Elicoor's page

How does the Unified Theory feat fit into all this, I wonder?

It's going to be a bit long, but there are 2 elements to explain.

The first part of Unified Theory is when the wizard finds the explanation that connects every type of magic, breaking every concept of magic down to fundamental rules that can be explained through Arcane. Through Unified Theory, one would be able to explain how deities grant magic, how sorcery can stay in the blood, skipping generations, how witch patrons can grant them abilities through a familiar, how embracing nature can give you druidic abilities, but also why every spell is locked to some traditions.

You can see it the same way fundamental physics tries to find a theory that connects every fundamental interaction, connecting general relativity & quantum mechanics, that would give you the capacity to describe anything in a physical sense. Except... it would apply to everything magical.

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The second part of Unified Theory, one that most people seem to occult (pun intended), is the ability to use that theory to describe any magical phenomenon in a matter of seconds (the time of a Recall Knowledge), as if you had some supernatural ability to break down these phenomena into their component blocks, blocks that you can then explain through the theoretical model defined in Arcana.

It's as if, as a theoretical physicist, you somehow acquired the ability to solve extremely complex equations about any physical phenomenon in a few seconds without external help. You're no longer an astrophysicist, a quantum physicist, or a specialist of air movements : you now are able to understand, describe and break down every phenomenon in the Universe to an accurate mathematical description.

As a Legendary-level feat, you have to consider it as some supernatural accomplishment, something impossible to do, but that your character did anyway.

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In other words, Unified Theory gives you 2 things :
- a deep explanation of all types of magic (the Theory of everything in physics)
- an innate perception and understanding of it (the supernatural ability to mathematize everything in seconds)

You forget another asset of Sentinel: It gives you access to one of the best (if not the best) skill feat in the game for medium/heavy armor users: Armor Specialist.
So, it's not 1-3 class feats. It's 1 class feat and at most 1 useless skill feat. Armor Specialist is not something you want to let behind.

The main issue here is that Armor specialist is currently written as having the Skill tag, despite being completely unrelated to skills in any way.

And it's probably a mistake, due to a template copy/paste from Steel Skin, which has a Survival prerequisite. Another point making me think it's a mistake is Mark having made an errata note for the feat in that thread..

In the current environment, I concede that Armor Specialist is a very strong Skill feat, as it grants access to defensive options for a small price. But it's probably going to change very soon, along with the APG errata.

Ravingdork wrote:

So if I hit someone three times, inflicting 1d6 persistent bleed each time, on their turn they roll 1d6 bleed three times, taking only the highest result?

What if, instead of compare dices and use them each time persistent damage is about to be applied, we use the rolled value.

This follow the "step 1: Roll the Damage Dice and Apply Modifiers, Bonuses, and Penalties" and solve all comparisons.

(Examples)

That would actually be a nice way to work with... Except it's contradicted by CRB621: "Instead of taking persistent damage immediately, you take it at the end of each of your turns as long as you have the condition, rolling any damage dice anew each time."

I'd be very glad if some of the full caster classes had a bit more than 3 feats at many levels (yes, I'm talking a bit about wizards and their very low number of feats, especially considering the fact some of them can be gated behind other options, shortening even more the list of available feats, while lacking many options about magical knowledge).

Brysun wrote:

Page 205+ Was Polar Ray intentionally left off the Elemental Spell List? If so, why?

Almost all Cold and Electric spells where, which is weird because I consider Lightning Bolt and Cone of Cold etc to be "elemental" but I guess Golarion or the lore or the game doesn't.

It's basically true for all energy derivatives :

However, a lot of element-based spells have unstable behaviour towards elements/energies :

- Elemental Zone (SoM) applies to Electricity and Cold
- Elemental Betrayal applies to Cold (APG) but not Electricity
- Elemental Confluence (Air option) (SoM) has the Air trait and deals Electricity damage without having the Lightning trait, while dealing no non-electricity damage
- Element Embodied (SoM) doesn't have any elemental trait by itself, only the resulting form ; the Air option deals Bludgeoning or Lightning damage ; the Water option doesn't deal any Cold damage.
- Elemental Absorption (Water option) (SoM) gives resistance to effects with the Cold trait, but the Air and Earth option do not apply to their derivative energy
- Elemental Tempest (CRB) talks about elements, but only applies to energy derivatives.

And at the same time, there is some illogical behaviour in the composition of the Elementalist spell list :

- You have Mantle of the Magma Heart, which is OK as a Fire spell... But at the same time you have Mantle of the Frozen Heart, which doesn't have any Elemental trait, as it's a purely Cold spell. (The word "Water" is not even present anywhere in the spell description)
- Why do Snowball, Frigid Flurry and Wall of Ice have the Water trait in addition to the Cold trait, where other Cold spells don't have it ? It seems somehow arbitrary, and not completely linked to damage types (Snowball deals only cold damage for example)

I'm mostly certain it's a way to avoid having a single class with all damage-dealing spells, but the spells themselves are lacking some internal coherency.

