Glade's page

Why not cast 1 action Magic Missiles and have each one benefit from dangerous sorcery? Memorize them in all your slots and you could cast 3 level 9 magic missiles on the first turn for 18 more points of damage than just 1. (Really, the one action magic missile is probably best cast alongside another spell for ultimate damage, but the main point is rocket wizard can get more damage per round if you burn through your slots…like…rocket fuel?

My understanding is that the extra damage from Dangerous Sorcery applies even if you use a 3 action cast - but only for the first missile. Is that not how it works?

You seem to be right about the Dangerous Sorcery - Bond allows a recast without using a slot.

The manifold missile is dead on! Thanks for the tip. If Rocketman was fortunate enough to find/buy a 7th level spell wand (lvl 17 item) that would add 10 rounds of 4d4+4 for a total of 40d4+40, or 140 average.

Taking out the damage from Dangerous sorcery when using bonded item would reduce the total by 41.

So in total we're up by 99 damage to 529 over 14 rounds, or 37.8 pr round. Pretty neat.

Of course, we could do the same exercise with e.g. fireballs to see where that got us, but it's still highly unlikely that Rocketman would be left alone to continue to cast cascading spells like that.

So, here we go again - a little bit of non-sensical and certainly not practical theorycrafting for a wizard who can toss magic missiles all day long.

The Rocketman is a Lvl 17 evocation wizard with bond conservation and superior bond. He also has a MC dedication in Sorcerer to grap Dangerous Sorcery for that sweet extra damage. For a particularly grueling day in the field where he has been told that he will be placed in a protected location to be the support artillery.

Rocketman has memorized (heightened) magic missiles in 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th lvl slots. As the battle begins he then proceeds to cast them all over the course of 5 rounds using all 3 actions to cast:

Round 1: 3 action lvl 9 magic missile (Damage: 15d4+15+9)
Round 2: 3 action lvl 7 magic missile (Damage: 12d4+12+7)
Round 3: 3 action lvl 5 magic missile (Damage: 9d4+9+5)
Round 4: 3 action lvl 3 magic missile (Damage: 6d4+6+3)
Round 5: 3 action lvl 1 magic missile (Damage: 3d4+3+1)

After round 5 Rocketman sighs deeply and uses Drain bonded item as a free action before he continues to cast magic missiles:

Round 6: Drain bonded item => 3 action lvl 9 magic missile (Damage: 15d4+15+9)

He then uses 1 action per round to maintain the feat bond conservation and can therefore only cast progressively weaker magic missiles, and only with 2 actions:

Round 7: Bond conservation 1 action => Drain bonded item => 2 action lvl 7 magic missile (Damage: 8d4+8+7)
Round 8: Bond conservation 1 action => Drain bonded item => 2 action lvl 5 magic missile (Damage: 6d4+6+5)
Round 9: Bond conservation 1 action => Drain bonded item => 2 action lvl 3 magic missile (Damage: 4d4+4+3)
Round 10: Bond conservation 1 action => Drain bonded item => 2 action lvl 1 magic missile (Damage: 2d4+2+1)

Wiping his brow of sweat Rocketman uses the superior bond feat to drain the bonded item for a second time that day, this time for a max level 7 spell:

Round 11: Superior bond => Drain bonded item => 3 action lvl 7 magic missile (Damage: 12d4+12+7)

Then he's back to using 1 action per round to maintain the feat bond conservation and casting progressively weaker magic missiles using 2 actions:

Round 12: Bond conservation 1 action => Drain bonded item => 2 action lvl 5 magic missile (Damage: 6d4+6+5)
Round 13: Bond conservation 1 action => Drain bonded item => 2 action lvl 3 magic missile (Damage: 4d4+4+3)
Round 14: Bond conservation 1 action => Drain bonded item => 2 action lvl 1 magic missile (Damage: 2d4+2+1)

At the end of 14 rounds the Rocketman has spent 5 spell slots and dished out 104d4+170 damage (avg 430 total, or 30.7 dmg pr round).

Now, I do realize that this type of scenario will never happen in actual play, but I am somewhat curious to see if this is in fact the way these feats work. Does this seem correct to you guys?

@Hmmm: Thanks for the in depth reply.

No, I don't have a SFS character. The background here is that I'll be GMing for my local group and plan to run the complete storyline of season 1, meshed with Dark Suns. I've read all the modules and background information, but I didn't find a good description of numbers.

