Karneios's page

Don't forget solar detonation does have the incapacitation trait (for the game I'm in now where I'm playing a purely fire kineticist the dm is running it as the incap trait just applies to the blind/dazzle effect and not the damage)

Gotta have your weapon ready for when you fight a will o wisp

The only way CHA stops being the stat for innate spells is if you take the psychic feat that turns it into int, having spellcaster investment does not change that stat it just gives you a proficiency in the tradition (or now in the remaster just gives you proficiency in spells in general but the stat still stays the same)

This whole old lady idea just feels to me like what would be something similar to a kind of rules lawyering to try and make it so the DM can never target you "fairly" without needing to ever roll for it

Old Mage Jatembe gets marked as specifically a wizard but that's never really sat right with me since I read his whole thing as using both arcane and primal pretty equally, I feel like he should have what most NPCs get in a special title rather than being wizard

"AI" Art is a tool made by stealing art from artists for the primary purpose of replacing their job with automation, I don't see how it is hard to understand why it is unliked, also for some people they trigger a real uncanny disgust in (I am part of some people)

I'm not clear if werecreature is an ancestry or an archetype? the preview calls it an archetype and then right after that it's a double-length ancestry

I don't like it because it feels like nothing, so like nothing I don't even care if I can't roll stealth for initiative and don't really feel rewarded when I do

Electric arc was hit in the same way that the majority of cantrips were, removing damage mod to replace it with one extra dice, if EA was overpowered I would've expected it to see a unique nerf and not the same nerf cantrips got in general

Would you say the cantrip change has widen even more the difference between casters that have a good focus spell (or have focus cantrips) and those who don't between levels 1-4?

Also, a few of them were also buffed a bit, right? A few of them do 3d4 instead of 1d4 + mod. Do these feel better or is it mostly the same?

None of the cantrips in player core are 3d4, that's just needle darts

You could also just ignore fob and go martial artist for grabbing the agile finesse backstabber d8 stance in either stumbling if you want armor or wolf if you don't care and wolf can also upgrade into the two action fatal d12 move that prones

I always guessed the strength requirement on form control was there to be a sorta guide to that if you were gonna use the form controlled forms in combat you'd want high strength anyway to have better accuracy from using your own unarmed attack mod

Seeing the new level 1 warrior muse bard feat does make me think if the resentment ability should just be once per cast of the source of the condition in the same way (as an alternate thing to put in to balance the ability more than kill the familiar when you can)

Karneios wrote:

The most recommended change of tactics I've seen has been to stabilise and leave the dropped person on the ground where the player can't do s~**, the other one I have seen after that where the downed player can actually do things has been to just get them up and then everybody run away if someone gets dropped

That is the reactive change.

The proactive change mentioned several times is ensuring PCs do not go down. Builds, tactics, healing are all tools that will be used differently in light of this.

Defenses are becoming more valuable than they were.

I don't see that as being a change though, buildwise wis/con and either str or dex depending armour were already highly valued, healing to keep people up was already happening because the action economy of going down was already bad

It comes back to my problem with this change/clarification making the game more lethal doesn't hurt the strongest groups but does hurt both the weaker classes and the weaker players (meaning both less interested/capable in the tactical side of it and also just people new to the system) and I don't really see the benefit of it, you can say oh just run dying how you want but new players are the most likely to just run as written

I feel like the strength of the witch has become so much more tied into the question "how fast will the DM kill the familiar each adventuring day", at least for the strong familiar abilities, for stuff like a 5 foot burst of difficult terrain that's less so

The most recommended change of tactics I've seen has been to stabilise and leave the dropped person on the ground where the player can't do s~~@, the other one I have seen after that where the downed player can actually do things has been to just get them up and then everybody run away if someone gets dropped

The only variants in gm core are automatic bonus progression, free archetype, level 0 characters and proficiency without level

Chrono wrote:

Mathmuse wrote:

The Wounded condition seemed like to say that the character resumed dying at the value where they had left off, unless they had medical treatment that restored their deep vitality.

So this isn't quite correct.

No matter how high your Dying value gets, if Dying is removed by any means other than spending hero points, your wounded increases by 1. It doesn't go to the value Dying was at, or anything like that - it is explicitly designed to counteract 'yo-yo' healing that plagues games like 5e, where there is no reason to heal until somebody goes down - Wounded encourages more proactive healing, to prevent going down to start.

