Kittyburger's page

"Lost Golarion"??

Lost Golarion has been a thing since the beginning of Starfinder! Golarion is VANISHED FROM THE UNIVERSE, the only thing present is Absalom Station.

It would not be fun for the player that it happened to on, but is there any reason why penumbra would not want to use her soul cage to drop a 6th level banishment spell on a player to thin out the PC's Ranks. It might to anti-fun to do first round and basically make someone miss out on a whole fight if they fail but if she where being threatnend by a big scary melee combatanbt I dont see any reason she would want that person to stick around.

Penumbra's tactics in general are pretty anti-fun for the player who, say, gets slammed as a 10th level champion with a dominate from a 13th level boss monster that her character has to roll a natural 22 to clear...

So many train puns that I'll be shocked if there isn't a steamtrain

Did he buy too many games

PF2 also just doesn't publish class specific content very often in general. Classes like the Investigator have never gotten a new subclass and only a tiny handful of new character options ever. In general, other than the APG there hasn't been much for any class. If anything the Champion is batting above average here.

Plus like, the Champion is a great class and it's kind of wild to point to that horrible new cleric archetype as evidence of some anti-Champion conspiracy.

Writers and editors are human beings and make human decisions. If they don't like/don't want a particular character (class) in their world, they're less likely to write for that character. No conspiracy required, just a plot element that may or may not be to a particular group of writers'/editors' taste.

Pronate11 wrote:

Kittyburger wrote:

Mangaholic13 wrote:

Kittyburger wrote:

Literally ANYTHING for Champions.

I'm starting to feel like I should have rebuilt my PFS champion as a cleric because right now it feels like the champion's narrative space is getting steadily squeezed out of the game - you've got exemplar for the god-adjacent melee beatstick space, guardian for the stop the enemies from beating my friends space, and battle harbinger for the divine gish space; and champions don't even have their full premaster functionality back yet.

It kinda feels like Paizo hates champions and only even still has them in remaster to retain backwards compatibility with premaster.

The Oaths are back, and vastly improved, from my understanding.

This is about NEW class features, not bringing back stuff that got cut out in favor of other classes.

They are not saying they should be brought back, but that they literally have been brought back. They are in divine mysteries. People have read them.

I was honestly on the fence with the Oaths back in the Premaster; a lot of them felt like they were extremely campaign-dependent (no point in taking the Shining Oath if you almost never fight Undead), or too circumstantial to pick over even just a basic Dedication feat. They're almost as bad as the PF1 Ranger's Favored Enemy feature, or even the current edition's Bane property, in that they're either super powerful/must-haves, or they're useless.

I will wait until the Divine Mysteries book hits the streets, but if the Oaths still operate mostly the way they have previously (again, that's an if), then I'm not holding out hopes that they will be amazing. If, on the other hand, they are significantly changed and instead give some more universal benefits, while adding an additional Edict/Anathema, then it will at least be worth reading them to see if certain build options open up.

This to begin with - Vengeance Oath seems to be the only one that's even remotely universal in applicability, but that seems more like Babby's First Smite than an oath the way the other ones are. The problem is dribbling out old features that were held back from Player Core 2 for space reasons is not the same as introducing new content, and there's been very little post-Remaster new content for Champion players.

"My class is too good at spellcasting, and I wish I had fewer spell slots so I could Strike more" is a really weird way of justifying the Battle Harbinger, but there's a valid point to be made that the Warpriest is more of a spellcaster with some gishy elements than a full gish. A Warpriest will want to Strike when they can, but they also have a lot of power to leverage via their spell slots and of course their divine font, so even a Warpriest who leans heavily into the Striking aspect of their playstyle will still cast spells. It's valid to want a Cleric doctrine that goes full gish, and trades off that spellcasting power for proper martial power.

