Errenor's page

Also, I'll take Paizo's down-to-earth, feedback-influenced, working-with-the-community approach over WotC's "playtests are just advertising" approach to everything any day.

Paizo also obviously has their own vision and intent towards the game, as even this change shows (contrary to what some people here spout). While what people say about WotC looks very much like: "we only do what gives the best publicity and hype".

I have run three sessions so far, and I am still figuring out the encounter builder. My party of six Pre-Gen PCs (Valeros, Amiri, Feiya, Ezren + Kobold Twins) have gone through back-to-back "moderate" encounters without much effort and shrugged off a tough "severe" encounter like an annoyance. Might be a combination of all of us learning the rules, how things work, and the GM not deliberately trying to kill everyone. :)

Have you noticed that base number of exp to build encounter assumes 4 characters in the party? There's a special table which gives increases for battle budget based on a number of characters over 4.

You mentioned that these changes will see print in the next print run of the Player Core and Player Core 2. When will the pdfs of those products be updated?

Pdfs are always updated with reprints. They update pdfs in sync with actual books. Because it's (mostly) the same typography work.

Yeah, whatever the ruling, one thing is certain now: no chance for avoiding any flat checks for Force Barrage due to 'automatically hit'.

For a spell that says "Target: 1 creature", sure.

For a spell that says "Target: 1 creature you can see", I wouldn't go for it.

What about a spell like:

Yeah, looks like AoN typo.

It's nice. Unless I forgot some corner cases new resistances/weaknesses rule looks rather clear.
And mwa-ha-ha! New Flame curse is now always fully terrible and will burn you to ash to unconsciousness during exploration. No escaping battles or chases for flame oracles (which dare to activate their curse).

Additionally, it shouldn’t be able to place unwilling targets who can fly in the air either, simply because it feels like the spell was intentionally designed to not harm the enemy if so. It somehow knows the enemy has wings? And decides to only work if they do? Like who the hell put that in there, that doesn’t make any sense. Far better that unwilling teleports into air are just an unsolved arcane problem.

Yeah... Magic being non-existent could be as wacky as you can imagine. And I can imagine some crazy ancient archwizard making such a spell or Netis having an odd joke. But probably not for this game.

Errenor wrote:

Tiny compared to what? Have you seen 5e Sorcerers for example (old ones at least)? Because while repertoires are still constrained, in 2e you can get most of useful things for several categories of spells. Even if probably not for all of them...

Compared to a wizard, I guess? A wizard starts with nearly double the known spells as a sorcerer and gains known spells twice as fast. The trade-off is that you have to prepare specific slots and you can cast 1 fewer spell per level.

You say as if a wizard can cast any spell they know at any time. They do not. Spell substitution wizard can be like that a bit but not in combat or any other time sensitive situation.

5e's sorcerer has fewer spells known, but because 5e's spell pool is a lot smaller it doesn't feel as restrictive.

Your way of thinking is strange. 5e spell pool is not at all small enough for this to matter even remotely. It absolutely feels terribly restrictive. Pf2e Sorcerer can have anything they want compared to 5e's.

Errenor wrote:

Demonskunk wrote:

me and my group are more interested in playing fun characters who are cool and interesting

Cool! Do that!

'Ignore all situational spells' is sort of counter to the idea of playing a character that's 'cool and interesting' over 'optimized'.

I guess this means that you should define what 'cool and interesting' means for you. I don't understand. If it means "take only niche spells and be invulnerable main damage dealer" you won't get that.

What you can use while raging and wielding a 2-handed weapon are focus spells like Lay on Hands or Life boost. The Heal spell works too BTW. Those spells do not have the Concentrate trait.

My unexpected discoveries: yes, they really don't have Concentrate!

Answering your main question, looks correct. Reaching fixed Medicine DCs is one of the main uses of the Assurance.

Spontaneous casters have one MASSIVE problem compared to prepared casters in that their spell repertoirs are TINY. As a prepared caster I can theoretically have every spell in the game AND prep them at any level.

Tiny compared to what? Have you seen 5e Sorcerers for example (old ones at least)? Because while repertoires are still constrained, in 2e you can get most of useful things for several categories of spells. Even if probably not for all of them.

And the game has hundreds of spells, many of which are extremely situational.

Exactly. That's why you ignore all situational. Besides they are not that good most of time anyway. Or play with them just for fun from time to time.

It's difficult to tell at a glance what saves an enemy might be weak against without metagaming. I don't THINK learning save strength is a function of Recall Knowledge?

It's exactly one of its functions. You can ask the question "which is the monster's weakest save?" You won't get the number though.

