Goodham's page

keftiu wrote:

Aaron tweeted that the book "has a surprise land," which I find incredibly exciting. This could mean that Bhopan is promoted out of being part of Jalmeray... or it could be that those angels on the cover mean we're in Holomog, but that feels unlikely.

Any other options I'm missing? I'm struggling to imagine what this could apply to.

I think that IS the name of the land - "Surpriseland" - kind of like "Newfoundland" or "Switzerland".

The real question is, of course, what is there and who lives there? Does have an overabundance of ambush predators? Is this the land of the infamously eternal versatile heritage known as the "Gotchas"? Is there really something new and unusual around every corner? Are the people living here really, really over-stimulated or are they just really tired of everything and just always have the attitude of "Yeah, been there, done that."?

:P

Jalmeray is known for the Students of Perfection, who practise mastery over the four elements. But there is one element they have overlooked.. the element of surprise! And that's where Surpriseland comes in with the new College of Confounding Revelation, where masters of surprise practise their arts.

On one hand, it would be weird if the Kineticist is better at getting targets to fail their saves than literally every caster. But on the other hand, it feels weird that legendary proficiency in class DC is a thing that's possible but no one ever gets it.

Since the Kineticist does not have an "pure power"analogue to "extra 10th level spell slot" at 20th level, I wonder if "legendary class DC" as a 20th level feat would work or if this is a place Burn could work its way back.

I'm not sure how kineticists having legendary proficiency would make their DCs higher than casters, who also get legendary proficiency.

Anyway, it seems a bit silly to give kineticists all these class dc-using abilities if they're just going to become impotent at higher levels because they stop having a passable DC to use them with.

keftiu wrote:

Erik saying he'd also like Minotaurs is giving me the most distant gleam of hope for them one day.

I'd also love to see some kind of trollkin Ancestry, though this might end up being more of the Creature Echo Feat design space. I just thing being gross and regenerative sounds fun!

Honestly given how varied and mutable trolls are, and the fact that they are already at least vaguely intelligent, I could easily see some kind of medium intelligent type of troll occurring without any icky crossbreeding stuff happening.

There's already a couple of medium-sized variants, like flood and sewer trolls.

I doubt it, but I would love to see an archtype for a white necromancero

The Hallowed Necromancer archetype was confirmed at Gencon, I think.

Maybe Paizo has heard my prayers for a playable troll ancestry and is delivering them to us, perhaps as a smaller variant like sewer or flood trolls that can pick a feat to grow large later? You never know.

I'm p sure they are doing undead via archetypes, so i expect we'll see mechanics like living monolith, golem grafter, and oozemorph where you start off in the process of becoming undead and each feat progresses your apotheosis. Because they use class feats though, I suspect we'll actually immunities down the line

Skeletons have been confirmed to be an ancestry. They're also the type of undead that has the most reason to be immune to poison, disease and such.

Alternatively, they could just let it ride with the advice that undead PCs are innately stronger in some ways than most ancestries, and so are best played in a game where everyone is undead.

They could also pair each undead with a vulnerability of some kind as part of the archetype that transforms you.

Negative Healing is usually a huge disadvantage when adventuring with groups of mostly living people, which makes their immunities a bit more manageable in mixed groups.

Goodham wrote:

Psychic having a cantrip focus makes me hope that they have some feature to make Daze a viable cantrip option.

I just want to be able to have a mental attack as my basic combat option instead of having to telekinetically throw forks at people.

What would make it viable for you ?

Having it deal around the same amount of damage as normal 1d4/level cantrips would be the obvious if boring solution.

Psychic having a cantrip focus makes me hope that they have some feature to make Daze a viable cantrip option.
I just want to be able to have a mental attack as my basic combat option instead of having to telekinetically throw forks at people.

The Repeating Hand Crossbow seems like it would work fine for magus, since they usually don't strike more than five times in an encounter.

Of course, using them means investing a lot of feats just to do the same thing as a bow, so it's still not ideal. Hopefully Guns and Gears will feature repeating weapons that are more easily accessible.