The way I'm imagining it is that 80% of the Starfinder's resources are now suddenly locked in the Scoured Stars - field agents, officers, spaceships and all. However, for an organization spanning the Pact worlds and beyond, and they are described as still having a presence most places, I'd think that they would still be numbering in the thousands at the very least. Drawing an analogy from modern day armed forces you'd still have lots of people working in the Lorespire complex with logistics, support, planning and other administrative stuff - The operational capacity has been severely compromised however, so new field agents are desperately needed.
You could also imagine that capable venture-captains would no longer have teams to organize, and therefore be instructed to form field-teams to bolster the remaining Starfinders capacity. (As a clear parallel to what often happens in real life corporations of some size in a downsizing process)

I'm also thinking that an organization like this would normally have an ongoing recruitment and vetting process. Applicants would be screened for suitability, then put through a program best described as a mix of college and navy SEAL training. That would also mean that at the time of the Scoured Stars incident there were quite a few starfinders-in-training. Perhaps these half-trained cadets were put through an accelerated program as the incident occured and have now been comissioned as field agents, but still the Starfinders would aggressively recruit to fill these gaps.

This would leave the Lorespire complex feeling too spacious for the remaining regular Starfinder personnel, but the training facilities would be brimming with activity. Perhaps like a university campus where you get the impression that there are very few staff and professors per student.

As for details on the leadership of the Starfinders, The forum could consist of e.g. 5 faction leaders (including Luwazi) and 5 senior venture-captains (amongst them Royo and Chiskisk). (Like a modern day board of a company)

What do you guys think?

Right, so I'm wondering, what do we really know about the Starfinder organization as it is at the start of season 1 (i.e. before the Scoured Stars Invasion)?

Obviously we know something about the three pillars of leadership:

* First Seeker: Luwazi Elsebo
* Guidance
* The Forum.

We also know of two members of the Forum: Chiskisk and Royo.
It was mentioned that the forum also consists of venture captains and faction leaders.
Do we know how many members are in the Forum? And who the other members are?

As for venture captains, do we know how many there are?
Or an estimate for the total number of Starfinders in total?
How many Starfinder recruits would be inducted each year? (Immediatly after the Scoured Star incident)

Trying to get a grasp of scale here, any help would be welcome.

I guess that's true. And adding in a Nimble Dodge reaction the rogue can get an additional +2 AC at the cost of a reaction. Still, taking away the opposition's ability to retaliate by moving away is also a powerful defense.

At lvl 15 with legendary athletics, skill assurance, quick jump and cloud jump you're looking at a single action jump of 69 feet with no skill check, if I'm reading the rules right. That's one bouncy halfling.

High dex characters struggle to reach the pinnacles of AC in this edition it seems, since both bracers and clothing have a max dex of +5. Still, perhaps a moderate AC is tolerable if you make sure to not be standing in melee regularly?

With Quick Jump and Cloud Jump he could be fairly mobile at level 15. Skirmish strike to get into flanking position, attack/trip then jump to safety.

That's true, but only if you wear armor. At level 1 he is not using any armor, but eventually he will probably use either bracers of armor or explorer's clothes to be able to apply runes.

Blave wrote:

Take level 20 as an example. The best poison you can create via batches at that level has a DC of 37. Among the level 20 creatures in the bestiary, there is only a single one that doesn't auto-succeed on that check (barring natural 1s), and even that one succeeds on a 5. An alchemist could create a DC 46 poison at that level, which would have at least about 30-40% chance to work against most level 20 creatures.

I'm a bit confused here. Both Tears of Death and Black Lotus Extract have DCs in the 40's. I'm probably misunderstanding what Blave said; I'm just seeking some clerification because it seemed to me like poisons had a generally better rep in PF2E than previously.

And I'm also now considering a poisoner alchemist who multiclasses into rogue so they can apply a wider array of poisons to their weapons. Should be pretty nasty.

As a MC Alchemist you only get to advance your Advanced Alchemy to 15th lvl. Which means that you'd have to craft the lvl 20 poisons the hard and expensive way. (which of course you could choose to do)

I was considering Skirmish Strike as a good option - basically one more stride action to allow 'spring attack'ing.

How that would stack up with Quick draw I'm not entirely sure. For bomb throwing quickdraw would be superior I guess.

Possibly also Poison weapon to take advantage of alchemist poison crafting for free.

As was pointed out in a different thread, MC alchemists can make healing elixirs which at lvl 20 will yield 1960 healing on average rolls per day if all reagents are used for said healing elixirs. That seems like a worthwhile contribution to the party...

For the first time in many years I'll be playing a rogue in a 2e campaign. I've gone back to the roots and based the character on an old-school classic 'halfling thief' concept:

Ancestry: Gutsy halfling
Background: Sailor
Class: Rogue, thief racket

Str 8
Dex 18
Con 14
Int 14
Wis 12
Cha 12

My initial plan is to go MC alchemist for healing, poison, utility and elemental sneak attack via bombs. Doesn't come online until the mid levels, but thematically fun.

