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Over the weekend I ran 3 mock battles with my group each at a different level and party comp.

Encounter 1, party level 4
Party: guardian, commander(melee), barbarian, ranger(bow)
Enemys:4 durauger 2 flaming skulls

Encounter 2, party level 8
Party: guardian, commander(ranged), barbarian, thaumaturge
Enemys:zombie dragon (elite) 2 sulpher zombies

Encounter 3, party level 15
Party: guardian, commander(melee), commander(ranged), gunslinger
Enemies: 2 beneficial worms.

Our findings: both classes feel incredibly solid, our guardian player did find that intercept attack was a much more engaging and reliable mechanic compared to taunt. Especially in the high level build where he had three reactions to intercept and had 10 feet of movement on each. Also tough cookie is a very silly feat.

Onto commander more good news both our commander testers got a lot of active use out of their abilities, stand outs being form up, plant banner, quickening banner, and fortunate blow. In our last test we had two commanders to see how they play in multiples and surprisingly they very rarely where stepping on each other's toes and managed to work around each other very cleanly.

Criticisms: our guardian found that it was actually not super common for the situation to line up where taunting actually made sense, and as such his threat methods where basically never online. Also there for the commander tactics, there are enough "generally useful" commands like strike hard or form up that preparing the more niche options like pincer attack doesn't make a lot of sense.

On the upside my guardian player and both commander players where very satisfied with gamefeeland feel both classes as they stand are very effective at filling their rolls.

So amidst everything else in this class i cannot help but notice that commander gets some of the quirkiest animal companion access among its feats.

Command steed starts off well, a basic young companion with extra banner utility, but then battle tested war horse is next, for mature companions and without the free action upside that is normally a great bonus. But as a bonus no one can mind control your horse and make it attack you, yay?

Then we get battle hardened destrier, where we finally get that free move, yay, but then it just stops, this horse we have invested a third of our total class feats into just never gets the animal companion capstone in specialties.

Just, am I alone thinking this is all just, really weird?

So, I realize this is EXTREMELY early into the remaster, to the point that officially it hasn't even officially started yet, but I feel like the new incarnation of magic schools are unsatisfying, an objective nerf to a class that was already mid, and worst of all incredibly uninteresting.

So schools have gone from a broad swath of magic, roughly one eighth of all spells to basically worse/more restricted sorcerer bloodlines. My initial thought was to scrap "school slots" and make wizards pure four slot casters who can spontaneous cast their school spells from otherwise prepared slots. This avoids the issue of dead slots that late game wizards are currently stuck with but it makes the schools even MORE "just sorcerer bloodline" and more subjectively i feel like wizard is THE prepared caster and giving them baseline access to spontaneous casting feels like it goes against their identity.

So back to the drawing board I go, to try to find a change that gives wizards an injection of interesting while keeping and ideally enhancing their identity. Which is when I was hit with the thought that wizards are usually portrayed as surrounded by parchment, tomes and scrolls, and was hit with inspiration; prepared scrolls.

Essentially wizards loose their school slots entirely, becoming baseline 3 slot casters. HOWEVER when a wizard is doing daily prep they can choose to prepare a spell in their mind, or in the form of temporary daily scrolls. Any wizard from a school with a curriculum can use a spell slot to prepare two temp scrolls of that slots rank, inscribing them with spells from their curriculum. The unified magical theory school can only prepare a single scroll from a spell slot but it can be of any spell they know, rather than being curriculum locked.

Further more wizards gain access to the "rescribe" activity, which allows a wizard to spend ten min "correcting" one of their daily scrolls and changing the spell to any other valid option (of the same level of course)

This has a few benefits, first and foremost hauling half a library's worth of parchment around every day feels very wizard and as such i like it. Furthermore it provides interesting trade offs. Scrolls have an innate loss of action economy due to having to be drawn curriculum wizards can choose how much of their vast spell access to trade away for staying power, potentially getting 50% more spells than a sorcerer if they go all in, in exchange for half the "repertoire" and worse action economy. Umt wizards who only go 1 to 1 on scrolls are only trading away their action economy in exchange for spell flexibility making them the defacto best users of the more niche spells in the game that would rarely find their way into a repertoire or prepared list.

I am under no illusions that this is perfect or even that great out the gate but I wanted to get other peoples thoughts and input before I move to try testing it out.

for a long time, I have been dissatisfied with most magic items in pf2e, and after a long time looking at it, I think I have finally been able to put my finger on why; It's the near ubiquity of once-per-day restrictions on activated abilities, which means that you cannot in most cases actively augment your playstyle with magic item's active abilities because you will quickly use them all up if they become a regular combat option.

From my understanding, the cause of this is the last-minute extraction of resonance, a character resource that existed in the playtest based on charisma that was spent to activate magic items, and when it was cut out, all the items that had previously required resonance where defaulted to one use per day.

I'm unsure how to go about fixing this, as I know for a fact that unlimited usage of magic items is just an invitation to break things somewhere. My tentative thought is to create a ten-minute action that functions similarly to refocus to allow a player to regain an item use once per hour, though at the moment it is still pretty vague and undefined.

So some time ago, I did a write-up on my conversion of the Abysians/Lavaborn as well as the early age of Arcoscephale from dominions, and I had intended to do conversions for that game but quickly got distracted, I am now motivated to pick it back up and while I can make no promises to convert the whole game, I can at least provide everyone with a few new nations to slot into their world

Before we start a summary of Dominions for context, the conceit of the game is that the head god of all creation has up and vanished without a trace. Before too long every nation of the world has its pet pretender to the throne viewing for the title of head god. These pretenders range from archmages to ancient heroes, to giant monsters from before time, to old allies, generals, or lovers of the previous head god.

the game takes place over three ages, and many of the nations I will convert will have separate entries for each age.

