GM Raymer's page

After a weekend of deep thought and testing, my concerns are PFS especially with the cut down scenario times and IRL parsing. But I'm able to accept it and I have some new perspectives. There is a certain hype to a party working around this, figuring out the pokemon type and more quickly ending the engagement with some more teamwork. I still don't know though how some of the shorter themed adventure products will do with this where many of them have so many things weak to certain damage types. In a longer AP with some variation, it doesn't seem like it'd be that bad.

I think it's gonna be fine either way so long as the resistances are just inverse (opposite) of the weakness, but if there's special clauses there also soon to be errata, I might have more concern. I didn't really understand the exclusion of the resistance section before really taking inverse as literally as possible. I get the difference between instance and trait quite a bit better after the weekend. I do believe it's pretty clear. But it's clear in a way that might take some people a lot of effort to see without further help.

I am still extremely disappointed that we would do this so late, but I guess it's better than never. I just think this can really rile up people initially hearing this. But it's the way it is, it has happened before and it's gonna happen again and we can all just decide for ourselves at the end of the day I guess because that's the only thing we can do. PF3e will probably have something like this many years into it too just given the process and history.

There's "do what tells a better story" and clarifying "this was always how it was meant to be." It can feel like a different message just on time in the wild/perception. When the foundation gets clarified like this so far forward, it does raise questions. I think it could use some notes/more examples though just to help people in transition. I fear some of my friends quitting/lessening their 2e time over this just based on perception. It feels disingenuous to go "good riddance" or "they could just ignore it." I look at the disparagement of PFS GM's vs Players and it just makes me a little sad to think people might have a bigger than usual negative reaction. Even if I think that's a little sillier now than I did before this weekend.

Sunken cost, bias, wanting to feel secure in our hobbyist identities in a world where we look to find ourselves through tribes. I think this change can be ok. But I do believe we should support each other and be as nice as we can to everybody interested in sharing fantasies with us. It's probably gonna be alright, but also people need to feel supported, so I'm opting to support anybody in whatever decision they want to make here from now on personally.

It's not just spell effects. Area isn't a damage type. There's a difference between fire trait and fire damage even if a thing has both going on. But it's easy to infer other things and I just hope people come together. I don't want to be right. I want us all to be happy. 😥

Nelzy wrote:

Spells like Flame Dancer use language like "... Strikes deal an additional 2d6 fire damage ..."

So it follows that similar "additional damage" wording elsewhere also counts as separate instances. There's no weird gotcha on the errata wording that would limit it to spells only. And tbh it's kinda cope to bark up that particular tree.

Weapon Siphon mods, energy mutagen puffs, flaming runes, etc, are all separate instances. Which is already 3 sources of fire damage, lol.

And because you only need 1 dmg to trigger weakness, you can buy the lowest grade version of those via gp and avoid any need for alch feat investment.

I wouldn't say it's cope. But I totally get how everybody right now is gonna have different feelings from this. Like I believe it totally is in the wording singling out spells. I think that's absolutely incorrect, but it is what the words point a mind to which is a symptom of a bad example without further reference. I'm of the mind that we don't actually know and posting this on friday on the way out of the office has left us all to speculation. (That's not cool.)

I want clarification of all of these things. Written. Said. If we're going to do this, I want to hear the philosophy behind it and I want not an example but some defining of instance and a simple bullet list going:
- Full weapon strike trait like Holy only trigger once.
- weapon + property = one instance
- Spell effects = one instance
- Runes = one instance.

Or simply just defining this as the DX() calculation part and then the two clauses of holy-likes once, take highest of material/weapon dice.

Anything! I'll accept/run ANY result even if it's a terrible one at PFS alright? But it just needs to be explained for it to be easier understood and the side questions answered if we're going to "clarify" and not view this as "change". So we don't need to speculate or have this clashing of minds in the community. It leads to arguments and divides us. If the idea is to clarify this many years later, please for the love of Aroden actually define it. Don't just give us an example and leave it at that. (I doubt they will, but that's what they did this weekend.) They left this in the air for YEARS and even the people who made it didn't seem to see this. Clarification would be so helpful.

I get nobody except pharasma knows how aroden died, but how this all works cannot just be based on this example alone or be a divine mystery with multiple parables. I feel like an ant in an ant farm being shaken even if I do or don't do this or if I do or don't like it.