Any advice on which skills to increase and which feats to take at each level? Not necessarily looking for an 'optimized' build, but a build to fit the concept and be a valuable team member. (This character would never consider doing solo missions.) Any traps to be aware of? The campaign will most likely take us to lvl 20, so I'm trying to plan as far ahead as that.

Agreed. Any mention of how someone with alchemist dedication would get new formulae other than buying them?

CRB: "Each time you gain a level, you can add the formulas for two common alchemical items to your formula book. These new formulas can be for any level of item you can create"

You could conceivably think that this also applies to the alchemist dedication feats, but I can't see it spelled out anywhere.

It's basically spending all your daily batches on Elixirs of Life. Just checked my math and noticed that 2000 was a bit optimistic. It's more like 1700 on average. Which is still more than solid, in my opinion.

With the Mastery Alchemy feat of the alchemist multiclass archetype, you can use your batches to craft up to level 15 items. That would be the Major Elixir of Life, healing 8d6+21 damage (42 on average). At that level, you have 20 batches and each creates 2 Elixirs, so you get 40*42 = 1680 HP healed per day on average.

I think when first doing this calculation I checked the maximum potential healing from those Elixirs (which is 2760, by the way) and somehow "over 2000" got stuck in my head. Sorry for the confusion.

Anyway, I'm currently playing a Sorcerer multiclassed to Wizard and I intent to get Alchemist Dedication at level 9 (multitalented ancestry feat) and Expert Alchemy at level 10. That gives me 20 Lesser Elixirs of Life, for an average of 330 healing.

Mastery Alchemy at level 14 upgrades this to 28 Moderate Elixirs of Life for 826 healing.

And of course, those are the maximum numbers if I never use the batches for anything else. There's also a great deal of flexibility with bombs and other elixirs like granting Darkvision to the whole party or giving your tank a Stone Body Mutagen. Or hand some poison to the rogue.

In some ways, a character multiclassed to alchemy feels like he can use his batches for healing and utility more freely than a true alchemist, since he doesn't need batches to do his main shtick. I can cast all the spells I want and still brew all those Elixirs every single day.

Thanks for that. I'm currently playing a rogue - and I think I just decided on going for the Alchemist Dedication :)

Getting the alchemist dedication and the follow up feats that increase your advanced alchemy level can provide LOTS of free healing every day. We're talking about more than 2000 points worth of healing in elixirs of life at level 20.

Interesting, could you spell this out please? I'm not sure I see how this would work...

My group has just started the AP now and we're all excited as to how this is going to play out. So far we've just finished part one and the salt works.

So one of the things I've decided to try out here is the variant campaign rule of automatic bonus progression. I've coined the Silver Raven Figurines as minor artifacts brought into existence by Milani herself, though this is of course not known. Rather than linking the bonuses provided directly to the PCs level, they are keyed to progressing Milanis goals in Kintargo and Ravounel. Flavor-wise the Silver Ravens figurines are focus items which channel the Kintargan inhabitants hopes, dreams and aspirations to provide the figurines' owners increasing benefits as the rebellion progresses. Mechanically the bonuses will more or less follow the suggested level, but is triggered by e.g. gaining a new rank for the rebellion, or completing the decoding of the documents etc. This also works as a motivation for the characters to build the Silver Ravens organization and progressing the AP.

I'm also thinking of what measures Thrune and his allies take to tighten their grip on Kintargo. Even as the AP starts he has access to some high level spells through is cronies (at least 6th level divine and arcane spells). Using long lasting spells with cheap material components might be a thing he would task his subordinates with doing every day. Some possibilities may include casting of prying eyes for subtle monitoring (A dozen small magical sensors flying at 100ft altitude per casting gives a certain 1984 feeling), permanent image to erect "statues" of Barzillia Thrune, modify memory/charm monster on known dissidents for the typical brainwash etc etc.

What other methods have you guys envisioned that a tyrannical ruler might use to quell dissident?

I like your take on the UI and gravity options Torbyne.
How about any magical / hybrid items for use on/in starships? The SFCRB states something along the lines that technological solutions are sometimes not used just because it is so much easier to just use magic. If the spell list was as in old pathfinder you could expect to have items based on a number of spells to hlep make space travel easier and with less need to haul so many supplies. Food, water, air, hygiene etc would all be taken care of by magic items. Potentially sensors could be augmented by divination magic items etc etc. I wonder if this is part of the setting as described so far, or if it will be part of any upcoming books where starships are described in more detail.

How are people handling starships in terms of flavor?

Are there other often used sci-fi tropes that are not mentioned by the rules, or perhaps magic items that are being incorporated in starships in your games?

