RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16. RPG Superstar 7 Season Star Voter, 8 Season Star Voter. Pathfinder Society GM. 5,530 posts (5,753 including aliases). 26 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 36 Organized Play characters. 1 alias.
Look, I get that PFS/SFS exist in a ecosystem that in part relies on game stores. But there just isn’t an argument for social responsibility that says “paying real world money for in game benefits” is justifiable. In any economy.
Why? It's a PvE game. You can benefit from it without buying anything. The RIP benefits largely just keep your character from becoming unplayable. The money goes towards small-time retailers in an industry with low profit margins. Most game stores and gaming places in my area charge $25 to $40 table fees anyway.
I'm struggling to see what's socially irresponsible about this.
Howl of the Wild 74 (Thlipit Contestant archetype)
The lash unarmed attack cannot be used with Lunge (Player Core 142), which is listed as one of the archetype's additional feats. It appears the feat was listed with intent of being used with the archetype's unarmed attack.
Suggestion Add the following sentence to Thlipit Contestant Dedication's text: "Treat the unarmed attack as a melee weapon for the Lunge feat."
I am a little disappointed that the fey eidolon and dragon eidolon did not get updated. Fey eidolon still references spell schools, and it would be nice if the dragon eidolon got updated with respect to the new lore.
Losing half the Ancient Osirion pantheon is incredibly brutal. Neither War of Immortals nor Divine Mysteries elaborate how it happened. Only a summary in War of Immortals.
My friends who love Egyptian-themed characters are devastated by this. Even those that bought the books were totally blindsided by it.
I only have an issue with skill challenges when they're designed poorly or run incorrectly. A good skill challenge encourages roleplaying. A bad skill challenge forces players to roll-play.
A good skill challenge has the GM present an open-ended problem and allows players to decide how to solve it. Specific skills are only mentioned when the GM adjudicates the player's proposed solution or when players are stumped and need a hint.
A bad skill challenge has the GM present a problem and then explicitly lists the solutions. GM lists the skills; player rolls the one with the highest bonus; end turn. There's no decision-making here. Chases earned their notoriety because they almost always fell into this structure in 1st Edition.
I would like to advocate for a boon to take Werecreature Dedication. Even though I made him as a skinwalker in 1E, and never got to play him, I think the Society would benefit from having a weretiger fighter who hates mornings as a member. This would also tie in with my request for character import from PF1 for characters under a certain level (4th or so) in order to get some of those unused GM characters played.
Or at least lower the price of beastkin. I never understood why they're Rare despite untamed druids and barbarians being incredibly commonplace.
I'm glad there's now a way for fans to sell IP merch, but this is basically the death of Pathfinder and Starfinder 1e content, with only a month of advanced notice. This means I'll have to scrap a project I've put a lot of hours into. I also tend to release my ancestry titles with conversions for previous editions. I won't be able to do that anymore.
Thank goodness. Playing a braggart swashbuckler through the Slithering was one of the worst experiences I've ever had in PF2e. It wasn't even the oozes that were frustrating. That was almost four years ago, and I still fail to convince myself to ever play swashbuckler again.
The text says "Weapons with the kickback trait don’t gain that
trait’s benefits when using an air cartridge firing system" and "they’re the default used in Arcadian air repeaters."
Full stop.
I agree this change was probably meant to be a buff to long air repeaters, but that's not what the text says.
At the very least, I think it should be clarified in PFS sanctioning. There will be GMs who will interpret this in the worst way.
On one hand I would prefer that the players of clerics of Gorum would need to figure out what is next for their PC and continue building from there. Do they become a fighter? Do they go to a new god? I think that would add a lot of good fluff to the campaign and characters.
Play a thaumaturge or a divine witch/sorcerer. Keep pretending to be a cleric. "Gorum's not dead. He's just sleeping!"
I did this with an Arodenite in 1st Edition. Honestly, now I'm kinda tempted to do it with a summoner having the time traveler background.
