Henro's page

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR BLOOD LORDS AHEAD, OBVIOUSLY.

It's possible we lack critical information about the focus point recovery change, but that's also pretty trivial to implement today.

I thought the idea that Drow were a conspiracy cooked up by the Snekmin to be pretty funny. It's not a bad plan either, rattle the elves on the surface and make people who delve underground assume any cavern elves they encounter have sinister motives.

I think if we're returning back to the source and picking a new direction from there, we already have those kinds of analogues in 2E going forwards - cavern elves for one.

But 3pp will be in a much better spot to create something that borrows more heavily from WotC drow. Less to lose and less to protect in case the hammer comes down, and less of their own setting baggage to handle.

I guess that Henro is speaking of the same point already put forward by others : you can currently have 3 Focus Points but regenerate only 1 of them every 10 minutes.

So, 1 Focus point can be used basically once every encounter.

The other 2 Focus Points can only be used once a day.

This has been the sticking point for me, yes. The solution currently is currently quite indirect and I don't think "when your focus pool increases, that doesn't actually give you more focus spells per combat, just one extra per day" is especially intuitive to begin with.

Snowball was, as many of you know, one of the best and most beloved spells in Pathfinder Second Edition. While I realize the reasons why are incredibly obvious to anyone who has been playing the game for a long time, it is probably not as apparent to anyone who is newer to the system. On first glance, many people would in fact draw the other conclusion. For that reason I have included a brief explanation of why Snowball has been such an integral pillar that you can of course skip if you already know all the reasons why.

With the remaster, the fate of Snowball remains uncertain. Will it be removed from Pathfinder Second Edition or worse yet, given a meagre buff in power level which pushes it into mediocrity? Not enough people are asking these questions.

Personally I'm a little worried that the focus point changes might push the game towards greater polarization of power between builds. It is a (probably deserved) early-game boost to casters, but you only get that boost if you pick up the feats that grant additional focus points and focus spells. Furthermore, this will widen the gap between classes that get premium early focus spells and those that don't (or alternatively reduce build diversity for those classes if there are universally good options for archetypes to snag a good focus spell). 2E is generally pretty good about having builds of various levels of optimization be close to one another and I see this as a potential step away from that.

With that said though, making focus pool and point recovery linked is a big win in my eyes. It used to work in a way that was pretty unsatisfying and unintuitive for a lot of new players so I'm happy it changed, it's just that the specific nature of the change has some worrying implications IMO.

None of my players have ever seen a Drow on Golarion, though they probably assume they're down there somewhere. If I ever go downstairs for an adventure I think I'll make the Drow a long-dead civilization the surface dwellers still have legends about. Might make for an excellent setup and "oh s&$*" moment for whatever it was that did them in.

My overall impressions are very positive. A lot of the things getting a second pass are things that I've had some frustrations with in the past, and certain classes like Witch getting a glow-up sound well-deserved. There are some things going with OGL that I'll miss - schools of magic is something I have a great fondness for, though the 2E implementation of wizard schools never did much with the concept so there isn't too much to really miss anyway.

There are other changes I'm at least slightly mixed on. The focus point change is something I'm overall pretty positive about - the janky nature of increasing your pool and recharge separately was something I found myself explaining to new players over and over again so I'm glad those are now interlinked. However, I'm a little wary of the specific way this is being implemented as it both seem to place a greater emphasis on GMs making a distinction between 10 and 20 minute rests (something I am not fond of), and something that could potentially make certain character options that grant early focus spells extremely strong. Changes like this also risk leaving classes stuck in the awkward middle of too old but also too recent to be covered by the remaster in the dust (I'm mostly thinking about Psychic).

I don't use it and I don't especially miss it. Opportunity cost is something I value when it comes to character creation, and none of my players have ever really been too fussed about it. What I often do (and would highly recommend others who don't use Free Archetype try) is sometimes giving out Archetype Feats as quest rewards. Usually these free feats are tied to personal quests and ambitions the PCs have (I'd say I usually give out a feat this way to every PC every 5-6 levels), and it has worked out extremely well in the past for me.

CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR BLOOD LORDS

I am currently running Blood Lords, and I am having a blast! However, I felt that it was a bit of a shame the reputation system doesn't really come into play until the later books. For that reason, I decided to add some "sponsorship rewards" the PCs can get if they reach a certain reputation threshold with a faction. I have currently not decided how much reputation the party should have before they get offered a sponsorship (probably around 15), and I don't think I am going to allow multiple sponsorships. If the PCs decline a sponsorship, they will lose some reputation with the faction they snubbed, but gain some reputation with its enemies.

Anyway, here is two of the sponsorship items the PCs can recieve in case a GM wants to steal them/the idea. Because they are a bit of a handful to port over to the Paizo site, I'll settle for posting one for now but I can post the rest if anyone is interested in using them. I also wouldn't mind hearing other people's thoughts on this idea/items before I use them in game.

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CELEBRANTS
Bloodclone - Ritual 6
Rare, Necromancy
Cast Time 10 Hours
Duration One Year
Cost a tub of prepared special blood worth 200 gp
Primary Check Arcana, Religion or Occultism (expert)
Secondary Check Crafting or Society
Secondary Casters 2
The Bloodclone ritual was created by the Celebrant faction as a way to be in multiple places at once, as limiting yourself to just one party at a time was too restrictive. The blood clone has no combat abilities, but can use the charisma-, wisdom and intelligence-based skills of the copied creature. The clone looks like the original, though it has telltale signs which reveal it is not the same upon close inspection, such as a red tint to its skin. The clone has the memories of the original from when it was cloned. When the duration ends, the blood clone melts into a puddle of normal blood. However, the copied creature can absorb the blood clone at any point during the duration to gain some or all of the memories from it.

Critical Success As success, except the blood clone uses a modifier 1 lower than the original for mental skill checks.

Success The ritual is successful. When the blood clone uses a mental skill check, it uses a modifier 2 lower than the original.

Failure The ritual fails, and the same creature can't attempt to create a blood clone of itself for 1 month. Half of the material components used in the ritual can be salvaged. 

Critical Failure The ritual appears to succeed, but the resultant blood clone holds a grudge towards its creator and attempts to secretly undermine them.

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TAX COLLECTOR'S UNION
Taxman's Mark - Item 11
Artifact, Magical, Transmutation
Usage Worn Tattoo
A Taxman's Mark is a unique magical tatoo, usually etched onto the hands or arms. By Gebbite tax law, a bearer of a Taxman's Mark has the right to extract taxes from officiants of any major faction of Geb, other than the tax collector's union. A copy of the mark is then applied to the officiant, indicating they have paid their taxes to a bearer. Overuse may sour relations with certain factions.

Destruction Each Taxman's Mark is bound to the original copy of The Dead Laws, an artifact in its own right. If The Dead Laws is destroyed, so are all the Taxmen's Marks.

A lot of the data you would get from a playtest already exists given these rules have been out in the wild for four years at this point.

It appears that the link stopped working at some point. I'm not sure how many people this would affect, if any, but I figure I might as well make sure there's an up-to-date link in case anyone happens to stumble on this thread.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l_642uWTwp0yvADFjwtJsXy-cPqqYThU/view?usp= sharing

I would have preferred to just edit the original post but this will have to do I suppose.

I'm not sure if underpowered is the word I would use, but the Lich archetype definitely feels a bit underbaked to me. It makes sense as a caster archetype, but does not offer much if anything for casters who aren't Wizards or Magi (The fist upgrade is very nice for a magus).

I did some light homebrew on the side to add some more spice to the Lich archetype. It's just two feats, but I'll link them here since they're relevant.

The special spells granted by this feat are not intended to be much more potent than spells of the same level, if at all. Instead, it's intended as a way to give Liches access to a broader suite of premium necromancy spells if they choose to invest in it.

I apologize for using Evil necromancy to revive a long-dead thread.

The other day, I found an interesting tidbit on page 456 of the CRB:

"Many area effects describe only the effects on creatures in the area. The GM determines any effects to the environment and unattended objects."

