FlashRebel's page

Ravingdork wrote:

I laugh when I hear people justifying things with RAW these days. 2nd Edition has more or less killed the concept of RAW. The new Gamemastery Guide makes it pretty clear too.

Thanks for the Jab! Appreciate it.

We also follow logical flow and common sense.

Your not a master of what your a master of is dead

A game needs clearly defined rules that every player must abide to to even be considered a game. Respecting the RAW and believing there is something wrong with the current ruleset are not incompatible points of view.

OK I think I can sum up what went wrong with the familiar in 2E: familiar abilities are supposed to be everything. Just look at the feats: Familiar gives the familiar with a cap of two abilities, Enhanced Familiar raises the cap by two. As if the familiar itself was supposed to be nothing.

There is also a noticeable balance problem between the abilities: giving extra movement options to a creature that doesn't do anything interesting on its own and cannot act independently adds zero value, having an extra spell slot, an extra cantrip, an extra focus point during a big encounter or more reagents for alchemists already feels more appealing. And none of these improve the famialiar in itself but rather its master. It's quite telling when abilities that don't require the familiar to do anything other than staying out of trouble are popular.

What I would personally ask for is for the familiar to be able to do substantial things by itself. If every creature under a PC's control must have the minion trait to not have the level of independence of a PC and to avoid stretching encounters like crazy and smashing the action economy, so be it. When I see the work done with animal companions, to give them distinct abilities and evolution paths with further feats without making them feel like an extra PC, I really wonder what went wrong with familiars. It wouldn't be hard to have a choice between several creature types with different stats, movement options and skill proficiencies, and think about all those special abilities with later feats and evolutions. The reason why an animal companion can remain helpful fon level 1 to 20 is mainly because it can evolve three times during its master's growth. The familiar is stuck without any possible evolution except for two classes, one with a specific career path to choose at level 1 for it.

Ignoring all mechanical/numerical effects, here are some things a familiar can be used for:

Low level flying reconnaissance.

Item retrieval from hard to access places (burrow/flight).

Low risk infiltration as a species common to an area.

Non-threateningly approach and calm a frightened child.

Delight patrons at a bar while you gather info.

Keep watch.

Deliver messages to the princess who's under lock and key.

Start a fire on the other side of the castle.

Gather information from wildlife.

Gain favor with the Familiar fanatics at the wizard academy.

Signal the second team when to start the attack.

...

I mean, if your game has nothing similar to any of these, I'm glad I'm not playing in it.

Except a familiar is a minion and a minion won't do anything without being ordered constantly. Barely anything you're suggesting here is possible.

graystone wrote:

Malk_Content wrote:

I can understand some familiar being killed on recon "ah snake kill it" but most why would that happen. Like oh no your crow failed its stealth check the bandit spots it and goes "Oh a crow."

Most likely because of the guy on the ground yelling commands at it every turn

Yelling telepathically from up to a mile away. This is before we get into the fact that minion is an encounter restrictive state, though this is one of those gm fuzzy grey areas you hate so hopefully the gmg will have some words on what minions do out of combat (this my biggest bugbear with the system honestly)

This is not how empathic link works. You cannot use it to deliver a message, let alone give orders.

The question is how much of “more vulnerable” is them actually being more vulnerable and how much is people actually taking them into account for AoOs more now.

It does relate cause those items came out long after P1 came out when Familiars were around from the get go. There were plenty of items to help with Familiars eventually. Would it be nice to have those items sooner rather than later? Yes. But that applies to a lot of items from P1.

The base rules state that familiars cannot equip items.

I honestly never want to play in game where familiars weren't useful. Sounds like a boring group.

Not everything has to have numerical values attached to be worthwhile, and the non-combat capabilities of familiars (which are changeable on a day to day basis) are significant.

In my game, familiars are extremely worthwhile. If they're not in yours, chuck it on the pile of other options that your group likely can ignore due to table variation.

What capabilities? Failing at every skill checks because of poor modifiers across the board? That's the problem: the familiar has no capabilities to speak of. Small sizes no longer having tangible benefits and the minion trait just finish to kill it.

The abilities that the familiar grant are useful, extra cantrip, spellslot, focus, alchemical reagent and quick alchemy.

They are not combat buddies, but they grant the master a lot of small advantages that you can change each day, it's basically a floating feat.

You have to recalibrate your expectations -- familiars are not assumed to be used in combat anymore, unless it's under very special circumstances. I feel their big draw are the master abilities they provide: an extra cantrip, a quickened refocus, eventually an extra low-level spell slot.

In that respect, it might be better to see them as special magic items that enhance your caster.

And regarding their defensive abilities, I feel they actually gained options; Damage Avoidance and Lifelink means they won't die to a stray cone of cold or chain lightning.

One important note: If you get a familiar, you absolutely should take Improved Familiar as soon as you can. Having only 2 daily abilities is very restrictive, 4 is much more flexible.

I never expected familiars to be combat buddies, I expected familiars to be useful at something other than staying in my pocket to passively give extra spell slots..

Flexibility is meaningless without interesting abilities in the first place. I had fun in First Edition with my hedgehog familiar, clearly the furthest thing you can have to a combat buddy considering it has no natural attack and is Diminutive, because it was an extremly good infiltrator with the magic barding I got crafted for its protection and extra bonuses to Stealth. The sage archetype was awesome, it was akin to a living library.