Trouble is, the Battle Harbinger doesn't do that very well, and in fact it doesn't even do that better than a Warpriest. Despite the former's faster scaling, both end up with the same attack modifier, because the Battle Harbinger gets stuck with a Wisdom key attribute and is thus behind most other martials in accuracy half the time. When either hits with a Strike, they end up dealing the same baseline damage, because the Battle Harbinger still only gets weapon specialization at 13th level, and doesn't get greater weapon specialization, putting them significantly behind other martials. A Warpriest could use any 6th-rank or higher spell slot the Battle Harbinger doesn't get to prebuff with heroism and match or exceed the latter in accuracy, and could use any of their many lower-rank slots to cast bane, benediction, bless, and malediction on-tap, also to the same effect as a Battle Harbinger in any instance that doesn't involve counteracting. Effectively, the Battle Harbinger falls short at its intended assignment compared to existing options, and whatever feats the archetype picks to make up for it, the Warpriest can do equal or better, such as by picking Channel Smite for divine Spellstrikes (the Battle Harbinger is also behind a feat due to their dedication requirement).

In my opinion, here are the changes the Battle...

Battle Harbinger really would have fit better as a Champion archetype, but nooooooooo...

Kittyburger wrote:

Literally ANYTHING for Champions.

I'm starting to feel like I should have rebuilt my PFS champion as a cleric because right now it feels like the champion's narrative space is getting steadily squeezed out of the game - you've got exemplar for the god-adjacent melee beatstick space, guardian for the stop the enemies from beating my friends space, and battle harbinger for the divine gish space; and champions don't even have their full premaster functionality back yet.

It kinda feels like Paizo hates champions and only even still has them in remaster to retain backwards compatibility with premaster.

The Oaths are back, and vastly improved, from my understanding.

This is about NEW class features, not bringing back stuff that got cut out in favor of other classes.

An Exemplar Class Archetype that gives them a Deity an dtheir spark is a small portion of the deity's actual divine power kinda like a Champion but more offensive.

The Champion's narrative and game mechanical space is already being stomped on by like 3-4 other classes now without Exemplar just blatantly getting a class archetype that's "I'm you, but better in every way."

Literally ANYTHING for Champions.

I'm starting to feel like I should have rebuilt my PFS champion as a cleric because right now it feels like the champion's narrative space is getting steadily squeezed out of the game - you've got exemplar for the god-adjacent melee beatstick space, guardian for the stop the enemies from beating my friends space, and battle harbinger for the divine gish space; and champions don't even have their full premaster functionality back yet.

It kinda feels like Paizo hates champions and only even still has them in remaster to retain backwards compatibility with premaster.

Is there an option to be a ‘Champion’ of Razmir too, or just a ‘Cleric’?

Haha, champions don't even have their full premaster ability set back yet, let alone anything new.

What HMM and Bret said. 1.5 to 2 hours is great for Quests, when it gets to 3 hours or so it's REALLY hard to sell for players.

Wooooooo!

Oh, also, they renamed the slayer, too, pretty obviously because "slayer sounds kind of murderous". I'm not actually saying the inquisitor change was entirely about offensiveness. I think they probably thought "inquisitor sounds kind of evil and might distract players".

Source, by the way: One of my players who didn't know the game well once played an inquisitor of Shelyn. His read on the class was that of an oppressive heel, so the joke was an extremely aggro orc Shelynite. The connotation is there.

I'm pretty sure the devs would change barbarian to berserker if they could get away with it, just because it's clearer, but it was a core class.

To me, "Slayer" should be some kind of magical rogue subtype - but I'm admittedly a 90s girl and when you say "Slayer," I think Buffy.

KoriCongo wrote:

Michael Sayre wrote:

CyberMephit wrote:

And those who came up with and support the idea of renaming it better not read up on real-life paladins :facepalm:

As of the remaster, PF2 doesn't have paladins, either.

I'm...unironically mad it took me two months for me to realize you guys did that...

Kind of does justify my point that the asterisk text there is showing your hands too much.

I would hazard a guess that moving away from paladin was to divorce from D&D-isms primarily and that this aspect is a happy accident. Where divorcing from associations with the people who destroyed the history of the Mayans, the Meshika(Aztec), and probably more cultures on Turtle Island(North America), is just good sense

Did I miss something? The Paladins were the 12 knights-companion of Charlemagne. The application of that name to characters who were more like the Knights Templar was largely an example of the anachronism stew that was Gygax's D&D game.

My pregens are updated (for level 1 at least, I'll update the other ones later)

I'm going to assume that schedule slip did what schedule slip does with the PC2 pregens?

