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The GM is not playing by THE rules, though he may be playing by HIS rules, which is acceptable. However, it should be clear before hand, even if as people pointed out... when the plan of action was presented to him, the GM should have pointed out it would run afoul of the goddess's expectations. Unless somehow part of the plot of the story is how the Gods or that Goddess is becoming unpredictable. However, even then it would be best to give the players a 'warning' about the nature of the game.

You don't start a DragonLance Campaign without mentioning... ohhh... by the way the Clerics have lost their powers.

You don't start a post Godsrain Pathfinder game without telling someone looking at Gorum for their deity, about the recent ramifications.

Now, if the issue the GM had was that you were making a Relic, and the relic was supposed to be powered by that particular deity's power, giving it divine abilities. Well, then it could be reasonable in my mind for the deity to have simply had the first attempt fail. (If I felt so compelled, I'd almost assuredly warned the cleric of the chance for such a failure) If it were an item simply enchanted by other members of the party, the goddess should not care that they choose to use a mace rather than a Polytool. As pointed out it is the goddess's preferred weapon, not their required weapon.

So it is a valid thing that could happen, but it shouldn't happen out of the blue, as that would violate most people's baseline expectation of cooperative storytelling which underlies the base of Pathfinder's rules. People mention being Old-School, and there would be some truth that Old-school standards, GMs could be a bit dictatorial in their decisions, so if playing under those generalized play standards, the GMs choice might make more general sense. But by modern standards, and Second Edition pathfinder rules, such a ruling should not come out of the blue without being flagged/mentioned by the GM before the players proceeded with their actions.

I'm currently running AV and one of my PCs is large. It works reasonably well to make such circumstances be difficult terrain. It slows them down, making their choices relevant, but doesn't stop the game.

One thing to absolutely pay attention to however, is that if you do it for the PCs or their allies, make sure you do it for the monsters in most cases. There are numerous large creatures that are found in spots where they would be moving in narrow areas. (like on stairs and such)

While monster rules and PC rules are not always equal. They should be generally similar when there is no specific reason for them to be different.

Or simply make it be Magic… and lock a portal with magic that one has to have the strength of spirit/soul of a certain level for it to open for them.

Otherwise, you can try to tier a particular solution to a certain level, but what about certain ancestries or potential consumables a character might have. It seems ripe for unexpected solutions drummed up by clever players.

Honestly, since we know a book is coming out that will be representing this data, I think the most honest answer is... interpret it the way that is the most fun for the GM and players, and revisit it after the new book comes out to see if there was a change.

Unless by random chance the developers are willing to share what WILL be in the book, I feel like the discussion will become relatively moot shortly.

Maybe none of the text will change, and thus I'm wrong, but I suspect a word here or their might have changed, even if minor.

It might be worthy to mention that the Manifest Eidolon might have been included to make sure that people weren't of the opinion that they had a Eidolon companion that was more like an animal companion that was just always physically present with you, if you got it via the dedication. But it doesn't say that.... actually, what is says is that you get an Eidolon. It doesn't actually say you get the Eidolon class feature, it says you get an Eidolon.

If after Impossible Magic is out, the wording is still unclear, that's when I think the conversation could continue, based on whatever the wording is then. Otherwise, I think it is relatively clear it can be read several different ways, with reasonable arguments going for a variety of them.

I agree That Raven's reading isn't decisively wrong. I'd say as written it is mildly up in the air. Technically speaking, taking that argument to its conclusion leaves one to say the part where they share HP isn't conferred, but that takes an extreme as it leaves out any definition for their HP, so it seems obvious that is intended.

I have trouble making it work to have them literally share actions, without the bonding such that they have telepathic communication or communion between the two. Eidolons are supposed to share actions, not be commanded to use their actions. A slow on you or your eidolon effects your pooled actions. It doesn't reduce the number of actions you have to command your eidolon. That all said is my interpretation, but it seem the intended interpretation.

To me, in writing focus was on making sure they didn't get Act together, and then probably later focused on insuring they never bought anything that would grant them any form of Tandem action. I'm not sure there was a lot of focus on the thought about shared senses or telepathy. It think the finer details of the Multi-class dedications are a lower priority, and don't get as much attention.

I think we can even point at the Swashbuckler as an example of this. The original rework on it gave them the Panache ability that they could earn, and seemed to then literally strip away all point of having panache as an empty reward that to enable, you had to spend future feats to have panache earn you anything. This appeared to be because they reworked/organized the class abilities/features to be more organized, moving some of Panache into Stylish Combatant feature, but didn't check the dedication for any changes needed.

It think this happened because the ruleset was created for the class, and fell into to the class, but created rules elements similar to familiar/pets and animal/non-animal companions which frequently had other tie-ins. Perhaps if they'd put the Eidolon rules as a section, which the Summoner referred too, and then put extra features that the full classed summoner go in addition to base Eidolon, it would have been easier to make it clear what the baseline was going to be for the multiclass Eidolon.

Taking the stricter interpretation of Only top part of Eidolon class feature, other aspects don't apply can also be taken to mean that the subsection under Eidolon titled 'Gear and your Eidolon" and "Lost and Altered Actions" should not be applied either as they weren't included.

I think if I had someone ask for Summoner multiclass, I think I'd probably allow the telepathy and shared senses actions as part of it, because I think it wouldn't be unbalanced and I don't like the ramifications of saying it shouldn't be there.

If in a game with a player, and with a GM I knew well enough to be honest with, I'd lobby that at a minimum they should be allowed to keep the telepathy, because is seems obvious that even Multiclass Eidolons are supposed to share actions and MAP together, and that mostly makes sense if they have a more 'shared' consciousness that is more in line with Telepathy.

Honestly, the multiclass dedication isn't appealing enough to me to really inspire me to delve into it at the moment, so I can't imagine having to argue that point myself on my own behalf. I think for most examples of having an Eidolon, it makes more sense for them to be the major part of the story, not an add-on so it is harder for me to imagine a multi-class example I'd explore myself.

So no Raven isn't out of line, but I'd confess there are more ramifications from taking that point, that other changes they don't list would also legitimately fall within that interpretation. I'd not back that interpretation myself as a final choice, but I understand their logic.

Honest it is probably be worthy of FAQ/errata, although maybe it has been resolved in the Impossible Magic, so it is likely better to wait for that at this point. I'm sure it is too late for anything to change in Impossible Magic, if that text hasn't been reworked in the new book, or the reworked text still has the same of similar ambiguity.

It is even traditional for adventures to somewhat coincidentally be helpful to the adventurers as one of the various creatures you have to pass by to get to the 'big bad' at the end of the adventure will often have something significant (magic item of a level one or two higher than you) which happens to inflict some sort of damage the big bad is weak to, or that perhaps bypasses a key resistance it has, which gives the players an edge needed to overtake such an otherwise significant threat. In addition to making the final encounter easier, it also ends up making the encounter where they earned the particular item more memorable for the party as they reap the rewards for gaining the item.

Could one thing that might make a memorable fight be fighting a creature more four or more levels higher than the PCs, but have the creature less than committed to the fight. If they can take the creature down to half HP or hit it with something it is weak against, or some other specific accomplishments, they disengage and decide it isn't worthwhile hanging around.

You have an extreme difficulty potentially creating some instances where the party will have to retreat. Others, once they get a good foothold, or figure out a key aspect, they may bypass the obstacle (even though they don't actually fully defeat it, they do get through it)

Such a battle might have the boss trying to take/steal/recover a key resource important to the storyline, which if lost negatively affects the party. But the creature may not care about killing the party, they just want the item, when they think they spot an opportunity to get it. But they also aren't interested in actually getting hurt getting it, so they are willing to retreat if things look like they might get close to having the tables turned.

You probably need to be careful to not have such a creature take the party completely by surprise, as that could potentially easily take out one or more PCs before they have a chance to react, and that would likely feel pretty -unfun- for them. But a broadcasted threat coming in, with a demand to turn over their hard-earned resource they just got, could make the choice to try to keep it more memorable.

