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We're a bunch of Pathfinder fans from Australia and have been wanting to create a series ever since PF2 came out. We finally got off our butts and did it, and we hope you'll come along for the ride. Check out our announcement here! In this discussion we talk a bit about our play history and give a bit of a teaser about the campaign to come. Ask us anything about it here!
This is just a spitball, and may be entirely off the mark, but thought I would throw it out for discussion. Please forgive if it has been raised elsewhere, this just occured to me while playing a bard last night. At the moment striking spell feels kind of meh to me personally, and it feels like a negligible difference from just casting a spell and striking as normal. The whole "I have this spell I can cast, I'm also going to sneak some strike damage in" feels kind of... boring? with the new action economy allowing for that double up fundamentally. As a magus, you should be able to do it as part of your core routine, like a bard's composition cantrip, without feeling like it's a burden. What if your strike was placed in a cantrip wrapper? That is, you gain a magus attack cantrip with a range of touch that deals damage equal to the damage of your weapon strike. It could be textured as a magical energy placed into your weapon, or even a held weapon created out of magic itself. The key here is then the interactions you can get from applying spellcasting effects to your strikes. For one thing, you could get unique heighten effects depending on your synthesis or feats. I'm hoping we see new spellcasting feats and metamagic feats in the new book, which is a perfect opportunity to use them in a unique way. Reach Strike? Cool.
We can then use the real estate of magus potency for focus spells that may give you free metamagic or combination effects. This then allows the magus to then apply their magical upgrades to their martial prowess pretty organically. It means they can keep their identity as a intelligence caster, but one that is just trained to use it more directly in combat. Obviously there would be things to consider:
This may be too out there, but keen to hear any thoughts on it.
My party loves stealthy approaches, but one trope we've always missed having access to is knocking out an unsuspecting guard or similar with a single knock to the head. It's nearly impossible to emulate this with current rules I feel, other than simply dealing enough damage in one blow and these scenarios often almost end in standard brawling. Has anyone created or played with their own ruling on this? I'm thinking somewhere on the lines of requirements being:
I'm trying to work out what the use case is for taking overextending feint (OF) over nimble dodge (ND). ND gives you a guaranteed +2 to AC against one attack at the cost of a reaction. OF requires you to feint, then only on a success do they get a -2 to their next attack with the opportunity for a -2 for all attack rolls against you. This is at the price of a feint action, the risk of not succeeding, and the trade-off of making them flat footed. Is the reaction that valuable? The only scenario I can imagine OF being better is if one opponent is making multiple attacks against you, and you just hope for a crit success.
Hey everyone, I know the tighter maths and associated stats have been covered here quite a bit, but I cannot for the life of me surface the relevant threads. Is anyone able to summarise this for me or point me to a past discussion? I'm trying to get a measure on how much a +1 influences success rates. My initial interpretation was that against a matched DC it affected three potential faces (CF->F, F->S, S->CS), ie 15% of your rolls would be positively impacted. But I realise now that (I think) it's not possible to have a situation where all three faces are relevant without a 20 and 1 being present (thus two impacted faces becoming redundant anyway). So in what scenarios does that +1 have affect 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% of your rolls? I also know there was a theoretical 'DPR' % increase floating around, can someone break down that maths for me please? FWIW I'm trying to get a better touchstone on it for the purpose of creating custom items/effects, and want to be careful about numerical effects. Thanks!
I've been a long time 1e GM, and moving to 2e has been great in many ways. One double edged sword I've been struggling with however has been running multiple enemies in combat. While the 3 action system opens up a lot of interesting things with monsters and npcs in combat, I'm finding it really difficult to run them efficiently. In 1e I would usually be able to deal with an individual enemy's turn by going "what is the main thing they'll attempt this turn". Now I feel a lot greater cognitive load having to execute 3 actions for every monster. This is not such a problem with one or two enemies, but I often run games with 5 or 6 players, to which I usually increase the minion count. Even with 4 enemies, that's 12 actions I need to calculate, and I'm finding it's really bogging things down on my turn. So does anyone have any advice or tips on running multiple baddies smoothly? Thanks!
I know it says specifically "You don’t gain any other abilities from your choice of deity or cause", but it feels odd to me that you would get training in all armour types, and access to other champion feats, but not a weapon specific to your new devotion.
I'm running Fall of Plaguestone soon, but my book only just arrived last night (Australia QQ). I've had time to skim read the beginning and some of the gazeteer & characters, but feel wildly unprepared for setting up any kind of mystery. So, any advice on the key beats I should hit for the first session to lay the groundwork? What's important to know about the encounters/story? Thanks!