For instance in your games are typical starships fitted with stuff like

- Inertial dampeners (so that high g maneuvers can be executed without crash couches, injected "juice" etc.)
- Artificial gravity
- Cybernetical links to allow 'jacking-in' to the ship
- Magical amenities based on low level spells/items (e.g. an item which can cast predestigitation may replace a shower with water, the galley may be equipped with an item casting create water for obvious reasons, etc etc)

Haha, that's actually true - the PCs are often assumed to be the 'good guys' but surprisingly often the gist of it is: "Can we somehow legitimize killing this person/monster/organization and claim loot?" -
AKA 'MurderHoboing'. Maybe Golarion would be worse off if the PCs won the day in all APs :)

This could also be a fun way of inserting various theories of how/why Golarion disappeared - perhaps the bad-gus won in many of the Pathfinder adventure paths and the Gods eventually decided that a Golarion where the Worldwound was spreading, ruled by Thassalonian rune lords etc etc was just too much. Thoughts?

Hi all,

Note that this is intended for GM reading and advice. Minor spoilers ahead, so if you intend to be a player you are hereby warned.

Thanks for replies - yes hopefully the Pact Worlds will detail this out a bit. Obviously the Golarion portals are non-functional from the pact worlds, but the ones on Castroval work and perhaps the ones on Apostae. I haven't seen them referenced anywhere else though, so should be interesting to see.

I'm planning to start a campaign in the near future and am getting to know the setting - this may have a bit of an impact imo.

I noticed a sentence in the CRB describing Apostae:

"This arch is similar to those that link many of the system’s worlds—and a functioning ring of such portals within the city provides access to most of the other Pact Worlds"

So I started wondering if there are any descriptions of these portals, how common they are and how available they are. Presumably these are the same type of magical portals as used by the elves of Castroval. If so,

- Which of the Pact Worlds have them?
- Does one (or more) exist on Absalom Station?
- How available are they? Can anyone use them (for a fee perhaps)?
- Would they be the preferred means of transportation for shorter missions where a starship is not required?
- Being instantaneous, would they have an effect on how information flows in the Pact Worlds (rather than dealing with the time-delay of the Drift (when travelling physically) or light speed (when broadcasting messages)?
- Are there other consequences will a network of portals have?

This is absolutely brilliant! Thanks for your efforts.

Thanks for input guys. I guess using the pathfinder as a guide would be the closest thing since the starfinder society is said to be modelled on the pathfinder society.

Is there such a thing as a Starfinder Academy where selected recruits receive training in the ways of the Starfinder Society in the official setting? I haven't been able to find a reference to something like that in the published material to date.

If there isn't, what are the Society's methods for finding and recruiting the new members it sorely needs after the scoured stars incident? If I were to homebrew an academy in my campaign what suggestions do you have for such an academy?

In the Starfinder organization there are obviously different ranks. Venture-captains, First seeker, Faction leaders etc.

But I haven't seen anything about how this applies to "ordinary" Starfinder members, other than the Field Agent title/rank. Is there a rank system within the Starfinder Society? If not, what would be your suggestion for including a semi-military rank structure?

How are you (as the GM) planning to deal with player deaths? As far as I can tell there are magical ways of resurrecting a dead character (Reincarnation, Raise dead and Miracle/Wish)

Further, the technology to bring a clinically dead character back to life could also be said to be present in Starfinder. Placing a mortally wounded/dead PC in suspended animation and bringing him to a well equipped medical facility could almost certainly keep the PC alive.

The biotech level to produce clones/androids is in place as well as being able to upload your personality. If so each PC could theoretically dowload themselves on a regular basis and upload to a new body if killed beyond all recovery.

So, dead may not need to dead-dead anymore. But if so, what are your plans to deal with this. A credit cost for the resurrection? An XP loss to reflect a non-perfect upload? An attribute penalty to reflect a less than perfect clone? All/none of the above? Something completely different? Or simply stating that dead is dead. Make a new PC?

Dot

Have any build guides shown up yet? I'm thinking like the ones for PF where a massive amount of work has been done to write up some good guides with color coding and analyses, e.g. like these ones:

http://zenithgames.blogspot.no/2012/11/the-comprehensive-pathfinder-guides. html

Nice, thanks. That seems pretty straightforward then :)

Consider a monk with imp unarmed strike. Medium sized he has a reach of 5 ft as normal. If grappled he can fight effectively using imp unarmed strike.

Then he gulps down a potion of enlarge person, becomes large and now has a reach of 10 ft. If grappled he can still fight effectively using imp unarmed strike.

My question is, does the enlarged monk with 10ft reach still threaten at 5ft range? (A fighter using a 10 ft reach weapon wouldn't, but I wonder if a monk could simply strike with elbows, knees and headbutts at that range and still threaten?)

@ UnArcaneElection

Buckler it is :)
Lore warden does add some nice feats, but at the cost of bard levels. Hm, perhaps it might be worth it at that...