I feel like if 'broken' during the adventure, the player should have means to 'fix' it. Crafting via heal check, etc. If it takes so much damage it needs to be considered 'destroyed' then the player may do without their 'feature' for the rest of their scenario, but I would feel it within the scope of believe that care provided to the heroes between assignments should be sufficient to restore their natural state.

Is it:
1 Death (you must pay for resurrection or use an appropriate boon).
2 Permanent curses
3 Permanent negative effects, including things like:
a Petrification
b Permanent polymorph effects
c Other effects that have no expiration and leave the character impaired.

While you might be able to argue 3c, I think the reasonable answer is that taking enough damage to potentially 'break' your natural armor, may be enough to disable a benefit for the adventure. It does not 'remove' your feat/ability that granted it. Which means for purposes of the game you still have it. While you can argue a magic shield, when destroyed, you no longer have it. When your natural armor is 'mechanically' destroyed for purpose of the game/encounter, you still have the feat. And as a result, since there is no spell for 'restoring natural armor' that you could argue that they might need to pay for to remove the condition you either have to 'retire the character' or allow it to heal.

Since they still have the feat, I would argue, after their recovery time, they will again have use of the armor for their next assignment. We already have precedent for this. It is not unlike the fact that while most non-PC characters may effectively die at 0 HP unless story reason to track their continued status, animal companions and PC-Adjacent creatures do not. Even for instance if they are undead or constructs and would normally be destroyed at 0 hp. I think the same 'concept' would/should apply to the natural armor. While destroyed, and no longer helpful, it still is a part of the character. It will given an appropriate time of healing and care, will eventually be functional again. That capability is all that is required to allow PFS to allow it to be healed fixed in between assignments, per raw.

Well that would be my perspective on it. Otherwise you probably need to provide rules for retraining out of biological feats you no longer get use out of, etc. Which seems like a direction I wouldn't want to force people down.

I think the handing such, as mentioned above, should be done with care. If you have something that is supposed to be able to do damage to someone's armor. And that comes into play, and it should be damaging the character's natural armor. I'd pick an appropriate value for how many HP the armor should have. (and it being natural, can probably have greater HP as the person levels up) The natural armor can take damage, and if 'broken' could make the natural armor ineffective. But the damage wouldn't just be passed on to the player's HP. It would be tied to the natural armor. Presumably, such natural armor would be allowed to probably heal naturally, although I'd probably allow a heal check or crafting check to help move it along faster than they probably would want to wait for it to simply heal naturally.

But damage to armor is rare, so each one probably is worth independent review, if dealing with the armor damage is actually beneficial to the story/conflict or not. A case like a rust monster doing damage to armor, would almost assuredly have no impact on natural armor on any biological creature, but could of course affect a clockwork, or metal golem.

You might consider Magus to provide you some extra blasting via cantrips. And gives you choice to potentially expand into spellstrikes if you want to pursue it for occasional use. You could potentially pick up shield cantrip to get ability to do shield blocks and improve your genera AC without having to carry a physical shield or choose warpriest.

While Swashbuckler isn’t considered a particularly strong archetype necessarily, I believe that with the recent errata clarified that the archetype does get some panache benefits which was not originally clear. You could choose Bragart, Fencer, or Gymnast. It however seems like items which could pair well conceptually with a priest of CC.

Other archetypes to consider might include Weapon Inprovisor, which also seems easy fit with your deity. Something unexpected, but potentially useful at times would be Mauler, potentially having a rapier for fine battles, and something bigger when something bigger is called for.

If you go warpriest, Aldori Duelist seems like it could go well with your faith. It also seems like a strong option for Kingmaker due to location. Bastion might be helpful if you like having a shield but want to use more of your actions for spellcasting, movements and attacks rather than raising a shield for potential attacks that may or may not come. The reactive shield would let you use your reaction to get you shield bonus to AC just when you actually take an attack.

All rituals or at least all I can think of are uncommon or more rarity, so access to them is generally always at the discretion of the GM for access.

The primary defined effect is that there is a modifier to the DC to Learn/know about uncommon/rare/unique items.

Honestly, I wish there were some common rituals. If they are worried about game balance, they could make sure the costs associated with them were high enough to insure the don’t become overused.

You need to be careful setting the price of rare items like spells/rituals/formulas. Because you need to keep in mind one could potentially try to make copies of a rare formula, and try to sell multiple copies. To make that not happen you might need to adjust the buying price, but not selling price barring specific GM or story driven exceptions.

If people complain about it. It can be pointed out if it is a rare, duplicate able item, by advertising availability of buying it without exclusivity, you are essentially making it common in your vicinity.

It was a legitimate question. If they had spelled it Cat Sidhe I would have actually probably connected it to Celtic mythology instead of 'star wars' mythology. I just wasn't aware of the connection and it made me laugh, as I bumped into the statblock on, I believe it was the demiplane site for Starfinder so it made me wonder.

Thanks for the information, although I still wonder if it might be a useful springboard for a fey ancestry whom might be able to be stretched to encompass a species similar to the Cat from Outer Space in a Starfinder setting. I don't think I'd have though to go Fey, but it makes a lot of sense. I also imagine one would be able to pull in Egyptian mythology into them as well perhaps as there seem decent parallels.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Are we supposed to have Cat Jedi, which are estranged fey cousins to the Cat Sith?

Or what is the literary origin of the concept of the Cat Sith? I'll confess I partly ask looking to see if we have seen anything official in 2nd edition similar to the Bastef, but the Cat Sith really caught my attention and curiosity. What are their role in the future of Starfinder.

For boss monsters with particularly high weaknesses, you could change the implementation so they take full weakness damage only once per turn. Subsequent triggers during that turn would apply only half the weakness (or something similar). This makes a fire weakness relevant, with say a flaming property helpful, without making "attack as many times as possible with it" the obvious answer with it.

I also like the idea of granting bosses additional reactions, similar to a hydra. Particularly powerful reactions might be limited to one extra reaction per two PCs. These reactions could be set to trigger at the end of a player's turn (when the boss's next turn isn't imminent) if that player interacted with the creature in some meaningful way, such as attacking it, flanking it, standing adjacent, or affecting it with a spell. The reaction could be a Strike, a buff/debuff effect, or a choice from several options.

Another possibility as has been mentioned is giving bosses a subordinate turn, not unlike the option of granting extra reactions, but giving full actions at a later time. I agree it should be limited to one or two actions, preserving 3-action activities for the primary turn. End-of-turn effects such as persistent damage would only occur on the primary turn. Conditions like slowed could be directed to consume actions from the subordinate turn first, making the primary turn harder to shut down.

Subordinate turns might also allow for interesting chained abilities, which gives access to telegraphed 'big moves' that someone mentioned earlier.

For a basic example:

* Primary turn: Bite. <one-action> some normal damage
* Subordinate turn: <two-actinon> If the Bite succeeded and the target remains adjacent, Swallow Whole. More bite damage, but bad situation afterwards.

If the party knows this is possible and the consequence is severe, it creates tactical gameplay as allies work to prevent the follow-up action.

Defensive reactions are another option. A skeleton, swarm, or similar boss could gain reactions triggered by taking a large amount of damage at once[at least level in HP], reducing that damage significantly [perhaps halving].

Similarly, a boss reduced to 0 HP could trigger a reaction that instead leaves it at half its current HP and gives it the wounded condition. In exchange, it enters a desperate final phase with abilities such as fast healing, reduced weaknesses, increased resistances or an aura that damages nearby creatures (i.e. thrashing 10' aura; bludgeoning damage).

Since the Stunned condition would be especially devastating to such a creature, becoming stunned could trigger one of their reactions. In that case, the reaction would merely negate the Stunned condition instead of reducing damage for that attack.

Granting several uses of such reactions would force the party to sustain a constant pressure rather than relying on one or two massive hits.

The common theme is preventing a boss from being trivialized by one or two exceptionally powerful attacks. Requiring a sustained, coordinated onslaught gives the entire party more opportunities to contribute and may be a useful ingredient in creating memorable boss encounters.