Essentially, if a character goes down to a crit, they go to dying 2. They take damage when they are inside the splash radius of a bomb, dying 3. The cleric casts heal on them, all dying cleared, Wounded 1.

Sorry, my lack of experience with the Wounded condition means that I have not memorized how the numbers work.

I read about D&D 5th Edition providing too much mid-combat healing, but I had not imagined that it meant letting teammates drop before healing them. My PF1 and PF2 players are careful to heal their teammates before they dropped, except in the three situations that I mentioned in my previous comment. And in the Primal Bandersnatch example, the party healer was casting ranged Heal every turn on the defender facing down the bandersnatch, while carefully standing just outside the 30-foot range of the the bandersnatch's Confusing Gaze. PF2 combat is so fast that having a teammate down for a single round would be a major handicap.

5e's yoyo healing came about because its healing is generally bad and healing word exists as a bonus action, trying to keep people up in that system is just wasting your time, it is also the only system I know of where it's such a constant thing because that's kind of how they built the system (also the only example that really gets made)

Bluemagetim wrote:

Wounded tells you here when you will actually add your wounded value to your dying value. It happens when you gain the dying condition.

It doesn't happen any other time. So when you increase your already existing dying condition you are not gaining it.

That's the old rule, yes. From what I understand, though, the Remastered version of that same rule (the Wounded entry, in the conditions list) actually stated that you add your Wounded value when you "gain or increase" the Dying condition, not just when you "gain" it like we're used to. This specific text change is the reason people are talking about adding Wounded again every time you get Dying from any source (hitting 0 HP, being damaged at 0 HP, failing a recovery check, etc.), not the wonky text in the Recovery Check section.

They did not update the wounded trait to say gain or increase, it said that in the playtest and that's it, player core wounded still just says gain

For treat wounds the ward medic and continual recovery skill feats make those restrictions go away as they increase but yeah the expectation by the game is that in general the party can heal themselves up between fights

SatiricalBard wrote:

Can a Champion become Sanctified? If so, do they do this the same way as Clerics?

I would tend to assume that a Champion must be Sanctified, and equally, must choose a deity that allows this. Certainly that's how I would rule in my game at the moment, if I had any players who wanted to be champions. Unless at some point we ever get rules for Champions of Neutrality, which... doesn't really make a lot of sense. Champions were always more about alignment and only incidentally about worship, just as most clerics were primarily about worship and only incidentally about alignment. But we'll see what actually happens with them when Player Core 2 comes out next year.

If a champion had to be sanctified then there can be no champions of gozreh or pharasma and probably more in the future that have no options for sanctification and while sure I could see that for gozreh maybe, I do not see champion of pharasma being something that could not happen

The other question here in terms of how much this changes how the game plays is beyond the encounter when someone goes down. I'd assume it's now beyond the question to push on if you can't clear the Wounded condition.

So you've got to Treat Wounds to clear that. Which also means you probably shouldn't rely on Treat Wounds just to heal up, since then you won't be able to clear Wounded. Unless you're in a place where you can safely hole up for an hour of course.

Seems to me this could dramatically shorten the adventuring day.

Wounded goes away on successful healing with treat wounds as well as going to max hp

The combat utility of conceal spell is really just it lets you get around silence since silence now just turns off the ability to cast non-subtle spells in it, I'm not really looking at new player feats and judging them based on what if an npc has it though because that doesn't feel like how those really get built anyway?

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

AestheticDialectic wrote:

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

I don't like that Gouging Claw is even more a mandatory cantrip for Magi.

If I'm playing a Magus, I want to do magic with my SWORD, not a shapeshifted unarmed strike! And casting it through a weapon just seems SILLY! What, your sword shapeshifts into a claw that you swing like a backscratcher with a bad attitude?!

I personally rather use ignition over gouging claw

Really? According to this analysis here ignition is one of the worst damaging cantrip options...

Ignition seems to be balanced as a melee cantrip with ranged as an extra effect. I think the analysis also under values fire damage because resistance is common but fire weakness is also common making it a pretty good thing to have in your back pocket. I don't think the melee ranged versatility is actually useful because players tend to pick one or the other exclusively.

It's honestly kind of weird that melee cantrips seem to do less damage. Needle darts is an average 7.5 while gouging claw is an average 7. Allot of ranged cantrips do an average of 4-5 but they're all multi target so easily do double.

