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Well second edition took a much more controlled look at money than 1st edition did. It worked hard to eliminate the idea of someone simply using a wealth loop to get more wealth, to get tools and magic items that made them naturally work at a level higher than their actual level.

You can see this premise work out as now Crafting largely becomes a narrative choice, which is potentially less efficient than simply working and buying your item, presuming the item would be generally available where you are.

With that in mind, a 2e version of such rules would probably focus on any 'structure' the character owns as having some assigned level. That level would limit the effects its features might be able to provide to itself and/or one of the players. This would keep players from getting outside of their proper power scope.

Any such subordinate entities would probably normally be capped level-wise to the level of the PC owning the entity. If it is an entity that a PC might have more than one of, it wouldn't surprise me to see such entities limited to level below the PCs level, and limit the number of such entities that the PC could control or have it have actions, similar to limits on number of Minions.

These rooms would be bundled together to form the entities which would sort of be 'Downtime Minions'. (and generally minions are capped below the existing players level by one or even more levels)

You might want to look at the rules within Age of Ashes adventure path. It actually does have some rules for how you can repair and refurbish some rules in your 'castle' you get in the AP, how much it costs, and what benefit it provides as a party.

You might have some success looking at these rules creating downtime only party members, and have these party members primarily provide some various niche benefits to the PCs under certain circumstances, and otherwise work to maintain themselves, growing if the PC level has gone up and offers options for growth, and have these things ideally not generate a cost to the players. The more such investments the players have the more chance they get use out of the resource, but potentially might increase the chance there comes an unexpected 'cost' that would have to be paid to upkeep the resource.

Don't know that this helps, but again if you need existing rules, you may need to look at Ages of Ashes. If you want something more fleshed out, that may take some development. I do believe there were new kingdom rules in the second edition kingmaker edition, but I haven't had a chance to play them. My understanding was that a number of people suggested some significant rebalancing rules for those rules however.

I think I want to mention that my suggestion would be that people should not feel like they should let themselves get hung up on the specifics of the Iconic characters.

I would go so far as to say that a big part of their existence is to give new players a starting point, and that for the ends of Enabling you to have the most fun you can, you shouldn't worry about playing the character 'as cannon', so you shouldn't feel like you make a mistake about playing it because you don't own its nature.

Instead, take the character sheet, and use it as your base. If you get inspired to change something, do it. If you want to play a goblin alchemist, and fear you don't know what choices to make. grab the Fumbus sheet. But guess what, you like the name Busfum better, scratch it out and change it. Make them female, if that makes you feel more comfortable playing them. Now give them blue eyes, because, well that's what you want. Make them a little taller, or a little shorter. (try to stick within norms for a species as given, but even in any particular ancestry, there can be exceptions, which PC's will tend to be those exceptions) As long as it doesn't have mechanical game implications, change things as much as you need to make the character yours. Swap out their birthplace, or family lineage.

Use it as a template to build your own ideas onto. And as your game familiarity grows, expand in the direction you want. When advancing levels, you can look at what the Iconics get to help make your choice, but choose something different if it sounds more interesting.

The only time the Iconics need to behave a certain way, is in the Adventure Path images, and in official cannon stories. When playing in a game, they are yours as much as you want them to.

All that said, people are people, and our brains naturally may feel a certain trepidation or fear of doing something wrong, with someone else's idea. I know when I GM, I often have to deal with that very fear when dealing with a published setting, such as Golarion, fearing I may portray something 'wrong'. I've had to learn the setting is there as a starting spot for me to set the adventures in, for my players. As long as they (and also myself) are having fun in it as I portray it, we are doing it right. So I'm going to give you the instructions not to feel bad, if you catch yourself feeling that way, but to try to recognize the fundamental purpose of the game is to have fun, and the purpose for the progenerated iconic character sheets is to give people a starting spot to begin building characters if they are new. So if your are using it to build your character (using how ever much of it you need), my statement is that you are doing exactly what they are for, and therefore doing it right.

my couple copper pieces...

Been running a game for the family and my son has been playing a Magus. As we have looked over the changes to Magus through the remaster and Errata, I started looking at all the various schools and was trying to ask myself if there was something missing that might make sense to exist.

In the end I came up with the idea of a martial summoner who focused on fighting with teamwork alongside ephemeral summons rather than an Eidolon.

The first issue was most summoning spells would be prohibited from leveraging Spell strike, so I figured the School should change that. Next how to balance what Spellstrike and Arcane Cascade gives you. Trying not to make it too powerful, but should remain worthwhile and hopefully flavorful.

Then trying to come up with a Conflux spell that adds to the style of play, but wouldn't been too strong.

At least so far, it seems like the following seems to do a reasonable job of being worthwhile, but not overpowered.

Synchronic Summoning
Homebrew Content
Source Homebrew
Your connection with the ephemeral summons you call into being is much more attuned than most. This timing allows you to coordinate your minions initial attack with surprising accuracy.

When you use Spellstrike, you have the additional option to make the spellstrike a three action spellstrike and cast a three action spell with the Summoning trait.

When casting a summoning spell in this manner you can designate a target. The creature you summon has to be placed in such a manner that it can use one of its actions to attack the target you designated the round it is summoned. As part of the Spellstrike you can make a Strike of your own, which can be either unarmed or weapon, and can be melee or ranged, as long as the target is within the first range increment of your ranged weapon or ranged unarmed attack. Your minion uses this roll to strike the designated target, which must be the first attack it makes.

When casting a three-action summoning spellstrike in this manner, this activates the Magus’ Arcane Cascade at the end of their turn.

Whenever in Arcane Cascade stance, if casting a summon spell, or when sustaining a summon spell, the magical energy from your Arcane Cascade applies its bonus damage to spell’s minion’s attacks until the start of your next turn.

Conflux Spell Synchronic Strike
Studious Spell (7th) Marvelous Mount
Studious Spell (11th) Cozy Cabin
Studious Spell (13th) Liminal Doorway

Synchronic Strike [one-action] Focus 1
Homebrew Content
Uncommon Concentrate Focus Magus
Source Homebrew
Cast [one-action] verbal; Requirements You have a summoned minion requiring a sustain action. You tune deeply into the energy tying yourself to your summon using the magical energy to charge for your next Spellstrike. Designate a target within range of a melee strike distance, or a ranged strike within the first range increment. You sustain your summon spell giving your minion actions as usual, but one of its actions must be used to attack your designated target. If the minion does, you get to strike the target. Multiple attack penalty applies to both of these attacks (your and your minion’s) as normal.

At a glance it seems pretty reasonable.

I think this sort of thing also would become even more relevant for StarFinder, where Alien species should be able to rely on alternate senses more often that we might otherwise see in the other more traditional low-tech fantasy stories.

So I'd go so far as saying it would be wonderful to see Starfinder rewrite the rules to something akin to this, and people could easily re-port Pathfinder to use the more up-to-date rules if they are helpful.

If I had to make three changes to the Magus, they'd be the following:

Have Spellstrike remove the manipulate trait from the spell you're using.

Remove Arcane Cascade's requirement entirely, allowing the Magus to enter it whenever they like.

Give the Magus heavy armor proficiency.

With this, most melee Magi would no longer be prone to triggering Reactive Strikes, would have far less difficulty slotting Arcane Cascade into their turn, and would be far less MAD. Although more could be done to accommodate melee Dex-based Magi, the above would be quick and simple enough to not radically disrupt most players' builds, and would improve most subclasses without affecting Starlit Span, by far the strongest hybrid study at the moment (in fact, it would let more subclasses share its strength of making Int easier to build). If this somehow makes the class too strong overall, that could be addressed by altering the Psychic to make amps a spellshape free action focus spell, and also by having the multiclass archetype no longer give out amps, both of which arguably need to happen on their own merits and would make the Magus less dependent on one particular synergy for their power.

Beyond this, there's perhaps more to be done with fancier changes: because basic saves are there for pure damage effects, much like many attack spells, it wouldn't change the Magus's niche to use their attack roll to determine the save result of basic save spells, even if the spell probably ought to whiff entirely on a miss (this is what Channel Smite does). If we want to let Dex-based melee Magi deal more on-hit damage without having to also build Strength, one way to go about it could be to have Arcane Cascade replace Strength with Int as your melee damage roll modifier, with an increase to the base amount. There's also likely more that could be done in the realm of feats, and another user, Kalaam, made a good proposal to include more feats that let you recharge Spellstrike with successful skill actions. The Magus certainly...

I think removing the requirement from Arcane Cascade completely would be wrong. However, I could see making it become a free action (or potentially reaction) if done immediately following casting a two or three action spell, as well as likely immediately after a spellstrike. Arcane Cascade by design should require casting a spell, and I see making it free after casting a reaction or one action spell might be too-cheap.

Having seen a magus in the party, and seen it happen that the spellstrike invoke an AoO, it still was not that big a deal for them. Rather than making them immune to those reactions, I think it might be better to allow the reactions but make them less dangerous.

Give them a +1 status bonus to AC vs any reaction triggering off of their spellcasting (potentially not just limited to manipulate reactions, but that could be the limitation). Then include a boost while in Arcane Cascade where the bonus increases by the number of points of damage done by the Arcane Cascade. Also, while in arcane cascade, have reactions occur, but happen after the action is completed, meaning that the spell cannot be stopped by the reaction, even if getting a critical hit.

