Guntermench wrote:

That's a good point. Ostentatious Arrival says "If your next action is" which would disqualify Meld into Eidolon as that is the action you take next, not Manifest Eidolon.

If we want to get that pedantic about it, it says if your next action is to Manifest your Eidolon, not if your next action is Manifest Eidolon.

The 'to' there is referring to the result of the action, not the name of the action (which would read more 'if your next action is Manifest your Eidolon' - which as Kelseus points out, doesn't exist).

To support this;
1) there is no action named 'Manifest your Eidolon', it's 'Manifest Eidolon'.
2) the result of the Meld Into Eidolon action is 'you Manifest your Eidolon'.

So if Ostentatious Arrival works at all, then it must work for Meld into Eidolon.

This is also how I took it you must use an activity that "Manifests your Eidolon" and it must use 3 actions, But I suppose it will likely be a table decision until the Errata comes out

I believe based on the bolded section I have posted below that yes you can combo Meld and Arrival and based on the Emanation rule you would be able to ignore the damage. Unless of course I completely misinterpreting the rules.

Your physical form can combine with that of your eidolon, granting benefits but limiting your capabilities. You Manifest your Eidolon, but instead of summoning it into an adjacent open space, you become it. While Manifested in this way, you use its statistics...

If the next action you take is to Manifest your Eidolon as a three-action activity, or to Cast a three-action summoning Spell, the creature appears in an explosion All creatures in a 10-foot emanation around the creature you summoned or manifested take...

Source Core Rulebook pg. 457 2.0 An emanation... Unless the text states otherwise, the creature creating an emanation effect chooses whether the creature at its center is affected

So this may be crazy and honestly I may just house rules this myself if I'm not happy with the RAW but since it currently looks like firearms are about as strong as Thrown Weapons with Javelins being almost as good as Dueling Pistols I thought of the ways throw build are made to work, using any or all of the following.

1. Give gunslingers a class feature (I'm thinking 1st level) to reload without a freehand (keeps their niche protected)

2. Add a 2nd level feat called Quick Reload that allows for reloading a Firearm or Crossbow that have a Reload of 1 and then striking for 1 action (without the penalty since quick draw doesn't have a "misfire" chance) I'd give this feat to any class that already has Crossbow support

3. Make a 3rd level weapon property rune of Reloading that reloads a Firearm or crossbow for free (similar to Returning runes) Though you don't gain any bonuses you would have gained from reloading normally

EDIT: I realized after posting this that #2 makes running reload less useful but for shot range characters running reload isn't that great. so maybe have it only work for Firearms. *Shrug*

I agree that it will likely be a power increase but I am planning on running a game with dual class characters to see if it is a notable power increase, I reckon it will be less about the rules themselves and more in how each group approaches it.

So this is more of a hypothetical question at the moment so I don't have any specific examples. I was trying to think of a way to give non dual classers something to offset the versatility that a dual classer has and came up with the idea of giving them double class feats.

Mostly I'm just hoping to see if other people believe this to be a good solution and if anyone see a way for this to be more unbalanced than it seems

So the Stunned thing is cooler than I thought but still only on a crit fail which at least at my table doesn't happen very often even against mooks

The half damage on save would be cooler if Electric Arc didn't have the same and hit 2 enemies and have the same damage track as all the other damaging cantrips

I would be ok with it doing less damage if it had the same heighten as all other cantrips but did like a D4 or something

So I know that damage isn't the only important thing. But daze lagging behind in damage by so much and with the stunned effect only applying on a crit fail. With that in mind it really doesn't seem to be that good of a cantrip.

Does anyone else agree or have a reason to use it?

So would it be too powerful to allow all characters to get Dex to damage on finesse weapons and what ability should thief rogues get to replace it?

Unless I'm missing something, you only gain your reactions back at the start of your turn so if the fighter never gets a turn then they would run out of reaction and break the cycle.

Lost the multiple Lay on Hands per fights to a single Devotion spell per 10 minutes until lvl 6.

Lost the upgraded damage on martial weapons from Deific Weapon (Now only affects simple weapons).
Lost the ''Heal spell' via lvl4 feat.
CHA seems really useless now.

Did I miss something?

Deific weapon only applied to simple weapons in the playtest as well

If your deity’s favored weapon (see page 72) is uncommon,
you gain access to it. If the weapon is simple, increase the
damage die by one step when you wield it (d4 to d6, d6
to d8, d8 to d10, d10 to d12).

Maybe I'm wrong and at this point I don't remember where it was said but I thought they said we would be getting blog post every Monday?