The big problem I have with this is that it acts as a substantial buff in power if you have enough system mastery to take advantage of it. For someone running around with a fairly standard astral flaming weapon, not much really changes. But once you know to stack multiple different sources of damage and then get a weakness up so that applies multiple times? You've got a significant damage multiplier.

That can make fights faster, but it's only going to make fights faster with characters/groups that are set up specifically to exploit it. In a game without that (either with new players are players that just don't dig into the rules like this), combat hasn't really spread up significantly. Some of the scenarios I'm seeing posted by more optimization minded folks are DRAMATICALLY stronger.

Generally speaking, boosting the power of system mastery like this makes it harder to plan combats and makes the encounter building rules less reliable. Do I need to buff combats for a group using this? Or have enemies also start taking advantage of it? Or do I just accept that one group will melt enemies quickly and another won't?

I don't really have good answers to that at this point.

Unquestionably, the good news is that we actually have an answer that we can all work from now in terms of understanding how things are intended to work. And if I want to house rule that, I can. That's better than the situation we had where there wasn't really a common understanding of how this actually worked, with large table variance and the closest thing to a consensus we had was "do what Foundry does even if it's not actually correct just because people understand it."

I'm just not confident that this direction is the right one. I haven't had a lot of time this weekend to really understand what it means so I'm still kind of processing it.

I share those concerns. I just never really seen any table variance on this one in my own experience. More clarification is just really needed, I've been thinking about this too much. The negatives. The pros. The possibilities. What is this doing at my home game. What is this doing to me as a player. What do I do to spice things up. How is this going to be at PFS.

I don't have any good answers either. If I look at it critically, I think it's messy and needs just some more clarification. If I look at it from real far back, I can see how this might be enjoyed. Do I think this makes for a better story for a majority as a blanket basis though? No. No I don't.

So based on what you guys said, I agree with yall on a lot of points. So let me play 100% devils advocate here.

So I explained my concerns and why this might be possibly disruptive. But, I also started thinking about how this might be OK and there are some positives.

- We haven't seen the whole picture and if/how weaknesses work here maybe there's clauses.
- I find a majority of groups (not me) don't like longer combats. This could be something that groups like with the swing ending opposition faster due to pc's not having a lot of weaknesses.
- Focuses the tactics from the usually environment that in official maps usually lack overlapping uneven ground, inclines, obstacles or doodads onto inter-turn buffs making it more group orientated and the game moves forward faster. Lots of rules and options but we never see them stacked up a lot.
- Just because it widens the gap of known and not, it could actually just be hype over big numbers and getting forward to other content.
- Happier more general customers, more completed products, more sold products.
- if they're willing to clarify this 6 years later maybe we can clarify things we never though they would before? Like this isn't a one-off. This is intended clarifications after getting remaster off the plate.
- Makes the tactics more about inter party buffing and sharing in the huge numbers that feel shared.
- Might be viewed as an experienced person moving the pace forward if they do stack in a lot of ways helping the less experienced because many of the effects are multi-target.
- the extra 75 damage on that dragon is about cutting the 1 - 2 rounds of it doing actions but the actual "challenge" and general results are over so we get on with the rest of the other bits of the game.
(Don't roll dice unless there's a consequence/don't roll dice if there is no question left and similar mantra's.)

it raises only a few questions...
- Clarifications and more clarifications please. I want to see the categories and steps outlined beyond a example.
- What happens if this "new start" is not the original agree upon norm that designers used? How do we approach older content? Pre-spring content.
- I really hope the new beginner box product the Secrets of the Unlit Star includes these new rules if we go down this path. If it does not include them I'de be really sad.

Maybe this was always the intended way, I do still doubt that when I perceive the designers/creators to of been in some agreeance but you know what... Maybe this is a good response to more common, general customer desires in the modern age of 2026 just like remaster tried to be, even if it's wild, even if I don't want that, I can actually see now some possible positives to this.

I still believe in my concerns. But I do see how this does make more sense than maybe I initially thought. Maybe it's not what I want. But maybe it's something other people do and maybe. maybe, I should be receptive to that.

And that comes from testing it. Waiting for the official responses and clarifications. And making up an opinion. I thank you guys for these comments. Please discuss further, I really do want to try this.