Well Consecrate is a 2nd rank ritual, so being less than that would make it a 1st rank ritual.

Something you could consider would be have the ritual only able to increase the sanctification level of the space to at most Twice the rank that the ritual is cast at. So casting it as first rank ritual could take a space up to 2nd level of sanctification.

It would be within the general concept of PF2 so say perhaps that the ritual might also only be able to advance up to the current level of the primary caster. So a first level primary caster, casting it as a 1st rank ritual should not be able to advance the sanctification up to a 2nd level sanctification.

Doing this you can make the baseline ritual smaller. You can scale cost based on the ritual rank, etc. And it should theoretically keep the ritual from allowing the players outside of expected game constraints.

Also with respect to your last ritual about the weather. I'd probably add a criteria that an area can only be under the influence of one instance of the ritual at a time. Subsequent attempts to change it automatically fail until the prior ritual expires. (if you did allow it to be overridden, such a resetting of the effects would have to be done by someone casting the ritual at both a higher ritual rank, and having a higher sanctification level. This would keep people from having repeated ritual battles trying to go one way vs the other.

Also, rather than have failure provide the reverse effect, have it have no effect other than giving all casters a -2 status effect on attempt to preform this ritual for the next 3d4 days. (and the failure effect would also occur on critical failure effects)

I love the bestiary cards, but acknowledge they are a cost. But they make having the stat block and image to show the players really conveniently located.

However, it shouldn’t be that hard to make a two or three column document, and paste in encounter details and stat blocks copied from archives of nethys. It wasn’t 2nd edition, but I did that for a kingmaker AP I ran. In it, I prerolled wandering monsters per terrain, rolling what they encountered and wrote the generated number and stat blocks. I stole a couple unique encounters from a different adventure source, but then when they travelled, I roll d to see if they had an encounter, if they did I grabbed the next remaining encounter for that terrain and ran it. There were a few that were encounterable and got rolled on more than one terrrain. But I treated several ones as unique encounters and skipped them if they encountered the same thing in a different terrain already. Having stiff like that collected with stat blocks and printed as a stick reference booklet made the play time run smother. It took a bit of time to set up and print but wasn’t horrible with to get done. As I recall copying monster stat blocks out of AoN was easier/effective than trying to pull it from pdfs. I think it kept formatting better as I recall.

Make a word document as quick reference printers and/or save it as pdf to reference with you laptop, phone or tablet while running. You can even leave hyperlinks to AoN pages for the creatures, items or relevant rules elements for quick reference.

Level or I suppose rather Rank, should generally be tied to how powerful it is in game balance, or what level it should be able to begin coming into play.

If you want it to be usable at low levels, but rare, putting it as a higher level keeps it from being used. Instead of having it be uncommon, have it be Rare (or even unique for truly unknown rituals).

They can have heightened effects, so at higher levels you can get more important/useful effects.

If you need a ritual to be available at a lower level, but feel it is doing something more powerful that might normally require a higher level there are a couple things you can look at.

One have an NPC lead the ritual, and make the secondary caster requirements something they can fulfil, and make their secondary caster checks be reasonable for them to pass.

Other options would be to have the ritual require a focus or components that is impractical to acquire outside of the circumstances for which you are making it take place in the story.

The ritual might be a low level ritual, but requires the primary caster to have the 10th level relic of the deity in question. Which a relatively high level guardian carries it, and will only let it be borrowed for certain (storied) reasons allowing the PCs to use it just the once.

When setting the Rank, you'd probably set the level based on how much power it has to change the environment around the casters. Very much like a spell. If the is going to provide a buff to people in combats, it needs to not overwhelm the game balance, unless it is necessary to make the story work, in which you need narrative controls on it to insure it only affects the encounters it is intended to in future stories. (Ok, you might let someone come up a way to get it to work in some unforeseen future circumstance, but it shouldn't become a new, always win button)

As an example, creating an undead by ritual is limited to undead that are similar in level to what they could summon with a similarly high ranked slot spell, a bit higher at higher levels). However, it costs a bunch of money, thus reducing your resources in doing so. Because then you have the risks of failure, and have to deal with the logistics of getting your minion places.

So based on that, I say you try to base it on spellcasting, with respect to power. But you can fudge it a little, one way or another as long as factors keep it from being abused. (factors above an beyond being rare, for instance, because once you let them have it, it bypasses that restriction)

While I agree with The Raven Black, that saying holy isn't enough... at least based on the edicts and Anathema, it seems like the GM's view of the Pantheon for the Empyreal is leaning into their collective battle against evil... which means choosing to side with the pantheon, means that I think they should be signing on for what they will see as the great 'HOLY' war. Based on that, I think that the "Must be Holy" is the appropriate answer for the pantheon as given.

Otherwise, I think you should remove 'oppose evil agents and their schemes' out of their edicts, if you want them to be able to opt out of choosing to be Holy. Refusing to hurt the innocent, one doesn't necessarily have to be taking sides on the 'Holy' axis, but doing that and having to oppose 'evil' sounds like you are inherently placing you in that battle.

If you change the edit to be something more like oppose those who harm or destroy those or that which have done no harm, nor seem intended to" Something like that aligns it less with the cosmic war and includes others whom might just over-reaching their destruction of those standing in the way of some goal.

Keep in mind that a character of the pantheon will be bound by both the edicts of the Pantheon, and their personal primary patron both (as long as the pantheon edict/anathema doesn't violate their person patron's edicts/anathema). So when creating the Edicts and Anathema, they shouldn't just duplicate a member deities, and should ideally not generally conflict in ways that would be hard for the GM and players to adjudicate.

The newer Beginner Box (“Secrets of the Unlit Star”) is intended to be the replacement for the older one, and if you’re brand new to Pathfinder 2E, that’s probably the version I’d recommend.

The big reason is that it’s built directly for the current “Remastered” rules. The Remaster was Paizo’s update/reorganization of Pathfinder 2E after the OGL/Wizards of the Coast licensing issues a couple years ago. Mechanically, the game is still very much Pathfinder 2E, and the differences are generally pretty modest. However, some terminology and a few rules concepts changed (for example “flat-footed” became “off-guard,” alignment was removed, some specific monsters were replaced, etc.).

Because of that, if you’re learning the game fresh and buying current books from Paizo or your local game store, sticking with the Remastered material will probably make things simpler.

That said, the older Beginner Box is still excellent and absolutely playable. The differences between pre-Remaster and Remaster content are not huge, and older adventures/content still work fine.

One other suggestion: if it’s within your budget, I’d honestly recommend the physical Beginner Box over just the PDF. The maps, dice, pawns, and reference materials make learning the game much easier and more immersive for a new group.

Either way, though, the Beginner Box is a great starting point for Pathfinder 2E.

I think Trip's argument is that the Reaction isn't Disrupting or stopping the action, the reaction produces a result that imparts the Unconscious condition (lack of HP) which as it applies to the person making the activity, prevents them from completing their activity.

While I agree that to disrupt simply because you struck would require a critical in that circumstance (which could disrupt without needing to explicitly downing the target) it isn't unreasonable to have the creature was downed, fail to complete its activity, because they ceased to qualify for the activity.

As a GM I have to say I'd feel completely comfortable letting a range strike potentially complete if it felt right however. I think most reactions represent an opening... and not all of them complete before the thing they react. [feel free to say that isn't what the rules say, I'm just stating my thoughts]

I'd say most cases if it were a multi-action activity, I imagine I'd allow the source creature going down to terminate the action. Something like spellcasting, thus I'd likely rules would stop it. If it was someone with a ranged weapon like a bow already drawn and prepped to attack a foe, I'd probably have the shooter go down after the arrow is released.

If it were the lever situation... it might matter more what was best for the story. If it was pulling the lever down, I could argue they let themselves fall on it to take it down. However, since the guardian was able to position themselves in front of it and protect it, I'd imagine it possible to complete a lethal swing before they got enough a hold on the lever to activate it. If I weren't going to rule that way, unless the creature had an ace in its hand that was unknown, I'd have warned the guardian about the fact that I wouldn't allow them to interrupt the activation.