The problem with a status penalty is that it doesn't stack with Demoralize
Well, there are only the two types. Unless you want Get 'Em to be an Item penalty for some strange reason.
Edit: Or, I guess if you are arguing that the penalty should be Untyped. But that would make it stack with everything and that just feels way overpowered.
I'm saying that it's an antipattern to make a Charisma-based skill monkey class have a combat class feature that makes using Charisma-based skills redundant in combat. This is why I suggested making the ability to cause off-guard at the cost of requiring a skill check.
Alternatively, maybe Get 'Em could give you the choice of whether it's AC or a saving throw that gets a penalty?
The problem with a status penalty is that it doesn't stack with Demoralize
If I were designing Get 'Em, I would make the ability require a check with a skill based on Leadership Style. If it succeeds, the target is flat-footed. If it fails, the target just receives a -1 circumstance penalty to AC. Lead by example grants a +1 circumstance bonus to damage per weapon die and the envoy benefits from it on the triggering attack.
This is a class I've been looking forward to. I really like the directive system, but the Envoy's class features make it feel like a worse rogue or investigator.
Spoiler:
I don't understand why the class has Charisma as its key attribute. Almost none of the Envoy's class features use it. Compare to the alchemist, inventor, thaumaturge, and investigator, who all have important class features that use their key attribute. Is there a reason why the class does not let you choose? Why can't Leadership Styles determine the key attribute like rogue Rackets do? Why can't there be envoys who lead through Wisdom or Intelligence? Restricting it to Charisma hampers character builds and concepts for pretty much no mechanical reason.
Get 'Em's AC penalty does not stack with off-guard, which makes other actions like Demoralize or Create a Distraction feel like a better use of your action economy.
Get 'Em's lead by example ability's damage bonus does not stack with many weapon traits. It also has worse scaling, given that most such weapon traits scale based on weapon dice.
Does the envoy benefit from Get 'Em's lead by example on the attack that triggered it? It seems like a "no," which really hurts its usefulness because you have MAP and already had to spend two actions.
I really like Size Up's purpose and flavor, but it's a weaker and more restrictive Pursue a Lead. Size Up takes between 1 to 60 minutes---Pursue a Lead always only takes only 1 minute. Size Up has a frequency of once per hour---Pursue a Lead can be done once per 10 minutes. An asset must be a person while a lead can be a creature, item, small location, or anything that the GM allows. Size Up has complicated rules for how much information you already know before you can designate something as an asset---Pursue a Lead only requires a single clue. The circumstance bonus from Size Up only applies to Deception, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Perception, and any check to Recall Knowledge. Pursue a Lead works on Perception and virtually any Charisma-, Intelligence-, or Wisdom-based skill check. Pursue a Lead's bonus also increases at a later level, but there's only 5 levels of Envoy so far. The bonus from Pursue a Lead can also be granted to allies without any feats.
Saw It Coming is cool, but it only works if your asset is an enemy. What if the asset is a hostage or a neutral party your enemies are trying to harm?
Saw It Coming's circumstance bonus to initiative is deceptively situational. You already get the bonus if you roll Perception or a social skill as your initiative. In fact, Saw It Coming's bonus will be *worse* if Size Up's bonus increases at a later level like Pursue a Lead does. It's also worthless if someone Scouts or you have Improved Initiative, which one of the Leadership Styles grants for free. So Stealth might be the most common use-case? But circumstance bonuses to Stealth are easy to get, and you will likely have one if you're Avoiding Notice while having cover.
I like the idea behind Leadership Styles, but, as mentioned before, many of them are hampered by the fact you always have Charisma as your key attribute modifier. An Infosphere Director will have to decide to either ignore Charisma or become MAD for little benefit.
As others said, I don't know how you could ever reliably use Guns Blazing's acts of leadership. A MAP does not carry over after a creature's turn unless they Ready an Action to Strike. The only way you can trigger it is if you can Strike as a reaction or if the creature takes a Readied Action to Strike before your turn. Even then, you won't get much use out of it, because most, if not all, directives last until the start of your next turn. Am I missing something here? If there is some way to use this, it needs to be more clear.
