Dubious Scholar's page

Without anything preventing actual death, you will hit Wounded 4 and automatically die eventually. There's only two ways to actually clear that mid-combat that I know of. The first is to be at full HP and have Moment of Renewal cast on you, which will clear it by counting as "resting at full HP". The second is to be a level 20 Exemplar and use Reach For Immortality's transcendence effect (which clears all negative conditions period). Both of these are once per day, so that's finite.

Meld With Eidolon got a slight buff in that Boost Eidolon is constantly active during it.

There's a new feat to reduce the MAP of agile attacks even further, which is never a bad thing to have.

Ah, yeah. That's a cute exploit.

Final Union allows to be "unconscious", but since the ritual means you can't be killed, the time limit for the fighting while dead never kicks in. So you just end up at Dying 3 indefinitely but damage is useless.

The anathema are the kicker there, or being turned to stone or something as you note.

All the new spell slots open up interesting options, for sure.

Curious what kind of utility stuff people are thinking about in low rank slots. Cloud Dragon's Cloak is suddenly very interesting now that I have some 3rd rank slots to spare... (Though that is also the rank of Haste, so I'm also considering just slotting Lightning Bolt as a signature spell there or something until I have 7th rank spells and party Haste is on the table)

The usual timeframe to handwave HP in exploration mode tends to be 10-30 minutes depending on how much damage there is. (Possibly longer if the party's really banged up).

In that sense, the Necromancer heals themselves at a significantly faster clip, only really matched by the Exemplar's Scar of the Survivor I think. That 10-minute break that lets the party patch up a little bit before more enemies show up is a full heal for them if you're doing that.

It's not exactly out of line, Exemplar's Scar of the Survivor is similarly absurd out of combat. But the main limitation is that it only works on the necromancer, so the rest of the party is exactly as banged up as before.

My read of the feat is that it lets you choose to have it function as healing for all living targets affected by the spell or none of them, it's not selective. You have to make a single choice for the spell as a whole when you cast it.

In the middle of combat that makes it awkward for a 3-action cast but very useful that you can 2-action "heal" with your slots. It gives you the very useful emergency healing to any party member, it doesn't give you the "Cleric against Undead" strategy, because if you're fighting living creatures your only options are "hurt everyone" or "heal everyone".

The Raven Black wrote:

TheFinish wrote:

The Dedication specifies Learn a Spell can only be used to add cantrips to the keepsake, preventing the use of Learn a Spell to add any other Rank.

Actually, the dedication says "You can only add cantrips to your keepsake with the Learn a Spell activity or by other similar means."

First, I don't see the need for this even for Cantrips.

Second, it does not speak about adding other spells and thus does not prevent what already exists, ie with Learn a Spell.

Why do people keep repeating this about "not speaking about adding other spells"?

"You can only add cantrips to your keepsake with the Learn a Spell activity or by other similar means." is not placing a limitation on how to add cantrips to your keepsake, it is telling you straight up that cantrips are the only type of spell that can be added to your keepsake.

And we know that because interpreting it the other way is nonsensical. What point would there be in stating we can add cantrips to the keepsake via Learn a Spell or other means when that is just...how things work?

The "only" is the limitation. Your reading boils down to "The only way you can add cantrips to the keepsake is with Learn a Spell or by other similar means"...as opposed to what? What other ways would there be to add cantrips? Or spells at all?

Considering the FAQ speaks of limiting the hedge mage, the only interpretation that makes sense is that Learn a Spell (and other means) can only add cantrips to your keepsake and nothing else. Otherwise the errata makes no sense, because it's not limiting anything.

Sure, it limits you to cantrips... until you get the feat that says it can now also have 1st rank spells added.

"Each time you gain a spell slot of a new rank from the hedge mage archetype, add three common 1st‑rank spells to your keepsake. Your keepsake can also hold 1st-rank spells."

The second sentence does nothing unless it's modifying the restriction in the dedication, because the previous sentence already handles adding 1st rank spells via level up. If it's not allowing you to Learn a Spell, it does nothing at all.

I'm getting a little grumpy over the new eidolon statistics. I kind of like that they've simplified the attribute spread, but it also looks like eidolon attributes have been lowered overall, which is a bummer. Dragons certainly did.

At first I thought it was a new paradigm that has all of an eidolon's non-Str/Dex attributes add up to a +3, and I was OK with that even if I missed the old spreads, but construct adds up to a +4, so I'm not sure what's going on.

I'm mostly worried over things like reduced saves for the eidolon. Fort and Will saves, especially Fort, are going to matter to a frontline fighter, and eidolons look like they may be an average of one or two points lower than they used to be?

I'm also reading this over AoN, so if it's different in the book please let me know.

It sounds like +3 would be correct to match PC stat lines (which, unless you use optional flaws, always add up to +9 total) since STR and DEX are taking 4/2 between them.

Dragon has the same total stats, but they're spread differently, from what I can tell on AoN. They're one of the few eidolons to not have +3 con now actually.

