I remember how surprised I was when I ran into Cheryl Ladd at a hotel pool in Waikiki and she expressed interest in dating me. And then I woke up.
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The real question is "what kind of lunatic starts a meeting?" :-)
Is it named "Thing"?
In the forum thread "Paizo Blog: Starfinder Masterclass Miniatures Partnership" I have one "new" message, according to the Forums main page. However 1) it's been there for several days and does not go away however many times I click on it, 2) when I do click on it I'm taken to the relevant Blog entry instead of to the forum thread, and 3) clicking on the thread title also takes me to the Blog post rather than the thread.
Hm. Wizard with Rogue Dedication is cool, but... as I remember it (it's been a minute, so I may be wrong) E.G. Gygax's Gord the Rogue was, in PF2E terms, a Rogue with Wizard Dedication. Am I misremembering? (This is a side trip from the main thread -- I'm not saying anything about which way round is "better", it depends on a bunch of factors, including the character's back story).
I suppose if a critter is not "striding" or "stepping", but is, say, jumping up and down, or flailing at the ground or something like that, tremorsense will pick it up, but an unmoving creature creates no tremors for tremorsense to pick up.
The real problem is trying to find a length of scenario that fits everyone's needs. Groups running at game stores on weekdays that start at 6 pm and run to 9 pm because the stores are closing need 3-hour scenarios. Do they? Or do they need three one hour scenarios, or two one and a half hour scenarios, or a one and a two?
That museum is fascinating. Been there a couple of times, though not in the last twenty years or so.
Insanity, pure insanity. Which sooner or later will have consequences.
FYI tin degrades and is a very poor choice for a 'clay tablet'. Yeah. I was thinking it was gold, which would work, but I checked the adventure in which that happened and it was tin.
In another world a certain dwarven weaponcrafter/mage engraved his spells (in dwarven, using their runic alphabet) on thin tin plates. Not sure how that would go underwater. :-)
In any case it would be ten in-game minutes, not ten real-world minutes.
Don't know if I'm going to like this or not. We'll see.
You guys would hate healing (and probably combat as well) in Hârnmaster. :-) There's a reason the folk of Kèthîra avoid combat if at all possible. :-) :-)
I'm always looking forward to a nap. :-)
I suppose it depends on how much abstraction you want in your games. For me, less is more.
Recovery takes time. Hang in there, Cal.
Clarification is always good. And I suppose automatic Crafting progression is a decent candidate for a house rule.
IIRC you take no damage if the fall is less than or equal to five feet. If that's the case, I submit that you will take no damage from a fall during a Long Jump, unless, as I said, you fall into a pit that's deeper than five feet.
There's no way they would make a class that requires Crafting to function at all and then not give it auto-advancement in Crafting. You're entitled to your opinion of course, but that's all it is. When Paizo officially tells us that you're correct, I'll accept it. In the meantime... a Trained Crafter can make items up to 8th level. A Master Crafter can make items up to 16th level. A Legendary Crafter can make items up to 20th level. Alchemical Crafting is still Crafting, and Advanced Alchemy and Quick Alchemy are also Crafting, even if they don't require a skill check. Personally I think a Trained Crafter should be limited to 2nd level items, and Expert Crafting should be required for 3rd level and higher items, but that's not how Paizo set it up.
So if you fall while doing a Long Jump, you take no damage from the fall -- unless maybe you're jumping over a pit, in which case the question is "how deep is the pit?"
Seen in this light, I feel the only Must Have is a way to heal everyone to full after each encounter. Do you want your "role-playing" game to be nothing more than a series of combat encounters? No Exploration, no Downtime, no doing anything other than combat? I sure don't.
Okay, answer this question: when you make a Long Jump, with or without Sudden Leap, if for some reason you fall while doing it, how far do you fall?
Not at all sure how useful this is. I suspect that the more experience you have playing Pathfinder, the less useful it will be. I do think that new players need some discussion of what the roles are and which classes can fill them.
The main roles for a four person party are exemplified by the Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, and Wizard. First, what more general name would you give these four roles? Something like Damage Dealer, Healer, Utility, Blaster? Not sure that pays tribute to everything a class might be able to do. What I'd like to see, in the end, is a list of classes with notations of what they're good at. Rogue, for example, is good at damage as well as utility. And what does "utility" mean, anyway? Is "Buffer/Debuffer" a good role descriptor? What about "battlefield control"? What others are there? Anyway, given a list that says what the classes are good at, and combining that with ThrabenU's three part tier list, it should be easy to pick a class depending on whether you're new or of moderate or experienced player ability.
