Joey Cote's page

Oh, spells that increase your size (enlarge person, etc) increase the damage of ranged weapon attacks (bows, throwing axes, etc not rays).

At least one creature, (the mythic crystal creature in the warded circle), has two DRs listed and it stacks them (lists the creature as having 25DR and 10DR, damage for less then 36 did nothing). But that might be some mythic ability it has.

The save to avoid dying from a coup de grace isn't 10+ damage dealt from the attack. Not sure what it is exactly but I was coup de gracing a creature for well over 100 damage and it was making it's saves on a 35ish. Maybe it is doing 10+base damage for the attack and not including the autocrit damage.

Animal companion stats are either way off (as they were in Kingmaker) or I have been misinterpreting the druid animal companion table. The animal companion stats are much higher then they should be, including natural armor bonus, which makes them really great at avoiding taking hits and laughing off the damage when something does actually hit them.

All you need to do to flank an opponent is have at least one other person threatening them. Makes it absurdly easy to do precision damage.

Diego Rossi wrote:

Joey Cote wrote:

Maybe if they simply had an ability that would allow them to be considered to be flanking any opponent an ally was also threatening. A teamwork feat would be good for that, since it would require other players to also take it and most melee's would see it as being worth taking.

Gang Up (link fixed)

Its utility depends on the number of melee combatants in your party and your willingness of spending a feat to take Combat Expertise.
If you have a party member who uses summoning or has an animal companion it should work well.
Note that party members with reach will make it way easier to use.

Hmm. Going to be running a campaign as soon as our present one ends. I have been reworking more then a few feats and some of the core rules to get rid of things that really annoy me. I think removing the combat expertise requirement for Gang Up would fit perfectly in that list.

I think the biggest problem with the rogue is the difficulty in using their precision damage due to both the difficulty in anyone without teleportation or invisibility like ability to get into a flanking position and the very limited situations where an opponent would be flat-footed.

And even if they can somehow safely get into such a position it can put them in extreme danger. If there are multiple opponents they might then concentrate on and flank the rogue. If the rogue has positioned to get on the opposite side of a big, nasty opponent and the opponent chooses to attack the more squishy rogue? Now the rogue is in a bad position for a healer to be able to help.

I love the rogue's massive amount of skill points and enormous list of class skills. Close in stealth isn't even vaguely reliable in my opinion. But I do think that their rogue talents could use a serious reworking with an eye to helping them be able to use their precision damage and making their stealthing more feasible.

Maybe if they simply had an ability that would allow them to be considered to be flanking any opponent an ally was also threatening. A teamwork feat would be good for that, since it would require other players to also take it and most melee's would see it as being worth taking.

I really love Second Chance for melees swinging two handed weapons.

Iron Will is another feat I will almost always try to buy as early as I can.

The real problem with Vital Strike is that it's entirely dependent on swinging a big weapon. So it's really for Enlarged Impact Butchering Axes or shapechanging druids. Otherwise it's junk. So I house-ruled it to +BAB damage and eliminated the Improved and Greater versions.

Interesting. How do you deal with crits multiplying damage if it is a straight +damage bonus and not additional dice?

How does devastating strike work in conjunction with your house rule?

Sigh, anything that the adventure gives me that the party can actually use. I am so sick of large and small sized weapons with nice abilities that are vendor bait because no one can use them without taking a hefty penalty.

My first kneejerk reaction is Heighten metamagic because I find the idea that if you use a higher level spell slot to cast a spell it isn't considered that level for anything that is concerned with the spell's level (primarily DC) is utterly beyond comprehension.

As a player in our campaign we knew a dragon was soon going to attack our town. I had managed to purchase dust of disappearance, potion of heroism and potion of fly in order to try to deal with the creature. I spent the entire duration of the dust of disappearance completely whiffing while trying to hit the dragon or trying to catch up with the dragon as it flew away only to stop and set another building alight. In the end, our archer and wizard did enough damage to it that the dragon decided to retreat.

It felt really, really bad to have blown thousands of gold in one shot magic items to have done nothing in the battle, especially when "defeating" the opponent also resulted in the town taking quite a bit of damage and not gaining anything out of the fight. And now I don't have that money to upgrade my other equipment.

