Corradh's page

Could any spell be more thrilling than Dancing Wights?

tmncx0 wrote:

Are you your own ally? Has this been definitively answered for this edition, or not? Because I’ve been letting my Paladins Retributive Strike enemies that hit them based on the ruling that “yes, you are your own ally”.

I don't know if this has been "officially" answered, but I spoke to a dev (Mark) and the answer is "no". Ally refers to someone who's not you who's on your side.

This came up for us last Saturday because someone wanted to know if they could target themselves with Forbidding Ward.

Quote from the book pg. 175 section Item Damage subsection Broken:

"broken armor is an exception. It still grants its item bonuses, but ..."

How in the heck does armor get broken if it does not take DENTS?

If it does not function as an item that takes damage then why have a call out "Materials" on pg. 177 and a hardness guide on pg. 354

If shields can take dents so can armor. You are going to have to address this.

Any other way would be inconsistent game mechanics.

Page 372, corrosive rune.

But the point is : they can't keep track of this. They don't know what the item does.

It's like asking you what I have in my pocket while you never saw what's inside.

Oh, oh, I know this one! Pick me! Pick me!

(On a serious note, our GM has told us to jot down some piece of reference data for items we can't/don't want to identify at the moment)

With the low hardness of shields/ease of denting, it seems fine to me.

I'd also note every time I (or have seen others) ask if the TPK reporting players tried anything but "we hit it" they've gotten defensive about how all the other core options couldn't possibly have helped even though they didn't try them. Although this is anecdotal, my group did a lot better when I informed them of their other combat options (as a GM to people playing a new game for the first time SHOULD be doing in my opinion.) It's amazing how much of a difference readying, grappling, intimidating makes. Demoralize outright won two fights in the first module.

Definitely, once we started employing flanking and demoralizing, it was very helpful.

I've also never, ever seen a player death in PFS at one of my tables I've played at; I have GMed a couple of deaths, but these were one-off players using pre-gens.

Part of the problem with the playtest (in the grand scheme) is that PF1 players are frnankly spoiled. They have options galore, incredibly powerful martials and casters, healing spam, no mid-difficulty encounters (either too easy or too hard).

Removing all knowledge of PF1 playstyle and rules knoweldge is nearly impossible, so playtesting has been biased a bit with that regard. Throw the new rules learning aspect in with this for those players who have limited or no PF1 rules knowledge and you'll get a bias for lack of knowledge and/or lack of combat strategy, all of which affect the outcome!

That being said, I'm not sure there is anything, at all, that can remove these biases.

I've only played in one PF1 campaign (off and on for a few years now), and honestly have no idea what the dying rules are there because I don't think we've ever made it down to 0HP.

Fortunately, when I'm GMing, it's AD&D 2E so they're used to more brutality from that.

So far I haven't had anyone survive a crit from my monk while in tiger stance, so it's been kind of bittersweet.

Nevermind, I was thinking incorrectly...

I'm in the camp for boosting the other healing options available outside of cleric's channel energy. We ran In Pale Mountain's Shadow twice, with different parties (but the same players). First time through I had a druid with a few heals prepared, and Natural Medicine. The second time I had a cleric. There was a very stark difference in how long we could adventure between the two parties.
Natural Medicine generally didn't work out too well for me, between the DC and the once/day limit. It's already limited to strictly out-of-combat due to taking 10 minutes, after all.

I looked at the 5th level cleric pregen, and yes, that does appear to be it, 1st level is just your modifier, then heightening adds 1d8 as well as the modifier.

Corradh wrote:

Claxon wrote:

Dekalinder wrote:

How about divorcing background from mechanics, and have everyone write the background they like, pick the stats that fit the character, and chose an appropriate lore and skill feat? Or that would be too much player empowerment?

That's essentially what I was suggesting.

I think the only thing that might need curating is what feats are available. And that would be as simple as making a list of feats that is felt to be appropriate as background feats from the list of feats.

It might be as simple as anything that doesn't have a level requirement on it, but I don't know all of the feats well enough to say if there is something that wouldn't be appropriate as a background feat.

I mean, is Fleet acceptable as a background feat?

I could see an argument where your background is that your an relay runner or sprinter, so gaining a speed bonus would be appropriate in my opinion. But I don't know if it's balanced or not.

Fleet is a general feat (the errata says the "skill" tag should be removed from it), backgrounds only give skill feats. It's also listed explicitly as a general feat in table 5-1 on page 160.

Yeah....I think only skill feats are too restrictive.

Like I said, a character whose background is as a runner probably out to be able to have it.

I can't say I'm terribly enthused by most of the background-provided skill feats either.