Saw some archetype pictures in the twitch stream. The Rivethun emissary is Shardra, so combining the archetype with the new animist class...

:)

So glad to see Shardra make her triumphant return. I was hoping she wouldn't be consigned to the history books after Crystal left.

I’m still curious how illustrations are being accused of being “photoshopped”.

It's a way of discrediting the artists (and by implication, the company that commissioned them) by accusing them of plagiarism. It's also trivially easy to prove wrong, as many if not most of the comparisons he made are between images that share little more than a slight cosmetic resemblance (he moved off of the claim of "photoshopping" when challenged, revising it to a claim that Lucasfilm or Paramount might sue over a "vague resemblance" when the legal standard for copyright violation is "striking similarity," i.e. the presence of features whose ONLY explanation is direct copying of copyrighted material).

It's also a way to derail the conversation by moving the topic onto something unrelated but at least mildly spicy.

To me it sounds like the flip-tiles line wound down some time ago. As an organized play GM/Venture-Officer, I haven't seen a scenario in a couple of years come out using flip-tiles (except for the PFS Season 5 intro scenario, a use that was widely panned - most people I know who run that scenario have run it using a printed custom map because of how awkward the scenario map is to put together), and I think that's partly because the flip-tiles are difficult to use.

I assume US law requires Paizo to have made efforts to protect their IP or else lose their rights to it. IANAL, I don't know for sure.

Copyrights are a simple monopoly on the use of the work throughout the period of the copyright (which is why preservation of old films is such a pain - in many cases the owner of the copyright of the film literally does not exist anymore and there's no clear heir to those rights). If copyright was lost due to non-use or non-protection it would clear up a LOT of problems in archiving copyrighted material.

Trademarks, on the other hand (which is a weird blanket that basically covers every single possible proper noun in a fictional work that could be economically exploitable) do have to be protected or you do lose them.

I also don't get why someone's fan AP, if they're not charging any money, isn't protected as a transformative work even if it does use Golarion proper nouns. What would happen if someone posted their homebrew Numeria content to AO3?

Generally speaking, transformative uses are, to quote the US Copyright Office, "those that add something new, with a further purpose or different character, and do not substitute for the original use of the work." (emphasis mine) Fan APs actually DO "substitute for the original use of the work," which is why you can't use "Golarion proper nouns" without a license to do so. You can make fan APs because the rules qua the rules are not copyrightable - i.e. the common observation that you can't copyright game mechanics, only a particular expression of them.

Copyright law sucks and is a huge headache for everybody.

I am very concerned about the abruptness of this change. This feels really sudden and awkward, as well as problematic from an Organized Play perspective since Starfinder 1st is still going to be supported through the Year of Era's End season through GenCon 2025. This feels like it wasn't fully thought-out before it was announced.

I'm so stoked to see the final release, and sink my teeth into the new witchwarper and precog!!

I really don't like calling their "alternate [reality / timeline / spatiality / whatever]" schtick a Quantum Field. I have said it before, but, the word "quantum" is so overused and diluted in sci fi, it's lost all meaning. Especially given that quantum science and quantum computing are still burgeoning fields in real life, the more that those fields develop and mature (and usage of the word "quantum" along with that), the more that using "quantum" as a stand-in for "something weird, spooky, and/or high tech" will feel quaint and outdated.

Fun fact: There was a "Radio Cleaners" in downtown Minneapolis in the 1930s. It had nothing to do with radio, just a dry cleaner shop, but "radio" had connotations of new, modern, and high-tech.

In the 1940s-60s it was anything to do with aviation and space (jet-, strato-, rocket-, space-age...) In the 1970s-90s it was computer tech. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.

Terevalis Unctio of House Mysti wrote:

What information do we have on the dragon folk heritage?

The Dragonblood versatile heritage will be very customizable. You can choose how dragon-looking you are (ranging from "basically a humanoid with a dragon for a head, to just having horns and draconic eyes, and everything else in-between). There'll be 4 lineages to choose, one of each magical tradition (Arcane, Divine, Occult and Primal). And a fair bit of the Kobold's draconic features were ported over and adjusted for the Dragonblood.

So everything from Dragonborn (D&D) to Dragonborn (Skyrim). Cool!