1. the early age: In this era, the world is young and wild, the world is full of monsters, magic, and a lot fewer people. People of this era are armed largely with bronze or basic iron, and have a weak understanding of the magic that fills the world around them,
2. the middle age: People have risen to prominence in this era and begun to take control, science has advanced rapidly and understanding of magic has grown with it. The monsters of the previous era have become scarce and more fantastical races have begun to lose ground to humans.
3. 3 the late age: Humans have now become the dominant people of a world that is clearly in decline in this era the magic of the world has begun to fade and many nations have been dealing with great tragedies. a once fantastical world has been mapped and a world of mysticism has been replaced with one of steel and engineering, what magic does remain tends towards death, soul and blood magic which are the least diminished paths of magic, if also the least moral.

This of course has little bearing on any use in an actual pathfinder game, I'm more just giving it as context for the world these nations come from, so context out of the way, let's move on to Early Age Xibalba, "Vigil of the Sun" a nation based on Aztec and Mayan culture and specifically the Mayan underworld. and it's god Camaztoz.
Xibalba is a vast realm of dark caverns hidden underneath the dense forests and jungles of the surface. According to Legend the sun and moon would pass through the labyrinthine caverns of Xibalba on their daily journey to the eastern horizon. On this journey, they were guarded by the bat people, Zotz, that dwelled in the dark reaches of the Xibalban underworld. Being almost blind, they did not covet the splendor of the sun. No one has seen the sun or moon pass through Xibalba in ages, but the Zotz keep their vigil and their traditions alive. But in recent times the bat people have lost their purpose and the priestly rulers of Xibalba look to the surface world to once more bask in the splendor of the sun and moon. The zots are led by priest-kings from various cities and only the priesthood represents any centralized power. They still train the sacred Sun guides to this day, once tasked with guarding the celestial entities through their dark world. Only recently have the zots come into regular contact with the people above and begun to adopt their technology and practices.

Ancestry
Zotz
Rare
The batlike Zotz are thought of, by those that know of them at all as primitive and childlike in their adoration of stories and legends, and while it is true that ages of isolation within caverns have left their technology and society in a less than advanced state the Zotz are not so simple as outsiders might think. Eternally curious, quick to learn, and always observant, the Zotz are quickly adopting ideas and technologies from the surface, bringing advancement to their society with remarkable speed, and they take a great deal of pride in the legends and folktales of their past, no matter how impossible the surface dwellers might say they are.
You Might

- Seek to live out the glory of your people's folk tales as a guide and ambassador to celestial objects.
- Find yourself confused when interacting with a world built around vision and how necessary other people find it.
- Find the vast openness of the outside world both intimidating and exciting.

Others Might
- Find your amazement at the commonplace technology or the surface endearing.
- Worry that you are always eavesdropping on their conversations
- Find themselves regularly startled at how you can move around so silently.

Physical Description
Zotz are a slender race that stand about half a head shorter than a human on average, not counting their large black wings. Their skin tends to be a dull grey color and portions of it are covered in fine black fur such as their batlike heads and forearms. Their eyes are universally grey and unless a source of light or movement catches their attention are always staring straight ahead, unfocused. In contrast, the large wide ears of the Zotz are constantly active flicking to focus on different sources of sounds in their surroundings.
Society
The society of the Zots is a very decentralized one of countless villages and towns and is bound together by shared culture and history rather than any actual nation or government. Settlements are led by the priesthood and are largely agrarian in nature with farmers, hunters, and simple craftsmen composing the vast majority of the population. Those Zotz that show exceptional potential are trained to be sun guides and tasked with guarding the villages against threats.

Alignment and Religion
The primary religion of the Zotz is based largely around a pantheon of minor deities known as the Teotl. These beings vary widely in terms of personality, alignment, and domain but share an underlying theme of the importance of cycles, whether those be cycles found in nature, those in personal life, or in civilization, or even those on a more cosmic scale. The idea that beginnings and ends bleed in a continuously changing pattern is deeply ingrained in Zotz society. And as such zots tend toward neutral alignments and towards “big picture” worldviews wherein they are merely small facets of a much grander whole in which all things are temporary by their very nature, and that one must always be seeking new beginnings rather than clinging to loss or trying to force what one has to last forever.
There is a secondary religion of zots that is far more unsavory. Known as the Ah Nakom or heart-seekers, these cultists instead follow beings known as the Onaqui; cruel fiends that teach that complacency and peace foster stagnation and eventually decay and it is only through fear and turmoil that societies and people ever find a reason to improve. As such members of the Ah Nakom thus seeks to spread fear and instability throughout Xibalba, kidnapping and sacrificing those with especially peaceful lives and offering the hearts of such people to their masters, hence their name. All of this is allegedly done for the betterment of all, and while most cultists do believe that, the Onaqui are simply sadistic beings who feed on fear and suffering and use the cult as a means of sustaining themselves.

Adventurers
Zotz might Leave Xibalba and venture into the wider world for any number of reasons, but curiosity almost always plays a part, For the Zots, the surface was always thought of as a semi-mythical place, and the chance to voyage through it and learn about it firsthand is remarkably enticing to many a young Zotz.

Names
Ah Chun Caa, Bitoln, Bolom, Buluc Chabta, Cabrakan, Camulatz, Cauac, Chacoch, Hozanek, Hun, Kianto, Mitnal, Oxlahuntiku, Tzacol, Tzarab, Uc Zip, Xecotcovach
Hit Points: 6
Size: Medium
Speed 25 Feet
Ability Boots: Dexterity, Wisdom, Free
Ability Flaw: Strength
Language: Undercommon, Zotz. Additional Languages equal to your intelligence mod if it's positive. Choose from Abyssal, Aklo, Common, Terran, and any other languages you have access to.
Traits: Humanoid, Zotz
Blind: The eyes of a Zotz are almost completely vestigial, and can do little more than differentiate light from darkness and identify large or sudden movements. Sight is a vague sense for zotz, they gain a +2 on any save against visual effects, and cannot read writing that is purely visual in nature.Echolocation The primary Sense of the Zots is their hearing which is incredibly precise. Hearing is a precise sense for the zotz and with a series of ultrasonic chirps and clicks they can quickly form a mental map of the surroundings detailed enough to allow them to avoid danger and target enemies.
Heritage
Fox Zotz
You are much larger than most of your kin standing half a head taller than most men with a long almost canine head compared to the flat faces of most of your kin. You have 10 base Hp and are trained in Intimidation and gain a +1 circumstance bonus to coercion, your large bulky frame easily coming off as threatening even if it is not in your nature.
Vampire Zotz
Much like your namesake you are best known for supplementing your diet with blood drawn from living creatures, usually livestock. You gain a Fang attack that deals 1d4 piercing damage, it is in the knife weapon group and has the agile finesse and unarmed weapon traits. Whenever you critically hit using your fang, you apply the weapon's critical specialization effect and gain 1 temporary hp per damage die. This temporary hp is removed after one minute.
Leaf-Nosed Zotz
You are a nimble zotz noted for their very flat face and large nose, known among your kin as the swiftest and agile as well as the most skilled fliers, You gain the Flitter Feat, are trained in acrobatics and gain a +2 circumstance on checks to maneuver in flight and tumble through.
White Tent Zotz
You barely resemble your other kin much at all with the dark fur of most zotz replaced with a dense white puffy fur that almost makes you appear spherical when you are sitting. You are small instead of medium and can fit through spaces even smaller than that, You gain quick squeeze even if you do not meet the prerequisites and are treated as tiny for the purposes of squeezing.