Their durability is also terrible, with Damage Avoidance only doing half the job Improved Evasion did and needing a famliliar ability slot, and what remains if I have to use Lifelink as well? The answer: a complete liability of a creature that does a lot of things very badly and nothing decently (even its Perception, Stealth and Acrobatics checks rapidly become laughable).

From a pure technical point of view familiars can seem a bit lackluster but lets take another look at it from an rp perspective

You already lost my interest right there.

your familiar can communicate empathically with you over a mile distance (as mentioned this they had before but I'm just considering thoughts here to see if an familiar is worth it)

since they can have their movement adjusted every day they can be spies for basically every enviroment

they can have sccent and potentially notice enemies and dangers none of the players would notice

In the same manner darkvision can be helpful

they can have speech and communicate more complex information, either after spying on someone or after moving from one part of the group to the other

and spell delivery can be very useful, either for damaging enemies or helping your allies

and if you are fine with your companion just sitting around looking cute, just pick 2 master abilities and you're golden

Some familiar abilities are a bit situational, but they can be adjusted every day and be potentially very helpful

This last bit sums up everything: it looks awesome when you see all the range of familiar abilities, then you remember that you can get 4 of them at most if you're not a specialist and this thing can die from a monster sneezing on it. If I need spying to be done, better invest training in Stealth, ability boosts in Dexterity and do it myself rather than suffer this utter piece of garbage that cannot do a single good check to save its life.

If they are worth it is up for you to decide

I decided then.

Draco18 wrote:

used to get for free

This is not the same game as Pathfinder First Edition.

How does it make the familiar less terrible for getting cornerstone abilities stripped away? Some aren't even available as familiar abilities anymore. Forget about familiars being an extension of their masters, it's not even the case anymore.

Familiars are very important to Alchemists. Nearly a feat tax to me.

Considering how alchemists are terrible in general and have no other good level 1 feat, no surprise there.

For casters, they give very nice abilities. Familiar Focus is extremely useful.

Until your focus pool grows above 1. Anyone needing this is a big user of focus spells, and as such they naturally grow out of needing such a crutch of an ability.

They also keep their function as scout if you give them flier for example.

If you consider then expandable, that is.

It's a first level feat, after all, they can't give you too many good abilities.

They give you a companion that can neither do any physical tasks not communicate with its master, and can die in any encounter. Even for 1st level feat standards, this is a trap feat.

Compared to Animal Companion, the main difference for me is that Familiars only need one feat. If you don't improve your Animal Companion, it becomes very quickly useless in combat.

Are you soure we're talking about the same thing? Familiars don't even have the option to evolve the same way a companion does. From level 1 to level 20 it remains a complete liability, above all for casters themselves ironically. Animal companions are better in nearly every aspect from the get-go except they're more specialized. Familiars aren't specialized in anything and this is why they suck.

Familiars are Swiss Army knives, plain and simple. The breadth of possibility for one feat is impressive.

Familiars are not Bowie knives. They can’t do the heavy lifting work.

I think familiars suffer most when looked at from a raw power perspective. Can a familiar help you take down a Minotaur faster/better/stronger? No. It’s not a Bowie knife.

But, can the familiar help you avoid the Minotaur entirely? Or get you eyes inside the Prince's war council? Can it enhance itself or its master in different ways each day depending on what the master anticipates needing? Yes, because it is a Swiss Army knife.

Yeah, a Swiss Army Knife that consists entirely of dull and broken blades. Forget immediatly about scouting missions since anything with the minion trait will start wandering off after 1 minute left to their own devices. And even then, the familiar's extremly lame skill modifiers, above all at higher levels, would make such missions suicidal anyway. The fact that you have to waste your time commanding a creature that can do nothing decently, not even some pretty basic tasks, makes it a complete liability.

Damiel wrote:

so what does a familiar get you, that you cannot get without?

Nothing because it would be a feat that everybody has to take and they want to avoid that

It still gives flexibility

Being good at nothing is not flexiblility, it's uselessness

I think you're also failing to appreciate that, unlike say Dangerous Sorcery or Reach Spell, the familiar feat is only going to get more powerful over time.

Citation needed.

Frankly, the familiars here are already more flexible and impactful to alchemist and caster characters than many 1E familiars were before we had familiar archetypes, improved familiars, etc.

Is that a joke? 2E familiars don't even have the most basic features 1E familiars had, some didn't even make it as optional familiar abilities.

The APG play test made a note that there will probably be even more familiar abilities released in the APG. Other books can do the same. And frankly, they absolutely shouldn't be like the familiars of 1E which became a little too much like a second party member in sheer terms of what it let another player do.

Did you even play the game? Familiars had their uses but would clearly never replace a party member. No amount of extra gold and achetype combinations can make a familiar as powerful as a PC.

The more I look into it and see discussions about it, the more it seems like having a familiar in 2E is utterly pointless. A simple comparison with the animal companion says it all:

- The animal companion generally remains what it was in 1E, a combat buddy with limited intelligence but a few interesting features. Animal companions come in varying types, having their own stats, attacks and skills and even some special abilities, starting with their support actions and later special maneuvers and branching evolution paths become available with more feats. They're relatively fragile compared to a PC but can also be equipped with magic barding and a small selection of magic items.
- Familiars have lost nearly every ability they had in 1E, only keeping the empathic link. There is no choosing a type of familiar anymore, they're all the same, with the bare minimum for HP and movement, no stats, attack or training in any skill, simply using their master's level as a modifier, only receiving an additional bonus in Perception, Stealth and Acrobatics (the importance of Perception on a creature that cannot communicate at all without an extra ability is debatable), all of tiny size and gaining no benefit from it (even squeezing through tight spaces is impossible without Acrobatics training) and unable to equip any item. It's still a good thing that familiars use their master's AC and saves modifiers as their own, including item bonuses, but this is their only positive aspect.