That said, was hoping that since Androids are being actually created in Starfinder timeline, was hoping to see an option for them to emulate non-human Ancestries, especially non-Medium ones.
I want to tackle this comment, because it has come up a few times. The team is VERY excited at the possibility of doing more with the "android chasis" but also don't want to complicate the Core Rulebook design too much. That being said, there's been a fair amount of hype for us exploring "Xenometric Android" as a potential versatile heritage in some future products. :)
Seems like a great opportunity for a Starfinder analog to the Mixed Ancestry versatile heritage. A science fantasy setting would have many more ways to create hybrid creatures.
OK, so please correct me if I'm interpreting this wrong.
1. We cannot publish Infinite products under ORC, but that's OK because we don't need to anyway?
2. If we publish an Infinite product based on a Paizo ORC product, we don't need any additional license beyond the Infinite license?
3. If we use Open Game Content from a Paizo OGL product, we have to publish it under both OGL and Infinite license as normal?
4. If we use setting/characters/etc but no Open Game Content from a Paizo OGL product, we don't have to publish it under OGL with the Infinite license. This is because the it's the Infinite license is what allows us to do that, not the OGL?
What about spells that have the same name but are otherwise completely different in a way that renders them incompatible with existing options?
For example, Remastered Light is NOT the same spell as the existing Light. They have completely different effects. How would my wayfinder work when the remastered Light cannot target objects? And what about Speltrickster? Can I use the old version of light for these options or so they just not work anymore?
It doesn’t seem fair when you can still use an old spell if it got a name change but not if the name stayed the same but nothing else.
But I'm really, really, really hoping unarmed attack builds get some love with the remastered Ranger. Almost all ranger martial feats only work with weapons. Twin Takedown, Hunted Shot, Hunter's Aim, Skirmish Strike, Far Shot, and many other feats don't work with claws and other unarmed attacks, which is incredibly weird for a class that revolves around "hunting prey."
I built several Exemplars to get a feel of the options and the experience of creating a character using it. Afterward, I ran a variety of combat encounters from the 10th level of Abomination Vaults. I was interested to see how satisfying the class felt in combat with the flow of swapping ikons.
SUMMARY
1) The class has amazing flavor and many interesting abilities. However, it lacked the breadth of tactical options I expected from this class's design.
2) Lack of medium armor proficiency, incompatibility with unarmed attacks, and weak feat choices at low levels were major limiting factors in character creation.
3) Almost all active feats are Transcend abilities, which compete with one another for usage. This made the class feel like it had less breadth of tactical options at higher levels compared to other martials.
4) Ikon swapping could be interesting at times, but I felt there's a dominant strategy in just swapping between weapon and worn ikons. Most body ikons did not feel useful in combat.
6) Struggles with constructs until level 7 when you can swap out spirit damage for something else.
7) Having only 2 + Religion trained skills does hurt.
Details:
CHARACTER CREATION
I built multiple exemplars based on several concepts I love. Out of them, I had two favorites:
1) katana-wielding storm-themed samurai kitsune using Gaze Sharp as Steel, Gleaming Blade, and Thousand-League Sandals
2) human dual-wielding air repeaters using Scar of the Survivor, Fated Shot, Victor's Wreath. This took advantage of Humble Strikes increasing the damage die of air repeaters from 1d4 to 1d6.
However, I ran into a few obstacles when making exemplars:
1) Absolutely no support for unarmed attacks. This surprised me, especially as many mystical characters in historic literature are unarmed fighters. Plus, the class features do not work with unarmed attacks. Humble Strikes only work with weapons. Weapon ikons have to be weapons, and other ikons have no options for enhancing unarmed attacks. So, even taking Martial Artist archetype is not an option here. It's also a missed chance for foxfires dealing spirit damage, which would have been super cool and flavorful.