It might be interesting to have a Magus study that got heavy armor, but it doesn't seem like heavy armor should be the 'standard' in my opinion.

I was looking through the Rival Academies book and surprised a bit that it had fewer Wizard Schools than I had thought, sporting some options for Witches and Magus, etc. above and beyond Wizard Schools.

However, looking over the Schools and Curriculum spells which they did have, it occurred to me that schools should often have uncommon spells, that are only 'common' to members of their school. Of course any spell common to any wizard, whom has to study the spell from his spellbook would of course become relatively easily taken, by someone getting a hold of some individual's spellbook. So it might make them notably less exclusive than one might otherwise think.

However, what if due to the nature of the core curriculum some spells are covered so much that a wizard does not need their spellbook to study any spells that they know spells from their schools major curriculum. This would help 'secret' spells to remain secret, as written copies might only exist in school libraries and in rare cases potentially on scrolls, made by a member who felt they needed extra castings.

It is a minor extra boost to what you get with your curriculum. (spells you could prepare, even if you lose your spellbook, for instance)

I also am contemplating potentially allowing any wizard to swap a prepared spell for another copy of the spell they have prepared in an appropriate School Slot as an option when Focusing. Basically notably weaker version of the ability that the Runelords have where they can swap any prepared spell for any appropriate curriculum or sin spell, not just their currently prepared one.

I believe if you want to cancel or modify part of your order, you need to email Customer.Service@paizo.com

I believe you can request they pause your subscription, if you just don't want the next item but are interested in future items. You might lose your subscription benefits until the next item order though, if I understand correctly.

They used to handle request on the website, but I think they had issues with two different intakes, with people waiting on the website, and then emailing later, leaving situations where they might have more than one person handling the same issue or an issue that already got handled.

When they had it on the website they had the issue of people who put in requests and were not patient, or if others responded to the thread it effectively pushed them back in the queue, causing some issues with that, so I think customer service is now just by email, if my memory is serving me right.

Someone on staff may go ahead and respond to you for the official answer. But I thought I'd point you to email in case it is urgent. The email address I gave, should be the email address they give you at the end of the email updates they send out about subscriptions.

A bit more complicated than some ancestries, but I think it would be a wonderful idea.

Rules to enable a player to play as a Pet, Companion, or Eidolon.

Current rules limit Familiars and Animal (or other) Companions' abilities significantly to insure they are 'less' than a significant threat to keep 'one' person from overshadowing another's.

This would enable two players to play and have a built in 'relationship' between their characters, and would effectively double the budget for them.

Conceptually the old master class would archetype in such a manner that much of the expended budget goes to the other player, leaving room for the character to receive potential buffs from their partner they might not normally get. (even if it is more often getting the support bonus gotten from their AC due to their companion having more actions to be able to spend one to grant it to you)

At least first draft, I'd imagine these would likely be largely fall in as a marshal, which would bump up their hit points and would have the feature to receive typical buffs from their partners, probably going both ways. The thing being said, it feels like these would be combination of Ancestry and Class together as a combination. Or Ancestry translates some aspects of the normal starting choice of the pet/companion/eidolon and class ends up being tied to if they are an Eidolon, Companion, or Familiar/Pet.

For instance, if I played the companion to my partner's druid. Instead of simply having the statistics for attributes and AC and HP for normal Animal Companions, you would have ones more comparable to a full character, with attacks, damage, and defenses more comparable to a Marshall. Would have their own spot in initiative and have their own actions. They would have the option to spend one of their actions to give their partner the listed 'support action' for their base companion type they are based on, as an example. The druid might likewise have some way to donate an action to provide some baseline bonus to their companion. (don't know exactly what this looks like, be it a circumstance/aid bonus to attacks, etc?) But this would play into their continued dependence on one another to help one another, but would allow two people to play the two halves and have them both represent full roles within the party.

It would seem to me there would/could need to be three potential balancing points created. Familiars/Pets, Animal (and otherwise) Companions, and Eidolons.

Eidolons for instance are already the closest to already being a full martial, but tied back to their partners HP. So the question would be would you unjoin the HP between them (but potentially have over-damage spill over) or leave things as is, or some other combination such as always have half damage from one spill over to the other unless they are already taking the damage from the same source. Again one of the big changes would be splitting their actions up. But maybe as a not to the old action economy there might be an Act Together reaction allowing one of the pair to sacrifice an action to enable their prater to spend a reaction for certain defined actions in the Act Together with Partner reaction.

Animal Companions seem easier to do, just making them a martial base with some interactions with whatever partner class they happen to be cooperating.

Familiars/Pets are probably the harder thing to balance. They aren't generally intended to be combat participants, so whatever abilities they are normally granted by their master might interact more oddly with them being granted to another PC. I still think it would normally be doable, but may require more thorough thought than the others.

Perhaps in non-combat circumstances, there could be a rider that allows the Necromancer to be able to roughly reproduce that which a Phantasmal Minion can preform, but such manipulations being limited to only occurring withing spaces where the necromancer has current Thralls as the concentrates on the desired result/work. (effectively giving them access to a single such minion, but its effects/actions limited to only contagious spaces occupied by thralls.)

It might be interesting to allow them to effectively behave as a Floating disk as well, basically call thralls into existence and the thralls just pass the object/objects over themselves to the next thrall. Meaning it can't move faster than the speed you create new thralls.

It could be argued that in combat the Thralls are too confused/instinct controlled to preform more discrete tasks such as this.

Your concept of a throne forming under someone is certainly very thematic and so would be cool if there were a way to make it viable. I guess in theory if thralls were on either side of the necromancer they could lean in and form a seat under them perhaps.

....

There's a big difference between "helping the GM come up with a list of stuff the PCs would like to find someday" and "asking for a specific ritual that mostly exists to short circuits narratives or as a vanity piece for the PC.

So Imprison and Freedom I suppose could be used to short-circuit narrative in that it opens up a way to 'eliminate' an enemy which you have already defeated (given the requirements are pretty explanatory that you have to have control of them) without killing them. Or opens up a narrative that would otherwise be unavailable to release someone from a narrative imprisoning which has already taken place.

But I think with keeping the context of the requirements that Imprison has of needing to have the target subdued the whole time does the opposite of 'short-circuiting the narrative' and simply enables a new narrative that doesn't have to include killing as your means of presumably eternally defeating an evil.

Freedom, again is something that lets you narratively bring someone whom was 'lost' back, I suppose someone might say having arbitrary narrative McGuffins would be better to collect and free them from an arbitrary narrative prison, could be a 'reasonable' proposal for narrative solution, but the old ritual required a certain relatively detailed level of knowing who they where, where they came from, and where they got imprisoned amd/or get access to where they are being held prison, so they seemed to be intending to insure the narrative was addressed in the original ritual. So I'm not entirely certain that the ritual was that much of a narrative short-circuit as it was.

Then, Creating demi-plane falls smack into the former category of being something primarily only relevant in the 'wish-list of things we'd like to bump into' to develop our character in the direction we would like to see. It simply doesn't provide access to really break anything that the player can't already break. For nearly all cases I can imagine, it absolutely requires access to Interplanar Teleport... which has an uncommon tag on it because 'it' might bypass certain narratives, or enable travel the GM doesn't want to enable. However, I don't really see how create Demiplane allows anyone to 'break' any games unless you are talking about things that aren't broken by the ritual, but are instead broken by Interplanar Teleport.

It makes perfect sense to block players from creating Demiplanes in a low magic universe where mortals can't access other planes. If that is the narrative being sold by the GM, I'd realize that I probably couldn't expect them to let me create my own plane, unless they were very inclined to make exceptions for us the heroes in the long game.

But why when a mage can cast a spell and summon an undead for a minute, and a few levels later, they can potentially take and learn to cast a ritual for a cost that allows them to make a permanent instance of such a creature and potentially control it.

So why when a wizard can manipulate the same magics to create a Demiplane and prepopulate it with a mansion for a day, and then why is the default that it is completely unreasonable for them to potentially be able to make a simpler empty Demiplane that is permanent or whose duration is beyond the life of the maker, if they apply some of the same elongation techniques via a ritual? It doesn't seem like it passes the narrative or regional tests from my perspective to fall into a can't be done without Mythic. It absolutely can't be done without powerful magic, but that isn't the same thing as Mythic.

It is absolutely true that higher level rarity items you might not even realize they are important to you and so they are the items that are most likely in my opinion to trip people up, because someone may ask the GM to later after they started getting set on the idea.

Someone claimed that create Demiplane actually created problems for their campaign, I'm really curious how, and want to ask, was it really the Create Demiplane that caused the problem, or was it creative or overuse of InterPlanar teleport, or treated the Demiplane as a mobile Tardis, which the ritual itself clearly does not allow by raw. Was it allowing them to have an armory always withing 'teleport' distance from their front line in the dungeon? Again, that isn't the fault of the Demiplane, but the teleport. Allowing you to teleport back to a nearby castle a weeks ride away every night would be the same situation, so it isn't the Demiplane.

Maybe it is that it allowed them to hide somewhere where they could go but others couldn't' readily follow. But again that seems more like an Interplanar Teleport issue again.

