Feragore's page

It just occurred to me that Pathfinder Society has its own set of modules, and I found they are all
available for purchase on the Paizo store.

From this, I had an idea of creating a sort of customized campaign of a series of modules, rather than an established Adventure Path. This would be ideal as a side campaign, so that players (and the GM) don't need to be completely invested in a full campaign, and can concentrate on the the specific stories told by each scenario. Also, everyone need not commit to a complete adventure path that spans 10 or even 20 levels which can take months or even years of real time and may only see payoff during the conclusion.

Essentially a part-time affair, where we play as-and-when we are available.

Has anyone tried to use Pathfinder Society's content this way outside of Organized Play? And if people have played in PFS, what are the stand-out scenarios and quests that absolutely should be played?

Note for mods: I thought of posting in the Organized Play forum, but this idea feels more general to pf2e game running. If anything, the idea of a home game that remixes years of the living campaign and ignoring strict PFS rulings would be off-topic there. I certainly doubt we could have sanctioned characters without any oversight at least, as well as ignoring the boon system in a home game. If a forum mod thinks I'm wrong, please let me know.

Scour the Library reads:

(1 action, Psychic, Psyche) Seeing an enemy's attack, you quickly consult multiple scraps of lore in your mind, synthesizing them into the perfect plan. Make a check to Recall Knowledge (using an appropriate skill) about one creature within 60 feet. On a success, in addition to the normal benefits, you gain a +1 circumstance bonus to your next attack roll against that creature and to your AC against the creature's next attack. On a critical success, the bonuses are +2.

As Recall Knowledge is a secret roll, how does the psychic gain the attack and AC without knowing the result of the secret check? Does the GM have to apply the bonuses secretly?

Reading a discussion about retraining posed an interesting question I've not really seen challenged.

Many adventure paths have special archetypes you may gain access to over the course of the campaign, often as a reward. Some of these can appear quite late, but unless it's at level 2, players have already made build choices, so they might need to retrain.

However, the rules on retraining state:

When retraining, you generally can’t make choices you couldn’t make when you selected the original option. For instance, you can’t exchange a 2nd-level skill feat for a 4th-level one, or for one that requires prerequisites you didn’t meet at the time you took the original feat. If you don’t remember whether you met the prerequisites at the time, ask your GM to make the call.

To me this seems as written a character who obtains access is not able to retrain to that dedication and subsequent feats. Access is a prerequisite that wasn't met when they were level 2, 4, or 6, even if now they have it available to them.

But that also means that those archetypes can't reliably be bought into. A campaign might even be over before you get past the dedication feat and you have to start over instead of taking stronger high level feats as some rely on the lower level ones.

Also, if the archetype was made access by a particular person or faction, what happens when that person or faction no longer exists or is on the other side of Golarion?

I would assume this would also prevent retraining as they couldn't find a suitable expert to retrain with, but would PCs even be able to learn those uncommon feats without their mentor when leveling?

How would you rule these?

I just noticed something about Covered Reload that makes it non-functional when hiding.

You duck into a safe position or minimize your profile while reloading to make your next attack. Either Take Cover or attempt to Hide, then Interact to reload. As normal, you must meet the requirements to Take Cover or Hide; you must be prone, benefiting from cover, or near a feature that allows you to Take Cover, and you need to be benefiting from cover or concealed to a creature to Hide from that creature.

Take Cover and firing from cover has its own problems (taking 1 turn to set up), but Hide is just non-functional.

The Hide action states:

If you successfully become hidden to a creature but then cease to have cover or greater cover against it or be concealed from it, you become observed again. You cease being hidden if you do anything except Hide, Sneak, or Step. If you attempt to Strike a creature, the creature remains flat-footed against that attack, and you then become observed. If you do anything else, you become observed just before you act unless the GM determines otherwise. The GM might allow you to perform a particularly unobtrusive action without being noticed, possibly requiring another Stealth check.