Starcatcher wrote:

RIP... no, wait, he'd hate that.

I believe the appropriate epitaph would be RIV.

}

This feels like a trend for Quinn, but I’m not sure why I think that.

Also what is Quinn’s orientation? MLM?

Mark Moreland just said he's gay. And apparently clueless. ;)

Legendary investigator. Clueless AF. That's our Quinn!

Quinn. Buddy. My Paladin Sophiriel is the epitome of useless lesbian and SHE could see the goo-goo eyes that Rhys was giving you!

Qaianna wrote:

Gromiel the "Archeologist" wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

They have and they haven't, and where they have, it's pretty scattered about in various official blogs, Twitch streams, book publications, and other sources.

Drow have been retconned to have never existed. They were either subterranean lizard people, false reports made by surface dwellers, or evil cabals of cavern elves.

Dragons and many other creatures don't need such changes; as they're still very much a part of the setting. Even though you won't see them printed anymore owlbears still populate the forests of the Inner Sea.

I said it was underground lizard people all along and everyone just laughed at me.

Well, what do surface iruxi think?

I think the surface iruxi would kindly remind inquiring apefolk that not every reptile is a lizard, and that once upon a time in the world there were many reptilian civilizations and very few mammalian civilizations so an underground reptile empire seems just as plausible as an underground mammal empire

You just reminded me that I have a Xulgath tribe led by a disguised Skelm lurking around in my campaign that clearly needs something to do.

"Press [F] to pay respects"

Dancing Wind wrote:

Jonathan Morgantini wrote:

I believe this may be of interest:

https://downloads.paizo.com/PZO14001-SCE_TheGreatToyHeist_Pregens.pdf

The Great Toy Heist Pregens PDF

I would die for Hellpup and Flappy TToTT

As would I. I read them after I printed them and was like, "OMG, it's like someone switched Ace the Bat-Hound and Batman, and then made them cute plushies."

moosher12 wrote:

Of course they should follow their code, but what I find concerning is this situation:

So if a justice champion is a loyalist for one brother, and hates the other brother, but the other brother wins, should the justice champion be obliged toward switching to that brother's side or change class?

If both brothers have a host of justice champions that are loyal to their seat on the throne, what should the champions of the losing side do?

They should... follow their code.

Perhaps they think that fully claiming the throne by force and/or killing everyone else with a claim is enough to make you the rightful ruler. Then they should acknowledge and accept that the winner is now the rightful ruler. Perhaps they do not think this thing, and instead think that the man currently on the throne has somehow rendered himself unfit for the position. Then they should react accordingly. If two brothers each have a group of loyal champions of justice, and each orders them into battle, and they consider these to be lawful orders, then they should do battle with one another... just as they would if they were aligned with different governments, and those governments were in a dispute over the proper disposition of a certain chunk of land.

A justice champion's code just tells you what to do with respect to the rightful rulers. You yourself have to decide who is the local rightful ruler (or if anyone is) based on your own interpretations. Everything else descends from that.

Squiggit wrote:

Sanityfaerie wrote:

I mean, I'd love to play around the grey edges of these things, but... it only goes so far.

Farther than I think you're giving it credit for.

A cleric of Abadar or Calistria (or another god that allows both) can choose to Sanctify to Unholy and as far as I can tell has absolutely no requirements whatsoever needed to maintain that sanctification (other than the rule about gaining the opposite trait). Maintaining their powers as is, including

...

Just gonna repeat what I said before: "My Lord is the rightful ruler of these lands, and his brother is a feckless usurper who must be overthrown for the good of all" is a CLASSIC character trope for a paladin knight (in the classical sense of the word "paladin" - a senior knight whose post is as a close guard to the king).

So as I recall it...

- Dragonborn in 3.x was a template that ate most of your race and gave you a bunch of other stuff instead. It was very nearly irreversible, and it included a massive compulsion to follow Bahamut's Glorious Crusade. The only way to go from being a dragonborn to a living non-dragonborn was to die, and then be hit with a reincarnate spell, and get reincarnated as something else.

Dragonborn didn't exist before they were independently and roughly simultaneously created by Wizards of the Coast for D&D 4th Edition (dragonpeople) and Bethesda for Skyrim (people who had the souls of dragons).