A 'Lost Omens Planetary Guide' type book would be pretty nifty sometime down the line.
Brethedans / Barathus will definitely need to be included as a playable ancestry, they're just too cool.

Goodham wrote:

The Constricting Hold feat has the same wording of requiring your eidolon to have a creature grabbed, and I'm sure people aren't going to be arguing that it should be totally unusable because the eidolon using the action can't have their eidolon grab someone because they don't have one.

Not sure where you are going with that. Your Eidolon didn't take that feet, the Summoner did. Therefore the wording is correct. Your Eidolon has somebody grabbed is the trigger. The effect is your eidolon performs the constrict action.

The point others are making about the spell is in this case it is actually the Eidolon casting it and so doesn't have a valid target since the Eidolon doesn't have a companion or an Eidolon itself.

The problem is that the term "your" refers to the creature casting the spell or who owns the feat. In the example you propose with constrict, the feat is still the Summoner's and therefore "your Eidolon" means it works. In the spells case "your Eidolon" doesn't work if it is the Eidolon casting it themselves.

The requirement is not on a feat, it is on an action granted by a feat.

The Constricting Hold feat has the same wording of requiring your eidolon to have a creature grabbed, and I'm sure people aren't going to be arguing that it should be totally unusable because the eidolon using the action can't have their eidolon grab someone because they don't have one.

Worrying about the monsters running up to the Summoner and hitting them seems a bit strange since there is nothing stopping them from doing the same to a wizard, except summoners have almost double the hit points when compared to wizards.

Yeah, Ostentatious Arrival is a free action to turn on, so you'll never accidentally do it.

It is a little odd that that part of the feat hurts you if you ever use it, but I'm not sure it's broken per se.

What makes it even stranger is that the playtest version of the feat didn't deal damage to the summoner.

I hope to see the rest of Golarion's solar system explored in a PF2e book somewhere down the line, if only to see Brethedans become a playable ancestry.

Give me my psychic jellyfish aliens, Paizo!

Goodham wrote:

Being Good doesn't mean that you're infallible, though. A neutral character can think of the goodlies as right-minded but letting their altruism get in the way of doing what's right in the long run.

But "hey, good guy, you're not doing as much good as you can, here's how you can do good better" is not exactly in the portfolio of "neutrality".

If you think a good person is misguided, and you want to help them so they can get more good done, then that's Good, not Neutral.

I think you're conflating two definitions of good here. Neutral people telling good people to be less altruistic (good) because it's a waste of time and effort seems to be fairly in-purview to me. They're not going to kill them for being too self-sacrificing, but they think they are fools for being like that.

I feel like a major issue with "neutral as balance" is that unlike in some other settings, in Golarion Good is actually supposed to be good. Good Gods aren't supposed to be jerks who do harm on purpose, since if they did that then they wouldn't be Good anymore. Evil, likewise, is actually evil and not just misunderstood.

The neutral character who believes "we can't have too much Good in the universe" or would tell a good person "you should be less good" is a deeply disturbed individual.

Being Good doesn't mean that you're infallible, though. A neutral character can think of the goodlies as right-minded but letting their altruism get in the way of doing what's right in the long run.

This is the territory who fight to defend their 'team' (faith, country, family, etc.), whether right or wrong, as long as it doesn't betray their trust by committing atrocities (or I guess, going too altruistic, but what would that even look like?). Basically, they have standards about what they won't do.

I imagine being too altruistic would be something like seeing an outside group in trouble and endangering their chosen group to help them.

Eidolon Ranged Attack feat getting moved down to level 2 from 8 and given the propulsive trait is very nice news.

The Steed Form description seems to be (unclear parts in angle brackets):
"Your eidolon changes to make it particularly effective as your mount. <When> you ride it, you get your full number of actions each round instead of <reducing> them to 2. This applies only when you ride your eidolon, not when <allies do> (see Riding Sapient Creatures sidebar on page 71). Your eidolon <has> to be at least one size category larger than you to ride it. Since you work <as an unit>, your eidolon's move actions while you're mounted gain the tandem <trait>."

