Genie in a Bottle's page

Shining symbol and arcane standard are items that can be used to inflict weaknesses.

Just like how havoc dragons are going to be renamed to be delight dragons in the draconic codex, are requiem dragons renamed crypt dragons? Because both requiem and crypt dragons appear to shepherd souls to the afterlife.

Or are crypt dragons and requiem dragons like infernal and diabolic dragons, which are two separate species of dragons that live in Hell

I also really don't like non-scaling items. If I am a player I always never end up using any item activation because they never feel worth the actions it takes to use them when I get the item, let alone a few levels later. When I am a GM, I never see players use items either, unless they are consumables like healing potions.

I think a good thing to introduce to your games are relics. These are special items that grow stronger with your character, and they unlock new abilities as you level up. For example, you could have an axe that is an earth/plant relic that starts with the ability to spray pollen at level 1, and then at level 5 gains the shattered earth ability, letting you create difficult terrain.

Copy/pasting my post from the spring 2025 errata suggestion thread:

Book: Rage of Elements

Rule: A few kineticist feats such as Counter Element, Elemental Overlap, and Elemental Transformation have a prerequisite of "exactly one kinetic element"

Problem:: What happens if someone took one of these feats and then later gained a second element? For example, a single-gate earth kineticist taking Elemental Overlap at level 8 to gain the earth/metal composite impulse Whirling Grindstone, and then later at level 13 Forked the Path and gained a new kinetic element (which may or may not be the metal element).

I have seen some people say that they can no longer use the Whirling Grindstone feat, as they no longer meet the prerequisites of "exactly one kinetic element", and I have seen some people say that they could still use Whirling Grindstone because their character met the prerequisites at level 8 when the feat was taken, and losing your feat because of a natural choice you made during a later level up (which might be months or even a year in real life, during which your character would be constantly using the feat) is too bad to be true.

Personally I would really like to see the five esoteric dragons (astral, dream, etheric, nightmare, and occult), the five outer dragons (lunar, solar, time, void, and vortex), and the nine planar dragons (apocalypse, bliss, crypt, edict, havoc, infernal, paradise, rift, and tumult) dragons before any new dragon types, as these have still not been converted to pathfinder second edition even after nearly six years.

The outer dragons might have a shot of being released in a later starfinder second edition book (although it seems that they won't be in alien core), but the others might literally never get another chance.

The dragon codex only having what is probably 21-25 total dragons with 16 of those likely being the dragons from monster cores 1 and 2 seems like a complete waste to me. 25 dragons would have been enough for all the 19 unconverted dragons plus a couple of new ones, like skymetal dragons.

So if Monster Core has eight dragons, and Monster Core 2 claims to have eight more, does that mean only around four new dragons will be in the Dragon Codex, as the twenty dragon statistics includes expansions on those sixteen dragons?

ServoShell's overclock needs to be on a minion with the tech trait, but technomancer has no way to permanently have a tech minion such as a familiar. As such, the only way for them to benefit from their overclock is the following:

Turn 1: the technomancer summons a tech minion from a spell like summon robot. They cannot overclock, because summon spells are 3 actions and overclock costs 1 action: the technomancer does not have any leftover actions.
Turn 2: the technomancer casts a non-cantrip spell. They can then overclock their minion. However, if they had cast a 2-action spell, their minion immediately disappears because the technomancer never spent an action to sustain their minion. So the technomancer is forced to cast a 1-action non-cantrip spell this turn.
Turn 3: the technomancer can finally start benefiting from their overclock and can potentially jailbreak a spell.

I think that this is incredibly inflexible compared to the other programming languages. For example, DPS++ can overclock their weapon on turn 1 and doesn't need to use two spell slots to do it. Simply giving the technomancer (or at the very least, the ServoShell subclass) a permanent tech familiar would solve this problem.

Some less intelligent dragons, not necessarily drakes, and a civilization with a culture around becoming worthy by becoming a dragon rider.

This actually already exists on the planet Triaxus, with dragonkin and ryphorians (also known as triaxians).

I would really like the planar dragons to return! Stuff like the apocalypse dragon from Abaddon, havoc dragons from Elysium, and tumult dragons from the Maelstrom. I really would like to know how infernal and diabolic dragons interact with one another, as both species are native to Hell.

I would really like rules for building your own custom weapons. Additionally, I would also like new weapons that use the more underutilized traits.

For example, looking at the Archives of Nethys, the resonant trait exists on exactly two weapons, the wish blade and the wish knife, both of which are uncommon ancestral weapons. The vehicular trait was introduced in treasure vault is on weapons that are supposed to be attached to vehicles or worn by a mount, but the only vehicular weapon is a battle saddle (to be used on a mount), so there aren't any vehicular weapons that can be used on vehicles.

According to the Archives of Nethys, other traits that are only represented by one or two existing weapons include: brace, climbing, cobbled, double barrel, jousting, recovery, and training.

A lot of these can be used to make some really cool weapons in my opinion. For example, a double barrel shotgun does not currently exist. Another example is some sort of whip that has the training trait.

pauljathome wrote:

It takes a bit of careful parsing to realize this but the key is on the “can move through”. Note that a developer confirmed that this was deliberate and the reason they added tumble through to the play test version so this is NOT rules lawyering away from RAI.

