Kilraq Starlight's page

It isn't working for me. I am not receiving the reset password. :(

The wind howls across the battlefield. The battle wasn't going the way Malic and his kobold brethren had expected.

The goal had been to remove the real danger, a thin and gaunt looking Orc in the back, dressed in clothes and wearing various holy symbols. All he had to do was get by that lumbering brute with the oversized greatsword. They had anticipated that. Even the shots of deadly arrows from the elf with a devilish glint in her eyes were obvious. Looking at her mad him mad for some reason. Didn't they know what a cliche they were, bah.

What they hadn't anticipated was a wall of fire erupring between them on the way to the ambush. Worse, the Minotaur was brandishing a whip in a very threatening manner. If he could make a wall of fire appear, how much more deadly might he be with that whip!

I don't have anything to add that hasn't already been said about possible updates to this guide, but I can give you my thumbs up and salute for making another excellent guide for the game. Keep up the good work!

OrochiFuror wrote:

Agree. All the anathema are opt in, and they are almost universally things a character choosing the associated option would naturally be inclined to do.

If you want a character to have an option but not it's associated anathema, you should think why a character would be drawn to that option and what beliefs they have. What would make them want that option but not it's anathema.
If the answer pans out to be because your making something silly or contrarian, then you should recognise that such things don't generally fit into Golarian, and you should talk with your GM about it.

I don't think that is fair, people didn’t opt to worship a deity or be bound by their rules; they chose to play a class with healer mechanics and then had the deity and anathema forced on them. Their only option was to either accept those two or not play the class.

Some players may be hardcore atheists who strongly dislike the concept of worshiping anything and find it humiliating. Others may be very religious and find the concept too close to idolatry (remember the satanic panic). Some players simply played healers in other games, like MMOs, as a white mage or something similar, and wanted to do the same here. I don’t see the point of forcing a vegan to eat meat, and I don’t see the point of forcing someone who doesn’t want to worship gods into pledging divine servitude to a fictional character.

I can get what you're saying here, but this is Pathfinder 2E. You literally have options when it comes to a healer role, you are not forced into the cleric role.

Yes, divine font for cleric is great, but so are Divine based sorcerers, Divine witches, oracles or even druids if you want to go down a healing heavy route. Anyone can go medic and heal people up. If you want to be a healer in this game, you have a plethora of options.

No one is forcing an atheist to play a god or anything else of that matter. It's not hard to see that if you do more than a cursory glance at the system.

Would love to play this AP when it comes out. Great job on the primer. Looking forward to seeing how the AP plays out and if there are any interesting twists.

Some people might even try to absorb an Exemplar's blood/lifeforce to try and become one.

Don't give a certain lich in a certain lake any ideas...

It is my understanding that they approach it as you mentioned! Evaluating the entire body of work of each writer as well as an AI checker. We really value our creatives and their work here.

Glad to hear it. In the modern era it is easy to just let things slide. Taking the hard route is the right course nowadays. May you and Paizo keep taking the right calls.

Also, thank you so much for the transparency. It's good to see inside the eyes of the company and having a good rep to talk to us.

Ravingdork wrote:

I've never heard of a full proof method of detecting such things in writing (or even a reliable one), but I trust your team is far more capable at it than I likely ever will be.

Thank you for always being so kind, patient, and clear with us, Maya.

And I always will be! ^_^

As someone who works in education, I can confirm it is a scourge, but one thing that does help is having a body of evidence of a writers previous works, either written or pre AI age. Styles/habits are really hard to change.

Maya, if you are able to discuss it, do you know what kinds of checks Paizo is using to stop AI works? I'm am 100% with your companies anti AI policy, I'm just curious what tools are being used in the industry. For example, Turnitin is very popular in education atm.

On topic, not a huge fan of the artwork, but a twisted and contradictory hero who just wants to find a noble end while wishing those around her would stop being so noble for her, it's a good story buildup. Will be interesting to see where they go. Good job to both the artist and writer. While I may not like all the elements of the story and art, I applaud the efforts put into place to make such things in a very complex and old game world.

...

1. Sorcerers have to practice imposing their will on their inherent magical-ness. It's about their technique (perhaps visualizing or simply believing what they want to happen) and efficiency of effort. This makes it relate similarly to everyone else's training. You don't get better unless you practice.
...

Now I'm picturing a sorcerer like a father or mother driving the car, talking to the magic and blood cells in the back as they are fighting.

"This is my body you two and if you don't listen to, so help me Goddess, I will turn this body right around and out of this combat!"