Impossible Magic had changed the Energy Heart Summoner feat to no longer allow for sonic damage. Was this intentional, or did they intend to explicitly write out the list of ‘standard’ energy damage types for clarity and missed it? If it’s the latter, it’s an error worth errating since I can’t think of any balance reasons for it.

Not just Sonic, it used to be "Any energy other than Force" and it got changed to Fire/Cold/Electric/Acid. So that's Vitality/Void lost as well.

Briny Bolt, the arcane spell, has odd critical damage language.

It says it does 2d6 on a succcess, and 4d6 on a critical success (so double damage) but the heighten doesn't mention critical damage.

It makes heightening it very weird, when it would be 10x easier to just say it takes "double damage" on a critical success.

(Accidentally posted this in a different thread, don't mean to double post)

For what it's worth, Hydraulic Push has always just been a flat +3d6 on crit at all ranks too. Briny Bolt on crit adds an unremovable Dazzled 1 minute on top of higher damage though, so... while it'd be nice if it was just double damage I don't know that it's a mistake.

Martial classes guzzle gold like crazy for essential runes, and casters are "what do I spend this on?". But that's a separate misstep of the system with martial power too tied up in their weapon runes.

Yeah, barbarian's rage (in PF2) is not some mindless uncontrolled fury.

It stops things that require concentration, but there's a lot you can do that doesn't require concentration.

It's certainly not like "the Black Rage" of the sons of Sanguinius from War Hammer 40k.

Also, you don't necessarily have to play the game in a setting that is post events of God's Rain. You could play at a time when Gorum still existed.

IIRC, there is no dedicated God of War with the death of Gorum, at least not the way that Gorum was. Though there are other deities that are related and cover war, they just tend to have something else that's more important than "war for war's sake".

Yeah, the part of Gorum that was most interesting is that war was the goal. Well, conflict in general - someone who goes around fighting duels to the death is just as valid.

Many of the other gods that encourage war are more leaning towards conquest specifically - war as the means to an end. Or they favor directly solving problems with violence, but only against those who deserve it.

Though https://2e.aonprd.com/Deities.aspx?ID=302 is an example that might work as a pure god of war itself. In general, if you search gods with the Might domain you'll find a lot of candidates.

This isn't often discussed in regards to casters, but I feel spell saves, on top of the other problems people have listed in this thread earlier, are also slow. What I mean is that, if you are a caster and cast a spell like fireball against a group of 5 mooks, the GM has to roll 5 separate saves (possibly with different modifiers as well), which probably doesn't sound like much, but when it can happen at least 10 or more times each combat session you'll quickly notice the group is probably losing like 10 minutes each session for something that could have been condensed into a single roll from the player's side.

Although the upside is that it has less variance. If you made one roll for Fireball you could deal double or nothing to everything, instead of getting mixed results. And the mixed results are part of what makes AoE blasting so useful - if you can open a fight with Fireball then the enemies who got burned extra badly are obvious targets for the party to hit first and remove from the fight. (The results are similar for debuffs, though some debuffs mean an enemy should be lower priority) You drop a Fireball and you're pretty sure you'll get the exact result you want - lots of HP off the encounter as a whole, even if you don't know what enemy will take the brunt of it.

But that aside, yes - casters can be more complicated in execution at the table as well because they tend to require more double checking things (gotta look up 3 different saves) and time to resolve the results of whatever they do.

namenottaken wrote:

Not sure if you are accepting stuff from Impossible Magic yet but here goes

outlier the new Palm-Held Sun counting as constant and portable source of Natural Sunlight completely nukes vampires regardless level due to the sunlight vulnerability, something that has previously been seemingly avoided. It completely neuters Vampires and similar creatures despite being a 2nd rank spell. And while I love the idea of a spell that can be used to exploit a creatures thematic weakness, this is seems more like an easy win button.

I think some incapacitation like effect for whether it counts as Natural Sunlight and a cap on the sunlight exposure for the spell.

P.s. this is one of my first posts like this so I apologize if I overstepped by suggesting an errata fix

WOW. This is an absolute madness! They spent YEARS being completely and utterly terrified that any item and effect would count as an actual sunlight. Almost nothing does (if anything). They introduced items which shine like a sun, but then wrote painful explanations that they don't actually generate sunlight for any case that matters apart from plot tricks which GMs must invent themselves. They wrote spells which are kinda sunny but actually don't even think about it.

And now this.
And yes, sunlight absolutely destroys a lot of iconic creatures: vampires, shadows, wraiths (some more than others). On the one hand is was always irritating because GMs would basically never use them by day because of this and players can't use the weakness because sun effects are almost non-existent. On the other hand if the weakness were used the encounters wouldn't be any fun. At least the second time definitely.
I think I'd remove this spell from my games for the time being anyway.

The most notable examples iirc are kineticist impulses. Solar Detonation and Ignite the Sun. Can't kill vampires off with a single kineticist until very high levels since Detonation is a 3-action overflow though. (Otoh, Ignite the Sun is level 18 and generates indefinite sunlight in a thousand foot radius, so... gg vampires)

One thing to note - weapon range is the range increment, not the maximum range. Maximum range is 5 range increments, it's just you take a -2 to hit for each increment past the first.