Level 1 Ancestory Feats
Flitter
Move Like a Whisper
Piercing Screech
Scorpion Familiar
Zotz Lore
Zotz Spell Familiarity

Level 5 Ancestory Feats
Attentive Eavesdropper
Cavern Crawler
Envenom Weapon
Fable Collector
Zotz Spell Secrecy

Level 9 Ancestory Feats
Cavern Clinger
Chthonic Echoes
Deafening Screech
Practiced Flight
Wing Step

Level 13 Ancestory Feats
Experienced Flyer
Move Like a Shadow
Zotz Spell Expertise

Level 17 Ancestory Feats
Echo Mastery

feel free to leave feedback this was very much eyeballed and at least some part of it is almost certainly badly worded and imbalanced
Sometime later this week I will put out the zotz adjacent Xibalba content including

Items
Machauitl (Level 0 martial weapon)
Obsidian Razor (Level 7 Specific weapon)

Creature
Beast Bats (Level 2 Fiend)
Jaguar (Level 4 Animal)
Onaqui (Level 13 Fiend)
Ozelotl (Level 4 Fiend)
Wooden Warrior (Level 2 Construct)

Characters
Chek Ahau (Level 13 Priest-King)
Chamiaholom and Chamiabac (Level 18 Onaqui Priests)

NPC
various zotz

Archetypes
Sun Guide

So since i will be on vacation for most of next week and will not have time to do any more playtests I want to go over my overall evaluation of the kineticists based on the playtests ive run compared to my initial thoughts here https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43nul?Collecting-my-thoughts

The class is really cool and has a lot of things going for it, but it also has some pretty substantial flaws, both overall and with certain options. going over the latter first. Flame eruption is just worse than all the other early overflows for no good reason, bad damage, bad scaling bad aoe, its just... bad compared to tidal hands, areal boomerang or tremor. also the water critical is just awful, since while splash is valuable, you can never plan for your crit so the chance of it doing more than 1-4 more damage on your target is just luck.

onto deeper problems, this class seems to want to be mobile a lot of its impulses are centered on the kineticist and ideally you want to be bouncing around the map to get into position however they don't have the action economy to do this at all, their offensive overflow impulses are all at least 2+1 actions leading to awkward gaps after you reposition since you have a remarkable lack of one action options leaving you nothing to do but blast, which leads us to the second problem.

Elemental blast kind of sucks, it is just a series of 8 unimpressive martial weapons, fire and air at least have unique attributes but earth and especially water just have nothing going for them that makes the blast interesting to use. Sure they can switch from melee to ranged but the only difference here is that melee does like 2 more damage since you cant afford to invest heavily in strength, and air, oh god that d4 hurts. Can you imagine how sad it made my level 6 players when they crit a high level enemy and got all of 8 damage out of it? The fact that they rely on the same gather elements as your impulses also leads clunkier turns than they need to be. AOO is also a concern but none of the adventure combats i used had aoo in them, so i cant comment how big an issue it is in practice.

overmore, more than any other class i feel kineticist lives or dies by the encounter they find themselves in. Are they in a moderate counter with a ton of -3s or -4s? the kineticist will feast. even if they are against a small group of on or above level characters with low reflex they can have a good time. but if they are against a small group with even moderate reflex, or any single character at all, they just feel worthless since you cannot target other saves meaningfully, and your already low damage gets halved more often then not, and if you are against a solo boss who happens to have high reflex? well at that point the kineticist cannot really do anything at all, which leads me into the biggest point

The damage across the board just isn't good enough, stunning revelation i know but past the very early levels the kineticist will struggle more and more as their damage output lags behind increased enemy hp. now this is true of all classes but the fact that in the time it takes a kineticist to gain between 2.5 to 4.5 damage when using a 3 damage impulse foes have gained 40ish hp its just a feels bad moment when you use your tidal hands, and all three enemies save, taking 9 damage each an doing nothing to actually get them killed any faster.

Now this is not to say I dislike the class, as i said in my previous review the class is cool as hell and a lot of its abilities FEEL good its just you play everything out and realize that at the end of all your cool s!~~ you haven't actually accomplished much of anything.

And as for the hot button topic of blasting, in addition to the general injection of interesting that generic blasts need, i hope that we end up with a selection of single target overflow impulses so that kineticists can really go all in on blowing up that one guys face. I am concerned with the kineticist in its current state but hopeful that paizo can salvage it into something that could become one of my favorite classes.

So! there has been a lot of discussion of the current version of the classes failings, as well as things that people are happy with as is, So I thought I might start a topic for things that might be a bit too good, either in comparison to other things offered at the same level, or just maybe a bit too good for the game in general.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is Rock Rampart. A free wall of stone whenever i want it? With no overflow or action cost? I feel like this might provide a little too much battlefield control in enclosed spaces where you can just indefinitely segment an encounter into effortless chunks.