Then again, their philosophy on page space now seems to be "lots of repetition".

The problem when you try to reduce page space to squeeze more options in a book, is that it increases the number of elements that require DM validation. And that starts to become a problem when it becomes about character creation, which is a process you're supposed to be able to do on your own (for example if you want to prepare a character for PFS).

If you have to sort out every sub-variant of the eidolon type you chose, it quickly becomes something complicated to read or to understand. Having mutually exclusive variants without a lot of subvariants makes things clearer.

Plus, having repetition between both helps players familiarize themselves with the way eidolons stat blocks are written, and it opens doors to make more specific eidolons as uncommon or rare options in future books.

Using Divine Lance as an alignment detector is completely an evil act: you cast offensive spells at people who didn't attack you (and might be completely innocent, but of an opposing alignment by nature).

Would you find it ok to cast Produce Flame at random people, considering some might have innate Fire Resistance, just to detect those who don't ?

Yeah, it also feels that way for me. Shipping fees have become so high that it's often far more interesting to buy the pdf and the book separately.

And what was true about a pdf only subscription 9 years ago might not be true nowadays. The evolutions that happened these one and a half last years towards more virtual tables, more long-distance play and less in-person play, especially in Europe where more restrictions apply (like curfews and forbidden gatherings), shaped a world in which more people would like to subscribe to pdfs to get the books.

9 years ago, pdfs were somewhat more of a bonus for PFS players who didn't have to bring 20 pounds of books due to picking options in multiple supplements. Now it makes things easier for a lot of people who use VTTs on a weekly basis.

Plus, I really do think some of us (people in non-English speaking countries) would like to subscribe to pdfs to have the newest game elements in the original language and having paizo earn money for it a bit sooner, while buying the books for their collections in their own language, making it easier to play at a table with new players who do not always have enough skill in speaking other languages.

Making enemies lose actions is most of the time a good tactical move, even if it costs the group more actions than it makes lose to an enemy : you have to see it as a ratio of action cost to action lost, relative to the total number of actions available to each group.

Making a solo boss enemy lose an action is good : they only have 3 actions a turn to your (standard group considered here) 12 actions. If you lose 2 to cast slow, unless the enemy critical successes, you payed 1/6th of your actions to make the enemy lose at least 1/3 of their actions in a given turn. The real action cost looks bad, the relative is good.

Doing the same to a basic enemy when you have 6 or more of them is a bad move.

Maneuvers are good. Not perfect, not all the time, but overall they are good.

Another very important tactics is the use of Delay. It helps your group setting up things when the initiative is not in your favour. For example, casting Fear/using Intimidate just before the enemy's turn is not very useful, as it only makes them weaker for the duration of their own turn. If you Delay your turn, play after them, you can use your frightening effect for the whole round duration, weakening them against all of your team's moves AND their next turn.

And as Unicore said just before : There's no absolute winning strategy. Have a good score in your main stat, adapt to the fights, check your environment (chances are you're not fighting on your own turf), and don't expect every roll above a 5 to be a success all the time.

Well, that's not true, Ruzza.
According to the panel Focus points from multiples sources from the CRB pg. 300, if you have multiple abilities that give you a focus pool, you gain additional points.

Example pg 300 "For instance, if you were a cleric with the Domain Initiate feat, you would have a pool with 1 Focus Point. Let’s say you then took the champion multiclass archetype and the Healing Touch feat. Normally, this feat would give you a focus pool. Since you already have one, it instead increases your existing pool’s capacity by 1."

And Healing touch contains the following text : "If you don’t already have one, you gain a focus pool of 1 Focus Point".

Thus, whenever you gain an ability that makes you gain a Focus point or a Focus pool, if you already have one, you increase your capacity by 1, up to a maximum of 3.

The problem here is that the chase was resolved in encounter mode, making your DM completely logical in having you use actions for your animal companion.
However, if you left it behind for a full minute, it would probably follow from a distance, according to CRB634 ("If given no commands, minions use no actions except to defend themselves or to escape obvious harm. If left unattended for long enough, typically 1 minute, mindless minions usually don’t act, animals follow their instincts, and sapient minions act how they please.")

If that chase was resolved as the special Chase subsystem from GMG, you probably wouldn't have that to handle until the real confrontation part which would play in normal encounter mode.

When the wergeld/weregild has official specified values depending on the age and gender of the murdered person, as it was at some period with the Wisigoths, it's more like damages to compensate for the loss and less like a bribe.
Or, like the salian franks, when you have specific damages amounts to compensate for wounds, and murders. I know that these kind of damages existed to avoid using the faide laws (compensating blood by blood), but they are still a form of damages.

In that way and among the wealthy, the values could be equated to the price of a resurrection spell/ritual. Though, many cultures might not want to try such rituals, by fear their beloved ones might become feral undead due to failures. (It might be an interesting plot starter though: a ritual that went wrong, and paid for by weregild might be a good call for investigation and adventure).