Familiars used to have the advantage of being intelligent creatures to compensate for being vulnerable and non-combative, had Improved Evasion by default to avoid dying immediatly to area damage, came with different advantages and drawbacks depending on their species and were also considered as a part of their master for the use of certain spells like teleportations, avoiding a lot of hassle. Now everything is gone. Familiars can barely be considered intelligent creatures anymore, their chances of surviving a single encounter at high level are close to zero if there is any form of area damage, there are no mechanical differences between two different familiars and they rapidly become a load when certain spells are considered. Is there anything a familiar is still good for?

Squiggit wrote:

Rysky wrote:

... were familiars immune to AoEs in P1?

No, but they got improved evasion at level 1

Familiars probably have more HP in PF2 than PF1 though.

PF2 familiar is 5 HP/level, PF1 is half the master's HP.

Isn't that the same as just picking Damage Avoidance(Reflex) in PF2?

Not the same actually: improved evasion both negated damage on a successful save and halved it on a failed save. Damage Avoidance only does the former.

Gortle wrote:

So it falls to the GM to make a decision.

Not really.

Yes in the sense that a GM can always decide to add a houserule.

But there's no decisionmaking involved in running large weapons per the rules as written.

It's just that other game systems (like D&D or Pathfinder 1) makes people expect large weapons to deal more damage. That expectation is where you took a wrong turn.

I had this expectation too at first, and the rules about "damage die sizes" didn't clear the confusion. But as the dev team actually wants to move away from the insanity that 1E had fallen into with encounters cleared in a few rounds with massive damage flying everywhere, it makes sense that oversized weapons no longer give a damage bonus.

Draco18s wrote:

One? Two? Pretty sure it's two.

And that only matters if the familiar doesn't die in a random area attack...

I really need to be reminded of the point of having a familiar, because I don't know anymore. I remember having fun with a familiar in 1E, a hedgehog sage familiar, both a great infiltrator and a compensation for the party not having enough ranks in Knowledge among all members.

Now that being tiny no longer has any benefit apart from crawling in small spaces, familiars have insanely low HP, terrible attack and skill modifiers, cannot benefit from any equipment and don't have a single interesting ability, I wonder what they're good for except emergency food rations.

The extra damage from using a large weapon, and the clumsy condition, comes from the Enlarge spell (or the Titan Mauler class feature) rather than the weapon itself.

Normally you can't use a too-large weapon. If something lets you use one, it tells you what happens when you do.

Actually, any character can pick up and use an oversized weapon, except you gain nothing more out of it than a weapon of appropriate size and gain the clumsy 1 condition while wielding it. The only class in the game right now having abilities related to oversized weapons is the giant instinct barbarian (who actually must wield an oversized weapon to fully benefit from their titan mauler ability).

In the case of being both enlarged and wielding an oversized weapon (pretty common for giant instinct barbarians with the Giant's Stature feat), the clumsy condition doesn't stack with itself, and again, no other benefit comes from the weapon being oversized.

I looked up the bestiary to find low-level large creature with weapons, like the ogre warrior, the minotaur and the cyclops, and they use the exact same damage dice as small and medium creatures with their weapons. Do you thing this is enough to clear the confusion about the damage of large weapons?

Crafting in 2nd Edition isn't supposed to be a good money maker for the reason that it was too easy in 1st Edition to break the economy in half. Crafting while adventuring was more or less free money for the party. I know a few artists and I can tell that making good art takes quite some work, and during adventuring you can expect to make rough sketches at best that won't sell for a copper.

Your player needs to spend some downtime in his craft if he hopes to make money out of it, by using the art lore skill as Timeshadow suggests. He can flavor it as painting some interesting landscapes he came accross while adventuring, and this would definitely make his art interesting to the common folk, but he needs to present something more than sketches quickly put together in an hour or neither art enthusiasts nor novices will be interested. Using downtime makes sense both on a balance perspective and on a flavor/believability perspective.

That's something I noticed about the new dynamic of polymorph spells: you don't have to make a gish build anymore to benefit from combat-oriented forms - and they practically all are - but it's still an option nonetheless for specialists. Getting combat feats from multiclassing definitely complements the polymorph playstyle very well. The biggest selling point of battle forms IMO is their excellent AC, something spellcasters often lack due to low armor proficiency.

FlashRebel wrote:

beowulf99 wrote:

The only thing that resistances and weaknesses care about are traits. If you don't know this to be true, you are not playing the game as intended.

Adamantine is neither a damage type nor a trait while many resistances mention it. If only traits matter, how do you explain this?

Precious trait essentially covers this, with the descriptor being the specific material in question.

Precious is not a weapon trait and isn't used to describe weapons.

FlashRebel wrote:

beowulf99 wrote:

What I am not saying is that being under the effects of a magical effect gives you magical by default. An effect has to specify in some way that it is granting such an effect, and in fact all of the examples I can find do.

The magic weapon spell doesn't mention the magical trait. Neither do magic fang and shillelagh.

No but they do mention treating the affected weapon as though it was a +X Striking weapon, meaning it gains all of the traits of such a weapon.

