Dan Batchelor's page

In our game (half way through age of ashes 10th level now) it feels as if casters is firmly in the support category. They are not bad but it definitely sucks when you throw off your big bad cone of cold to virtually no effect. We have now house ruled all pure casters start at expert and progress one step ahead getting a new step called archemage at 17th gaining an additional +2 over legendary.

Fixes the to hit issue and helps blaster as they have a better chance of crit fails on fireballs. it also helps when you pull out baleful polymorph or similar spells that you have a chance to at least incapacitate them for a round.

Even with this change martials are still far and away king damage dealers.

Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! wrote:

That thing just about TPKed the whole group.

Large 4th Level group
Barbarian, Champion, Cleric, Sorcerer, Bard, Monk, Alchemist

What was the Bard doing?

“Interesting question.

Let me tell you something about “the bard”. So as i mentioned I am a failed bard. About century ago I have all the talent in the world and get accepted into a prestigious college. With my gift i can be the next Meric Songspinner or so I am told. I get to school things are going as planned. Early on I meet Vrett a gnome and his girlfriend a spunky little gnome named Amethyst. We call her Amy for short. Vrett is a good friend and doesn't really have my gifts but is a solid performer and has been at the school a few years so he takes me under his wing and shows me the ropes of campus life/ Amy, now Amy is another level. Better than me, beautiful, magnetic, eleteric. The three of us work closely together and I fall hard for her almost immediately. Being friends with Vrett I keep it all to myself. Or so I thought. I channel my pent up feelings into my art and push myself I am one of the only students to give Amy a real run for top performers.
Then one day Amy comes to me crying saying how Vrett has been cheating on her and dumped her for someone else. I comfort her which quickly turns to her pushing for more and soon enough I follow my heart and give in. We make passionate, mind blowing love. When of course right at the crescendo Vrett comes in. Nothing she said was true. Massive fight follows. Vrett hates me. My love for Amy is now rage, hurt and betrayal. Vrett leaves school.
I can't live with the guilt and leave to follow him. Fail to find him and become a wandering minstrel. AMy stays on at the school. Her only really competition gone graduates the top of her class.
Skip forward a century. I end up performing in the inns in Breechhil just killing time until there famed “Heroes for Hire day”. Amy shows up and does me the courtesy of not performing because she would get hired everywhere instead of me. Sadly this is just straight up fact but feels like a huge insult coming from her. “Don't condescend to me Woman!”

So in short what ever she was doing during the fight it was most likely screwing me over some how.”

Now to the Bargast fight. She (illegally cause we were too low. Thank god for mistakes in the players favor) used both the song of defense and Inspire confident. Healed several times and shot crossbow bolts at the fiend.

She DID NOT save our asses with her music. No matter what the others say. It was fine
I DID NOT run into combat to give that shocking grasp at touch range to impress her with my manliness.

Also our GM.....my wife actually rolls everything but secrect rolls in front of the group so I know she didnt fudge the victory for us. Other than the roleplaying reason of letting us go on prepared. We took down time to move striking and armor runes around. I did some research in town and got the vital info not to bring fire to the fight.

That thing just about TPKed the whole group.

Large 4th Level group
Barbarian, Champion, Cleric, Sorcerer, Bard, Monk, Alchemist

My sorcerer is bleeding out on the floor after enlarging both the champion and the Barbarian I stupidly closed in for a shocking grasp. That did not go well. Fading in and out of consciousness I see the Barbarian screaming in rage even as she is hammered to the floor poison and blood running from her.
Monk was doing virtually nothing due to some protective magic. The thing just laughed at her as her blows land with no effect. It looked down at her then deliberately stepped past ignoring her feeble blows.
The cleric of Calistra is swearing in some language I don't know. She is a "reformed" champion of Asmodeus but I am not sure I buy it. I realize at the last that she is trying to heal me but the creature doesn't like that. The priest is wearing some type of plate armor that covers nothing and yet somehow protects her anyway. Calistra's doing no doubt. It doesn't work in this case and the priest and her sexy armor both hit the ground, dying.
The goblin alchemist is as far as she can get from the Demonic thing. Seeing her former tribe reduced to skeletons that have been placed in bizarre worshipful poses might have broken her. She has been throwing colorful flasks of gods know what at it but missing with most of them. She did get lucky and land something green (acid?) on it and it has been burning away on the skin of the beast. I have no way of knowing if it is even feeling it.
The beast moves to finish me off. I am already done for but it is impatient. The monster's claws slashes down and the last thing I see is the champion's great sword thrust through the back of its head.