I just don't see how gating these items past the prior Rare tag really did anything to improve the sorts of stories you could tell with them. The only thing the did was made the critical successes a bit bigger for the mythic instances. Which could have easily be handled as a mythic Heightening note added to the original rituals, or making the modified version have a different name and larger sizes, and then just leaving the old ones be.

For example... I'd suggest the mythic versions of ritual, for create Demiplane, the primary caster should hence be considered themselves as a key for the Demiplane, and that the primary caster should be able to choose any of the other three secondary casters as becoming alternate keys for purpose of entering the Demiplane. That makes sense as part of being a mythic entity, that you yourself would gain a relationship with the plane you helped create. That has more mythic flavor to me, in that instance.

If they had simply named the ritual Create Mythic Demiplane and published it like it was, it would not have had the negative impact the current implementation has due to the convention of overwriting elements with the same rules in the remaster, since this would simply have become the only 'remastered' ritual 'published' for creating a Demiplane, but anyone open to legacy content would easily find the old non-mythic one available for use if they are open, and it would be RAW available to anyone as long as the GM approves.

Yes by RAW the GM can decide to homebrew, but the homebrew is not considered RAW, it is just something that can happen if the GM wants to change the rules to allow it. Just like the GM can decide players can have 1000 HP if they want, or get rid of the increased price to buy higher attribute bonuses. It can exist, but it doesn't officially exist.

Someone can let a player add their spellcasting modifier to Cantrip damages when they cast cantrips, but doing so, they aren't playing by Remastered rules. The developers tried to balance their changes to the cantrips to account for this change. But in this case something was specifically taken away from normal Epic adventurers such as any mages planning on having a actual Planar Library to retreat from and reserved for only Mythic heroes.

Honestly at this point, I'd hope they consider errata it by renaming it Create Mythic Demiplane even if they don't ever reprint Create Demiplane in any post-remaster book. It would acknowledge some people out there may have planned to have their non-mythic character have a planar domicile in the distant future, and make it a official legacy option.

Honestly, Freedom and Imprisonment are harder to know how to address, as I see wanting to block non-mythic characters from targeting Mythic one with the rituals perhaps, which means legacy copies of the ritual would need errata to make Mythic creatures not be valid targets for the ritual. In such a case they sort of have to be reprinted, which is extra space. It would be easier to simply update the ritual to by default not target Mythic creatures, and leverage Mythic Heightening which affects rolls, and enables targeting of mythic creatures or imprisonments. I have to admit I'm less concerned about those two rituals as they don't really impact character development like the Create Demiplane one. Given unlike quite a few character ideas I've had in my life whom planned to one day have a demiplane of their own, or friends with similar plans, I'm not coming up with specific character ideas whose life plans included a Imprison or Freedom ritual.

The queen might be under some form of magical Geas which may prevent her from directly opposing members of her former party. They might mutually be blocked from direct opposition overt action against her, but this magic may not be so ironclad that it prevents her from affecting one another indirectly by agents that are not truly theirs.

Whatever the other three are doing, it likely indirectly negatively impacts her and therefore she doesn't want them to succeed. Maybe it will call down some great magic that would either be 'associated' with her, or would be quickly 'blamed' on her and cause the surrounding forces to cause her no end of trouble she isn't prepared for. But by leading an independent group of heroes towards a path that will intersect and eventually collide with their plan, and her providing enough information and resources that they have a reasonable chance to foil the plot, it isn't truly her stopping them, Just like their plot would truly be considered them causing her the trouble she foresees.

If you don't like the Magical Geas route, another option is a bit simpler. While she may personally have reasons she doesn't want them to succeed, and she is the leader of her nation, she may realize that too many of her subjects may be sympathetic to the instigators of the plan she opposes personally to publicly and officially oppose it. The act of officially opposing it might cost her too much politically/socially for her to commit to it. Her people can follow instructions to stay out of the way of a strange band of outsiders, and they may wonder why, but then they don't have to associate that band's actions as all being intended outcomes of their leader. It buys her enough plausible deniability to keep herself within her safe zone.

Sometimes a leader is forced to use one Voice in public, even if the whispers they make after may seem to counter what was just spoken moments before. It reminds me of I believe it was the King and I where one of the King's many concubine's had fallen in love with a local monk, and they had tried to run away together but were caught. When the king's family tutor comes barging in and berates him in front of his nobles for him doing something he can't do, because the tutor's cultural sensibilities couldn't stand it. The king rebuffs them sending them away, and has the two lovers tortured and killed I believe. In quite, afterwards he again rebuffed the tutor saying he had intended to make the pair simply 'disappear' to no-where and anyone who cared would have assumed they were silently killed, but would have in reality simply been sent far away where none would know who they ever were. But because of the fuss made in front of the Nobles, and attempting to define what he could and couldn't do as king, he had to demonstrate to the nobles that he was not deferring to the foreign tutor's culture and dishonoring his own culture and position.

A similar thing could happen with the White Queen. Her people may not feel comfortable opposing the outward purpose her normal allies' plan seems to mean. But the Queen can see something bad in its future, but perhaps not in a way that would be 'appropriate' for the consumption of her people and public image. (take for instance if her public thinks she is invulnerable and none can ever be like her again, then if both of those facts would be revealed false by the 'plan' in the end, she can't let the plan succeed, but also can't acknowledge that the plan would prove such things, or the very thing she is attempting to stop would become true.

Another option could even be if she cares for one or more of them, and thus doesn't want them 'Harmed' but she can't allow them to 'succeed' for some self-preservation reason. If she came out and outwardly opposed them, they might fail to understand her continued 'care' for them. Thus she needs to manipulate another factor to oppose them, which she can't be squarely proven as responsible for.

I agree with PossibleCabbage that wizards have spells that create temporary demiplanes with specialty contents already, with the understanding they may not be 'permanent' they are still creating it and in a sense being able to be daily creating temporary things, it isn't hard to imagine it not being past their ability to create a permanent one. It doesn't seem that these rituals should be gated behind a Mythic trait, unless all those spells like Planar Palace, and I suppose the old Rope Trick spell may no longer exist.

Maybe looking at the Rituals created for pre-remaster created larger spaces than in retrospective were intended, and it might have worked to try to debuff them a little, but it really seemed like the choice to rip them out of normal play didn't increase the stories you could easily tell, but really cut the stories you could easily tell. (unless you delete new rules) I don't think deleting the new content shouldn't normally reduce the common story-sets you can tell.

I think others mentioned what came to my mind too. Perhaps make Non-mythic demi-planes smaller, make them either not be able to grow (other than growing to critical size) or make them grow very slowly and only on critical successes.

It also seems perfectly reasonable to have certain types of desirable planar traits (such as Bountious) possibly be gated behind Mythic access. If someone wants to seem to recreate it they might have to import enough animals and plants into it. There could be other traits (I worry Elemental might be a base trait that might be expected by others, but you might gate it, or limit it to one, and/or don't allow it to be changed once set)

Otherwise limit non-mythic planes to where future rituals can only be used to create new/replacement keys for access, be limited to one portal etc.

If you are allowing the party access to the Plane Shift spell, so giving them access to be able to create a DemiPlane doesn't seem more story shattering/building that Plane Shift itself. (after all they can potentially simply planeshift somewhere and simply take over an existing space someplace, that could even be even larger) I'm presuming that Plane Shift isn't retroactively being made a Mythic only Spell.

Heightening the ritual would increase its size and potentially unlock certain planar traits. Heightening it with Mythic would unlock larger sizes at specified levels, allow larger growth and unlock more planar traits than the non-mythic versions.

The concept of rituals that while base are not Mythic, but can have a Mythic Heighten option seems like a wonderful mechanic to be explored, I really wish this was the route taken/considered.

I appreciate James taking the time with interjection, and while I may disagree personally that it should be the case, I am none the less happy to have a better understanding of how he perceived it as being narratively better for normal non-mythic mages to not have access to such planar creation within the realms of Golarion, barring of course some narrative exceptions. And he has pointed out that his view isn't reflective of specific conversations with the Rules staff's intent. It none the less likely has some weight to any changes they might consider based on feedback they get, if their intention wasn't exactly what got written down.

Yes, those of us negatively impacted by the change, can always homebrew. Paizo isn't going to repeal the ORC if I homebrew a non-mythic create demi-plane back into the remaster. But taking rituals that don't really seem to have any more functional regional impact than saying the PCs are allowed to buy a house or tower somewhere, and putting it behind a Must-Be-Godlike wall does actually negatively impact the game for anyone in Organized Play, or playing with GMs whom are not comfortable venturing into homebrew rules. Being able to provide feedback and express concern behind such decisions on the part of the community should be welcomed. Guess what, that means I need to accept and understand that someone said they as a GM had run into issues with the Create Demiplane having caused them problems. Honestly, I'd love to know more about that, but that is likely too detailed for this discussion.

I suppose also at a root to this is that when I saw the opportunity for Rituals in Second Edition, I was exited, as it made sense for their existence, and I thought it was something that could really shine and be another thing to make Second Edition a draw. But they were really so very minimally explored, they didn't really meet this expectation for me. Then turning around and pushing what were actually already existing rituals, and making them even less accessible really was going in the completely opposite direction. In summary, I think that is part of what is driving my reaction in this case too. The new rules are making Rituals 'less' a part of the game than the used to, when they seemed to originally have had even more potential than they eventually emerged with.