2) Lack of medium armor proficiency. This outright punishes Strength builds. I see absolutely no mechanical reason for this, and I strongly disagree with the flavor reason why the class only has light armor. There are plenty of legendary heroes in mythology that wear significant amounts of armor. If low armor is so integral to the class, then maybe give them expert in unarmored defense?
3) Boring 1st level and 2nd level feats. Almost none of the low level feats are attractive. Claim Initiate Domain is the most interesting of the bunch. Sanctified Soul doesn't feel like a net-positive. Twin Stars is a feat tax for dual-wielding that also conflicts with Dual-Weapon Warrior because you don't get a 1st level feat. Vow of Mortal Defiance is cool but I personally despise the flavor. Leap the Falls is not worth a class feat; it's two level 1 skill feats that only work with body ikons, which are the worst ikons aside from the overpowered Scar of the Survivor. Abilities that disrupt healing feel too situational as a player option and horrible as an NPC option, making Thorns of Mortality feel lackluster.
4) Low skills. Might be justified because of the versatility and combat focus, but I'm really missing that one skill increase at level 1.
I ultimately chose the samurai kitsune for this playtest.
ANCESTRY Sylph Kitsune
BACKGROUND Martial Disciple
CLASS Exemplar
STR +5, DEX +4, CON +3, INT +0, WIS +0, CHA +3
CLASS FEATS
Claim Initiate Domain (Air)
Only the Worthy
Motionless Cutter
Dominion Signifier
Journey of the Sky Chariot
IKONS
Gaze Sharp as Steel
Gleaming Blade
Thousand League Sandals
EPITHETS
Brave
Whose Cry is Thunder
GAMEPLAY
I ran through several combats on the 10th floor of Abomination Vaults. Swapping between ikons proved a lot more fluid than I anticipated and was pretty fun. However, as a level 10 martial, I felt like I had less damage and fewer tactical options, despite the ikons having varied effects. Most active abilities in feats and other class features are Transcend abilities. This combined with Transcend forcing a swap creates a rather big problem where ikons and Transcend abilities were always competing with one another. Most of the class's damage rests in the weapon ikon, which makes the feel problem worse. Also, because most body ikons don't feel useful in combat, there's a dominant strategy where you're just swapping between weapon and worn ikons. On the other hand, the support auras are really strong, even though some of them will become less useful at later levels due to status bonuses not stacking.
Brave Epithet ended up not being particularly useful. Most of the body ikons are extremely situational. If I want mobility, I'm better off using Thousand-League Sandals. So Brave never saw any use. There was a combat where I got lucky with lots of crits, which made Whose Cry is Thunder's Immanence incredibly awesome. That was the one time Epithets actually ended up being fun. I never got to use Judgment from Clear Skies. As cool as it looks, it did not feel worth using. The range is too low and my character primarily uses Strength, not Dexterity, which would have make the ranged Strike not particularly great.
Were I to make another exemplar, I would either focus on stacking immanence effects or support auras with maybe one go-to Transcend ability.
There were two combats of particular interest.
The spirit damage was very helpful against a combat of specters, and it was pretty fun to try to end each turn with Gaze Sharp as Steel active to protect myself from the ranged attacks.
On the flip side, I struggled against a stone golem, which is immune to spirit damage and has resistance 10 physical. I had to change my strategy to kite the construct with Thousand-League Sandals and use Gleaming Blade's Mirrored Spirit Strike to try to penetrate through its resistance.
However, I realized after the fight that I made a mistake: Mirrored Spirit Strike changes the weapon damage to spirit damage. So, I would have been completely useless against this monster. My only choice would be to stick with Thousand-League Sandals to help my allies kite it, and even that wouldn't work if I ran this encounter as written in the adventure path (the golem is supposed to be in a tiny room).
Then later, I realized I forgot that Whose Cry is Thunder can change spirit damage to electricity damage. So, I guess Mirrored Spirit Strike would have helped after all!