Casting implements only solve part of this because Wands can only be used once per day without risking breaking them and staves are not cheap. (Nor do I fully understand how they work, but that's a different issue).

Staves to casters aren't like magic weapons to weapon users, but they can be very important. Especially if you want to widen the repertoire: this is their main purpose. Also use scrolls.

I dunno, a desire to choose cool and interesting options ...

... me and my group are more interested in playing fun characters who are cool and interesting

Cool! Do that!

And I feel like PF2 hates us for that .... the system wants me to be a master planning min-maxxer who tactically assimilates with a hive mind called [party] to perfectly dominate every combat encounter?

No, it does not any of those. Of course, a GM could make it so. Which is not the system's problem, but GM's.

I don't enjoy carefully perusing options to build a character.

So, don't.

My party struggled to get through battles in Edgewatch with a 6 person team when the general opinions we could find online talked about how easy all the encounters were for many groups.

I remember that this AP (older one btw) could be overtuned. So either GM didn't have enough experience to understand this, or it's fully GM's problem and they wanted to make a wringer. You can tell them that the game is too difficult. Thankfully tuning the difficulty is very easily done in PF2.

like preventing Swallow Whole.

I still think that sickened vampire is funnier :)

Chocolate Milkshake wrote:

Pretty sure they're just a Poppet.

Looks a bit big for a poppet, I think? They're the same size as the Necromancer iruxi next to them, and lizardfolk are Medium.

Hey, who's to say there can't be big metal poppets? There already are big sprites, why poppets are worse?

Cryptic is not what I look for in my rule books.

I don't know, I think it would be fun to find a Cryptic in a rule book. They are hilarious.

Yeah, this should be the foundation for rulings in such cases.

That's actually funny. And maybe even great enough to allow in games.
What would break in campaigns and battles if all biting/eating monsters were fully affected by sickened?

For the same reason, to make it simple.

Simple enough for me right now.

Probably not very helpful, but if you really want players to take the lead on where the adventure goes you don't need old school, you need newer narrative games like PbtA for example. You don't need to be gamebreakingly powerful for this.

Until you've used it for the ability. Nagaji drink it for the ability, not eat whole bottles/boxes with it.
Anyway, that's the only objection? Because there were more reasons. The main of which is Double Poison doesn't work like this, it needs an actual weapon, not an imaginary combination of abilities.

"Also to my knowledge and memory you can't acquire Rings of Wizardry in PFS."

So far as I know -- which admittedly isn't much -- the RoW doesn't appear in any of the "one-shot" mods, but I do know of an AP in which it can be found. Obviously I will not say which AP it is :) What I don't know is whether or not APs can be run "PFS legal."

APs are entirely out of PFS. They are always free-play. GMs (and players) do what they like. So it doesn't matter if the Ring can be found in an AP.

Also to my knowledge and memory you can't acquire Rings of Wizardry in PFS. They are uncommon and there were no boons for them. I suspect it's because the orgs think rings give too many slots and only to arcane casters with no analogues for other traditions. Wizards must not have nice things :)

You are trying to break the game again.
No, it's not possible for so many reasons.
First, a dose of poison for Venom gulp is not an item of any bulk anymore and doesn't work with Throat pocket at all. If it's still an item for Throat pocket it doesn't work for Venom gulp. Choose.
Second I absolutely would forbid using Throat pocket and Venom gulp at the same time even if it's not prescribed. You either keep items in your throat or use it to hold and spit poison.
Third you aren't applying "two different infused injury poisons to the same weapon" in this case however you look at other things here. So Double Poison doesn't work.
Yes, they made a typo or were imprecise, "touch" poison is the same as "contact" poison.

Weakness wrote:

Whenever you would take that type of damage, increase the damage you take by the value of the weakness.

As no damage is taken (immunity is applied first), the weakness is not applied.

This is only relevant if Holy trait and Spirit damage are processed together. If they are not, as it were in the removed errata, then what happens with Spirit damage basically doesn't even matter.

Errenor wrote:

You pretend that this feat is some general feat. It is not. It's a feat for a fully (magical-) mechanical ancestry with a very specific lore. So, yes, it's very definite that this eye is because of their magical-mechanical nature. It's just as true as you can't get any of elven adaptability feats (if they exist) or some feats which depend on elven life span through Adopted ancestry.

Besides, I didn't include the text "as determined by the GM" for nothing. I, as a GM, desided so, there's nothing to argue about.

By this logic, literally every single feat from the automaton can't be used for the purposes of adopted ancestry. This analysis needs to be done on a feat by feat basis, based on what the feat says in it's text.