The fact that Goblin Dogs spread a disease (ok technically allergic reaction, but functions as a disease) to non-goblins is also very appropriate for an Apocalypse Rider Fumbus to choose to ride.

Correct, she may not have approved of what happened, but was potentially responsible for those who did it. With command structures, one can still feel responsible for what happened, even if it wasn't your command that made it happen. In fact what happened could have even been contrary to explicit instructions, and one could still fault oneself for what happened.

Maybe she didn't make it clear enough that it would not be acceptable, and they took it as tacit approval, or maybe she did make abundantly clear, but others were losing trust in her leadership and leaned towards the suggestions of another. Even in such a case, she could hold herself responsible for having lost the faith of those in her command, that they chose the wrong path to proceed.

I agree that Arazni seems like she would have NO use for pleasantries with Iomedae if she felt it was Iomedae's true responsibility. The potential of her being the patron of the Knights by way of powering the Crimson Reclaimers seems to confirm this. It kind of leads to a belief that she might not believe it is the fault of the actual order, but perhaps the actions of some of its individual members. She perhaps doesn't personally feel betrayed by the order (although she might hide this for whatever personal reason) but rather considers it personal betrayal by those directly involved in the binding, which may not have been everyone.

An alternate scenario might be that the binding was done by order of Aroden... at which point Arazni might not have considered the Knights at fault, rather finding Aroden at fault. It would be strange, why wouldn't Aroden just tell his Herald to appear. Maybe the Whispering Tyrant tricked Aroden into making a prophecy that if his herald was bound, she would be victorious, but that very binding would be the source of her loss of faith causing her to be able to fail. And it would be the beginning of Aroden's prophesies that would come to fail, until is final death himself. That would be yet another potential option.

Either way, it may not have been Iomedae's choice, but it may not relieve her from feeling responsible, and it being responsible for forming some of her core beliefs. Not only that, but both of the above might actually be true. Aroden may have overridden Iomedae's choice, and for that Arazni may fold Aroden responsible. In public she may even hold the Knights responsible for her death, but personally, she may recognize Iomedae as having been the leader of the Knights and may know her choice, had it been followed would have respected her, and so in secret she may feel kinship for those who still hold to the original intent of the Knights, even if she doesn't wish to publicly assert this, as it might be difficult to explain to so many mortals, whom would see it as forgiveness, rather than respect for a leader for whom was overridden.

All these are possible scenarios that might make sense.

There is a certain interesting aspect to the idea of a God making a decision that was wrong, and overriding a mortal, who eventually takes the mantle of that god later on after he dies due to his error that may have been in part tied to this decision. But implications are that Aroden had plenty of 'non-good' mistakes attributed to him, which seems like it would make his association with 'good' to have been a mortal mistake in the past, potentially due to so many of the worshipers being human, and only chose to view him from their own ethnic perspective when they labeled him good. (which is no longer a universal element in remaster)

Finally got to look at this part of the book and compare the old ritual from Archives of Nethys with the new one/ones. So now I have a better understanding of the question and concern.

And by the way there is a sidebar that describes what a Mythic Ritual should be.

WHAT MAKES A RITUAL MYTHIC?

Rituals are magic that anyone with the right skills and resources can perform, and they often have large and significant effects or ramifications. So what makes a mythic ritual mythic? Most notably, the scale and impact they have on the game world. While most rituals might have a significant effect for a single character or a small region, mythic rituals can represent huge changes in the story and structure of the narrative, dynamically changing things that are true about the world in a way that creates consequences felt at a national or planetary level, and might even end or begin significant stories.

Based on this sidebar it seems like a mistake to have made Create Demiplane into a Ritual that required Mythic. I could see why it and Imprison, and Freedom Rituals, for instance could have had Mythic Heightening's that would potentially leverage Mythic points/Mythic skill proficiencies, etc. But crating a small demi-plane is not changing something at a national or even regional level, and is a part of many a Fantasy story that weren't planning on treading on the 'godlike' power structures. For instance most magic users can create smaller temporary places relatively easily, so why would creating a private space less than half an Acre in size considered mythic now?

I understand perfectly how it could have seemed like a perfect opportunity to include the Create Demiplane ritual back in after remaster as working with Mythic and Divinities puts you in a position to talk about planar powers and such. However, I also agree it is (in my personal opinion) a poor choice to consider this ritual only appropriate to Mythic stories, when it was more widely available before. Playing a 20th level wizard isn't supposed to 'presuppose' you are playing a Mythic game, that would need the Mythic rules, and the original ritual fit perfectly well in those fantasies. How does this 'change' limiting to Mythic characters, enable you to easily tell the same stories you could, that you want to.

If they wanted to make Mythic only version of the ritual, why didn't they name it Create Mythic Demiplane ritual? Give it some better options or size growth making a a preferred route for rather extreme. Honestly, it isn't hard for me to imagine someone having added the ritual in the book because it 'seemed appropriate', and then later editing passes someone 'presumed' that because it was in the book, it needed to be tagged mythic as a baseline. I'd be all for a errata to remove the Mythic trait from the ritual, and add a Mythic Heighten that would add the Mythic point cost, enable Mythic skill proficiency to be leveraged, and have it adjust the outcomes in some appropriate manners.

Again, saying Rare means you need to talk to the DM, and so Mythic Rare means the same, so there is no difference, does not work. Otherwise you could say, take everything RARE in other books and add Mythic. And we should all know that doesn't make sense.

I'm hoping that the original intent was for Create Demiplane was to show how some rituals might interact with Mythic but might not Require Mythic, and editing got carried away with simplifying/unifying things and took it too far. Again, that's my hope, and I'm hoping something will come out to clarify something like that.

What if for the Multiclass Archetype dedication: it granted an amended
Shift Eminence that loses the ability automatic trigger as a free action at initiative.

As well as the following changes to Multiclass Ikons:
Immanence and Transcendence abilities remain at the starting baseline of their ability. Any plus per weapon die remains a static bonus on one weapon die, any abilities that improve at specific levels remain the baseline state. (I'm thinking the resistance ability which simply is based on half level is probably fine being kept as is per base so one might wordshop the wording to insure the based on level doesn't trigger that being a resistance 1 ability costing an action. Any other concerns people have?)

Additionally Multiclass Exemplars find it fatiguing to Holding Immanence in their objects for more than 5 minutes or for extended times such as in exploration or downtime.

There might be a multiclass archetype to regain the ability to trigger Shift Immanence at initiative as a free action or reaction (at start of first turn after initiative), but it would likely leave the limitation on how long one can maintain an Immanence effects over time. Not sure what level it should be.

There would be a MultiClass Archetype feat:
Unlock Full Potential of Ikon [Feat 6]
Prerequisites: Exemplar Dedication, Basic Glory
Your First Ikon unlocks any boosts based on (per weapon die, or based on Exemplar level)

If people feel that having at least 3 feats invested in an archetype isn't enough to get the full unlocked ikon ability, the feat might unlock up to a certain number of weapon dice/or unlock up to a certain level ikon ability unlocks, with a subsequent unlock feat unlocking the remainder.

Another potential feat to exist would be an alternative to the 12th level one:

Second Full Potential Ikon [Feat 14]
Prerequisites: Exemplar Dedication, Unlock Full Potential of Ikon
You gain an additional ikon, selected from those listed on
page 43. When you Spark Transcendence, your spark moves
automatically from the ikon you just used to the other ikon, both Ikons are unrestricted by the restrictions of only base ability per weapon die or level unlocks. (note: implication would be this 14th level feat would not require the 12th level feat, but would subsume its benefits if someone wanted a 'full' power second ikon.)

This would mean that without further investment, any Multiclass Exemplars would need to spend an action to get their Immanence ability, instead of typically getting triggered in initiative. Restoring their Immanence ability after forcing Transcendence will also require an action until they get a second Ikon, which is yet another investment.

Choices and Ikons are still readily available, potentially powerful, but come at a cost of an action to get into them. Could make multiclass Exemplar Multiclass Archetype less attractive to classes that are short on extra actions in early rounds, but I'm not entirely certain that isn't an ok situation to make people question if it is the direction they want to go or not. It makes a multiclass Exemplar have the divinity be less easily accessed, but gives them the ability to step into it with proper investment of actions an feats and get a real flavor of the class imparted to the character.

Railroading can be fine, especially when the basic premise of it has already been presented in the story pitch, for example. In fact not railroading when the expectation is that there is only one possible path can be really frustrating. When players work to come up with a plan, and then have it unravel to only a different route, it creates tension that isn't needed. Simply starting with a brief understanding of where people are and jumping to 'flashback' allowing people to introduce yourself, and work towards getting to the 'start' of the game lets them play a reasonable goal of getting to the start of the game together. (presuming all the players are playing 'together' for everyone's benefit)

Otherwise, you ask for ideas for our home games, but so often the best ideas are 'our' ideas, but finding ways to integrate the ideas of our players into the plot and story.

I always try to come up with back stories that have plenty of examples of partially fleshed out NPCs in my story. They may be Allies, or enemies, or sometimes not specifically either. There is frequently a variety of conflicts, which normally at least a few may have been won by me, but may leave some enemies, but may also present opportunities for some allies.

I've done this, intentionally for some time, even if it wasn't a formal thing I did, but I've seen GMs actually ask for aspects of this, and have seen how it makes it easier for them to potentially fold your character tighter into the story.

