Colette Brunel's page

How is the Legendary Negotiaton skill feat actually supposed to work? It is a three-action, 15th-level skill feat that does the following: "You can negotiate incredibly quickly in adverse situations. You attempt to Make an Impression and then Request your opponent cease their current activity and engage in negotiations. You take a –5 penalty to your Diplomacy check. The GM sets the DC of the Request based on the circumstances—it’s generally at least a very hard DC of the creature’s level. Some creatures might simply refuse, and even those who agree to parley might ultimately find your arguments lacking and return to violence."

However, Make an Impression can bring a hostile creature up to indifferent at most, and that is on a critical success. You can make a Request only on friendly or helpful creatures. How does this feat actually work?

Are there any plans for Dahak's other notable minions, listed in Inner Sea Faiths, to make appearances in this adventure path?

I am talking about Aashaq the Annihilator (CE female great wyrm red dragon cleric of Dahak 7), Emissary Rixmar (unique contract devil), Kronoroth (herald of Dahak, unique ancient white dragon), and the Roiling Mass (unique Medium magma elemental).

How could these be integrated into the adventure path? What would their respective creature levels be?

How much time actually goes into the "working" part of a downtime day? Suppose the party travels for 8 hours; can they spend the remaining 8 hours on a one-day-long downtime activity?

I can find nothing in the downtime rules clarifying how much time is actually spent working during a downtime day.

The rules for rituals say 8 hours per day, but that is specifically under the context of using rituals in exploration mode.

Suppose a downtime "day" is actually just 8 hours of work. What is stopping a character with the spare time from just working for 16 hours, thus squeezing in two downtime "days"? Or, alternatively, what is stopping a character from dedicating a downtime "day" of 8 hours of work, and then spending a couple of hours adventuring somewhere?

Is the elananx monster in the bestiary supposed to have Stealth +14? Its Pounce does not work too well with no Stealth training.

Can an arcane or primal spellcaster Sustain a Spell three times during their turn to ping flaming sphere damage three times?

How bad an idea is it to let the aspect of Dahak stick around in a harmless form in the Huntergate waystation? That way, the PCs can effectively chat up an imprisoned dragon god, Dahak can feebly taunt the PCs, and generally be an interesting face whenever the party crosses between Breachill and the Mwangi Expanse. I was thinking of taking this a step further and letting Dahak harmlessly manifest outside the Huntergate waystation, in Breachill, as a tiny little wyrmling, to banter with the PCs in town.

Also, what was stopping the aspect of Dahak from manifesting when the Cinderclaws passed through it?

Today, thousands of years later, the Kyonin side of Lotusgate has become the hub of a much larger aiudara network, its link to Alseta’s Ring long forgotten. The ruined portal in Alseta’s Ring exists as a reminder that nothing, no matter how exquisitely crafted or magically protected, lasts forever. The ancient techniques Candlaron used to build aiudara have been lost as well, so the chances of Alseta’s Ring being some day relinked to Kyonin are remote at best. In the Age of Ashes Adventure Path, Lotusgate plays no role other than as a reminder of the past. At your option, you could allow the PCs to discover a method to repair the portal once they’re very high level, but such an event is beyond the scope of this campaign.

First of all, is Lotusgate actually "the hub of a much larger aiudara network"? I thought that Lotusgate connected to Galtgate, and Galtgate was the hub.

The Lost Omens World Guide says:

the capital of Iadara, where several aiudara—elf gates—link the elven realm to distant lands, and where the Sovyrian Stone that powers all aiudara is carefully hidden away.

Is this a retcon, with Lotusgate now directly being a part of an aiudara network in Iadara itself?

Secondly, it is not unthinkable that the characters might just identify Lotusgate for what it is, and its connection to Iadara, the capital of Kyonin. How would the downtime task of sending envoys to Iadara pan out? The PCs could send over 5th-level elven clerics Kellen Carondil (a Desnan well-suited to travel, no less) and Tarindlara Vallindel off to Iadara to engage in diplomacy; the town would still have a 5th-level cleric in the form of the local Caydenite. Going by this map, there are ~400 miles between Breachill and Iadara.