You might want to look at either some Relic Gifts or Deviant feats as potential inspirations for some of the abilities that could be granted. You might potentially require them to delve into their given sin a little more to replenish the use of their ability over time.

Plane is correct that you will likely need to work on at a minimum on how to best self-market your idea. Paying someone to market something that you yourself have trouble marketing would probably be either really expensive, or likely to not get the reception you are hoping for.

And I'm not trying to be harsh, but reading your first post, your idea of Dawn of Mankind was at least a little interesting. But immediately you said, civilizations weren't really around, but the players goal is to explore and find a civilization.

But in the Dawn of Mankind before civilizations, who would be looking for a social concept that hadn't been widely invented yet. It would seem like their goal would need to at least start as something else, even if you can transform that goal into search for civilization through some means. But guess what, you need to have your idea of how you're going to preform that transformation.

Is it a rumor or dream of a great plain of endless grains and wandering herds of meat animals, as the local inhabitants are dealing with a drought in their local vicinity?

Is the goal to find a new homeland, does the tribe follow them, or do they stay, believing their goal is foolish. Thus, in addition to finding this 'promised land' the heroes have to find it, and then get some kind of proof, and then bring it back, and then potentially deal with some challenge that they might have been able to bypass the first time due to being a small band, but will need to confront to enable the whole village to pass, including the elderly and children or such on their second trip back to the 'promised land'.

With that in mind, is this a brand new idea, or have you already run some folks through a 'beta' version of this adventure path. If you haven't, then I'd suggest you do plan to do that. Since you don't have the benefit of an already known name, you probably need to do that before you fundraise. So you have more to show for 'what' people would be backing. So you can describe the 'elevator pitch' for the final full arc of the adventure. It is reasonable to say, hey I want this adventure to have really cool artwork, but to get that, I need funds to pay a good artist to make them a reality, that's what you are funding here in this Kickstarter. I think in your position you need to already have at least a workable draft for your story and encounters at the start.

This way you can tell people what levels it is set for. What subset of species allowed (is it all human). What classes are allowed. (seems hard to imagine Wizards without civilization, same for gunslingers, for instance) These are all things that your target audience would likely need to know in order to get them to buy in, that they would want to get to run, or be a part of this adventure.

You might inquire with some of the prior authors of commercial adventure paths, either Paizo or others, and see how much it might cost to have them do a once-over editing pass over a draft. That might be able to be a cost that could be tied to getting to a tier in your Kickstarter. But keep in mind, the more future development, the longer the time to final product, and the more stressful your Kickstarter will be, both for yourself and for your backers.

You should be clear at the start of the Kickstarter of what you have done, about what you need to develop still, and what is waiting on the funds coming into the Kickstarter, and how much you need to make those things a reality for the project.

All that said as someone who hasn't ever run a Kickstarter myself, although I have backed several, including some that ran into.... troubles. Not at a scale of a Kickstarter, but I had done some impromptu card production projects at a small scale, that I had to juggle some of the above elements to have people understand what the end product was going to be. With those I had to have something already in had that was an example or prototype of what the end was going to look like, for people to be interested in participating.

This seems reasonable, and from the context of the game, is probably even within the scope of the original rules. The rules generally only write what is relevant to the PCs, so at a minimum, your version would be within the original rules, save that I would indicate that the other PCs in the party, and/or other participants in the ritual would all share the enmity.

I would say that the continued existence of the creature after the elimination of those whom created it would have fallen out of the scope of what they ritual was having to define. Your clarification seems like a worthy inclusion. However, it might be appropriate to include all participants in the ritual in the enmity, and it may at least tentatively apply to anyone/thing that tries to stop them from destroying their creator(s). The tentative hated isn't probably normally enough to continue their existence, if their end goal has been achieved. (destruction of their creators) Once their goal has been achieved they would probably revert to their pre-ritual existence, either instantly, or gradually as what makes a better story.

I agree that allowing a cultist to intestinally critically fail, just to create some horribly powerful creature that will hate everyone seems mechanically wrong, unless that is the specific need for the storyline, which would make it ok.

Even if mechanically the above became the standard, there can be story-driven exceptions still, so this doesn't stop needed stories from being able to exist, but patches the mechanical holes you mention.

Honestly, I like the name Slayer, it is a good one-word name that is evocative and does a really good job of conveying what I think is intended of representing a 'Monster Hunting' class. The fact that the name is a little on the highly aggressive side is fine, especially if it isn't 'a required aspect' the players have to adopt by being the class. The class name should point you to the general idea of the type of character you are playing, but doesn't have to exactly fit every example of an instance of that character type.

So keep slayer as the name of the class, but decouple it with the requirement to have to KILL each opponent to take a 'trophy'.

Maybe baseline, trophies may come from Kills, and that may even me a mechanical reality. But it shouldn't have to be the only way. Similar to how very explicitly, it is mentioned that when taking a Trophy from a humanoid, you typically take a Token, instead of part of the body of the creature. (obviously a nod to trying to maintain some of what civilization considers appropriate or not)

There are already adjustments to what a Trophy is/how you get it. There are other modifications that could open up the class to being a monster hunter, whom hunts 'Pokemons' by defeating them and gain benefits from 'collecting' a new pet. Maybe in that case, a trained pokemon slayer might 'slay' the pokemon, but it is really non-lethal damage to it and it becomes a trophy. But that is just reskinning actions/results.

But how about more applicable and potentially relevant options to place as rules. Offer that when you fully defeat an opponent, but don't kill it. (defeat it, it acknowledges defeat) You may be able to take a Token or Keepsake from the battle.

To keep people from just 'leveraging' peaceful battles as an never ending source of trophies, we could put stronger limitations on it. Non-lethal trophies have to come from a creature that is at least one level higher than you. They also have to come from an encounter which would be considered severe. Finally, they would probably need to be relatively public.

In some cases, your non-lethal trophy may not come from the creature you defeat but the patron of those you defeat. In these cases the trophy may be considered a Favor.

An example in this case could be that a Slayer may earn an actual (by class) for winning a public tournament, sponsored by the local nearby noble. (as long as the tournament battle qualified as a Severe encounter for them, and their opponent was a higher level than themselves)

Part of the idea being you don't get to get a trophy by simply beating a rough peer in a non-lethal battle. You don't get a trophy for ganging up on a stronger opponent to the point the opponent no longer has a chance, that doesn't earn a trophy either.

Other limitations, for lethal or non-lethal trophies. You should, I think obviously only be able to keep one trophy from any particular opponent/patron. Wile you might choose a new trophy later for a latter battle, it would replace the previous one. You can't take a non-lethal one and then later kill them and take a lethal one (the non-lethal one expires).

With this expansion, you might also be able to expand the trophy mechanism to enable you to take trophies from opponents which were not your Quarry. Entering an official tournament or match, should give the slayer an opportunity to select their opponent as a Quarry, even if the match doesn't technically provide the time normally needed.

Two, if you are ambushed by a creature, or stumble onto a monster that you slay. Even though it was a surprise, as long as you contributed to the kill (doing damage, debuff, etc) you should be able to claim a trophy from it as long as the creature is at least a level higher than the slayer and at least a moderate encounter.

One might actually also leverage the RARE tag on a creature, and say that a creature with the RARE tag, if defeated can have a trophy taken even if they are only equal to the slayers level when not a quarry. It brings a mechanical aspect to the Rare tag that can be beneficial to the Slayer. Unique, while theoretically rarer, is also supper common as any 'specific' Named instance of a common creature with an extra ability, qualifies as a Unique creature, despite otherwise being common.

Again, leave the name slayer, which might allude to a lot of Killing. But keep the class from being forced to go full Murder Hobo to fully leverage its class abilities. Letting the class spread its wings out to cover the whole range of Monster Hunter themes for its characters.