So, I guess what I am trying to illustrate is that especially in a PnP game like Pathfinder expendable items can be a major cost. As one of my friends put it, "Using things like that feels like throwing gold into the void." That heroism and fly potion as well as the dust of disappearance should have given me a good chance to really impact the fight, but due to disadvantage of random dice rolls it was all a waste.

I don't mind the prerequisite for the combat maneuver feats so much since the feats provide a large modifier to the maneuver and give defense against the same. And the greater version are a bit sick in what they allow (in many cases). It's just that by the present rules the players get punished twice, once with a provoked AOO, and if that connects, then an almost guaranteed failed check for the actual maneuver (which might have even more negative consequences other then just failure).

I think I am going to throw out Greater Cleave as I have never once seen it used and put Whirlwind in it's place. Whirlwind being part of the cleave chain seems fair more thematic then it being part of the spring attack chain.

Combat maneuvers don't provoke. It makes for a far more interesting combat when players don't get punished for trying actions without having invested in specific feats.

Trying to figure out how I want to integrate the ritual system of spell casting from PF2 into PF1. I know I want it, because there are a lot of great ideas for story there.

I think the flaming enchantment would still do damage, but it would just be the 1d6 fire damage. Disrupting I don't think should do anything against an undead.

True, both disrupting and flaming both include the "hit" language. But the flaming enchantment "surrounds" the weapon in fire, so even if the weapon cannot hit the box or undead, the energy radiating from the blade should. Disrupting doesn't indicate that it radiates any energy so requires interaction between the weapon and the undead.

But both those are RAI arguments. Pure RAW, since the weapon cannot hit the flaming and disrupting enchantments shouldn't work.

Radiant energy is one of the stupidest enchantments at +4 cost that I have ever seen.

Could let the players continue on with their plans to attack Sandypoint, and while they are doing that the goblins with the support from the folks in the fort also attack the town, and the players.

Two fairly obvious suggestions -

1) Any melee weapon you wield gains the Flaming Burst trait.

2) Cast quickened scorching ray 3/day at an innate ability so that it treats your character level as your caster level.

I would think that in a situation where the person was babbling, say due to insanity, the tongue spell would simply translate the words but not provide any clarity because the tongue spell doesn't read minds, it just translates language.

I don't think it would give additional clarity in a situation with a really low intelligence or an extremely inarticulate person trying to explain something either.

Mounted archery, just add the abilities to mounted combat. Archers really don't need another feat tax.

I think the "this combat maneuver provokes an attack of opportunity unless you have (Improved x)" was one of the biggest mistakes in the game. Sure, have the improved feat, just let it have the static +2 bonus to perform the feat, that is good enough. Having combat maneuvers provoke means that when characters (or monsters) want to try something a little out of their box they usually get enormously punished because the if someone hasn't already used up the opponent's AOO then they stand a good chance of getting hit, which is bad enough, but that hit is probably going to cause the maneuver to fail.

I don't like the formula's for common items. Just say the characters know them. But having the characters search out/quest for formulas for uncommon/rare items? That seems very reasonable and can even be fun.

I think I would make working with uncommon/rare materials a formula in and of itself. I.E. you wouldn't need a formula to know how to make mithral chainmail and a different formula for a mithral breastplate. You would just need a formula to teach you how to forge mithral.

A weapon that is +5 or better is considered all alignments for the purpose of bypassing aligned DR. The rule is in the Glossary section in the rules for Damage Reduction.

Also, the same section says
"Overcoming DR: Damage reduction may be overcome by special materials, magic weapons (any weapon with a +1 or higher enhancement bonus, not counting the enhancement from masterwork quality), certain types of weapons (such as slashing or bludgeoning), and weapons imbued with an alignment."

But the beastiary section on damage reduction also says

"Some monsters are vulnerable to good-, evil-, chaotically, or lawfully aligned weapons. When a cleric casts align weapon, affected weapons might gain one or more of these properties, and certain magic weapons have these properties as well. A creature with an alignment subtype (chaotic, evil, good, or lawful) can overcome this type of damage reduction with its natural weapons and weapons it wields as if the weapons or natural weapons had an alignment (or alignments) that matched the subtype(s) of the creature."

I don't think that an intelligent weapon having an alignment is the same thing as it being imbued with an alignment (such as it would have if it had the Holy ability) and it wouldn't have the alignment subtype automatically anymore then a player character would.