The other one is chain blast. Now don't get me wrong, chain blast is really cool but it sits in a kind of troublesome spot for damage. As is chain blast, when active is a very rewarding situational 3 action feat. The problem is its also the best way to use your blasts for damage, by a large margin. if you expect even a small amount of your combats to leave have chain blast online you should take it because its just that explosive. and being this good with the blasts as mediocre as they are right now means that any improvements to the base blasts that are not distinct actions of their own could easily push chain blast's output into utterly busted

so several people have been bringing up the value of an at will aoe attack that consumes no resources and can be spammed forever, and how it justifies some combination of the low single target options, low aoe damage, and clunky economy. and I would like to point out an option that we already have.

Introducing spammy mcblaster the sorcerer.
Spammy is a dragon sorcerer. he takes electric arc as a cantrip, flaming hands as a first level signiture spell, and fireball as a third level signiture spell. along with advanced bloodline spell at 6, and bloodline focus at 12.

now, at the very early levels, 1-5ish spammy can actually run out of spells, but once they have a free dragon breath every fight at 6, the amount of encounters you need to throw at this character for them to run out of aoe is obscene and it only becomes more so as they level up, once they hit 12 and have two dragons breaths per fight they will probobly never need to touch an aoe that does equivalent damage to what a kineticist does. so they will also never run out, and have suprior damage, and have suprior dc, all while having a better action economy.

this is something we already have and we have collectivly been complaining about blasters from day one because this is not very good, this is considered a trap that new players try and realize it doesnt work. and spammy still has the other 90% of his class and spell list with he can do all sorts of things with while still having this option.

So having read through the class, as well as every thread on here and the subreddit I thought I may as well lay out my initial thoughts, I wont have a chance to playtest until the weekend but in the meantime here is where I stand:

firstly, this class is cool as hell, I do not want to understate this, its been a long time since a class felt this intrinsically awesome as the kineticist does, Again no gameplay experience yet but on read through the feel of the class is perfect.

Now in no particular order
Blasts: These seem a bit underwhelming. Every other martial in the game has some way to bolster their damage or their accuracy to give them a unique edge, The kineticists do not have that, so while their attacks are competent, they will fall behind basically any other martial when they have their thing going.
Secondly, elemental blasts, I am fine with the physical damage for air water and earth for a baseline but PLEASE offer the option to expand upon these with proper energetic blasts, cold, electric maybe sonic, ideally as level 1 impulse feats so you could grab them with your gate bonuses.
oh also waters crit specialization of "deadly d2" is utter garbage

8 hp and light armor feels a bit limp for a con class, the fact that even maxing out their con apex and all they will still have comparable hp to a normal fighter irks me, i feel like if something is going to be a con class it should be more resilient then this, at least give us the option for medium armor

Speaking of, Con, its just... give us a mechanic to do something with this please, as is we are boosting it out of obligation so that our dc keeps up and thats it, Im not calling for a return of burn but actions that self proc a fort save with risk of consequences could be a cool way to do it.

I am working under the assumption that expert weapons at 7 is an error because "martial proficiency except for exactly 2 levels" makes no sense from a design perspective

Now onto the non blast impulses, first going over the non overload ones, these are really cool actually, there are some stinkers, like the damaging auras that do 1 damage per effective spell level are... basically meaningless, but still overall im pretty positive, at will utilityish abilities for 2 actions that represent roughly half a spell of the same level? sounds good! my biggest problem is that these are all one feat a piece which feels like it will lean into a situation where your build can only do like 3 neat things, or you spent all your class feats on abilities you do not often use. not sure what the middleground is here but its a potential issue i see.

moving then to overload impulses and with them class dc. Again I have not playtested this yet but this looks... not great. The biggest painpoint for me is the action economy, all of these are effectively 3 action routines that hit an aoe for not especially impressive damage, roughly cantrip damage or half a top level spell, my issue here is that unlike your utility impulses, which function well, these "half spell actions" are saddled with awkward action economy tax, as well as worse dc than casters about half the time, meaning that they will often do miniscule damage when mobs all pass or crit their saves. Overmore they are mostly locked into targeting reflex saves for damage, outside of a couple impulses in earth, so they lack the flexibility to target weak saves that casters often exploit to bolster the chance of a spell landing. Summing up, I see damage, action economy, save flexibility, and DC all as potential pain points, they don't all need to be improved but there defiantly feels like there needs to be some give somewhere. Personally I would be happiest if the action economy was loosened up.

also lastly elemental adept is AWESOME but the bulk progression is so slow as to almost make your character feel weaker for having it, like, my level 10 geomancer looks at a one pound rock and has to just shrug "its too big for me boss?" that just sucks all the potential fun out of the ability.

On the whole I really do love the ideas in the class I largely think this is just a matter of numbers tuning more than anything, Its not there yet, but im hopefully optimistic that whatever comes out of this playtest will fulfill my dream of playing a "blow everything up forever" character.

so glancing over them, they all seem to roughly have cantrip scaling rolling one more d4 or d6 but without the stat mod to damage. They have much better ranges, areas and riders than cantrips to be fair, but they also have a worse action economy, taking the same two actions as a cantrip, but also requiring you to gather again afterwards for an effective +1 action tax. And lastly, these are Keyed off class dc proggression rather than magic Dc proggression so your dc is stunted about half the time, meaning that things succeeding and maybe even crit succceeding on your saves will be a frustratingly common experiance. I just dont see a world where these are an effective use of your time unless you can really nail that ace aoe.

As the topic says it has always kind of bothered me that fae are linked to the primal tradition, but the primal tradition is arguably the worst for doing fae-stule magic, no invisibility, no suggestions, they get charm at least but thats kind of it, so when you make a fae themed character i think the occult list would be a better fit, do you guys think that would cause any problems?

As the topic says it has always kind of bothered me that fae are linked to the primal tradition, but the primal tradition is arguably the worst for doing fae-stule magic, no invisibility, no suggestions, they get charm at least but thats kind of it, so when you make a fae themed character i think the occult list would be a better fit, do you guys think that would cause any problems?