Thank the gods for Natural 20s.

Super fun fight but DAMN!!!!!!!!

Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! wrote:

Natan Linggod 327 wrote:

And there is no mention of needing 'talent' to become a wizard anywhere that I can find. Just time, money and education. All of which the upper classes have in abundance.

There is no mention of it because as a PC if you want to become a wizard you become a wizard. Obviously it takes a talent to do it. Do you honestly think if tomorrow medical school or law school was made free that everyone would be Doctors or lawyers? No way. A lot of people would go to school for it and while we would get some great doctors or lawyers out of it, we would end up with many more drop-outs or bad doctors and lawyers. There is no "talent" for either profession but it takes a combination of traits that not everyone possesses.

Back in PF1 this would be a lot of people getting 1 level of doctor(Wizard), then getting the rest of their levels in something else.

And we aren't talking about the average Joe-in-the-street here, but people with the resources to ensure even the least talented of their brood gets an excellent education.

Also, let's say that Wizardry talent is something that's 'inborn' like a Sorcerer. Wouldn't the upperclasses marry with that in mind? After all, political and economic marriages are much more common among them than among the lower classes. Adding in the requirement for marriage being a history of magic talent seems like a no brainer to me.

And remember that magic isn't something new. It's been around since day dot so a lot of the older family lines would already have been marrying for magic talent for centuries.

In fact, given how important magic would realistically be in a world where it actually works, I would expect that NOT having magic talent would be more of a rarity among the upper classes rather than otherwise.

Oh I agree that every noble house and well off merchant would want to have a wizard in the family. And again using the real world as an example many rich families do have kids that are lawyers or doctors. High powered families would have to keep magic in mind all the time. I think it would be more along the lines of every kid would be trained in the Arcane skill. Even if you have no talent for magic you could have a thorough understanding of how it worked.

Of course if the OP was asking if making a world were every noble was a wizard would work. Then absolutely it could work. I would probably give everyone the adapted cantrip feat even if they are not casters for free at first level. Then have every noble take the wizard dedication at 2nd level.

And there is no mention of needing 'talent' to become a wizard anywhere that I can find. Just time, money and education. All of which the upper classes have in abundance.

There is no mention of it because as a PC if you want to become a wizard you become a wizard. Obviously it takes a talent to do it. Do you honestly think if tomorrow medical school or law school was made free that everyone would be Doctors or lawyers? No way. A lot of people would go to school for it and while we would get some great doctors or lawyers out of it, we would end up with many more drop-outs or bad doctors and lawyers. There is no "talent" for either profession but it takes a combination of traits that not everyone possesses.

Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! wrote:

Casting spells requires the talent to do so and takes real effort. It also takes expensive schooling. Not everyone is able or willing to do it.

In real life everyone should be a lawyer and a doctor as both can have powerful impacts on your life. Most people are not either though.

They don't have nearly as powerful effects on your life as magic, especially if you're already rich and and powerful, they don't affect you much.

Of course they do. In fact more so if you are rich and powerful. Who do you think pays all those high priced lawyers.

The fact is, it is much easier to pay a guy who did all the schooling and learning than it is to do all that yourself.

Casting spells requires the talent to do so and takes real effort. It also takes expensive schooling. Not everyone is able or willing to do it.

In real life everyone should be a lawyer and a doctor as both can have powerful impacts on your life. Most people are not either though.

Also, the flickmace could look like a ball and chain flail with some cunning self retracting mechanism. Or look a bit like a meteor hammer. It could definitely look cool.

Sorry but the most "cool" this ridiculous thing looks is like the guy at the gas station with the extendable key ring or maybe as mentioned above a paddle ball.

Here is a video to show you the coolness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBzWHudBoiA

I see that Paizo made, arguably, the best 1 handed weapon a yo-yo that you need to be raised by gnomes to use.