Remember the movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still"? It appeared throughout that the human-looking Klaatu was in charge and the robot Gort was his minion -- and the movie didn't do what the original story did, which was to have Klaatu tell.. somebody, I forget who, possibly the woman who was played by Patricia Neal in the movie, that it was Gort and not Klaatu who was in charge. So we can perhaps infer a connection in the Summoner/Eidolon case, but we'd need more information to determine which one is in charge. :-) 'As the robot prepares to depart, Sutherland impresses upon it the need to tell its master, the Klaatu yet to come, that his death was a terrible accident. Gnut replies, "You misunderstand, I am the master."' See the Wikipedia article on "Farewell to the Master". Gnut is the robot the movie named "Gort".
There seems to be a move afoot to integrate Pathfinder 2E and Starfinder 2E. Herolab, for example, allows one to choose both game systems when creating a character. How is that supposed to work? It doesn't make sense to me to play a high tech character in the Pathfinder setting. Where's he going to get his Starfinder supplies? It doesn't make much sense to go the other way either. Aren't many Pathfinder character classes going to be at a significant disadvantage in the Starfinder environment?
When you throw a ball or shoot an arrow a relatively long distance, you don't throw it directly at your target, you elevate the throw so that the ball or arrow describes a parabola. So a long distance throw or shot can have significant height on it. When you make a Long Jump, you don't do that. So how high above the ground do you get when you do a Long Jump? Watching Olympic jumpers I'd say not more than five feet, and probably less. Or my memory of that watching is flawed. :-)
No tier list is perfect. :-)
Seems to me that a smart martial character would have a ranged weapon for that start to a battle.If they are not built for ranged, it is likely much better to Delay until the opponents come into melee range. Fair enough -- if you can convince the player to do that (players IMO are often not as smart in this regard as their characters should be).
I think considering that Pathfinder has always underlined "it is clear to anyone intelligent enough that the Eidolon is under the control of the Summoner" that the Necromancer and their Thralls should work the same way. A Summoner and his Eidolon are marked as such by an obvious (it cannot be concealed) identical sigil on both the Summoner and the Eidolon. Most sophonts would infer a connection of some kind between them. Remember the movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still"? It appeared throughout that the human-looking Klaatu was in charge and the robot Gort was his minion -- and the movie didn't do what the original story did, which was to have Klaatu tell.. somebody, I forget who, possibly the woman who was played by Patricia Neal in the movie, that it was Gort and not Klaatu who was in charge. So we can perhaps infer a connection in the Summoner/Eidolon case, but we'd need more information to determine which one is in charge. :-)
Sometimes people want to play a class based on vibes, before finding that the mechanics are not a good fit for them. I think alchemist is one of the classes this happens the most often with. ThabenU has a Youtube video that produce a "Tier List" for the 29 current PF2E classes and the six SF2E classes. It's divided into three parts: new player play complexity, median player rating, and experienced player rating. Alchemist is rated "Avoid", "Deficient", and "Above Baseline", respectively. Two hours long, but well worth it IMO. Also, if you feel that's too long, the spreadsheet he produced and showed at the end of the video is linked in the first comment. The "Avoids" for new players are Alchemist, Animist, Psychic, Summoner, Thaumaturge, and Witchwarper (SF2E). The "Simple" classes are Barbarian, Fighter, Gunslinger, Kineticist, Monk, Ranger, and from SF2E Operative and Soldier. YMMV, I suppose but these look right to me.
Seems to me that a smart martial character would have a ranged weapon for that start to a battle.
For Advanced Alchemy, it is debatable as one may argue that the list of conditions there supersedes that of the Craft activity. One might also argue that the list of conditions for Advanced Alchemy is in addition to the list in the Craft activity, with the added benefit that you don't need to make a Crafting check. I don't think it matters much. If you're making (non-infused) items during downtime, clearly the normal Crafting rules apply. If you're making infused items using Advanced Alchemy or Quick Alchemy, you are Crafting (Advanced Alchemy, at least, says "you Craft...") you may or may not need to follow the rule that your Crafting skill level must be Master or Legendary if the item is above a certain level. Note that there is no requirement to be Expert in crafting for items above some level below nine (the level for Master crafting). All that said, it makes no sense to me not to increase Crafting Proficiency level routinely, unless you're never going to use Crafting during Downtime. I would add that it's specifically the Proficiency Level requirement that's being questioned. Nothing has been said about the other requirements.
Not going to argue about what the rules actually say, but I like ottdmk's take.
(Larry) Niven's Law of Time Travel: In any universe of discourse in which time travel is possible, it will not happen. :-)
Hm. Fortune. Mine is usually bad. :-) Anyway, thanks guys for the suggestions.
Another question: there are four kinds of bonuses to a skill: Proficiency, item, circumstance, and status. Proficiency you improve when you can. What should I be looking at for the others as I progress in levels, both for Downtime Crafting and for Encounter/Exploration Crafting? I know the Alchemist's Haversack is good, but that's level 11. What should I get until then?