I think either melee ignition and gouging claw need more damage or ranged ignition needs a change like being made a reflex save. Having the versatility of reflex save or ac attack may be worth it's lower damage.

as a d6 vs a d4 they scale much better than needle darts, going from 2-12 vs 3-12 at 1st rank up to 3-18 vs 4-16 at 2nd and then 4-24 vs 5-20 at 3rd and so on

I think they wanted to clarify the original ruling.

The way some of you are reading it is nutso:

1. Knocked down dying 1.

2. Healed up to wounded 1. Dying condition gone.

3. Knocked down a second time, Dying 2 because regain Dying 1 condition plus wounded condition for Dying 2 when unconscious. Wounded 1.

4. Then you're all saying the designers intended for you to miss a recover check when Dying 2 and suddenly go from Dying 2 to Dying for because increase dying by 1 and add wounded a second time? I don't think they mean this myself.

I think it's the old method.

1. Knocked down Dying 1.

2. Wounded 1 when healed up.

3. Knocked down Dying 1 plus wounded 1 for Dying 2.

4. Miss recovery check dying condtion goes to dying 2 plus Wounded 1 for Dying 3.

You only add your current wounded condition one time. It is clarifying that you add it to your current dying condition. Not each time you increase your dying condition.

I'm not going to change it until I see a designer provide a clear example they intended the dying condition to rise that quickly.

I think some you of are reading more into than is there.

Maybe some designer will clarify and it will be that deadly. I don't know. I know I'm going to keep running it as I was and this seems like the same rule I was using.

The designers have clarified it, the clarification is the remaster with the text that if you fail a recovery check you add dying equal to 1 (2 on a crit fail) plus your wounded, I do not like it and we can all run it however we want but it is pretty unambiguous on the wording of it with a link to an image from the remaster itself here: from the pathfinder memes reddit

MEATSHED wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

MEATSHED wrote:

Yeah lawful and chaos especially have issues because, with how it's described in pretty much every book, following a religion is by its nature is lawful, which seems like an issue for chaotic gods.

Not all beliefs follow a strictly organized religion.

Yes but that isn't what being lawful is. If you follow a code, even if it's an entirely personally one that you made up, that is lawful.

That is one take on Lawful. It's far from the only one.

It's the one that's in the core rulebook's alignment section

"Lawful characters have a set system in life, whether it’s meticulously planning day-to-day activities, carefully following a set of official or unofficial laws, or strictly adhering to a code of honor"

Karneios wrote:

Arazni is NOW a god, she hasn't really done anything beyond hide and maintain her privacy since becoming a god since as far as I know that happened after she got free of Geb by having her body be destroyed by the positive energy nuke Tar Baphon unleashed in tyrant's grasp, also talking about how evil she is having vengeance in her motivations and edicts, that's Calistria's whole thing and she's not evil

Calistria has the advantage of not being power-hungry, not being cruel (just vengeful), and not having ruled a nation of undead who eat people for hundreds of years. And also not having been labeled with an evil alignment - yes, alignment is questionable, but there's PROBABLY a reason for that, given that alignments are descriptive. Her methods and motivations are probably a lot less vicious and destructive.

Also Calistria has this as an anathema: "Become too consumed by love or a need for revenge"

Whereas Arazni has an edict that basically reads "be consumed by a need for revenge" (despise and never forgive those who have hurt you).

Calistria wants you to get revenge, but also wants you to have a good time and keep things in perspective. You should always get revenge, but you shouldn't let it take over your life. Arazni doesn't care about having a good time or keeping things in perspective, she just wants to hurt people.

When was Arazni power-hungry or cruel? She didn't want to become a lich queen and rule over a city of undead, she made the place stable and didn't make the undead lives of the people she hates hell there, and I do not see a difference between "despise and never forgive those who have hurt you" and "take vengeance" beyond verbosity, Calistria's priests aren't out there after a while forgiving people who hurt them and despising and never forgiving does also not mean do everything you can at all times to get retribution

I am just ignoring the "it says evil on her page so clearly she must be evil unlike calistria" part of it because that is I feel a useless part of argument especially when I believe that the only reason arazni has evil on there is because she was turned undead and undead are evil

Deriven Firelion wrote:

In summation, the following is true:

1. There is no proof item bonuses to attack roll spells would make them overpowered.

2. We have multiple examples attack roll spell improvements not changing the value of attack roll spells...

In the past one of the game leads/designers has stated that adding a bonus to attack rolls would increase the spell DC, and make those spells over powered. I'm sure there's a way they could write it to only be to attack rolls so I'm not sure why that's been stated before.