The weapon is treated as such, it doesn't gain any additional traits not explicitly mentioned. The only spells that give extra traits to their targets that I could find are polymorph spells and they certainly do not give the magical trait. Giving a new trait to a target is not implicit and claiming otherwise is an outright lie.

FlashRebel wrote:

beowulf99 wrote:

Barkskin doesnt make you or any of your equipment magical. You are simply under the effects of a magic effect.

So does a weapon affected by magic weapon, claws affected by magic fang and a staff affected by shillelagh.

Not wrong, but incomplete. Those spells, as stated previously specifically provide the benefits of being a magic weapon, as though they had the proper runes.

They deal more damage and have more chances to hit. Your point? Show me the part where the spell gives the magical trait to the affected weapon.

FlashRebel wrote:

beowulf99 wrote:

Run it how you will. If you dont want staves to count as magical weapons, that is your prerogative. But don't claim that the rules support your position. Because they certainly do not.

It's not as if they supported yours either. Every DM I know would laugh at your face if you told them about your opinions on magic items and resistances.

And you haven't provided a scrap of evidence to support your claim. Quote me a rule that states that an item loses a trait when used as a weapon. I'll wait.

Everything you've provided until now is based on inconsistent interpretations: anything that doesn't have the magical trait is not magical unless you say otherwise. You don't get to act like you have a solid point.

Edit: You actually bring up a good point. Precious metals dont inherently have a trait. But what zi dont think you realize is this is destructive unto your own argument. If traits are not factored into resistances and weaknesses as you claim, then how does a +1 weapon interact with them? A potency rune only makes a weapon magical by conferring the magical trait to it.

Then admit that the rules are unclear or incomplete instead of claiming to have the right answer to a question the rules don't address clearly.

Even more interesting: the scrollstaff. It is identified as a Specific Magic Weapon as far as I can tell, away from home at the moment so dont have my books in front of me. But it operates exactly like a standard Stave.

It doesnt have a potency rune by default. Shouldn't this item appear with Stave rather than specific magic weapon on Nethys if this was not the case?

The scrollstaff doesn't function like a standard magic staff at all: it doesn't provide any spells on its own and doesn't use the charge system.

What we've learned so far is that the rules about resistances mention traits and damage types being important but also take parameters that aren't traits into account, unless "trait" wasn't used to mean what it generally means in the rules but for its broader meaning outside of them, we still don't know what constitutes a source of magical damage by the rules except for spells and a few explicit examples, and that a magic weapon may not even have the magical trait if its magic comes from a temporary effect.

- If traits are the only thing that matters for resistances, then any permanent magic item is effectively a source of magical damage for the purpose of resistances and using spells to enhance weapons won't bypass anything since the magical trait is conspicuously absent in these cases, and this doesn't explain how resistances bypassed by precious materials that don't come with extra traits work.
- If traits aren't actually what matters and anything with magic in it, whatever its type or usual function, is valid to bypass non-magical resistances, then any beneficial spell on anything effectively makes it a source of magical damage by this logic (and this type of resistance becomes nearly pointless).
- If you have common sense, you simply look at the 1st Edition rules about the matter and they clearly mention that DR/magic (reminder: DR only worked against the base damage of weapons and unarmed/natural attacks, everything else being covered by specific resistances) is bypassed by weapons with at least a +1 enhancement bonus to attack rolls (the bare minimum to be considered a magic weapon but still exclusive to weapons for the most part) and make the deduction that the 2nd Edition equivalent of this enhancement bonus (the item bonus given by the magic weapon spell or potency runes) is what makes a weapon/unarmed attack a magical source of damage.

The only thing that resistances and weaknesses care about are traits. If you don't know this to be true, you are not playing the game as intended.

Adamantine is neither a damage type nor a trait while many resistances mention it. If only traits matter, how do you explain this?

What I am not saying is that being under the effects of a magical effect gives you magical by default. An effect has to specify in some way that it is granting such an effect, and in fact all of the examples I can find do.

The magic weapon spell doesn't mention the magical trait. Neither do magic fang and shillelagh.

Barkskin doesnt make you or any of your equipment magical. You are simply under the effects of a magic effect.

So does a weapon affected by magic weapon, claws affected by magic fang and a staff affected by shillelagh.

Run it how you will. If you dont want staves to count as magical weapons, that is your prerogative. But don't claim that the rules support your position. Because they certainly do not.

It's not as if they supported yours either. Every DM I know would laugh at your face if you told them about your opinions on magic items and resistances.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I still don't have a good idea of what a CN champion would be about, modulo the requirement that this character is not a person who would be a pain in the butt to adventure with.

Like, what are the tenets of chaos?

I think the "not a pain in the butt to adventure with" is one of the big stumbling blocks for the champions of neutrality. In some ways it is worse than the champions of evil, since you can expect bad behavior out of "super-extra evil guy", and you really shouldn't have to expect it out of champions of neutrality (except for maybe the CN one).

I have a hard time thinking of CN tenets that aren't just watered down versions of the CG (and what I presume the CE ones will be). Maybe liberate slaves, but then they are on their own (shouldn't be dependent on you, that is just a step back towards slavery) and art is inherently beneficial (even if it is done on someone else's property without their permission--say hello to the CN champion of graffiti)---sounds like a jerk and a pain in the butt to me.

The eternal problem of the CN alignment: being interpreted as an excuse to be as disruptive and insufferable as possible by way too many players because too few have any idea what it should mean.

Basically being CN means you don't want anyone else to tell you how you should live your life and value your personal freedom greatly, but this doesn't mean you don't care about the consequences of your actions or don't have any standards or principles (and this is why CN deities have edicts that their worshippers follow gladly).