Yes, yes, exactly! You understand now! And I did that analysis. Well, apart from lore feat, it can be used.

But like, to be real. The mechanised nature is so much easier to replicate in another ancestry. Magical prosthetics already exist in the game, this is basically a sidestep from that, even less so because the feat doesn't actually specify anything mechanical in it.

Let's get real. Have you actually read Adopted ancestry feat? It's about social things only. No prosthetics, no surgery, no weird science, no even magic apart from learning it maybe. So any argument "but you can change your body!" is absolutely irrelevant.

Also wasn't this originally about custom mixed heritage anyway?

It was. I just mentioned the feat as an example that Automaton is a very special ancestry. But ScooterScoots couldn't avoid telling me how wrong I am about it.

I don’t see much a difference between base ancestry human heritage automaton and the other way around.

I do.

Errenor wrote:

ScooterScoots wrote:

And there are plenty of adopted ancestry feats that make sense, why couldn’t a poppet have an integrated armament? Why couldn’t an elf sorcerer have an arcane eye?

None of those make sense because "as long as the ancestry feats don’t require any physiological feature that you lack, as determined by the GM". And all Automaton feats apart from lore are fully based on their mechanical body. You say, you can get some similar effects from somewhere else? Good, get them from somewhere else. From an elf or a sorcerer in this case.

The text of arcane eye:

“Your eye has been magically enhanced to pierce darkness. You gain darkvision.

Enhancement Your eye can see invisible creatures in brief spurts. You can cast see invisibility as an arcane innate spell once per hour.”

That sounds like the sort of the that could happen to anyone with an eye through numerous methods of magical...

You pretend that this feat is some general feat. It is not. It's a feat for a fully (magical-) mechanical ancestry with a very specific lore. So, yes, it's very definite that this eye is because of their magical-mechanical nature. It's just as true as you can't get any of elven adaptability feats (if they exist) or some feats which depend on elven life span through Adopted ancestry.

Also it's not simply Beast Gunner's Spellsling. You must be a Gunslinger, have spend 2nd lvl feat for Spellshot dedication, 4th lvl feat for Beast Gunner's dedication and 6th lvl feat for a Spell-Woven Shot, and only then you can activate ammunitions during Spellsling.

Automaton mixed ancestry makes plenty of sense. You were i.e. a human soul shoved into an automaton body. That’s literally the lore behind their creation. Makes sense that would sometimes result in the soul retaining some aspects of the ancestry it was before.

It's another way around: this is a versatile heritage to Automaton ancestry. And... even that is mostly discouraged right in the ancestry.

And there are plenty of adopted ancestry feats that make sense, why couldn’t a poppet have an integrated armament? Why couldn’t an elf sorcerer have an arcane eye?

None of those make sense because "as long as the ancestry feats don’t require any physiological feature that you lack, as determined by the GM". And all Automaton feats apart from lore are fully based on their mechanical body. You say, you can get some similar effects from somewhere else? Good, get them from somewhere else. From an elf or a sorcerer in this case.

Errenor wrote:

They can't give clarifications in the format "yes, the text means what the text reads" for any little and even big thing

I mean I'm not sure that's a relevant argument here.

"damage that isn't damage" is neither an intuitive statement nor explicitly clear within the text.

In this you are right. I am myself not happy about it. For example I didn't even know/remember at some time that persistent damage was doubled at crits 'like normal damage'. And I still don't like it. It's a tricky rule for just a condition.

Errenor wrote:

You asked for a clarification in another topic, but I really don't think any is needed. If a thing doesn't do damage, it doesn't do damage.

I agree, but the confusion in this thread brings up the point it might need an official clarification

They can't give clarifications in the format "yes, the text means what the text reads" for any little and even big thing. They very rarely do confirm obvious things, but they don't like it it seems. Which is understandable because it means just restating the books. And that is a rather senseless action. They've already wrote the books.

P.S. Also they most probably won't change Acid Flask because the format 'common effect is in the general desription' was chosen deliberately and most likely to save space in the book and to not repeat the same thing 4 times. Again, I don't think they would give this up.

Samir Sardinha wrote:

I'm not missing 1 damage, the only 1 damage at Acid Flask is Splash damage.

https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=3286

You made up a new rule that a kind of bomb somehow would lost the effect of the bonuses without explicitly say so or it will add non existent damage.

Either way wouldn't it be better if the dev's actually addressed it and gave us multiple examples?
Acid Flask with bonus damage like my example, double slice flaming rune, dagger gouging claw critical spellstrike, bleeding finisher with wounding rune.