The diplomats could cast wanderer's guide to ignore terrain, pass through Druma, and make it to Iadara more or less without incident. On Speed 40 riding horses, as per page 479 of the core rulebook, they would travel 32 miles per day, thus arriving in ~12.5 days. But what would happen then?

As per the Lost Omens World Guide:

Kyonin’s leadership has begun sending more diplomatic emissaries to other nations in preparation for a large-scale war that could ravage the continent. At the same time, this need for greater cooperation with other nations has led Kyonin’s leaders to open their own carefully watched borders to ambassadors and visitors from a wide array of ancestries and nations.

I have been running Age of Ashes #1: Hellknight Hill. The group has completed its second session. The player characters are currently 3rd level, having cleared out all three wings of the Citadel Altaerein vaults.

The party is a maestro bard, a flickmace paladin champion, a guisarme Brutish Shove fighter, a crossbow Precision ranger. This is a reasonably optimal party. Being a maestro is great for Lingering Composition for long-lasting offensive buffs; the bard also took an ancestry feat for two-target cantrip electricity damage, which is really quite a good spell to toss out at-will, though it cannot be made nonlethal. The flickmace paladin champion restricts enemy options with reach Ranged Retribution, while the guisarme Brutish Shove fighter further locks down enemies with Attack of Opportunity; working together, they really hamper enemies' tactical choices. The crossbow Precision ranger took voluntary flaws to Strength and Charisma, so between Intelligence 14, Wisdom 16, all knowledge skills trained, and Monster Hunter, they are the party's big brain.

The party has prioritized Wisdom over Constitution, so they have good initiative. As part of pre-agreed standard operating procedures, the party makes extensive use of the Scout exploration activity, further pushing up initiative. Between battles, Medicine and champion Focus Points keep the party's hit points topped off.

We play for 6 to 6.5 hours. We play entirely via text and virtual tabletop. I pre-type plenty of material, even NPC banter, and I speed along the dungeon crawl process as quickly as I can, because I never really liked dungeon-crawling anyway; thus, sessions go by relatively quickly. During the first session, nobody spent any Hero Points. During the second session, I handed out a total of 8 Hero Points, on top of the starter pack. In future sessions, I will hand out fewer.

I am the GM who ran roughly two dozen iterations of playtest adventures, and every single one of them concluded in a TPK; in a few cases, there were even multiple TPKs in one session. I run my combats brutally and in a wargame-like fashion, and I have no compunctions whatsoever against focus-firing down PCs. I tend towards mechanical transparency; all combatants on both sides are aware of one another's special senses, AC, saving throws, Hit Points, Speeds, Attack of Opportunity capacities, and similar values, though PCs still need to discover NPC/monster special abilities via Recall Knowledge.

Three out of four players are long-time veterans of my playtest adventures, and are thus masochists who know my GMing style and the basics of 2e fairly well. The fourth player has no prior 2e experience, but is generally good with grid-based tactics, and likewise knows my GMIng style quite well.

I do not like talking about the narrative or roleplaying side of my playthroughs, with a few exceptions, because they are very much down to personal taste. I doubt that many players would be enthused by my "absolutely everyone is cute, friendly, and whimsical, even the evil mooks" NPC style, or my cutesy anime aesthetic, for example.

Let us get this out of the way. I have gone over other adventures extensively: Cult of Cinders, Fall of Plaguestone, and the first batch of Pathfinder Society scenarios. I think that all of them are fairly good. Hellknight Hill, in my opinion, is a marked step down from all of the other adventures. It is sloppily-written. The authors were clearly struggling at several points, because it was written mid-2e-development. Many plot points, NPC actions, and contrivances either are nonsensical, or require the great majority of the NPCs to be straight-up idiots (even by Paizo adventure path standards); the players have openly noted this as well. The out-of-the-box encounter design is very boring, and unlike Pathfinder Society scenarios, there is no encounters-per-day guideline, so there is no real impetus for daily resource management when the party can rest at-will. It is a schlocky dungeon crawl through and through.