Sanityfaerie wrote:

I mean, there's an even simpler form. Old king dies, has two kids. Both kids have claims to the throne. Each asserts that their claim is the rightful one for various reasons. Which one is rightful? There's all sorts of different things you could slap in as arguments on either side and the answer would inevitably boil down to "personal interpretation".

Of course they should follow their code, but what I find concerning is this situation:

So if a justice champion is a loyalist for one brother, and hates the other brother, but the other brother wins, should the justice champion be obliged toward switching to that brother's side or change class?

If both brothers have a host of justice champions that are loyal to their seat on the throne, what should the champions of the losing side do?

"My lord is the rightful ruler and his brother is a feckless usurper " is a valid option.

I dunno, I feel like philosophical space psychics have been around for a while by this point. Not to mention soulknives. It's hard to trademark "space knights" when Star Wars was itself pretty derivative (non-judgmentally) of older sci-fi tropes.

I didn't say Sith Lawyers were rational. I just said they were a thing. ;)

I hope the Redeemer's champion reaction gets a buff. In theory it's the most powerful champion reaction because it can just straight-up stop the monster from getting a powerful strike through; in practice it's weak because the GM gets to choose whether it procs its maximum effect or not, and almost every time that choice is "not."

And I think that this is because the action cost of the Enfeebled action is a potential future miss, while the action cost of completely stopping the action is a guaranteed present miss. The action cost of taking the enfeebled debuff is therefore lower than the action cost of taking the whiff on the Glimpse of Redemption.

MadScientistWorking wrote:

Ezekieru wrote:

Also, I do hope we get a lot more detail about the Alchemist if/when we get a blog about them! We were left with a lot more questions than answers from the Remaster panel at PaizoCon, so I hope Logan, or whoever they get to write the blog on the Alchemist, will give us a lot of detail about the class's changes in the coming weeks!

Shhh... Let them cook.

The book has to already be printing it is already as cooked as it is going to be for the moment.

Based on schedule, the first printing isn't just already printing, it's printed, in North America, and ready to be shipped out from the warehouse.

Helmic wrote:

Justice is a little annoying in that it does seem to be assuming Lawful tendencies, so not justice in that broad a sense. Liberation would probably be closer to the "justice" of the old Chaos alignment, more of the justice of the people weilded against authority rather htan the justice of the paladins that is more about defeating those that oppose a just (and usually, but now not always, benevolent) authoirty.

While Justice is typically interpreted as lawful, there are applications to non-lawful classical alignments.

Neutral Good might would of course favor fair treatment to all. A Sarenite

True Neutral would look at all sides of an issue, and try to come to the conclusion that is most objective. Ahem: Pharasma's court.

Neutral Evil would lean to more personal justices, or a more detached and professional view of what justice is, at the cost of others. Like an avenger going along a dark path. An antihero could be this type, attempting to exterminate an evil faction to exact justice on them, but they remain cruel to the citizenry as well, or care not for casualties. Alternatively, a professional agent that metes out what appears as justice to the average citizen, but is absolutely otherwise evil, like Homelander or Omniman.

Chaotic Good wants to bring about justice independent from law, actively righting wrongs that the rule of law could not. Firebrand ideology, basically.

Chaotic Neutral would seek personal interpretations of Justice, independent from law. Calistrians only care for the rule of law if it directly benefits them. Ultimately, they simply meet out revenge whenever they see fit.

And Chaotic Evil would alike seek personal intepretations of Justice, at the expense of others. Lamashtan ideology, for example wants justice for mistreated monsterfolk, but they are willing to exterminite non-monsterfolk to achieve this.

There are of course, other unsaid avenues by how alignments could gravitate toward Justice, but the main point is, Justice as a middle...

As you say, there are a LOT of interpretations of "justice." I have one RPG in my closet where "Justice" is used as a Bad Thing - it's a concept used by the monsters in the game to convince people to do horrible things to others because they think they have the just right to do so.