So what I present, is less specific ideas for specific things that can happen, but a list of things you can encourage your players to write up and give you, leaving you with some options to look over for ways to weave them into the story in question.

Describe the following from your path; (or as many as makes sense, often including a name, something describing them, and why they are to you what they are)
3 Allies:
3 Enemies:
3 others who would know of you: (but not necessarily one of above)

Some events;
A Regret:
An Accomplishment:
A Dream or Goal:
A Fear or Nightmare:

Something Lost:
Something Found:

Something which was misunderstood about you:
Something you have misunderstood about your life: (this could be something like you believe you were wronged by someone, but you were lied to and though what you believe, it isn't actually what happened)

Even if someone doesn't fill out all of the items, it gives you a chance to help link the players stories together, either by directing two with similar stories that could be connected, to work together. Or potentially secretly working to reveal that their stories cross though an NPC that played a part in their past. Which you can give them updated details adding to their sheet, with details you want to provide to them, so when they recognize a past NPC they can react authentically based on the additional information, and might be surprised when another has a tie in to them as well.

I'll say I am looking forward to seeing how the new Class Archetypes work out. I've been looking forward to the successor of the Inquisitor ever since second edition came out and the successor of the Paladin focused on being the Heavy Armor Paragon. Given, out of a half dozen Paladin characters I've played in the past, only one would have willingly donned heavier than light armor given their own choices, the new take on the class obviously wasn't the most well fitting for those concepts. As it became quite clear the developers took a very different meaning for Holy Warrior than I wanted, I realized that what I probably wanted in Second edition for these concepts would be viewed more as a Holy Striker instead of Holy Defender, which was what Champion was.

So for some time after that I have looked forward then to a Successor to the Inquisitor, who despite the secret agent feel they had, was otherwise seen as something of a strong case for a Divine Striker. When the Thaumaturge was coming, i definitely got the Monster Hunter vibe from it, so had some hope maybe it might fit that concept but it really it just not really tied to divine, which is perfectly fine for the concept it is meant to be, but again left me wanting for these concepts.

I think some of these class Archetypes could very easily give me what was missing. (not that I couldn't have potentially squeaked something out with a Cleric or Oracle multiclass archetype to get the flavor I want, especially on a free-archetype game, but this hopefully will be better suited)

I will admit that I was surprised that the inquisitor(vindicator) wasn't coming out of Investigator, but I see the reasons and they make sense, and it sounds like future books may have a divine Investigator, so I'll look forward to seeing that one too.

Just noticing now, the mention of the Vindicator sharing their Divine Sanctification with their allies, and honestly, that sounds like a neat ability, as well as being a sort of _Nod_ to the old Inquisitor, without shoving too many abilities into one package.

Wait... just a thought. I think it would be completely within the rules to allow additional characters to preform Aid actions to help the Primary and Secondary Casters. So a ritual requiring a single primary caster and a single secondary caster could have a third person doing an Aid to help the Primary caster's roll, and a fourth person whom spend their time to Aid the secondary caster on their roll. This could give them a 'relatively easy to get' +2 to their check.

https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2552

In retrospect, it would seem like the rules on stacking, and the fact that secondary casters create a Circumstance Bonus to the Primary caster check, it makes sense that rule could be interpreted that you may only be able to aid the primary caster by being a Secondary caster. However, I think it would not be hard to imagine being able to say, preforming and Aid action to help Secondary casters achieve their result. The rules mentioned above indicate the person would need to be present at all times the secondary caster is preforming their actions for the ritual, but does indicate that aid actions don't have to be constrained to rounds.

It isn't hard to imagine a primary ritualist flanked by secondary participants and assistants/acolytes, etc. surrounding them passing them the things they need next.

Another option, after x days and the secondary casters have any failures, the primary caster can delay their roll a day, allowing any Failed casters to re-roll their individual roll. Casters that succeed need not re-roll unless they want to, but as the re-roll for the failed caster the caster must consider the new roll their roll after the reroll.

I question if that would/should apply to allow re-rolls of critical failures on secondary caster's rolls, as it seems like there should be some risk of accumulating a critical failure.

Perhaps if understanding the ritual is not proceeding as it should could become a roll that the primary has to make before making the final ritual roll, if they want to delay/extend the ritual.

Make the Delay/Extend the ritual roll be an Easy roll for 2x the Rituals rank. As long as they succeed they have the option to delay a day.

If people feel it make it too easy to get rid of Crit Failures from secondary rolls, you could make rerolling a crit failure requiring rolling a crit success on the easy roll. And extending could require at least one secondary caster does a re-roll, so if all have succeeded, but one had got a crit failure, extending the ritual fishing for a crit success on extension roll might be risky as the secondary caster could end up adding another crit failure.

Could it be they are 'expecting' these rituals to be key points and thus expecting the players to burn hero points on the roll if need be to insure they succeed?

Not saying that is intended, as the rules say that you can't use fortune effects on it, and hero points are treated as fortune effects, but it might be when they designed the rules and did probability checks on chances, hero point expenditure might not have actually been intended to be prohibited.

I could also imagine as some mentioned, paying more in specifically relevant material components for the ritual, or specific timing, would be very easily merit a reduction in the Target DC for the checks, potentially both the primary and secondary checks.

Another option you might allow spellcasters whom are acting as secondary casters expend a spell slot of the level of ritual they are preforming (during each up to day) for the ritual in order to have the option to re-roll their roll (but having to take the re-roll if made, and not otherwise compatible with other fortune effects).

By boosting the likelihood of the secondary casters being able to succeed you indirectly make it more likely the primary caster will be able to succeed, without making the primary check have an easy button. (which allowing the primary caster to just spend a slot to get a re-roll might end up spoiling the risk/reward, and handicap non-casters from rituals too much)

Another option to improve the results of secondary casters on the primary caster roll would be sticking to what the rules say that each secondary caster has to make a different check, but you would skip the mention of after each check has been made, other secondary casters make no rolls. Perhaps you could allow secondary casters to pick their check they take, but allow them each roll in sequence. As long as none have critically failed for a particular check, allow others to attempt for the same check to do better, such as to avoid the -4 circumstance penalty. This would allow additional casters to boost your chance of success, but would also increase the potential of a crit failure which would certainly be bad. I might be tempted to up the DC of secondary caster checks if they use more than double the specified secondary casters however as larger groups can become cumbersome to manage, to help more not always be a way to make it easier at any scale.

Another different option, you could switch the bonus for a successful secondary check to be a +1 untyped bonus, or +1 stacking circumstance bonus that would stack but only with other secondary check bonuses earned. Potentially having critical successes, instead of granting +2 have them grant the same stacking +1, but allow the primary caster to roll an additional primary check and drop the lower. Critical Failures might do as they currently say, or might make you roll an additional check, but forces you to discard your highest of your rolls for the primary check.

That is a lot of ideas, just a brainstorming... something might sound like something that would do what you want in your game, and help your players enjoy the process, and help you feel like you've accomplished making a fun playing experience.

The specialization allows them to use melee weapons for their abilities, and strength for their key ability.

The text says they may like to use their fists, etc. it says you may be a martial artist. However, the text seems to not enable unarmed attacks unless they get treated as melee weapons in Starfinder.

Are strikers prohibited from using their abilities with unarmed attacks. Is that what was intended? Or were they intended to allow agile melee unarmed attacks?

My daughter thought she could convince her brother to try a vesk striker operative with natural weapons, but if they can’t use their natural attacks with their abilities, he probably would not want to play that.

So, it looks like in the the multiclass archetype for Swashbuckler they definitely did run a pass through to update it to reference the new Bravado trait. However, when you compare the rules between the pre-remaster and remastered, the boost to speed and bonus to attempts to achieve Panache during were a part of the Panache feature and granted in pre-remaster.

I don't understand why the developers would turn a working archetype feat that gave you a benefit, into one which effectively gave you nothing unless they they felt the original was way too overpowered. Even then, it seems they intentionally work to break things into bite sized pieces and divide them up into sequential feats when needed. All that said, I also don't think this would be a case of them fixing something they thought was overpowered.

I think that someone cleaned up the Panache rules in an editing pass, placing the 'effects you get from panache' in a different paragraph and it eventually got a new class feature name. Then whomever was particularly aware of that change, I'm guessing was not the primary individual involved in the retouch of the Multiclass archetype, or simply the edit to Panache class feature was done after the last touchup of the Archetype.

While you can't use... the rules from premaster are this as saying that is what they are now, I think it does help expose the likely intent.

I will confess while I sometimes just want to get a chance to play a certain role, I'll admit, I've had so many concepts it isn't hard for myself to end up offering to be Player D, and fill a role that will help the party the most. Not because I will simply mathematically figure out what will give us the best, but by doing a little spreading out of our resource among different quadrants you diversify and strengthen the party. I also love to, if possible come up with reasons for me to have tie in's to other party members, if they are willing. I don't expect it of others, but enjoy coming up with links with a player or two if I get volunteers. This sometimes opens possibilities to have starting synergies with them as well. I am most likely to volunteer to be a player like D in games that I know less of the people, thus feel like a guest, and am willing to 'work' for the opportunity of being involved to play.

Really all the discussion seems to be mostly talking about player expectations, but as an example, the question about using a potion. If you want to 'give' a little bit on this, but put guard-rails on it. You can create a special necklace that can hold one potion, that you can fit one potion into. And that potion is already near your face, may have an easy or magic way to open and thus allow that one potion to be worn (available without requiring an action to pull out) so that it can be drank with only one action.