What I can suggest for CN tenets that would work and not overlap with CG and CE are one of the core principles of libertarians: the importance of responsibility and accountability. Because the advantage of following an authority that tells you how to live is that there is no need to be personally responsible since you cannot be held accountable for your actions. Freedom cannot work for long in a society where people aren't encouraged to be responsible.

You.

In literally every edition of D&D and in Pathfinder a specific magic enhancement to weapons or unarmed strikes is needed to ignore resistances against non-magical attacks (i.e magical upgrades specific to weapons), and any other item that doesn't get the same kind of magical enhancement is not a valid magical damage source when striking with it.

The text about resistances that mentions magical attacks mentions magic weapons precisely. Everything that allows to ignore resistances against non-magical attacks mentions that it works like magic weapons if they don't mention anything more precise like spells that add the effects of fundamental runes.

Or be consistent with your logic that anything magical works since using spells is apparently enough to have a magic weapon even when the magical trait isn't mentioned, and admit that anyone or anything under an ongoing magical effect should definitely count as a magical source of damage. Until then You don't make any sense.

Except it's not the definition of the magical trait, like, at all. You're making it up. The only explanation is that you have a problem with hard magic systems in general and shouldn't play Pathfinder in such a case.

Sure, "Basic Magic Weapons" is as specific as you can get. And you keep proving my point that you rely on inconsistent logic in your arguments: anything with the magical trait is apparently supposed to be treated as a magic weapon even when it's not and ignore certain resistances, the magical trait merely amounts to being imbued with some form of magic by its very definition, but apparently being imbued with magic via a spell isn't enough to have the magical trait except when a specific spell is concerned, then it's right to ignore non-magical resistances.

Pathfinder works under a hard magic system - the same as D&D anyway - and this means that there are different specific sorts of magic that do different specific sorts of things, with some overlap on a few domains at best, and magic items work on this logic: a magic item that hasn't received any specific property to be a magic weapon isn't a magic weapon. Just having the magical trait doesn't mean the staff of fire is automatically treated as a magic weapon since it's been created to cast fire spells and needs weapon runes to be a magic weapon. I wouldn't argue for a magic staff with a built-in magical property that affects melee attacks, and for now the staff of power and the staff of the magi are the only ones with such properties.

By the way, I noticed something interesting: a magic weapon is clearly described as a weapon with fundamental runes and has the magical trait:

A magic weapon is a weapon etched with only fundamental runes. A weapon potency rune gives an item bonus to attack rolls with the weapon, and a striking rune increases the weapon’s number of weapon damage dice.

The Prices here are for all types of weapons. You don’t need to adjust the Price from a club to a greataxe or the like. These weapons are made of standard materials, not precious materials such as cold iron.

The magic weapon spell makes no mention of etching runes or the magical trait:

The weapon glimmers with magic and energy. The target becomes a +1 striking weapon, gaining a +1 item bonus to attack rolls and increasing the number of weapon damage dice to two.

Does this mean that the magic weapon spell doesn't give the magical trait to weapons and doesn't allow them to bypass resistances accordingly?

Then is a wand effectively an improvised magic light mace? And does casting barkskin on my wolf companion make it effectively a magical animal companion and make its unarmed attacks magical?

Be consistent with your logic and you will see how much sense it makes.

I just think they shouldn't try to delay making LN and CN champion a thing because N alignment is hard to figure out good tenets for <_<

That's the thing: neutrality is either being undecisive about your stance on morality or unwilling to pick a side. None of these can make particularly interesting champions. If these champions come to existence, they wouldn't have any particular alignment-based tenet and would probably follow their patron deity's edicts and anathemas above all else.

Then there would be the question of how alignement-based class features would work for neutral chanpions.

FlashRebel: Generally it's a weapon and the Shifting rune to change weapon shapes. That lets you easily swap damage/crit types and keep your runes.

Shurikens: with these you don't have to carry one at all times to avoid the action to draw it like with a dart. People are going to start looking at you funny when you carry one in your hand at the bar and walking through the market.

Secondly, it triggers feats that require a reload 0 weapon like Double Shot/Hunted Shot - these are multiclass feats but you need something like this if you want to 'flurry' in ranged as the monk Flurry requires a melee weapon.

Oh, good point there. I had forgotten about specific ranged weapon feats. Definitely interesting to have a thrown weapon (full Strength bonus to damage) usable with bow feats.

beowulf99 wrote:

Claxon wrote:

The magical trait does not seem to have a specific interaction with Resistance to damage, so I would say unclear.

So...maybe, but it needs to be clarified.

Personally, I would want the answer to be no. Just because the staff has magical power does not make it magical as a weapon.

Except the Magical trait is the only thing that tells you whether or not an attack is magical in the first place. So it is the only way you could ever bypass such a resistance.

Look at it this way. Why does a weapon potency rune allow you to bypass that resistance? It isn't because the Rune states that you bypass it specifically and it isn't because your weapon is doing any "extra" damage. It is because the rune provides that weapon with the Magical trait.

That's a fair, but it should be more explicitly clear in the description of the magical trait.

Because otherwise, I think magical gloves would bypass magical resistance with punches, because the rules aren't explicit on how the magical trait is supposed to interact with resistance.