I'm not totally sure what the significance of gaining the tandem trait on the eidolon's move actions is.

Nethys is worshipped as a dualistic god of creation and destruction. Obviously his good followers will emphasize his nurturing aspect and the evil ones will focus on the blow-everything-up side, but neutral ones venerate both sides and try to balance between them.

Nature deities like Gozreh have an obvious aspect of balance and cycles to them, since nature requires both life and death. One other significant group of neutral deities are the Psychopomp Ushers and their boss Pharasma, who are also concerned with balancing the flow of the River of Souls, with some of them helping nurture life when its needed and others orchestrating extinction events when people are not dying in time.

I think balance as a concept gets a bad rap because it brings to mind the old druid-laws of D&D that obligated people to kill a baby for every one they saved, but to me that's kind of like the neutral equivalent of the lawful stupid paladin stereotype.

Neutral champions are tricky. Since like "Champion of Civilization", "Champion of Nature", and "Champion of Freedom" are all pretty sensible things to have. But like Magdh (LN) is not really an advocate of Civilization, Neither Nethys nor Brigh (TN) are not really advocates of nature, and Groetus (CN) doesn't seem to have anything to do with freedom.

This problem seems to already exist with the current causes, though. You can have Redeemers of Nethys and Desecrators of Achaekek. Leaving it for the player to explain how their cause and god interact seems to be fine to me.

Abadar might be opposed to slavery but he is also an ally of Asmodeus, the biggest promoter of slavery on Golarion.
I'm not sure how effective trying to free slaves through legal means is when you're dealing with the laws of Hell.

Costing an action to switch makes it the same as taking out a staff that you're wearing for one-handed weapon users. Even for two-handed weapons, it only saves an action.

Another point is that it would make Twisting Tree vastly superior to the other studies because they can actually use their staff spells in combat without spending several turns switching modes on their weapon.

Charon Onozuka wrote:

If you want to cast multiple spells every combat and never make regular strikes - be a wizard.

Pretty big misrepresentation of what I was saying but sure. No one wants the Magus to be a Wizard, but given how slim their resources are I think it's reasonable to wonder how much time the Magus gets to spend being a Magus over the course of a day.

Like I said, mostly optimistic about it, but it was an issue in the playtest and it's kind of uncharted territory in general.

Don't forget that magi also have a class feature (somewhere around level 7 if I remember correctly) that gives them a bunch of low-level spellslots that they can use to cast certain spells determined by their subclass.

One feat from the Ancestry Guide I've wondered about is Fey Disguise. It lets a sprite cast Illusory Disguise once per day.

The problem is that Illusory Disguise limits you to disguising as people who are within 6 inches and 50 pounds of you, which makes the feat rather useless for most Sprite heritages (except for Pixies), since they can only disguise themselves as other tiny humanoids.

I'm not totally sure if this is intended, but the feat could at least have a note on this for people who aren't aware of the exact heights and weights of sprites compared to gnomes, kobolds and other small ancestries.

I believe the first mention of the Five Points and the Dying Wish was in the Tales of Lost Omens: The Dying Wish with the the Pathfinder Society Guide preview.

The changeling story is called The First of Many. Interestingly, they're all by the same author, Rachael Cruz.

I wasn't aware of the first story you linked, thanks for letting me know!

Unfortunately, I misread the story and thought the place they talked about was Padiskar, but the story explicitly makes a point of differentiating between the two places. Which seems to imply that it's not related to the Spawn of Rovagug.

Xethik is right about the Conflux spells granted by the Hybrid Studies at least being able to recharge the Spellstrike. But Invictus is also right that not all Conflux spells will recharge the Spellstrike.