This which reminded me of this thread and the discussion surrounding collateral damage. Turns out the game more or less handles it like I wanted it to after all, which was a pleasant surprise to be sure. Fireballs do in fact destroy unattended chairs (unless the GM is a hardass about it).

The only reason I bring this up is to the benefit of future 2E GMs who stumble onto this thread - it took me two years before I even found this passage after all.

EDIT: Wait... Did Lethe really bring up this passage on the second comment??? How did I miss that back then??? Then why did I even...? Anyway, don't mind me, carry on.

It depends a lot on the situation. I'll generally allow a takeback, and will give my players information or context in advance of certain actions if I think their characters would be aware of some critical piece of information that they missed. A chasm may look fairly safe in a player's mind, but the PC can see it and knows just how deadly a fall would be.

However, at some point an action has happened, and choices are made as a result of that action. At that point it's too late for rollbacks - not because of realism or grit but because the choices and actions subsequent to the rollback are valuable too.

Are there? The Daikyu seems rather unique in its awfulness. I have trouble thinking of a weapon that's as bad as it, maybe only the heavy crossbow. And even then, I can think of more characters that would make use of a heavy crossbow just because it's simple.

Sort of late reply, but I think Heavy Crossbow is actually pretty sweet depending on who's using it. The key is never ever reloading, which is totally feasible as a low level Wizard (you're probably not using those hands for anything for the first couple of levels anyway). Getting a d12 ranged attack once per fight is not unlike getting an extra focus spell, and once you've fired you can drop the crossbow as a free action if you need to use those hands for anything. IMO, low level crossbow usage is actually pretty optimal for a lot of characters.

But Daikyu sucks, yes.

I want something in the design space of the 1E occultist (martial who prepares special items which change around their playstyle). I'm not at all married to many or any of the specific mechanics of 1E occultist though (and Antiquarian is a really good name). So that's probably the new class I'd like to see.

Quite like these categories as roles. Can you apply them to the classes with rankings?

Here's a ranking I did in the past. These are entirely based on limited personal experience with the classes, and I don't feel the same way about all of them anymore. Hopefully the conversation in this thread is of some use.

EDIT: Also, I should note that these ratings only really apply to base-class only with no Archetyping. I think ratings like these start to break down completely when you try and take archetypes into account.

EDIT the second: I will also note, having a perfect 5 in this rating is not the same as being Tier 1. In most games, many martial PCs tend to need to play at least 2 of these roles, switching between them as needed.

My initial role classification for martials in combat was;

"Supported Striker" (Giant Barbarian would be the posterboy for this, and so would Rogue. This role focuses on dealing big damage, but usually needs help from the rest of the party to operate at max efficiency and also just to stay alive)

"Independent Striker" (Monk is the best example of this role. This role focuses on skirmishing, helping out with flanking, and generally being in the right place at the right time. Mobility and action economy is a big focus)

"Tank" (To tank, you need two things; bulk and tanking abilities. The tanking abilities usually come in the form of reactions like AoO. Generally wants to punish enemies if they decide to attack the frailer party members. Best example is obviously Champion)

"Support" (For a martial this mostly means buffs & debuffs, and to be honest it's a bit of a misc category mostly there for Alchemist. However, Rogue and Investigator would be two other classes that do some useful things in this regard.)

This classification focuses less on abilities in a vacuum, which I think is important when rating classes from a combat role perspective. I also don't think casters and martials can be rated against each other in any meaningful way. They tend to occupy fairly discrete spaces within the party, and the fact that casters start out somewhat below curve but generally scale slightly ahead of martials complicates things further.

I use the same metric as Exo for some things (role classification), and while I think that metric would be the place to start for proper tiers, I also think actually doing tiers like this becomes too complex to actually go anywhere.

This has been a helpful thread in helping provide uses for that spell. When going over spells, I looked past it as it didn’t seem particularly impressive at first glance. Removing all reactions on a successful save now does seem a great way to throw a wrench in my players’ tactics.