Or you could pull off a Megamind ending. The party sees the heroes get killed. They go on doing whatever it was they need to do, and any attempts to bring the heroes back to life fail. At some point near the end of the campaign, the characters find out the heroes are actually alive and just decided they no longer wanted to be heroes so faked their own death.

There's also this FAQ that everyone seems to have forgotten about.

FAQ wrote:

Alchemist, Tentacle/Vestigial Arm: What does "extra attacks" mean for these discoveries?

It means "extra," as in "more than you would be able to make if you didn't have that discovery."

For example, if you're low-level alchemist who uses two-weapon fighting, you can normally make two attacks per round (one with each weapon). If you take the tentacle discovery, on your turn you can make
* two weapon attacks but no tentacle attack,
* a weapon attack with your left hand plus a secondary tentacle attack, or
* a weapon attack with your right hand plus a secondary tentacle attack.
At no time can you make a left hand weapon attack, a right hand weapon attack, and a tentacle attack on the same turn because the tentacle discovery says it "does not give the alchemist any extra attacks or actions per round." This language is calling out that the tentacle is not a standard natural weapon and doesn't follow the standard rules for using natural weapons (which would normally allow you to make the natural weapon attack in addition to your other attacks).

Likewise, if you instead took the vestigial arm discovery and put a weapon in that arm's hand, on your turn you can make
* a weapon attack with your left hand and one with your right hand,
* a weapon attack with your right hand and one with your vestigial arm, or
* a weapon attack with your left hand and one with your vestigial arm,
At no time can you make a left hand weapon attack, a right hand weapon attack, and a vestigial hand weapon attack on the same turn because the vestigial arm discovery says it "does not give the alchemist any extra attacks or actions per round."
The exact same restrictions would apply if your race had claws or you had some other ability to add claws to your limbs: the text of both discoveries says they do not give you any

...

I don't agree with your interpretation. Swinging two two handed weapons isn't any additional attacks, which is all that FAQ talks about. It is giving potentially more powerful attacks, but not more. In the spirit of the FAQ, not making the alchemist more powerful in melee, that might be true. But just using the vestigial limb to hold a light weapon, and using a two handed weapon in your primary hands, would also make the alchemist more effective in melee, and that seems to be allowed. Even using a two handed weapon and a shield would also make the alchemist more effective, and it seems pretty unlikely that FAQ was intended to prevent that.

Dragon Disciple, I always loved that class.

Mystic Theurge, no idea what they would do to make it work and either not break the magic system or make it worthless archetype, but I can hope.

Paladin of Ababar multiclassing into ranger for crossbow feats?

This feat has a couple of important parts.

1)You keep a spell book with all your occult spells in it. This includes all your "repetoire" spells.
2)You can use the Occultism skill to learn occult spells. This means you can learn Occult spells that are not part of your normal spell "repertoire".
3) During daily preparations you can take any one spell in your book and add it to your repertoire. If this one of the spells already in your repertoire it becomes a signature spells, if it isn't then you treat as any other spell in your repertoire until you prepare spells again the next day.

It has two powerful effects. One it gives you potential access to additional occult spells if you can hunt them down and learn them. Two it gives you one extra spell a day that you can cast.

Example, a 6th lvl bard with esoteric polymath would have 5 cantrips, 3- 1st level spells, 3- 2nd level spells, and 3 -3rd level spells in their repertoire. The bard could then choose any one spell that they learned (which they have scribed in their spell book) and add it to that repertoire, so they might have 4- 3rd level spells that they could cast, but still would only be able to cast 3- 3rd level spells a day.

It gives the bard a bit of flexibility in that you can choose a spell to add to your repertoire each day which might give you an advantage in situations you know you are going to face.

At least, this is my understanding of how this feat works.

I think it's just a misprint. I would imagine they either meant for 1 day to be L or a week to be one bulk.

As written its pretty funny.

I was looking at the 11th level bombs and just not understanding the design here. Needing an attack roll they basically do 3 dice of damage, do 3 persistent damage, and get a +2 to hit. But an 11th wizard using their electrical cantrip does 5d4 on up to two targets with a reflex save. The damage seems pretty much the same. And the cantrip damage actually goes up far faster then the bomb damage. The bomb's splash damage is pretty insignificant, even with feat that using their int modifier instead of the normal splash damage. At 11th level that is probably only +2 more damage then the base, +3 if the GM is generous and gave the player a +2 int modifying magic item. The bombs do have secondary effects, but only the lightning bomb's causing the target to become flat footed seems very significant.