Again, my simple solution... which others might have better. Make non-lethal trophies require opponents at least one level higher than usual, come from a severe encounter or harder, and typically require a public battle, or turning folks over to public or commercial authorities. (commercial authorities being Hellknight organizations, etc. whom may have offered rewards for them)

In addition to potentially requiring one level higher for non-lethal trophies, require the same for potentially enabling taking a trophy from a battle with unexpected opponents, as long as both the creature qualify, and the encounter was at least moderate.

Last potentially leverage the Rare tag to open up some trophies when they might not have otherwise qualified.

Lastly, consider offering Keepsakes. If a Slayer's ally falls (dies, or otherwise incapacitated/retired from playability) As long as the Ally was at least the Slayers level (not just a minion). Let them take a keepsake to honor their Ally. Functioning like a trophy. (or maybe you might honestly want to allow the slayer to take keepsakes to honor their own minions, as there might be a very reasonable character concept for such a character, in a relatively gritty setting)

Anyway, it seems like there is real potentially that can be given to the Trophy mechanic if they open it up to a wider range of Trophy(Keepsake, Favor, Token, or Memento)

The Agile Maneuvers feat for Swashbuckler should really add Dirty Trick to its list of affected actions given you added an entire Swashbuckler Style built around that Attack action.

Agile Maneuvers (with requested addition in italics/brackets): "You easily maneuver against your foes. Your Disarm, Grapple, Reposition, Shove, [Dirty Trick,] and Trip actions have a lower multiple attack penalty. Even if your weapon or unarmed attack doesn't have the agile trait, the penalty is –4 if the action is your second attack on your turn, or –8 if it's your third or subsequent attack. If your weapon or unarmed attack is agile and you have panache, the penalty is reduced further, to –3 if it's the second attack on your turn or –6 if it's the third or subsequent."

Reasonable concept, but the prerequisite is Expert in Athletics, and Dirty Trick is keyed off of Thievery.

Maybe it would be ok to change the Prerequisite to Expert in Athletics or Thievery.

Then have the feat ability grant the given reduction to MAP on Disarm, Grapple, Reposition, Shove, and Trip maneuvers if you are an expert in Athletics.

To expand on it, you might add Force Open to the Athletics options.

It could then grant reduction in map to Dirty Trick if you have Expert in Thievery.

https://2e.aonprd.com/Sources.aspx?ID=74

Shows you things in Archives of Nethys that are in the Ancestry Guide.

I guess something you might keep in mind is that some people might look at ancestries out of Starfinder Second Edition. But if you are doing your own setting. You can probably keep a pulse on options that come out like that simply off of Archives of Nethys rather than buying all the Lost Omens or Starfinder books. If you decided to use them, you'd undoubtedly be putting your own spin on them anyway.

However, it wouldn't be impossible to look at the Starfinder ones as examples of what future ancestries might include, as some might inspire some thoughts on how to deal with any of your own internal setting ancestries.

The format they have expressed other player options would come out would be Rules books such as Guns & Gears, Dark Archive, Howl of the Wild, and Rage of Elements type books that would have a theme and would have a host of player options, along with information on how to run such themed campaigns. They will assuredly continue to make new classes as time goes on, so you may want/need to keep that in mind for your setting, but you could easily need to have some sort of supplement explaining how that class fits into your campaign setting, especially if your campaign setting has some different mechanics that might be baselines for that universe, which might be a little different than Golarion.

Even the rulebooks have a lot of Lost Omens setting information in them, but it isn't the focus of it. There will also be plenty of player options in many of the Lost Omen lines of books that comes out, including things like Ancestries, Equipment, Spells, Schools, Domains, Feats, Archetypes and such.

Implications was that Players Core 1 & 2, and the GM Core and Monster Core are going to be the COREs. It wouldn't surprise me to potentially see them keep coming out with Monster Cores perhaps, but I'm not positive that is their intent, or not.

I named a character Sera or more specifically 'Seraphina' which was intended to be honoring Sarenrae because I decided it sounded reasonable to believe some unspecified cultural linkage between the name and the diety.

I also had a Tiefling character whose given name was Asmodheir. (but might be off on the exact spelling, it was a long time ago) It implied by the one whom named him that he was a descendant of the great legal mind. *cough* The name was both supposed to be an honor, but also a play on power for their 'family'. The fun part was of course my character was decidedly good and not interested in helping the family out at all. *chuckle*

And I just have to mention, I heard about a family where I grew up as a teenager. The parents in question had named their two children Zeus and Hera. I found the thought way too disturbing, suspecting that they didn't really have a deep understanding or the core mythology behind the names. It just didn't sit well for me, understanding that Zeus and Hera were both siblings, and the primary examples of husband and wife (and horrible examples at that). I couldn't imagine choosing those two names for my children. And for reference, two of my nephews have names that were chosen from ancestral mythological powers to honor their heritages. (one Norwegian, the other Native American) Also as it was mentioned above. Both of them had their other name (either first or middle) came from one of the Archangels names, chosen intentionally as well.

I think it is an excellent point that for Print you want to keep names unique so they don't collide with other stories, especially for key NPCs. However, it wouldn't necessarily be bad to have some common first names that could be reused, especially for more mundane characters, as they are known, 'common/ubiquitous' names. It might even be good to have some surnames that are almost viral in various regions.

The second edition kingmaker AP is definitely an outlier as far as Paizo content goes. If you look into its history, the actual Kingmaker AP was a very popular first edition AP. It was popular enough that they agreed to try something new with it and did a crowdsourced project to convert the first edition AP into a second edition AP. That conversion was very large, and incorporated elements, if I understand correctly, from the Owlcat computer game, as well as other feedback they had gotten from the original printing of the AP. However, all that said, it was an enormous project and was not part of the official AP release schedule, so Paizo had to keep resources committed to the normal APs scheduled, so it kept resources available to the project a bit more limited, which it again was my understanding caused delays.

The AP books are generally really good looking. I haven't had an opportunity to run its second edition, but really hope to at some point. I've heard, just like the original AP, the kingdom building and warfare rules were kind of rough, and there are people who swear by several homebrew solutions for them. I think that this is explained by not really having enough playtesting being able to be done on those relatively significant side portions of the story. However, it is also true, they aren't absolutely critical to be done exactly as is to go through the AP, so skipping them or homebrewing seems perfectly reasonable as decided by the local gm and table.

The controversy over the OGL and the subsequent need for Paizo to go through the Remaster was a big enough event in the whole industry, it seems like people in the industry should have been aware of the existence of the changes. And the remaster really implemented so few actual rule changes (aside from renaming things) that it would have been disingenuous to have named it Pathfinder 2.5 at all. If they had tried to go with a numeric, it would have been far more honest to call it a 2.1 version. I don't think that remaster would be anywhere close to being half-way to whatever would become the future Third edition.

But I agree their support of the Archives of Nethys is quite significant. This is especially good for people who might be trying to migrate things from pre-remastered to remastered, as if you look up an item from a premastered resource, when you are looking at it, it lets you know where there is a newer remastered version of it to look at. Then the GM can choose to use either one, if there are any significant differences in it.

And again, the timing of the remaster was pushed not by Paizo timing but the whole OGL Debacle, and another company that pushed the envelope there, so Paizo had to figure out the most appropriate response to help their business model move forward. What they knew they had to do was move away from the OGL license for all subsequent products as soon as they could reasonably, and that was going to require refactoring a few things on the way. I understand people have specific differences in what they would have done, but overall, they probably did what the needed to.

While it might have been nicer from your perspective, for it to have been named 2.5 so you could have tried to limit yourself to only remastered content (2.5 as you'd suggested) and never picked up the Kingmaker AP, bypassing a classic story. or would have felt like you needed to limit yourself to only pre-remasterd content (classic 2.0 by your nomenclature) meaning you might have limited yourself to only buying old rule books missing out on the newer, fearing it too be too different to use. I think most agree the differences are really not that big of a difference. Off the top of my head the only two things I can think of is Alignment (mostly alignment damage, with holy/unholy), and Spell schools are the items that sometimes confuse people about what exactly should be done. Maybe I am forgetting something?