Lady Wrath wrote:

Unless things have change the reaction that was shown earlier

The poster said "This is the Reaction for Champion", so I'm taking them at their word: it's worded as if there is one reaction total. I have no way to check.

Lady Wrath wrote:

there was a lvl 1 feat to allow you to step if you weren't within reach and strike if the step put you within reach

*Looks at playtest* I'm not seeing that feat. The updated feats I see are RANGED REPRISAL — FEAT 1, UNIMPEDED STEP — FEAT 1, WEIGHT OF GUILT — FEAT 1 and none of those 3 do what you said. That said, even if there was a way to use it in the way you're talking about, it means you're moving out of flank to do so making you not a flanking partner anymore.

That said, my experience was with the earlier, in reach strike without step feat. If this is some change between start and 1.6, I might have missed it as I wasn't too worried about champions until they get a non-good or unaligned option.

1. I also can't confirm anything in the final product yet

Captain Morgan wrote:

But the idea that Retributive Strike is a bad ability raised so many eyebrows at my table, where in practice they found it borderline overpowered.

The bad part, IMO, was the 'strike within reach' part. For instance, you couldn't help that flanking rogue if you had a sword and shield because of reach: they literally had to be in base to base contact to help them. So for that team, it bordered on useless. With the new 15', no strike needed version, it's pretty sweet now.

Unless things have change the reaction that was shown earlier in this thread is only for the NG Champion and the LG Champion still uses Retributive Strike and with it you could in fact help a flanking ally in the original version only the enemy needed to be within reach and with the multiple champions update both needed to be within 15 feet and there was a lvl 1 feat to allow you to step if you weren't within reach and strike if the step put you within reach

....

Just realized I got way off topic but I was so excited to get to ask you some questions. Thank you so much for you time Sir also I need to thank you from my entire gaming group for fighting for the Champions of all alignments as my group loves the concept so much that I had to homebrew the concept when we played D&D and PF1

We have tried to make simple weapons a certain amount worse than martial weapons and to make weapons roughly competitive with others in their category. We believe bows should be just about the right amount better than crossbows given bows are martial and crossbows are simple. If that's true and we did so correctly, it should mean that a Dex-based champion of Abadar using Abadar's favored weapon (crossbow, which gets a bonus die increase and does 1d10) is able to keep up with one that decided on shortbow instead (1d6).

So would you say in your opinion that a ranger with Crossbow Ace using a Crossbow be competitive with a shortbow ranger? Also do think its worth it to use the heavy crossbow as a main weapon or more of a one shot and drop weapon?

Lady Wrath wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

graystone wrote:

Bardarok wrote:

Shuriken is a martial weapon albeit an uncommon one and being agile, thrown, and one handed it is competitive with the shortbow.

Grumble, grumble, grumble... Stupid playtest pdf. They have uncommon ranged after exotic melee so when I saw exotic I though everything after that was exotic too. :(

That does make it pretty close then.

I suppose it is close when you put it that way, I keep forgetting Shortbows aren't Agile because in my houserules I drop Volley from Longbows and give Agile to Shortbows.

I had the exact same idea, how has it gone for you? I was worried it would be to unbalanced.

Well for one, as this exchange illustrates, it makes bows much more powerful than other ranged weapons.

Hey Mark, I don't know if you're allowed to answer but, are crossbows any better in the final product. I love crossbows conceptually but in practice even the classes with bonuses towards using them are seem better off just using bows.

graystone wrote:

Bardarok wrote:

Shuriken is a martial weapon albeit an uncommon one and being agile, thrown, and one handed it is competitive with the shortbow.

Grumble, grumble, grumble... Stupid playtest pdf. They have uncommon ranged after exotic melee so when I saw exotic I though everything after that was exotic too. :(

That does make it pretty close then.

I suppose it is close when you put it that way, I keep forgetting Shortbows aren't Agile because in my houserules I drop Volley from Longbows and give Agile to Shortbows.

I had the exact same idea, how has it gone for you? I was worried it would be to unbalanced.

The part in Monastic Weapons about melee weapons is meaningless when talking about flurry as the weapon trait ALREADY allows you to use them [without monastic weapons] with flurry and Shuriken is a ranged weapon with the monk trait. About all Monastic Weapons does is allows matching proficiency bonuses with unarmed/monk weapons and allowing monk feats to be used with monk weapons: however, since an ability can be "a feat, a spell, a class feature, and so on", I'd say the weapon trait already allowed use with feats anyway.

