Easl's page

My experience has always shown the following to be true across all editions:

1. Martials are easier to play. The effects of their abilities are more immediate. Their power increases are fairly linear....

2. Casters are slow burn characters with a steeper power curve starting low and rising the highest....

...Always been that way.

I agree...for the limited set of ttrpgs "across all editions." Ever since the 70s and 1st ed D&D this has been the case. However it's worth pointing that it certainly doesn't have to be this way. Other systems balance things more equally or differently. Point being, if and/or when PF3e ever comes along, they don't have to stick to the old mold that's kinda been one of the hallmarks (haunted? Weighed down? I guess it's in the eye of the beholder) of d20 level based systems for the past 40-50 years.

And PF may have an easy time of it, too. With kineticist design, there was a pretty obvious and intentional 'level setting' for damage. It would be very easy in a new edition to make spells, and martial class features+feats hit those same marks, and make the strengths and distinctness of each class or playstyle reside in how they do that dpr or what else they do.

I'm frankly not sure whether the community would actually want that. After all, it means giving up that juicy 'absolute BOOMshackalacka power' that high level casters have now. But, if the community wants a more smoother caster experience across levels, an experience that is directly comparable to martials (and vice versa), that's certainly possible to design.

That said, they've been off-screen long enough that I think it's coming up on a good time to start doing something with them again, but if we do, I think I'd prefer to pick one of them and not the other and build them up so that they can stand on their own two feet, and then do the same thing with the other one at a later date, so that when and IF we do something about their bickering, it's got more meat on those bones than just a pretty barebones "we exist because we oppose the other" sort of vibe.

I know we have the Animist and Exemplar as new classes who take the bits of godstuff and use it to 'power up.' But giant chunks of godstuff raining down could easily blow holes in the barriers between planes...holes that some people want to use the godstuff to fix...and others want to take further advantage of...

Thus they could make good archetypes for the War of Immortals setting. Instead of separate 'this is who you are' classes, they could instead be 'this is the goal you've decided to pursue after encountering a chunk of godstuff next to a rift' type things.

I'm going to go with a completely different route than I think what anyone else has suggested (unless I missed it).

Gorum, in the midst of this war of the gods is having the time of his existence. This is what he was made for! But something happens, something that makes him realize that fighting, that combat, isn't the answer and shouldn't be what he's doing. And then he unmakes himself because a deity focused on fighting who suddenly realizes that fighting isn't always the answer is a contradiction that simply unmakes his existence.

Now I have that iconic 'flower power' image in my mind. Gorum walking up to Rovagug and attempting to stick a flower into his mouth (well...one of them...).

That would not end well. At least, not for Gorum.

I'm gonna be honest, the Zoetrope image wows me more than the beastie. Beautiful!

Hmm...guess p36 of PC1 is gonna need some re-remastering. Dei-re-master?

I'm hoping he dies in single combat, not ganked from behind. Maybe this beast we've been hearing about in the other stories shows up, roars a bit, and Gorum does a "Challenge. Accepted."

Basically if you simply say "it has some weakness" you are cheating your players out of their feat, since that's so extremely vague that's functionally no different than saying "you got nothing".

Well, we're talking about a failed roll. "You got nothing" is perfectly fine for most failed rolls, so in that respect, not cheating the PC out of anything. AIUI Dubious Knowledge isn't supposed to give a good answer on a fail, it's supposed to give the PC a gamble, a risk. I'd stick with that conceptually regardless of how Paizo parsed the new last sentence. "Fire is an imporant part of this creature...but you can't remember if they have a weakness to it or gain strength from it" seems about right.

I recommend AoN use, but if that doesn't meet your need I think the Alkenstar Humble bundle (announced March 21) is still available. For $30, you get all the stuff listed below as PDFs. Note that this includes the CRB, APG, GMG, and Bestiary:

Pathfinder Second Edition Beginner Box
Pathfinder Adventure Path #178:Punks in a Powder Keg (Outlaws of Alkenstar 1 of 3)
Outlaws of Alkenstar Player’s Guide
Pathfinder One-Shot #3: Head Shot the Rot

Pathfinder Adventure Path #179:Cradle of Quartz (Outlaws of Alkenstar 2 of 3)
Pathfinder Second Edition Core Rulebook
Pathfinder Second Edition Bestiary
Pathfinder Lost Omens World Guide
Pathfinder Lost Omens Character Guide

Pathfinder Adventure Path #180: The Smoking Gun (Outlaws of Alkenstar 3 of 3)
Pathfinder Guns & Gears
Pathfinder Lost Omens Impossible Lands
Pathfinder Second Edition Advanced Player’s Guide
Pathfinder Second Edition Gamemastery Guide
Pathfinder Adventure Path #178:Punks in a Powder Keg (Foundry VTT module)
Pathfinder Adventure Path #179:Cradle of Quartz (Foundry VTT module)
Pathfinder Adventure Path #180:The Smoking Gun (Foundry VTT module).