As an example, I'm currently running the Abomination Vaults from their deluxe compilation. It is a premaster AP, but we are playing it with remastered rules. They would never remaster it, since it contains elements that are just too entwined potentially with OGL content. However running it as a remastered game is not really hard to do on the fly.

I ran the ghouls as their old pre-mastered form because that is the stat blocks I had on me at the time, and I hadn't realized the differences. I think it would have been perfectly easy to substitute the new stat-blocks and abilities in if I'd had the cards, or printed off/accessed them on the fly with the Archives of Nethys without any real concern. Either way they work perfectly fine as creatures.

Sorry that the Kingmaker AP being premasterd through you through some confusion, but I think having thought they were different versions would have been a worse expectation for most people. Hopefully in the end the AP was enjoyable experience for your table. It is certainly good to be aware if any AP or scenario is after the remaster or not, but I don't think you should ever consider a pre-mastered adventure off limits, because of your using the remastered rules.

At least now the discount appears to be showing up on my phone. I’ll try it on my computer when I get home. Hopefully it will be working there too. It happened on more than one device, so wondering if it was a wider issue or something about my account for a short time.

We discover his death was actually a plot by Arazni to try to take over. Last time this slipped out… there was a multiversal memory hiccup that seemed to affect everything, but especially around the world of Aroden’s origin. In fact I’m having trouble recalling, but I think they lost it.

Yep.

Yes, what were we talking about? Why am I holding an empty book?

I just recently was browsing and bought a couple items.

I seem to remember them showing on the page, but maybe only in the cart as showing my discount for them. I removed a couple of items since I was trying to efficiently use a Society coupon from my gold rewards.

I ordered the first items. Got them. The email shows my discount, as well as the coupon code I used for to cover much of the cost since they were Society products.

Now I'm going back a few hours later, and was going to add some of those things I took out of the cart earlier, to go ahead and order them. However, they are acting like there won't be any discount applied to them. I haven't redeemed another Society Coupon code yet, but I'm pretty sure the discount was showing before the society code was applied, and they showed as two different modifications in the confirmation email I got.

Did something happen with the discounts for Paizo plus since the morning? Is something off about my account? Is anyone else who would expect to get a discount, seeing theirs showing up automatically, or other not seeing it when they used to? Is everything working for everyone else and I need to contact customer service by email before making my next purchase?

I agree that while the talk of moving towards something where the damage gets merged together, while intended to simplify things, I think actually opens many more doors to things that don't make sense that might be baseline abilities, than the prior proposal opened more edge cases that were viewed as potentially exploitable.

Whatever they decide on, my suggestion is that they work very carefully on. In fact, my suggestion would be to present a 'draft' of an errata for players to playtest and provide feedback. It seems obvious that the designers value people's impression of this particular rule-element, since they were willing to retract the errata based on feedback to it.

Let them come forward with a draft and get feedback on it so that before it becomes official, it can be run through its paces, and if there are any edge cases that need to be addressed, they can be via potential errata fixing those edge cases where they exist.

Don't just go... they want a simpler rule to apply so just throw everything in the pot apply everything only once and that's always it. Since I think people have pointed out that that isn't actually that much simpler from a cognitive stance. (i.e. could seem very counter-intuitive, and may open up other exploits, like triggering splash and area weakness, unless you only ever get one resistance, which may neuter abilities intended to spawn weakness damage but will be covered up by larger existing weaknesses.

Welcome to the Instances of Damage playtest. Where we will examine the Resistances and Weaknesses of potential rules instances pertaining to the topic. :) *laugh*

Keep in mind, if you had a boss monster that was 3rd level at you being first level, that trophy would be good for levels: two, three, and four. So it would only be needing to replace (or chosen to keep with a personal boost back up to 5th level when you hit 5th level).

I imagine many boss monsters would be the monsters you know about in advance, and will be a higher level that you, so they will last longer. This would keep you from being able to grabbing 5 really easy 1st level creatures with very versatile traits/damages/etc. and simply reuse all five of them up 19 more levels. (although my suggestion doesn't stop you from managing it with two of the five)

My concern with breaking them into blocks of levels and forming tiers it means that you are implementing the above situation, but focusing the change at specific levels, where suddenly your trophies will be inadequate and you need to get new ones of the greater tier as soon as possible so you aren't behind. So I would think that would be worse than the above.

The suggestion about limiting the number of traits that the trophy can hold/trigger based on the level of the creature seems like something that might have a promising aspect to it. However, we probably don't want first level trophies to be trapped as being only able to have one choice, if we can avoid it.

Then someone will complain when a simple 18th level creature can't fill out most of the potential of a maxed 18th level trophy, since it is doing all the same damages, and only one weakness, etc.

I agree that having an example or examples including persistent damage in an example would be ideal. In general, I think the rules were pretty clear for me that you would not combine different instances of the bleed property to get a higher bleed condition, based on the given rules, but admit an example existing that makes that clear would be great.

I sort of feel that some of this could have been better fleshed out if Paizo published their rules. But would do more to include 'extra examples' to show the applications of the rules as intended on their errata/faq page. While the rulebook would/should include an example, additional examples could exist on the FAQ to help insure the rules intent is clear. All these 'clarification examples' need not be planned to be printed in all rulebooks, and thus the errata/reprints don't need to be relayed out to make room for additional examples.

I think one of the things that kept some long standing 'ambiguous' situations, such as instance of damage, was concern about the errata having room to add lots more text, and/or examples.

Talking about persistent damage, it is clear they each trigger 'actual damage' at the end of the turn of the creature with the condition(s). That is when the normal rules for resistance and weakness will kick in. If I remember correctly, the thing that used to be ambiguous about persistent damage in the past was that if you took persistent bleed and fire, and were unconscious, would it trigger dying checks twice, or only once. I'm pretty sure I read recently, that the answer was supposed to be once. All persistent damage got applied once fully calculated at one time at the end of their turn, so it would only kick the dying condition up by one.

I agree that trying to re-add the same damage into like bundles creates complications, because what do you do when you are somehow adding together 5 bludgeoning silver damage and 3 bludgeoning cold-iron damage, do they combine because they are both bludgeoning, if so what happens to the other traits? That's the obvious type of example, but what happens if you get some 10 Spirit damage, and 5 Holy Spirit damage.

Honestly I'd rather go back to their proposed treat everything as one instance and have either only highest resistance/weaknesses apply or all relevant ones apply, as I think in the end that will surprisingly be just as complicated and subject to abuse, and will reduce, or in cases destroy the flavor behind such resistance/weaknesses.

If people are really too concerned about multiple triggering of weakness, make a rule, that past one/first instance, any additional damage from weakness can not exceed the damage done in that instance. Likewise, any resistance applications can only reduce the damage by the given instance.

So if you had a sword with a flaming rune do 10 slashing, +5 fire from flaming, and +3 fire from an allies spell, and the target had weakness 10 to fire. It would do 10 slashing + 5+10 fire + weakness + 3+3(3 out of 10 max). Giving a total of 10 slashing and 21 fire = 31 damage. Someone wanting to be complicated will say, I want to have the full weakness proc on the 3 damage instead of the 5 damage, and that would improve the total damage to 33 damage, so if you give the attacker the choice to pick which instance gets full weakness, it would increase the effect, alternately, you rule the full amount always applies to the largest instance of the impacted damage.

So there are options for those who are concerned that triggering weakness more than one time (even though it seems obvious it was intended to be possible) might be too easy to potentially accomplish, and too effective when you are able to do it.

I'm noting at lest some things, like elemental wisp familiar abilities, and burn it goblins grant a status bonus to applicable damage, so that keeps them from triggering new instances, and thereby new weaknesses. However, it does present an interesting question of if you have a spell which produced fire damage to your attacks, and you attacked with an alchemical weapon doing fire damage, would you get the burn it status bonus damage to the spells damage, as well as the alchemical weapons damage?