To be honest, I'm not sure why the feat mentions melee at all as it gives you something you already have.

OMG GRAYSTONE I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!

Also I think fists count as weapons for things like Double slice and twin takedown, based on the wording of the LVL 16 Fighter feat Graceful Poise unless someone has word from a Dev that says otherwise

#3 You can combine flurry and hunted shot for 4 shuriken shots per round. EDIT: also with Hunter’s Edge [flurry], the second set of attacks is at only -6. on the second round you could make 5 attacks [flurry, hunted shot and normal strike].

You can't flurry or make any other "unarmed" ability with ranged weapons

Yea Malcolm your work has been much appreciated it made it so much easier to go over the spoilers without searching all over. I wish we could do something to reward you for the work.

It's okay, everyone.

The real spoiler is the friends we made along the way. :)

Love you too Max <3

Mista Bulmahn?

Well dang I knew it was going down like this but now it just feels bad :(

Multiclassing maybe. If your proficiency with weaons is going to be higher than your proficiency with unamred strikes monastic weaponry may be worth it.

EDIT: That would be for fighter base Monk multiclass though. For a monk base I can't see a reason beyond flavor myself.

You know I don't even want weapons to be better just equal to the various unarmed so it doesn't feel so bad to choose them if you want the flavor.

Mr. Bulmahn if #85 isn't found could you please tell us what it was cuz it's driving us insane. We would appreciate it sooooo much.

Darkwynters wrote:

It's a Mad World, guys. *tosses hankie to Oholoko* 20 min... how could only ONE spoiler be missing :(

Because, I suspect, that the 'collection game' was deliberately, and statistically, designed for failure.

If it where designed to be achievable the cards would have been available in more than one place.

You're like a constant downer huh? :P

So maybe I missed something but looking at all the monk weapons it seems like none of them compare to using the stances even when looking at high str low dex their was a stance attack better for that then a monk weapon. I thought maybe a ranged monk would cool using Shuriken but then I noticed that Monastic Weapons ability to us unarmed abilities only applied to melee weapons so that was a bust too.

TLDR: Is there a reason beyond flavor to ever choose to use weapons as a monk.
(would love to see Mark in here to give his opinion like he did for power attack)

isn't it an hour and a half till noon PST

0o0o0 O 0o0o0 wrote:

Biztak wrote:

Arachnofiend wrote:

I agree, this is a major positive change for the system. Best part is that it's a baseline action rather than something you (or worse, the Expert themself) have to feat into.

I kinda wonder if we could broaden it even further; if the Bard wants to put on a play in a Hamlet-esque scenario, then he should be able to give the Barbarian quick instruction on how to perform her role the way he wants even though she lacks any previous acting experience. This would open up a ton of non-combat solutions to problems that simply were not feasible in PF1 because it was unrealistic to expect everyone to be trained in the same skills (and was a bad idea anyways in most scenarios).

I am now planing a play within a play, thanks for the idea.

It's a lovely idea, and now rules-compatible.

The bard puts on a play, the Rogue and Sorcerer take the lead roles, the Barbarian does a bit of stunt work and clowning, the Wizard does stage management and special effects. All of it can be role played, yet not too much hand-waving, die rolls are still in effect.

Yesterday in my War for the Crown game, we had the five characters who actually took the kind of skills you expect in an espionage AP, including the dwarf fighter who was actually a master at Deception, and then...the human fighter, who refused to raise Int or Cha even once and managed to not have any Int or Cha skills except the Lore from his background. Anyway, they needed to infiltrate a fortress at 12th level by all disguising as guards. The fighter naturally had +0. But with Follow the Expert on the master ranked rogue, he got +12 proficiency, +3 circumstance, and they slapped a +2 item bonus on him as well. With a hero point after a bad roll, he made his check, and they all managed to successfully infiltrate as guards!

My player have wanted to do things like the Follow the Expert stuff for awhile now across multiple systems and I can't express to the Paizo team just how awesome this and many of the other PF2 mechanics are and just how appreciative my group is at your dedication to making the best game you can.

You know what else is nice? NPCs being designed like monsters not only means they are easier for GMs to run. You can also now hand a player an NPC to tag along in battle and it will be significantly easier on them. I was going to build a couple of Black Arrows for such purposes using PC rules, but then it occurred to me I could just use NPC statblocks with some minor tweaks and they would have a much easier time with them.

Right now I use generic fighters for soldiers and guards but, now I can make a bunch based on the regional fighting styles in my world. It will be super immersive for my player to see NPCs more customized for the location their in without it being a chore for me.