I would not spend all my time crafting. :-) I took a look at it. Pick an item for a level one alchemist to craft, say an acid bomb. If I figured it right, and assuming he has access to an alchemist's lab, he pays 6 GP up front to craft four of these, one day to start. At the end of the day he can pay another 6 GP to finish the crafting, or he can spend some number of days to finish it, at the rate, because he's Trained and first level, of 2 SP per day (he doesn't pay that, it's just how much his efforts take off the remaining cost). So it will take him 30 days to finish it. He can, of course, stop at any time in that 30 days and just pay the remaining cost at that point. At higher levels he would need to spend a bit less time, for example at level 3 he becomes Expert in Crafting, so now it's 5 SP per day, but he also gets access to a higher level of the consumable with a cost of 10 GP each, so 20 GP up front, and forty days to finish. Gotta admit, Crafting does seem designed to make sure you spend most of your time adventuring. :-)
It occurs to me that an alchemist, at least one who has access to an alchemy lab (I seem to remember there's one available in Otari, if we're looking at Abomination Vaults or other adventures based there) can make very good use of downtime to produce alchemical items to augment what he can do not during downtime, especially if he knows what the others in his party might need, or he has some kind of Spacious Pouch to carry them in. So a player playing an alchemist probably needs to convince his GM to provide sufficient downtime for that. More generally, one might postulate that at the beginning of an AP or other long campaign, at least, the players should get say 30 days (more?) of downtime to make or do whatever. I suspect that happens rarely, if at all. (I'd expect at least a week or two of downtime at several points during a campaign even if there's none at the beginning). Comments?
The nearest outback to me closed about a year ago. The next nearest is 20 miles away. I prefer Longhorn anyway.
'"Contact" is [b]not[/i] a verb!' -- Nero Wolfe :-)
Something came after Endgame?
Teridax: I thought I had read that the Eidolon is the spell repository for the Summoner but I can't find it now and don't have time to look further. :-(
Uncommon and Rare spells have to be learned, but they do not add a spellbook for spontaneuous casters, they are just added to the list of spells one could add to the repertoire. But you can't add to the Repertoire except on level-up, as I read it. "I learned this spell a couple of months ago, but I couldn't add it to my Repertoire until now, and since I haven't used it since I learned it, I've forgotten it."
A question on the Froghemoth: the description says it's "bog-rotted". Bog rot is a disease with 3 stages. Stage one would make the critter Clumsy 1. Stage 2 would be Clumsy 1 with a -5 foot penalty to speed. Stage 3 would be Clumsy 2 with a -10 speed penalty. Each stage lasts one day. So which at which stage is it when the party first encounters it? I'm guessing Stage 3, since it's apparently been rotted long enough to be weakened (as in using the weakened template) by it. Stage 3 plus weakened template would make it a lot easier to handle, I think. Second question: This thing is an aberration. Occultism, say da roolz, is used to identify aberrations. How do the players know to use Occultism? Or do they not know and have to guess? Is "giant frog is some kind of aberration" just general knowledge that "everybody knows"?
If Runesmith gets an honorable mention, then Kineticist definitely should as well. Thanks. Added a paragraph for them. Still counting them as martials. :-)
Most spell books are limited in the number of spells they can contain, so a Wizard will eventually end up with more than one book, unless he puts everything in an Endless Grimoire (first available at level six, iirc).
That covers one of the three types of thralls, I guess. Maybe all of them.
Spellcasters can be classified in a number of ways. For example, by Tradition, by whether they are Prepared or Spontaneous, by whether they need a spellbook for all their spells, and possibly by other criteria I'll think of later or someone will bring up later. Here's my list: Animist
Bard
Cleric
Druid
Magus
Necromancer
Oracle
Psychic
Sorcerer
Summoner
Witch
Wizard
Seven prepared spellcasters, two get a free spell book at character creation, two don't need a spell book for common spells, and three have special "spell books" (Dirge, Eidolon, Familiar). Six spontaneous casters. Twelve total casters, because the Animist is both. Runesmith is not listed here because "runes are not spells", but the class works similarly to a spontaneous caster. Some runes are of a specific tradition, some are just "Magical". A Runesmith's repertoire can have as many as twelve runes, but the Runesmith can etch only half as many runes as are in his repertoire on a given day. Kineticists aren't spell-casters either, but they do manipulate the six elements (earth, air, fire, water, wood, metal) and virtually all of their abilities have the Primal trait. From the class description: "The primary magical actions kineticists use are called impulses. You can use an impulse only if your kinetic aura is active and channeling that element, and only if you have a hand free to shape the elemental flow." Most impulses are gained through feats. Note: the "slots per rank" above is based on the max according to the class's spell slot table. Some have more, e.g. the cleric's divine font spells (Heal or Harm). There are also Focus spells, which all spellcasting classes have and some non-spellcaster classes (Champion, Monk, Ranger) can have. Did I miss anything? I hope this article might be useful to some players and GMs. :-)
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