Well the magical trait only mentions that the item in imbued with magical energies that don't belong to a specific tradition. If every item with the magical trait can bypass resistances to nonmagical attacks rather than only weapons with potency runes, I guess any magic item can be used as an improvised magic weapon. Considering the staff of fire without runes as a magic weapon makes just as much sense. Plus it gives magic items more properties pulled out of thin air that they're not supposed to have, and pushing this reasoning a little further would cause serious balance issues that would go further than improvised magic weapons that deal a pittance of damage and don't look too outrageous for now.

Trust me, I had a DM who saw magic items as an excuse to allow this kind of nonsense and having a specialized magical crafter or two in the party was always the best way to destroy his sandbox campaigns.

I would rule that without weapon runes, a staff of fire having no baseline magical property that affects it as a melee weapon wouldn't bypass resistances against nonmagical attacks, the same way wearing healer's gloves won't make your fists magic unarmed attacks.

There is one thing I really wonder, having not playtested the game myself: how many weapons can a player generally afford to maintain decently upgraded with the gold earned from adventuring or downtime? A single feat giving access to many choices is good, but the number of choices becomes meaningless if you can only realistically afford a small fraction of them.

From what I saw, fundamental runes are expected to come up and be made available for the gear to be useful against encounters getting harder.

Speaking of runes, the returning rune makes shurikens completely pointless: the only difference between darts and shurikens for a monk is that shurikens can be drawn in an instant and thrown in quick succession, except the returning rune already allows thrown weapons to immediatly return to the thrower's hand upon hitting or missing and be thrown again. Oh, and the shuriken has negligible bulk while the dart has light bulk, but is that a big deal when you only need one with a 55gp property rune anyway?

Shurikens need something more to stand out because for now they have nothing.

You'll regret this houserule the first time there's a 2-action spell that's really not meant to be cast in the same round as some other 2-action spell UNLESS it's just once per day via Quickened Casting.

Example?

I don't think it would fit too well with the current design of the game: no activity or ability uses this type of limitation anymore, you either can use it during an encounter or you can't , there are no limited numbers of uses per encounter. The only exception is the way focus spells work, when 10 minutes of rest are available between fights.

For a 10th level feat, Quickened Casting is underwhelming, above all since metamagic feats can no longer be used together on a single cast. I really fail to imagine a recurring scenario where a single spell per day cast faster (not even nearly instantaneously) would make much of a difference. Making it usable once every few minutes would probably work and still wouldn't break the action economy in half.

Once per encounter would be extremely strong.

What exactly would make casting a single spell in an encounter in one less action "extremly strong"? It's not as if spell slots grew on trees, and not even the strongest spells available can be quickened (it only works on spells at least 2 levels lower than the caster's maximum spell level).

FlashRebel wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

Quote:

Unless you have a feat to substitute an attack roll for a trip check

Uh. Trip is an attack roll.

An Athletics check and an attack roll are two different things. One is used for a special attack that targets the Reflex DC and uses your Athletics modifiers, the other is used for basic strikes that target AC and uses your attack modifiers. You don't use your Dexterity when you roll for Athletics.

"When you use a Strike action or any other attack action, you attempt a check called an attack roll."

Trip Single Action Attack trait. I'm not sure how you can call an action with the attack trait not an attack action...

"The more attacks you make beyond your first in a single turn, the less accurate you become, represented by the multiple attack penalty. "

Attack trait: "An ability with this trait involves an attack. For each attack you make beyond the first on your turn, you take a multiple attack penalty."

So we know trip "involves an attack", it's affected by MAP's [something only affecting attacks], and the roll you make with an attack is called an attack roll. What am I missing?

Perhaps the fact that tripping requires an Athletics check and Athletics is a Strength-based skill that doesn't care about what weapon you use?

Quote:

Unless you have a feat to substitute an attack roll for a trip check

Uh. Trip is an attack roll.

An Athletics check and an attack roll are two different things. One is used for a special attack that targets the Reflex DC and uses your Athletics modifiers, the other is used for basic strikes that target AC and uses your attack modifiers. You don't use your Dexterity when you roll for Athletics.

FlashRebel wrote:

As far as I can read, there is no interaction between the two

Finesse lets you use Dex instead of Strength on attack rolls. Trip is an attack that uses strength.

Trip uses an Athletics check and a finesse weapon adds Dexterity to attack rolls. Unless you have a feat to substitute an attack roll for a trip check, you don't get to use your Dexterity for it.

From what I understand, the shield in itself is not a weapon and as such your shield bash wouldn't benefit from effects that enhance weapons. It's even in the description of the shield bash:

A shield bash is not actually a weapon, but a maneuver in which you thrust or swing your shield to hit your foe with an impromptu attack.

A shield boss and shield spikes are another matter entirely, they're weapons in their own right and are treated as such.

Are you sure you can use Dexterity instead of Strength to trip with a finesse trip weapon? As far as I can read, there is no interaction between the two:

You can use your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier on attack rolls using this melee weapon. You still use your Strength modifier when calculating damage.

You can use this weapon to Trip with the Athletics skill even if you don’t have a free hand. This uses the weapon’s reach (if different from your own) and adds the weapon’s item bonus to attack rolls as an item bonus to the Athletics check. If you critically fail a check to Trip using the weapon, you can drop the weapon to take the effects of a failure instead of a critical failure.

The idea being that it comes from mental acuity, rather than mysticism.

You're just describing wizards here.

I just want a character that throws stuff around with his mind, but it's not magic. It's just him doing it mentally.