But you're an Investigator. You know your attack roll ahead of time... and so you can determine whether you really need to get close or if that 40' range at -2 to hit is enough. And it's only a -2, so there's a lot of ranges on the dice where you do decide it doesn't matter (plus enemy types that are notoriously low AC/high HP damage sponges... which are also a situation guns excel in)

Edit: As far as weight goes... yeah, you're kind of cutting it close there. I might consider your stat distribution a bit, and whether you can find room to not be at negative STR. Another option would be to take Hefty Hauler at 2 to get 6 bulk cap. This delays the automatic success on Medicine (and you did take it to expert to get that online a level sooner). Healing Plaster is a bit of a grey area, and you badly want the extra bulk anyways imo for other items that'll add up (ammo is already 2L or more, etc).

Edit 2: For ancestry feats long term, Fortuitous Shift is an option to build towards. Empathic Plea is another defensive reaction option.

I did take Radiant. It is real useful. Unfortunately, most of the other epithets are not so good. I really dislike when there is only one really good option.

I think it's about a 50% hit rate on the level 3 epithets.

Dubious Scholar wrote:

It's one of the better martials at dealing AoE damage as well, a lot of options at various levels for that. Nothing on par with spells (the only option there is Barbarian with Dragon's Rage Breath), but plenty of ways to do Strike+save turns when facing groups of enemies.

Ummmm....a Giant Instinct barbarian using a reach weapon (15ft reach) with Whirlwind Strike is also pretty damn effective, if you have a good amount of enemies in that 30ft circle.

Yes, but that does 1 strike of damage. Dragon's Rage Breath is the only martial AoE (excluding outright focus spells, at least) that does damage on par with spell slots. (That is, it gets 1d6/level of damage as opposed to most everything else gaining dice at half that speed)

Pretty much all martial AoE abilities do damage closer to a single weapon strike when you math out the expected damage. (with some variance for what size your weapon is and between the different options)

Edit: Might have misunderstood your reply.

Yeah, I think Exemplar as a class is fine. It trades off some damage for utility. It won't delete a single target the way Fighter and Rogue can, but being able reposition the whole party or hand out status bonus to AC for free (since it's the same action you raise a shield with) and such are great.

It's one of the better martials at dealing AoE damage as well, a lot of options at various levels for that. Nothing on par with spells (the only option there is Barbarian with Dragon's Rage Breath), but plenty of ways to do Strike+save turns when facing groups of enemies.

The biggest thing I'd say for Exemplar is that it's one of the most flexible martials in builds. It can literally use any weapon. Deft epithet fixes reload weapons. Shadow Sheathe removes all the friction of throwing weapons. Unarmed, 2h, sword and board, bows... you have options that work with all of those. You have ways to lean into being tanky if you want.

Blue_frog wrote:

Plus, roleplaying.

"Didn't you get skewered a minute ago ?"
"I got better".

XD

It is kind of funny to be able to look at traps and just face tank them. Burning walls of fire? Casually saunter through while making trolls look slow to heal.

In-combat, Scar of the Survivor is good but fair (It won't let you tank an entire encounter on your own but it can sure make you durable). Outside of combat... damage doesn't exist. It just doesn't.

Exemplar has a very odd power curve, with level 1-4 class feats being very medicore (Energized Spark is practically mandatory in case of constructs, but taking one instance of it is fine and you get so much juice at level 1 you don't care. Steel on Steel is useful... 4 levels later when it actually hurts enough to be interesting). I think Flow of War is legitimately good even if it competes with Reactive Strike and they start getting more interesting stuff at 8+. Fly speeds and such are hard to argue with even if lots of ways to get them exist.

The main thing that's odd about the Exemplar dedication is that weapon ikons are basically the standard damage bonus feature every martial class gets. And being able to poach that at basically full power is very unusual (and why Monk Dedication made you wait until level 10 for Flurry and they eventually nerfed that further too).

TheFinish wrote:

While Meld Into Eidolon did receive a buff in that you're now always under the effect of boost eidolon while melded, it's still not very good, and this goes double for Summoner Archetype.

I feel there's room to have a discussion about how Meld Into Eidolon should work to be a worthwhile option. A permanent boost eidolon while melded effect is nice and I guess kinda replicates having a version of Act Together that only allows you to use boost eidolon, but its not even close to enough to be worth it.

My pet design was just to make a class archetype where Act Together gets replaced by the ability to spend 1-3 actions casting a spell on your eidolon, then your eidolon acts. This gives you boost or reinforce every round for free, but also lets you still use buffs and self-heals while melded. Allow a turn 1 of extend boost+haste+strike or something that way.

Could easily add a level 4/6 class feat to enable that while melded still I guess.

Xenocrat wrote:

There’s a spell review that includes a list of reprints at the end. I’ve also seen someone’s word doc link that supposedly had SoM content that didn’t make it over. But I couldn’t find the first easily or the second at all.