Nothing about the alchemist makes me even vaguely want to play one. The extracts are basically weak spells and there isn't enough variety. Moderate healers so long as whatever your fighting doesn't have attacks of opportunity or your people aren't weapon and shield fighters. Mutagens .... are not impressive and have drawbacks which I just don't understand the need for. Poisons could be good but as others have said, monster fortitude saves are probably going to be their best save and if you go that route you're going to want to poison your buddy's weapons since they are going to be more likely to hit then you are. And they need to run for multiple rounds to do much.

Unfortunately it can’t be helped. The playtest is over and the book is published. We have what we have. Further threads won’t really change the book to the degree you want it changed.

Considering the number of problems that were brought up in numerous threads (alchemist fast alchemy needing a free hand but also needing an alchemist kit, which requires two hand as an example) I am rather disappointed in this aspect of 2E.

Could the tank spend feats on Quick Repair until he can repair the shield in one action?

Quick Repair itself answers you question. It requires you to be Legendary in Crafting to change the repair time to one action (although you would still have to have the repair kit in hand, which takes two hands, which means you have to remove the shield at some point). But Quick Repair doesn't reduce the time it takes to do something, it changes the time, so even if you could take it multiple times, it would have no effect.

Confusion probably comes from in the Playtest it cost a certain amount of points equal to the ability's rank (or whatever they called it). I know I was looking at this section today and was asking myself that question.

For me the problem I have is after casting a max level polymorph, the wild druid is basically fighting as well as a fighter with no feats. Some of the forms give flight, which is very useful, and some of the elemental forms will give you an advantage in the right situations. The forms don't even give you a special attack like an autograb or trip attempt after a successful attack. And loosing spellcasting, the ability to activate magic items, and not being able to communicate with party/minion and magic items not effecting your polymorphed stats is a very strong negative for using your primary ability.

For me, the problem isn't so much dispel magic spell itself, its the entire entire counteract set of spells. IE neutralize poison, remove disease/curse/ paralysis/fear/etc. These spells remove only one specific type of effect but use the exact same mechanics as dispel magic, meaning like dispel magic they need to be memorized at the highest level to have any real chance to remove an effect.

Even dispel magic ought to have a better chance of working. Should a lvl 3 spell have a chance to remove a lvl 8? Probably no, but it should have about a 50% chance to remove a 5th since it generates no effect other then removing magic. And the spells which are more specific counters ought to be better.

As it stands even removing an effect one level higher then the spell your using pretty much means needing to roll a 15 to succeed. Two levels higher, your probably looking at a nat 20. That is just a bit much.

Well, item level has two points. You need to know it for crafting and you need to know it for suppressing the magic item with dispel magic.

In both cases you need to make the flat check on any action that would "target" a creature. Normally this would be attacks, but even things like intimidate/feint checks (that are not AoE) target. As per the rules for Sensed, Concealed, Unseen pages 303-304.

Between how anemic the divine spells are and how the majority of the cleric feat list is based on channel energy (then basically half the uses per day clerics get for channel energy) and then to top off the cherry the domains powers are, in the majority, garbage abilities its no wonder that clerics are a garbage class at the moment.

Seriously, it was designed as a primary caster class, with almost no offensive spells. The few spells that are offensive are either low damage or the control/debuff spells target the best save on the type of opponent that you want to cast that spell against. Buffs are weak as well, especially those that give any kind of bonus to offense. Those that give resistance to effects are a bit more useful, but still pretty weak.

Then there is the entire problem with condition removing spells need to be memorized to their highest level in order to have a good chance of removing effects, which basically removes the cleric's top two spell levels for many purposes unless you know you are going to be facing a specific threat that you set up for.

You can build a melee or ranged offense cleric, although they won't ever be anywhere near as good as a fighter/paladin/rogue at those jobs since those classes get feat to boost those aspects, whereas the cleric spells come no where near.

And when you throw in that almost 1/4 of the the gods are true neutral, but numerous spells and feats aren't usable by true neutral gods its really sad.