The CRB, APG, GMG, and Bestiary were also in the previous humble bundle third tier. So if you miss the window for Alkenstar, you can probably get all these core pre-remaster books in the next bundle.

That's easier said than done in some cases. I used to play a witch using the occult spell list and almost all of their early spells are Will saves, with the occasional fortitude save. There were no reflex saves.

OP is talking Wizard, so they're more likely to be thinking about debuffing reflex with the occasional fort.

But aaaaaalll the general comments above apply: (1) there are many effects, but (2) many are CHA based, which means for an INT caster a debuff-for-your-own-attack strategy suffers a bit from MAD, and (3) action economy means you generally want to debuff when it will benefit multiple PCs, not just you, leading to (4) it's probably much easier just to try and have both reflex and fort spells in your repertoire so you can target the lowest save without need for a pre-debuff.

That's why I'm curious what people think and how they'd GM some of this stuff, since diabolic deals to become a god haven't been things before!

For a homebrew campaign, I'd probably GM the ritual/contract as giving them some initial reward merely commensurate with the spell rank (obviously not 'become a god'), and then try and think up a whole lotta plot hooks related to the price they had to pay and the process they'll need to go through to retire/become a deity. If it happened in a canned AP, really not sure. Maybe a single bonus thing and a single cost event related to some key encounter.

Ah yes, you're right. So the third action is commanding the familiar.

Maybe your GMs are nice, but I personally don't attack a weak shield user when there's a raging Barbarian close to my monsters. It's basic prioritization.

If there was a general feat that said "1a. Requires 1 hand. Effect: GM selects a PC without this feat for the monster to attack instead", then pretty much every character would take it on just about every build.

That "feat" is a shield. At least, for GMs following your tactics. I would absolutely plonk a shield down on every single PC I made for any game with a GM like that. :)

Nice. Only two small quibbles.

First, Sudden Bolt is amazing but it's also a PFS-limited AP-dependent spell, which is so out of the norm in terms of damage for a second rank spell that I expect many GMs aren't going to want to allow it. Got any more 'common' suggestions for second rank [cough you may want to change level to rank cough] spells?

Second. Under the 'Third actions' section, you have: A few of them are extremely impactful (Stitched/Spirit Familiar) but they are class dependent. Sadly, my copy of PC1 says both shed spirit and stitching strike are 2a not 1a. So those are not good examples of how a blaster can best use their third action.

Interesting reference to the super-dangerous Rova-Spawn. Wonder if this is the same creature that hunted Erastil in his prophecy.

I thought so too. In classic fashion, Death of Bad Guy (#1) results in Revenge of Bad Guy (#s 2+)...but now I guess we won't be seeing that scenario. Someone else is gonna be the lit fuse.

I'd note, however, that the non death of Rovagug does not imply that the spawn remain a non-threat.

OK, seriously, how is this happening? A striking

flaming longsword is 2d8+1d6+Str damage - one strike alone is more than 15 damage on average! And the minimum damage is still 3+Str if you replaced all your dice faces by 1, which means two hits do a minimum of 14 damage (Most martial classes should have +4 Str, any class without that has a damage booster of some sort). I can't actually see a world where your players are hitting once or twice a round and doing 15 damage total.

I think OP was saying he gave them the striking flaming weapon because without it party damage was so low. But fully agree with you, 15 dpr for an entire party of four seems too low even without the MacGuffin.

Which is why I think what's happening here is (1) higher level NPCs cause (2) many more misses than normal, and so (3) he's actually seeing fewer than 1 hit per PC per round. Probably more like 1 hit per two PCs per round. And so my recommendation for fixing the situation would be (4) forget the MacGuffin, just lower the level of the foes so that they have lower AC and saves. That way all the players get the joy of being effective/useful, not just the sword-wielders.

This is all true. Today is the reveal of the last 'safe deity' and then next week on Tuesday we reveal all the tie in stuff and who is actually getting killed.

[Quickly goes over to announcements page]

...nada as of this posting...

[Shakes fist at squirrels in frustration]

Personal Antithesis states that the enemy "gains a weakness against your unarmed and weapon Strikes". From a strict RAW reading (but that's what we are doing) it's not the damage itself that triggers the weakness but the fact that you Strike the enemy. So it isn't related to any instance of damage and as such should not interact with other weaknesses.