People don't tend to care about armor runes until they find themselves swallowed whole by a monster. Suddenly those bitter and swallowspike runes become a whole lot more important.

Aka, hello Mr Purple Worm

I'll add my own, with a selection of focus spells from various domains -

Metal Domain - Serrate. One action, can be done to any allies metal weapon and scales up to 5d4 free slashing dmg per hit. Flurry Rangers will love you.

Wood domain - Arms of Nature. 2 actions to never be without a weapon again. You're always near a wooden door, table, wagon, tree, etc. Nothing fancy, but ambushes are less troublesome at least.

Might - Athletic rush - one action for speed boost and athletic bonus while also allowing a movement action. Get where you need quick or trip someone to assist.

Knowledge - Scholarly Recollection. Make the GM give you that good recall knowledge check.

Glyph - Redact. Or as I like to call it the screw with your DMs npcs. Takes a clever player but you can do so much trickery with this focus spell.

Considering the fact that Paizo made the Wandering Chef archetype a thing, I think this could be ground enough to make this another option officially too. The idea is to give us freedom to play the way we want, particularly if the effects are the same either way for the two feats. I'd add this as a suggestion to the Fall Errata post as a potential fix.

One minor note though, while they would use the highest spell casting proficiency they have access too, remember that their spell pools are still different. For example, a Wizard/Summoner would have both a set of prepared wizard spells and also their summoner spells, both different from each other. To my knowledge, these spells are not interchangeable either.

While I've never played a monk to that level but I'd love to have a multiclassed monk who picked up some Kineticist stance feats to merge them together with a monk feat. There are fun possibilities in that set.

This sounds like the realm of rituals or wish spells, as others have said. I'd imagine if said Kobold did something that was huge for dragonkind, something that benefited all dragons, that some of them may create a unique one time ritual to help said Kobold become an honorary member of their kin. I'd imagine it would look like something like a mix between the wish ritual and the reincarnation ritual. With 3 dragons of different traditions having to serve as the secondary casters. Fun to imagine... Give me a bit to homebrew it.

It seems like there are very few good talismans

I wouldn't say that. They are easy items to give away as a GM without doing any lasting damage to the "total treasure" guideline, since they are one and done.

For example, at lower levels a caster and a melee (minus fighter) will have the same chance to hit with a weapon. Imagine having some organization give it's new members a small set of predators claws or potency crystals. Let's everyone feel powerful for an important hit. Or if you're trying to encourage tactics, give them some wolf fangs as well to incentive tripping.

Or if the party is going to be doing some dangerous activities near a cliff, give them a few jade cats as a safety measures.

Treat them as the consumables they are. Interesting effects. Used to give you an edge in a situation you are predicting could come up.

What's Oracle systems for the GM?

It's a system that came out of the solo rpg tabletop world. The idea is you have a list of charts and random rolling tables that you use to determine the events of a story, with you the player (or player if there is multiple players) interpreting the results of the roll on the table. Simple ones use 1d6, but there are others.

Trevor Devall has a good YouTube set of videos on his own campaign using the system. https://www.memyselfanddie.com/

I'm just looking to see if anyone has experience with the many different versions out there for the Oracle/DM. Alot of people use AI for this now, but I'm not comfortable going that direction atm.

I am in the city of Absalom!

Best watch your coin purse than. Absalom is a big and dangerous place.

As for Talismans, there are many! A word of caution though. Spellhearts and talismans share the same slots, so explore ones that typically don't fit on a weapon or armor slot if you are using them. The one that grants 'safe falls' is one of my favorites to keep on my person at all times.

Lol you could have players play I rolled low again bingo.
If they fill out their bingo card they get a 20 on their next roll.

I run a game for teenagers. I will be adopting this idea for my table. The kiddos will love it. Haha

Big question: Will the AP have modifications in it to play it without Mythic?

The big question here. I'd like to know this as well.

Also, as a side note, I do NOT want to have them try to run a game using AI. I have yet to find an AI that actually knows PF2E rules, it usually creates a lie or made up rule/feature.

So I am currently running a Tabletop RPG club for my school kids and I want to know what experience people have with using Oracle systems for the GM. This would let me have multiple games running, with me just giving advice to the students and helping them with good guiding questions to decipher the dice roll on the tables.

I've made a couple tables for them to roll on so far myself, but I know there are some good pre-built Oracle systems for those who do solo-rpgs. That said, I've never run any myself and have no idea which ones are best when it's a group, not solo. My googlefu is usually pretty good, but I get strange results when I try to find information. Anyone have suggestions, starting points, etc. I'm up to buying pdfs if I need too to have the students use. (I'm teaching in China in an international school, so physical books are a no go.)