When you want to Treat Wounds, you have to choose before rolling which DC you want to aim for. If you choose the Expert DC (DC20) and miss, you have the results of a miss for Treat Wounds, relatively to the aimed DC.

This chart (taken from reddit) gives you an average value of Medicine rolls depending on your modifier.

Except it's not magic and not supposed to be magic. And the "cool" factor doesn't compensate for everything that feels off in these class features.

The goofy side of the inventor didn't impact me as much, especially as you have Explode as their first class feature, and their Unstable keyword, that immediately says "things won't work as expected"

From a quick read-through, my first impression about the class is very mixed : there are a lot of nice options, like Cauterize, or Blast Lock, that give color and depth to a Gunslinger character type; but on the other side, a few options give a really cartoonish feeling :

- Black powder boost (especially the vertical boost)
- Rebounding assault (I can accept the damage combination and 1d6 precision damage when both weapons hit, but the throwing weapon that rebounds into the gunslinger's hand breaks the suspension of disbelief for me, even in a fantasy world with magic)
- Instant return (this one really made me think about old warner bros. cartoons in which bullets could be intercepted in the gun cannon and shot back before exploding)

I think a lot of these effects come from balance issues, but they tend to break immersion due to being too implausible.

I'll try to complete this post later, after making tests in my playgroup.

To answer your main question, you have to consider the number of different combat styles that exist in PF2.

You have:
- Two-Handed (a weapon wielded in two hands)
- Two-Weapon (a weapon wielded in each hand)
- Weapon+Shield (a weapon wielded in one hand, the other using a shield)
- Thrown (some weapons that need to be drawn and thrown at the enemy)
- Projectile Weapon (a weapon that throws projectiles at the enemy)
- Fencing (single weapon, other hand empty)
- Unarmed

The fighter has a lot of feats that are dedicated to a single style among these seven. Playing a fighter implies you have to choose between those styles to define your main attack style. A few examples:

- Guardian's Deflection is related to Fencing
- Double Shot is related to Projectile Weapons
- Double Slice is related to Two-Weapon
- Aggressive Block is related to Weapn+Shield
- Brutal Finish is related to Two-Handed

Plus, you have to remember that the class dedicated to Fencing, Swashbuckler, only arrived with the APG, so some feats had to be dedicated to that style, especially considering that the Aldori Dueling style is quite known and prevalent as one of the setting-defining points.

On another topic, but also related, that feat by itself has a lot of issues. As its reaction needs you to know if the attack should have missed with a +2 to AC, if your DM usually rolls behind their screen, or simply by not having access to the stats, you can never tell if the attack would have missed. Making the trigger extremely DM-fiat sensitive. I can totally understand the fact that the Paizo team didn't want to make a 5e shield-like reaction, where adding a +2 might have no effect besides using your reaction for the turn, but worded that way, it somehow implies you should know the exact roll, instead of just knowing if your ally was hit/crit/missed/critfailed.

I hope there will be some kind of clarification about this whole "occupied hand" thing.

"Ray and other created effects" refer to the spell description, where you can sometimes have a line saying "Effect ray". If there's an Effect line, the spell's out.

Fireball would be out as it doesn't affect one or more creatures. Slow is a good example : it targets one or more creatures, at a specific range greater than touch.

Crystal chakram anyone ?

They're a thrown weapon, function as ammunition (concerning enchants, and being destroyed after hitting, 50% if miss), and they crit on 18...

They have to find shelter quickly. Otherwise... It'll quickly smell like grilled bacon.
Thunderstorms are supposed to be incredibly powerful here...

1. I'd split the 60 lightning bolts between the PCs. Striking twice as often those wearing metal armors.
2. which level are they, and were they supposed to know there were violent thunderstorms in that kind of place ? If they did, and made nothing to prevent that, they could be responsible for their own misery.
3. Have them take a bolt or two, then press them to find shelter on their own. During that time, make the bolts reflex negate. (Think Lightning Plains in FFX)

If only we could get back the 4 "Paladin of honor" (LG, current paladin), "Paladin of freedom" (CG), "Paladin of tyranny" (LE), "Paladin of Destruction" (CE) from UA... Or at least their equivalent.

It would leave the druid and paladin as opposite-aligned classes (As druid HAVE to be at least partially neutral, whereas paladins cannot be neutral in any way.

You have to make Swim checks each turn, but it costs no action unless you decide to move.

Swim

Make a Swim check once per round while you are in the water. Success means you may swim at up to half your speed (as a full-round action) or at a quarter of your speed (as a move action). If you fail by 4 or less, you make no progress. If you fail by 5 or more, you go underwater.

So if you don't move voluntarily and don't fail your Swim check, you have no problem making a full attack. Even with a two-handed weapon, you can still use your feet to keep a certain position in water. (See Water-polo players when they rise from the water using only their feet)

In fact, according to Golarion FAQ :

Favored Weapon (Unarmed Strike): If my deity's favored weapon is Unarmed Strike, do I gain Improved Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat?
Yes, if your class grants you proficiency in your deity's favored weapon as a class ability.