Yea I was thinking might as well let them spend there feats wherever but I think they will need to still get the 3 feats before moving on

So I just thought of something should they be allowed to spend their class feats on dedication feats on top of the free ones?

So first thank you all for the advice, I have made some decisions about the game. All 4 players will be human nobles (Though likely less nobility and more a Socialite family). I will either have them all be imperial blood or if they like the idea one of each tradition for the fun (I have a great story reason for it now, But one of my players reads the forums so it'll be a secrete for now) and I will let them choose if that want to be a Sorc or a MC Sorc

I'll be willing to share the intro story once my group has talked about it.

With the feats also Level locked there becomes a definite peak to how powerful any one character can get. It could be fun for One Shots to give every player a free extra feat, and i’ll Be interested to hear from players that try giving extra feats how it works out.

I'm actually thinking about running a game like that now, I made a thread about it if you wanna check it out https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42l91?Free-dedication-feat-campaign-Idea#1

I was inspired by a conversation on this thread https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42l6m&page=2?ALL-Multiclass-Archetypes#70

I was thinking about running a game where all the player are members of a highly magical family (probably siblings if that matters) and start as Sorcerers but the magic is so inherent to them that they can easily split their focus to other fields as well (getting free dedication feats) I would love to see other peoples opinions of the base concept and I do have a couple of specific questions

1. Does this seem doable or will they have to much difficulty with combats?

2. Should I start at 2nd level, I really want to start at first and give them Rp hooks as to why they choose to MC where they do and as I don't really give out XP I just give them a level when it feels good for the Story I'm not too worried about them needing to survive to many combats as as group of sorcerers

3. This one is more from the story side and less from a mechanics side: Should I allow anyone to have a Different Bloodline (ie a tie to a different part of the family bloodline) or be like a late bloomer where they start as a different class but must MC into Sorcerer

Oh and if anyone is interested in the story itself let me know and I'll post it when I'm done working on it (I have a homebrew world so it won't be set in Golarion)

I can't actually envision a scenario in which the Paizo devs believed Signature Skills would survive community scrutiny. I don't have that little faith in their capabilities.

I think it was because class skills and Cross class skills have survived in D20 systems in general for at least 16 years and I may be wrong but I believe Signature Skills was the 2e version of class skills. I'm glad it was removed for the same reason I typically ignore the class skill list, It got in the way of more interesting roleplay

Malk_Content wrote:

Arachnofiend wrote:

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

And then there will be people with the playtest so firmly stuck in their heads that they'll insist on judging PF2 as though it were the playtest, even after its own release. That's the most fun group of all!

In fairness, "these are the absolute worst ideas our team has had, let's call them a playtest and see if they aren't as bad as we think they are" is a poor way to make a first impression. I've been generally positive about what I've seen post-playtest but I'm not gonna blame anyone who took their playtest experience and decided Paizo has very little goodwill to work off of now.

Well thank god that isn't what they did then was it? They made the most radical changes, not the worst. And most of them, going by surveys were very well recieved. Even the one totally axed mechanic (Resonance) wasn't totally panned in the surveys, with just the fact that those who didn't like it absolutely abhorred it making the choice to remove it.

Two words: signature skills.

Not trying to pick a fight Arachnofiend but you seem to have a very negative opinion of Paizo and seem to expect the worst from them and if that's the case no meaningful conversation can be had about this, however if this is not the case my argument to Signature skills being a "Worst Idea" is as follows.

Signature skills seemed to be a way to keep the concept of the class skill (which is a thing present in all the D20 systems I've ever seen) while still being useful in the new skill system but when enough people told them that they instead liked the idea that anyone should be able to train anything (which a a Roleplayer I heavily agree with) they changed it.

One very cool thing about this system is you can run a pseudo gestalt home game by going “Everyone gets a bonus dedication feat every second level”

What adjustment would you make to the level or difficulty of an encounter for a change like that or do you think it would be unnecessary

and also do you think and kind of adjustment would be needed if I gave a player a free archtype feat for roleplay ie A player starts getting taught tricks by a sailor NPC while traveling so I give them the Pirate (though I think it should just be called Sailor) dedication feat as a reward for the roleplay

@Captain Morgan: You just seem like a smart reasonable person who posts here a lot and I tend to agree with you.