I played DnD initially (3.5 era), but never found a consistent game as a kid. When I was in the military one of my superiors ran a game and I got into character building then. Later, when both of us left the military, we meet again and he ran pathfinder instead of 3.5 or 4DnD. I liked the open source information and the ability to find information freely. I played that well into 2019, when I heard about the PF2E playtest. As a caster favoring player, I did not like the initial taste of PF2E, but Nonnat1 videos eventually got me to give it a second look. Between that and the Archives, I got sold. I've been running a school club for my students since then. Fun times.

Sadly I am not in Oregon anymore. however, I have a few friends in the area, I'll inform them.

Last session got my hands on some full plate. Nice AC when I raise my shield

Plate is life (particularly if you can get mighty bulwark). Any big fit moments yet? Other members surviving well?

Kilraq Starlight wrote:

Could be a good community project. Give advice or warning about certain classes that have since come out for that campaign. Would take a lot of work but would be a worthy sort of task that would help out many.

This is a really, really good idea, Kilraq!

Yeah. Maybe we can make a thread or section for it and produce some templates to follow, then break it into areas for an AP. Would need some forum adjustment I think to allow it to work on the forums, though if someone had the time to make a Google doc for it that could work too. Sadly neck deep in working on a work certification atm myself so I can't do so. :(

Maya Coleman wrote:

I check this every day of the week to make sure you haven't died again. ㅠㅠ

LOL... oh it came close this past session. Well it came close not due to HP, but due to some conditions and a disease. I pulled through though thankfully.

Now we are level, so there is that! :)

Time for some blessed one feats maybe?

Could be a good community project. Give advice or warning about certain classes that have since come out for that campaign. Would take a lot of work but would be a worthy sort of task that would help out many.

Now I'm picturing your character window shopping for shields, going over their fine points, while sipping on some local street food drink.

ottdmk wrote:

I'd be really curious to hear details of your Build. Fighter/Alchemist can go a lot of different ways.

Hold-scarred Orc- Fighter Vicious Swing/Aggressive Block- Axe and Shield

Alchemist - Mutagenist focusing on mainly combat buffing mutagens (though know cognitive and what not)...

Have a fair amount of skills and the like.

If anyone wants to check him out (he is missing a shield because it broke) - https://pathbuilder2e.com/launch.html?build=1048347

A good build. All the talk about the summoner in the general area has made me start thinking about a Summoner/Rogue build. Your own gangup partner! :p

May the adventures for your Mr. Hyde go well!

Unofficially, apps like Wanderer's Guide and Pathbuilder seem to be giving the bonus for both classes. As for official... No clue.

Cleavious the friendly neighborhood goblin merchant makes a big ear-to-ear tooth-filled grin when hearing someone is looking to be sold an archetype.

"Did you say sell me an archetype? It's your lucky day I'd be more than happy to sell you an archetype, let me tell you those free archetypes are overrated, much better if I sell you one! My favorite is this really expensive one over here, how much gold did you say you have?"

I feel this post is a prime example of 'Tell me you're a dandy archetype without saying you're a dandy archetype" kind of thing.

Yeah my new guy is a smarty tank :)

Update with your (mis) adventures when you can. I wish your new brainchild a safe adventure! May they have a less tragic ending.

The character died... Death to Wasp Swarm/poison!

So, I brought in another character. Fighter/Alchemist (Mutagenist).

Reading this felt thread felt like watching a show and then getting an anticlimactic ending. Alas poor unnamed Inventor, we hardly knew thee. Haha

And yeah... Swarms are something I think everyone needs a plan for at some point in their build.

Outside of multiclass options, I love the flavorful shooter options.

Unexpected Sharpshooter -https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=123

You get to be that wild card wherever you go. Super flavorful and fun to RP.

Sniping Duo - https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=121

Closest we got to combo team play. Love the build up and the mini buffs you can give between yourself and the spotter. Nothing like built in RP story stuff.

Soulforger and Mindsmith - https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=102
https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=194

My weapons are my mind/soul. Super fun and iconic to play. I made a Orc Barbarian with a spectral scythe weapon for my students to play with and they have always loved it.

Honorable mentions - All of the Pathfinder society archetypes. Flavourful and full of useful skills/actions for all types of players. Better for the RP group though. So Swordmaster, Pathfinder Agent, Etc.