This means you aren't just 'changing the rules' to make all potion use easier, but you basically allow one prepped potion to be more easily used, to allow the characters to rely on them a little easier.

Probably as mentioned it would be good to make sure people's expectations are understood. And maybe if they were, maybe people would understand the reasons people choose what they have and have suggested what they have, and perhaps might come to understand it might not be as bad a core reason as someone might be assuming it is.

Moon Marches Magistrates

A coalition of those in the given churches focusing on keeping the 'eternal peace' in borderlands, by insuring that justice is carried out by insuring there are costs to those who attack the foundations of the civilization and people. Even if there isn't an otherwise strong foundational governance in said region. Basically even the twilights of civilization should have the benefits of the hopes for stability and justice.

I have to mention.... small children have been proven to being very able to be very proficient at Taunting. Be it used against, other children, adults, other small cute animals, or dangerous beasts.

So don't discount taunting, by way of minions. ;)

Wow, already?! It is the first Starfinder lore book that will be Fully-compatible with the Second Edition ruleset that they have thus far only teased us with!

The ability gives a debuff against the target. It uses the Circumstance penalty as the means to affect the target, and it benefits the whole party.

If some party members get specialized off-guard, against the target, the fact that they personally get a better bonus than the other party member granted does not invalidate the fact that the party member helped the other party members. It might not be ideal that the individual might be one of the bigger damage dealer, and an additional boost might have been welcome, but it doesn't invalidate the action.

The cases where the target is already off-guard, is a case where the first part would immediately be redundant (unless the target moves into a position making it lose off-guard during its turn). That has more validity as a concern, but of note, it might have value in the case of the target moving out of off-guard, as well as the fact that the follow me bonus will still stack on top of it.

Potentially, what if each member of the envoy's team was allowed to take the bonus as a circumstance penalty to the target's AC, or as a circumstance bonus to the attacker's attacks? Or even limit the 'alternative bonus' option to their first attack to help minimize how often the option is triggered. But it could help such an action to still provide a viable contribution, even in situations where someone may already be off-guard.

Again, another thought, if concerns this solution is too powerful, you could limit it to a follow me bonus/option that triggers if the person is already off-guard to the Envoy when they attack them. This would limit this additional option to the situations where the target is likely off-guard to others (because they are off-guard to the Envoy) so it limits its usage to more of the circumstances where the normal benefit would have been lost already. Or to avoid the switching of penalty to bonus, you could instead offer that when the Envoy strikes an Off-Guard target, the follow-me benefit gives +1 damage per die to any attacks that strike the same target while considered off-guard to the attacker. (basically move the to-hit bonus that would have been lost to a better damage bonus)

I'm pretty sure they want to avoid having the directives from constantly having to have a roll made to do something. I think one of the feedbacks given to Starfinder play was that rolling to get a bonus to your own action or someone else's action being a standard thing you have to do each round was less fun than activating an ability and knowing it has some effect, even if small. Then ideally having the ability to do something active with your action to. (hence the Directives, buff but automatic) and (follow me, active action that boosts your baseline buff, but does something too) I think that feedback was talked about in past, especially affecting the old implementations of Envoy and Operative classes.

So I don't think they will want a directive as baseline as Get'em to involve rolling to have an impact.

I have thoughts about adding more science and civilization to Skitter Crash.

...
What is a good small amphibious predator among the Starfinder creatures that can be crawling out of the swampy water to invade the transported forest?

Hey, I have to say I like a lot of your suggestions. I agree with a lot of your thought processes regarding it. I didn't get al the way through the adventure with my own family, and they didn't themselves run into the missing the expectations of the players yours did, but I agree that the scale between science fiction and science fantasy can certainly be something that could/would affect peoples enjoyment of various adventures.

Some potential aquatic/amphibious options:
Jakkerant CR 5
Atlapak, Juvenile CR3
Holofang CR 4 (not really small)
Murzzilat CR 4
Murzzilat, Bantling CR 1

While not specifically aquatic/amphibious they are noted to be found in both marshes and forests
Tashtari CR 3

I think I have suddenly realized something that I realize has gotten lost over the version edition changes that might be something that actually been helpful.

It used to cost to advance in level. It could be flavored as paying a trainer, paying for materials used in training or a variety of things, but it gave a bit of a cost at level up.

One of the reasons I realized this was lost was looking at how for wizards they get to write free spells into their spellbook at level up. But normally writing spells in the spellbook requires expensive ink with actual cost/expenditures, but you somehow get some free ink simply by 'inspiration' on level up. Granted, some of that cost, easily half of it based on the Learn a Spell activity and its critical success might represent use of expensive materials to test your understanding, so some of it might represent the cost of failure to get it right the first time, and thus 'inspired writing' (100% correct) might cost significantly less ink used to write the spell. But it seems like it should still cost.

However, by there being no actual expected expenditures, for leveling up, we can't as easily (without compromising story here or there) count that ink as materials gotten in the process of leveling up. If leveling up always had an 'expected' expenditure, getting and using the ink could simply be a part of the expenditures for the training.

Such a full expenditure wouldn't have to be hardcoded to paying a tutor... it could be flavored according to the class, and might even involve upgrading their expected equipment.

For a fighter, the player and GM could agree that their 'training' costs go towards buying new, better weapons, or upgrading the quality of the ones that they have. A sorcerer buys magical trinkets to help pull their power out of their bloodline, or might even be allowed to be spent towards magical consumables who exposes their bodies to more magic helping it to further develop.

Monks may spend it on incense to help their focus, or demonstrate their dedication by finding and donating things needed by their order. (or a drunken order monk might spend it on really top tier booze to elevate their experience)

I suppose, with the way the game is defined to work by default one could argue the training costs are simply tied to WBL table and all investments counts as progress. But I think in many stories, actually dedicating some expenses/investments towards 'training/improving' actually could seem like a real benefit.

Re: Ed and RD. The rule creates a rather drastic shift in price/value/accessibility of various items depending on of there is a weaker version of the item available.

Taken to an extreme arbitrary example: if there is a Rare potion of Death that is 9th level and causes someone to die. If there is a Rare Greater version of that item that is 20th level and has that effect on everyone else in a 100 mile radius.

The existence of the first item suddenly makes makes the cost to access the 20th level version brought down to a 9th level's item cost. If costs are intended to be a balancing point, it can actually cause problems.

It is very much the same discrepancy that Prepared casters (the ones who have to learn spells at least) have over Spontaneous users, who get free rank-up on spells, while spontaneous casters have to pay for theirs. The Prepared casters who get all the spells obviously already had the benefit of the free spells.

Note, I'm not positive that with the wording as given, that this free granting of access to the higher level item actually completely invalidates the higher level item. The lower level item formula grants you the ability to craft the higher level item (at appropriate level), but I don't think it conveys the entire benefit of the native formula. To save the day of prep time, I think would still require the higher level formula as currently written, unless I missed something.

And as a GM, for my prior example, I'd have to keep in mind whenever making a lower level, lesser item of an existing item, I might have to consider making the rarity of the item different, as it was made clear that items with different rarites don't pass the benefit between them.

If someone is concerned about the fiscal impact of the rule on the game, rather than ignoring it you might allow someone to research the higher level formula via on-level daily income work, and start with 100% credit for the highest lower level formula in the family they currently know. You could even offer a discount (automatic progression based on some percent of the value of any actual production of the items in question.

Meaning a crafter who has been making +1 runes enough time, would after so many basically come up as a 'side effect', with a usable formula for a +2 rune.

Raving Dork, one issue with your example which makes sense having a 1st level character learn something early, and eventually being able to do more advanced things as they have leveled up. But the issue is, that it also presents the example allowing the higher level individual, going out and buying the primer on gunpower, and without ever touching an ounce of gunpowder, begins assembling the C4 explosive device.

People like to talk about Heightened spells, saying heightened spells are balanced to be worse than naturally higher ranked spells, so potentially there is a balance concession that if you get a heightened rank spell knowledge for free, you are getting something less powerful than a spell of the full native rank, so one can say the spell is balanced in it lack of cost, by its weaker strength. However, it was implied that items are definitely supposed to be tiered according to their actual power, not based on their weakest instance and progressing bit by bit, but less than something 'starting' at that level.

I think this is Ed's concern. It can be nice to get things for free. Often hard to pass up, but it may make certain things start seeming to lack values they used to and drift distribution of items to things that there are lower level items to, since they will become significantly cheaper to access. This creation of best value cutting diversity may be a cost the the flavor of the stories. Thus the concern.

Honestly, I think one suggestion that I've heard was to give them a better chance to get benefit from being risky against tougher opponents.

Failing with Audacity: (or grace if you prefer)
When attempting to gain Panache from an opponent whose level is higher than yours. Potentially also have an option to include other opponents, when success is still hard, say a qualified check that would require more than a 15 to succeed on. Have a simple (not critical) failure grant panache, though the shock and audacity of the move.

Now, you can attempt moves that make you look good, or even attempt things that are a gamble, and reasonable risk you making a critical failure, but opens the ability to have a reasonable chance of gaining panache, even against a boss opponent.

Doing something someone "shouldn't" typically do seems perfectly in line with the concept of a swashbuckler, and them getting away with doing it seems perfectly reasonable.