GM: “Your barbarian was raised by gnomes?”

Player 1: “Yes, and every time he lost his temper his parents made him stay in his room and his only entertainment was his yo-yo.”

Player 2: “Weird, my fighter was also raised by gnomes but his parents bought him two yo-yos to play with.”

Player 3: “You two sound like powergamers. Not me, my martial is based off the tried and true yo-yo and board style fighter that every fantasy movie ever has. He became an adventurer when his adoptive parent’s village was wiped out by orcs.”

/LOL

That is the same with campaign settings for existing systems. They tended to start as a homebrew first. I don't think the problem tends to come in fudging the rules or the rolls to help the story and the players along. I think the problem is when you are fudging them to punish players for pissing you off or because you are seeing the die the rolled horrible with last week do mostly above average this week.

When dealing with a campaign setting that you and your players are creating, I feel it is important to create and alter rules so that they fit your setting more. When dealing with new players that have never played before, I find it important to play a little looser with the rules. The faster a new player's character dies out of the gate, the less likely a the player is to return to not only your campaign but the game as a whole. Heck I don't even like it when established players die right out of the gate. I'm not running that one campaign from years ago where the whole point was to see how quick the party would be TPK.

But that is just my opinion and experience.

I never fudge rolls. In fact, other than secret rolls, I roll everything in front of the players. I don't tell the players what the enemies need but everyone is going to know that a 1 or 2 is probably bad. They might suspect I am fudging it if the Lich rolls say a 7 to save and I say that is a success but overall I think this helps a lot with player trust. Keep in mind it also means that I don't fudge to save players either. I like there to be a sense of danger. If players don't die they aren't being heroic they are just not being lazy when the save someone. However that last sentence is a whole nother topic.

This is how a typical situation might go in one of my games. The characters are about to charge into a throne room of undead with the BIG BAD LICH sitting on the throne.

Here is what I think

Should happen: Fight of several rounds with both sides getting in a few good blows and the fun of unleashing there saved up big gun attacks.

Could Happen: The lich fails an early save to the Wizards disintegrate or dies to a lucky critical hit from the warrior.

Could Happen: We lose a character or two in the first round to a blown save and the group needs to retreat double quick

Could Happen: TPK (Total Party Kill) On a TPK this is either extreme bad luck on the partys part and lots of “1” came up. Or I planned a “Dangerous” encounter that was really an “Impossible” encounter. In these cases I usually take it easy. Depending on how the deaths happened I use a couple of options:

Could Happen: The thief is snuck through the door and attempts to sneak past the lich and through the secret door behind the throne and regains the “Holy Relic of Great High Lord Macguffin” and is lucky enough not to get seen. The group gets some XP for pulling off the heist.

Could Happen: The characters try something I didn't think of

So I know what your thinking:

Damn, did he really just type all that

Tl;dr I dont fudge rolls I just adapt.

*edits to do some cleanup of this stupidly long post :)

Simply put, being a social game, discussion will end up being the way decisions are made, but I do think the RAW can weight heavily on how those discussions go.

Oh I agree discussions with your GM should be the go to move. I just dont quite understand the "X spell is" is uncommon or rare and now GMs can disallow it and that sucks. I want a rule that forces the GM to allow me to have X spell"

Why? If the GM was against something being in his game and as mentioned above even if you could "force" the GM to allow you to have "X spell" why would you want to do this?

A good GM should be more than happy to help you realize your character design assuming it would not be completely broken or there is another in-story reason for it. The GM should be able to explain why they are restricting the spell.

A bad GM is just a bad GM and you are probably better off not playing with them regardless of what they are restricting or weather you could use RAW to force your way with them.

I'll bite.

The reason I play PFS is to avoid GMs invoking Rule 0. Why?

1. I'm interested in playing Pathfinder. I'm not that fascinated with GM Bob's version of Pathfinder. No offense to GM Bob, but I don't think GM Bob's house rules/modifications are going to be a net improvement over the efforts of professional game designers. Time and time again I've seen GMs make house rules to alter rules/mechanics that they don't fully understand. Like pulling on a loose thread of a knit sweater, GM rule-zeroing creates more problems than it solves.