Muahaha! And they will have all of you to thank...or blame.

Notably, the spell is a lot less powerful in the hands of a GM since you lose the spell's best case scenario (full party vs a solo enemy). In the hands of a boss monster, the spell is quite weak. However, it can still be a useful one to remove annoying PC reactions like AoO, especially when the enemies are in a group.

The secret use of this spell is that it's unbelievably good. It's gotten a bit of a reputation of being a bit OP at my tables.

The trick to it is using it against solo bosses or other fights with few opponents. At that point, you're not trading actions 1 for 1 - you're trading 1/12th of the party's actions for 1/3th of the enemy actions, and their reaction. It's an exceptionally good deal for a 2nd level spell.

Honestly I am surprised I haven't heard more people talk about wealth as a limited resource because there is a large block of posters to this forum that have pretty negative opinions about consumables and view the destructibility of shields as an impediment to their use as opposed to incentive for the GM to keep giving out new, more level appropriate shields as the game progresses.

I feel compelled to chime in as a staunch anti-permanent-item destruction poster. I still strongly support consumable use and am a huge fan of tactical scroll use and the spell slot liberation that comes with them.

My beef with shield destruction in particular is that shields aren't consumables - they're permanent items - and therefore occupy a different role in the game's economy. The game is ready and balanced around players spending consumables but not magic item.

This thread needn't become another shield thread (and I apologize in advance if I inadvertently cause that to happen) - just wanted to clarify why someone might be vehemently against permanent shield destruction but not consumable use.

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As a GM, I rather frequently give out consumables like scrolls earlier than the players are expected to have them - to give the players a taste of later power (potentially influencing their build decisions if they find a spell they like more than expected), and giving them a super-tool to get them out of a jam.

I had a recent online conversation which made me warm up a little towards Clinging Ice. Previously I wrote it off because while it's very action-efficient, I thought it would run out of steam too quickly unless you face off against several foes (not dealing damage on sustain, coupled with temporary immunity, means you can only damage one particular creature once per combat.)

However, it was pointed out that the sustained -5/-10 movement speed can actually be really impactful in solo encounter, specifically against enemies with a 25ft speed, due to the fact that these enemies then become super easy to kite. Having that utility in solo fights (against 4+ enemies it's just plain old efficient damage), definitely got me past my poor first impression of the spell a little.

I wonder how much of the shield problem we could solve by making destroyed shields salvageable (possibly in downtime) without a significant GP expense.

Since "you can't use your cool magic shield until you get back to town" seems less punitive than "that's some money wasted."

Incidentally, this is basically how I run things at my table. A destroyed magic item counts as 90% of the destroyed item's value in materials - so it can be remade with crafting/paying an NPC for a reforge. This has the added bonus of making crafting a more generally useful skill.

Not sure how having the choice is punishing over it just happening without a choice on the players part.

Again, the only thing I really care about here is permanent magic item destruction, which I don't think should be a thing in the game. If shields could be destroyed without player input, I'd think that was an even bigger problem than what we currently have.

Personally I just feel that blocking a big attack with your shield and barely hanging on is a great cinematic moment and feels good as a player to do - therefore I think the game is in error when it punishes this exact behavior.

I will add that I have no personal gripe with knowing the damage before blocking, just with permanent shield destruction (and magic item destruction in general).

I think the big disconnect comes from the fact that 2E operates opposite to how you expect the fiction to work in this regard.

Fiction: "It seems my foe is coming in for a devastating attack... I have no choice but to sacrifice my trusty shield if I want to remain standing"

2E: "It seems my foe is coming in for a devastating attack... Now is the time to intentionally not block with my shield, taking the attack head on and dropping unconscious. Falling in combat is just a temporary setback, while losing my shield would be near-permanent damage"

Shield destruction is the game giving you an option it's not prepared for you to take. Generally, I think its bad that the game lets you potentially break your character's economy for a temporary advantage. At best, it basically never gets used.