The first session covered 1st-level gameplay, clearing out the first level of Citadel Altaerein. The group took zero damage through this whole session, burned zero spell slots, and spent zero consumables. During the first encounter, the fire, in my policy of transparency, I informed my players of the full mechanics of the encounter. As it turns out, the fire hazard is only dangerous if the players have the mechanics obfuscated from them, because once they know how the scene actually works mechanically, the PCs can simply delegate many tasks to NPCs. The fire rolled low initiative, the PCs delegated many tasks to NPCs, and so the fire was gone and all 40 townsfolk were rescued before the fire's turn on round #4.

After watching Alak Stagram slay some imps single-handedly while taking zero damage, the PCs picked up their very own locked-at-2nd GMPC. The citadel romp was fairly humdrum. The group blazed through virtually every encounter. As per the adventure's suggestion given Alak's presence, I combined the giant bat and the skeletons, and the warg and the graveshells. The PCs knocked out every single monster, except for the skeletons, and except for the giant bat, which was accidentally killed by a lethal attack from a crossbow Precision critical hit (spawning a funposty fake meme image).

The Calmont hostage scene was fairly silly. One DC 16 Intimidation check is all it takes to get Calmont to surrender, strangely enough, and that is precisely what the PCs succeeded at. Even if the PCs had failed that check and decided to rush Calmont, the adventure prescribes Calmont fumbling with the knife; it is a bit silly if PCs need no finesse in hostage situations, because they can count on the hostage-taker fumbling with their weapon.

The PCs hit 2nd level after attending to the warg puppies. The session ended then.

Come the second session, I went off-script a little. I was dissatisfied with the boring, "some trash enemies in a room attack the party" encounters, and the players were eager to enlist some NPCs into the party, so I ramped up encounter difficulty. I think this made for a better session overall. It may not have been particularly faithful to the adventure, but it was a more engaging set of tactical challenges.

For starters, I had the warg mother return to her babies right then and there, and I had her be an elite winter wolf, a 6th-level creature. They had an extensive back-and-forth discussion debating the morals and ethics of the party taking her babies. Calmont joined in here, so it was the four PCs, Alak, and Calmont versus the winter wolf. Thanks to flanking and decent positioning, the elite winter wolf had a hard time getting off a breath against more than two targets. The battle ended early into the second round, with only the bard having taken any damage, a solid 24. The PCs merely knocked out the elite winter wolf, so that they can unite the male warg, the mighty mother, and the two puppies all together for counseling in Breachill.

The next fight was against the darkvisionless emperor birds in a pitch-black room, as per James Jacobs' confirmation. The party knocked out the birds in the first round. Come the second round, the elite soulbound doll and the gelatinous cube rolled initiative and joined the fray. The party took out the elite soulbound doll before it could act. The gelatinous cube proved more troublesome, and its Engulf dealt 6 damage each to the champion and the fighter, but it went down early into the third round. That was the only damage the party took.

After punching some sense into Pib and then healing the kobold up with Medicine and champion Focus Points, the party enlisted Pib and Zarf to join them, alongside Alak and Calmont. Then I had Team Cinderclaw rush the war room for a grand battle. The first wave was three boggard warriors and two boggard scouts. Two-target electrical cantrips from the bard and the two kobold dragon mages proved terribly effective against low-Reflex boggards. The party knocked out all three boggard warriors and one boggard scout in the first round, and nobody was ever frightened by the croaks at any point, in part thanks to the maestro bard's composition spells. The second wave, arriving at the start of round #2 and rolling initiative then, was comprised of the five charau-ka. The party knocked out the remaining boggard scout and four charau-ka by the end of the second round, and knocked out the fifth early into the third round. The party took zero damage during this fight, quite surprisingly.