But, well, Weakness to Strike is undefined and as such can be read in a lot of different ways.

Right, so the issue is something like this. Bob the thaumaturge has a sword with the flaming rune on it. d8 slashing + d6 fire. He's fighting Examplo, who has Weakness 5 to fire. Bob makes his Exploit Vulnerability roll (no crit). Now knowing that Examplo is already weak against his flaming rune, Bob picks Personal Antithesis. Bob swings and hits. Is the result:

1. [d8 slashing] + [d6 fire] + [higher of Weakness 5 or Personal antithesis], or
2. [d8 slashing + Personal Antithesis on "weapon strike"] + [d6 fire + Weakness 5 to fire]

Keeping in mind the general rule on weaknesses, "If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a creature is weak to both a type of damage and a material or trait, such as a cold iron axe cutting a monster that has weakness to cold iron and slashing."

I think for balance and my admittedly guessing at RAI, I'd go with #1. After all, "strike vs. fire' is orthogonal but so is 'slashing vs. cold iron.' So the example case in the rules provides applicable guidance to this case (IMO). But I agree that it is somewhat unclear.

Tomorrow is the final prophecy? Who do YOU think will be announced safe?

First guess is Saranrae, goddess of plastic wrap. Second guess is Norgerburger, god of hamburger theft.

But overall I think it's nowhere close to strong, it's more funny than strong.

Agree. Flight comes in around L7-12 depending on class and other factors, so a strong leap that you're getting from a combo of feats and items around L6-8 sounds very much okay.

But the players' damage output is low. Without me boosting their damage, the total damage from all four players in one round is only around 15. Each player only manages to hit once or twice in a round, and if the spellcasters and healers are focused on buffing the fighter players, their damage is even lower.

The raw damage from a L4 PC should be something around 8 per successful hit or spell, excluding 'big whammy' class abilities which may or may not be available. So you have two damage dealers, the cleric is healing, and a caster is buffing? Or maybe the group is missing more than you informally estimated? Frankly, with a severe encounter round averages could easily end up being 1-2 hits per round for the entire group.

It really all comes back to that severe encounter choice: higher level foes will (all else being equal) be harder to hit, causing party average dpr to be lower because fewer attacks land (and against spells, foes make more saves).

I would use the GMC p75+ to get a rough guide for what an encounter should be like. Even if you are playing an AP, you can compare what's in the AP to the GMC guidelines and, if it looks like the AP is tougher than your group can handle, dial it down. Remember, the AP has to be written as "one size fits all" while parties are not all one size. So if your party is bigger, smaller, very experienced, very inexperienced, or players focused build resources on non-combat roleplay, in such cases it will be normal for a GM to consider maybe adjusting encounter difficulty. Many APs come with advice about how to adjust encounters if party size is different from 4, but there's nothing wrong with adjusting the encounter for player experience or other factors too.

Handing out higher level equipment is a way to do that, but I think your players would have a more satisfying play experience if the monsters were simply lower level. That way, instead of the occasional strike doing better, everything the PCs do tends to work better because all check values are a point or two lower.

Yes, another necro'd thread. #@$@@@! But Magnus did ask a slightly different question.

MagnusPrime wrote:

After using the shield block reaction make you lower your shield?

No. Nothing ever says that.

But note that the Raise a Shield action only lasts until the start of your next turn. So whether you block with it or not, at the start of your next turn you have to spend the action to re-raise it if you want to continue the AC benefit and remain qualified to use the Shield Block reaction.

Man imagine being a spellcaster and having a favorite spell or set of spells and being told you're not only objectively wrong for feeling that way but are actively making Pathfinder worse.

A fair criticism.

It's not binary, it's a spectrum. When you tend to open fights with a Fireball/Lightning Bolt, most players quickly learn (these are not complex spells). And then, peer pressure serves you as you are no more the only one to disagree with Leroy Jenkins. Sometimes, it even ends up with the group agreeing on fireballing your ally, which is a good way to teach.

Can't say my experience or preference is the same as yours.

This kinda makes me change my mind about the OP subject. If spells like Synthesia are driving caster PCs to not only repeat the same tactics and spell lists game-to-game but insist all the other non-caster players dance to their tune, removing such spells has shifted in my mind from 'unnecessary detrimental removal' to 'better in that it encourages a wider set of play styles and an exploration of a wider set of spell choices.'