@Edge93: It does get so annoying to see over and over the bad GM argument. I'm sure people have had bad GMs (Hell I've had bad GMs), But there is a super simple list of things you can do if you think your GM is bad
1. Talk to your GM about the thing that bothered you and see if it can be fixed
2. If that doesn't work, DON'T PLAY WITH THAT GM and if its a friend whose just a bad GM see if the other players feels the same way and if they do just have someone else GM

Also I don't think what you said was harsh at all

Thanks Captain Morgan its nice to have someone like you agree with something I said, that sentence is the most important part of the game to me and if I knew how to bold things I likely would have done it myself. I also get frustrated when people come up with crazy edge cases to make a rule look bad.

The way my group (I'm the GM) handles the concept of controlling your AC:
First of all we understand that the needing to spend an action is entirely for game balance

Unless the owner is changing the target or the type of actions that the AC is doing we still have the owner spend the action (For balance) but we role play it as the pet continuing to act without orders.
And on the not getting an action when the owner doesn't spend the action, If something is actively attacking attacking the AC I give it one free attack unless its really hurt in which case it moves its speed away from the enemy (Usually towards the owner if its safe). if its being hurt by something environmental (or an aura like that of a fire elemental). If neither of those thing are true it does nothing and we RP it as a moment of hesitation a turn is only 6 seconds after all. In my games at least AC don't go without "orders" very often less than once per combat.

In my opinion if something needs to happen a certain way for the sake of number balance, then we should work on a way for it to make sense in the RP of the situation. And so far everyone at my table seems to accept the AC as a real animal and not a robot and a way to boost that more is to either have the owner if they want or the GM role play the animal as well describing what its doing in social situations as much as in combat.

Thanks NielsenE I have no idea how I missed that. It's nice to have the exact page just in case it's questioned at the table.

In the playtest, you could take the extra action granted by haste at any point during your turn.

Not that I don't belive you but just because I know at some point I'll be asked "Where does it say you can". Is that a listed rule somewhere or is it that fact that it never says you can't use it at any point on your turn that makes you believe you can.

Im very excited too though the Cloistered Cleric seem a little underwhelming. I only think that because the path options of all the other casters have abilities that boost them where this one seems like its just saying "Hey you're a caster" maybe I wrong but it was my first impression. I hope I'm wrong and that the Domain Initiate feat will be real cool.

So I have two questions

Q1 Does the game enforce the order you take your actions. ei do you have to take your 3 normal actions then the extra limited action, Or can you take the extra action at any point in your turn.

Q2 when it comes to haste it says you can only use the extra action for stride and strike actions but does it have to be the basic action or can it also be used as part of activities that include those actions like Power Attack or Sudden Charge

Though I am hoping to see official rules (I haven't been able to find any, Maybe one of the Devs will notice this and be nice enough to give their view on it.) but I would also love to just see peoples opinion on the matter.

John Lynch 106 wrote:

Voss wrote:

I'm honestly not following you. They did it the right way (and not the 4e way) by having static DCs that don't advance. Yes, there is a table for reference... that isn't a bad thing.

Actually, I strongly disagree. Not every GM is a great GM. Some range from mediocre to bad. This table will encourage those GMs (and new GMs) to refer to the "appropriate DC" table and use that without any significant thought as to what challenge is facing the party. Forcing GMs to jump through a couple more hoops would force them to think about what's happening in their world.

Also the "not 4e way"? Pretty sure 4e did have text surrounding the DC table explaining what those DCs should mean. Didn't stop everyone (including you) for criticising WotC and 4e for the table's existence and for misunderstanding what the table represented.

Mark Seifter wrote:

That's not the case; the Gamemastering section takes effort to tell GMs not to do it that way.

It wont' be enough for many GMs. As I outlined quite a while ago there is an alternative way to give GMs the same information which would force them to actually decide what is happening in the universe before getting the DC.

Y'all have convinced me that PF2 and 4e are handling skill DCs in a relatively similar way, but I'm having trouble understanding why it's bad.

You're saying that new/bad GMs ran the game in direct contradiction to them and that the rules were further distorted in the memories of people who had an intensely negative emotional reaction to 4e. Is that correct?

If the rules say "don't do X, for these three reasons..." why would any GM who was making an effort to run the game well, do the exact thing that the rules were telling them not to do? How could any rule system protect against GMs who aren't even willing to read it?

Very true and besides with or without a chart a DM like that will likely just make up their own DC's anyway just because the feel like it.

So Mark, I wasn't sure when or where to post this question but this blog seems close enough. Is it possible for you guys to make a fillable pdf character sheet, I know eventually someone else may do it or I'll figure it out myself. It would be nice to get one directly from you guys for players like one of mine who cant really write well but can type fine.