Corradh wrote:

Aviana wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

The Tanglefoot cantrip doesn’t list base duration, only heightened durations.

Also, this part absolutely needs to be clarified before final print. By context, I'm assuming one round. But also, I shouldn't have to assume.

Given that they're successfully entangled, does this also mean that in order to use their acrobatics/athletics check to remove the entangled condition, they still need to pass the DC5 flat check in order to perform their acrobatics/athletics check?

No, neither of those has the manipulate trait.

I suppose the next question is whether the check to remove entangled is an immediate one-time check, or if they can continue to make the checks each round when the spell is heightened if they fail the initial check.

Looking at building a paladin here, and I do see that it specifies that you select one weapon during daily preparations, and in your hands it gains one of the properties. Is the property fixed for the day, chosen during the daily preparation, or is only the weapon itself fixed, with the ability to change the property on the weapon itself based on what is needed at the time?

Same question on the 3 action Heal entry, not sure exactly how it's supposed to work.

Dekalinder wrote:

How about divorcing background from mechanics, and have everyone write the background they like, pick the stats that fit the character, and chose an appropriate lore and skill feat? Or that would be too much player empowerment?

That's essentially what I was suggesting.

I think the only thing that might need curating is what feats are available. And that would be as simple as making a list of feats that is felt to be appropriate as background feats from the list of feats.

It might be as simple as anything that doesn't have a level requirement on it, but I don't know all of the feats well enough to say if there is something that wouldn't be appropriate as a background feat.

I mean, is Fleet acceptable as a background feat?

I could see an argument where your background is that your an relay runner or sprinter, so gaining a speed bonus would be appropriate in my opinion. But I don't know if it's balanced or not.

Fleet is a general feat (the errata says the "skill" tag should be removed from it), backgrounds only give skill feats. It's also listed explicitly as a general feat in table 5-1 on page 160.

page 34 sidebar (Human ancestry) wrote:

Languages

Common
One additional language, selected from those to which you have access

Everyone has access to all common things, by definition, so you can select any common language. Regional languages are all uncommon, but you can pick anything from the Common Languages table on page 40 (which includes Elven).

This was really unclear to us: "languages to which you have access", but the GM ruled that since our Taldan wizard had the scholar background, choosing from that other table was fine. I had initially thought that it specifically meant those regional languages.

Xenocrat wrote:

The Tanglefoot cantrip doesn’t list base duration, only heightened durations.

Also, this part absolutely needs to be clarified before final print. By context, I'm assuming one round. But also, I shouldn't have to assume.

Given that they're successfully entangled, does this also mean that in order to use their acrobatics/athletics check to remove the entangled condition, they still need to pass the DC5 flat check in order to perform their acrobatics/athletics check?

For future reference, a plain Strike (page 308) has no critical failure entry, so nothing special happens then. (And hurray for that, fumbles suck.)

Yes, I was nervous about the increased possibility of critical failures during strikes until I realized this.

Okay so from the sounds of it I WAS just shouting into the void and my lack of time to read thoroughly so far (I just got the pdf recently) is what's causing my confusion. Many thanks, all!

I was in the same boat, and as I've dug further into the rules my appreciation for them has grown, and my initial skepticism has waned.

I like this idea as well.

Curious about the specific ruling on this as well, since our gaming session is approaching. I can see arguments for it going either direction since it's a reaction (you can clearly tell you're reacting to an incoming hit, so could also have a feel of whether 'tis but a scratch or whether your bloody arm is off?)

I was looking at a bird for my druid as well. The persistent bleed itself seemed okay, but the target is also dazzled until they stop the bleeding. This means they need to succeed at a DC5 flat check on each attempt to attack/target anyone before they can actually roll for success on the attempt, as I understand it.

Related, one of our players was wondering if it ever scales/improves or if it's just 1d6 full-stop.

I did answer my own question about the double damage on the critical, and it does work how I suspected (but I think for quality of life, the Deadly quality definition after weapons could also specify this, or perhaps in the "doubling damage" section).

I was also wondering about how that works as far as the double damage on a critical. For a standard rapier, would it be the 2d6 for damage, and then the additional 1d8 for the deadly quality? For a master rapier, 2d6 and then additional 2d8 for deadly?

Regarding crits, with the lack of anything with an expanded critical range or feats to expand critical range, I was guessing crit confirmation is gone. Just my thoughts.

It does specify in the monk class preview blog:
"Further, they're untrained in armor, but get graceful expertise at 1st level, which gives them expert proficiency in unarmored defense (everybody else is only trained)."

http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lkv3?Monk-Class-Preview