There was no right answer for how to handle 'instance of damage'. The term was undefined. And worse, it behaved inconsistently. Different people had different definitions for it. Sometimes the same people would have different definitions for it in different circumstances.

Before the errata, how much of that is one instance of damage? Most of it is magical fire damage. The mutagen is alchemical and therefore not magical fire damage. Is it still part of the one instance of damage when the damage instances are grouped by damage type? Is the Flame Wisp spell still part of the grouped instance of damage since its narrative description has it happening after the strike hits?

Whether you are happy with that or not is less important. If you and your table don't like that ruling result, you can certainly houserule it to be run in a different way. Nothing wrong with that.

The benefit is that all of the developers and contributors that are creating monsters or equipment or spells or feats, and all of the people writing adventures and APs, and all of the people running or playing PFS are all on the same baseline expectations for how instance of damage is defined and how that interacts with weaknesses and resistances.

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I've seen folks homebrew multi triggers but with a limit. But I've never seen any content in all of pf2e that I have played front to back where this seemed like the designer was making material directly intended to be used with that interpretation of multi weakness, I have no evidence, I have no reference for that, and I don't know where to look.

If I had an example, and I've looked for HOURS. It would abate my concern and make me go "Well maybe this wasn't as concrete as I thought." But I'm talking every youtuber, every player I've ever played with, IRL, Online, PFS whatever. VO's. Coordinators, every product I've played felt very much like overtime they found out what worked. You can watch creators also do it that way. I have no example of them not. Please help me find some.

What happens to this older content that seemed to have a relatively agreed upon basis who in my own eyes created an agreed upon direction? Is this a PFS variant toggle? I'm all for doing what is fun at a table and all of that. But we are "starting" again just like you say. That's all I meant by I want to try this but would want clarifications.
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That it took more than 7 years (I include the playtest) to get this key clarification is the root cause of the problem.

Because every person had to independently make up their own mind about it and these opinions then had years to become entrenched as a key part of each person and table's gamestyle.

I think this is SPOT ON. I think this is where even my own bit of bias comes from. It was left for SO LONG it created a norm that I have never met somebody not do in 4 years. I agree it's a interpretation. I WANT clarifications. MORE clarifications. I WANT a new start so long as we address the old content that maybe didn't anticipate this.

I personally think the approach they ended up taking makes sense. It basically boils down to "can you clearly identify this part of where the damage is coming from? Then it's a separate instance".

It does have consequences - being able to stack a whole lot of the same damage type against an enemy weak to it. I think that's generally not a problem, if there's enough variation in enemy weaknesses and resistances. It becomes a problem if you have a campaign where most of the enemies have the same weakness. Or if the party can actually cause enemies to gain a substantial weakness.

If this clarification had dropped earlier, maybe that would have caused writers to be a lot more cautious about abilities that cause weaknesses. So better late than never, but better early than late.

Spot on. I do agree it is clear and is setting a definite rather than a interpretation.

I think Paizo might want to look at the Review section of the store.

• It's an email portal to confirm. (Outdated and seems to lock us out from the potion that would have the edit functionality.)
  
• It doesn't accept new or the old forms of markdown found on this forum and provides no styling.
  
• I can't edit or delete a review I've made nor can I preview it.
  
• We cannot add Break lines to a review to form paragraphs.
  

Breakline ^ (Empty Space) Look at the broken unordered list above.

I cannot make an informed proper review to discuss why you would or wouldn't want to purchase a product so I simply do not make reviews.

I also cannot seemingly delete them once approved. I can't inform, I can't opinionate, I can't edit or correct something. It's just "this is good." Or "this is bad." I don't care about the gold or any of that. I want to be able to actually post a review I can be proud of that contributes to the community and is accurate.

Also, since the change the [ list ] and [ * ] markdown is overlapping the profile forum avatar on a lot of browsers on the forums here and the list function only accepts one line or "/li" and breaks. (You might see that in this post. at the top.) I don't really come to these forums to speak because of it's state and it seems less popular than the other ways of communicating about things. I hope in the future that changes.