Also Shadowdancer and Eldritch Archer. Mostly due to PF1E love, but they are still so much fun to design and play out these kind of characters.

Kilraq Starlight wrote:

Combo attacks are an area that PF2E does not currently tackle and would need a full ruleset to make work. Essentially any ideas would be in the realm of homebrew, which is perfectly fine! I love the ideas myself, since you could make combos with any types of attacks (Final fantasy vibes there)

P.S, Lots of chatter about Kineticist lately. Wish they would just make a class forum at this point.

Yeah, was kind of thinking that Genshin vibe of hyperbloom, vaporize, etc.

It would be interesting but would also probably become a go to where the GM would have to design encounters where the "wonder twins" couldn't get their attacks off in order to mess up their combo.

That's what I mean about needing a ruleset. We don't want to just have to leave it up to GMs to "wing it", but ways to rule it well.

For example, a hard rule that you can only do such combos to enemies who are debuffed in some manner, with some combos being possible only when specific debuffs are in place.

As much as it's fun imagining Kin's mixing, I'd love to see some melee combos too. Think of all those shows where the hulking bruiser swings hard and the enemy dodges, but they were acting as a faint for the arrow flying in from the archer behind them, or the rogue popping out of the literal shadows (Shadowdancer love woo). Would be fun to theory craft one, but that would need to be posted in the homebrew section of the forums.

Combo attacks are an area that PF2E does not currently tackle and would need a full ruleset to make work. Essentially any ideas would be in the realm of homebrew, which is perfectly fine! I love the ideas myself, since you could make combos with any types of attacks (Final fantasy vibes there)

P.S, Lots of chatter about Kineticist lately. Wish they would just make a class forum at this point.

Kilraq Starlight wrote:

Just frustrating to have to use homebrew when it seems like a thing the developers could have built.

The number of things the developers could have built is infinite. At some point it's ok for GMs to build them themselves.

True. I'll be building a ritual here soon. I'll be posting it to share when I'm done for advice.

Well that is the thing. I'm not asking for it as a player, but a GM. I would love to have an event for my players, using a ritual to create a Divine Warden, for the players defend an area they leave, as a plot event. Having a premade mechanical ritual is the point. If it's not there, it's just a pity is all. I try to not impliment things that are not in the books, for player transparency. Just frustrating to have to use homebrew when it seems like a thing the developers could have built.

TLDR : There is no proper ritual for a Divine Warden, found in Bestiary 3. It is mentioned, but not there, and animate object doesn't work as a replacement.

Post: I was building a character for one of my students games and I stumbled upon Divine Warden template in Bestiary 3 while researching dieties. This led me down a rabbit hole trying to figure out where this ritual was. Unless I'm mistaken, there is none. A general template is in place for the putting this on a monster, but not the rules for the ritual to make a creature this way.

Created through complex rituals performed by a faith's adherents, divine wardens have been imbued with a fraction of the power that courses through a champion or cleric of a particular deity. This divine spark allows the divine warden to serve as the protector for a temple, shrine, or other holy site. Such guardians aren't intrinsically bound to a fixed location, but they rarely leave the temple or site over which they watch.

Most divine wardens have been crafted from clay, stone, wood, or similar materials and typically have features that resemble a deity or a deity's herald. Divine wardens often have other abilities typically exhibited by constructs, such as armor plating, the ability to disguise themselves as statues, or other similar benefits.

The faithful worshippers who craft divine wardens typically animate the constructs using a special ritual in which the followers beseech their deity to empower the guardian. The divine mandate that imbues a divine warden with power also allows the sentinel to recognize enemies of its deity and prevents the construct from attacking other members of the faith, unless these patrons choose to attack it first.

In rare cases or particularly dire times, a deity might create a divine warden by directly animating an existing statue or idol to aid faithful followers. These divine guardians are most likely to be found outside of their original locations, assisting displaced congregations or pursuing those who might harm the faithful.

I've looked at the other rituals to see if maybe there was a generic ritual that accomplished something similar and thus checked animate object first. While it can function somewhat ok, it's not very satisfying since the ritual from the bestiary is supposed to create a guardian infused with divine energy that protects those who follow the deity.

Other rituals bless a place, ward an area, and other such things, but nothing does what this block suggests. Anyone have any ideas, workarounds? I'll homebrew one for my own campaigns, but this seems like such a commonly desired kind of activity that I'm surprised the ritual doesn't seem to exist.

This won't be an exhaustive list but...

Dragons breath. (dedications or ancestory, but the human one doesn't scale)

Alchemist get scaling DC for their infused alchemical items.