You did, it is listed before going into the different grades of acid flask . Took me like an hour of contemplating and rereading the acid flask before I noticed it.

Archives wrote:

This flask filled with corrosive acid deals 1 acid damage, the listed persistent acid damage, and the listed acid splash damage. Many types grant an item bonus to attack rolls.

You asked for a clarification in another topic, but I really don't think any is needed. If a thing doesn't do damage, it doesn't do damage. It doesn't matter that a character has bonuses to damage, because it doesn't do damage. And while Acid flask actually does, I maybe found at least one bomb which deals persistent damage, but not normal one. The result is the same: it doesn't deal normal damage. So bonuses to normal damage don't matter. And btw all bonuses mentioned above are to the Strike or 'hit'. Neither of which is persistent damage.

For example, treating an automaton as a cyborg or a golem could be considered reasonable. Once let a player be a kobold with the automaton mixed heritage to be a clockwork cyborg, for example.

Ok, this here looks extremely questionable. I wrote what PFS guide doesn't specify, but what it specifies very well is mechanics. And Mixed heritages is mechanics of character and it's a homebrew by definition (apart from available Versatile heritages). There's no Automaton Versatile heritage. Moreover, Mixed Heritages are explicitly Limited (which almost means forbidden) with this explanation (very understandable):

I mean it still almost may as well not exist because closing your eyes and just tanking the blinded is usually better vs enemies with serious glare attacks. Especially if you have cat eye elixirs to reduce the flat check.

Oh, no. Here I would be a restrictive GM and would give a choice: either you want Cat's eye bonus or close your eyes and be blind. Cat's eye improves vision, no vision - no bonus.

Tridus wrote:

You can find individual GMs who are ridiculous about such things because that's just how things go with people, sometimes.

Out of curiosity, I read and hear about these folks from time to time, but have had the fortune to not have to deal with one myself. Is there any recourse when dealing with one through the system? Or is it something you just have to deal with or find another GM.

There's a guide for PFS. And as it maybe expected it says basically nothing about reflavoring (expect for GMs to remove potentionally problematic elements of scenarios like spiders). The most close thing is general phrases like: "we intend that all participants may enjoy gaming in a fun and safe environment. Participants are expected to respect their fellow players and work together to create positive and memorable experiences." So, PC's cosmetic reflavoring definitely isn't forbidden by the campaign rules. GMs which forbid that basically violate at least the spirit of the PFS guide. Players can adress "Venture-Officers" about such problems. Whether this would help or even be considered serious I don't know. They weren't helpful at all when some Oracle characters were or could become basically broken because of Remaster implementation in PFS.

Yeah, provided you're not trying to finangle some sort of mechanical advantage, PFS is reasonably tolerant of reflavoring in my experience.

PFS itself doesn't care. Long as it doesn't change how it works you can describe your character largely however you want and it doesn't really matter.

You can find individual GMs who are ridiculous about such things because that's just how things go with people, sometimes.

Thank you, I thought so. And of course I meant complying with mechanics, not trying to change something mechanical because of reflavoring.

ScooterScoots wrote:

Won’t help you if you’re in PFS and can’t reflavor but for any home game it’s fine.

Which sort of reinforces the point.

You can do whatever you want when you're reflavoring. Just ask the 5E players. You can technically reflavor a dwarf into a golem. Don't even need an Automaton for that. But that's why I said, "In a Lost Omens game." And when PFS society is a thing, I'm pretty sure PFS players would want their option, too.

Does PFS really restrict reflavoring like that? I don't remember this. Who and what cares how you describe your mechanically automaton character? Crazy players or GMs? "No, I looked into your character list, your PC is an automaton, you got the lore all wrong, change it right now or else!!!" Like this?

I do want to keep my Owlbears though, and I relied heavily on the 1E Bestiary entries on ‘terrain/climate” for populating my encounters, so I need to figure out a 2ER equivalent eventually.

Among all the great and useful posts I didn't see the answer to this. I present to you the Owlbear! It's considered legacy content now but it doesn't prevent you from using it. Also you can search for anything else there, there's high probability that it exists in PF2. When it doesn't you can search the same categories (like 'demon') and look for creatures of close levels, maybe it's there by a different name. Or there's some analogue.

Now with that text removed, I don't really have evidence besides history, the way it was.

If a GM insists that Lay on Hands requires a free hand, while I don't agree with them, I don't have evidence to tell them they're wrong other than "well it used to be this way".

But you do have the evidence that spellcasting doesn't require free hands.