I had a GM who reasoned exactly like this, and psionics became the most OP characters in his setting due to being as dangerous as wizards but with none of the usual weaknesses of magic users: dispelling had no effect on their powers, spell resistance didn't work, detect magic detected nothing, and even a place covered with dimensional locks and a giant antimagic field didn't prevent them from teleporting all over the place and wrecking havoc.

If a monk's ki powers must be treated as spells and even be renamed as such, I don't know why psychic abilities that behave like spells in many ways shouldn't.

I join Ascalaphus on this one: it's a rule that only involves tamed animals not of the companion type.

For random encounters, every animal in the bestiary has some text about their usual behaviour. As a general rule, most prey animals don't look for a fight and run away whenever they can. Predators vary in behaviour with some only attacking in groups and fleeing otherwise, others fighting and fleeing when they get seriously hurt and a few fighting very aggressively and sometimes to the death in some circumstances.

The thing with neutral alignment is that it's not a particularly militant alignement to begin with.

I don't know if I'm the only one with this interpretation of if it's actually correct, but from personal experience a character alignement represents an ideal they have for the world they live in and how they would like to change it:
- lawful types want a strict organization and order while chaotic types want as much freedom as possible and view strict rules as arbitrary limitations;
- good types want everyone to be as compassionate as they are and build a world around altruism while evil types don't care about the well-being of anyone but themselves and want everyone to be this way;
- neutral types don't really sway one way or another, some want to maintain a balance (this led to "stupid neutral" characters switching sides in the middle of major conflicts because they don't want a winner), but for the most part they aren't inclined to join conflicts at all, they mostly want to do what seems the right thing to them.

I can see LN or CN champions being a thing, but I wonder what a true neutral champion would actually stand for.

I guess it all depends on what you consider "harming".

That's the entire problem with vague anathemas. "Own a slave", "steal", "lie" and "create undead" are clear anathemas that use unambiguous terms and don't have wiggle room to argue. "Harm" is subjet to interpretations and endless arguments. Except dealing damage clearly falls into harming, no question, and it's ridiculous for a deity that forbids using illusions to harm to also grant a domain spell (i.e a very specific spell that doesn't come from a spell list shared by multiple classes) of the illusion type that can only be used to deal damage.

The OP has no intent on good faith argument, they are clearly only interested in airing their complaints which essentially boil down to "I don't like anathemas that are restrictive." Well, guess what, that's literally the entire purpose of the "A" in the first place.

If you don't like those restrictions for your Character you shouldn't choose that deity in particular. This is a single spell that the "A" discourages you from using from a single one of the several optional domains they provide, it has nothing to do with "Bad Design" or bad writing and frankly, your assertion is childish and insulting to the authors and editors.

Sure, it's well-known that writers and designers can do no wrong, that's why every new edition keeps everything intact.

Oh, wait!

FlashRebel wrote:

You choose Sivanah specifically to have access to her domain spells

That isn't why I picked her at all.

Then I guess you have nothing to bring to a conversation about the absurdity of a domain spell being anathema to a deity that grants it to her clerics. Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away.

GM Doug H wrote:

Good design wouldn't have any of those options in her portfolio. It's really not that complicated. And telling people "no one forced you to make that choice" or "just don't use that class option" is not a constructive response to design criticism....

Again, it is ONE spell from ONE of her portfolio choices... The portfolio that was designed to be god agnostic because of the limitations of game design and print space.

You keep mentioning PF2e being combat heavy, and it is... That has nothing to do with the usage of illusions as defensive tools, preparatory tools, combat aversion tools, escape tools, diffusion tools...

Your issue, again is to do with the thematics of the god...

As for the "its not constructive to say don't use that class feature"

Sure it is, if you are playing a fighter who doesn't kill their foes... You choose a non-lethal weapon and or make non-lethal attacks. This is exactly the same, you have chosen a god and these are the thematic restrictions based on what that god represents. This isn't a matter of a dead feat, this is a matter of that feat not suiting a choice the player chose when creating the character.

If I play Zon-Kuthon cleirc, is it bad design that healing hands is a level 1 feat and I get so many healing spells in the divine domain?
Now sure Zon-Kuthon isn't giving me the feat through the domain choice, but it certain is giving me the power and spells in the first place despite using them being an anathema to their values. This isn't questioned because the cleric is designed for a wide range of worshipers, the same goes with the domains, if delirium domain gave you no options I would agree with you. But this isn't the world we live in.

Having one less option for the feat out of four isn't making anything unplayable or any great flaw in design.

We're not talking about a choice of deity bringing a limitation to a general option of the cleric class, we're talking about a choice of deity that brings a very harsh limitation on the powers SHE HERSELF GIVES. You choose Sivanah specifically to have access to her domain spells and one of them violates her anathema. This is absurd.

Choosing a career choice that brings some limitations to your general options is one thing (I don't think anyone had a problem with opposition schools for example), but a career choice that brings a limitation to the options it itself gives to the point of making some of them barely usable is awful design.

Where is the rule that force energy doesn’t go through hardness?

An item can be broken or destroyed if it takes enough damage. Every item has a Hardness value. Each time an item takes damage, reduce any damage the item takes by its Hardness. The rest of the damage reduces the item’s Hit Points.

Effects with this trait deal force damage or create objects made of pure magical force.

The rules on item damage don't make any exceptions about hardness reducing damage, and force is not a miraculous damage type that can bypass every resistance, just a damage type that is notoriously hard to defend against. Only special attacks and effect that specificly mention bypassing hardness do, and even then, they rarely bypass it completely.