I see what you did there Paizo. Each of the new causes (in a sense) embody each of the aspects of alignment or sanctification. Justice represents law (i.e paladin), liberation represents chaos (i.e liberator), desecration represents evil (i.e desecrator), redemption represents good (i.e redeemer), grandeur represents holy, iniquity represents unholy, and I guess obedience represents neutral (this is the only one I'm not so sure about, since obedience feels like the "unbiased" choice between grandeur and iniquity though obedience has like a tyrant-y feel in its name. If its meant to represent obedience to your god, I feel "devotion" would feel more neutral, but I'm probably reading too much into this).

One of the character ideas I got out of this is a stern champion of Pharasma. This character is not cruel. But she is very wedded to the concept that death makes us all equal, and all - King, knave, first citizen or least of all of us, must bow before the implacable equality of death.

Ezekieru wrote:

I love the split of 2 Holy Causes, 2 Unholy, and 3 Causes that can be sanctified, but you don't have to. That offers a lot of choice for how you want your Champion to play like, and opens the doors to many more kinds of "more Neutral" Champions post-Remaster.

Can we have someone confirm which of the two (Iniquity or Obedience) is the Tyrant/Antipaladin Cause? If I were a betting man, I'd say Tyrant sounds more like Obedience, while the Unholy-only Iniquity sounds like the new name of the former Antipaladin.

I think Inequity is tyrant. Obediance feels to me like Lawful Neutral.

For those saying that Obedience sounds tryranty, remember the typical lawful mantras of "obey your elders, obey your parents, obey the law, etc." But it can also flex into submit to unjust laws. Being neutral, it can flex into both it's good, and its bad applications, for example, based on whether a god like Erastil or a god like Asmodeus grants you the Obediance cause.

I tried to chart them up to help myself visualize the inspirations from the old, and using the now defunct alignment system, this is the gist I got, which ended up in a hexagonal array, 2 holy causes on the left, 3 neutral causes down the middle, and 2 unholy holy causes on the right

Obedience - Lawful Neutral, Lawful Good, or Lawful Evil
Justice - True Neutral, and can find ways to bend into most any of the classical alignments. (Only one I struggle to justify is Neutral Evil.)
Liberation - Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Good, or Chaotic Evil

Grandeur - Neutral Good or Lawful Good
Redemption - Neutral Good or Chaotic Good

Inequity - Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil
Desecration - Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil.

It's "iniquity," not "inequity."

"Iniquity" means "immoral or grossly unfair behavior." So Iniquity sounds to me more like it's intended to cover the former Antipaladin territory. "Obedience" has always been the Tyrant's thing - it's just been tweaked to allow different interpretations that are non-evil.

I love the split of 2 Holy Causes, 2 Unholy, and 3 Causes that can be sanctified, but you don't have to. That offers a lot of choice for how you want your Champion to play like, and opens the doors to many more kinds of "more Neutral" Champions post-Remaster.

Can we have someone confirm which of the two (Iniquity or Obedience) is the Tyrant/Antipaladin Cause? If I were a betting man, I'd say Tyrant sounds more like Obedience, while the Unholy-only Iniquity sounds like the new name of the former Antipaladin.

Obedience looks very Tyrant-y, with changes (I can see a stern and unyielding but not unholy Obedience Champion of Pharasma, for example).

Kittyburger wrote:

I'm sure that Disney lawyers had something to say about it, too.

They might have a ton to say about it (I hope they all play Starfinder, after all) but immediately assuming that they were involved in this decision in any way is a huge logical leap.

Not sure what grounds they'd have to get involved in whether or not Dae could have manifested a stellar mote at birth or not, in any case.

I did some work for Star Wars, once upon a time, and anything that looks sort of "Jedi-y" makes me imagine lawyers with red lightsabers closing in on the heroic redoubt, if you know what I mean and I think you do. ;)

Is Unholy going to be available for Society play or is it going to have the same restrictions as Evil did pre-remaster?

GameDemon wrote:

Nothing like that.

"The cycle that empowers and guides solarians is a philosophy that came to the Pact Worlds on the Idari, along with the tradition of the solarians themselves."

- from paizo's blog (https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5ljyq?Class-Preview-The-Solarian)

The Kasatha only brought the first tradition of solarian training to the Pact Worlds aboard the Idari and SF1e solarians were interpreted through that lens. We already had solarians moving outside that framework in SF1e with the Broken Cycle, Stellar Mystic, and Electrical Attunement options.

