Gaulin's page

Yeah that's good news. Thanks guys. Always nice to have actual solutions when you ask for help! Back to being excited for my wild shaping Iruxi!

It looks like you need the quick squeeze feat to squeeze at all outside of exploration mode. You may be stuck in forms with a burrow speed at higher levels. Blue and Brass dragons, earth elementals and purple worms. I don't see the various earth glide like effects on these forms though, even when their monster version has them such as the earth elemental and the purple worm.

That said, maybe you don't need to squeeze at all. The squeeze DCs listed give descriptions like can't fit your shoulders through and such. They also say that in many cases a tight fit is just difficult terrain. Given that compression is gone, a giant anaconda is going to have the same troubles as any other huge creature, it may be deliberately free form reserving squeezing for tasks that are much smaller than you are. Purple worm ignoring greater difficult terrain may be as close as you get to a larger form for smaller spaces.

There's still the space requirement for initial transformation though. It's not pretty. You could always use a lesser form and use your own to hit modifier, but your AC is in the toilet.

Ah, I missed that bit about tight fits and difficult terrain. That's good to know! I'm fine with a penalty, that's something to balance being so big. It's just being unable to continue without becoming humanoid and wasting the point would be too much for me to make the character.

But yeah quick squeeze should be enough. In the skill description it says you can fit through something as big as your head (at a high DC), so I think even a huge creature should be able to squeeze through a 5 ft wide hallway.

Wild shape does actually force you to use the highest level of form spell, as it is automatically heightened. Unless you're referring to things like pest shape, but that doesn't have much to do with focusing on playing through encounters with a focus on shapeshifting. And saying that druids are great casters is great, but not if that's not what I want the character to do. It's like saying I wanted to be a sword and board fighter, but it sucks, but it's okay because they're good archers so that's how you should play them (totally not true, just a hypothetical).

I also realize that high level monsters are usually big, but I don't want the stars to align to be able to do what I built my character to do. And if I do build a druid with a focus on wild shaping, it will affect how my stats are laid out, especially if multiclassing is in its future for things like flurry of blows. And that means casting will fall by the wayside to a certain degree.

I do wonder how squeezing would work. If a character focused on acrobatics and eventually got quick squeeze, that might be enough to make wild shape more functional

I've been very excited to make a form focused druid for the campaign my group is running. But something I'm sure most others have already realized hit me; wild shape, at medium to high levels, forces you to become large or huge. I can't find any concrete rules on squeezing either. So if we end up doing a dungeon or the like with 5 ft wide hallways, and I'm sure it'll happen depending on what ap or Homebrew we do, my character is going to be really lame.

Is there something I'm overlooking? I was really excited for my character but after this realization I feel a little deflated.

While I'd be worried to tread on kineticist territory as I desperately want it to be added later, an archetype that is based around cantrips would be super cool.

Echoing soulblade/mindblade and gloomblade. Anything that can let a character summon weapons.

I always loved constructed pugilist (I think that's what it's called), the idea of having a clockwork/mechanical arm you add in cool abilities with through feats is so so cool.

It might be too complicated but the vigilante had such cool flavour and I think it could work well as an archetype.

I'm at work and am bad at math anyway, but I wonder how animal companions compare to summons. I know summons have way more variety and utility but still.

Summoning and spells you can sustain are good in the way that they make your spells last longer, but they're still expendable resources and usually last a minute. Expendable stuff and items are what I was hoping to avoid.

Bard cantrips are good for sure, support wise.

Couple other things I was thinking of; animal companions, while they don't do as much damage as a decked out pc of course, do pretty respectable damage and last as long as you can keep them alive. Also a monks whirling throw does equal and decent damage regardless of what items you wear.

I have zero doubts that as the game expands we'll get a huge amount of options. 1e had a ton if you knew where to look, with ways to make some spells last such a long time, gloomblade, spiritblade, kineticist, summoner... a ton of stuff. Very excited for the future of the game.

I'm always attracted to builds that need very little and can keep attacking without expending resources. I'm wondering if there are any feats or builds etc. that I've overlooked.

So far I really like barbarian, as they can rage as many times as they want, and certain kinds of barbarians need very few items. Spirit and dragon especially, with spirit getting a ranged attack that doesn't benefit from items and dragon getting the ability to turn into a dragon as long as you rage, and polymorph can't benefit from items anyway.

Druid is another, especially with a sorcerers refocus ability and form control means indefinite wild shaping.