I think you might mean this for the spell review and this for a list of reprinted/not reprinted content.

Both of them very useful!

Very useful indeed! I have a summoner who will be very interested in some of these new toys. Especially with the extra spell slots.

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Ranged "rogue" is the niche Investigator beats out Rogue at. High levels aside, Strategem is just so much easier to turn on the damage bonus at range than Sneak Attack, and it functions as a pseudo True Strike as well when there's multiple targets.

Not really? A mastermind rogue works ranged from the get go, and a scoundrel rogue can take Pistol Phenom Dedication to get Pistol Twirl at 2nd level or wait and take it at 4th level through Gunslinger Dedication and eventually poach the reload actions too if they use a firearm.

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Investigator is pretty underrated, mostly cause they have a central problem - what to do when stratagem will miss - that needs to be solved. And if you don’t they’re a bit sucky.

It is a quite solvable problem though.

The investigator isn't underrated. Its probably the second worst martial behind the inventor. Its a class that was seemingly made around exploration with combat as an afterthought on a system that mostly revolves around combat. It also doesn't help that everyone that can poach DaS can use them better than the investigator's themselves. Really its only saving grace is being a worse rogue, which makes them at least good, but if the rogue is there why bother with it honestly?

What do you mean by "worse rogue" though? Because investigator is better at skill checks than the rogue is. It's the best class in the entire game at them, because of how broad their +1 circumstance bonus for cases is post-remaster.

Ranged "rogue" is the niche Investigator beats out Rogue at. High levels aside, Strategem is just so much easier to turn on the damage bonus at range than Sneak Attack, and it functions as a pseudo True Strike as well when there's multiple targets.

The main issue is Investigator's class feats are so lacking. They do not offer the same amount of power as most other martials aside from a couple standouts. A lot of them are doubling down on exploration mode, the area Investigator is already the best at, and doing so in very specific ways.

I think a lot of people are underrating them a bit (...but just a bit, because unfortunately they're still one of the weaker martials at fighting due to their poor selection of class feats for getting good at that). This is the one class that beats Rogue at skills (due to the +1 bonus for cases and how easily it can be turned on).

So, folks, I think we need to take a step back and look at the situation realistically.

In practice, the end of the partnership with AoN means they will no longer receive material directly from Paizo, nor can they use Paizo's images, as those are copyrighted and not covered by the OGL or ORC. Consequently, they will rely entirely on voluntary collaboration for updates, and those updates will arrive more slowly than before.

Pathbuilder, on the other hand, won't be affected because it never relied on this partnership; it is based 100% on open content.

That said, here is my theory:
AoN doesn't generate revenue for Paizo, and Paizo is currently facing financial strain and logistical issues. Naturally, they are re-evaluating partnerships. In doing so, they likely realized that AoN competes directly with Demiplane's Nexus platform—with one key difference: Demiplane (which also uses images provided by Paizo) likely pays Paizo something—probably thanks to its subscription model—whereas AoN, which operated on donations, couldn't afford to do so.

In practice, with the end of the official partnership with AoN, Demiplane gains a significant advantage regarding updates. They already had a professional team to update content quickly; now, with the exclusive advantage of receiving newly released material early, their lead time over their main competitor in this area—AoN—becomes substantial. This advantage is highly beneficial for Demiplane, as it drives more traffic to their site and, consequently, increases exposure for the subscription plan they sell.

That is my theory on what is actually happening. Whether due to an exclusivity agreement with Demiplane or a desire to avoid cannibalizing their own sales, ending the partnership with AoN became the more attractive option for Paizo. That said, this is still far from toppling the services provided by AoN or Pathbuilder; to achieve that, they would have to try to dismantle the open license, much like WotC/Hasbro attempted to do with D&D. However, I doubt that...

I don't even think demiplane has to enter into the picture - there's definitely time and effort involved in the partnership with Nethys, and with reduced staff and budget strain it's not hard to see why someone on the business side would look at that and wonder if it's worth continuing.

Dracomicron wrote:

Okay, my question is, why would the Sports Luminary's hardlight weapons be comsidered improvised for the Luminary? Like, if I am a Brutaris player with a ball or a professional wrestler with a steel chair, wouldn't you know how to use your hardlight creations optimally?

I'm not saying that they should rival a solarian's stellar weapon or anything, but having them at least be competent with their creations... it would at least make for some more interesting situations where you can't bring traditional weapons into a club (like that bit in Incident at Absolom Station).

I'd say that they would be improvised for anyone other than the luminary, and the damage scales to d6 at level 3 and 2d6 at level 6 or so.

The other types could have similar scaling benefits. The hardlight just seems so half-baked right now.

I think the buff to hardlight props is supposed to be a minor little thing. Kind of like a sorcerer’s blood magic, it’s not supposed to have major impact on the game I feel.

Sorcerer's blood magic isn't a ribbon though. Anoint Ally can do a lot of good stuff in particular when you can pass buffs out to the party with it.