By this point, the party has spent zero spell slots (not even the kobold dragon mages spent spell slots) and zero consumables. During the second session, they captured the two birds and all ten of the Cinderclaws, out of some sense of pacifism.

The grizzly bear, the party calmed with a Nature check. The undead Hellknights, the party circumvented at Alak Stagram's insistence on using the cloth insignias recovered earlier. And that was that. It was not quite in the adventure, but I spent a fair bit of time roleplaying out interactions with the sophont, undead Hellknights; it is a shame that the adventure never brings that up as a possibility. I had the undead Hellknights banter about afterlives in Hell and such, what kind of undead the party would want to be, the silly loophole of the insignias, and similar topics.

The party is ready to continue on to 3rd level in the exact same adventuring day. Alak, Calmont, Pib, and Zarf are still tagging along, so I will have to combine together encounters in Guardian's Way and the Goblinblood Caves into quite the grand rumble.

Is it just me, or does making 4719 AR a post-adventure-path world mean that Golarion is now crawling with parties of high-level heroes? How would this not be a massive factor, if not the single biggest factor, in the political landscape and the relations between nations?

Consider the following adventure paths: Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness, Legacy of Fire, Council of Thieves, Kingmaker, Serpent's Skull, Jade Regent, Skull & Shackles, Shattered Star, Reign of Winter, Wrath of the Righteous, Mummy's Mask, Iron Gods, Giantslayer, Reign of Winter, Hell's Rebels, Hell's Vengeance, Strange Aeons, Ironfang Invasion, Ruins of Azlant, War for the Crown, Return of the Runelords.

These 23 adventure paths all end in a living, intact, high-level party (up to 20th level and mythic tier 10th for Wrath of the Righteous) who will probably amass even more levels and power as they go on to tackle the "continuing the campaign" adventure hooks.

Would this not mean that Golarion's landscape is now dominated by these epic heroes serving as the real movers and shakers of the world? Assuming a four-PC party for each of these 23 adventure paths, that is 92 heroes. Even if a full half of these legendary heroes retired, never to adventure again, the other 46 would still be forces to be reckoned with, the real powers behind the political landscape. There is no way that these immensely powerful figures are just sitting around, doing nothing. Would Golarion not effectively be a world of demigodly heroes engaging in national-scale, if not global-scale, adventurous pursuits? Only one of these, the Hell's Vengeance party, is supposed to be evil, too.

In the "post-adventure-path cinematic universe," there are dozens of epic figures ready to teleport off and solve the world's problems. I cannot see how it would be possible for any major power, terrestrial or extraplanar, to attempt some nefarious plot without being responded to by at least one of these parties.

Consider, let us say, Kintargo, capital of Ravounel. By the time the party completes the "Continuing the Campaign" section of Hell's Rebels, they are quite likely to be 20th level. By that point, I do not think that party is going to let any ills befall Ravounel, let alone Kintargo, the capital city that they spent the bulk of their career fighting for and defending. This makes it all the more confusing that Age of Ashes #3 is heading to Kintargo. The same goes for the Jade Regent party and Kasai (capital of Minkai), the Curse of the Crimson Throne party and Korvosa, the Iron Gods party and Starfall, and so on and so forth.

What counts as "mortal" in this game, for the purposes of abilities like the balisse angel's Guiding Angel? Is there some printed rule on this?

Celestials, fiends, and monitors are likely not considered mortals.

Humanoids most likely are. Doomsday Dawn implies that aberrations are considered mortals.

But what about aberrations minus a playtest lore source? Animals? Astrals? Beasts? Constructs? Dragons? Elementals? Ethereals? Fey? Fungi? Giants? Oozes? Plants? Undead?

Is there really no scaling on the Trip action's critical success? It seems a bit weird to me that a character critically Tripping an enemy can deal a little extra damage (nowhere near as much as a proper critical hit on a strike though), but a flat 1d6 damage is barely noticeable at higher levels.