As it says in the title, downtime rules seem, generally to require a week or more to amount to much of anything, which is fine and all it is "downtime" after all, but the thing is that most adventures really have points where your players can just go on break for like, half a month to craft and earn income or what have you, often times as written its hard to justify more than a couple days of rest and recuperation before they return focus to the plot at hand, so making use of research or crafting or influence seems like a bit of a struggle to do. am i alone here or do other people have issue with this as well?

My idea is basically to allow them to play more with the action economy so that if they are expected to be doing the same thing every turn the turns can still be interesting.

Main idea:whenever you amp a cantrip it reduces its action cost by 1 (minimum one action) but you can only amp one cantrip per turn), this makes the fact that the amped cantrips are a bit underwhelming less painfully because now you arent just selling your spell slots and proficiencies to get the maps and cantrips, you are also getting far more freedom with your turn and action economy than a caster normally would.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

If i have a bastard sword with a dancing rune, and am holding it in two hands when i activate the dancing rune, does it dance with a d10 damage dice or a d8?

Now off the bat I know, RAW the awnser is no, arcane archer specifies bows with the option of crossbows, but given firearms where not a thing at the time do you think they should be added to that list?

I had intended to do conversions for that game in a somewhat haphazard manner, however, I have since realized if I wanted to get anywhere with this I need to do it systematically, so from here on I will be tackling nations in their in-game order.

Before we start a brief summary of Dominions for context, the conceit of the game is that the head god of all creation has up and vanished without a trace and before too long every nation of the world has its own pet pretender to the throne viewing for the title of head god. These pretenders range from archmages to ancient heroes, to giant monsters from before time, to old allies, generals, or lovers of the previous head god.

the game takes place over three ages, and many of the nations I will convert will have separate entries for each age.

the early age: In this era, the world is young and wild, the world is full of monsters, and magic, and a lot fewer people. People of this era are armed largely with bronze or basic iron, and have a weak understanding of the magic that fills the world around them,

the middle age: People have risen to prominence in this era, and begun to take control, science has advanced rapidly and understanding of magic has grown with it. The monsters of the previous era have grown scarce and more fantastical races have begun to lose ground to humans.

3 the late age: Humans have now become the dominant people of a world that is clearly in decline in this era the magic of the world has begun to fade and many nations have been dealing with great tragedies. a once fantastical world has been mapped and a world of mysticism has been replaced with one of steel and engineering, what magic does remain tends towards death, soul and blood magic which are the least diminished paths of magic, if also the least moral.

This of course has little bearing on any use in an actual pathfinder game, I'm more just giving it as context for the world these nations come from, so context out of the way, let's move on to Early Age Arcoscephale "The golden years" a nation based on preclassical Greece.

At this point, Arcoscephele is a loose collection of City-states connected by culture alone. Bronze is more common than Iron here and warriors from these lands seem to gleam like gold. Food and labor are largely imported from tributary states leaving inhabitants time to focus on artistic or academic pursuits. Philosophers gather and discuss esoteric concepts and engineers produce clever if rarely useful contraptions and machinery. At the heart of Arcoscephale is mount Cephalos, which they hold to be sacred, and where pegasus riders are trained.

Items

Icarian Harness
Apple of Discord
Keledone
Bag of Dragons Teeth

Spells

Disolve Unto Atoms
The Illusion of Motion

Creatures

Blemmyes
Talos
Hound of Twilight
Kerberos
Ker
Khalkotauros
Daimon
Spartoi Soldiers
Cetus

Feats

Wind Rider Dedication (To do)
Mage Engineer Dedication (To do)

Other options

Mechanical Owl Familier
Pegasus Animal Companion

I've put the two dedications on hold while I cover the simple stuff from other nations, but to sum up, wind rider will be about utilizing a flying animal companion as a mount, along with some divine flair, and mage engineer will be about building clockwork minions that go from inert items to active minions once they are wound but are... kinda dumb and only last a few turns before winding down. I'm also considering writing up some heroes and NPCs but I'm unsure on that one. Anywho I would love any feedback, I eyeballed a LOT of this so it wouldn't surprise me if some of it isn't exactly balanced.

So this is one of my many many shower thought house rules that I would like some feedback on. I love the lore skills and how specific they are, and characters being able to use them for knowlage and income adds a lot of characterization.

However the problem is that raising them is almost always suboptimal. Maybe if your a rogue you have skills to burn but most classes are on a bit of a budget when it comes to skills and given you can earn income with almost any skill, and invest in a broader knowledge if you want to recall, I have rarely seen a lore raised above its initial level 1 trained, which is, imo a crying shame.

My solution is to give characters extra skills at regular intervals that can only be invested into lores. This will allow a fighter to be a master carpenter or a allow a wizard to study history or other scholarly pursuits while they are stuffed in all those books.

The question is of course how many lores and how often and there I admit I'm at a bit of a loss how many "flavor lores" do you guys think is appropriate without crowding the skill list?

I'm planning on lowering a lot of vision levels because darkvision and low light vision are all but omni present. It's to the point where lack of darkvision on humans feels like a weakness, rather than having it feel like a strength for other races. However I dont want to strip it away without replacing it with anything, so my question is what level of utility should I be giving these options to compensate.

Canadates include

Goblin
Hobgoblin
Gnoll (in the future)
Tengu & leshy (I know they have low light vision)

Which now that I've written out is less than I anticipated. Huh.

Anyway what do you guys think is an appropriate compensation for say, knocking dark to low light or removing it entirely?

As far as I am aware they are the only monster with an any alignment trait at all, rather than just an alignment. Not even deamons have the evil trait, they are just NE, it feels weird that rune giants got singled out here.

I'm thinking of doing a conversation of the mammoth rider prestige from first edition. My only issue is that I am unsure if I should make it it's own dedication or if it should be a line of feats nested in Cavalier.