Another factor that will strongly affect the way that you approach prepared casters vs spontaneous casters and their spell selection is how your party approaches adventures and encounters in the first place. I realized after reading several of the responses here that a large number of folks here are first learning about a dungeon, adventure, encounter by walking into it with the expectation to solve/resolve it immediately and then move on to the next.

The tables I play with the most tend not to take that approach, and are pretty comfortable having a planning/investigating/infiltration/recon day (or even week) followed by an implementing the plan day...

Yeah, and to add to that I think both you and RavingDork have posted past anecdotes about using unusual spells and tactics to avoid an unnecessary combat. 3x fireball is great for bulling through, not so great if your party decides the best "solution" to an encounter is to go around or accomplish the objective some other way.

But who does that?! It's really unheard-of! So nobody, actually. Chop-chop-chop! Casters must get by as they can somehow.

Ah, yes. And flanking! Flanking! Flaaa-anking! FLANKING! Who cares if it's not always optimal or hinders casters?

Hard to tell whether you're being serious or tongue in cheek, but I've played with a few Leeeeroy melee types. Who simply don't care that the casters want to use ranged AoE, they're going in. Can't imagine the sort of clusterbomb a game would be if you had that sort of "I do it my way and I don't flex" melee-focused player AND a "I do it my way and I don't flex" ranged AoE blaster player too. A recipe for tpk finger-pointing for sure. Every character optimizing their individual dpr choices /= optimized party. That's more like...everyone defecting in the prisoner's dilemma.

if the goal is to start a war, killing Rovagug is a way to do it. The alliance that imprisoned him includes Gods that don't really like each other, but a mutual enemy that you don't want to escape has a way of keeping people in check and from moving too aggressively against anyone else.

I like it. Sort of an arch-duke Ferdinand type of thing: what kicks off this massive war is not the individual death itself, but all the agreements the death unravels/triggers.

So I guess he would be a prediction for NOT-safe. Sarenrae remains my prediction for next safe.

maybe we could check the poster and see if there is a pattern in the arrangement of the gods who are safe and which are not?

I got two in a row predicting Nethys then Zon-Kuthon for the bingo, but then Desna ruined my streak.

So now I'm predicting 'even distribution' and thinking it'll be one of the currently unpicked corners. Guessing one of them...Sarenrae. Her corner looks pretty empty.

I regularly mispronounce it something like "Norger-burger", which makes me think of a dark, shadowy cloaked figure...that steals your hamburgers.

I'd probably run it "straight," meaning the crit on the second power causes slot loss...of which the kineticist has none, so they just take the damage and stupefy. Though if a kineticist takes a caster archetype, those archetype slots would be affected by the power.

However, fully agree with Bidi that it's really up to you.

Disagree with Yuri, I think? IMO Confiscate is a "protects against a spell" power, so I'd say it affects impulses. Trigger on use is simply how and when it protects, but what it does, is protect. However I haven't thought deeply about the matter, that's just my 5-minute superficial reading answer.

The entire fall/atonement mechanic is a problem as it mocks a real life religious ceremony.

Well, as someone who played through and was affected by the whole "rpgs are satanic" bit, I'd say three things about this.

(1) my main concern is that my friends at the table enjoy the game, not what non-players I don't know might kibbutz about. If it's a problem for a player, then we'll use Rule 1 and change the game. I've done that. VtM. Evangelical player. We made it work. But if it's some random internet complaint about rpgs, sorry, no dice.

(2) Pretty much any form of expression is going to draw ire from the purity police, so IMO if you go seeking for some perfect in-game representation of some real-life culture or tradition that will satisfy your critics, you are guaranteeing yourself failure. No in-game representation of X will ever make them happy, because what they actually want is nothing short of "don't say, reference, or use X in your game."

(3) Paizo, in particular amongst game companies, goes out if its way to keep it's games inclusive and try and not make it's cultural/background material offensively stereotypical. So if someone sincerely thinks the company is painting an offensive view of religion, I'd suggest they contact the company and describe their complaint specifically. If the complaint is well-reasoned, the company will likely take it to heart and think about how they might do better in the future, because they're that kinda cool.

The new Wizard feat Secondary Detonation Array offer an idea. The typical complaint about it is that the target can avoid the extra damage by moving away. Big glowing runes appear under you...who wouldn't? But what if Mr. Phoenix's presence next to them is giving them a reason to stay put. Or, what if your enemy has no reason to know what secondary detonation array is, the fact that Mr. Phoenix is staying put when these runes appear on the floor might get the enemy to believe it's safe for them to stay put too.