GameDemon wrote:

"The solarian contemplates and gains power from the life cycles of stars."

"Whether you apprenticed in a temple or came to your powers through personal revelation, you recognize yourself as part of an ancient tradition — a force of preservation and annihilation."

- Core rulebook

A newborn possesses only basic cognition and doesn't have the capacity for any of these. Becoming a solarian is a personal journey, one that requires time and conviction. This has been the way to become the warrior - philosopher we know from day one.

Quote:

"Whether you apprenticed in a temple or came to your powers through personal revelation, you recognize yourself as part of an ancient tradition — a force of preservation and annihilation."

Personal revelation is listed as being on equal importance with temple training. There are a lot of stories of particularly spiritual people demonstrating remarkable enlightenment improbably early in their development. Dae is clearly meant as something of a solarian wunderkind.

-------------------------------

But of course, all of this is largely irrelevant. These were the exact same arguments that happened when PF2e came out and introduced changes or when the Remaster happened and things had to be removed or changed to ward off WotC's lawyers. Changes happen and the intent is clear. Solarians are moving away from the portrayal as being...

I'm sure that Disney lawyers had something to say about it, too.

Even casters have 3 actions per turn, and since casting typically takes 2, casters should have something useful to spend their third action on, like guidance, intimidation, battle medicine, bon mot, athletics, recall knowledge...

Don't get me wrong, getting slowed 2 as a caster IS harsh and eats away the majority of what you can do, but it's unlikely to crit fail twice in a row (with your heropoint) and if shield is the only 1-action thing your character can do, that's kinda on you. You could be taking out resources such as healing potions or scrolls or bombs and using those. You could be providing flank, aiding, or on the very least, tank a hit or two.

2/3 of the combat encounters in this scenario deal with monsters that can cast slow. If someone is unlucky enough on the dice, they can be reduced to 1 action per turn for 2/3 of the entire scenario, which doesn't feel right to my designer brain. Remember that a critical failure is not just a natural 1 but also -10 from the DC number (19 for the low tier). With level 1 proficiencies, that's on average 4 or under on the die if Fort is the character's weak save, or a whopping 20% chance of critically failing in a tier where the average party doesn't have access to dispels or other removal options.

I get what the designer was going for, but I feel like this should have been a tier 3-6 scenario because of the number of monsters with Rank 3 spell slots, and having the possibility for a player's first experience with Pathfinder (tier 1-4 is open to beginning players, after all) be having 2/3 of their actions stripped from them for one or more fights could be seriously damaging to the game and PFS.

The scaling on this adventure feels off in multiple ways.

As was stated in the review that was posted, the influence encounter to rouse the crew has a very high degree of difficulty and is harder the more PCs are involved; especially with the captain, whose thresholds are incredibly high.

Probably more seriously, though, even at the 1-2 tier you have to deal with a Rank 3 spell, Slow, a lot, also with a really high DC, which means with average proficiencies for level, the party is very likely to have at least one crit fail. If that crit fail falls on a sorcerer or other spell caster, expect to have a very frustrated player on your hands. I rolled a 1 and I was like, "Welp. I'm going outside. I'll shield every turn because there's literally nothing else I can do unless a monster wanders into melee range."

I get what the designer was going for, but I feel like this should have been a tier 3-6 scenario because of the number of monsters with Rank 3 spell slots, and having the possibility for a player's first experience with Pathfinder (tier 1-4 is open to beginning players, after all) be having 2/3 of their actions stripped from them for one or more fights could be seriously damaging to the game and PFS.

The number of monsters in 5-17 that can throw slow is a problem in a tier where dispel magic items are not widely available. I was playing a party's sole spellcaster in this and critically failed a save vs. slow at the VERY BEGINNING of the final encounter. I was NOT happy, having literally everything I could possibly do that was useful stolen from me for the entire fight. Dispel magic is a rank-2 spell... but it requires 2 actions, so you can't cast it if you only have 1 available action in a turn.

I literally said, "Well, I'm going to Shield on every turn. I'm going outside, come and get me when the fight's over."

I don't know who that Kate Tremaine chick is, but she sounds cool.

My FLGS just said that the BB is not available to order yet, so I'm a little confused now?