Korre's page

As a side not maybe this is what I am missing but here is what it says for Focus spells:
CRB p300
"Focus spells are automatically heightened to half your
level rounded up, just like cantrips are."

This I knew and the Wild shape spell only has a "Heightened (2nd) You can also wild shape into the forms listed in animal form."

It still only says the forms. So at best you maybe could say its spell level is now the Focus spell level which is half you level which still would not match his numbers he listed. He would not get large form till level 8 in this case not at 4.

Korre wrote:

Houngan wrote:

Reach and Attacks of Opportunity - Wild Shape includes Animal Forms at level 2, Large Animal Forms (10-foot Reach) at level 4, and Huge Animal Forms (15-foot Reach) at level 5. I Plan on taking Combat Reflexes and Distracting Stance at later levels to expand AoO opportunities (pun intended).

I do not think you, as a multiclass Druid, would get those abilities at those levels as you only get basic spell casting without an additional feat.

CRB p219
"Basic Spellcasting Feat: Available at 4th level, these feats
grant a 1st-level spell slot. At 6th level, they grant you a
2nd‑level spell slot. At 8th level, they grant you a 3rdlevel
spell slot. Archetypes refer to these benefits as the
“basic spellcasting benefits.”

CRB p401
Since the Wild shape focus spell gains the animal form via:
"Heightened (2nd) You can also wild shape into the forms listed
in animal form.

You would never get access to level 4 spells and thus cannot highten to gain all of those benefits of the large form and up.

I think that is the way it would work but maybe I am missing something.

Yes you take the first level feat Wild Shape , or the second level Order Explorer. Via the 4th level Basic Wilding multiclass feat. You are not getting it via spell casting slots but as a focus spell via feats.

Wild shape: "Heightened (2nd) You can also wild shape into the forms listed in animal form."

To gain those forms you have to have the spell slot level access or you could instantly transform into the most powerful version. Nothing about that says you get the heightened versions of the form without the requirements as I read it.

Reach and Attacks of Opportunity - Wild Shape includes Animal Forms at level 2, Large Animal Forms (10-foot Reach) at level 4, and Huge Animal Forms (15-foot Reach) at level 5. I Plan on taking Combat Reflexes and Distracting Stance at later levels to expand AoO opportunities (pun intended).

I do not think you, as a multiclass Druid, would get those abilities at those levels as you only get basic spell casting without an additional feat.

CRB p219
"Basic Spellcasting Feat: Available at 4th level, these feats
grant a 1st-level spell slot. At 6th level, they grant you a
2nd‑level spell slot. At 8th level, they grant you a 3rdlevel
spell slot. Archetypes refer to these benefits as the
“basic spellcasting benefits.”

CRB p401
Since the Wild shape focus spell gains the animal form via:
"Heightened (2nd) You can also wild shape into the forms listed
in animal form.

You would never get access to level 4 spells and thus cannot highten to gain all of those benefits of the large form and up.

I think that is the way it would work but maybe I am missing something.

Quick backstory: First time player of a few months. Current group is wizard(wife), cleric(me), fighter, rogue, barbarian, monk. Slowly learning rules and it seems like every combat the two of us playing casters do nothing comparatively. 6th level fighter recently dropped almost 50 damage without even using all of his 6 attacks, he did roll really well. But wizard struggles to deal above 15 even with really good rolls. Seems like all of the martial classes can hit 20+ damage in a round on mediocre to good rolls. Then my buffs/debuts do so little that I have to individually remind each player to account for them or they ignore them.

Am I missing something here or is there just a huge difference in combat impact between spell casters and non?

There inst that much of a discrepancy in power levels that I have seen in 2E. There are a lot of things in this that are setting off alarm bells. A level6 Fighter with 6 attacks? HOW? Are you sure your playing 2E because that's not possible in any way I know of so far.

As casters are you using cantrips or actual spells and if Cantrips are you heightening them?

I think some more info is required to know whats going on.

All great responses, Thank folks! This gives me some ammo if necessary for making my case if pressured to justify it. I do not foresee any issues now though.

I could not find this asked anywhere so sorry if I missed it.

Druid pets and barding. By default Druids refuse to wear metal armor we know that they will not wear it themselves.

If I wanted barding for the pet though how would that work since I do not see any materials listed for what each barding is made of. I would assume light/medium could be non metallic but heavy would be.

Thematically I could see how you could even say that the Druid would not place metal armor on a pet given his proclivities but technically HE would not be wearing it. I could see how that would be like helping a fighter don his armor triggering your anathema, it seems silly.

I feel like at least Light/Medium non-metallic barding could/should be a thing. Maybe I missed something in the rules?

What do you guys think?

What are you fighting anyway?

A lvl 9 creature like a Young Blue Dragon causes like 28 average damage with a strike, with the Sturdy Shield lvl 7 you take off 10 of that because of hardness and take the 18 damage remaining leaving you still at 22/40 before broken and 22/80 before destroyed.

So it can kinda take 3 normal hits or 1 critical hit (1hit + crit if you do in that exactly order).

I guess im being too hard on this. I will try it a bit more and head the advice and see what happens. Here's hoping.