For me, Aid should always be worse than Demoralize as Demoralize asks for some investment and has limitations (the Mental Trait and the fact that it doesn't stack with most debuffs). Once you get to +3 and even +4, Aid becomes largely equivalent to Demoralize (depending especially on initiative order). So I don't see the point in making it that easy to use.

Aid IS worse than demoralize. At least IMO. Demoralize gives a -1 or -2 to an enemy on ALL checks they make and all DCs they use until the end of their next turn. They attack 3 times? That's -1 to three separate checks. They get hit by 3 effects requiring saves before their turn comes up? That's another three checks they get the penalty on. Meanwhile, Aid provides +1 to only one check.

Aid also has a less valuable crit effect. Demoralize is -2 until the end of their next turn, then -1 until the end of the turn after that. Aid is +2 for - again - just one check. It doesn't get any sort of next round carryover.

So the investment is buying you "every check the target makes until end of next turn, and sometimes the turn after that, for enemy" rather than "one target check, for friend." Pretty big difference, IMO.

Still, to try and get back on topic, in terms of remaster making it easier or different, CRB description of the reaction and PC1 description of the reaction is seems close enough for rock n' roll. I don't see any need for a GM to change their practice. If you were conservative with it, the remaster provides little reason to get more liberal and if you were liberal with it, little reason to get more conservative.

It should be a bind, though not a shackle, especially if pursuing an edict. Sometimes one must balance the "must" with the "must not", though in good faith, not with a mind to exploit said rules (unless perhaps a diabolic follower who might be obliged to!).

Morally legalistic characters can be fun. To borrow and modify a bit from Sherri Tepper, if Asmodeus tells you "don't mess with their heads", is your character's response "okay, no mind control or gaslighting then," or just "okay, I won't knock off their hat"?

Both types of characters can have a place in the campaign. IMO a GM's job isn't necessarily to tell the player which type they should be, but rather make interesting encounters for the type they want to play.

;)

There are many people like that Magus, players who don't like the idea of touching the rules even to cosmetically homebrew their own spells, yet would love to pick a simple theme, filter search AoN, and have a set of options that matches. Because of the community's great resources, and the huge arcane spell list, that Magus was able to play their lighting striker without much "hassle".

I get that. But your original complaint was about newbies who don't have the savvy or desire to do anything like 'a filtered search on AoN' not having a good selection of spells to choose from, right? If you are now talking about the players who can do that, then the way they can get an expanded list of spells is "use pre-remaster material which has not been republished," and the limited selection of spells in PC1 is not an issue.

And the idea that a player wishing to build a PC that uses mostly just lightning spells is too specific a fantasy to be compatible is... like, wild. That is a super vanilla desire. I didn't realize how few lightning spells were core until I checked.

Well I think we are veering into a more general pathfinder game design discussion - one which has little to do with PC1 spell list specifically. I get where you're coming from in saying such a character is a popular archetype. I agree, it is. But (outside of kineticist) pathfinder has arguably never supported it strongly. So I disagree that the remaster is any sort of downgrade from the premaster for those types of character concepts, simply because premaster didn't support them in any great depth either. As you yourself admit you can trait search on the entire AoN database and not fill every slot with a unique lightning spell. Given that AoN includes all the premaster material from every supplement ever published, how is "not enough spells provided for themed casters" a specifically remaster (and even more specifically, Player Core 1) downgrade?

That example not only adheres to the actual tennets of Saranrae, it creates an obstacle which can be overcome with a variety of skill challenges. That's way more interesting than hemming and hawing over whether your God will arbitrarily be less ok with one weapon of murder over another.

I agree. A GM using divine tenets as a plot hook for interesting story choices is good. A GM using those tenets to deny or restrict player choices, maybe sometimes necessary but often much less interesting.

I would only caveat your example by saying GMs should (as always) avoid single-path solutions, or damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't situations. If a GM is purposefully setting the PCs up for a tough moral conundrum, then they should also set up multiple paths a faithful follower might take to succeed at achieving the goal while remaining faithful to their goddess. Real life might sometimes give you no-win, "every choice is evil" situations. But this is a game. The point is to have fun. So try to give (the players of...) faith-based characters ways to succeed without breaking their characters' faith.

Well, you can engage in melee with the bad guy while your wizard friend uses you both as ground zero for his Fireball. Or your Kineticist friend hits the entire area with a Blazing Wave cone or Solar Detonation blast. And so on - you get the idea. Is that what you were looking for?

If you're asking about resistances, the general rule is they don't stack, and there is no specific clause in this spell which would lead me to believe it does (i.e no specific rule mentioned in the description which would override the general rule). So if that's what you mean by combo...probably not?

my question would be what causes you to lose your spell-casting?