I agree you need to let your players know your rules/changes. I mean there is an old story floating around about a guy who went to a gen con in the early days of D & D and got into a game where he was attacked by a duck driving a +1 hotdog stand.

However the complaint isn't “I keep getting into f$%^ing games and dying to a f$%^ing duck driving a hotdog stand. It is “this rule allows the GM to much power” let’s be honest here do you really think GM running the duck driving the Hotdog cart going to care about RAW.

2. Pathfinder is a cooperative game. As a GM, I don't "own" the game, it belongs to all the people at the table. There is no game without players and GMs, I don't see one as more critical to the game than the other, there just happens to be more players than GMs. Obviously for game play, it makes sense to enable the GM to make adjudications when the rules are ambiguous or players can't agree.. But the GM isn't always the most knowledgable about the rules and as GM, I get to decide because the players agree to it.

As the GM you don't “own” the game but most are trying to tell a story that you can enjoy along with the multiple players. As a GM I am not worried about someone pointing out that spending 3 rounds and heightening the spell to third level gets them 6 magic missiles not 3 like I said. That is fine and I actually like players who are knowledgeable about rules that can catch those types of brain farts.

3. IMO, the game is most enjoyable when the GM's presence is transparent. When I GM, I don't want to imprint my "style" on the players. I want them to perceive that the outcomes were not at all influenced by my personality. Obviously that is still my style, but by way of analogy, I'm trying to serve unflavored water.

Interesting because as a GM I definitely have a style of GMing. Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones both have a severely different flavor of storytelling. One isn't better than the other and certain flavors might suit your tastes better than others but both are tasty. You just need to find one that suits you and hope it isn't D&D the movie flavored (eeeeegads)

I don’t force a predetermined outcome because that is how “I” planned it. I set up situations and let the players handle it how they may. Sometimes I know how it will turn out and sometimes the players do something off the rails that I didn't see coming. In those cases I just adjust and move on. Often times it can make the story more interesting that what I had planned.

4. A GM refusing to follow the rules engenders a feeling of player vs GM, for me.

YMMV.

This may just be a matter of perspective. To me if I point out a rule to a GM and they acknowledge it but keep the situation the same. I just assume that either:

1) There is something going on that I am not aware of...or
2) The GM forgot about something and now a basic spell is about to ruin his murder mystery or whatever and so he is ignoring the rule. Either way I don't feel combative. I just roll with it.

P.S. If any of this sounds snappy it is not meant to be. I appreciate your perspective on this.A big reason I might not have run into this is I play with players I know in real life. Lately I have been thinking about running a game at a local shop just to allow people without a GM a chance to play. But all this adversarial nonsense has me rethinking it.

Dear Miss Manners,

I have seen many posts on the boards here that complain about the rules allowing the GM “too much power” and a few that complain about players “getting to much control”.
I honestly do not understand this. I have been both a player and a GM since the original hardbound AD&D books and this makes no sense.
As a GM I am going to run the game I want to run. For instance in PF1 when I tell you cant have more than one class per 5 character levels. I am not going to allow your Ninja/Paladin/Assassin/Rogue/Fighter/Monk/Gunslinger/Barbarian/Ranger/Druid /Butcher/Baker/Candlestickmaker into my game. Now you can show me exactly where in the books it says this is a legal character and how wrong I am. Hell, you could have the highlord of Paizo himself come down and tell me in a thunderous voice “Hastur! You are wrong. This character is legal.” Guess what? You still can't play that character in my game. I don't care about your law degree in PF1 rules. If you don't like how I run my game go elsewhere.
Now that being said as a GM I am trying to lay out a world for exciting stories and allow players to help tell those stories and hopefully have a ton of fun playing. And while I may have a certain way I do things I am not at odds with the players. It is a group effort. If you as the player didn't have fun during a session I as the GM probably didn't either. As the GM I have reasons for the things I do. Certainly I have better things to do then just show up to run a game where I f&*$ with you all night.

Tl;dr So my question is? What is happening in games where players feel that a rule in the book is going to help them? Are there really that many petty GMs that are just arbitrary f@#&ing with characters? And if so does a rule written in the book actually help?