Hardlight ammo in particular could be neat and a vehicle for riders. Not entirely sure what I'd want to put on there - cast/spotlight for free is obvious and would actually be a neat way to get the debuffs rolling in a fight, but once they've been cast it's less valuable. Maybe their role is active for a round without the spotlight as special effects relevant to it pop up.

The number 1 issue with the class, imo, is the bouncing spotlight. Person under spotlight does anything? That's a chance to move it. And you have to move it to keep it from going out (and you need to track when you last moved it for that).

Taking away the "it only lasts one round unless you keep moving it" would vastly decrease the overhead of the class imo.

It kind of sounds like the main issue you're facing with the mechanics is just that the class is brand new so there's no automation tool built for it yet.

I can't really agree on the flavor thing. Flavor is what you make of it and the Luminary is a tech-y buffer/debuffer. Whether it's ridiculous or not is entirely up to the GM or player... you even listed an example of another class being played in a more ridiculous fashion.

I will agree that in the current state the class is somewhat anemic, but the best way to fix that would be adding more, not stripping it down.

There aren't any automation tools when you're playing in person. Someone's going to have to track those spotlights and that's going to be a pain.

In particular, the part where your spotlight has to keep moving to stay active is a problem, because it basically requires you to keep bouncing it around. Yes, you can bounce it between an ally and the enemy they're hitting, but even so, it's awkward.

I do personally like the Wheel spell. It has a 5/6 chance of being something useful. The damage and healing are both good for 1 action, the various buffs are good too.

1-Penalty is bad. The Star Contestant only has a 1/36 chance of getting this though, so...
2-It's True Strike. Use it or lose it, but it's good.
3-Explosion for a d8 per spell rank is a good use of an action.
4-This one's odd, because it kind of feels like it's just a free spin next turn. Not impressive.
5-Healing a d8 per rank is just Heal. And for one action, like Heal. But it can also overheal.
6-Heroism. It's Heroism. And then it becomes pick your favorite (2, 3, or 5 as needed).

The fact that the Star Contestants gets to spin twice and pick their result means they should, most of the time, be able to do a lot of work with their third action each turn... as long as they can do their turn from next to the wheel.

So, this is a CHA martial with a lot of focus spells. They have standard martial stats.

Spotlight and Roles are very high complexity. I see what they're going for here, but juggling spotlights to keep them active might be complicated. Some very good effects in the roles though, and being able to debuff any save on demand without a saving throw is huge. Romance is a great way to help whoever's taking fire, etc.

I do note however that this class has no damage bonuses. This is somewhat offset by the focus spells... but a martial with no damage boost is in an odd place. Envoy is a comparison point here, but Get Em is a potent party buff and they bring some other major utility with directives, so that's the bar for Luminary to meet.

Platforms feel underwhelming. The bonus effects for hardlight props are kind of narrow (and it's unclear what Contest even does at all, exactly). Bonus skill training is standard... it's mostly just picking which set of focus spells you'll have and which free first level feat.

Speaking of, the first level feats are all kind of underwhelming. They all give you bonuses for setting a role on yourself and let you set it as a free action. That's great, but the bonuses are mostly ways to use Performance for other things, and a lot of them basically don't do anything else (they turn off the penalty for those roles, but... several feel kind of situational - Drama Maven is something I can't see basically anyone actually excited for as an example).

The higher level feats are more interesting. Some action compression at level 2. Blooper at level 4 is nasty, as enemies critically miss quite often (because they often make attacks with MAP). Most of them are pretty good at 4 actually, though Guest Cameo is the standout imo because it's a really good focus spell. Trope Deconstruction at 8 is really neat and opens a lot of potent options (reversed Romance is Get Em, reversed Irony can open an enemy up hard to spells, etc).

The meat of the class is definitely in its focus spells though. Going down the list of platforms...

Contest offers a really good buff to start out. Since it counts any and all checks, it means they get a +1 to their next attack any time they miss. It doesn't limit how many of these +1s can be floating at a time and it eventually goes to +2 at high levels. Highly poachable for other platforms imo. The wheel is fascinating - lots of powerful effects, unclear if that's each creature can spin it per turn or only the first... and the star contestant should be spinning that every time to rack up the buffs and explode enemies. Comparatively, Summon a Friend is functional but unexciting... mostly because it's never going to top the Wheel. Of. SUPERSTARS. It's a good reaction.

Fashion gives your target a great third action choice in forcing enemies to save against clumsy over and over. Can't go wrong with that. Getting two targets at once is a nice upgrade. I'm honestly not sure how to evaluate the other two. Catwalk is interesting but might be best suited to locking enemies into an area or something. Strut and Pose feels weak for a 6th rank spell?

Music is another third action with its unique role. The only thing is, 1d4 isn't much. It's not nothing either, but... hmm. It averages out to slightly ahead of character level or so though, which... I guess that makes it functional. Interestingly, it encourages putting this on yourself with the second spell. But... Fascinated remains one of the worst conditions, though this is a valiant attempt at making it work since you can rob multiple enemies of actions easily. It needs to specify whether allies can attack them without breaking it or not... and I suspect not, which, well. There's a reason Fascinated isn't very good. Grand Crescendo on the other hand is great, no notes. Damage enemies, allies get temp HP, it's a big AoE and no reason I wouldn't use this liberally.