@Lune

That is a really interesting build as well! Do you have a post where the full build is detailed?

@UnArcaneElection

I really like the mouser for this build, even a 1 level dip gets a lot of mileage. 5 Panache points will most certainly make you a big (small) nuisance for most opponents, and being in the opponents square will make it quite easy for your allies to be within your zone of protection, even without using reach weapons. Which of course makes using a benevolent shield better again... I like it.

As for the lore warden levels and weapon focus, I'm not entirely convinced. If you aim to be a reasonable damage dealer yourself, then yes. If you're fine with never dealing an actual hit point in damage yourself throughout your adventuring career, then no. I was planning on the latter, dealing damage only through assisting my allies to hit.

And yes, bard levels and casting is fairly tanked, only to be used for buffing and out of combat (apart from the obvious inspire confidence), but you do get the staples like haste, heroism etc to cast when/if you have no other way of being helpful :)

@spiffy337

Right, so if I could squeeze in Crane style that would take the dodge bonus from fighting defensively up a notch. With the Blundering defense feat you want to hit those even numbers

Fighting defensively w/3+ ranks Acrobatics: +3 dodge AC
Cautious fighter: +2 dodge AC
Crane style: +1 dodge AC

You could be doling out +3 to AC to everyone who is adjacent to you. Any way to pump this further within the same build I wonder...

@Knight Magenta

We ruled that bodyguard required you to have the target you are trying to protect within melee reach

That's already part of the rules I believe:

Bodyguard excerpt:
When an adjacent ally is attacked, you may use an attack of opportunity to attempt the aid another action to improve your ally’s AC.

...and not only that, but you also need to threaten the attacker of your ally to use the Bodyguard feat as pointed out in an earlier post. So longspear and spiked gauntlet will probably be good choices for weapons.

We retired the helpful kobold because he was too effective

That is hilarious! :)

I find the idea intriguing and as someone else pointed out here, the other party members may be ok with a 25% discount to the full price and a guaranteed availability of the item they want. (Our group tends to randomly generate what's available from the ye-olde magic shoppes). Leaving the crafter wizard with a WBL benefit which he can use to increase his own power for the good of the party, or for purely selfish reasons. (Add roleplaying here)

Then again, it all depends on what you want out of it as a player. While most players enjoy being effective and "winning", each player also defines what winning is to them and what their character's motives are.
(As a contrast there are entire builds focused only on making your party members great, e.g. the Very Helpful Halfling) Apologies for the shameless self-promotion of the thread :)

In my book the wizard charging something between cost price and marked price is ok. Perhaps 75% is a good benchmark?

@UnArcaneElection

Yup, he his crammed for feats. No two ways about it. Though I don't think weapon finesse and such is a huge deal for the Very Helpful Halfling. After all, he's not interested in hitting his opponents, only in using aid another. Hitting AC 10 to trigger aid another is something he can do unless he rolls a natural 1...

By all means, incorporate anything you find useful - let me how how they play if you want, I'd be interested to know :)

PS: The mouse swashbuckler was a cool class, I hadn't noticed that one before.

Updated based on your feedback :)

One of the key features of this build is being able to dish out teamwork feats, specifically harrying partners to provide aid another bonus the whole round and not just on their next attack - this will make your frontline fighters hit even high AC enemies with all their iterative attacks and using power attack etc etc.

Compared to the first build, his saves and hit points are the same but AC is up by 2 due to cautious fighter, meaning he is even more survivable.

Inspire confidence will still affect all allies for +3/+3 to hit/dmg.
Aid another bonus is at +11
Swift aid bonus is at +8

All adjacent allies will get a +2 to AC from Blundering defense.
Aid another to FF#1 will give +14 to hit (including inspire confidence)
Swift aid to FF#2 will give +11 to hit (again including inspire confidence) - Alternativly using both swift aid and aid another on FF#1 for +22 to hit (Allowed by RAW?)
Allies qualifying for Bodyguard will get +13 to AC on AOOs (including blundering defense)

Aid another bonus will last the whole round, making sure that the BBEG has a hard time hitting your peeps.
Toss in some haste/heroism/finale spells as needed.

With all modifiers he is at +9 to hit so barring a natural 1 he will hit AC 10 and succeed on aid another.

@ Oli Ironbar

Sounds like an interesting build, would you care to share it?

@ spiffy337

That's a really interesting build as well. Cautious fighter and Blundering defense are good finds, I think I'll see if I can incorporate those into the Very Helpful Halfling build! Thanks.

Question on the Blundering Defense though: Using this, will you provide your adjacent ally with 1/2 of your total dodge bonus, or only 1/2 of your dodge bonus originating from Fighting Defensively/full defense (including cautious fighter)? What I'm thinking of is other sources of dodge AC e.g. combat reflexes or from monk/duelist abilities etc. Consider a halfling monk with high wisdom and combat reflexes (perhaps a sensei archetype) - he could pump the AC provided to your ally considerably if the feat gives 1/2 of your total dodge bonus...