So I am a bit... dissatisfied with how runes are described, they are so close to many familiar mechanics but a lot of oddities like runestones and somehow removing a carving from a surface to move it to another keep it iffy. To remedy this I've built a small collection of house rules that help remedy the issue. It is built around Automatic Bonus Progression since that's a system I always use, now without further adieu:

Runes are now "X Crystals" enchanted gems similer in appearance to an Ioun stones, they require magical Crafting to make and can accept any one gem or crystal as material to cover crafting costs. Unlike runes these crystals can always exist independently of items and runestones do not exist. Crystals have a Bulk of L.

Crystals can be affixed to items that have specially made slots for them. Affixing a crystal always has the 10% crafting cost to represent applying fastening (usually a small amount of gold silver or mithril) to hold the crystal in place and intigrate its effects. Applying a crystal requires the magical crafting feat, however removal can be attempted without it. To remove a crystal without magical crafting requires a craft check with 15+the crystals level as the DC.
Critical success: you remove the crystal without issue
Success: you remove the crystal but damage the item in the process giving it the broken condition.
Failure: you fail to remove the crystal and damage both it, and the item. Both items become broken
Critical Failure: you fail to remove the crystal and destroy it, as well as damaging the item it is affixed to.

This brings us to slots, Items have a number of slots depending on the skill of the craftsman as follows.
An Expert skilled craftsmen can create an item with 1 slot, this adds 10 G to the base price of the object and makes it a level 2 item.

A Masterfully skilled craftsmen can create an item with 2 slots, this adds 250 to the price of the item and makes it a level 7 item.

And a Legendarily skilled craftsmen can create an item with 3 slots. This adds 2500 G to the cost and makes it a level 15 item.

This system of Expertly made, Masterwork and Legendary items replaces the Grade system for items, and all special matireal items use the price modifiers in the matireal section rather than the specific price for a given armor/shield/weapon of that material.

Ergo an expert craftsman can make items of cold iron and silver with a cost of 10+ item cost + 20 per bulk.

Wheras it takes a Legendary craftsman to work oricalcum with a cost of 2500 +item cost + 10000 per bulk.

When an item with Crystals slotted into it is damaged the Crystals are safe, however if the item is destroyed all Slotted Crystals become broken.

I'm certain I have forgotten bits but that is largely the guts of it.

So after seeing it in play and experimenting with some more... drastic homebrews I have found that the Incapacitation trait is mostly fine and something similer to it is definitely needed to balance most of the spells it impacts. HOWEVER the full fizzle nature of it really sucks, so I'm proposing a simple change; incapacitating a target with a level higher than spell levelx2 no longer promotes success to crit sucess. Failures still become sucess, and crit fails still become normal fails. But from what I've seen boss monsters have high enough saves that they will have a decent chance of fizzling the spell with a crit anyway, and it allows things that are slightly stronger than you to be resilient to control magic without just invalidating it. What do you guys think?

So I do like Incapacitation a lot with one small downside, they are basically untenable for spontaneous casrers as is unless you dedicate one of your precious signature spells to them. Because otherwise your level will quickly outgrow its usefulness and then it's just a dud in your repotaur. Would making all Incapacitation spells signature by default be overpowering or would it be better to just give free retrains on level up once such spells have become dead weight?

One of my players is a cleric of shelyn, and they wanted to have the art form they are dedicated to be writing; jotting down short stories, aesops and amusing anecdotes with fun spins as inspiration hits him, I'm just not sure what skill would best represent this.

As it says in the title, since the gate points for critical fail/fail, fail/success and sucess/critical success are all exactly 10 apart, +10 will always move you up exactly one catagory

So, I totally understand why, in general, the summon celestial/summon fiend spells are hated at 5th level, requesting "troops" from your patron power of choice is not something nobodies should be able to do.

At the same time, I love imps and lantern archons and nosoi and voidworms ect. Are awesome and I have always loved getting one through the improved familiar feat. But now calling one requires a 5th level spell and they only stay a minute which is.... not helpful.

I am trying to think of a way to make these little assistants more accessible but I'm not sure how to go about it, whether it be a summon spell with a unique duration or a ritual or what. How would you guys go about it?

There are a number of threads on here for individual overhauls so I thought I might start a thread for cataloging more minor tweaks you all have applied to your games.

Starting in no particular order:

1 Fear gravity: cliffs are scary and falling off one should be impressive but in pf its kinda.... not, a level 10 barbarian can fall about 600 feet and have a slightly better than coin flip odds of living, and anything below 300 cannot kill them from full.
House rule: fall damage raises exponentially dealing d6 damage for every 10 feet fallen squared, so 10 feet Is 1d6, 50 feet is 25d6, 100 feet is 100d6 ect.

2 sturdyness runes: not an original idea I know but turning the sturdy shield into an upgrade path makes shields as a whole make way more sense. Each sturdy rune changes the hp and hardness to the equivalent sturdy shield

3 Versatile comands: simple and easy patch, a lot of summonable mobs dont work super well on a two action minion economy, the solution is allow command a minion to use 1 or 2 actions, and if it is used with two it simply transfers that action over giving the minion a full 3 actions.

4 Sunder: another easy one. Things that can target creatures can also target objects (some exceptions) an unattended object has basically no ac while an attended object has the same ac as its holder. Exceptions: a ton of immunity I can think to list out atm

5 obligatory alchemist mod throw everything: scrap quick bomber, at level one alchemists get the following:
An alchemist keeps careful track of her equipment so everything is ready at a moments notice. Items with a bulk of Light can be drawn without an action when you interact with the object to activate it or throw it. All such objects have a throwing range of 20 feet and if they lack weapon damage deal 1d4 bludgeoning on a hit. If thrown at an ally they can use a reaction to catch the object with a free hand in which case an attack roll is not needed.

So I have been convering the content out of rise of the runelords that is not represented and am a bit stumped at the thelassian sin schools. The main reason being that the forbidden schools are, not just mechanically but also in lore a hard restriction and I'm trying to think of what kind of boon they could have that would make that restriction acceptable over a normal specialist.

My current working plan is that spell slots from level 1 through 8 are treated as one spell level higher for the purposes of heightening their specialized schools. Of course heightening isnt even across the board, most evocation and conjuration spells have it while things like transmutation or necromancy often do not.

So what are your thoughts? Is this a workable point to start from or a horrible idea?