Are you using Sturdy Shields? Sturdy shields will generally have enough Hardness and HP to take a few hits for their level, and if you're a shield focused character, your GM should probably be feeding you some in the loot.

The trick to shield usage is that you block the little hits. If you have a shield with 10 Hardness, and are going to get hit by two attacks, one for 15 and one for 25, you block the 15.

Either way, you're stopping 10 and taking 30, but if you block the smaller hit, your shield is only taking 5 instead of 15. Good shield discipline keeps your shield in the fight for longer, which in turn means it can soak more damage for you.

The other thing to consider for shields is being able to keep them intact. If you get to Master in Crafting and take the Quick Repair feat, you can restore 20 HP to your shield in 6 seconds (Assurance also helps). Not ideal for a fight, but it is an option, and it's great for keeping it up between fights.

Sure I know of the sturdy shields but they still are not very good. The problem is that since hardness barely goes up you AND the shield keeps taking more and more damage. The sturdy shield scales but still not great and the hardness is mediocre compared the the average rolls for damage I am seeing. I could use it just to block small hit that barely affect it but I dont see those much and that feels counter to what it should be. I don't want it to eat a full crit or anything and be barely scratched but it feels like it should be much more that it is.

A lvl7 Sturdy shield is a loss of 360gp if destroyed. That seems excessive. Also that limits it to the Steel shield only. Thereis no way to have a Sturdy Tower shield that I have seen. If the materials were the ones that actually scaled you could use a Tower Shield if you wanted. As it stands the only option if you want a mediocre scaling shield to block with is a sturdy shield. As I said this feels very unsatisfying.

Im not trying to be difficult just honest.

So I made a Human fighter for Society play and I feel like I have run into a brick wall. I came from AD&D in the 90's so its been awhile since I played but I did not realize that Fighters were more jacks of all things martial rather than optimal for tank (They aren't bad mind you). Seems the Champion fill that roll and that's OK, I moved on from that but then I noticed something I must have missed bringing me to:

Shields.
I loved them at the start but wow, the scaling is not there. I noticed I started holding off blocking more and more as I climbed in levels. I saw the hits going FAR above the standard Shield BT and many times over the total HP's. I finally decided it was time to get a new shield and bam, almost all are the same or even worse on hardness and HP. I see how the Champion can add to that between Shield ally and one of the Lastwall feats and get another 4 to the hardness. Fighter's get nothing though and it's kinda placed me to feel like I am in a conundrum. I could continue with wielding the Shield and 1h Melee and using Double slice or maybe respec and go for Power attack. I have also had suggestions from some folks to use a doubling ring and use the Shield still.

I feel that it would be better in almost all respects to just use two 1h swords with Double strike and grab the Twin parry feat to use instead of using raise shield. No more blocking but it feels so worthless to block, much less with something costs hundreds or thousands of gold that could break in one hit and maybe even destroyed (I know you see the damage first before blocking but at higher levels it feel so high most of the time its irrelevant). Im not sure If I am overthinking this but I really feel disappointed now at how bad it feels once I got a taste of the scaling for shields.

Any suggestions or help would be appreciated.

I do not see anything written in that action about developing a reputation, nor do I see anything about wooing them in any way.

What was the check you used to befriend the blacksmiths son? The failure just says that you offended the NPC you attempted the check on and nothing about harming or developing a reputation outside of what that one NPC thinks of you. Even if you attempted to seduce him specifically I do not see how you could gain some kind of reputation about it. This seems like poor GMing and not an issue with rules.

I'd be surprised if you can use it in society. Medicine is already arguably the best skill in the game, so I don't really think it needs to become a Downtime income earner as well. Flavor wise, remember that earning income isn't just a function of being good at a task, it is a function of marketing it. You can heal sick poor people at the local church all day, but if you want to get money from them for it you'll need a little business savvy, AKA medical practice lore.

That makes sense. I like that explanation of the lore aspect. I think it is just a bit odd that no wisdom based skill can earn income. The description of wisdom in the Core book even seems to indicate that it would be viable for that purpose.

Wisdom measures your character’s common sense, awareness, and intuition.

Maybe I am reading too much into it and as was said it could just be for balance purposes.

Thank you all very much for the explanation and clarification!

I was making a new character recently and I was thinking of using the medicine skill for my earned income. To my surprise I found that medicine cannot be used to earn income (normally at least). Is this correct or am I missing something? It would seem to me that using your medicine skills to heal and cure ailments during downtime would be an acceptable way to earn income.
I ask this mainly in context of Society play. I know normal play is up to the GM more or less and it seems that they made allowances for that in the wording and a possible increase in DC per the GM's decision. Is anyone aware of this would make since for society and if not why? Is there a good reason for this like balance of the skill?

Sorry if this was discussed before but I found no threads on it specifically when I searched.

Goblin Alchemist Male
Trash-diving pickle thrower

You may see dirty street water runoff but he sees quality alchemical reagents.

SuperBidi wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

Wheldrake wrote:

Would it break the game if you allowed the rogue to declare his Nimble Dodge *after* the DM said that he just got hit or criticalled?