Do you by chance have a link for that?

If I did this correctly, this should be an exact link to the exact discord post.

The elemental spell list automatically contains all spells with the air, earth, fire, metal, water, and wood traits, even if they were released after Rage of Elements (its most recent update).

A necromancy spell list could work similarly, and contain all spells with the spirit, vitality, and void traits.

Yeah, it would be pretty disastrous if someone could pick up this kind of burst from archetyping—especially someone with Legendary class DC, like a kineticist.

Usually archetypes will come with their own class DC. For example, the inventor archetype makes you trained in inventor class DC, but you can't be an expert in inventor class DC until level 15 (assuming you have the brilliant crafter feat). Even if a kineticist took the inventor archetype and took the Explode feat at level 8, their Explode action would use their inventor class DC, not their kineticist class DC, so the DC would end up being much lower than their impulses.

The kineticist archetype itself also works like this. Their level 12 feat Expert Kinetic Control makes you an expert in kineticist class DC, which is used for any impulses you would gain from the archetype.

There is no reason to think that the runesmith archetype wouldn't work the same way, so a kineticist with the runesmith archetype wouldn't necessarily become a lot more powerful via runes like Ranshu or Atryl, where you want to invoke the rune.

I think that runes that are more "passive" like Holtrik will be a more popular pick for those with the runesmith archetype, as you don't need to worry about your class DC for those.

I had the same thought, short of sticking to a free-hand weapon like a gauntlet or Engraving Strike becoming a mandatory pick, you're forced to choose between the things you're supposed to be good at.

Funnily enough, I don't think that Engraving Strike lets you Trace a Rune without a free hand. All it allows you to do is Strike and Trace a Rune for one action instead of two. It is a really powerful feat, but it doesn't let you Trace Runes while wielding a hammer and a shield. Unless that shield is a buckler I guess.

Smithing Weapons Familiarity is also kind of weird to have there. The Necromancer one I got, but Runesmith already has martial weapon proficiency, there's only a handful of advanced knives (none of which particularly fit the flavor) and two advanced picks with ancestry traits, and the feat doesn't grant you critical specialization like the ancestry ones do. What do you actually gain out of this?

Yeah it is kinda weird that this level 2 class feat feels similar in power to a level 1 ancestry feat. That is actually one of the reasons why I think making it so that smithing weapons count as holding an artisan's toolkit would be a good change.

When I was reading the playtest, one thing that I thought was really weird is that the runesmith must either have a hand free or be holding an artisan's toolkit to use their Trace action or at least one of their class feats (Return unto Runes). Possibly more class feats in the final version of the class too.

The class seems to have a lot of support for shields, such as the Shield Block general feat, a few runes that affect shields, and a couple of feats that help with the action economy with shields such as Fortifying Knock (one action to Raise a Shield and then Trace a rune onto your shield). But the 'sword and board' style of using a shield and a weapon is practically unusable. I guess you could forgo tracing your runes, but then you are not using half of your class. Additionally, one of the artworks that is being used to showcase the runesmith appears to be a dwarf wielding a maul, a two-handed weapon. Yes, I know that this was preexisting artwork. But why choose to show an artwork that doesn't fit the class?

A solution that I came up with to this problem is having the hands used to hold smithing weapons also count as holding an artisan's toolkit. What are smithing weapons? They are the weapons referenced in the Smithing Weapon Familiarity feat. So weapons in the hammer, pick, and knife weapon group. My thought process here was "the exact tools in an artisan's toolkit depends on what craft the toolkit is for. A runesmith, being a smith, would likely have them be smithing tools, which would contain tools like a hammer."

I was wondering what other people's thoughts were about this idea?

I feel like looking at the Starlight Sentinel archetype from Tian Xia Character Guide would also be useful. As far as I'm aware it's the first instance of a ranged attack that uses your melee attack bonus to Strike, and also has a longer range than the solar shot, though I don't believe it has increments.

Solar Shot doesn't have range increments either. Graviton attunement has a maximum range of 15 feet (just 5 feet more than what you would have if your solar weapon has the reach trait!) while photon attunement has a maximum range of 30 feet.

It doesn't seem like anything stops you from have 4x Wands of Shardstorm rolling.

The rules of wielding items states

Some abilities require you to wield an item, typically a weapon. You’re wielding an item any time you’re holding it in the number of hands needed to use it effectively. When wielding an item, you’re not just carrying it around—you’re ready to use it. Other abilities might require you to be wearing the item, to be holding it, or simply to have it.

You can still get 2x wands of shardstorm online. Once you switch hands you are no longer wielding two of your wands and you no longer benefit from their free missiles.

Ever since the kineticist playtest was released I have been thinking of a goblin fire kineticist with the oracle archetype to get incendiary aura at level 4.

After watching Nonat1s kineticist preview, this idea seems like it will be even better, since kineticists now use con to hit with elemental blast (so they are less MAD then the playtest), and when they create their elemental aura, they can also use a one action elemental blast for free.

Burn It! would also increase the persistent fire damage (but sadly not the fire impulse damage) dealt by my arsonist goblin.