There might even be a 'perk' that typical feats that grant reactions from acrobatics checks, might not trigger against swashbucklers unless they make a critical failure.

P262 GMCore
Magic Scroll entry

Frequency once per day, plus overcharge;

Making a guess someone was copying some content over from Wand.

I would argue that it is still around for keeping from Breaking Verisimilitude.

I think first edition had things it called Trade Goods that typically always traded for at value. In second edition they just mention exceptions being art objects and raw materials which trade at full value. (it is too bad they didn't go with a category of trade goods).

If I went into a store and bought some random object and went to some other random store and tried to get them to give me money for it, or stopping some random people trying to unload it, I'd probably consider myself lucky if I got 50%.

If you ask me, in rare instances I might have gotten close to 90-100%, much more cases would likely get closer t0 40-60%. And probably at least as many cases would get zero buyers or perhaps an offer for something like 10%.

So for me when you are defining 'what is being sold' and 'when exactly it is being sold', I consider a 50% as a reasonable 'average' that if anything probably is generous, as long as you are excluding the trade goods that just automatically are trading at near 100%.

Now, if an NPC approaches the PC saying... I've always wanted a crossbow and I see you have one, can I buy it off you. Then suddenly, they are trying to define the 'what' and 'when' so you can easily have the player demand full price, they aren't trying to drive the sale. They can even potentially ask for more than 100%, but that doesn't mean the buyer will be willing to buy for 100%.

Lets pretend however, the person approaching them, wants to buy the crossbow, right now, but they don't have cash, all they have is barley (which because of an overabundance for some reason, we will pretend is not considered a trade good). It might be reasonable to have the PC as for more. As the buyer is trying to force two transactions, one to buy the crossbow, the other to sell their barley for payment for the crossbow.

So the PC can easily justify 100% pay for the crossbow, assuming it is in good working like new condition. They can also look at the attempt to sell the barley as they are again defining the time and goods to be taken, to say they are only going to count the Barley at 50% value, similar to if they had tried to sell barley themselves.

So if the story involves an NPC who is by 'story' wanting to buy something. they should be willing to buy closer to the 100% price range. Buying from an lesser known vendor might be justification to cut the price a little bit, but it would also be a little conditioned on hoe much the buyer needs it and their actual timeframe on the need.

I'm sure that part of it is a holdover from first edition where it was an attempt to keep crafters from breaking the game via game economics. However the crafting system as it is in Second Edition makes that impossible at base reading of the rules. The 50% in that instance almost seems like a punishment.

But you can note that they seemed to intentionally leave it at 50%, since the game they made in between PF1 and PF2 was StarFinder. And in that game you only got 10% back. (and I'll admit that felt harsh)

But yes rules as written, you generally sell for 50% when the players instigate the sale, save for certain exceptions, which they list and the GM could choose as they deem fit.

If you say in the description of the town, that due to recent earthquakes or other natural phenomenon there are lots of injured and therefore there is a shortage of healing potions, and are none for sale. If a Pc had one and decided to offer it up for sale, it is reasonable to consider they might quickly get an offer for 100% value quickly, assuming the populace could afford it.

I agree, if you chose that one, you get the boosted version of it. If you learn a the other Psi cantrip listed for your conscious mind though some other feature, but got it from something other than your conscious mind, you would cast it only as a normal cantrip. With the dedication, it seems you get only one of the two normal conscious mind cantrips. (so if you chose the other one, and got the ray of frost some other way, then no you wouldn't have the psi version)

While these could be chosen to only apply to wizards, or might work for other prepared casters. Obviously one shouldn't implement all of these as that would break things. However some of these might ring a certain truth for your view of your campaign if you feel like these casters are suffering.

I personally liked the old historical rules where a prepared slot could be left open and filled by later preparation even if it isn't as efficient then. It was a simple and elegant solution for people who knew they were going into an situation with some definite unknown. It cost immediate availability of resources early on and a little time to help insure you had a more tailored resource in the future. However, as that isn't the baseline any longer, so I'm trying to work from there and think of other ways to help prepared casters. I'm also trying not to simply give away the substitution thesis, although I'll confess the potential of someone feeling like this treads on their area of expertise. I still think these items don't completely destroy the flexibility that the Substitution Thesis could grant a wizard, even if one of these other rules in play. Some might even strengthen the flexibility of the Substitution Thesis.

* Re-preparation Exploration Activity
One of the ideas is to allow the approved classes to have a 10 minute activity that would allow a prepared caster to re-prepare a spell they had prepared earlier. They would select a different spell of appropriate rank that they still have prepared, and it becomes un-prepared, in order to re-prepare the first spell again.

* Casting a cast spell from their Spellbook metamagic/spellshaping
Another option would be to allow a wizard to preform a 10 minute activity [perhaps a new form of metamagic/spellshaping] using their spellbook that would allow the caster to immediately following, cast a spell they had prepared earlier in the day but have already cast, using up one of their other spell slots of appropriate rank instead losing preparation of whatever spell was in that slot.

* Wizards Signature Spell feature
Another option. Give wizards a signature spell feature. A wizard's (prepared caster's) signature spell for a rank is chosen when they get their extra spell for that rank. They can choose to spontaneously cast a signature spell from any appropriate rank for that class, using up the prepared spell in that slot.

Specialists might likely be limited to picking their signature spell from their curriculum. Or it might only limit the highest level signature spell, but the bonus slots, if limited to only curriculum spells might still be limited to only being usable for signature spells if they are curriculum spells, leaving an advantage to keeping most signature spells in the curriculum.

This actually seems like something that could help give the Wizard class and even individual wizards additional flavor, which sounds like a good thing.

* Prepared casting duplicate preparations feature
People seem to mention signature spells as being strong for spontaneous casters, I could see an option allowing a prepared caster (any prepared caster potentially) to slot the same spell more than once, the spell becomes spontaneously available from any rank the spell was slotted in.

So a wizard slotting Dispel Magic into two first rank slots and a Magic Missile in the last, could cast Dispel Magic up to three times if they chose to use their Magic Missile slot to cast Dispel Magic. If they go up in level and slot Dispel Magic in first and second ranks, it would allow them to cast the spell using any of their first and second rank slots. (starting using their original assigned slot, but can use up other prepared slots of the designated ranks)

While this steals from some of the spontaneous caster's strategic strength, but doing it is inefficient (so has strategic cost) since it uses up extra prepared slots. However, in cases where a wizard is already knows they may need multiple castings, this lets their preparation in that respect get rewards by committing to their choice. Honestly I sort of feel like if you do this, one should allow it for all prepared casters, but that's my feel on it.

* Extra preparation selection feature for prepared casters
You could also simply allow prepared casters, or prepared casters limited to by spellbook/familiar, to prepare one more spell than slot. When you have used the last slot in that rank, you can no longer cast spells from that rank. (i.e. you have so many memorized, but only so much 'strength')

If people feel that prepared casters, in general are hurting due to their need for preparation, you could grant all prepared casters an 'extra' preparation for each rank, and that the casters that are limited by spellbook or other mechanism to subsets of their lists and grant them up to two extra 'preparations'. I'm not sure I really like the idea of two extra's but it was a potential thought.

Ok, I bring this up because in large part I'd mentally categorized them in the two obvious categories which have different names. The obvious divisions.

Spontaneous and Prepared are the ones I think people would immediately come up with. Also, not long after thinking of those, I think many people will be able to come up with Focus casters as another somewhat distinct from. Another might be Cantrip only casters, and we might potentially include impulses as another form of magic.

There are also, an a different axis (how many spell slots and what distribution) that could include the list of normal, wave casters, multi-class archetypes for instance as well.

Well, I want to go back to the first two for a couple reasons. One because I always found it ironic that Spontaneous casters were always singled out for being so flexible, and prepared casters' players would complain having to pick their spells at the start of the day was too hard, because they didn't have enough information.

I couldn't help but notice Spontaneous casters had to pick their spells at character creation (or level up for their progression). It is absolutely true that being able to re-use those spells within a day is an advantage within a specific encounter, so in a way, I can understand how from an encounter-only perspective, if they picked well (at creation), it could be a distinct advantage.

However if you consider a campaign can be played over several modes of play, the spells might have to be selected and divided up between encounter spells, exploration spells, and downtime spells. Prepared casters get the choice to rebalance each day to better optimize for whatever mode of play they anticipate that day.

Some of the most vocal complainers about the flexibility of spontaneous casters was always the wizards, and I saw the list of spells they started out with and would shake my head, realizing that advantage, that and the theoretical ability of them to easily add new spells easily to their spells known, I would get frustrated by their complaints. However it has sunk into my thoughts recently that I could see how if GMs did not really bother to have wizards be able to uncover enemy wizards spell books in the party's travels, or allow them to buy scrolls of spells they don't know, I could see how as they leveled up, that flexibility would absolutely diminish over time if kept very constrained.

This also made me think more about the other prepared casters whom simply 'Know' all the spells. This actually bothered me a bit from early on. It bothered me that with each new book, or even adventure, some casters were suddenly instantly upgraded with new choices. So I actually like one of the early 'rulings' that eventually got reversed, saying that those spell casters knew all the common spells in the core rulebook, plus whatever rulebook they came in, not necessarily all the rulebooks automatically. I honestly wish that there were uncommon spells in the Divine and Primal tradition that were unlocked by certain classes or deities for instance.