There are so many moving parts in the game that this small divergence or backpeddling in favor of a vulnerable PC doesn't seem out of line.

Strictly speaking, this would be a house rule, but it's not a huge reach.

This would be a big and enjoyable improvement.

Current situation:
GM: I'm going to strike.
Rogue: I do Nimble Dodge
GM: Oh, I rolled low, you would not have been hit anyway. I strike again.
Rogue: okay...
GM: ...and I hit.

New situation:
GM: I'm going to strike and I get X
Rogue: Feh, that isn't close.
GM: I strike again and get Y
Rogue: Hah! I nimble dodge and just avoid it!
GM: Drat.

That's way to strong. During a single round, you won't take that many attacks. Chances are high that only one attack will be just 1 or 2 points ahead your AC. So, basically, it's equivalent to saying that you have +2 AC. So, now, Nimble Dodge becomes a Raise a Shield action for the cost of a reaction and no need for a shield. Expect greatsword Fighters with the same AC than sword and board ones. Way way overpowered.

I think "way way overpowered" is a bit overstated. It's almost the same as reactive shield except that you can do it with a two-handed weapon, except that rogues generally prefer smaller weapons that work with sneak attack. Also, it would still only work on one attack per round. It may need a bit more polishing but I don't think it's all that far from being just right.

Except as a fighter you: a. have to already have a shield, something taking a hand slot and bulk and can also break (if used to block), and b. the fighter loses his reaction and thus his other feature Attack of opportunity. The fighter has to give up much more to do what you want a rogue to do but without the equipment or the loss of some other base feature relying on the reaction at those levels. Rogues have only two reactions to choose from till level4 and both are at level one.

I think if they want to make it stronger they can add a feat at higher levels to improve it to react after hit or make it last longer but that should require an additional feat investment to get that strong.

Alexander Augunas wrote:

One of the big issues with Nimble Dodge, though, is that Raising Your Shield applies to every attack attempted against you until the start of your next turn, while Nimble Dodge works only against one attack.

Raising a shield is also an Action and not a Reaction. Why people keep drawing the comparison to using a shield is beyond me. Comparing it to reactive shield is fine, but people forget the biggest issue with Reactive Shield:

It competes with Shield Block, which is a powerful damage mitigation tool.

It's objectively a good Feat. And "only one attack" is underselling it. The attack you are likely to use this on is the attack that is most likely to hit you which is almost always the first attack a creature makes in a round.

Which means you almost always know exactly which attack you should be using your Nimble Dodge to avoid.

Being able to increase the miss chance (and reduce crit chance) of the most likely attack to hit you every round is just straight up good. Compare this to any of the other Class Feats at level one, and it's easily going to get the most mileage.

A Thief Rogue with 18 AC at level 1 and Nimble Dodge and high mobility tactics (which a thief is likely to employ) is going to find a lot of value here.

If you want to argue that there are builds where it's worse or better, go ahead and argue it, but it's a solid feat.

In a tight math system like PF2, it's not even up for debate. That +2 matters a lot.

This.

As to changing it to being usable after the hit roll, that would make it much too strong. Again its a reaction not an action.

If this feat doesn't speak to you that's fine, just buy a shield (and boss/spike), deal with the loss of an action every turn to raise it, loss of a free hand and the added bulk if any. Nothing is stopping you from doing that.

Thank you for the replies.

I understand how hard the folks at Paizo are working and I appreciate it. I just feel like if this is the way society works maybe the first few months should be repeatable scenarios only so people can explore the new system and get used to the rules and get a little more additional books before folks start losing content to play permanently. I just don't see the logic behind this. It is my fault for not seeing the rules as written and logiced it out incorrectly in my own head.

As a side note will the errata changes have any effect on this? I specifically avoided playing the alchemist because of the confusion in some of the rules and weights.

I will have to endeavour to find other ways to get caught up and play with friends again then. I do like the idea of the sactioning of the adventures as I am running a small sporadic home game of Plaguestone.

Thank you all again for the information and clarification.

I am still pretty new to Pathfinder Society and just started in the playtest. I played a lot of AD&D growing up but stuff like Society play is new to me. I was informed of the fact that you cannot repeat adventures unless it has the "repeatable" tag recently in Society play. I knew of this but I was informed that this is not per character but completely covers all characters. From what I understand now you can't complete a non-repeatable adventure even on a different character.

Is this correct? If so how can I ever get another character levelled up at all if I die or dislike my current one? Following the current average two adventures a month for the next year, you could only have twenty-four adventures to do and only a very small per cent of them repeatable. This is even more important given the lack of options currently and the slow process of approving them for society play. Is there any way to remedy this if you have some adventures spread between two different characters? Does this restriction stay in effect if that character dies?

I am not trying to seem difficult but nothing about this after it was explained to me seems to make any sense. Please tell me this isn't so or that there is a way to at least fix this!

Thank you ahead of time for your responses.

Per the Rulebook: reaction - An action you can use even if it’s not your turn. You can use 1 reaction per round. 17, 461–462, 472–473.

You can only have one reaction per round. You would get to choose the one you wanted to use though as far as see it.