Since my first thread on returning classes seems to have wrapped up, the logical next step is where do we go from here? What new themes mechanics or ideas do you see them using to create brand new classes or perhaps classes that at the very least have no resemblance to their pf1 incarnation (there are so many archetypes it wouldn't surprise me if one or two of them are named the same as one of the new classes)

For my part i would love to see an artificer, jury rigging gadgets and contraptions, building gizmos and do dads to fill whatever need the party has, vaguely similar to the alchemist but with a more skill monkey approach to the class. And if people need the magic item aspect back i feel like "false runes" or something like that for fleeting enchantments could be a thing as well.

So I have been converting my parties characters from 1e to 2e and one of those was a skald, which I built as a barbarian with the bard dedication and it has been going well however on a glance through the spell rules again i noticed spells get the concentration trait from verbal components, something every bardic composition has. Is it unbalanced to ignore that incompatibility so he can use his composition cantrips and composition focus spells or would this be overreaching?

By its end pathfinder had a LOT of classes of.... varying soundness. I am curious to see which classes everyone expects to see brought over, and to start things off I'll go over my thoughts.

Summoner, gunslinger, magus and inquisitor: these classes I feel are all more or less inevitable, they are popular, have a clear gameplay focus, a solid thematic backing and, summoner aside, relatively few fiddly rules that would overcomplicate the transition.

Cavalier is iffy, as best I can tell it has never been the most popular, mounted combat is borderline nonfunctional in dungeons teamwork feats are a non starter in pf2 and challenge feels like a champion ability, my gues is that the Cavaliers will not be coming back.

Warpriest is a standout for being the name of one of the clerics subclasses writing it off almost completely

Skald, bloodrager and hunter can be emulated fairly closely with existing devotions which I think makes them unlikely

Vigilante is actually one I think that is prime to come back, but as a devotion rather than a base class, something that I think would mend a lot of the flaws in the class.

Ninja samurai mesmer spiritualist and arcanist. I do not see any of these making a return as standalone classes, however I can easily see all of them being used as a variant of an existing class either as a new subclass or something like the pf1 alternate classes

Occustist and medium's whole schtick feel like they would be incredibly clumsy to implement directly and I feel like both would have to be rebuilt ground up from concept to work.

And the rest I haven't seen enough in play to get a solid grasp on.

Is there any unified or exhaustive list of the various non-standard mechanics that have popped up across the adventure paths such as jades romance and caravans, runelords sin ranks, mummies masks panic ect? Whenever I try to search for something like that I always get lists of the peicemail or wordcasting rules, which are much easier to find.

So I have noticed some, but not all of the magus archetypes that replace spell recall do not replace improved spell recall. Should I interoperate this as:
A) improved spell recall is also removed and replaced with nothing
B) I get improved spell recall at the normal level despite lacking base spell recall
C) improved spell recall is 'demoted' to normal spell recall

with the upcoming advent of occult adventures adding psionics to 1st party pathfinder, we have reached 37 classes, slowly but steadily nearing 3.5s level of class bloat. Dont get me wrong i love all the classes, new and old, i just think conceptually, some of them, such as Hunter and warpriest, really have difficulty justifying themselves.

And that got me thinking, what is there left conceptually that hasn't been done between all our classes, the various archetypes there of and multiclassing (heresy i know), and the answer i came up with is a dedicated face class; A class excelling in a social environment who's silver tongue can get you into or out of just about anything. a class whos meditations, taunts and threats could turn enemies against each other and make friends out of foes.

Sure we have skills for that, and the rogue has some perks that enhance them (but come on man, thats the rogue!) But i feel this is something that you could certainly build a class out of, It will need more than that just that certainly, but i think a solid core is there, what do you guys think?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?2037-The-OGL-Shall-Return!-And-Oth er-Short-Stories!#.VGElUjTF8Zm

personally I'm very excited for this, and i know the lack of this has been a sticking point for a lot of people on the subject of 5e.

Overall, i am extremely Happy with the 5e rule-set, however the new magic rules Make a few things rather hard to pull off, so I've come up with the following patch:

Permanency
4th level Transmutation (all Spell-lists)
Casting time: 1 action
Material: V, S, M (a bit of gold dust, worth 10 GP)

Casting this spell creates a small false mind to concentration and maintain a spell you are currently concertinaing on. You no longer need to Concentrate on that spell, and it lasts for 1 Minuit after this spell is cast, regardless of the spells own maximum duration.

At Higher Levels: Casting permanency as a higher level spell allows the effect to last longer but also increases the material cost.

As a fifth level spell, Permanency extends a spell for one hour, and costs 50 GP

as a sixth level spell, Permanency extends a spell for 24 hours, and costs 500 GP

as a seventh level spell, Permanency extends a spell for a week and costs 2500 GP

as an eighth level spell, permanency extends a spell for a month, and costs 10000 GP

At the Ninth level, Permanency extends a spell forever, until it is dispelled and costs 100000 GP

Special: A caster may dispel his or her own permanency early at any time they are within 100 feet of the effect it is extending.

This allows for things like permanent transformations, and magical obstacles such as permanent walls of element in a spellcasters lair or continuous Illusions.and allows casters a bit more versatility if they are willing to pay for it, while being too expensive to become a default. The material costs are simply as an example, i will need a lot more playtime before i am able to judge a proper scaling for the cost.

So thoughts?

So i was Perusing my PHB the other day when i looked over the paladin class and something hit me. There was no alignment .... anything, and double checking throughout the book it seems that this is constant.

In 5e alignment never touches mechanics.

Protection from evil singles out undead and fiends, rather than an alignment for instance. the same group a paladins Smite keys off of.

Just a few ideas to help the rogue do what Paizo seems to want it to do,

10+int skills per level (silly i know)

Expertise (Ex): at the second level, a rogue picks a number of class skills equal to his int bonus (minimum 1) that she excels in, these skills are granted a bonus equal to half the rogues level

Agility (Ex): At the fifth level a rogue may preform any skill that would take a move action as a swift action

Rapid Strike (Ex): At the tenth level when a rogue sneak attacks, they may do so as a full attack applying sneak damage to all of their successful attacks, as long as the first attack was a valid sneak attack.