They sure managed it with kineticist's gate attenuator and all that took was (does not apply to DCs)

I do not see a way to mix the flavour of exemplar with the balance of exemplar and I was hoping the playtest wrap up would address it but unfortunately not, like with the flavour and inspirations given it should be a better fighter than a fighter, better barbarian than a barbarian, better archer than a ranger or fighter, better rogue than a rogue even, it feels to me like a flavour that should be on whatever the mythic track turns out to be, like using a couple of the given inspirations as examples Achilles as a mythic fighter or Hercules as a mythic barbarian

Hero Points also aren't a just combat offensive tool to be spending all over the place on trying to make spell attack spells work, there's the previously mentioned don't die option or just rerolling saving throws but also my biggest use of hero points, out of combat skill checks

I will also add since I forgot to in the last post, I am on board with trip's reading of reload and the idea of needing to regrip before you can reload which requires releasing the grip feels to me like being excessively restrictive in your possible reading of rules because you have already made up your mind that things must be as restrictive as possible

I will note that recently there have been some spell attack spells without the attack trait, the list of ones I know of are Flense, Inkshot, Purifying Icicle, Exploding Earth, Splinter Volley, Percussive Impact, Blinding Foam and lastly an area spell attack in Ravenous Darkness

Captain Morgan wrote:

Rangers also make the games best switch hitters because unlike fighters and gunslingers their proficiency and damage boosters aren't limited to one weapon group.

Things that those classes can easily work around proficiency with a level 2 feat like Mauler or Archer Dedication.

The Rangers damage boosters are often limited to once per round which is worse that one weapon group.

Gunslinger explicitly can not work around proficiency with dedications, it has a whole class feature about it in Singular Expertise

Not really. Even if I day an all living party I would have to chamge the assumption of positive energy was illegal which changes the encounter.

There is also the fact the undead rise through the floor with no counter play where 6 somehow know the cleric is the issue.

Basically a GM can make even moderate or lower encounter much harder by changing the default assumptions. In which case if you put the party at an extreme disadvantage then it is mo longer a moderate encounter.

It's a severe encounter in the book and honestly for me personally I'd hate removing the illegality of positive energy in geb more than a tpk if I were in that situation, it'd just feel too much to me like undercutting the roleplay and setting and being like what's the point

No other armour has its broken threshold in its stat block either, it's just a matter of judging based on material

Karneios wrote:

Again if it was supposed to be undead and supposed to be immune to negative energy they would've made that happen with the forced free undead archetype like strength of thousand's forced wizard/druid (also it's book of the dead not dark archive), given that you didn't even read the player's guide for it maybe it might be a good idea to properly read through at least that if not some of the actual AP before talking about how it was intended to be run and how the writers intended for encounters to be engaged

I've read the first module of Strength of Thousands. There is no forced free archetype. It's recommended that you use it. Paizo doesn't force anything on anyone. Not their style.

I'll read the Blood Lords myself myself and see what they recommend. I cannot debate you at the moment because I have not read the player's guide or the books.

I've read the synopsis and discussion in the Blood Lords forum. I knew they released the Blood Lords AP with the Dark Archives with the intent that you use Free Undead Archetype with the module.

So I'll see once I pick up the books what it recommends. You continuing to post that it wasn't intended to use Undead archetype when everything I've read about the module indicates it was intended including the Dark Archives release sounds like defending a bad decision.

The whole spellcasting for everyone section of the strength of thousands player guide is not a recommendation, it is saying that the characters are either a druid or wizard multiclass archetype under the free archetype rules, not that they may be or that it's recommended for the GM to give it to them just flatly that they are

Again if it was supposed to be undead and supposed to be immune to negative energy they would've made that happen with the forced free undead archetype like strength of thousand's forced wizard/druid (also it's book of the dead not dark archive), given that you didn't even read the player's guide for it maybe it might be a good idea to properly read through at least that if not some of the actual AP before talking about how it was intended to be run and how the writers intended for encounters to be engaged

MEATSHED wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Squiggit wrote:

I mean I wouldn't even necessarily call the example a huge outlier. A bit extreme, but sometimes you just get ambushed with no forewarning or opportunity to prepare. That's just how PF2 is written sometimes.

That is a pretty big outlier to me. I've read a lot of the APs and it is my understanding blood lords was very much set up for the PCs to be undead and gain the benefits of doing so. This would offset the need for them to use positive energy damage.

It was that one change that made this encounter from something the PCs could handle to a TPK.