Warning: There's minor spoilers for Abomination Vaults.
Also... you can still use Shocking Grasp, you know? It won't be fundamentally incompatible with the remaster. Archive of Nethys isn't removing it, nor will your old rule book be altered. I imagine pre-remaster content might not be viable for PFS, but home games should be fine. Heck, even PFS might still allow it, since tons of books and spells won't be getting remastered. Parsing out which is which may not be worth it when the real problem of publishing rights isn't impacted by table play.
That's unacceptable rhetoric in my view, even putting aside PFS, which is the only avenue of play for many such as myself.
I'm looking forward to Player Core, and I think most of the changes will make the game better. However, the Remaster was aggressively advertised as not adversely changing anything in the game. The previews make it clear that's not the case. A popular spell was outright removed and replaced with a completely different one. Light is now incompatible with options that interact with it; even wayfinders don't work anymore. At least one class will suffer a major paradigm shift and require an extensive errata.
I'm just puzzled why shocking grasp had to be replaced by a completely different spell. Thunderstrike is a great addition but why remove an iconic spell that has a fun niche?
Literally the whole reason they are doing the remaster, and aluded to in the blog post itself.
I'm not seeing why shocking grasp needed to be changed to a completely different spell. Other spells were kept fundamentally the same despite a name change.
That's because those spells already had different mechanics than their OGL counterparts. Magic Missile and Scorching Ray both had variable output based on the 3 action economy. Barkskin gave you resistance and weakness to different damage types instead of boosting your AC.
Spells that didn't have unique flavor or mechanics were altered so that they did, a la Meteor Swarm and Cone of Cold. And shocking grasp was functionally equivalent to its 3.5 version.
Still is not a good justification for replacing shocking grasp with a completely different spell. All of the above examples are fundamentally the same spell in both flavor and function.
Both scorching ray and blazing bolt shoot one or more heat rays
Both meteor and falling stars rain fiery death from the heavens.
Both cone of cold and howling blizzard unleash a frosty cone-shaped blast.
Both magic missile and force barrage still fire magical homing missiles.
Shocking grasp discharges a burst of lightning through a touch.
Thunderstrike calls down lightning on a distant target's head.
I'm just puzzled why shocking grasp had to be replaced by a completely different spell. Thunderstrike is a great addition but why remove an iconic spell that has a fun niche?
Literally the whole reason they are doing the remaster, and aluded to in the blog post itself.
I'm not seeing why shocking grasp needed to be changed to a completely different spell. Other spells were kept fundamentally the same despite a name change.
I'm just puzzled why shocking grasp had to be replaced by a completely different spell. Thunderstrike is a great addition but why remove an iconic spell that has a fun niche?
I cannot say I’m pleased with the removal of alignment. I understand many have misgivings about it but that’s a massive change to the lore of the Great Beyond. I’m having flashbacks of 4th Edition.
We don't plan to change the structure of the Great Beyond, so if the alignment aspect underpinning the organization and various interrelationships between the planes is important to you, don't expect any major changes to the lore that will frustrate you.
It's not just planar politics but also the concepts of philosophy, morality, ethics, and virtue as tangible forces that drive the multiverse and form the quintessence of the planes and the extraplanar creatures that reside there. Plus, it's super cool to say you're channeling "good" through your sword or getting hit with "chaos energy." It also removes hooks for gameplay and takes away something from the game.
However, I'd be totally OK if alignment was replaced with an analogous system that uses an expansive selection of specific aspects/ideals instead of a restrictive, finite list of dispositions. Maybe even use domains or something of the likes of Stormlight Archive? It would be really cool, open a huge range of options and concepts, and would work well with the trait system.
I just don't want a mechanic that's adding value to the game/lore taken away and replaced with nothing.
I cannot say I’m pleased with the removal of alignment. I understand many have misgivings about it but that’s a massive change to the lore of the Great Beyond. I’m having flashbacks of 4th Edition.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16