Did I miss something, or do clerics and druids not actually have a 17th-level class feature? Bards, wizards, and, as of Twitch stream errata, sorcerers all have a 17th-level feature; are clerics and druids supposed to receive one?

Wizards do not appear to have a 3rd-level class feature, either.

How do nonlethal spell attacks work? Page 453 says, "You can make a nonlethal attack in an effort to knock someone out instead of killing them (see Knocked Out and Dying on page 459). Weapons with the nonlethal trait (including fists) do this automatically. You take a –2 circumstance penalty to the attack roll when you make a nonlethal attack using a weapon that doesn’t have the nonlethal trait. You also take this penalty when making a lethal attack using a nonlethal weapon."

I can see this working in one of two ways. Either a spell attack roll can be made nonlethal at no penalty (because spell attack rolls are not weapons), or a spell attack roll cannot be made nonlethal. Which is the case?

For those of you who already have the Lost Omens World Guide: What are the best optimization uses of these new dedications? I am not answering questions about the Lost Omens World Guide; I am just asking other people who already have it.

Most of this material seems on the merely "okay" side. I would say that multiclass dedications are generally stronger from a mechanical perspective overall, since they allow for cherry-picking of some rather nice abilities. These new dedications are definitely more niche.

The strongest of these dedications is probably the Runescarred, since it is essentially a spellcasting archetype with no ability score prerequisite, though it is still tied to Charisma in a way due to relying on innate spells. We have already seen the Pathfinder Agent, whose entry feat gives the 7th-level benefit of Untrained Improvisation, but someone could just take Untrained Improvisation at 7th anyway. I suppose the Hellknight Armiger is kind of, sort of okay, for the damage resistances? Magic Warrior Dedication saddles a character with the whole anonymity and face-mask gimmick; someone has to go in two feats deep for Magic Warrior Aspect, which is decent for gaining speeds from animal form.

Aldori Duelist and Red Mantis Assassin are troublesome to qualify for, because they require you to already be trained in the Aldori dueling sword (uncommon, a whopping 20 gp, advanced, one-handed, 1d8, finesse, slashing into versatile P, and that is it; very underwhelming) or the sawtooth saber, and their initial dedications mostly just keep your Aldori dueling sword or sawtooth saber proficiency up-to-date.

Perhaps the single most disappointing dedication here is the Living Monolith. Living Monolith Dedication is really, really narrow for a 2nd-level feat, only really affecting recovery checks. The 4th-level feat, Ka Stone Ritual, is required for all other feats in the chain... and it is a rare option, which means it is extra-gated behind GM fiat. It is the only rare option in this entire book. Fortified Flesh is an 8th-level feat that grants resistance to all physical damage (except from adamantine) equal to the number of Living Monolith feats, but again, it is locked behind Ka Stone Ritual, which is rare. I do not like this conceit wherein tempting options are locked behind rare rarity.

All in all, while I can see some of these dedications having niche uses, it seems to me that most characters will be mechanically better off with a multiclass if they want to take a dedication.

In the bestiary, there is an NPC/monster called the drow rogue. They have a reaction called "Nimble Dodge," and it says, "Requirement A drow rogue can’t use this reaction while encumbered. Trigger The drow rogue is hit or critically hit by an attack made by a creature the drow rogue can see. Effect The drow rogue gains a +2 circumstance bonus to their Armor Class against the triggering attack."

On the other hand, a PC rogue has a worse version of Nimble Dodge:
"Trigger A creature targets you with an attack and you can see the attacker.
"Requirements You are not encumbered.
"You deftly dodge out of the way, gaining a +2 circumstance bonus to AC against the triggering attack."

This has to be declared at the targeting stage, as far as I am aware, which means that once the attack has been rolled, a PC rogue's Nimble Dodge is no longer valid. Page 15 of the core rulebook confirms this. The issue here is that in certain live-table games and in many online games, it simply is not feasible to declare Nimble Dodge at times.