PCs can be undead in Blood Lords. It is not required though.

Don't they recommend free archetype with that AP for PCs to be undead?

Blood lords doesn't have free archetype by default, it does note that allowing living PCs to retrain their latest class feat into an undead archetype after dying is something a GM can do.

I know Paizo isn't going to force anyone to be undead or play with an optional rule.

It is my understanding that module was built with the idea of the PCs using free archetype undead to create the feel of being undead citizens in the land of Geb.

Calliope's DM allowed them to take undead archetype, then completely changed how negative damage worked mid module creating a situation where the dread wraiths had full power but the PCs were hamstrung.

I do not see that as a common or even uncommon scenario in Paizo APs and I've read a lot of them. If Paizo does something in their APs like outlaw positive energy, then they add something else to make up for it like encouraging the PCs to use the undead archetypes to make them resistant to undead attacks. Then both the DM and the players have to think outside the box about how to conduct combat.

If it was written intending for the players to be free archetype undead it would do what strength of thousands does and explicitly say to use that rule

The players guide recommends players be undead from a thematic standpoint, that the adventure path being set in geb is a good place for players to try out being undead, it's not saying it's recommending it because of the mechanical benefits of being undead

Geb has a faction that works as a secret police to stamp out positive energy use by any means necessary, it's not just a case of lol don't follow the laws

Geb where the blood lords AP is set (and its player's guide mentions) has positive energy be illegal

MEATSHED wrote:

Its weird because I don't really think of a lot of concepts were the ancestry is important enough to pick first.

I can't think of any concepts that don't already have an Ancestry.

How are you picturing a character and have no idea whether they're a goblin or a plant?

Anyway, when you're building a character you probably have both settled before you start to build. You choose then together, but I usually start building ancestry-first.

I have made a whole bunch of characters where ancestry is one of the last things I decide on

Since shocking grasp is the only spell slot attacking touch spell they've printed at all ever I don't think it's that safe to assume, hell just looking at attack spells available at all in the arcane list kills any belief that there's gonna be some great replacement coming for the magus

I fully believe the amount of posts is less a strong indication of a problem in the design and more a few very active posters and the heights of previous edition wizard

Karneios wrote:

and I never claimed the class was useless, I do not know why I'm getting put into that when all I said is it does need some errata

My apologies! Probably I read multiple complaint posts and mixed them up. Though your comment about RM "functionally does nothing" I thought was a bit over the top. Does the info gap require a 30 second GM-player conversation to fix? Yes. Does the info gap render the entire block of text unable to be used at all? No.

I don't want to make my DM do balancing for a game because they printed an area ability without an area, the strength of that impulse at various areas, especially since it could also be either a cone or an emanation based on the text (I could even see it being a line), is widely different, I think saying just a 30 second conversation is misrepresenting how important the area information is, especially with the pretty strict balancing PF2E has in general but also that functionally does nothing was explicitly about the as written text of the impulse because that's just factual

The kineticist has multiple features that flat don't work (Roiling Mudslide being the obvious thing that gets brought up but also for single element wood or metal the elemental transformation and apotheosis feats) so yeah I think it's reasonable for people to have an expectation that given the time we live in they would use their digital platform to put out some errata to explain how those things that don't work should work, like how dark archives got a quick digital errata post

A lot of the non-unique spells are spells that are just arcane and one other list so just the flat numbers doesn't really show the full thing

a thing about arcane and occult spell lists that I feel is what has caused some of the identity problem there is an amount of spells that are just on there because wizard/bard should have it more than it feeling like it fits the identity

Quote:

A kineticist isn't a satisfying "elemental wizard" to some people simply because it isn't called a wizard

Well... And probably because the kineticist isn't int based. For me at least, that's more important than the name.

For me it's this and also like the Primal trait all over it and the required training in nature

My view on the fighter is that it is too strong in a way that warps the martial role and makes other martials feel bad to make outside of very specific niches (or champion as the only real defender) but also the way to adjust it is either a ground up rebuild or straight removing it and neither of those are going to happen, I mostly think it just straight shouldn't have been in the game because I think without it the three of champion (without a specific divine focus), barbarian and ranger make a good balanced base for combat martials

I hate constitution as an ability score, it is real important for combat it is also very boring and basically useless outside of combat, playing a kineticist right now (currently in a section of an adventure path that is very non-combat) has really solidified my opinion on this, it might be weaker but I vastly prefer Int over con