Butterfly Sting seems a good choice for your Legionnaire - for the bard based build I posted however... He doesn't have a snowballs chance in hell of hitting a barndoor. In fact he has to be somewhat mindful to not gimp himself so bad that he struggles to hit AC10 for aid another. So handing out confirmed crits is not something he will be doing on a regular basis :)

One comment to the golden legionnaire is that even at high levels he's often going to have to make a choice of which buffs to give. United defense and Authorative command are swift/move actions, and Aid another is a standard action you are limited to a 5 ft step in terms of movement to position yourself for use of the bodyguard feat. Also, without the harrying partners feat the bonuses from aid another will only apply to the first attack done by/received by your ward. Still a very interesting build for sure. Hope you have fun playing him in PFS - would be interesting to hear what your experience with him is :)

Thanks for all the feedback, exactly what I was hoping for from this illustruos forum and its patrons :)

@zedorland

Master Performer is definitely not pathfinder society legal, has a significant roleplaying requirement, and should definitely not be allowed by DM's without due consideration.

Looking more closely at this feat chain I think you're absolutely on the money. Good call - I'll revise the build and trade these for other feats.

@Derric Winters & MrCharisma

Well done on finding obscure traits! Kudos! Working an "adopted by gillmen" trait into the background story may be a bit of a braintwister. Perhaps a gillman adopted by halflings could work... I'll note it as a possibility, but stick with Battlefield disciple for now.

On the topic of swift aid and helpful halfling:

I don't know if there is an FAQ, but the way it's worded grammatically prohibits them from working together.

Perhaps you're right, but as you say, GM is the final arbitrer. For now I'll assume he agrees with you in the build. That would mean that the swift aid will be at a base +1 to aid another - but will still benefit from benevolent abilities of weapons and armor, gloves of arcane striking and ring of tactical precision, correct? If so that's still a sizeable bonus to provide to someone on a swift action...

As long as you're doing this remember that 3 points into Acrobatics gets you a further +1AC when fighting defensively

Yup, already taken into account in the original build. ;)

As far as I can tell you can. Aid another uses an attack-roll (1 always misses and 20 always hits and other stuff that goes with an attack roll). The main point about not being able to use abilities like this is that you have to take the penalty to get the benefit. In this case you are taking a penalty to your aid-another roll, so you should be able to take the benefits as well.

Agreed - but check with your GM. For this build I'll assume we can convince the GM.

Also while I was looking for a ruling on Aid Another (didn't find it) I found COMBAT ADVICE which could be useful?

In the right build, yes, but with this bard build we're already providing a +3 competence bonus to hit and damage through inspire courage and maintaining this as a free action every round. Being the same kind of bonus they won't stack unfortunately...

AND LASTLY, EVERY BODYGUARD BUILD SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THIS UNFORTUNATE FAQ ... SORRY TO BE THE BEARER OF BAD NEWS.

That is something to be aware of. As written, pre-FAQ you only had to be adjacent to your ward, it said nothing about having to threaten. So this can be remedied by using a reach weapon, but that again makes it harder to use a shield and its sweet "benevolent" ability. Alternatively you can move so that you always threaten the same enemy. My intention here is to use a 3rd level bard spell Coordinated Effort to give party members the Escape Route feat - this should make it a lot easier to position ourselves where we threaten the enemy without being killed by AOOs.

One more question came up: Being that aid another specifically stacks, would a swift aid and an aid another from the same source (the helpful halfling in this case) also stack? I.e. could the halfling use a swift aid to give Frontline Fighter #1 (FF#1) a +8 bonus to hit AND then give him a +11 bonus to hit for a whopping +19 bonus to hit?

Thanks, I thought so too. If we're correct, that makes the helpful halfling trait and a few other magic items which bump aid another into an interesting team tactic... Cheers. :)

@MrCharisma

Yes, I've been trying to find a ruling/faq/dev statement on that subject as well, coming up short so far.

- Swift Aid gives you a reduced effect Aid Another action.
- Helpful increases the effect of an Aid Another action.

Seems to me that helpful does interact with the swift aid feat, but if so how? Does swift aid give you 1/2 of the total effect or -1 to the total effect?

Still worth it, but would be good to know...

Are you thinking of a different trait than Battlefield disciple (which is already in the build)? If so I'm intrigued :)

Also seems like the jury is out on the question of using fighting defensivly with aid another - at least I couldn't find a good answer in the rules section....

As in the subject.