A fair few GMs try to resolve monster turns as quickly as possible (can they really be blamed for trying to sustain a fast game pace?), and there is sometimes only a very short period between the GM declaring an attack target and rolling the attack. Sometimes, especially in online games (e.g. macros), the GM proactively resolves attacks against PCs directly. In cases like these, it is terribly difficult for a PC rogue to use Nimble Dodge, unless the GM manually asks, "Would you like to use Nimble Dodge?", each and every time the rogue is targeted by an attack while the rogue still has a reaction available.

I cannot be the only one who finds this clunky.

Are combatants aware that a given opponent can perform an Attack of Opportunity? This is a fairly important piece of information, and the rules do not clearly state such a thing.

Some enemy feels like Striding past a PC fighter (or anyone else with an Attack of Opportunity). Are they aware that the fighter can perform an Attack of Opportunity from the outset, before they even make the Stride? Do they become aware the moment they come within the fighter's reach? Do they become aware only once the Attack of Opportunity has already happened?

Similarly, suppose a PC barbarian is facing an orc warrior (common creature 1st) with Attack of Opportunity, and the barbarian wants to Stride past the orc warrior. Are they aware that the orc warrior can perform an Attack of Opportunity from the outset, before they make the Stride? Do they become aware the moment they come within the orc warrior's reach? Do they become aware only once the Attack of Opportunity has already happened?

Fighters generally seem to be best-off with a flickmace or a reach polearm to capitalize on Attack of Opportunity, but some might instead prefer to emphasize their striker side and more directly eliminate enemies.

I was running some numbers on 1st- through 4th-level fighters earlier, comparing pick and light pick Double Slice, generic one-hander and generic agile Double Slice, greatpick Strike Strike, generic two-hander Strike Strike, greatpick Power Attack, and generic two-hander Power Attack, all against various ACs. My assumption was that the third action would never be used to attack due to MAP, and would instead be used to do something else, like reposition. The results were inconclusive and showed that which had the best DPR was strongly dependent on the specific target AC. From 1st through 4th, a fighter may as well just take Sudden Charge at 1st and simply Strike + Brutish Shove with a two-hander.

5th-level, though, is a different story. It seems to me that from 5th level onwards, a pure striker fighter's best choice for raw damage is pick and light pick Double Slice. The principle is simple. Double Slice is the best way for a fighter to land as many critical hits as possible. Pick critical specialization is devastating, since it cranks up the damage even further, possibly ending the enemy right then and there.

Given a striking rune and doubling rings, a 5th-level fighter's pick deals 2d6+4 damage (average 11) on a regular hit, and 4d10+8+1d10+6 (average 41.5) on a critical hit. The same character's light pick deals 2d4+4 damage (average 9) on a regular hit, and 4d8+8+1d8+6 (average 36.5) on a critical hit. Those are some nutso numbers. Given a rogue multiclass, Sneak Attacker, and attacking a flat-footed enemy, it seems to me that a pick and light pick Double Slicer is the single best pure striker fighter from 5th level onwards. Is there anything in the fighter that can compete for this damage purpose?

The Minecraft fighter seems unusually effective.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VQdXIJMMeNlkL1ta_b9q_iImAHoujDCYs1W aBJP-Rjs/edit

Average 5th-level AC is 22, with 75 hit points. A 5th-level fighter likely has an attack bonus of 4 ability modifier + 5 level + 6 master + 1 item = +16. That gives a regular hit chance of 50%, and a critical hit chance of 25%. Given the damage numbers above, if even one of those attacks is a critical hit, that lays waste to roughly half of the monster's hit points, with a regular hit on top of that generating further damage. There is also the off-chance (6.25%) that the enemy is one-turn-KOed outright.

The numbers above improve with flat-footing, bonuses to attack rolls, and so on.

It is a gambler's build for sure, though; lacking in consistency means that it is on the more luck-dependent side, and it can easily run into overkill issues when focusing fire with other party members.

A variant could be a greatpick fighter multiclassing into a spellcasting class for true strike, but that is limited by per-day uses.