So as part of Covered Reload, you Hide, then you Interact. That is not a "Hide, Sneak or Step" action, so you become observed. There is nothing specific on what at 'particularly unobtrusive action' is, which puts the action in the realm of GM fiat at best ("you are only 10 ft away so you become observed" "Make a second Hide check to see if the monster hears your Interact"), and simply doesn't work at worst.

And subordinate actions also "still has its normal traits and effects", so the fact the Interact is part of the Covered Reload action does not change its effects.

Thoughts?

Outlaws of Alkenstar appears to set itself up as a Wild/Weird Western AP with outlaws, heists, guns, saloons and clockwork inventions.

The human ethnicities most prominent are Garundi, Keleshite, Mwangi, and Vudrani; each ethnicity has its own distinct culture loosely based on, as far as I can tell from the wiki, real-world African and West Asian cultures.

They also seem far removed and at odds from the basis of the American culture of the Wild West, to the point where it almost feels insensitive given the imperialism that was going on at the time.

Given that Paizo has probably thought about this already, what is the culture of the city, and by extension, the AP? Is it the 'Wild/Weird West' city? Is it a Garundi city? Or is it its own thing?

I'm making a rogue for an Outlaws of Alkenstar campaign and figured, "I should try and get a gun to work."

At first I tried to get a rapier and pistol, but without Way of the Drifter from Gunslinger, you can't reload the pistol. Air repeaters have other problems like expensive ammunition (1 sp each) and very low damage.

I had almost got it to work with a 2-handed gun as you could still reload a 2-handed gun, and fitting a bayonet or reinforced stock would give me melee attacks without having to spend Interact actions to switch-hit. Unconventional Weaponry (see note) would be used to get scaling jezail proficiency and I'd have a good ranged weapon to boot, sacrificing the critical specialization for a better die over the flintlock.

However, I just checked back and the Bayonet and Reinforced Stock are both martial weapons - even though the stat profile is equivalent to the respective dagger or light mace. As they are common weapons, they would never qualify for Unconventional Weaponry even if I swapped to a simple flintlock musket.

Is there a cost-effective way to have both a firearm and a melee attack on a rogue that can both scale without Release/Interact, or is the general feat Weapon Proficiency the only way which still falls behind from level 5 onwards?

Free archetype rules are on, but the archetype feats ended up being decided upon before the class so I can't use that without starting over. I'd end up going Investigator otherwise for full martial proficiency with similar skill progression but I don't like its implementation in 2e at all.

Firearms use bullets which are priced at 1 sp per 10 rounds, regardless of the weapon.

But an air repeater magazine is 6 sp which 'typically' holds 6 pellets, or 1 sp per pellet.

The air repeater doesn't use black powder which is the expensive component in bullets, as implied by the cost of blunderbuss and hand cannon ammunition.

Is there a particular reason why air repeater ammo, one of the weakest ranged weapons, costs 10 times the price?

It is 'tomorrow' in my time zone, and I can't find any details by searching.

What time is a product released on street date for new products typically?

One of my favourite classes across all d20 systems was the Tactical Warlord in 4e. It was a sub class focused around tactical acumen, supporting others and granting extra attacks using their INT score for checks, rather than shouting motivational quotes at people with CHA.

I had wanted to build something similar for a while but never found the opportunity.

I was hoping the APG would come through, but none of the features appear to fulfill the role. There's the new Marshal but it seems to be very similar to an oratory bard. Investigator has some out-of-combat skill boosting but is relatively selfish in combat (Devise a Strategem) and has a different fluff, being mostly Sherlock Holmes. Theres a couple of new Warfare Lore feats but the Battle Planner feat is entirely selfish too - only granting the planner themself a pre-rolled initiative result.

Did I miss something or is a heavily refluffed Wizard the only way to get that feeling of being a strategic leader - though they're too missing the martial 'lead from the front' flavour the taclord had?