On a personal note, I used to work in web design, this new store/website deployment I admit, has been embarrassing as somebody who wants to educate about lost omens and get people playing Pathfinder/PFS/learning. People have to source material/give each other the free pdfs right now and I look like a pretty crazy guy when I hand people the lorespire guide and have to explain it and where/how they get their feet wet into it.

People's minds explode when I have to explain some QOL features of 2e are found in the PFS play. (Differing sizes, etc) and I wish that was communicated better because a lot of people who don't play PFS usually homebrew this up and that information is usually a new realization for people who've even played for years.

A lot of your fans also work/worked in web design. We would of absolutely helped/consulted in this transition/plan for the store. And I hope you guys did something like that. Volunteers IMO are a huge reason to what has made 2e what it's become. (FVTT, Archives of Nethys).

I don't really understand why you went with the company you did for this project in particular, just looking at their work. I also might be wrong but I do feel there was a lack of contingencies of "what do we do if X happens." That might not be fair/right of me to say and is more how I feel, not what I know. You guys might not be able to be totally open about talking about that either and isn't the point of this thread so I apologize for that possibly unfounded/random criticism. But that's how I have 'felt' as a customer/user watching this and I don't mean to hurt anybody's feelings by expressing that.

TL;DR I just really want the basic ability to review. I don't think I've ever had to ask a company, let alone one that sends me emails to do it.

Honestly, I wish I could help you guys. 😔

I don't generally post to these forums because I find it outdated and not everybody is here.I've seen a lot of discourse over the weakness clarification example. These are just some of my thoughts as a long-time customer and enjoyer of lost omens as an IP. (This isn't a complaint, it's an observation.)

Image of the Errata
FAQ Page (Player Core Spring 2026 Errata)

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I agree with pretty much every change into remaster and I follow the errata usually right to the tee etc. I just feel like changing fundamentals like weakness regardless of the discussion of math or balance 6, 7, 8 years changing down the line a fundamental thing that affects a lot is concerning. I thought this was behind us and that was the point of remaster and etc. Mostly because it's a wide sweeping change via an example that needs further clarification.

Nobody at Paizo on any let's play I can find has ever played it that way. And the creators have said that damage = per type. The errata example felt like an error or something out of nowhere. I don't think it/Paizo is "wrong" I assumed it was a mistake. Because there's a history of making them and things getting past edit/jobs being given off to writers and things just happening. Like the dreaded topic/history that shall not be named. "Sources" and various other things. I can't condense all that history down and it spans a lot of years but that's more why I am somewhat eyebrow raised.

This came out on Friday and we're waiting till at least Monday for answers. Having people spin around all weekend is entertaining but it also sorta sucks.

I downright can believe that somebody posted this before it was ready as they were leaving or finishing their work for the week considering it references the resistances but doesn't include them. (But that's just a theory... a game theory!) It's not that I dislike these changes either. I'm just concerned and hopeful that if we do this that there's clarifications. In the encounters where this works. (any weakness, looking at you undead majority games. And stacking abilities that give weakness and die types but this is somewhat unclear.) If the history was better, I wouldn't have concern or think that. (But this is also just me.)

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It's possibly creating a divide between the knowers and the not knowers in a way that feels anathema to the closing of that efficiency gap (which I thought was a design direction for 2e, but this is telling me maybe for 6,7 entire years that wasn't the truth which is fine also but after this long?) I am concerned about organized play/pickup situations and IRL calculations/parsing.

We already have a system where some of the QOL features/rulings people look for are behind knowing the PFS guide/PFS rules (items of differing sizes/consumables, decreasing state of success willingly to ally effects, etc.) and a lot of people don't interact with that and usually think some of the features of PFS are their own invented idea. There's a division of information/assumed possibility that requires a bigger picture view/system knowledge to gain that information.

I'm more than willing to try this weakness change. But I don't like the idea that I'm showing up spell striking and confusing some poor new gm trying to learn at their PFS game and calculating each die and weakness if it does come up/people will stack dies when they can just buy the scrolls in-between. There's enough things to think about to be adding this into the stew pot. They already spent all the time and effort to look up the guide despite it being not the most user friendly or onboarding friendly process learning about warhorn online or etc. They're here trying to learn. I did not know we wanted to complicate math like this IRL?