You're being very aggressive in probing me right now, which I can't say I appreciate. The Wild + Life witch brought it to a oneshot which wasn't specifically prepared for what each individual PC might look like - I feel like I should be allowed to run those too. And yes, the Witch played really poorly... I really don't know why you find that so hard to believe. He cast his spells and didn't have a lot to fall back on after that unlike the other casters in the party.

Shroud comes from whiteroom and online conversations - APs apparently have a lot darkvision as you reach higher levels.

See, I think we're talking past each other at this point. What I'm talking about currently is less a power issue and more of a design issue. Being penalized for making easy-to-make choices just doesn't feel very good. I personally feel like Wilding Word is a badly designed focus cantrip because it ties so much of your character's early game power to something so situation-dependent. It reminds me a lot of the kind of hyper-specialization you'd find in 1E, actually.

However, if the Wizard>Witch part of the conversation is what matters the most to you, I will gladly concede that point. I don't especially feel like trying to argue for an absolute like that (because it's impossible, Witch will always have at least some things it does better than a Wizard, even though I don't think most of them matter), even though I personally believe Wizard for the most part beats Witch in every way that matter.

Also;

So because there are 3 Hex cantrips, two of which are excellent in the proper circumstances and one of which has a heavy narrative focus, the whole Class is worse than the Wizard?

You make 3 sound like an insignificant amount. I understand you won't concede these spells are bad - that's fine, we don't have to agree there. But try to also understand my perspective here; I think all of these spells are really bad, and that's almost half of the available Hex Cantrips. Given this, do you really think it's unfair of me to think this affects the overall power of the class?

In one group she was the most effective action economy user by a large margin. Evil Eye Occult is a fantastic Witch and I have no idea how anyone in their right mind would call it "bad".

Evil Eye is quite, no doubt. If a new player selected that path, I think they'd have a good experience with the class.

Not really. The only real exception to choices being "asbolutely abysmal" is Eldritch Nails, but that's more of an issue with no in-class support for the Class Feat than anything else.

Nails really isn't the abysmal option I'm talking about. That's just one feat - if the rest of the character is good "wasting" a single feat isn't going to murder it. I'm specifically talking about bad hex cantrips, which in my experience make or break a Witch's early game.

The most obvious one to me is Wilding Word - having your hex cantrip be that situational is just a horrible time. Shroud of Night and Discern Secrets fall into the same box partially to me - they're certainly not as situational as Word by any means, but both have pretty serious table variance. For Discern Secrets, the combat utility will largely come down to how the GM runs creature identification. I think I'm a lot more generous than many tables on that front (I tend to allow my players to ask 1 or 2 questions about a monster on a successful ID) but even then I think Discern is a little so-so. Shroud is theoretically pretty cool, but is seriously hurt by the fact that everything and their mother has darkvision, exponentially so as you level. At the very least it's at its best in the earlygame, which is where Witches need the most help.

Many of the other Hex Cantrips are okay-ish. I think Evil Eye is the only standout one that really justifies the sacrifices the class makes, but my biggest Witch issues comes from allowing people to make incredibly poor, mostly irreversible, choices at level 1.

If your experience is that the Witch is weak, describe some experiences then. I can talk about how Evil Eye Witch, solid Recall Knowledge, and Weakness targeting turned the Witch into an MVP during a few encounters.

The absolute worst I've seen would be a Wild + Life Witch in a one-shot without animals. You're free to argue that that doesn't represent all of witch - and I'd agree, it's about the worst the class can possibly be. However, I think it's a pretty big problem the class can perform that poorly just based on a basic 1st level choice.

(I should clarify; this isn't me saying Witch is bad just because about the worst-case scenario is bad. I do think Witch is bad for this among other reasons - this is just me providing part of my experience since you did ask for it. If the Witch was overall great with one single terrible worst-case scenario, I'd look at the class a lot more favorably)

Henro wrote:

Midnightoker wrote:

You can sustain multiple Hex Cantrips and Focus spells at once which is the major difference between them and other spells of their type.

This made me really excited because I thought I'd missed some kind of serious upside for the witch that I didn't see before. The statement makes me feel like Witches have a way to sustain multiple hexes as part of 1 action.