In the situation I posted above if I caved into the thunderous voice of the Highlord of Paizo and allowed you to play your character would you really want to play in my game. If I was the player and had a character the GM didnt want to allow I would have no qualms about changing it or trying with a different GM.

-Signed Honestly Confused

Be wary of BIG ALCHEMY!

See Gisher here gets it. I'm just saying be careful what those alchemists hand you. Sure they SAY its a healing potion and the next thing you know your hands have turned into tentacles.

just a big ole pile of goodberries that don't heal?

Sorry I know they all say their food is "pure", and "wholesome" but there is way too much green sludge and smoke coming out of those alchemy guilds.

I'm leaning towards freeze dried soilent-green.

A weeks worth of rations is light bulk and can be held in one hand. I'm not sure I could hold 7 modern day military MRE packs in one hand.

What do you suppose the alchemist guild is doing to make food so light and do you suppose it has something to do with all the aberrations in the world?

I dont know the odds as I am not a math guy but I will throw in my 2 cents. I have seen a lot of posts about how powerful monsters are in the this edition.

For me this is a huge plus. I like my players to be worried about dying. Scary monsters make characters that much more heroic. If I want to run and easier game it is very easy to run lower level mobs against the players.

My only gripe about the current system (which appears to work very much liek the starfinder system) is that monsters of a particular CR are very, very similar. The monster creation system kind of makes it so there are just 3 monsters at ever CR ad caster, fighter, and skill monkey. I dislike that Pit Fiend and Balor Demons are basically identical because they are both CR 17.

IF they could work a little more variety into each CR level I would be happy.

Counter point:

3 Fighters with Furious focus and a healing cleric. Which also has the advantage of not burning spells on every attack.

Jokes aside I am happy that your unusual group seems to be working. :)

I love the idea of resonance. Binding with powerful magic items and avoiding the Christmas tree effect are worthy goals as is increasing the game power of the charisma stat.
It is funny that in an RPG the stat that will get your the furthest in real life (Charisma) is one of the most common dump stats.

I feel like the limiting consumables needs to be addressed in a different way.

Maybe wands no longer cast spells but add damage or other effects to spells. A wand of Charm adds +1 to the DC of any charm spell you cast. A wand of healing auto heightens +1 any heal spell you cast. Etc etc

Staffs can just expand your castable spells. So a character that has bound a staff of fireball can use 3rd level spell slots to cast the fireball spell even if he didn't memorize it today.

Potions: can be limited by
Player: "Good shop keeper I have 10,000,000 gold and want to buy every healing potion I can. "
Shop Keeper "Very well sir, I will ring you up for (GM rolls a d6) 3."

Healing and the 15 minute adventuring day is a whole different problem as well.

The internet has had 10 more years to improve fan toxicity since the PF1 play test. It is now Master levels and training hard for legendary levels.

But remember as these boards will be quick to point out that is only +2 better at toxicity levels so really not that much more toxic. Why even bother practicing to be mean and rude to each other for a crappy +2.

Put me in the camp of people who love the stamina system. I am an old school gamer (Original Hard Cover AD&D times) and was very leery of stamina when I first read Starfinder but I came around in a big way.

Stamina ups the intensity of fights. When the mobs knock someone into hit points of damage "S@#t just got real" Suddenly every hit is a potential problem and crits can be down right deadly. This allows a group healer to do things other than healing for the first part of a fight and then swoop in and be a hero.

Mobs are so powerful that virtually ever fight someone would take damage. This was a much more interesting mechanic than just hit points. You know you will be going into the next fight with your stamina topped off so do you waste resources healing your 10 points of hit point damage or just allow it to linger and hope the mobs dont get through stamina again.

Stamina allows a group to run without a healer. Granted the GM will have to role back the fight difficulty a bit but I believe adventures and combats would be every bit as intense.

Stamina is a great mechanic because it slows down the rate that players "lose" fights. As soon as you burst through to hit points of damage the players are on the ropes but now healing spells and magic items can slow the descent.

Also, There are not 2 pools to track with stamina. Just one really. If I have 70 stamina and 70 hit points then you just track damage like alwasy. As soon as I have taken 71 damage I am now into hitpoints.