Force Fang was used as the example as not recharging Spellstrike, but instead is a really strong, reliable source of force damage. Shielding Strike is the Conflux spell granted by the Sword-and-Board Hybrid Study, so for 1 Action and 1 Focus Point a Magus can Strike + Raise a Shield/Cast Shield + Recharge.

The quote given by Ashanderai seems to imply that Force Fang does recharge spellstrike:

- “A magus with like move->spell strike; force fang spell strike on two turns is going to wreck house.”

The thing Force Fang was stated to not be is an action compresser like Shielding Strike or, to use a more familiar example from another class, Flurry of Blows.

This is true, however this is also where the rarely used 1 action Heal spell could shine. No matter what, 1 of the 4 actions (due to Act Together) has to go to the Summoner himself, so using that for battle medicine or a 1 action heal spell still gives the Eidolon 3 actions to play with. Not to say having somebody else do it isn't just as good if not better, but it does make for an interesting mechanic.

I can definitely see Vital Beacon being an invaluable tool for Summoners capable of casting it, since they can just hang back and use their one obligatory action to heal while the eidolon does their thing.

Goodham wrote:

Page 244 of the CRB states that "You must spend 4 days at work, at which point you attempt a Crafting check." and there is no way to make it shorter to my knowledge.

Did you read the feat in question?

"These temporary items take you only 1 day to Craft instead of 4. If you're an expert in Crafting, you can Craft these items in 1 hour; if you're a master, you can Craft them in 10 minutes; if you're legendary, you can Craft them in 1 minute."

Yes, but that has no bearing on what I was talking about, since I was talking about what side-effects combining items would have on using crafting outside of Web Weaver.

Apologies if my post was unclear about that.

Goodham wrote:

One problem I see with combined items is that in PF2e crafting any item takes the same amount of time regardless of complexity, which means that a person who wants to create a normal set of clothes quickly is better off crafting winter clothes and stopping halfway through their project.

How so? winter clothes takes 4 days base and normal clothes are 1 day, so if you stop 1/2 way with winter ones, it took 2 days vs a single day for a complete set of normal clothes. So, no problem as it never 'speeds' things up that I can see: you get either a full set of normal clothes or a single shirt or pants layer of winter.

Page 244 of the CRB states that "You must spend 4 days at work, at which point you attempt a Crafting check." and there is no way to make it shorter to my knowledge. I was talking about crafting in general, since only applying this system to the feat would be a bit strange in my opinion.

This whole tangent may have gotten a bit off-topic, however.

Goodham wrote:

If the feat is intended to let you make partial items, it should probably be mentioned in the text itself, since there is no precedent in the rules for that. Something along the lines of 'The items you create cannot have a combined base Price higher than 1 gp'.

I see no reason you can't tie rope ends together for a longer rope, so that's easy. Much the same way, clothes are multiple pieces of clothing you buy as a package [unless you imagine a world where everyone wears a onesies] so it's not hard to imagine making 2 layers of shirts and 2 layers of pants for winter clothes for the 4sp total. Now making an actual single piece of equipment with multiple items is a stretch I know: It would be nice to have it have it spell out you can do it because, as you noted, the list of things you can make is mighty slim without it.

One problem I see with combined items is that in PF2e crafting any item takes the same amount of time regardless of complexity, which means that a person who wants to create a normal set of clothes quickly is better off crafting winter clothes and stopping halfway through their project.

Goodham wrote:

I didn't see this get mentioned yet, so here it is:

A level 1 ancestry feat for Anadi, Web Weaver, seems to have a problem.

The description specifically mentions rope as an item you can make with the feat even though the price limit of 1 sp means that rope is not an item you can actually make with the feat because it costs 5 sp.

In fact, the very low price limit means that the only items you can make are sacks, backpacks and regular clothing, which doesn't seem intended.

Rope is 5 sp for 50' so 10' is 1 sp and within the limit of the feat. You also missed bedroll. So, yes it isn't much. Since you can make 10 items, a DM might allow you to combine items into a bigger one so 50' of rope would be 5 items, Clothing (Winter) 4 items, Tent (Pup) 8 items or a net all 10 items.