The transformation magic itself? Maybe it interferes or something.

I'd definitely let transformed dragons speak. I'm ambivalent about spell-casting. I see both sides of the argument as reasonable. One thing I am 100% sure about though, is that once the GM makes the "yes casting" or "no casting" decision, any decent group of players+GM can easily create an in-game explanation for "why the magic works this way." ;)

I just finished a campaign with a Magus who took all lightning / electricity spells + Mirror Image. If they didn't have access to Secrets of Magic, they may not have had enough options to even have that simple of a fantasy to be viable without homebrewing. Even Sudden Bolt is from an AP book.

Ah. I don't think the design intent of 2e was ever to produce enough spells of each element to let a caster fill their entire spell list with unique entries of just that element. Players are too imaginative to hit any such goal as that: they can think of a wider variety of themes for themed spellcasters than Pathfinder (or any system!) could support. At least the way PF and d20 systems do spells. To get that level of variety, you need something more like a build-a-bear spell creation system. I.e. a system where each spell "book entry" can be used to create many different spells. But that's just not how these particular systems have ever worked.

So I think you're being disappointed that the game doesn't do something it was never designed to do. Fortunately, for a home game, it should be simple enough to work with your GM to reskin spells to support a themed caster. Fireball becomes Electroball and gets "Electricity" instead of "Fire" trait, etc. With GM coordination, it should be pretty easy to create a themed caster by reasonable trait replacement or other simple change. Your GM may not allow everything you want, but 1-3 obviously equivalent replacement spells per spell rank seems easily doable to me, and in most cases shouldn't pose a balance problem.

I'll admit I have an obvious bias in favor of reskinning things. So people may freely disagree with me on this. But in terms of player choices, I'd much rather have the devs spend their time delivering new classes and archetypes than new spells. New homebrew spells are pretty easy to design and balance. I can do that myself, for my players if I'm GM or in coordination with my GM if I'm playing and they're willing to let in homebrew content. Whereas it's really hard to get the balance right on a whole new class, and a lot of work to build one. So personally, I'm not looking for a large expansion of spells in further supplements. Don't need it, even if there's not spells to support the theme I want to play. I'm looking for other things out of player-focused supplements. But, I admit, YMMV.

Having more options for spell selection really does not add much in the "decision paralysis" department, and only full-list casters like Clerics are even affected by it directly.

Oh, I agree. Once a player has chosen the spells their character will actually prepare, the giant list analysis paralysis problem goes away.

But that's not what you brought up as the issue. Your issue was too few spells in remaster for it to be enjoyable for a newbie. I don't really see that. I think an 'old hand' might see the list as truncated compared to CRB+APG+other supplements, sure. But a newbie isn't going to see it that way. They'll have a fine old time with it, and I say that as someone who watched ~15 newbies in a group of 40 rpgers have a fine time using the freebie single-page spell list for their characters.

In terms of making the content sufficient to be 'good for the game', comparing PC1 to CRB+APG+other supplements seems a bit unfair. I'd at least wait until PC2, then judge whether collectively PC1+PC2 give you enough magical casting options to be fun or not.

scary harpy wrote:

If giant Octopi have communities/villages and communicate with each other, should they have higher Intelligences?

Their listed behavior is based off the "octopus city" that scientists found in real life (article below). So the answer is probably yes, but it destroys all basic assumptions about animals in the current system.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/octopus-city-observed-180964936/

Well it probably means we have to rethink "Intelligence" in the game just as scientists have had to rethink (multiple times) "intelligence" in RL. It turns out, a lot of capabilities we used to think required sentience or self-awareness to have, don't. Animals brains can have a lot of different social interaction and problem solving capabilities without human-like self-awareness. So no, no octopus is going to learn to write any time soon. Just because they can build and live in societies doesn't mean they can do other things that we society-dwelling and building hominids do. They are still low-INT for game purposes associated with anything better thought of as "humanoid capabilities that derive from our self-awareness and awareness of other hominids as themselves self-aware." But "general problem-solving capability?" Yes, octopi certainly have the latter.

I'm not at all "worried" about any player savvy enough to know about Humble Bundles or search forums online. My whole point is that Paizo's choices have essentially made that type of "savvy play" more ~mandatory than it used to be to enjoy and not be frustrated with the pf2e system...

...I very much worry that actually playing pf2e "paper raw" or however it ought be described, honestly seems to be a potentially aggravating experience as both PC1 & GM books need to be on standby at all times for rules questions...