At low levels it isn't so bad, but the problems with the cleric become apparent as you level them up.

I don't see this as any worse then failing a save vs disintegrate and not having that many hp left.

And the effect is permanent only on a critical failure from a touch attack, so its not likely to happen very often.

Not so sure that the effect can be removed by a lvl 2 remove paralysis, or at least, not easily. The way the lich's touch is written I would consider it no different then a Power, which for the lich would make it effectly 6th level. And if there is one thing that table 9-3 on page 320 has taught me, its counter an effect with a lower level spell is nigh impossible.

Personally, I absolutely hate spells that you get to resave against each round. Especially since if you make the save, the spell stop effecting you. If you had to make a save vs each round until the duration ended I wouldn't mind.

They should change the "and" between "spell" and "when" to "or". That way it would be clearer that both after summoning it gets two actions and in further rounds it gets 2 actions when you concentrate. As written now it leads to the misunderstanding that you have to you have to concentrate on the round in which it is summoned.

Hmm, I agree that after having played a cleric in a few of the scenario's without channel energy they would be the worst class by far in the game. Damage on spells other then harm are low, spells such as neutralize poison/dispel magic are badly hamstrung due to the way the chart works, buffs are a meager effect and with an almost universal 1 minute duration at best, if your god is true neutral you loose access to numerous spells and feats and considering how many spells on the cleric list are Uncommon that hurts badly, no advancement in weapon skills.

I could see Halflings having settled in the Mwangi Expanse and yet-to-be-discovered south-sea islands, kind of like pygmies.

Like the old Dark Sun halflings ... those guys were brutal!

So far as goblins forming a nation. I don't know much about the Pathfinder gameworld but if they are all refugees of shattered tribes, they would need two things to found a nation. A person or group of people to bring them together and some place in which to found that nation. Plus there are probably a lot of kingdoms that would be more likely to work to prevent such a goblin kingdom from founding then work to help bring it about.

I think this class needs to have Charisma as its primary stat.

Joey Cote wrote:

Can we please NOT make wisdom based casters absolutely suck at Religion

and Nature checks by making those skills Int based just because Wizards want to be the god kings of knowledge in this edition too?

The problem is that in this edition Knowledge is the ONLY thing Int has going on for it.

It's beyond terrible as a stat.

And wisdom also got initiative for some weird reason as well, so, it's not as it's hurting (will saves, perception, initiative)

Bonus trash-trained skills (i.e. Unusable after a point) are as good as a non-existent bonus.

And none of that changes the fact that druids and clerics need to be able to actually have decent base values on their Religion and Nature skills in order to to be able to make the knowledge rolls associated with those skills as well as identifying spell effects and magic items. And since every stat is so valuable now neither of these classes can afford to dump many points into Int just to get a decent value, or extra skills.

But yes, Wisdom is probably over represented. Perception, 5 skills, and the base for Will saves makes it very valuable. Especially considering the new rules for both out of combat healing using medicine and the change in battle medic (well, the change in battle medic is more along the lines of making it vaguely useful).

Instead ask for a skill feat that allows its taker to substitute their Int for Wis modifier on Religion/Occult rolls. We get a lot of skill feats and many of them are pretty meh.

I think the value of some of the Int skills have been minimalized due to the nature of the playtest. Crafting is useless other then for fixing shields since there isn't downtime between adventure for the characters to make things. Thus the crafting feats are useless as well. The adventures we have been on have made no use of Society (well, there was a single knowledge roll we could make the in most recent one that had no effect on the adventure) either, and that skill has a ton of really interesting feats. Occultism could be very valuable in a lot of games, seems to fit in great with Society for city type adventures although it works great with investigating spooky ruins type of adventures too. Arcane seems to be the one skill that is Int based that is going to frequently come up in the playtest.

Trick magic item seems to be a very useful feat once you get 9+ level and carry around a few staffs or wands. And since the requirement for use is an easy test a +1 in the stat makes it almost an autosuccess.

Lores need something. Maybe the ability to get +1 piece of information on a knowledge check per rank of the skill. Seems like it was intended to get around the signature skill limits for knowledges that a class wouldn't have as a signature and be useful for Int based characters.