If the feat is intended to let you make partial items, it should probably be mentioned in the text itself, since there is no precedent in the rules for that. Something along the lines of 'The items you create cannot have a combined base Price higher than 1 gp'.

I didn't see this get mentioned yet, so here it is:

A level 1 ancestry feat for Anadi, Web Weaver, seems to have a problem.

The description specifically mentions rope as an item you can make with the feat even though the price limit of 1 sp means that rope is not an item you can actually make with the feat because it costs 5 sp.

In fact, the very low price limit means that the only items you can make are sacks, backpacks and regular clothing, which doesn't seem intended.

I imagine it'll have some limitations (either it'll be restricted to Staff Magus but I doubt it) or you need to spend an interract action to switch between the two. Most likely to allow all Magus subclasses to have access to staves and not feel gimped on expanded spellcasting.

I would think that for the cost of a level 6 feat you can have both functionalities at the same time, since 'using an interact action to switch between the two' is already something you can do: You just wear the staff and use an interact action to wield it.

To be fair, that might have been a simple mix up. Avi could have been thinking of the wrong archetype.

Drawing power from your surroundings does sound more of a Geomancy thing than an elementalist thing. And I can't remember them giving a description of Geomancy at all.

It seems unlikely that the elementalist gets a unique selection of spells (which I think was confirmed?) and special stuff based on location.

I would give them a bit more credit than that!

Besides, during the PaizoCon Discord Q&A session this was asked:

Is Geomancy a subset of Elementalism? The way they were described as using elemental environments/terrain features seemed to be very similar.

Which was answered by Mark Seifter:

Geomancy: Terrains

Elementalism: Elements
Separate but you could use them together and it work work very well.

Guntermench wrote:

Albatoonoe wrote:

I can't say I'm not disappointed that we aren't getting more class feats, but archetypes are functionally feats for everyone. The Elementalist let"s me make a Pyromancy Wizard now, and that is cool.

With extra character options being included in APs, there are even more places where we can get new feats from. I'm fact, Strength if Thousands seems like a solid place for that kind of stuff.

Thought Elementalist was more whatever area you're in can affect the strength of spells, and wanted to use all the elements.

I believe that is geomancy. Elementalist seems to be a specialized caster of elemental trait spells like fire, water, etc.

This seems to be a common misconception, but the elementalist class archetype was described thus by Avi Kool, directly quoted from the PaizoCon stream:

"It gives you class options that allow you thrive in different environments and use those elemental environments to evoke your elemental powers. It's not like you pick fire and then that's your one thing that you can do, it's much broader than that. You're feeding off the elements as a whole."

Their description seems to make it clear that elementalist (the class archetype) is an elemental generalist that's powered by their surroundings.

We're getting two in SoM IIRC, the Devotion and Anger Phantoms.

Actually, phantoms are not undead!

As the description of the Phantom trait says:
"A phantom is soul that has diverged from the River of Souls on the Ethereal Plane before being judged. They typically retain memories of their life before death, but are not undead."

From the phrasing of the feature, it seems clear to me that radiation is going to be like diseases and poisons - a type of affliction, not a damage type.

Also to note, blightburn sickness is basically radiation poisoning and is already in PF2e, though typed as a disease.

1. Leshies are actually not humanoids either, they're plants. I haven't really noticed any effects from that other than them not being suspectible to lycanthropy. That also means that you can't pick the Beastkin versatile heritage with them.

2. No, you need a reach weapon to flank when you're tiny.

3. As far as I know, yes. They can move freely through other creatures.

4. I think sprites are around 9 inches tall. The Evanescent Wings feat existing does imply that normally you have to climb around.

Edit: Someone brought to me a rule from page 451

CRB p.451 wrote:

When an attack deals a type of damage, the attack action gains that trait. For example, the Strikes and attack actions you use wielding a sword when its flaming rune is active gain the fire trait, since the rune gives the weapon the ability to deal fire damage.