I've just looked at the APG and I'm amazed with what swashbucklers get. It seems to make fighters building for finesse weapons pretty redundant. With a similar build - they get a lot more stuff and earlier.

Swashbucklers get all the relevant feats - Dueling Parry, Guardian's Deflection, Dueling Dance - two levels earlier. They can still pick up Attack of Opportunity at 6th fairly easily, which is when the Fighter qualifies for the Riposte reaction that they don't get for free.

+2 to hit is mitigated slightly by the Precise Strike feature, putting them at +2 damage after Weapon Specialization and the Swashbuckler gets burst damage from the Finisher too.

They also get a huge bonus to speed, assuming Fleet is taken, the Fighter tops at 30ft but these guys hit 40' at 3rd and keep going. And just for gravy, they get two extra trained skills.

Is there any reason to build a finesse fighter now?

My friends are starting a new Starfinder campaign and I made the critical mistake of wanting to play a ysoki; the first time playing a not-boring race. The problem now is trying to find character art for them. The vast majority of sci-fi art just has humans - the most you get are implants and tech added on. Maybe some robots. Otherwise it's just art ripped from the books themselves.

Are there any good resources for non-standard races in sci-fi settings? Particularly ysoki but if this thread can point out for any other races for future reference, that'd be great.

We need portraits as we play online, not least of which using them for tokens in combat. Helps a lot with visualising a character too.

TL;DR: Reincarnate is better by almost every metric for a raise spell except time and also has the very real possibility of improving a character. Downsides are mostly roleplay if you even consider it a downside.

Reincarnate just came up within our group and it caused quite a bit of debate with its nebulous rules interpretation and power level.

Here is the spell:

So the general consensus on the forums discussing the spell from 3.5 and Pathfinder* was that you keep your mental abilities and features and replace your physical ones, typically on a case-by-case basis. So reincarnating into a Dwarf would give you Darkvision as a physical trait, but not Stonecunning as that's born in through years of living in dwarven society.

Fair enough. But the problem is there's very few negative races and once you go outside of the playable races, you get some pretty ridiculous things. Even a troglodyte, often derided as a terrible race, gains +6 natural armor, three natural weapons and darkvision 90. You could probably even rule out the stench if the character still bathes rather than embracing a troglodyte's societal norms.

Not only this but the core mechanics of the spell are ridiculous.

• Spell level 4 is lower than any other raise spell.
  
• 1000 gold is by far the cheapest of all the raise spells, excluding Breath of Life. You can die twice (or even just commit suicide and reroll your body if you really didn't want to be a trog) and still come up ahead over Raise Dead's 7k total after adding the cost of the Restorations.
  
• 1 week is roughly on par with Raise Dead but does become the worst for duration of all the 'long-term' spells.
  
• It has the same body part requirements as Resurrection, a 7th level spell.

And that's not even counting the cheese. Replacing all your physical stats does stop it from stacking up each time you die, but you can still plan your character build to spend 3k gold down the line to double-up on your physical traits while keeping a set of mental racials. Or even stacking mental age bonuses.

Now sure, there's a small chance that an ability score penalty will break your character. But you can fix that with magical items or again just accounting that you might lose some abilities and going over prerequisites. Or reincarnating again; it's only 3k gold total after all.

Is there any balance to be found with the spell? Again, it's a 1-week Resurrection that's even cheaper than Raise Dead that has a very good chance of permanently improving your character, cast by a Druid two levels lower.

And that's not even counting the roleplay potential. But why is it also the mechanically superior spell? You'd never want to cast a Raise Dead if you've got this at hand.

*The only change between the two systems is the negative level change; generally a buff as 2k gold and two shots of Restoration is a lot cheaper and faster than gaining a whole level of XP.

I'm finding quite a few odd rules here and there as of late, most of them cleared up with a forum search but this one appears to be taken as-is.

The feat Pin Down is written as:

Prerequisite: Combat Reflexes, fighter level 11th.