GM: "Iron man just hit you for 71 stamina. Thanos, you are now into hitpoints."
Player: I touch the blood on my cheek and say "All of that for a drop of blood."
GM: Nice I am going to allow a free intimidation roll.

magnuskn wrote:

Witch of Miracles wrote:

This is reaching a point where you just need the GM to use common sense (which is, admittedly, dangerous). You can't just sit around in a dungeon for 10 minutes while the wizard is meditating on his spellbook without consequences. Are there no patrols? Is there no wildlife? Hell, even if they acknowledge that, is the rest of the party going to keep escorting this maniac out of the dungeon so he can swap spells in peace every time the situation changes slightly? Continuously...

If you read the official AP's from Paizo, then the answer is "yes, you can totally sit all day on your duff in dungeons and do whatever, as long as you move three rooms back." Because monsters seldomly move from their rooms. The dungeons with active patrols and so on are very few and far between.

That's what I mean about common sense, though.

Combat is loud. Extremely loud. If you're forgetting that a lot of the dungeon has a shot of hearing you if you start clanging swords around, that's an issue.

Certainly, not -every- dungeon has active patrols, and not every dungeon has monsters willing to leave their rooms, but in the vast majority of cases, if an intelligent dungeon inhabitant hears combat, the party is probably going to end up on something of a timer as those inhabitants start moving to check it out. Same goes if they alert the wrong person. (I still well remember my party entering the boss room in Catacombs of Wrath first, then just getting slammed by everyone the boss could alert arriving in waves.) While it's also your job to exercise "don't penalize the party for making mistakes they couldn't have known to avoid," you've also got to play the enemies out in a reasonable fashion.

Also worth noting that if enemies won't or shouldn't leave their rooms, there's usually a good reason (forge at hook mountain is loud and full of clanging noises anyways, so enemies there probably wouldn't hear combat at the entrance; bosses taking time to buff once the...

Spending 10 minutes, even in a dungeon, is nothing. It takes that long to search a room properly. At best the wizard will just not help with the search and will change up spells.

Also something is overpowered if it requires the DM to be constantly thinking of a way to not let the player use it as printed.

Antimagic areas
Magic resistance (if that is a things still)
Frost resistance
+X weapons that do X+1 dice of damage and are just fun to hit with
They used dex as a dump stat
Character concept
Intelligent weapons
Dancing weapons

Probably some others

I really like the new multiclassing. Well to be honest, I really think I like the new multiclassing rules. I havent actually used them yet.
I absolutely hated the 3.x and PF version of My character is a 1 fighter/1 rogue/2 paladin/1 monk/1 gladiator/1 super ninja/1 ....... etc etc.

Get away from me with that.

I however dont have any problem with a player who honestly wants to be a 10 fighter/10 monk or what ever. To me, unlike the mess I just listed above a 10/10 character is a valid character concept. The min/max Frankenstein monstrosity is just someone with too many splat books.

This is my main problem with the rule book at the moment. You have to go to a ton of places to figure out how anything works.
Trying to figure out how an alchemist crafts potions you have to refer to the alchemist class, feats, crafting skill, equipment chapter, section on resonance, and the daily prep section. Once you have done all this you then have to figure out how they throw them which requires almost as many references.

I was really excited to download the book this morning but that enthusiasm has been dimmed somewhat by how confusing this rule set turned out to be.

I am sure with experience this will be cleared up but, for the health of the game I sure hope the actual core rule book is a lot better put together than the current document.

Just a cut paste of a post I made earlier that I think applies to this thread:

Abberation sorcerers gain the 9th level spell of shapechange.

"You transform yourself into any form you could choose with a
different polymorph spell you know of 7th level or lower. You
choose the type of creature as you cast the spell rather than
when you prepare it. You can Concentrate on the Spell to change
your form to any other form you could choose with this spell.
You can dismiss this spell by using an action (this action has the
concentrate trait)."

SO umm there are no polymorph spells on the occultist list, nor on the list of gained spells from your abberation bloodline. So you cast this spell to become yourself I guess for one minute.