Well I think then your problem is going to be with the entire future industry, not just PF2E-R. Everyone is moving in the direction of more online resources, more pdfs, less dead tree reliance. Heck, D&D put their core rules online for free in, what, 2018? At my kid's junior high school, they have a D&D club of ~40 people. I was amazed when I found out - that's huge to my way of thinking! Yet all these 11-13-year olds used the free downloadable PDF accessed during the game through their tablets, and the club as a whole used a specific online chargen system for all club members. Not a paper book to be found anywhere, except with the 8th grade GMs who were really into it, and every character sheet was printed, not freehand filled in. No kid was even allowed to use any class options outside the free stuff, without GM permission. And most of them didn't know about the non-free options,...and didn't care. Internet savvy is the new normal.

I'm an old "paper raw" guy who started in the '70s. I definitely see the GMC as absolutely necessary. So nobody's getting away with just PC1 and if that was one of your complaints, I'll agree with it. Remaster is not like CRB where everything you need is put in one book. But in terms of player options, I don't think you need much more than PC1, at least not for neophyte players. I don't think newbies would necessarily get frustrated with 8 ancestries + variable + 8 classes + class archetypes. Most likely any new player frustration would come from browsing online and finding all the other stuff, and wanting the GM to incorporate it (that used to happen even back in my day - a player would get hold of some new book I didn't have, and want to add that stuff in). But you specifically say you're not worried about those types of people. So taking the neophyte, never-looks-online, doesn't-know-or-care-about-all-the-other-material player, I think PC1 is quite sufficient for a good campaign.

The point is there's no point into buy an older book that has 99% of the book that you have a new one and once that this doesn't make sense why do you have to get the content from AoN to access a non-ported content if you already buy the PC1, PC2 and GMC?

Worth pointing out that the last two humble bundles have come with the CRB, APG, GMG, at least one Bestiary, and LO (plus plenty more, but those 'core' 2e books were included in both).

So I'm not sure exactly what the problem is. For spells and other content which has not been remastered, yes you have AoN. But Paizo is not forcing people to rely on AoN, because a few times per year they make a whole ton of their old material available in pdf versions, bundled together for one pretty cheap price. You're never going to get old dead tree versions cheap from the publisher because those have significant costs to produce. And yeah, when they run out of physical copies of old books they may not print more. C'est la vie. But pretty much what they can financially do to make the pre-master material available, they are doing. Free online "-pedia" version, check. Cheap pdf versions, check. Old stocks of dead tree versions at dead tree costs until they run out, check.

2. If killing the bandits is the only way to keep the town safe, there's no real moral differences in doing so by poisoning their food and death by the sword especially if the former increases your odds of success and reduces the odds of you or the other heroes dying.

Golarion is big enough and varied enough to contain both consequentalist and deontological Saraenrites (as well as people who are a mix of both).

So again, rather than the GM setting the terms of whether a Sarenrite should poison or not, I think the better approach is to work with the player to help bring their vision of their Sarenrite to life. And if this means that your in-game religions have a breadth and variety of sects, many of which are inconsistent with each other, and a player's Sarenrite disagrees with the local priest about how Sarenrae wants her to act...well...then your Golarion is quite like RL. :)

See, this is how "100 years after" disasters happen. Next time you guys find a bottle in a dungeon and think "hey, let's open it and see what's inside", remember that that bottle could be some previous heroes' loaf of bread :O

Nice job and fun story.

If I consider the Greatsword Fighter the enemy has in their face at 10 in terms of attention you are at 1 with your bow. The enemy ignores you as you are not an immediate threat and as such your Aid just fails.

If you want to divert their attention at range you need to roll Deception. If you want to look threatening more than you actually are you can roll Intimidation. But Attack Rolls won't help you there.

"Aid" is not solely limited to posing a violent threat to the enemy. Otherwise aid on non-combat checks would be impossible, yet it's mentioned tons of times in the PC. Aid could be, as someone else pointed out, acting like a spotter to identify a good target, or weaknesses. "His left pauldron is loose!" It could be being next to the archer, sword drawn, so that the archer isn't distracted by the thought of being stabbed by another enemy. It could be yelling at the opponent to make them momentarily look away from the archer. And so on.

I definitely do that and I have the right per RAW.

Yes, you have the right per RAW to narrowly restrict your players' uses of Aid in combat. I just can't see why you'd want to. Particularly since, in another post, you mentioned you don't think it's that effective. So why not let your players describe some fantasy, action-movie type action they're doing to help their archer friend and let that role play have a positive effect on the game? I mean, if the fantasy accommodates letting a dwarf trip an ogre, surely yelling at an opponent for a temporary distraction isn't so unrealistic as to require the GM to prevent it, does it?