Benefit: Whenever an opponent you threaten takes a 5-foot step or uses the withdraw action, that opponent provokes an attack of opportunity from you. If the attack hits, you deal no damage, but the targeted creature is prevented from making the move action that granted a 5-foot step or the withdraw action and does not move.

The issue is the bolded text. 5 foot steps are not move actions. In Combat, they are listed as miscellaneous actions. This then opens up possible interpretations:

Does it prevent all move actions that aren't based on movement?

You usually take a 5 foot step when your move action is not used for movement, thus it indirectly grants you the step. But what about if you've already used the move action?

Does it not prevent anything at all?

Again, five foot steps aren't move actions, so it can't actually prevent them as written. Nothing is being granted. Exception given to some obscure feat that would allow you to use a move action to 5 foot step. In that case, this feat would actually function as written. It does still say 'does not move', but because it doesn't prevent the step (merely the move action) and you never actually moved, you could just keep trying to five foot step again until the opponent runs out of AoOs.

Also, should the feat work as intended - interrupting and preventing five foot steps and withdraws - how long does the effect last? One round? Two rounds? The rest of the combat? Forever?

It's a fairly poorly worded feat compared to the similar Stand Still.

A curious scenario came up during theorycrafting that I can't seem to clarify online with the Come and Get Me rage power and intentionally provoking attacks of opportunity by moving, charging or using combat maneuvers without feats to get extra attacks above a normal full-attack. As far as I can tell from the 3.5 analogue Robilar's Gambit, that all works, but it's not the exact same ability so I'm not convinced.

And considering the general case, what would happen if you were in the middle of an action and someone you were threatening provoked. For example, you provoked them and they decided to make a trip without Improved Trip.

If you decided to take your AoO, what would happen? Would your action still happen after you make the AoO? Or would the action be interrupted because you decided to stop what you were doing to attack? What about if you were in the middle of a full-attack, would you still keep attacking even if other actions would be interrupted?

What if you were casting a spell? You're meant to 'concentrate' on the spell, but there's no check for 'Making an AoO during your spell'. A very easy case of that happening is simply someone moving past you as you were casting a summon/enlarge. Or even someone provoking from your reach weapon as they charge towards you (assuming you can wield it i.e. with Still Spell). Somewhat related to that, what about using immediate actions during spell concentration?

I was playing through a Breath of Life scenario in my head where the number of actions is ridiculously important and it came to actually using the scroll.

I did a bit of reading and came across the 'Spell Completion' rules that state the use of final gestures and the Scrolls section that states the specific exclusion of two spell components - "Activating a scroll spell requires no material components or focus." Note that verbal and somatic are not included. And "Using a scroll is like casting a spell for purposes of arcane spell failure chance." with ASF only ever applying to spells with somatic components.

This seems to indicate that unless you've got some way of reading that scroll without holding it - say, the caster's shield, you need both hands to use a scroll; one to hold the scroll so you can read it, and the other hand free to perform the somatic component.

Maybe one alternative is dropping the scroll and dropping prone to read it from the floor, but that still costs a second move action that would be spent picking up whatever weapon you just dropped.

What's odd is that I'm only finding a handful of discussions about it, and most of them from 3.5 (which in this case PF uses unchanged rules text) despite how awkward this ruling makes scroll-use during combat.

It's also somewhat related to divine casters not being able to cast while using TWF or heavy shields, which I've been unable to find a solution for besides a 3.5 feat.

Are they just two of those completely ignored rules in most games that really shouldn't be there despite pretty strong RAW suggesting otherwise?

I'm running a pre-gen campaign where the party starts with literally no equipment. This also includes the lack of the Wizard's spellbook.

What's troubling me is the rules surrounding Wizards attempting to use someone else's spellbook. Here's the rules, with emphasis.

So how does this work? Can the wizard even prepare a spell in the first place from a different book if he had no spellbook to begin with? You're only allowed to prepare spells if they were in your book, but that can't work when your old book is in a fire and your new book either doesn't exist or is completely blank, fresh from the bookstore.