Taking -4 to hit is less of a downside when targeting AC 10 to provide a successful Aid another action. Question is if the Aid Another is considered an attack (it is after all listed under the special attacks section) or if it is a standard action that is not considered an attack.

This subject has been discussed before, e.g. Here.

People seem to have differing opinions, however I couldn't find a definitive answer for this supported by devs or faqs. Is anyone able to provide some guidance please?

Oh, and apologies in advance if the answer is out there and my google-fu has proven insufficient.

@ UnArcane Election

Ah, but I haven't even used the Weal's Champion ability. The only reason for going Holy Tactician is to get the Battlefield presence ability to hand out the Harrying partner teamwork feat. It is a swift action, so good chances you can get to use it during an encounter, but in the example above it is much better to use swift aid every round if possible. Of course, if you only have one frontliner with you, it's easier to prioritize, but then again you may want to use some quickened spells or what have you....

Delayed bard spell progression is rough, agreed. Then again, this build isn't really that interested in spells. He does his work through others...

Traits and feats may be switched around for specific campaigns, good catch.

Yes, I mean heavy shield (",)

Master Performer is a feat from the Pathfinder Chronicles: Faction Guide which is PFS legal I belive and should be ok by most GMs.

One of the tricks here is using the Gloves of arcane striking which helps quite a bit with the aid another bonus. Using drawbacks could be a solution to traits - in my current campaign we don't use drawbacks, but if your GM allows them it's a good way to squeeze in that camapign trait for instance

@ Derrick

That's a good find - I wasn't aware of the Succor mystery.

So building on that you could get +4 from helpful halfling, +5 from succor, +1 from the ring for a total of +10 to aid another / +9 for swift aid (if my rules interpretation is correct)

That's a pretty good deal when you have 9th lvl spells too...

It doesn't exactly fill the role the very helpful halfling does, but is a nice backup action for an oracle and doesn't need to have a build around it...

So I was reading some posts about the aid another action and possible uses of that... and the bug hit me again. So, I thought, let me see if I can stand on the shoulders of giants and come up with a build that could be interesting and viable to play.

All paizo books are allowed, no third party.

Now this guy very much lives up to the helpful halfling description: "You see nothing wrong with letting others achieve greatness so long as the job gets done" and feels very in tune with how halflings are described. Your front line fighters will love you and the amount of additional damage the party is able to dish out will likely increase quite a bit.

He is also fairly survivable with very good AC, very good saves easily hitting the blue category in this table and has a decent amount of hit points to boot.

He's a poor to mediocre hand to hand combatant by himself, but that's not really the focus of the build. What he does bring to the table is this: Increase Aid Another bonus to ridiculous levels and make it stick the whole round.

Move close to a frontline fighter and buff him for:
+15 to hit
+4 damage
+14 AC

AND
+14 to hit
+4 damage
+11 AC

for another frontline fighter.

Without casting a single spell (of which he has plenty)

Now, two things are somewhat unclear to me and may change the numbers slightly:

1) Can you fight defensively to use aid another? (-4 to hit isn't so daunting when you only need to hit AC 10)

2) Swift aid as it is worded is a less effective aid another action for a less effort (swift action) - +1 bonus vs. +2 bonus. In this build I have assumed that it is an aid another with a -1 modifier, so that all the other additives to aid another will work the same way (e.g. the helpful halfling trait with normal aid another gives a +4 bonus, with swift aid it gives a +3 bonus). Has anyone seen a clarification for this?

Please comment, critiqe and make suggestions to improvements, point out rules or errors etc.

I thought so too, but running this by some of my co players for a sense check it seems to be some disagreements to this...

Does anyone know how this is ruled in PFS?

Thanks for your input guys - I agree that it's not really a game changer...

This request is a bit long winded, apologies.

I was invited to play in a Prey for Death game starting probably this day, or it might be a session zero for the first day. I'm planning on playing a Flurry Ranger RMA character. After buying the most important bits of permanent gear, I'm sitting at about ~1300 gold.

In the last high level adventure we played, we all basically ignored anything consumable and loaded up on all kinds of permanent items, and had a pretty rough time of it. So I'm wondering if investing in a few consumables at the start might be a better plan.

So, finally here is my ask, can someone recommend a handful of level 14 or less consumables good for high level-ish play in general, or specifically for this adventure if you can make it non-spoiler or metagamey? Thanks in advance.

Since:
1) Not everyone has purchased the remaster rule books.
2) Player core 1 and 2 are part of the core assumption.
and finally
3) The online reference for the rules is yet to be updates.

Is it possible for someone to describe the mandatory “Eratta” that are now mandatory for PFS play with the altered classes?

I understand that I am able to rebuild for a few more months, but I’m not sure if all of my characters remain legal to play until/unless they are rebuilt.