Loreguard wrote:

What if when taking a trophy, you record the level of the creature you took it from with the other elements recorded for the trophy.

You may continue to use any trophy you have as long as it is of at least your level -1. When you advance a level you may if you want, pick a trophy you are personally vested in, and its level for record purposes becomes the your new level.

Other trophy’s in your case that are of level -2 cease to provide their former bonuses. (Or they could become consumable, and will only function for one encounter, letting the trophy go out in a use.). The boosting ability would theoretically allow a slayer to bring up to two trophies from the start of their career up all the way to their apex, but the tree others would been to be replaced every few levels.

You could also make a rule that in cases where a slayer is allowed to take a trophy from a creature that has not died yet. It gets recorded as a level less than its actual level.

That would be an absolute nightmare for society play, at least. You'd never even be able to keep it full without heavily metagaming I think.

So you think you'd never be able to fill your trophy case and keep if full? So you think you would have less than three encounters where you could use your Mark Quarry, and take down an on-level opponent? Actually, taking down a boss which is the more likely case, would reduce the number required as they would stay good for more than two level advancements. I mean wouldn't you probably maintain your trophy case even if you only got to use Mark Quarry once per scenario and take a Trophy?

Actually, society play is a worthwhile general question. How will society play record your having acquired trophies? Normally you have to pay for the things you pick-up/acquire from your pay for the scenario.

Yes, scenarios where you are supposed to defeat, but not kill the opponents would be problematic for Slayers. An Agents of Edgewatch AP might also be a bad place for a Slayer.

Honestly, obstacle seems like a reasonable term to me. Prop certainly brings to mind objects much smaller than obstacles are.

Are daredevils allowed to PULL around props/obstacles? For instance reaching up to grab a curtain and swing, or swinging from a chandelier from a balcony down on someone below?

What if when taking a trophy, you record the level of the creature you took it from with the other elements recorded for the trophy.

You may continue to use any trophy you have as long as it is of at least your level -1. When you advance a level you may if you want, pick a trophy you are personally vested in, and its level for record purposes becomes the your new level.

Other trophy’s in your case that are of level -2 cease to provide their former bonuses. (Or they could become consumable, and will only function for one encounter, letting the trophy go out in a use.). The boosting ability would theoretically allow a slayer to bring up to two trophies from the start of their career up all the way to their apex, but the tree others would been to be replaced every few levels.

You could also make a rule that in cases where a slayer is allowed to take a trophy from a creature that has not died yet. It gets recorded as a level less than its actual level.

Might also consider a Nemesis option. A quarry who gets away from a past encounter can be labeled a nemesis. If encountering your nemesis, you may assign it as your quarry as a free action, but it replaces the current one(or chosen one if you have more than one quarry slot available. You can only have one nemesis at a time, and you can only replace a nemesis once a week unless you defeat the nemesis.(defeat, not necessarily kill). Swapped out quarry can’t become a nemesis, the nemesis has to escape an encounter and be the quarry at the end of the encounter.

To become a valid quarry, the Nemesis would need to still be high enough level to qualify as a quarry at the time of marking them as a quarry.

Might also be worth mentioning allowing for a personal/storyline Nemesis slot for some personally relevant opponent directly tied to the characters background/backstory. Not necessarily directly relevant to the current adventure.

Just a thought.

I would suggest that On The Hunt should be able to be triggered by an ally (up to say 4 designated during preparation for day)which you have trained with, when they get critically hit. That way you don’t have to mark them as your quarry, but unfortunate hits against your party can spur you forward.

This gives you more chances to engage your class abilities even if you aren’t battling a prepared opponent.

Or exclude Thralls specifically. I'm not sure summoned creatures, or even some minions shouldn't be allowed to trigger it, but I could see potentially limiting it to summoned or minions of your level or higher. When you are fighting a boss creature that has a minion, I think it is perfectly fine to have taking it down trigger a beneficial effect.

Minions in pathfinder aren't minions from other games where they are only 1hp.

Honestly I'm not sure it would be unreasonable for even minions or summoned creatures of your level -1 to trigger it. For 1st level characters, that would mean that any minions of summons of level (-1) wouldn't be able to trigger this. That seems reasonable to me.

'Summoned or Controlled by your Allies'

So if a party has a spellcaster who dominates an enemy and allows the party to take them down (or the other side takes them down), it can't trigger the benefit?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like your primary concern is them being able to trigger it with negligible investment. I think simple control of it by level is better than condition by who controls them.

I also don't know that 'revenge' on the hunt isn't appropriate, so boosting the party when an ally goes down seems to help the party's condition, so is probably a good thing when they need it.

So how does Assurance interact with Press?

You can only use a press action when you are subject to a MAP. When you are using Assurance in say Athletics, are you technically subject to MAP, but the Assurance cancels it? Or are you prohibited from using Assurance to complete a Press action? I could honestly see it potentially go either way.

Something else to keep in mind is that you don't have to assume that 100% of Newtonian physics works as it does here, works in the Darklands, as it is a fantasy setting.

The potential of a cave worm boring into a underground lake and thus emptying it completely, might not typically happen for multiple reasons. (potentially cave worms can detect large amounts of nearby water and avoid boring into them) Alternately there might be aspects fantasy physics that causes large masses of water, over a large scales to avoid mass migrations except through paths that are historically there.

The worm who does bore into the bottom of the lake didn't bore up directly, but bore up and down as it spiraled around. So the water pushes the worm down its own tunnel until it is pushed back up some, and then the water goes back up some elevation, but not all the way up to where the tunnel returns to going back down. The lake becomes a toilet bowl, but some supernatural aspect allows the water tension to be enough to keep the lake from flushing all down the tunnel.

Certainly allowing the denizens to have different day clocks in the darkness... or have different time frames as natural luminescent cycles might exist in various large caverns, with not all caverns having the same 'day lengths' due to different bioluminescence sources.

Other options to mark time, be they hours, days, months might be consistent recurrent seismic activity. Some form of Heat/Cooling cycles, geyser activity, radiation pulses, be they visible of invisible. Plant biocycles/generations. What if there were mushrooms that would grow and die based on a radiation cycle, that would be approximately 20 hours in length, and local sentient darklands citizens building their concept of time based on such a cycle.

Alternately, days might be keyed off of a 'daily' geyser which feeds the community... the geyser might have phases of activity, coming from seismic activity, noise, steam generation, gurgling sounds of receding water, etc. might be used to understand the point in the cycle which people are at.

Same could be true of a lava flow that would periodically occur through a generally regulated cycles. Be it naturally occurring, or part of some greater mechanism that might be from some historical civilization, or even current one.

All of this could be used to provide some flavors, providing some reference to what we know of as time passing, but give it an unexpected flavor with some potential differences.

Another example is when animal companions support behavior adds damage to their PCs attacks. (if you are looking for other examples of things that could easily be asked if they remain part, or should be separate.)

...

Please let us know what you think about this too in the comments!

I'll look forward to seeing the revised errata. But, to be completely honest, I was overall happy to see the first clarification. It mostly read as I had always read it, since I never agreed that the original rules ever said the All Resistance was an alternate rule, it always seemed to be clearly posted an example, intending to show an extreme example of the just explained rule.

I think one of the Biggest and Most Important thing for the final revision is to pick a very well crafted example that actually presents the most information to the readers in its example.

The original example was something that was too easy to interpret as a 'different/alternate' rule which brought confusion rather than clarification.

The proposed clarification used two instances of cold spells doing extra cold damage, rather than, something that would have been more useful, a spell doing cold damage, and a Frost rune. Which would allow the example to demonstrate the intention of if the frost rune was combined with the original physical damage from the weapon as a single instance or separated out. And at the same time showing how it would have been presumably considered a separate instance from the spell producing additional cold damage to the effect of the strike.

Other than the example not being ideal, and the fact that the logic of the statement of how the Holy trait affected everything in the strike (which sounds like all instances) but would only take effect once because if affects the strike only once. That didn't make internal sense to me, but might have been able to be better clarified, perhaps with a better example, perhaps better scoping. Perhaps if HOLY only affected the primary damage from the strike, or only affected the extra Spirit damage (and that instance of damage) from the holy rune.