Sports is for striking. That's a powerful rider to the first attack each round, but the temp HP never refreshes and doesn't scale at all, which feels odd. Big Game is moving damage areas and does very good damage over time. Grand Slam is fantastic and I will never not like "I cast Barbarian at you" effects. And for only one action with multiple bonuses to hit this is easily the best version in SF2 or PF2 and uh... wow. Sports is juiced, imo.

Theater is odd. The role is a double edged sword, because pulling people in to make everyone off-guard to everyone is a good way to make things quick and bloody. I don't know that I ever want to use this. Soliloquy however is great. Just give people Romance and move on, because making them harder to hurt while being able to heal repeatedly for double their level? Very nice, but it upstages Diva a bit. A lot of other interesting options here and you need to have a flash card for the lead actor if you stack this on them because they'll do this every turn for all sorts of goodies. Final Confrontation is doubling down on the quick and bloody though. ...I don't know how I feel about this platform because it's the biggest double edged sword and nothing else it feels like.

A special shout out to Cameo Appearance for the non-platform spells. Illusory Creature is a great and versatile spell and this casts it for less actions... and it's better since there's no disbelieving it. It can be blown up, of course, but still, summoning a turret with its own MAP to pew pew a bunch is fantastic and I'd take this 11 times out of 10?

but "stopping meteors with your sword" is probably a different game.

Barbarian does have Sunder Spell, which can directly attack the effects of a spell to destroy it.

Alternatively... it's probably within scope for Exemplar's Remake the World, but... that's one of the most open-ended level 20 feats in the game.

Yeah. I do think iaido can just be handled by an archetype - basic enabling with a minor bonus and then feats for various fancy attacks. (Please?)

Switch-hitting has long been a weakness of the system, but I'd argue it's more keeping multiple weapons up to par where you run into issues with resources. You're always making sacrifices somewhere to get it going. Finesse weapons are weaker, but otherwise you have to double dip STR/DEX and that's even worse, etc.

Ninja type stuff exists in many classes. Monks get wall running and water walking, etc. and can do some of the supernatural agility things. Rogues get a touch of that at high levels, and are fantastic at the assassination angle. I think Kineticist actually touches on some of the more magic ninja stuff, if you want someone who fights by chaining fireballs into faces and such.

Unicore wrote:

But I do oppose “every roll has to significantly change the narrative” on principle, and I especially oppose PF2 trying to mechanically codify all exploration activities around trying to make every single result of every single check have to be more important than “that doesn’t work and time passes.”

As I am trying to point out, the issue is that “how much time passing does it take for a failed result to matter?” is a question subjective to the situation it is happening in. At best, these decisions would need to happen at the adventure writing level, not the default activity results level, and that it is ok to have situations where no amount of time is going to matter and then we can just skip the roll, rather than have to invent a consequence just because someone chose to roll.

If a roll has no consequence on the narrative, why are you rolling?

I mean that as a serious question. I don't understand how it makes sense to call for a roll, resolve it, have the outcome be "nothing happened but you can roll again if you want", and consider that a good outcome.

I think we've all seen this play out at some point where that situation results in making the same check multiple times until the dice come up high enough that it's a success (or a critical failure), which results in something happening.

"Something happening" is the key phrase. "Something" is very broad. But just repeatedly rolling dice until the dice give a certain result that makes something happen is a waste of time, since something should be happening on every result.

(This isn't really an issue in combat because "you lost time" is an outcome in combat. Missing an attack isn't "nothing happened" because you used those actions and they didn't work. You can dress that up narratively in lots of ways but even in its most basic form, something happened as a result of that in that you used the actions.

In exploration mode that's often meaningless and so the whole way this gets handled RAW doesn't really work.)

Yeah - a better design pattern is to have the check not be whether you succeed, but what the consequences are. A success gets you the basic outcome, everything went fine. Critical success and things went extra well, you get some benefit somewhere... and then failure causes various consequences. Like picking a lock, failure can alert the guards, leading to narrative consequences later, an extra fight to drain resources, give them initiative bonuses, etc. and then critical failure to more severe consequences (the lock is jammed so now you have to bash it down and leave lots of evidence that you were there. Also, the guards are waiting to ambush you)

If failure is just "try again" then you should rewrite failure to be "you had to try X times before succeeding and that had these consequences" instead. If there's damage involved, just figure they'll take X packets of damage or whatever consequences but eventually get it, etc.

ScooterScoots wrote:

My continual flame doesn’t take up a hand, it’s a helmet light. With a cover and everything. If I want multiple instances I can get multiple and chuck them.

Yeah if your party does not have low light/dark vision light cantrip is a champ. can just have it follow most of your group around with no hands required. Just fire it up and have it last all day. A real lifesaver for dungeon crawlers.

Plus the ability to counteract Darkness with a cantrip is nice. Definitely situational to the party but it's useful.