I am rather disappointed by the fighter's 19th-level class feature. For comparison, at 5th and at 13th, fighters gain major class features that are quite possibly some of the best in their category: direct improvements to accuracy (and, by extension, critical hit chances) for their primary weapon. By 13th level, a fighter is legendary with their weapon category of choice, and that is fantastic. Fighter feats generally push a fighter into a specific weapon style, too.

On the other hand, at 19th-level all a fighter receives is... legendary proficiency in all other weapon categories, or merely master for advanced weapons. That is not very good. This is the level wherein backup weapons are at their absolute weakest, since the primary weapon is most likely a pile of runes, so switching away from it would be a tremendous downgrade. Backup weapons may still be necessary at times (e.g. against balors), but even then, this 19th-level class feature only really matters for backup weapons of a different category than the fighter's main weapon group of choice.

For comparison, spellcasters receive a 10th-level spell slot at 19th level. Alchemists, barbarians, rangers, and rogues get better AC on top of auxiliary benefits. Champions receive a great focus spell, and monks improve their accuracy. By comparison, the locked-in fighter capstone is "get better with your backup weapons" at the level when backup weapons are at their weakest.

Simply as a PSA, it is worth noting that all-champion (or all-champion-multiclass parties) are terrifying catch-22s. Champion's Reaction can respond even if the ally being damaged has Champion's Reaction themselves, so if multiple party members have Champion's Reaction, they can really entrap enemies in nasty catch-22s.

The absolute silliest hypothetical scenario is wherein everyone is a flickmace Ranged Retribution paladin champion, or maybe a 6th-level character multiclassing into paladin champion for flickmace Ranged Retribution, thus ensuring that the enemy side gets pounded with Retributive Strikes.

What is with the minimum four-day crafting time? As far as I can tell, there does not seem to be a way (short of some spell or magic item that I may have missed?) to reduce crafting times beyond the minimum of four days. In other words, a 20th-level PC with legendary Crafting and all of the Crafting skill feats still takes a minimum of four days to craft a 0-level item, like a bedroll or a belt pouch.

Do I have this right? Did I miss some rule that hastens crafting times? Because this cannot possibly be right.

It seems that non-evil diabolic sorcerers cannot use their higher-level bloodline focus spells. According to page 631, an evil ability "can be selected or used only by evil creatures."

Embrace the pit and hellfire plume are evil-tagged, and thus, cannot be used by non-evil diabolic sorcerers. They should avoid taking the Advanced Bloodline and Greater Bloodline feats. Even those evil diabolic sorcerers might have trouble with hellfire plume, because it deals half evil damage, and evil damage affects only good creatures, which cuts into the spell's damage against a good number of enemies.

Demonic sorcerers have no such issue with their focus spells.

Does this not seem a little weird to anyone else?

How does the rogue's Minor Magic actually work? They are not quite innate spells, they do not mention being trained in such cantrips, and no spellcasting ability modifier is listed for them. Did I miss a rule on how they work?

What is the mechanical point of the animal instinct barbarian? The two stronger instincts, dragon and giant, give some significant boosts to a barbarian's damage output. But all the animal instinct does is entitle a barbarian to use... weapons that are a smidge worse than most martial two-handed weapons, while also locking a barbarian out of auxiliary weapons? At best, that is a sidegrade, when other instincts are actual upgrades.

The only thing this accomplishes is cater to people who really, really want to play an unarmed barbarian, without giving an actual mechanical edge. It would be relevant in those once-in-a-blue-moon "no weapons" scenarios, and that is about it, really.

I could potentially see some merit to grapple barbarian builds, though those have a non-negligible opportunity cost, and not all of the animal attacks are attached to grapples. Some are simply flat-out worse than regular weapons (e.g. bull vs. maul, wolf vs. scythe). And what is this about only frogs and deers gaining extra upgrades from the specialization ability?