Casters in general are okay with cantrips, but a single martial regular strike (ignoring all the other feats they can get to improve their damage) does as much or more than a two action cantrip. I know in the grand scheme of things it's balanced because of spells, but as I've said I'm looking more for longevity (not really looking to have arguments about how you should never have so many encounters in a day/you will have all the spells you need/etc).

Has anyone come up with any other neat builds?

I'd you're talking about good berry it's an hour long cast. Just saying

If you don't actually play PFS why would boons matter? If you set your games to only allow what PFS allows, then they wouldn't be able to play them, would they?

And boons seem to work differently now. You don't have to find a way to go to a convention just to get a special race. Playing and GMing PFS seems to be enough.

Well yeah, that's the whole point of what I'm saying. If I went by pfs rules, only allowing what they normally allow (for the sake of balance mostly) then no one would be able to play leshies. I was hoping they'd be a race that anyone could play without boons or the like, as that, to me, makes it seems like devs feel they aren't any stronger hang core races. And I might dabble in some society scenarios but I prefer ap's and Homebrew.

Gaulin wrote:

So does uncommon mean it won't be playable normally in pfs?

I am pretty sure it means you will need to get a boon to unlock them for you but since it will be in one of the first books probably reasonably available before too long.

I hope not. One of the things I was hoping for going into pf2 is not having to worry about boons and such. I live in a smaller town and there's no way I'll ever actually play pfs but I like to limit myself and people I play with to pfs limitations, as I find it more balanced.

So does uncommon mean it won't be playable normally in pfs?

That's true. I wonder in the grand scheme of things how much worse that makes form spells than martial classes. But yeah I agree

Things like this makes me wish we had a simple questions thread, but oh well.

Just wondering if you add you str mod to damage to attacks made with form spells? Balance wise, I would assume yes, but I was hoping for clarification

Archetypes are definitely the thing I'm most excited for, though I'm prepared to be disappointed. The idea that archetypes can be applied to any class is awesome and has my mind going nuts about all the possibilities, but chances are most of them will be a couple feats mostly for flavour. But having something like gloomblade or constructed pugilist or adaptive shifter as an archetype would be too cool.

But the things I hope to be in it that haven't been announced yet are more class paths, class feats and skill/general feats. More class paths are obviously something everyone wants. But some classes feel very stuck once you pick their path, such as champion. A lot of your choices are made for you. Casters (mostly wizard and sorc) seem to have some pretty lame choices at some levels if you ask me. I know most of their choices come from spell choices but it makes me feel like multiclassing is the only way to go. Skill feats are another one; I would love if there were multiple feats for every level of proficiency.

I think MCing is the only way to make it work, and even then it is a little funky. It would be nice to know if any unarmed attack would count as a favoured weapon, that would open some doors.

That being said I don't think the armaments line of feats is all that powerful, especially if you're stacking them up against other early level class feats, and thats really the only thing being unarmed locks you out of as a cleric of Irori or what have you.

With the errata about unarmed attacks scaling better, I was looking at making a beefy cleric that punches people in the face. I love that fists can be a favoured weapon!

But I'm worried that picking unarmed is going to make my character weaker. The whole emblazon armament line of feats, which are super cool, specify they only work with weapons or shields. Is there something I'm missing or are unarmed clerics a bad idea for a caster who wants to do some melee?

Just for those who might get confused otherwise - the temporary hp doesn't stack. So really once a turn is all you'd need.

I was/am a little disappointed by the elemental line anyway. I suppose I was hoping for a temporary replacement for kineticist but elemental sorc is honestly pretty boring. Just a blast every ten minutes or a boost to movement for a minute every ten.

That being said I don't think they could've made it much stronger as the class itself is a full caster, so whatchu gon do

I would also like a kind of class that can create weapons, items, constructs etc. It could work a lot like alchemist does now, with different paths. Could have a weapon based path, functioning like gloomblade, an item based one focused on creating consumables like talismans and utility items like kits, and a construct path making minions and such.

I would also like a mystic style class. Something close to monk, but less martial focused, like how cleric is to champion.

That being said kineticist is the thing I'm looking forward to the most. A little worried about it, hope it doesn't take too long to come and hope it keeps the things that made it so special to me.

Don't forget wild winds gust. Pretty cool to have a 2 action aoe attack, imo.

I haven't read part 4 yet but just wanted to say a couple things. One, how do you keep track of so many conditions and hazards and auras and buffs? Just trying to wrap my head around how I would do it and not sure what the best way would be. Two, remember that barbarians get a class features at level 17 where they only need a round before they can rage again.