Easl wrote:

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Boost Eidolon with a strength chassis is basically hitting equivalent to a d12 weapon (d8+2). A giant barbarian averages 4d12+3d6+20 (instinct)+7 (str)+4 (spec)=67.5 per hit. The eidolon gets 47.5 instead, which is 70% of their damage per hit.

For Summoner, it makes a lot more sense to compare two actions...

So I went ahead and did the math for hits and misses and saves, assuming hits and saves on 11+, with crit successes (and failures for the spell) factored in. Overall, the results look better for the summoner.

Barbarian: 67.5*0.55 (1st strike) + 67.5*0.30 (2nd strike) = 57.375
Summoner, cantrip: 47.5*0.55 (strike) + 25*0.775 (cast) = 45.5
Summoner, burst: 47.5*0.55 (strike) + 72*0.775 (cast) = 81.925

So with a cantrip you can expect to do roughly 80% of the Bar's output over many combats, while with the burst cast you can expect to beat their damage output. The reason the summoner fares better here - vs the "naive, always hit" case - is because against an enemy with relative parity in AC and saves, the basic save spells almost always do something, while a martial's MAP strike will regularly miss.

Your burst seems to be using 10th rank Fireball damage. Wave casters don't get 10th rank spells. That said, there are more damaging spells available there. Falling Stars is an average of 75 damage with significantly larger AoE for instance. Spirit Blast is 77 average against fortitude. Phantom Orchestra is a sustainable and moveable explosion for half that every turn.

Hmmm Summoner is probably in there with Magus. The eidolon will keep up fully with martials on proficiencies and runes, and at high levels most will have reactive strike which adds to dpr. But the class doesn't have many big damage adds beyond that. Boost eidolon maxes out at +8 damage per strike, but tbh probably not many summoners are using it because there are often tactically better things they can do with that action. Does "+8 on top of all the classic weapon damage dice + str add + runes" get to 60% barbarian?

I guess for 2 actions, you could count one of those regular strikes + one MAD -5 strike + cantrip (from the summoner) as their standard two action damage average. With the ability to burst that with a slot spell in a big fight. Maybe the cantrip helps close the gap caused by the bar getting a damage boost to each of those strikes?

Note that Summoner has Extend Boost available to get 3-4 rounds out of the action. Though it's not as easy for them as bards since it's not on KAS, it is an option.

Boost Eidolon with a strength chassis is basically hitting equivalent to a d12 weapon (d8+2). A giant barbarian averages 4d12+3d6+20 (instinct)+7 (str)+4 (spec)=67.5 per hit. The eidolon gets 47.5 instead, which is 70% of their damage per hit. Which does satisfy your initial criteria, and of course this is stapled to a wave caster so you have a few high-impact spell slots every day (and even though you stop at master and 9th rank, there's still a lot of nonsense you have access to there)

The action tax for Sustain Boost is 1 action every 3-4 rounds, which isn't too bad. (You fall to only 58% of the giant barb without it, though remain over 60% of any other barbarian. You also do have access to d6 agile attacks, which I think closes the gap a little on second attacks)

Mechanically, the alchemist dedication is perfect, you get quick alchemy at 2 and advanced at 4 and there's plenty of healing options to make daily (temp HP per round, fast healing, straight up healing) while keeping quick alchemy for on-demand stuff like Cat's Eye Elixir (carrot flavored, if you're going with the theme?) or mutagens for skill checks and such.

By level 8 you've got haste and flight available from the daily potions and such too.

Oh, the usual comparison of gun/crossbow where crossbows are more reliable and guns more swingy is neat, it's just both heavily suffer from the reload tax.

Crossbows are actually kind of nice for remastered gunslinger. Crossbow Crack Shot on an Arbalest does a lot of work (+2/die to off guard targets/+1/die normally). 2d10+4 base damage at level 4 is basically on par with a 2h fighter, with the downside of reload... and the upside of just hitting anything anywhere without moving.

Strictly speaking, no rules exist to make alchemical ammunition follow any of the rules of magical ammunition. Treasure Vault and Guns and Gears both just list them out without any special callouts.

For the most part, this is fine - they're alchemical consumable items with a listed activation and general rules for those exist.

However, there are two important areas where this breaks down.

First, the normal rules for an activation would be the effect happens when you activate. The rules for magic ammunition change that, but alchemical items are explicitly not magical unless stated otherwise... and nothing says otherwise. So the absolute strictest reading would be that the interact to activate also fires the ammunition. Of course for obvious reasons basically everyone assumes this works the same way as magical ammunition, but there are no rules that actually say that.

Also, an interesting quirk in this is the remastered Beast Gunner, which has "Special If you also have the Spell-Woven Shot action you can load and activate a piece of magical ammunition as a free action before making a Spellsling attack once per 10 minutes.". Note this only calls out magical ammunition. Given the nature of the archetypes involved this could be interpreted as intentionally excluding alchemical ammunition, or it could be an oversight. Spellshot's Advanced Deed from the same book does explicitly list "magical or alchemical ammunition" though, which suggests intent. But it also would imply alchemical ammunition is not magical ammunition.