I cannot see how this is supposed to be on par with the plain, simple, and effective upgrades from dragon and giant. I am also comparing the baseline package; the baseline needs to be good, because feats come from a selectable pool of (ideally) balanced options. Animal Skin at 6th is decent, but is it that much better than other 6th-level barbarian feats?

Compare a 1st-level bull barbarian to a 1st-level dragon barbarian with a maul, for example. The latter has a very similar weapon profile, but deals 3 more damage with each hit, and that is non-negligible.

It seems to me that there is an unsavory situation in the rules wherein, if possible and if allowed by one's class choices, a character is most optimal as a neutral character with no lawful, chaotic, good, or evil component. Various spells and monsters deal lawful, chaotic, good, or evil damage, but as per page 452, such damage types only harm those of the opposing alignment. A neutral character, then, is immune to lawful, chaotic, good, or evil damage, taking the threat away from various spells and monsters. Furthermore, a neutral PC can still wield a holy weapon regardless and whack away at those monsters vulnerable to good damage.

Is this really a game wherein neutrality and moderation in alignment give PCs the most protection against various effects?

Well, according to page 13, "Often, a trait indicates how other rules interact with an ability, creature, item, or another rules element that has that trait." Thus, items are not abilities and vice versa. Page 532 says, "For permanent items with activated abilities, the Activate entry is a paragraph in the description."According to page 632, "Good effects often manipulate energy from good-aligned Outer Planes and are antithetical to evil divine servants or divine servants of evil deities. A creature with this trait is good in alignment. An ability with this trait can be selected or used only by good creatures." So on the _holy_ rune, a neutral creature could definitely use its passive effect, though not its activated ability. Maybe there is still some incentive to be aligned (though it takes, for example, acquiring an 11th-level item...), but for the most part, a neutral PC's immunity to alignment damage is still too good a protection to pass up.

Charm and charming touch mention that on a successful saving throw, the target can use Identify Magic to realize the attempt at enchantment, but how does this actually work if Identify Magic calls for ten minutes of examination of an ongoing effect? The charm attempt failed, so how can there be possibly anything to identify?

For that matter, since the condition appendix says that PCs are not subject to the friendly and helpful conditions, does that mean that the only part of such spells that PCs can be affected by is "no hostile actions"?

Spell Blending can be strong at higher levels, particularly since it is one of the ways in which a wizard can gain extra 10th-level slots, though it has the problem of being not very good at lower levels, no? I cannot imagine that the cantrip tradeoff alone is particularly valuable from 1st through 4th level.

Am I missing something about Spell Blending that makes it genuinely useful at lower levels, especially when the versatility-expanding Spell Substitution is right below it? Retraining class features takes a month, so this is not very easy to retrain into, either.

I mean, if cantrips are in such high demand, there is always Improved Familiar Attunement, and that does not sacrifice one of the precious few spell slots at lower levels. At lower levels, every spell slot counts, right? Giving up a 1st-level slot at 5th level (where Spell Blending really takes off) does not hurt, but it definitely hurts more at 1st level.

Very approximately, I measured Breachill's width as ~1,040 feet, and its length as ~1,400 feet. The town gates are an incredible ~100 feet wide.

That gives the town an area of ~1,456,000‬ square feet, or ~0.05222681359 square miles.

Given the town's population of 1,300, that gives us a population density of ~‭24,891.42857164302‬ per square mile.

For reference, New York City has a population of 26,403 people per square mile. So either I bungled up my math somewhere along the way, or Breachill has quite a thick population for a little fantasy town.

Consider Snagging Strike (fighter class feat 1st) and Combat Grab (fighter class feat 2nd). Does either occupy your hand, for mechanical purposes? This is important for the likes of Dueling Parry and Guardian's Deflection, which require a free hand. They also matter for themselves; if Snagging Strike, for example, occupies your hand, then it could not follow up into a Combat Grab.

Hustle says, "You can Hustle only for a number of minutes equal to your Constitution modifier × 10 (minimum 10 minutes)." What happens when this limit is reached? What is the "cooldown time" for this?