I don't think that was what he meant, but indeed there is actually is a way for witches to do that at level 20.

Hex Master

I am aware of that feat... Not a huge fan of it for a 20th level feat personally (the baseline of an extra 10th slot is really good so capstone caster feats like that usually need to be strong to compete, and I think this one is pretty mid).

I think the direct damage calculation is a little disingenuous - MM has significantly lower damage than other spells as a direct result of always hitting, which raises average damage by quite a bit, even when accounting for crits.

If keeping the cone effect is very important (and I'm not saying it's not, it's a neat effect), you could always write that into the item rather than the spell. So the Greater ring would read "Cast Rampush (4th or whatever). When you cast the spell using 3 actions this way, blablabla." Something I'm strongly in favor of is magic items altering spells in certain ways - I think that's a good design space.

You can sustain multiple Hex Cantrips and Focus spells at once which is the major difference between them and other spells of their type.

This made me really excited because I thought I'd missed some kind of serious upside for the witch that I didn't see before. The statement makes me feel like Witches have a way to sustain multiple hexes as part of 1 action. If that's the case, I still couldn't find it on my latest read-through. Could you elaborate what you mean by this so I can figure out if I've actually been missing some important feature of the class.

As for the rest of the comment; my views on Witches are entirely rooted in practical experience. In practice, I do believe the class mostly becomes "strictly worse Wizard". If you know what you're doing and select good hexes, lessons, and so on, you end up with a passable baseline caster - certain good enough to serve you well across a campaign. The issues I've seen are more so when you don't make these "correct choices", in which case the class can feel absolutely abysmal.

Current Witches have all the drawbacks of Wizards and none of the upsides. Unless you can snipe really specific focus spells (the fact that we need to bring in Rare options says a lot), the class is mostly just not good.

The lategame of the class is.. fine. The basic caster chassis does better the higher levels get, but the earlygame of many witch setups is among the worst in the game. Class is in a really bad spot atm.

I feel like we're drifting sort of off topic with "can Rampush feasibly be a variable action spell", but I honestly just don't see the hurdles you're describing at all. The spell doesn't need to be the same level as Magic Missile, and it certainly doesn't need to share the same damage scaling. Individual damage numbers can be tweaked if need be, though I think giving up the auto-hit from MM is a fair enough trade for some knockback.

You could make the exact same argument for Boots of Elvenkind.

It's possible I could, but I wouldn't. The effect on Boots of Elvenkind translates far less cleanly into a spell - something that generally holds true for these kinds of "smaller-action" effects stuck on items that I tend to look more favorably upon. A "Rampush spell" would need minimal tweaking (damage numbers adjusted based on level, mostly). An "Elven Step spell" would be a lot harder to envision as a slotted spell - the effect is just too small to cleanly fit into that design paradigm.

(The Boots also don't suffer from the whole DC thing either which means I inherently like them more but that's sort of beside the point.)

At some point you have to say "What do magic items get to do?", and I think the space that Ring of the Ram and Boots of Elvenkind have progressed into with regards to the action economy is where I'd like to see more items.

It's entirely possible I'm just misunderstanding you somehow here, though from this comment I get the sense we're somehow talking past each other.

My gripe was never about what magic items were and weren't allowed to do - I think anything that's already a spell could be stuck on a magic item, so I'm not trying to exclude certain effects from magic items. Rather, I think it's an uneconomical design to give magic items unique effects unless there are specific reasons these effects can only appear on magic items - and there are a lot of reasons an effect might only show up on a magic item; just none that I can see on the Ring*.

If there was a variable-action spell that worked exactly like the Ring currently does, and the ring worked exactly as it does currently only it calls that spell rather than spelling out the unique effect on the item, do you think the game would hurt or lose anything?

*Okay, that's not entirely true. I can actually see one reason, which is that a hypothetical Rampush spell would probably want to heighten with a (+1) for linear damage scaling, but the ring also adds an additional effect for the greater version. I don't think this reason is good enough to lock away this effect on a single item rather than making it more generally available, but I'm going to mention it anyway.