Let's assume this 'you can't prepare a spell not in your book ever' rule doesn't exist because it makes no sense, if they have to make checks to prepare every single spell, the only way to get around that is by making a brand new book from scratch but there's so many limitations to that it's not easy at all.

To start with, there's the contradiction with the first quote from the Wizard Spellbook class feature vs Replacing Spells: Do you just spend the hour to study the spell or do you have to prepare it? Both use the same check, but one's an hour and the other's a full 8, complete with spell slot limitations.

If it's the latter, it seems to me the Wizard can only copy as many spells per day as he can prepare, and each day he commits to scribing a new book, he's utterly defenceless as each spell slot is spent once scribed. Not really ideal. And every time he fails to prepare a spell with the non-trivial Spellcraft check, that's another day lost.

Duplicating probably wouldn't work either; if you're copying a book word-for-word, then the new book is literally a copy of the previous one and thus you'd still have to make checks. Also, what if you fail Spellcraft when duplicating? Does the copied book become useless? Read Magic only lasts 10 min/level. If a level 1 tries to copy someone else's book with 11+ spells, does it just fail? Do they roll Spellcraft on each page after? What if the book contains spells they can't learn?

And there's also the possibility of reading into the word 'borrowed' too much - say if you bought the book instead can you not prepare any spells from it? What if you just found it? Stole it? Looted it from his corpse? Does the book read your mind and lock itself when you give up the intention to return it?

As I don't know just how much free time the party has to wait for the Wizard to write a new spell book just so it can be designated as theirs, I'm considering houseruling it so we avoid this mess just to get the Wizard to parity with the simpler classes that just need their starting armor and weapons back but that seems like a kludge against some clear RAW and RAI against a Wizard just freely using a different book.

I've found a 3.5 rule on mastering a spellbook, but that probably takes even more time than scribing their own and with a rather stupid DC to be throwing at a level 1 character.

Most rules are fairly clear at least after reading over discussions on these boards but there's just too many contradictions and ambiguity to work with and surprisingly these rules don't come up often to have a general consensus laid out already.

Any advice on this?

I'm having some difficulty determining when a charge is allowed and what constitutes as 'hindering movement'.

You must have a clear path toward the opponent, and nothing can hinder your movement (such as difficult terrain or obstacles). You must move to the closest space from which you can attack the opponent.

If nothing can hinder your movement, does this apply to all effects that slow you down? For the main example, flying vertically cuts your speed in half even if you ascend only 5' out of your 60'+ fly speed. Is gravity hindering your movement or is it treated like spending extra squares as with diagonal movement?

How does this work with the Slow spell? It staggers you, forcing you to use the standard-action charge, but it also halves your speed. Are you able to charge or is the Slow spell 'hindering your movement'?

It's also curious when considering armor or a heavy load, which technically hinder movement from your base speed. But that clearly isn't a problem for charging otherwise the game would be fairly broken.

Or is it just the listed examples of 'difficult terrain or obstacles' and also effects that specifically state you can't run or charge?

I'm having difficulty in figuring out when exactly headbands/belts would actually turn into permanent bonuses. Usually forum searches work but discussion just goes in the way of talking about gaining skill points instead.

The rules state that after 24 hours pass bonuses become permanent but between sleep, bathing or during removing other equipment in the case of belts that bonus would be removed, even for a short duration, and reset the 24 hour attunement.

How is this resolved? Sleeping/bathing with a fragile silver headband would be pretty unrealistic. Rolls for potential item damage for the benefit of extra spell slots the next day?

On a similar note, if the effect is resolved (say with an ioun stone that circumvents physical contact), what happens with magic supression? Does the bonus return as a temporary bonus once the supression ends? Spell slots would be lost when the item becomes suppressed, but if it becomes temporary again for 24 hours, that means spell slots are lost for the day after too.