Yeah, even if GM for some reason doesn't allow a player to choose sequence of events, they can't cut in the process of starting a turn exactly after a PC ends their Averting Gaze. It must be the first thing to happen, then.
And it doesn't matter whether the player intends to renew Avert Gaze.
And the order of Basilisk reaction and regaining of actions is also rather clear. The regaining is later.

Yes. Ok.
Though that action from Haste shouldn't be already used.

If I correct understand this part, then Psychic spellcasting allow you cast when you are silenced, because you don't need to speak during your spell casting. But in some cases - you have to speak if spell enforce you to do it. For example we can see this spell Wails of the Damned - this spell have auditory trait, and we see this part in spell description "You howl a lament of damned souls..." - this spell in the same situation like Bullhorn spell. I think this is kind a narrative issue and you can just reflavore this spell and do it without your "mounth" and "prononceation". This reflavore is necessary to apply the Psychic spellcasting rule.

Am I correct in my thoughts?

No. Psychic spellcasting does not remove any traits of any spells. It does not remove any traits from an action of casting a spell either - if the spell had manipulate and concentrate traits it still has both of them. Needing to say incantantions is outside of the trait system.

Noted. If it worked for (both of) you - great.

1. A lot of the form attacks you're using are not finesse so I don't think you should be able to use a finesse attack modifier on them.

2. DEX is already good for a caster so it's defeating the point of saying you should have to invest in it to key it off an ability score that you're probably going to invest in anyway because it's giving you AC in caster mode.

It's a house rule so modify as you see fit, but since my goal is specifically "make forms better for characters that want to specialize in them" rather than "make forms better for casters that dabble in them", STR is a better fit.

1. I don't see any connection whatsoever between 'your unarmed attack bonus' and any form attacks. It doesn't exist. But whatever, it was already discussed before I think.

pauljathome wrote:

Did that apply regardless of Str? While I quite like the idea I'd think that would mean that you're REALLY heavily incentivized to play a Str dumping ancestry in that case.

It only applies if you're using your own attack modifier rather than the forms attack modifier (as usual). If you dump STR, your own attack modifier is getting dumped along with it so you're not going to get anything out of it.

It was an incentive to make investing in STR & handwraps valuable, since while you can hardly ever exceed the form bonus, you can get within 1 of it and the +2 is letting you come out ahead. Which is what's nice about it: this doesn't do anything for a caster build that uses a form as a side thing, but it does help someone trying to focus in on forms.

Why STR though? "Your" unarmed attack is finesse and can use DEX.

Can we take this mutagen talk somewhere else? We're trying to have a serious nudie discussion here.

Ehm, sorry. I got lost in topics... I blame Finoan :-p

It also applies if you downcast. Which is generally a really bad idea admittedly but at least you get the +2 status.

If by downcasting you mean casting obsolete form spell (even of the same spell rank) then yes. I suspect it was the actual idea behind this rule - to make using old forms not completely terrible but just very bad. Not making Fighter a better shapeshiter than Druid.

Some additional counterarguments:

The Research Field text cited is specifically for Mutagenist. Specific does not define general - that is a disguised form of the Affirming the Consequent fallacy. So at best, that ruling would apply only to Mutagenist characters, not all characters that have the Combine Elixirs feat. And it might only apply to the Mutagenist after they have the Greater Field Discovery that allows them to use two Mutagen effects at the same time and does override the Polymorph trait.

That Research Field text does not override or even mention the Mutagen or Polymorph trait. It says that it applies to Elixirs that have drawbacks. Which does imply Mutagens, but only because current Elixirs don't have drawbacks. It is not very explicit.

Mutagenist's "If you have more than one drawback due to Combine Elixirs or a similar ability, drinking the vial suppresses one drawback of your choice." means that it's possible to have "more than one drawback due to Combine Elixirs". No, it's not only about Mutagenists because the feat is general, for everyone, even for dedicated alchemists. There's nothing to state that it's working differently just for Mutagenists.

I don't understand. You have armor. Why would you need anything else? If some part isn't protected by armor clothing won't help, so it's useless. We don't need useless things, it's just making sense.

To think of it, Healing Holy Kick is absolutely feasible.

I don't think it's unreasonable if a GM rules you need to be able to touch them with your hand.

But you can touch them with your hands. They are just holding a weapon at the same time. Not really a big problem even if a bit awkward. Nothing says you need to touch them with an open palm :)

I think it's not intended to stack. It's clumsy 1, or, if an enemy is already clumsy for another reason, increase clumsy by 1 which increase lasts as written for a time or until a spear is removed. But it does not stack with itself and Duplicate Effects rule works.