Some Relic seed abilities

Invested Investiture (lvl 12 Thau feat so you can use class DC instead of item DC)

Scroll Thaumaturgy (lvl 1 feat, same effect as invested Investiture)

Feathered Flechette (lvl 8 feat from Winged Warrior, use class DC. Most of the archetype works this way)

Various abilities from the Vampire, Ghoul and Zombie archetype

Alkenstar Agent feats

Alter Ego feat

This is a start, I'll add more later.

As you can see, some of these are pretty useful, allowing that class DC to be useful in a variety of ways, but definitely requires some system mastery to notice. For most people, the relic seeds scaling DCs will be the most interesting additions.

Big thanks for the team. Your website makes running my after school Pathfinder games for students very easy. Keep up the Herculean task!

I'd say very few dedications (the whole dedication, not just the archetype) are OP. As others have mentioned, it would be a short list (and a contested one due to people differing opinions on what is or is not an OP option.)

My particular list for OP. (Either for times seen take with no real character reason, just for mechanics or potential power)
1. Exemplar
2. Champion
3. Rogue (I'm more neutral on this one)
4. Beastmaster
5. Any class caster dedication (except maybe Animist, Summoner, or Magus)
6. Acrobat (Free Acrobatic scaling)
7. Inventor (For Crafting Scaling)
8. Spirit Warrior (Merely because it's mostly a better Monk dedication since it invalidates the whole reason behind nerfing FoB and for a dedication only)
9. Pre nerf Six Pillars.

Not sure I'd ban any of these at my own tables, but these stick out as the biggest outliers for me. Only possible add would be Kinetistic dedication, mostly due to spam of some skills. But yeah, as others have already said, these are the only ones I'd see changing game balance more than expected.

As for the unpowered option... I'll do a different post on that. I've had tables where I've given some dedications and their feats as separate rewards because no one would take such options otherwise.

Idk. Demiplane has always been an end game goal for any caster I've ever played. A place they call "theirs" is about as end game as you can get. To lose that behind a mythic wall seems... Unnecessary. If it's too game breaking for the GM, just make it so it's not a "get out of jail free" card with a plane shift or other such spell act. /Shrug. That's just my two cents.

I think that high level parties need to be able to enter the Mansion w/o their bags gushing up contents. Being cut off from them is almost a penalty already, and perhaps worse if they need to do extended work or are hiding in hostile territory and forgot.

But also I dislike the economics that favors lots of small bags, making larger ones useless outside of unusually sized items seldom stored.
So yeah, Investing seems like a solution, but maybe we shouldn't care so much? Maybe it's all good being as wonky as it is because Bulk's so tertiary to actual gameplay, hardly an issue outside of the lowest levels and perhaps left behind. Toss some valuable statues (et al) that can't fit in the smaller bags at the party, and grin. Many old modules had different values for items if kept intact, being worth about 10x as much as if they had to be broken down. Hmm.

(I'm reminded of a high level adventure with a construct that emitted an anti-magic aura that plunged the party into darkness. Ever prepared, many had stocked non-magical sources of light (most were remnants from their earliest levels). Except they couldn't access them since the items were in extradimensional spaces they couldn't access. Party had to retreat in the dark and blockade a door just to retrieve mundane light so they could return to fight.)

Won't lie, that last little story bit is the things I love most about tabletop games like Pathfinder and DnD. I love the stories it creates, even if at the time they were like frustrating.

Or the trick magic item feat, unless I'm mistaken on something.

Call me crazy, but you could all just use the trick that I use. Spacious Pouches are unique investments. As in you can only ever use one. If you try and use another (outside of special feats) then it just acts as a normal pouch. Then you can't have a hundred pouches all inside one bag. This also preserves the value of the higher level variants.

As a side note I wouldn't let them conflict with other items of this nature, such as the wig, ancestory feat versions, etc. it's just meant to avoid the "must carry everything" mindset, but won't invalidate other items and feats this way.

Just my 2 cents.

I'm personally going to homebrew one. Make it related to horns and such.

I think the Avenger errata is actually worse than the book's approach to it. Needing to Hunt Prey then manually inflict off-guard just to get Sneak Attack damage on your deity's weapon makes it way too awkward and unwieldy compared to Hunt Prey being only necessary for the Ranger feats. Avenger has an issue of competing against Ruffian and this really holds them back in that fight.

I don't got the book so I'm unsure if I am missing anything, but doesn't the gang up feat make the offguard aspect very easy to remedy? Assuming you're coordinating with your allies naturally.