Great agility (Ex): at the 12th level, A rogue may preform any move action (excluding actual movement or class abilities) as a swift action, alternatively they may make a second 5 foot step as a swift action on a turn they have made a 5 foot step

Thoughts? i know the wording probably needs a bit of cleaning up. But other than that what do you think?

A Few months back I stumbled into a Discussion Talking about how to make a pathfinder game low magic and how its nearly impossible with how the game is made. Well that got me thinking and i have since put together a setting based mostly on old myths, especially greek to use as a low magic setting.

The base premise is ignorance. Rather than sprawling kingdoms and complete maps and brilliant universities to teach and learn you need a more basic world of city states and to some extent xenophobia. A world where the maps are patchwork at best, making no promises of what lies outside your homelands with rumors of monsters lurking in the gaps. In this world magic is not the tool of man, rather it belongs to the spirits and the gods. A wizard has no books or scrolls to learn his trade from, he must seek out an older wizard as a mentor or barter with the spirits themselves. Arcane casters are looked at with suspicion at best and in some areas such practices are banned completely. Even more suspicion is placed on those who are born with such talents, in part due to suspicions this places on their parentage but also because of the instability of their powers. similarly Divine miracles are not a common occurrence, only the most devout members of the church are granted this gift from the gods.

There are a few basic rule changes
1) spellcraft is not a skill, spellcraft checks are fulfilled with knowledge (Arcana) (Religion) and (Nature) respectively
2) Almost all casting classes are re-listed as prestige classes with the following pre-requisits

Bard - 3 ranks in arcana and Preform
Cleric - 5 ranks in Religion
Druid - 5 ranks in nature
Paladin - 1 ranks in Religion,
Ranger - 1 ranks in Nature,
Wizard - 5 ranks in arcana

Alchemist - 3 ranks in craft (alchemy) 3 ranks in Arcana
Inquisitor - 3 Ranks in Religion,
Summoner - 3 Ranks in the Planes, 3 Ranks in Arcana
Witch - 5 Ranks in Arcana

Magus - 3 ranks in Arcana

Arcanist - 5 ranks in Arcana
Bloodrager -1 Rank in Arcana
investigator - 3 Ranks Arcana 3 Ranks craft (alchemy)
Hunter - 3 Ranks of Nature
Shaman - 5 ranks of the Planes and Nature
Skald -3 ranks in arcana and Preform
Warpriest - 3 ranks in religion

you will notice that sorcerer and oracle are not on this list, these two classes can be taken from level one but have a couple kinks,
- - Firstly, both roll for the spells they gain when they level rather than choosing them; They can however specify the school they want to roll from and weather they will be pulling from a base, or expanded spell list

- - Second they both use the ruleset of Wild Magic, from 3.5

Now onto magic items, The feats scribe scroll and brew potion still exist and function as before, however all other Item creation Feats no longer exist. Magical items are not sold in stores or made in any number they are sources of awe, and carefully guarded by those who own them, Occasionally one might be sold, stolen or bartered off but this is not the norm. Most must be found, either buried in ancient ruins and temples or won from their previous owners.

In this system the art of magic item creation has been lost but it can be discovered in fragments. Any character with enough craft skills to create the base item could in theory enchant it, it is simply a matter of discovering the specific rare reagents required.

For Instance; a flaming burst weapon might require such items as a few drops of uncooled magma, an elementals breath, obsidian dust and a chimeras blood, The recipes and rites might be discovered in ruins or perhaps bought from higher powers and the activities to make a magical weapon should be an adventure in of itself

So Ive seen various people claim that the fighter is fundamentally flawed but for the life of me i cannot see it. Unlike the rogue and monk whos flaws run deep into the way the class is set up, the Fighter seems to only have a few Statistical shortcomings.

It seems to me that giving the fighter 4+int Skills and a good will save fixes the vast majority of the issues the class has. Perhaps the class skill list needs some tinkering with as well but that too is an easy fix.

Am i missing something basic here? or is it really that simple?

Presenting a custom spell and looking for feedback.

School: Necromancy [Shadow]
Wizard-sorcerer 3, Witch 3, Magus 3

Casting time: 1 Standard Action

Components: V, S, M (a bit of black velvet)

Range: Self

Targets: Self

Duration 1 Hour/4 levels

Saving throw: none

Spell resistance: no

This spell temporarily Animates your shadow as a separate entity under your control. Controlling an animated shadow not an action as the mental link is maintained as long as the caster is conscious. An animated shadow has a movement speed of 60 however they are bound to solid surfaces as a shadow and they must remain within 30 feet of their controller at all times, if the caster is moved away from the shadow the shadow is "dragged" along with them. An animated shadow may not interact with physical objects directly however he may manipulate their shadows, having a similar effect as if it where physical (lifting a pots shadow lifts the pot, shoving a guards shadow shoves the guard and so on).

A shadow shares all of the stats of its owner, including base attack , saves and skill ranks, however they have none of their abilities, nor magic enhancements, and despite possessing the shadow of weapons, any attack made by an Animated shadow is treated as an unarmed attack. Animated shadows posses a +20 Racial Bonus to stealth (+30 when not moving) and posses the "hide in plain sight" class feature. a creature who sees an object being manipulated by the shadow (or is manipulated by it themselves)receives a +10 bonus to perceive the shadow.

An animated shadow has 2 HP/caster level, and is treated as incorporeal for the purposes of Damaging it. Armor and natural armor do not apply to shadows and all attacks made against it are treated as touch attacks with a 50% miss chance. Being in an area of bright light reveals the shadow removing its miss chance, especially bright areas such as those illuminated by a daylight spell or a surface in very close proximity to a flame Deal 5 damage to the shadow each turn it spends in an area of intense light. If a shadow is destroyed it returns to the caster who immediately falls unconscious and takes 5D6 damage.

This spell may be ended by the caster as a free action, while it is active the caster possess no shadow. Any creature that has no shadow of its own (such as a vampire) gains no benefit from this spell.