These effects are set rather low level effects that you don't need to use heightened to get the stacking going because it's just per instance, making it cheaper to do with progress and devaluing the heightened effects of extra damage because it's better in some encounters (for me, basically all of my encounters and for most any effect that can impart one on any encounter.) to now stack multiple lower level sourced dies. (potentially because there isn't further clarification and it's an example only.)

Later at high-level play, this is a "how encyclopedic is your Pokémon knowledge?" "Bob just knows the different effects (abilities) at the different levels (evolve when) so his strikes (cause he knew the max stat array for his capture before continuing.) will simply be doing an extra two to three digit number." What I don't prefer is "Bob is more prepared before sessions so it makes sense." or something like that.

Now we can say it's always been a bit like that or the gap was never that small to begin with, but this is the difference between multi-digits per action in a totally different way between knowing and not which feels disproportional.

You have people who know and that's around people who are just enjoying their experience who never swap their Pokémon out mid-battle or just have one team of Pokémon they go from start to finish with regardless of type. To me, this can indeed bring out negative behaviors in people. Including me. Totally unrelated to balance or math. That's my concern. It's not the damage, it's all the other factors.

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There's nothing wrong with questioning these things. Partly why we're here playing 2e is these kinds of sweeping changes that happened in 1e. We went a really really long time where it seemed like this similar kind of fundamental change wouldn't likely happen, that was what many felt was a point of the remaster. It's more about my perception of the history that has me concerned. I've seen enough of this to not necessarily trust it.

I totally agree/see though that for a lot of people and the negative discourse is a hatred of change and there are more rational, healthy responses than just "I don't like that." We need to discuss the history. Discuss why and when push comes to shove, make up our own opinions and cooperate with those we play with. (Lest history will repeat itself.)

It's totally possible I have an incorrect perspective of that history or opinion. But this is my general feeling/brain storm with what I do know.

We probably won't be getting this product until the week is what I'm figuring. I contemplated getting a refund or just buying it on the fvtt marketplace where it's working but, support also won't be answering emails till the week. This also is happening with the bundle right now, as far as I have heard, there isn't anybody bundle or code alone who's received it in their library here on the official site.

Hopefully a fix on monday. Personally, I lost two days of work I took off from the delay that wasn't communicated here till later, trying to fit prep in my schedule, having to also spend the weekend unable to prep is also really disappointing. Really bad timing with a holiday/weekend adding to the wait. In the future, I'll probably be buying products near a release on the marketplace because trusting this release here stung.

Talking to individuals who have bought it on the marketplace and are using it, it seems like a good release tho. So there's that once we're able to get our hands on it, fingers crossed.

Can confirm that my digital download says the exact same about fetch serial number. I guess this is what I get for trying to buy direct! :( Nobody tested this it seems.

GM Raymer wrote:

Today is the day of the release! Can't wait to finally get a peek of this module sometime today! I see it's on the database with a 1.0 version but still all the pages are unavailable.

It's here!

Hype! Love the maps!

Today is the day of the release! Can't wait to finally get a peek of this module sometime today! I see it's on the database with a 1.0 version but still all the pages are unavailable.

Seems to of been delayed by a week from the 25th of June to the 2nd of July 2025? :(

OH MY. GOSH. I've waited MONTHS for this and to see it be on the store finally is great. I am so hyped!

So hype. Wasn't expecting another token pack so soon! These are super high-quality as always!

Look, I'm just gonna say that if we were going to announce anything about a deluxe Claws of the Tyrant Foundry module, we'd probably do it at PaizoCon 2025's Paizo Digital Products panel at 10am Pacific on Saturday, May 24th.

I didn't see this posted until today. And I am SO HYPED! I have waited MONTHS for the book release and I've talked about running this adventure just about every week since hearing about it long before the book release! Thanks for the hype update guys! :D

No update yet, but we will post here when we have one!

Ello! It's May! I basically buy everything Foundry. I've been waiting for this specific adventure on Foundry ever since you guys announced it and I'm still patiently waiting to play it after reading it :D

Everything about what this adventure is trying to do I absolutely love and I really like the other modules. I've been painstakingly holding myself back from playing this yet because you guys said it's coming. I'm ITCHING for this release. ITCHING!

Glad to hear we will get store pages/etc in the future. I love the shorter adventures and love the approach of doing 3 semi-connected ones like this.