I just wanted to jump on here and say that I very much enjoyed the interactive special last night and I very much appreciated how there was no pause to give Paizo their standing ovation like previous years. That had been a complaint of mine for years, so thank you for listening.

After some bad experiences at this weekend’s Gencon, I wanted to share a simple plea to the future scenario authors and developers. Particularly those designed for low level characters. Warnings, this will be long and will include math. But this can be abstracted down to a few succinct points. I will be using the term author, but please understand that this term is intended to include all levels that the scenario passes through, author, developer, editor and others that I am not aware of. It is not that I dismiss your efforts, but simply for ease of communication.

In closing I do want to tell you all that I appreciate all the work you put into this game, but I feel like some of the lower-level material may have lost its way recently. We need to be more encouraging to turn new players into veteran players. This needs to be embraced by all levels of this community. They are the future of Pathfinder Society

I recently played in a wilderness based scenario where we were told that “your ability to hunt and forage for supplies is part of the objective.” We were asked to make daily Survival checks to find supplies. Most of the group failed, but I succeeded, and I had the Forager feat, which should allow my character to supply food for most of the party, but upon pointing it out, I was told it didn’t matter. So glad I made this “meaningful decision” for my character. I’m wondering if any skill feats matter in society play, bonus from Quiet Allies? (nah, module says everyone must make a stealth check) Why have the feats at all if the published materials don’t acknowledge their use at all?

Did the playtest points expire at some point. I logged on today and it seems I no longer have any, and I never spent any?

You got my hopes up that there was another con coming to Sacramento. Alas, I'm pretty sure CogCon is in Rolla, MO. You might want to check your plane tickets?

I want to say an honest thank you to the organized play team for The most enjoyable multi-table specials I have participated in. In the past I have been openly and voiciferously critical of the way the specials have been managed, but this time I truly felt like the emphasis was on the players and you gave me, and probably all of us, an amazing experience.

If this ends up being my fairwell to PFS, at least I can say it was fittingly awesome!

Alright everyone, I'm done. I'm out. PF2 may go on to become an excellent game, but from what I have seen, I don't have much faith, so I'm done with this playtest and I have been encouraged, by my gaming group, to detail why on the forums. In the unlikely event anyone is interested, my reasons are detailed below

TLDR I’m tapping out on the playtest. I’ll keep playing PF classic as long as I have people to play with. I’ll also secretly harbor the hope that some other company will rob the bank on PF classic the way Paizo did to WOTC

So far, in my limitted SFS play, I find myself ambivalent towards Starfinder as a whole, and I have yet to have a fun experience with ship to ship combat. My experiences are as follows.

Basically it all boils dow to " If the gunner misses, nothing else for the round matters." And "If the gunner hits, all the previous actions are irrelevant."

I know someone is going to mention the tactics of putting your ship in an unmanned firing arc, but every ship we fight is either more maneuverable, or can shoot in every direction. And it seems like ships never seem to be out of range no matter what happens.

The other roles are support or reactive, but cannot meaningfully effect combat if the gunner misses.

I've gotten to the point that when the hex map comes out, I want to pack up and go home.

So, I'm asking all of you, how do I have fun with what seems to be a funless black hole of a minigame?

I wish I had posted this before everyone headed down to Gencon, but I have a request for the management of the Gencon special. Every year Paizo continues to produce excellent products, and the PFS crew produces amazing adventures. However, Ennies announcement at the Gencon special puts these two at odds. Every year the Sagamore is filled with people who love pathfinder, all enjoying a game with a story narative that gets interrupted by the Ennies announcement. My suggestion, and request, is to hold that announcement until after the special is concluded. I think we will still be there waiting to share your triumph.
In conclusion, Pathfinder is awesome, Pathfinder society is amazing and I'm looking forward to Starfinder. Keep doing what you are all doing, it's greatly appreciated.

Registering by tier, and if I don't have a character in tier(such as if my character gets killed earlier in the weekend) I have to play a pregen at that tier! This is not cool guys, I do not like this.

I don't see any reason why this should not work, but I'm going to ask. I have been saving towards purchasing at greater talisman of life's breath. I can now afford it, but I had a thought. i need to die >10 times for the greater talisman to have any benefit over multiple lesser ones. Is there any reason I couldn't buy say 3 lessers, wear one on my neck and carry the other two? If one goes off, I replace it asap. Seems like this would also get arround the once per day limitation. Seems like good economics to me.
Cant find a reason to consider this illegal and/or abusive.

I just need a clarification about the level range for scenarios. I was under the impression that a tier 1-5 adventure could only be played by levels 1-5 and a tier 3-7 could only be played by levels 3-7.

other people I play with are insisting that as long as the APL is in the 3-7 range, we can run level 1 and 2 characters. This just doesn't seem right to me?

Just tried to play through is with a 3-4 party. What the heck?