On the whole, even though I think retracting the clarification is a step backwards/worse, I appreciate that the team is trying to deal with this long standing issue, and the communities vehement reaction to their first attempt kind of makes me understand why they may have put off doing this for so long.

I honestly would have preferred they stuck mostly with their original clarification, but work more on explaining why Holy weakness when applying to multiple instances of damage would only hit once, and picking an example or even two to help clearly clarify their intent. As an example, and I think others have expressed this as well, that the limiting the number of times a weakness can trigger to only ever being one seems overboard, and being able to trigger it more than once was a good flavor/strategic nature to the prior system. I'd have thought the RAW being allowing it to trigger multiple times, with a suggested optional rule being a limitation of any particular weakness to only being triggered at most twice in any particular event/activity. (allowing more than once, but stopping it from getting triggered 5 times via some far more extreme but likely rare setup)

As it is an example that we are going to now have to deal with is if someone manages to do some kind of attack that does, damage with a splash trait, and has a rider that adds some additional damage with splash and area trait. The creature is Has weakness 5 to Splash and Area. So since weakness can only happen once per type, and you only take the highest. Now you have this case where you have splash trigger on the first damage, but splash can't trigger on the second bit, so you think your done, until you say... well that damage could apply as area damage, so you say splash applies once to the first bit of damage, and say area weakness gets applied to the second instance, so both splash and area weakness get triggered. Is that intended, or is that unintended. If you say it is unintended, then what other situations might that cause.

So, me overall, a bit sad to hear they are retracting the clarification. Happy they are revisiting it and look forward to seeing what they present, but I for one would have preferred pursing the original intent and identifying if there were ways to address some of those who felt there were balance concerns with allowing multiple hits on weakness.

Whatever you ad a design team do, please don't let the controversy keep from from moving forward and providing a clarification on how it is intended to be played. Obviously, people will home rule things more to their liking if your final ruling is too far from their liking. With as long as this has been played (as written, vs. as perceived), you could even provide an official optional rule as part of it to acknowledge the history if you want, and help GMs intent on going the alternate path do it with less balance impact, and more consistency across the community.

Thanks!
(edit: made the quote more concise, it didn't need all that in it)

Yes, some conventions for heighten entries could make things be less pulse-like in their damage progressions.

For Livewire something like:
Heightened (+1; even ranks) +1d4 extra slashing damage
Heightened (+1; odd ranks) +1d4 extra electricity damage

the Heightened (+1; once) entry I suggested above would be made clear it only applies once to fill in between +2 Heightening entries.

Ok, hardly world shattering, but some references exist to 2nd level magic missile wands. The given recommendation is generally to generally treat it as a 1st level one, but what if we could easily make it matter, but keeping it within reason.

My suggestion, What if you added the following to the end of the description for the Force Barrage spell.

Heightened (+1; once) You fire one additional shard irrespective of the number of action taken. (this heightening can only occur once, and uses up a rank of heightening not available to the other heightening option, which can also be used for other rank advancements)

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

Net effect:
every even rank advancement you get one additional missile per action, leaving the only benefit of going to an even rank, you get one extra missile total, than the prior rank.

rank 1: 1a = 1; 2a = 2; 3a = 3
rank 2: 1a = 2; 2a = 3; 3a = 4
rank 3: 1a = 2; 2a = 4; 3a = 6
rank 4: 1a = 3; 2a = 5; 3a = 7
rank 5: 1a = 3; 2a = 6; 3a = 9
rank 6: 1a = 4; 2a = 7; 3a = 10
rank 7: 1a = 4; 2a = 8; 3a = 12
rank 8: 1a = 5; 2a = 9; 3a = 13
rank 9: 1a = 5; 2a = 10; 3a = 15

Had the random thought, and thought I'd share to see if others felt it was worthwhile or problematic.

Yoshua wrote:

Has anyone who's order history not come over had it restored yet? Still waiting to get into the top tier of Paizo Plus

You are not the only one. I logged a ticket on 20th November and have not heard back yet.

My history failed to come across and my Paizo Plus tier is still wrong.

I fixed up my address, payment method and my subscriptions myself, although I did get charged the setup fee which seems a bit off even though it was only $0.08 <smiley face>.

Also, I am a 'Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Subscriber' and I am hoping I have not lost that status.

I also have not seen my Paizo Plus status upgrade for all the purchases I'd made last year. I remember it being mentioned as a known bug in that post, and so was believing it was being worked on. However, now it doesn't mention the issue, and doesn't say it has been fixed either.

Is it believed that it is fixed (in which case shouldn't it be listed in the items you believe existed, but thought were fixed) so I'd know I need to contact Customer Support about it separately, as it has not been fixed for me.

I lost my subscriptions as well, so had to resign up for them.

I also had, (trying to remember the exact tag) but I also had a Legacy Subscriber tag (The on that came from being an AP subscriber through the transition from 1st edition to second edition) Do I need to open a new ticket, or is this still being worked on and a known issue?

I'd suggested before that with a minimum of 1, have the capacity of the staff be equal to the highest rank of slot the staff can cast.

The staff gets reloaded automatically anytime a cantrip or slotted spell is cast from the staff, or the caster can spend an action with a concentration trait to reload it outside of that mechanic.

I don't know if there are any special staff's off the top of my head that can cast focus spells (none, that I recall) but if one does exist, it might be ok to have the reload for one like that to equal half the item's level.

Staff's aren't supposed to be able to have property runes, but if people wanted to provide some additional flavor but avoid some of the strength of property runes, you might be able to invent some weaker variants of property runes.

Runic Epigrams
can only be applied to certain types of weapons objects which were used as symbols of leadership as much if not more than as actual weapons. These include Staffs, Maces, Scepters, Rods.

When determining how many non-fundamental runes an object may hold, add the number Epigrams to the number Property runes to determine if it has been exceeded. Epigrams will deactivate before property runes, if the number is exceeded.

Epigram of Energy
One energy type from the list of (acid, cold, fire, sonic, spirit, poison, vital, void), defined when the rune is created is associated wit the rune. As a free action before making a strike with the weapon, you can change the base type of damage to the rune's associated energy.

Epigram of Protection
Requirement: grants cast a spell which provides an AC bonus, or item has an ability that can activate to grant an AC bonus.
This rune enables the weapon an action just like the Parry trait, granting a +1 circumstance bonus to AC from attacks.

Epigram of Resistance
Selected at run creation: one energy from the list:(acid, cold, fire, sonic, spirit, poison, vital, void)
Requirement: grants cast a spell which can provides an energy resistance of the type selected above.
Grants a reaction action which gives a resistance of 5 for the energy type given vs. one particular attack you are aware of when it it hits you.

Other Epigrams could exist, and would generally be less powerful than Property runes. Frequently not doing extra damage, but providing an alternative instead. Obviously, if you allow property runes on top of staffs, Epigrams would be unnecessary for additional variance.

I know i am behind the wave here, but a Parallel Worlds AP would be interesting. Imagine going to a world where House Thrune made a pact with Heaven instead of Hell, a world where Karzoug, Areelu, Barzillai, and all the villains won their APs, and the world is terrible. I think it would be great to explore these "what ifs" since, obviously, these worlds aren't part of the "official" canon.

Honestly, this would be fascinating. It would be an opportunity to play with non-cannon variant of cannon. It would even have the benefit of having space for toolkits such as introducing characters from alternate play groups which might have had players whom participated in the same APs or adventures but had different outcomes. While dealing with this can be very easily dealt with by a GM and 'magic' portals, the ability to list various possibilities and particular ramifications of one solution over another (parallel universe, or parallel world in same universe, same world but after a time travel reset where someone tried to change things, coming from a non-existent universe by way of magic intended to create a particular variation of a hero, etc.

If found popular, it could even be a recurring realm that might interest with portions of future adventures, etc. similar to the Mirror universe, but more varied than everyone having an opposite.