I prefer having this as a class feat such as Explosive Missile from PF1, modeled after Channel Smite and other similar 2-action attack feats, instead of as a form of ammunition itself. Reason being that making it ammunition itself leads to the issue of the alchemist having to either multiclass or take a general feat for bows, instead of playing to the alchemist's base proficiencies, and greatly overtuning damage for the class as roughly any attack with this ammunition would deal double the damage of another weapon user (late game of 12d8+splash, without property runes! This should not be a reliable single action attack!).

I suggest the following:

Alchemist Class Feat 4
Name - Explosive Missile
Prerequisites - either Quick Bomber or Quick Alchemy
Action time - 2 Actions
Cost - 1 ammunition, 1 alchemical bomb
Description - You draw and load an alchemical bomb and a piece of ammunition onto a ranged weapon with reload 1 or lower, and fire the weapon. On a success, the attack deals both the regular damage of the weapon in addition to the damage and properties of the bomb. On a failure (but not a critical failure), the target of the attack and creatures within 5 feet of the target are subjected to the bomb's splash damage.

One action to load the bomb and ammo, one to fire, simple. Makes light and hand crossbows that much better for the alchemist, without breaking the system by giving alchemists reliable access to a pseudo-spellstrike ammunition that they can shoot off multiple times a round.

This seems completely reasonable. Even allows for things like silver ammo.

Joey Cote wrote:

stuff

If you clock someone on the head with a full bottle of beer, you can actually very easily cause harm from the impact, even if the bottle breaks.

The main reason I advocated dealing bullet plus bomb damage is twofold: it keeps the damage in line with, say, double slice, and it makes dealing with how potency runes modify bombs way easier. Technically, acid flasks do not deal base damage, only splash and ongoing, and while it might seem like common sense to just add on some d4s on impact, it would require some weird wording to interact with ongoing damage. If you have it deal weapon plus bomb damage, the matter becomes easy: potency applies to the weapon, and count the bomb and weapon as one attack for weakness/resistance

Irl, there actually is a crossbow designed to fire rocks and bullets, called a prodd, which where my claim for bomb launching crossbows comes from. I'd think it would be perfectly fair to change the damage to bludgeon to avoid stacking a poison on top of the bomb, though.

You and I both seem to agree though that regular arrow, with a reload of 0, would be op. For what it's worth, I think that alchemical rounds would be a great shtick for crossbows and slings to even the field with bow in the hands of an alchemist (specialist or dabbler)

Oh, I agree that getting hit by an alchemical bomb would hurt, and I suppose leaving the sling damage in isn't unreasonable. And leaving in the sling damage would be an easy work around for not stacking the potency rune with the mulitplier for empower bomb.

Injury based poisons, I don't really mind the idea of being able to put those on arrows or bolts with alchemist bombs attached. After all, they will work on ammo fired from weapons with property runes giving elemental effects.

I did miss on my first read through that injury poisons only works with edged/piercing weapons. But unless we get something to raise the DC of crafted poisons to something like spell DC, I think their effect on combat is going to be fairly low. Although, since there isn't any rule I see for how long they last once applied to a weapon, I suppose you could make a bunch of your highest level poisons with advanced alchemy and apply them to arrows/bolts at the start of the day to have the highest DC. Although I think that most monsters are going to have about a 50% chance to resist poisons made by an alchemist of the same level, not including potent poisoner feat.

Bows using arrows with regular alchemical bombs attached doesn't seem like a problem to me. Having to spend roughly 3gp per shot(and maybe increasing the bulk of 10 arrows to 1) for what is going to 3 or 4 points of extra damage a shot is pretty safe. Its only with advanced/quick alchemy that I think we end up with problems. And yes, crossbows would be as safe as slings for not breaking game balance, and I don't even think you need to have the bolts blunted, or the damage reduced. But if you allow it on bolts, people are going to say it should be usable on arrows.

I wonder if there is a possible problem with slings, alchemical bombs, advanced alchemy and potency runes.

If we just treat the sling as a delivery method, and don't add the sling's base damage (which I don't think we should, a sling bullet and a alchemical bomb are very different physically - bomb is designed to break on impact which would make the impact damage fairly negligible) and the sling has a potency rune on it, then the potency rune maybe would apply its damage to the alchemical bomb. At which point does the alchemist Empower Bomb multiply all that (say (1d8 alchemical fire, +2d8 for potency rune) x3 for 9th level alchemist is 9d6 damage, with either 3 of that being splash to secondaries.