So by RAW it would, color me surprised !

That is very surprising to me, because it also means that you cannot use a weapon with a flaming rune underwater - at all!

Ashanderai wrote:

The Azarketi Ancestry rules are supposed to premiere in the Absolom book that has been delayed and currently has no release date. The Ancestry Guide was originally meant to come out after the Absolom book. But, Paizo is releasing a PDF on the 24th of this month that will have the Azarketi Ancestry information that is in the Absolom book. See above where everyone is talking about when the PDF will release.

Hm. The description of Azarketi in the Ancestry Guide seems just as comprehensive as the other new ancestries in that book. So I'm curious to see what additional information is in this pdf.

I'm expecting the information on the basic Azarketi ancestry, some heritages and feats.

My detective work leads me to believe that the supplement will have ancient scale, benthic, mistbreath, river and thalassic as the other Azarketi heritages.

Gisher wrote:

The Inheritor wrote:

With the release of the Ancestory guide, I've noticed some of the language around the Duskwalkers has tied them to the Samsara, is this deliberate? Should we expect the Samsarans in the future?

I hope they aren't retconning away their connection to the Manasaputras.

I've been concerned about that since Manaputras was not included in Gods and Magic.

I wouldn't be that concerned. Gods and Magic had to cut a lot of deities out just for page count reasons and the Seven Manasaputra Kumaras weren't ever fleshed out in Pathfinder 1e to my knowledge. They'll probably get included at some point when they make the follow-up book with all the other deities that didn't make the cut.

I think there are only three missing Aasimar lineages: Agathion-, Peri- and Garuda-Blooded. As much as I'm hoping from Manasaputra-Blooded Aasimar, I'm thinking it's going to be those three.

The pleading kobold asks anyone who will listen that he is in need of cold iron weapons to slay the devil that terrorizes his kin.

Looks like Urok rolled low on his +20 Devil Lore knowledge check!

I'm personally looking towards to seeing what dhampirs get - Changelings got a pretty good set of new feats in this book and I hope dhampirs will be similarly fortunate.

Hey, loving parents can still be evil!

Honestly the Versatile Heritage + Lineage feat system fits Skinwalkers so well I would assume Skinwalkers were the prototype if I didn’t see the CRB Playtest document with my own two eyeballs.

Recall, base Skinwalkers didn’t have any particular animal shape, they were just generally bestial, but you could pick up a different heritage to get different skill boosts, unarmed attack, and spell-like abilities. I could very easily see the base heritage giving that change shape ability, with Lineage feats making your form more specific to a certain animal and an additional skill boost.

Edit: In fact if they don’t do I’ll homebrew it myself, once I see how the change shape ability should be typed out via the Kitsune ancestry.

Good point. Lineages would work well here.. I just have a dislike for how they were used with the APG versatile heritages. The fact that you have to choose the lineage feat at level 1 meant that you couldn't pick any of the other level 1 exclusive feats like Darkvision or the tiefling unarmed attacks, which felt really janky to me. Also the benefits of most APG lineage feats felt pretty underwhelming in my opinion.

But you're right that it would work very well for skinwalkers!

You might very well be right about Skinwalkers!
I also considered the possibility of a werecreature heritage, but personally I'd like it to be split into multiple types of werecreatures, like geniekin are separated into five.
I want the option to turn into a shark or a crocodile, not just a wolf!

One ancestry and one heritage? Hmm.
I'm guessing that Ganzi will be able to get a fly speed, which would leave one more ancestry/heritage with access to flight. And there are not that many candidates for heritages among already existing lore that I know of.

Therefore my guesses for the remaining options are Strix and Mortics.

You only have around 3% chance of actually rolling two sixes on your 2d6 finisher to get that 6 damage on a miss, though.

I'd be inclined to agree with Cyouni that it adds your whole finisher damage because otherwise it seems almost completely irrevelevant. You'd get to deal 3 damage at level 17. The feat that Cordell mentioned would basically be a trap option with how little it actually gave you.