone got an item to boost one of their primary skills.

If you are trying to do a low magic campaign, you should just use the Automatic Bonus Progression. The math in Pathfinder 2e really does assume certain equipment and lacking that does make everything harder than it should be.

Just to add to this, anyone playing a rogue should expect to go down more than the other classes. That has been my experience and talking to others they say the same thing. Rogues can hit hard and are great for skills, but they generally get knocked out more than the other classes.

Them not having a full martial (Fighter, Ranger, Champion, Barbarian, Swashbuckler) is going to make fights a little more difficult for them than if they had one. Experienced groups can work around this to an extent.

I would dial down the opponents a notch and maybe have some discussions about strategy.

If they are complaining about mobility, have any of them taken the Fleet General feat or ancestry feats to improve their speed? Have you considered dropping them a 2nd rank wand of Tailwind for the casters or Boots of Bounding for the martial characters?

@Violet-Jade,

I was really excited when first looking at the Faith Tattoo, but then realized it wouldn’t help. Since I am already sanctified that part of it doesn’t help. It does not make the Strikes Holy by itself.

The first time I read the tattoo, I thought it allowed casting any 1st rank divine spell. Then I realized no, it was the 1st rank spell given by the deity.

Trick Magic Item isn’t a good solution because you would need to have the scroll in hand, spend an action to Trick Magic Item and then use the scroll. Minimum of two actions in the same round, likely three actions if you include getting out the scroll. I realized that I would seldom do this.

If there were an item that allowed me to activate it to Infuse Vitality that would work for me.

Still would prefer a boon or item that just allows Holy characters to apply that trait to their Strikes.

Sanctioning is something that the community badly wants. I will note that Driftbourne's comment above that 'no one I know wants to play unsanctioned adventures' is a common complaint. Not sanctioning these adventures means that we don't run them in our...

We have tried running unsanctioned content at a few of our conventions. In general it is much easier to fill a table of sanctioned content than unsanctioned content. Although I am willing (and at times eager) to do things outside of Org Play, I have an unopened box of Murder in Metal City sitting in my gaming room because it isn’t sanctioned. I doubt that I will buy another of this type of adventure unless they become sanctioned — I am more inclined to explore other RPGs in order to bring more variety into my gaming.

APs don’t have the same requirements as Society adventures. The Mode of Play section of the guide explains this.

I do tend to run as close to the script as I can. Can’t say that I can recall any instances where I really pushed the rules.

APs are a very different thing. Running Agents of Edgewatch, my players had to patrol the beach and docks for a day. If my anime can have beach and spa episodes, I see no reason that I can’t bring it into a Roleplaying game. I also changed around one of the investigation segments to make it much more of a sandbox adventure. I felt it was way too linear and railroaded in the AP so I changed things around there.

Neither of those changes would be appropriate for a Society adventure. I made mechanical changes and added encounters not in the AP. They would still be within the bounds for “Adventure Mode”. Since it was Agents of Edgewatch, it didn’t matter any ways as that AP is not sanctioned.

I would like a boon that would allow someone who is Holy to make their strikes carry that trait.

Champions that are sanctified have this. None of the other sanctified options provide it.

War Priests and anyone taking the Mortal Herald archetype could be Holy, depending on deity of course.

Agreed that Weapon Infusion with Strength works really well. It gives a lot of flexibility for attacking, even with a single element. If you are doing this, build for the armor infusion that your element provides assuming there is one. If there isn’t, consider branching out to an element that provides that.

Single element is tricky as each element lacks something. Picking two elements that have different strengths allows you to adapt to the situation.

Also if they have too many AoEs, perhaps they should retrain one or two infusions from AoE damage to something else that would be effective against a single opponent.

I don’t know what AP you are running, but also consider changing around things slightly to put in a boss that is vulnerable to their element. Sounds like they have already had enough instances where they felt less useful, putting in someone where they are much more useful can make it feel better.