I love the idea for using slings/ halfling staff slings for delivering bombs, since with expert weapons potency runes the bonus helps offset the problem alchemists might have hitting at higher level. The load action means alchemist won't be slinging as many bombs, but can do it further. I also don't think alchemists should take a improvised weapon penalty for doing this, the bombs containers could easily have been made rounded for just this use. Or, there could be a general, skill (craft alchemy? - bombs made by the alchemist are designed for use with slings), or class feat to allow the user to do it without the improvised weapon penalty.

I am not a fan of seeing alchemist use bombs on arrows. Especially bombs/ bomb arrows made with Advanced/Quick alchemy. This just seems a step too far, allowing for 1 action firing, already existing feat interactions, and base weapon damage being added in. Although in this case I suppose some of that would be offset by having to make attacks against AC instead of touch AC (and lets not get into the situation of having to check against both to try to get the bomb effects in even if the arrow damage "misses").

If alchemist bombs, especially the Advanced/Quick ones were able to be fashioned into arrow form, I would see alchemist being a popular multiclass option.

I think it really hurts that everyone else (gnomes) are now speed 25+, dwarves are still 20, and the one ability they had to mitigate the effects of wearing medium and heavy armor they now have to spend their heritage feat (or should that be "feet" in this case).

I felt like dwarves were pretty decent, better then gnomes for certain, but not much better then the other races. Now I think the other races are probably better. Look at the new halfling Keen Eyes ability.

Ok, so now we get a free heritage trait in addition to the ancestory trait. You pick a heritage at first, only gain one, and can never change it.

But Hardy and Unburdened and Ancient blood where made into heritage, meaning that you can only ever gain one.

Which makes Unburdened an almost auto take for any dwarf even considering taking heavy armor.

Which makes Hardy almost an auto take for any class that that doesn't start at expert in Fortitude.

Ancient Blood is still awful considering its a reaction and permanently reduces your Resonance by 2. The classes that could use it the most either have something similar (paladin) or have so many things using their reactions that they wouldn't bother taking this.

The new desert runner is good considering how often players typically run into fire damage. And heat exhaustion is a thing.

But at the start of the racial section for the update it says they added new feats to replace the existing ones, and basically they said the new feats would be better.

So we get a new ancestory feat at lvl 9, Mountain Stoutness, which gives +1hp a level and +1 to recovery saves. Nice, but its the same as toughness (and stacks) which is a general feat you can take at humans and everyone at 3rd.

Stonewalker at 9th, and that is a very powerful feat, especially for a rogue. Meld into Stone

Weapon Expertise at 13th with dwarven weapons. Frankly, pretty niche. Some classes will gain a bit of use from it, clerics primarily coming to mind. Really ... cleric only thing coming to mind.

This really seems pretty bad for dwarves below level 10.

I don't see how its any different then being a bow fighter in Pathfinder 1, without all the added books.

How about being able to spend a hero point to remove a Wound? Would give some use for that other then removing dying when you only have one, which would be very useful in games where the GM doesn't think to give out extra hero points and the players don't want to pester the GM for hero points.

I have always hated dex to damage. Why bother to have a high str when dex gives you the same advantages and adds to your AC, ranged attacks, and saving throws.

what if the bulk an alchemist can carry without having a high str was intended to keep players from preparing massive amounts of bombs and, therefore, want to utilize 'quick alchemy'. i mean, lets face it, we all realized that making a ton of bombs in the morning is more cost effective, and i think the devs saw that coming...

also, ya'll know that thrown weapons use Dex for attack right?

Doesn't really hold. The Alchemist can only make two bombs per resonance point, and that really isn't a lot for more then 3 fights in a day. And when you consider how bad the bomb damage is, it becomes less and less appealing. As for being cost effective, I think most of us consider 2 alchemist items resonance points to not even be enough considering duration of effects and the strength of the alchemist items. On top of that, I think that is giving Paizo's design team far too much subtlety.

We have done about 6 sessions so far and the GM awarded 1 hero point. He has probably just been forgetting, but anytime there is a mechanism where the player is basically encouraged to nag the GM to get points, its bad.