Henro wrote:

Unless I can come up with a compelling reason why this specifically needs to be an item and also not a spell, I'm not sure why I would do that.

Well for starters, it can be used by someone that isn't a caster, which is a big portion of what makes it awesome.

So would a version of Ring of the Ram that said "cast Rampush (DC 22)." Plenty of magic items exist that cast spells, and martials can use those no problem. When I look at Ring of the Ram, I just see a neat effect that can tragically only be used for a really small portion of a character's career due to the fixed DC, while also being locked to only ever being a magic item.

Why does some effect being *possible* to make into a spell *require* you to do so? Honest question.

I don't think that's what I said. However, as a designer/GM I get a lot more utility out of a spell than if I stick the same effect on a magic item. A hypothetical Ring of the Ram which just read "cast Rampush" rather than the current version would have let me give more options to more characters with the same amount of design. Unless I can come up with a compelling reason why this specifically needs to be an item and also not a spell, I'm not sure why I would do that.

Not related to the Ram conversation, but something I'm fiercely against is fixed DCs - really hate that the game took that route. Having class/spell DC be default for item DCs would have done wonders for this game I think.

I consider Witch to be the worst caster in the game atm. Worse than Wizard by a long shot imo.

Oh hey, I also had this exact idea the other day. Great minds think alike!(?) I think Gunslingers need a stronger mechanical core than "gun user" - and reloading fits the bill pretty well, while also future-proofing the class for any potential non-gun, non-crossbow reload weapons down the line.

I think there is a lot of design space for reload mechanics. In addition to what you said;
-Abilities that let you augment a reload, such as loading a gun with special ammunition.
-Abilities that let you use an unloaded weapon to some kind of effect, such as bluffing a shot for a Feint/Demoralize or similar.
-Abilities that let you use a loaded weapon for purposes other than striking, such as firing warning shots.

I really don't understand why Scaring NPCs to Death is more of an issue than stabbing them with a sword. If they're lowish level compared to the Barbarian, he or she could probably destroy them in one round either way.

This came up during one of my games. Total protection against all inhaled threats on a reaction is far more than I would want or expect a 1st level spell to cover. The spell is also worded ambiguously, the trigger seems to clash with the spell text. Things get weirder in situations where you don't know there's an inhaled threat, or when it isn't overtly lethal.

My solution was giving air bubble the same effect as holding your breath versus an inhaled threat (described on CRB 550). Which is to say, a +2 bonus to the save.

If I were to run paid games, any "reasonable" price I were to set would be a rather low rate for my time and effort. And the downsides are unreasonable to me - it would completely shift the dynamic between me and my players and it would add a lot of stress to the hobby for me.

However, I do have my players join in to pay for certain equipment, like any APs we run and certain types of software we can all use (most recently FoundryVTT). I don't think this is necessarily payment for a service, but more so a way to distribute the burden of investment the GM makes into the game.

As for the topic at hand. I hardly think it's unreasonable for communities to not want people to advertise paid games, even in lfg. Some communities may not want the promotion of any paid service/product without approval, and that's their prerogative. Paid games are inherently a different player/GM relationship compared to a non-paid game, I don't think it's reasonable to expect the two to be viewed/treated the same way in every community.

I think Wizard is a very strong class after ~level 5, in the hands of a player who knows what they're doing. Both spellsub and spellblend can put in some serious work.

I would probably say Oracle because the Curses/Mysteries make me really excited to build for that class.

While PF2 does things different in some regards, I feel that it is arriving at effectively the same place. It's just taking a better route.

While this is at least kind of true, I do think there are also large differences that don't just come down to choosing a different route to accomplish the same thing. The biggest one for me is where the game places PC optimization. In 1E, optimization happened in CharGen - the strength of your character was the biggest factor in determining how effectively you were able to handle encounters. Whereas in 2E, optimization happens during encounters, depending heavily on PC tactics.

In 2E, a party of average characters who use advanced combat tactics will most likely do much better than a party of optimized characters who don't. In 1E, the reverse was true.