I think it would be neat to have an innate transformation ability as if you had taken a mutagen as like a focus power or something. Some kind of transformation from taking so many mutagens like how Ant-Man in the comics has pym particles just imbued into his being after using them so much.

This is great and very much worth the read imo. Thank you.

Apparently it was just said on stream that the devs want to focus on making new things instead of porting over new ones. That has me worried as kineticist is my favourite thing and the reason I got into Pathfinder in the first place.

I personally think the game is much more fun when you don't know how many encounters per day there's going to be, it makes every expendable resource very important. It's also very immersion breaking to me if you're in a situation where in reality there would be no resting for a long time, like a city siege or infiltrating an enemy castle, or some time constraint like a kidnapping and everyone has to stop and sleep. Having a suggested number of encounters would force GM's to have to make silly reasons for breaks every few fights.

And as others have said, cantrips being buffed and focus powers really help with caster longevity in this game. One of the reason I like it so much.

For the druid feat form control, do you have to be able to cast the form spell at two spell levels higher to be able to make it last an hour?

How can a PC replace a destroyed spellbook or formula book?

How many focus points does a wild order druid start with?

Wild shape benefitting from items improving their damage die might give them the highest damage in the game. Spells like dragon shape already give a ton of damage die, adding another 3 would be crazy. I know that damage die increases don't say they're a typed bonus but RAI I feel they are.

As far as focus points go, druid is especially tricky. For one thing there is that bit that was already posted here, that focus powers give you a focus point. And wild order druids get two focus powers. What makes it even more confusing is it says that druids start with a pool of one focus point; is that supposed to be instead of the focus points wild shape/morph grant?

Wild morph is good early before you can wild shape into animals. It's also pretty good if you want to use unarmed a lot; later levels the bleed damage is pretty insane. Say if you were a monk or barbarian and didn't want to wild shape

So, to clarify: You can shift into an insect for one hour with level 6, as soon as you take the feat Insect Shape?

No you wouldn't. You'd have to be level 9 and able to cast 5th level spells. Insect form is a third level spell. One thing to remember is when you cast wild shape, you're just casting the individual form spell of whatever you're turning into. Look at this line in the text of wild shape;

When you transform into a form granted by a spell, you gain all the effects of the form you chose from a version of the spell heightened to wild shape's level.

So in effect, wild shape is no different than casting each individual form spell, it's just heightened and costs focus.

How does form control feat work?

It says it acts as 2 levels below then normal. If I'm casting 'animal form' will it only affect my AC? As it says my AC for animal form is 16 + my level. I can't see anywhere else where my level will impact form control.

Thoughts?

I did a dive into this last night. So yeah spells are cast 2 spell levels lower than max. If you look at animal shape, a level 2 spell, it can be heightened to be more powerful. And since normally wild shape is your highest spell level, you can lower it by 2 to not be as strong but to last longer.

One thing to note is I don't think you can reduce the spell level lower than the base spell level of the spell. For instance, you have to be able to cast 2nd level spells before wild shape can use animal shapes. Which means you can't use form control on it until you can cast level 4 spells.

Not to totally complicate things, but one thing to add is if you get the druid feat form control, a level 4 feat, you can cast wild shape at 2 spell levels lower (so at level 5, your highest spell level would be three, so minus two would be spell level one) to have it last an hour instead of a minute. This is important for some of the things you can turn into. At level 7 you can do animal shape as a level 2 (base) spell for an hour, at level 15 you can do dragon form for an hour (assuming you have the appropriate feats), etc.

I love the app very much. Not to be unappreciative but are you going to keep adding to it or fleshing it out more? Especially the quick reference section

That 'typically' can go either way, and in this case it does grant you a focus point. Just look at the example the book gives that I posted. The character already had a focus point, gained this feat;

You gain the appropriate devotion spell for your cause ( lay on hands for the paladin, redeemer, and liberator). If you don’t already have one, you gain a focus pool of 1 Focus Point, which you can Refocus by praying or serving your deity.

And gained a second focus point from it. So it's pretty clear to me.

Gaulin wrote:

Its very clear about it in the book. From the spellcasting rules;

Focus Points are not differentiated by source; you can spend any of your Focus Points on any of your focus spells. Likewise, when you Refocus, you get back a point as long as you follow the guidelines of any abilities that granted you focus spells.