According to the rules on reloading, firing a ranged weapon with reload 0 lets you draw the ammunition as part of the attack and doesn't seem to add the manipulate trait to your actions. To my knowledge, only alchemical bombs add the manipulate trait to Strikes.

I wonder if you could get bear sized hand wraps to put on after he has changed? What happens to an animal when you put handwraps of mighty striking on them anyway?

This doesn't change the fact that a polymorphed character cannot benefit from item bonuses on stats adjusted by the polymorph effect. Then they would have no effect.

Unicore wrote:

Level 15 is where the difference is likely to be biggest for the war priest completely dumping wisdom. Assuming that I wanted to be a Warpriest that deliberately tanked my WIS, choosing a race with WIS as a flaw and never invested in it. I am curious for folks to put together an ideal spell list for this single-class character. Including spells from level 1 to 8. I don't mean to put this out confrontationally. I am just interested in seeing where the first character shines when they're save DC and spell rolls are at a +19 vs a cloistered cleric who started with a 16 WIS (so not even maximized) and boosted it to a 20, who has a +26.

Depends on your deity of choice and how you approach combat. Lets take Iomedae for example.

Level 15 Spell selection:
Cantrips: Shield, Detect Magic, Guidance, Stabilize, Forbidding Ward

1st: True Strike x3
2nd: Enlarge, Faerie Fire, See Invisibility
3rd: Heroism, Disrupting Weapons, Comprehend Languages
4th: Air Walk x2, Freedom of Movement
5th: Death Ward, Breath of Life, Endure Elements
6th: Heroism x3
7th: Divine Vessel, Energy Aegis, Regenerate
8th: Righteous Might, Divine Aura, Heal x5 (assuming 18 Cha at 15th)

Focus Spells assuming you take the feats: Athletic Rush (+10 speed), Enduring Might (DR 21 vs 1 attack)

The spell list works a bit better with a Fighter MC + Opportunist feat to grab AoOs, since it has a number of options to increase the size of the Cleric and provide reach.

If you've got 2 rounds to buff, 8th level Righteous Might + 6th level Heroism is hard to beat, with a net +28+2=+30 attack modifier at 15th, dealing 3d8+15+1d6 good. And can still use your shield and cast spells. Its got some prep time, but that is pretty respectable when compared to a 1-handed fighter's +30 (15+8+2+5) and 3d8+13+2d6 elemental.

True Strike and Enlarge aren't even on the divine spell list. Where do you get them from?

A single weapon being both good to use for melee combat and to shoot projectiles would definitely be too good. And the halfling sling staff is far from a bad ranged weapon either, with very good base damage made even better by the propulsive trait and respectable range.

I actually want to know how you plan to apply poison to a grenade or how you plan to poison several creatures with a single dose of poison.

The current problem with Lore as it is right now is one problem that 3.5 D&D has: a multitude of skills with very specific uses, some seeing no use at all in some adventures and being indispensable in other contexts. Just look at this list to get an idea of what I'm talking about for those who aren't familiar with 3.5 D&D.

Pathfinder made the skill system less headache-inducing by merging several skills in one across both editions. In 2E, Athletics has all the uses of Jump, Climb and Swim and also governs combat maneuvers, Acrobatics is a merge of Escape Artist, Tumble and Balance, Thievery is a merge of Disable Device, Open Lock and Sleight of Hands, and so on.

I just don't get why skills related to knowledge have been spreaded out like this. Even Crafting doesn't have several subcategories to train separately anymore and it's not as if recalling knowledge was in any way reliable (even on a success, you're not guaranteed to learn something actually helpful), and even then, other skills allow to recall knowledge about many creatures too (notably the four spellcasting skills).

Something clearly needs to be done about the Lore skill. Maybe have a Lore proficiency that improves by itself with levels like Perception, have its initial subcategory decided by the character's background and the Additional Lore feat to benefit from other subcategories.

There are no explicit rules about intentionally targeting empty squares with weapons but the rules about undetected creatures provide something close enough:

For instance, suppose an enemy elf wizard cast invisibility and then Sneaked away. You suspect that with the elf’s Speed of 30 feet, they probably moved 15 feet toward an open door. You move up and attack a space 15 feet from where the elf started and directly on the path to the door. The GM secretly rolls an attack roll and flat check, but they know that you were not quite correct—the elf was actually in the adjacent space! The GM tells you that you missed, so you decide to make your next attack on the adjacent space, just in case. This time, it’s the right space, and the GM’s secret attack roll and flat check both succeed, so you hit!

The relevant part is about attacks always treated as a miss on an empty square, and for a splash weapon, a miss means it deals its splash damage in its landing square and in a 5-foot burst around it. Throwing a torch is the equivalent of using an improvised thrown weapon, and thrown weapons generally land in the square they're aimed at, whether they hit or miss.

Caltrops actually aren't used by throwing them:

These four-pronged metal spikes can cause damage to a creature’s feet. You can scatter caltrops in an empty square adjacent to you with an Interact action. The first creature that moves into that square must succeed at a DC 14 Acrobatics check or take 1d4 piercing damage and 1 persistent bleed damage. A creature taking persistent bleed damage from caltrops takes a –5-foot penalty to its Speed. Spending an Interact action to pluck the caltrops free reduces the DC to stop the bleeding. Once a creature takes damage from caltrops, enough caltrops are ruined that other creatures moving into the square are safe.

Deployed caltrops can be salvaged and reused if no creatures took damage from them. Otherwise, enough caltrops are ruined that they can’t be salvaged.