The spell seems a little underwhelming anyway even just for a primal sorcerer. One of the few advantages I have as a spontaneous caster is that I dont have to pick the form I become in the morning. So if I have dragon form I can become whatever color dragon I need to fit the occasion. That is slightly better than say a druid who will have to guess. That said, the only advantage that shapechange gives a primal sorcerer is that I can change into a red dragon, then a dinosaur(I guess), then into a blue dragon. That is provided that
1)I know both the polymorph dino spell and polymorph dragon spell and
2) I need to change into those forms within one minute of casting the shapechange spell.

This spell seems a bad option for primal sorcerers and of course a bad joke for abberation sorcerers as printed.

If they allowed sorcerers to duplicate any of the lower level non offensive polymorph spells with it, I could see it being a pretty decent spell with lots of potential utility.

My contribution: Move bloodline powers to the sorcerer section of the book!

Seconded with the addendum of:

Move all powers to the appropriate class section of the book.

Ok, I can see what you're saying. But does that mean your premise is that a wizard should have to allocate spell slots between "useful in combat" and "useful out of combat" each morning? With the ability to make an out of combat slot an in combat one if necessary?

How is that fun? That's a large part of why I never wanted to play a prepared caster. I either didn't prep combat spells, and had very little to do in a fight, or I prepped buff and combat spells, and didn't have the slots for misc. utility ones.

What's so bad about letting the wizard be able to do both?

I think the biggest problem is that at a basic level (at least as I understand the classes) is with class roles.

Wizards can theoretically know every spell in the game world but must choose each morning what they think will be useful. Splitting their castable spells between combat and utility.

Sorcerers can only know a small handful of spells at each level but have more flexibility to cast them. Sorcerers often have many more combat focused spells with little utility.

With this feat you now give wizards the ability to just prepare a bunch of combat spells in the morning and as soon as you need a utility spell just spend a few minutes and trade out that extra heightened fireball for it. This wont always be possible but as someone mentioned above unless the GM has you on a specific timeline, it will often be possible.

At a certain point you have to ask why would anyone make a sorcerer?

Abberation sorcerers gain the 9th level spell of shapechange.

"You transform yourself into any form you could choose with a
different polymorph spell you know of 7th level or lower. You
choose the type of creature as you cast the spell rather than
when you prepare it. You can Concentrate on the Spell to change
your form to any other form you could choose with this spell.
You can dismiss this spell by using an action (this action has the
concentrate trait)."

SO umm there are no polymorph spells on the occultist list, nor on the list of gained spells from your abberation bloodline. So you cast this spell to become yourself I guess for one minute.

The spell seems a little underwhelming anyway even just for a primal sorcerer. One of the few advantages I have as a spontaneous caster is that I dont have to pick the form I become in the morning. So if I have dragon form I can become whatever color dragon I need to fit the occasion. That is slightly better than say a druid who will have to guess. That said, the only advantage that shapechange gives a primal sorcerer is that I can change into a red dragon, then a dinosaur(I guess), then into a blue dragon. That is provided that
1)I know both the polymorph dino spell and polymorph dragon spell and
2) I need to change into those forms within one minute of casting the shapechange spell.

This spell seems a bad option for primal sorcerers and of course a bad joke for abberation sorcerers as printed.

If they allowed sorcerers to duplicate any of the lower level non offensive polymorph spells with it, I could see it being a pretty decent spell with lots of potential utility.

Got ninja'ed by Pandora, but yes he is correct. As I read it anyway.
A goblin swings and hits my ally within my melee range. I then swing at the goblin if I kill goblin its blow never lands on my ally and no damage is done to my ally. If I hit and the goblin lives he is enfeebled, likely doing less damage to my ally. If I miss the fighter in the group laughs at me.

My goblin alchemist has an 18 int and 5 resonance. During daily preparation she prepares 4 batches (of two potions if I understood this correctly) of alchemist fire. I now have 8 alchemist fires I can throw and have burned 4 of my resonance.

Do my bombs take resonance to use?
Can I hand my bombs off to other group members?
Does it cost them resonance to use them?

What if I prepared one more batch of healing potions? I am now out of resonance. Can i use my own potion to heal myself or do I need to use the rules for overspending resonance to use one?

I would not house rule it. I am certain that if you continue to run your game for a few levels you will be shaking your head saying "Remember when I thought magic missile was OP?"