That is true, but irrelevant to what was being discussed. Since the archetype says you only get the focus point if you didn't have focus points. So there is no modification to the pool.

If I was looking at making a focus spell powered monk, this would be something I would be interested in. So to me at least it's relevant. But there is a modification to the pool, you can even look at the example they give.

If you have multiple abilities that give you a focus pool, each one adds 1 Focus Point to your pool. For instance, if you were a cleric with the Domain Initiate feat, you would have a pool with 1 Focus Point. Let’s say you then took the champion multiclass archetype and the Healing Touch feat. Normally, this feat would give you a focus pool. Since you already have one, it instead increases your existing pool’s capacity by 1.

Note that the healing touch feat has the same wording as the basic sorcerer bloodline spell.

Its very clear about it in the book. From the spellcasting rules;

Focus Points are not differentiated by source; you can spend any of your Focus Points on any of your focus spells. Likewise, when you Refocus, you get back a point as long as you follow the guidelines of any abilities that granted you focus spells.

A character I'm planning on making is a druid/sorc. Partially for extra spells but also for the ability to recharge focus points every 10 mins no matter what. Combine that with the feat that allows wild shape to last an hour and you can change shape almost at will.

I think multiclassing sorcerer is a good idea, if only to get a focus power. That way you don't need to meditate, you straight up get a focus point every 10 minutes.

Yeah I hate stuff like this, where it seems they forgot to add stuff haha. But I know they were bound to with so much content.

It also makes me feel nervous to use class dc as it's so much higher than the thirty they say it is at 18th level; but 30 is pretty crazy low compared to what the spell DC would be. You're probably right however

DC are class DC :

10+Proficiency Bonus+Key Ability Modifier.

So trained class DC: 10+2+Str modifier for a Barbarian. It would be decent but definitely not as much as DC 30 at level 18 upgrade.

(I didn't double-check if Barbarian Class DC proficiency bonus increase for this example)

But the spell specifies spell DC, not class DC. Is there that says if you don't have a spell DC use class DC instead?

I hope I'm just missing something, but barbarian dragon form says to use everything the dragon form spell would give you except to use your own ac and attack modifier (at least until you hit eighteenth level in which case it becomes a little clearer).

Where my confusion comes in is breath weapon DC; in the spell description it says to use your spell DC, which barbarians don't have (again until you get to 18th level, where is says the breath DC becomes 30). Is there something I'm missing?

Right now I don't think multiclassing is that bad, as for a lot of classes (for me anyway) the feat choices for some levels are things I have no interest in. So why not get some spells or the like.

That being said as more content comes out and we get more feat choices, that might change or might not. Might make other classes even more attractive, might make it so every level of every class has something too cool to pass up.

Yeah but even in the description for the formula book it says you need to be able to reference it to use the recipes. So I think if it was gone you wouldn't be able to do any crafting.

Gaulin wrote:

I wonder if you could do a workaround by getting your familiar to cast it on you

Familiars can't cast spells.

With spell delivery they sort of can, they deliver spells with a range of touch

I wonder if you could do a workaround by getting your familiar to cast it on you

Wild wind stance is amazing. Changed to 1d6 from 1d4 in the playtest, lasts the whole combat, you get bonus to ranged attack ac, ignore concealment and cover, and wild winds crash no longer has a focus point cost. So you can do that in a cone or line as long as you have both feats.

Dragon wings is another. At higher levels it lasts 10 minutes, and sorcerers get 1 focus per 10 minutes no matter what, so you can just keep spending it on that. And as an added bonus, as long as it's active, it extends the duration of dragon claws too.

I have two main questions about alchemist crafting. The first is I'm unable to find anything on replacing a formula book. It seems very expensive to get formula and if your book were to be taken or destroyed... In fact, if an alchemist were in the sort of scenario where everything was taken from them (maybe the group was captured or the like) they would probably be the most useless of all the characters. So yeah, are there rules for remaking a formula book?

And this is almost on the same tangent, but more of an opinion I would say. The feat craft anything. Would that apply to quick alchemy? What sort of things would you say you could omit if so? Would you even need alchemist kits?

Actually its not quite right. You can take the initial bloodline power at 4 through archetypes, but you only get the second and third bloodline powers at 6 and 10 if you're a sorcerer. If you were multiclassing sorcerer you'd only be able to get them through the feat that lets you take sorc feats at half level, meaning you'd get the second bloodline power at 12 and the final power at 20.