I'm running Fall of Plaguestone soon, but my book only just arrived last night (Australia QQ). I've had time to skim read the beginning and some of the gazeteer & characters, but feel wildly unprepared for setting up any kind of mystery. So, any advice on the key beats I should hit for the first session to lay the groundwork? What's important to know about the encounters/story? Thanks!
Looking at a barbarian with bard multiclass, rage specifies you cant do anything with the concentrait. From what i can see that only applies to sustaining a spell over multiple rounds - does normal spellcasting have a caveat Im missing? And since Perform is concentrate, how does that apply to composition cantrips? Is there any restriction there? Whats the case for moment of clarity?
I've been deliberating on which version of the GM screen to order. What are the major differences? Is it just art & layout? What will everyone be picking up?
Hi all, So for my next game I am looking to build a character that uses uses force powers and/or telekinesis as their staple. I feel like there's a lot of creative and fun ways to play a caster like this manipulating the environment, foes and allies that's a bit different from the staple caster battlefield control. I'm looking to optimise, but in the sense that I'm optimising a specialty/flavour so it wont OP like a typical full caster. For example - I'm not bothered if all of my spell slots end up being used for metamagic missiles. So obviously the three classes I'm looking at are wizard (specifically the Force Commander), sorcerer (bloodline?) or kineticist (aether). Lvl 9, 20 point buy, 46000 gp. Immediate things are that I could use most of my gold to craft a ring of telekinesis for the wizard (with forge ring + arcane bond), which could be a really fun schtick (i.e. find him in a prison with nothing but a powerful ring). I don't know if it's feasible for a sorcerer to get a RoT at this level? Let me know what you can come up with!
I am thinking of building a Force Commander wizard for my next character, who will make frequent use of a Ring of Telekinesis. If I want to use my allies using the combat maneuvers the archetype and spell specify, how do I resolve the DC (specifically, exceeding the DC). If they are willing and not resisting, would their CMD be still be the written amount? Or go down to the flat 10? or 0? I basically just want to understand how far I would be able to move an ally, and I can't seem to find the answer through searches. Thanks!
The aim of this thread is to be a destination for Starfinders looking for inspiration on creating custom equipment. Please give suggestions for what you would like to see, as well as feedback and balancing advice on current suggestions. I am always open to corrections and constructive criticism :) I will be starting off with a focus on weapons, but throw out any and all ideas! The ideas dump will be updated here: Janco's Custom Armory As a bit of an introduction, I think some others have shared the same sentiment that I would love to see more ways to give weapons more "personality" and variation. While I fully appreciate the difficulty of doing this in a tabletop setting, I think there are some ways in which we can mix it up a little, at least until more options are released (and maybe even give some ideas to the Paizo team). Essentially, the ability to give a weapon more personality comes down to the resolution at which variables can be mix and matched. I don't get super excited about the fusions, and feel their value could be better distributed. The way I see it, in order to remain balanced within an item level, we have the flexibility to increase/reduce stats (Weapon type, Damage, Damage type, Range, Capacity, Usage, Bulk) and add/remove features (Critical, Special properties, Fusions). Here I should note that there are some great random generation tools already created over at sfrpgtools, which you should check out if you haven't already. It is awesome at mixing all the variables and outputting some cool gear. I also love the make and model naming schema. Adjusting stats gives some finer variation for balancing, but I feel creating some unique special properties and applying them more liberally in different combinations is the key to giving something character. All that said, the idea is that the page linked above will be a running database of sorts for the community to come up with inspiration for your home game gear. I'll start off with some of my ideas here, ripe for balancing discussions. Alongside the suggestions, I also use a couple of homebrew weapon mechanics that add a little more flavour. Please give ideas on how to better improve these. The first is Hit type. In order to circumvent the Pass/Fail system in combat a little, I've played with the idea of a breakdown of "Glancing Hit", "Hit" and "Direct Hit". A Glancing Hit occurs if you roll lower than the target AC by 5. A Direct Hit occurs if you roll 5 higher than the target AC. This allows us to add certain weapon effects that only happen on a GH/H/DH in addition to the current Critical Hit, and I don't think puts too much extra load on a GM. The second is Qualities. Weapon qualities are almost like grafts that you can apply to a base/existing weapon that modify the stats. These are a flat change to the stats and the only indication would be in the name. For example, you may have an "Accurate" Flame Pistol which has a base range of 30 instead of 20. I haven't fully fleshed these out yet but let me know what you think and how these might scale. Have a read of the current list, and post your own! |