It's not terrible. It has a long enough duration and requires no real effort on your end. So cast before combat and use it to "discourage" attacks against your person. And it does deal a solid 5-10 force damage without requiring anything more than a reaction.

Definitely more impressive on characters with more health (just because your more likely to survive it's use...). So the higher level you are, the more useful this spell will be. Not recommended as a starting spell.

But I agree, the name is very misleading.

Fair enough. Terrible was probably too strong a word. I just feel that without stopping any damage magic missile, supercharge weapon, and overheat are much better alternatives. Spending a precious spell slot on this is rough.

A few things here

1. Unlike the real world anti missile space lasers are a reality in this world.

2. Nobody wants a nuke shot on there planet. The fallout, radiation sickness and radioactive wasteland left behind are huge problems.

3. Even if your BBEG lives on a deserted asteroid if your PCs shoot a nuke any space government whether or not they are the target is going to shoot the nuke down for several reasons.
A. They cant be sure who or what is being targeted.
B. They don't want the problems listed above in 2 above
C. In a world of crazy tech and magic you never know if a
superhacker can divert the missile.
4. There is no way you can know if you actually got your target if you use nuclear bombardment

5. As mentioned above using a nuke would get you mad infamy.

6. And most important to your PCs. Nuking the BBEG from space nets you zero xp or loot.

I dont want them to bring in 9th level casters. I have played D&D (and pretty much always make wizards) since the early days. 9th level spell casting is an artifact from back in the days of when Gary Gygax was literally just making stuff up as he went along. It became a "sacred cow" when they designed 3rd edition and has never really left any incarnation of the game until Starfinder.

I am very happy with how they have made the casters in Starfinder. It has been a great change. You still get powerful spellcasters but not the godlike powers of high level wizards.

If you absolutely have to have 9th level spells back the biggest thing you need to fix is the "Morning spell matrix". One of my highest level characters from back in the day have about 20 spells he would cast every morning as defenses/buffs. Trying to account for every possible attack. Can you imagine how boring this really would be and how quickly a real human would stop doing this or just get sloppy or lazy about the routine. It is easy to say "My character spends every morning doing this." It would be much harder to every morning add 20 to 30 more morning rituals. I have a hard enough time with the few I do in real life (Expel waste, cleanse teeth, cleanse body, dispose of facial/body hair, summon clothes, dress, summon raw food, cook food, eat food)

It got bad enough that in some campaigns you would have to lead every combat with a disjunction spell just start a fight so that you would "only" be facing a casters back-up/contingency defenses.

Ugg, No thank you.

Here are a few descriptions I used when I ran this adventure from my group. Inaccurate, condescending, but no less boldly made by the explorer.

Halkueem Zan’s Descriptions

Kaukarriki- A population of furry humanoid creatures has been following our progress through the jungle. At first they avoided us but eventually started to assault us with rotten fruit and feces. One flew from the tree branches and stole my hat. I ordered my huntmaster to have his men open fire. After slaying several dozens of the creatures the rest fled. I regained my headgear and taught the wilderness the first lesson of many to come about who is master. I have named these vermin monkey-bats.

Obelisk- An immense pillar, nay, an Obelisk arising higher than the trees. Clearly this monument was built by the savages of this land to reach the gods. Were one to take the time to dig below they would most likely find the most valued treasures of the tribe brought here as tribute. I have neither the time or desire to unearth what is likely to be the worthless baubles (to civilized men ) and decayed remains of loved ones left here as sacrifices.

The Plague Warden-A grand statue of an alien creature dying of a wasting disease implores the uncaring gods to save it from its plight. The boils of its disease gained no doubt, from tribal cannibalism or other such savage practice, riddle its body in horrific and painful fashion. A grand construction used to hold those struck down with this apparently common malady.

B3-Poor construction has allowed rain water to flow into this room and fill a pit likely used to grow food (fungus and grubs) that would feed the outcasts forced to live in this plague hut. For the safety of my men I had them avoid the water.

B4-Depictions of primitive medicine men lancing the boils of the infected patients.

B5-A poorly made room with so many holes in the walls I could see in virtually every direction. Primitive craftsmanship indeed!

B6-A platform likely used to fling the bodies of dead plague victims to the earth below.