Second is the quirk of magical ammunition where property runes are not applied to the attack. This is a signficant drawback, and I'm of the opinion that absent explicit text saying so, it shouldn't be inferred to apply to other types of ammunition too. But it's an open question.

Notably, the section on magical ammo has a separate subsection on activated ammunition. If you assume this part to apply to alchemical ammunition too, you clear up the first issue (as this is where the separate activation and firing is stated). It can reasonably be assumed to be a general rule for all kinds of ammunition that is activated. It doesn't address the second question though, as that rule is outside this block.

In general, I think applying the activated ammunition section makes sense, and clears those things up. But the question of the property runes remains ambiguous and could use clarification.

Also, if Beast Gunner is supposed to work with alchemical ammo too that's an oversight.

My top 5 errata requests, in no particular order, are:

1: Explicitly state how Critical Hit Resistance works since it shows up a few places.

Are you talking about immunity to critical hits? That only applies to the double damage, all other effects on crit apply (PC 408 / https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2314). Not sure I've seen a resistance to crits, but I'd assume it's just resistance to the doubled half of the damage, since it doesn't make any sense for that to be any more when immunity is limited to it.

The resistance changes kind of feel awkward because it's been all over the place with multiple revisions.

I do think Resist All has had some screwiness overall with how potent it ended up being... but as noted a lot of things become kind of bad with the change. (Champions are fine, their reactions remain powerful even with this change)

How do multiple instance of Resist All work now? Can they each apply to a different damage type and thus stack in that fashion, or?

But honestly I think the last update was already fine.

Is the creature weak to X? Add damage.
Is the creature resistant to X? Subtract damage.

That was definitely not the original way things worked, but it's intuitive and easy to use.

Specific Magic Weapons should be able to have additional property runes added if you upgrade their potency rune, like any other weapon. There's a lot of them with interesting effects that fall off because you can't ever upgrade them at higher levels that way.

Honestly, ranged weapons as a whole suffer a bit, especially at early levels. Reload weapons are just taking a hit on top of that because it's never been properly budgeted. Every reload weapon could get a die size increase, and they'd still be generally weaker I think.

At the same time they're clearly not new. In both art pieces you can clearly tell their armor is dinged up and well worn, so I don't think the narrative is going to be "Somebody in Nex finally cracked the Jistkan formula and we can make Automatons again but with this fresh new design."

There were some hints about someone having cracked the code on them at some point? I think it was like, somewhere in Axis though. I'd have to dig through my books later to be sure.

Oracle's Nudge the Scales has an unclear effect for undead PCs.

"If you align yourself with life, you are healed by vitality healing effects, as normal for most living creatures; if you align yourself with death, you gain the void healing ability, causing you to be healed by void effects that restore Hit Points and any other effects that restore Hit Points to undead creatures."

Living PCs just become treated as undead by gaining Void Healing, which inverts everything normally. But PCs with Void Healing just "are healed by vitality" and it doesn't address anything else Void Healing applies, so a strict reading is that they:

Are healed by void or vitality healing
Are immune to void damage
Are vulnerable to vitality damage

It's not clear if this is intended, or if it really just means they should be treated as if they didn't have Void Healing at all.

Exemplar - Titan's Breaker/Fracture Mountains

The wording of this effect remains a bit unclear, because it increases a 2 damage per weapon die to 4+one weapon die. The most literal reading is to replace the 2 with all of that... per die, but that's obviously wrong. But just replacing the entire bonus means that at most levels you're only adding weapon dice and not actually adding any flat bonus. (Levels 1-3, 10-11, and 18 are the only ones where the transcendence does more flat damage than a maxed out weapon would), so if that's the intent it feels like it should just say "you add X weapon dice of spirit damage to the attack". Though that basically just makes it a worse Vicious Swing (due to the limitations of transcendence abilities). I assume the latter is intended, but... honestly it could just add 2+one die, 4+two dice, 6+three dice total and still be fine (basically giving the immanence effect on the bonus dice). Is it intended to say "increased by" instead of "increased to"?

There's enough enemies with Darkvision and since Darkness 4 only gives concealed against them, a simple Revealing Light is probably more useful a lot of the time (2nd rank slot and they can't move out of it, even if it gives a save)

The thing about Greater Darkvision is that Darkness can be counteracted by throwing the Light cantrip at it, which auto-heightens, costs nothing, etc. And trading 2 actions on your caster to negate 2 actions from a strong enemy is usually a win for the party.

Or as noted, Cats Eye Elixir. Dirt cheap and makes normal Darkvision sufficient to fight. (Actually, you probably just want to keep a flask on all your high level chars, because it's just useful)

The Blade at least can use the discount for better Strikes if they didn't need the extra action (all the slaying technique moves are relentless), but even then...

Unfailing Bow's immanence is odd. Increasing the damage on a critical hit would normally mean the damage bonus doesn't double for a crit, but then you're trading 2 damage per die for 1d4 per die, which isn't really an upgrade. (Average 2.5). If it's intended to double on a crit it probably needs to specify that.