Your coloration tends...

...As far as non-phsyical ways you can illustrate this...

How about: you use your beautiful, ethereal voice to sing vogon-bad, violent, goblin poetry. :)

I'm behind this plan now I think. Personally, I'd probably go for dual gate at the start and grab thermal nimbus and fire aura at level 5 to get this working at level 6 and grab molten wire at level 8.

Yeah, fire aura junction + thermal nimbus is just a great additional source of damage, for any kineticist build which plans to dip into fire 2-gates deep and get up close and personal with the enemy. Stances in general are pretty well thought out, so there are plenty of other good ones for PCS who don't go that route. But it's a solid 'bonus damage' combo.

The use of poison being discussed here sounds like assassination to me, which you can certainly argue is dishonorable. But Saranrae doesn't tell you to act honorably, she tells you not to lie.

Poison used in food and drink is clearly a form of deception. So if the PC is trying to be 'true to the spirit' of her 'honesty' Area of Concern, they may not want to do it for thematic reasons. A different PC of Saranrae who takes a more legalistic approach could point out it's not a lie and indeed could be a means of striking down evil.

As a GM, I wouldn't try to force all followers into a single mold. I'd work with the player to try and understand what sort of follower their character is trying to be, and then give them my advice on whether a course of action matches that theme that they - the player - has chosen. It certainly wouldn't break the anathema for me....but just because it doesn't technically break the terms of an anathema, doesn't mean that a character trying their best to follow Saranrae's example (as they understand it) would choose to do it.

A routine of pinions and thermal nimbus/consume power is intriguing. I wish the damage bonus actually added the relevant damage type from consume power. That way, you could trigger your fire aura weakness.

Let's say you've got your gate open and stance on. We'll go with L10, since your build requires L8 minimum but to get the benefit of fire impulse junction, aura junction, and metal gate you need at least L9.

Your PC decides to go with classic fire: Flying Flame/aura weakness + EB/aura weakness + TN/aura weakness for 5d8+5 + 3d6+5 + 5+5 = 27 + 16 + 10 = 53. Wow. But really, it's 37 against as many targets as you can hit with FF, plus one target for the EB, and thermal nimbus damage 'for everyone.' 53 is your "one biggest target" damage. Other pros for this strategy: your gate is still open, you still have your reaction, and you can easily flex into substituting a move for EB if you need to and still do most of the damage.

Your PC decides to go with "Consuming Pinions": reaction triggers CP, then MP+CP, + TN/aura weakness. 10d4+5 + 5+5 = 40. But wait, you might get +1 to hit. Count that as 5% more = 42. You're still 11 points behind (though unlike classic fire, the calculated amount hits 3 targets equally). Cons: your gate closes, you lose your reaction, and since it's a 3A attack it's not very flexible.

See? Pretty hard to get ahead of classic fire.

***

Now, neither of these are tank builds, and yet they both operate under the assumption that your enemies are within your aura. Could be a glass cannon problem here. Metal's ability to conjure armor may help you be more comfortable at that short range, which is a bit of an intangible.

So let's do a similar calculation assuming you have 3 or more enemies at range 60'...and you'd like to keep them that far away. So no TN and no aura weakness, but yes CP bonus, MP+CP = 10d4+5 = 30 on 3 targets, verses Solar Detonation 7d8 = 31, plus dazzle. Solar det's AoE is maybe better. And dazzle is good. But arguably Solar Det should be slightly ahead since we're comparing a L8 impulse to a L1 impulse.

In any event, the raw damage is very nicely comparable. Which IMO is no surprise, since as I said up above, it seems to have been an intentional design choice to make every element's damage impulses work out to do about the same damage. Even without CP, pinions ain't comparing badly to Solar Det! What puts fire builds ahead on the damage curne is really the aura junction and having a stance that does damage (which also combos with the aura junction) - the impulses themselves, when combined with the dice bump from the gate junction, still do about what the other elements do.

As has been said, there is the RAW that an item that is an Improvised Weapon is a simple weapon, but that doesn't say what items are or are not Improvised Weapons. And it certainly doesn't say that if an item is used as an Improvised Weapon then it is forevermore considered an Improvised Weapon.

Seems a pretty simple concept to say then that the rune is only effective when it's being used as a weapon, rather than "no rune." When the wizard magically impresses a +1 fundamental rune into your cast iron skillet, you get +1 for striking people in the head with it, not for cooking or impressing the room with your incredible pancake flipping. But to say the wizard can't impress a rune into a skillet at all seems a bit weird.