But let me continue forward some. It becomes clear that there are more than one 'branch' of prepared casters. Some are limited in the spells known, to specific ones they have encountered and collected. Namely the ones with a spellbook or spellbook like mechanics. They have to go out and specifically come to know any spells they need to prepare, and those spells have to fall into their list. The others simply gain access to all of them in their spell list if they are common.

Wizards are in the group of that greater limited selection of spells to choose from. Presumably this was due to a combination of items. One the history of the spellbook concept, and spells known. I'm sure that was a significant factor, as history and flavor are important to people naturally, and it was obvious that while pathfinder second edition tried to clean up a lot. Historical things that they thought they could still keep and balance well, they tended to keep. The other aspect I'm sure was that in keeping history for what types of spells the wizards had, the Arcane list had lots of spells, and they probably would have balked at the idea of opening up that entire list to any prepared caster. Any prepared caster for the Arcane tradition would be forced to have a gatekeeping mechanism. (we see it for the arcane witch and magus, for instance)

I can see how that gating mechanism is treated by a GM or campaign, could vastly impact the effectiveness of a prepared caster being able to build an array of useful spells to be able to prepare in their slots, in the varieties of play modes.

I'm trying to think through all the shared aspects that cross all the spell-casting spells, at least with respect to spell slots to try to keep in better mind aspects that affect their play.

They all start with a spell list which is based on a Tradition, but is gated by Rarity (for access, but not usability). Many classes have mechanisms, normally be feats or other class choices, which allow your to pull additional spells across from other traditions into yours. These increase your list size, impacting what magical items you can use, in addition to what spells you can learn, and these feats sometimes give you the spell in question as a spell known.

Next spellcasters have a Spells Known aspect. Some classes like Clerics and Druids, you simply know all your common spells from your tradition, plus the additional spells from your feats that expanded your tradition. Others have to collect the spells and pay to learn new spells and add them to you spells known. I think this cost, while not prohibitive, is definitely of note when compared to the classes that simply know all.

Now is where things split out more, based on slots granted.

Prepared casters daily make a list of what spells they are preparing based on the slots they have available, selecting out of their known spells. So these are their prepared slots.

Some prepared casters have swapped their normal prepared slots via a Flexible archetype for Collection slots. Their collection slots they pick spells out of their known spells and they can cast them as many times as they have usable slots for them. They populated these each morning as their preparation.

Spontaneous casters have a Repertoire of spells they build at character generation (and upon leveling up). These spells can be cast as many times a day as you have an appropriate slots for them. Signature spells allow you to heighten a spell using spell slots of other ranks than the rank where you have it slotted, increasing the usefulness of your spell slots for that spell.

Really, focus casters are sort of like a form of spontaneous caster advancement, as they get the ability to cast that spell with their 'focus' slots, but they aren't dedicated to that spell, and the focus slots are always at current max rank.

Wave casters can be either prepared or spontaneous, it just affects how many slots they get, and which ranks they keep. Perhaps further looking could be put into how the feats that give back limited use of lower rank spell slots for utility casting, but I'm not sure how much that helps this retrospective at the moment so I'm going to skip it right now.

Arcane Evolution is certainly a powerful option for sorcerers allowing a sorcerer to actually have flexibility on a daily basis with at least one spell. I would point out however, that it makes the spellbook, similar to a wizards spellbook, but writing all your naturally known spells becomes free. Yet adding spells costs the same as a wizard writing a new spell into the book. I kind of wish there was a small cost to write spells irrespective of if it were new or not as the implication is that writing spells into a spell book requires rare and magical materials. I wish there was a separate cost of learning and practicing a new spell. You had to know the spell before you could write/copy it into your book. It is a slight different, but I think it makes things more clear. It would also allow wizards to make smaller travelling spellbooks for their most used spells, etc. Things/ideas that are worthwhile concepts details for such stories.

While going through these comparisons, it really makes me feel like the Animist, in the new playtest, should really have its Spontaneous spells be described as being a Collection, since flexible spellcasting Collections are built entirely based choices made during your daily preparations. So your choices of apparitions during daily prep would fill out your Collection for the day.

I also want to point out that all normal cantrip casting is spontaneous, as you don't lose the cantrip (unless from a feat that is 1/day) after casting. So when comparing spontaneous and prepared classes, and their access to cantrips. Prepared casters get to choose from a wide selection of cantrips, based on what they expect the day, but the spontaneous casters are stuck with a static set which is normally the same size as a prepared caster. I think that over time/levels, spontaneous casters should learn new cantrips, so they can build some versatility over time.

I also think there should be some room for Cantrips which have a Minimum Rank to know/cast. These could even be things that would help prepared casters, as they could be VERY useful if you know you are going to need them, but might not always be powerful enough to invest in as a spontaneous caster, unless you get it free from your bloodline, for instance. Which that might even be the 'flavor' origin of some of these cantrips, as advanced bloodline cantrips (or witches advanced cantrips) that other arcane casters eventually learned how to reproduce.

I think the best explanation for the split would be spells that manipulate life energies in 'natural' ways, ways that the maelstrom considered intended for life energies to be manipulated would be divine and primal in forms general. However, life energies can be manipulated by methods that could be considered unnatural, and so you might call them Pseudo-necromancy if you were to coin a new old-school school for it. Those more unnatural manipulations of the life energies would seem to feel like they fall into the Arcane tradition for whatever reason.

So there are things factors about Life that nature considers part of its realm, but life extends beyond just the primal and divine aspects.

With primal or divine you might be able to emit pure life energy, or void energy, or be able to call a spirt from beyond back to a freshly healed body. But causing a dead body to become tethered to a source of void energy to animate it may not be a 'natural' function void energy. It may be an academic exercise of causing void energy to unnaturally attach to a body in a way that it's opposing object life energy naturally behaves, but using the 'knowledge' of the details of the energy the arcanist manipulates the environment of the forces enough to enable the transformation of the dead into undead. But this isn't a natural construction, but an unnatural, artificial design. Undead being a void energy, biological construct, or in other words an 'academic extension' of natural elements to create an otherwise unnatural thing.

Climbing Lore is pretty much only useful for lecturing others on how they're doing it wrong. XD

I think one could argue that Climbing Lore should certainly be useful in preforming an Aid others on an attempt to climb, by working to provide them with a better strategy to be successful in their climb.

I could see it becoming, instead of flat resistance value, making it become 2 + 1/2 the level of the armor item, or level of the beast if natural armor. Makes it relevant, but not giant impact at lower levels. I think the comment/concern about natural weapons is very relevant and should be considered carefully.

While making runes bypass it simplifies thing significantly, it also makes it lose some flavor though as well, which shouldn’t be ignored. Have to measure how much you lose vs how much it complicates things.

If we do have runes bypass the resistance do they bypass all and what runes do it. Does it have to be striking, or are potency runes enough. Does higher level armor require stronger runes to bypass archaic resistance if they reinstate it.

I'm sure some might be dead-set against this, but I think there could be room for armors and weapons having certain traits that interact that could cause adjustments to the base AC depending on a specific source.

You could invent a reflective padded armor suit. It gives you 5 flame resistance vs laser weapons (or just make it resist fire 5 for simplicity) However, it states it is less effective against piercing and slashing damage, in the effect of being a circumstance penalty) to AC against such sources.

You have a single target AC, but you know that the source of the attach/damage can potentially trigger an adjustment to the chance to hit, or damage.

Yes, tuning the AC up or down by 1 increases damage not only 5% in certain respects based on damage, but also an extra amount based on its impact to critical hits. But in the end I think the idea of allowing attack types to affect the target DC could be useful and could give armors and weapons more flavor. Give a flak vest a +1 AC vs attacks doing Concussive damage. Actually, there is sort of already a precedent with this with respect to shocking grasp getting a +1 circumstance bonus to hit against someone wearing metal armor.

I loved how in StarFinder, the different critical effects of weapons were NOT limited to only higher skilled combatants. It gave the weapons additional flavor from the start. It would be nice if critical effects traits could move forward. Other weapon traits could be like deadly and fatal, which have an effect on a critical, but don't require critical specializations to trigger (even if critical specializations might level-up these abilities) Again, I think the goal should be to help build flavorful Lore and Mechanical impact for a wide variety of both weapons and armor.

From my experienced most wizards including myself, change their spells based on a variety of situations.

Even if they have a default 'loadout' of spells.... they have multiple defaults. One for adventuring days, one for travel days, one for downtime days, sometimes multiple for downtime days if they have different key activities they do (bit it crafting, working, gathering information, etc).

In addition to the variety do different sets, I most would tweak their loadout based on what terrain/opponents sets we begin seeing recurring, to better optimize their ability to respond.

However, I would also say it is not fair to say that Schools have to be replaced with a spell list as long as the old lists. The old spells were associated with one arbitrary spell list and some were niche usefulness spells other key spells others potentially nearly entirely existing for fluff. They don't all contribute equally towards genera functionality of filling a school slot. Ideally, school curriculums should include spells which will hopefully be crossing old school boundaries, and also presumably include primarily key useful spells in the sets. I haven't seen the specifics of any of the teased curriculum lists, so I can't judge them as to if they meet that. I agree that there should be more than one choice for each Rank of spell. But since the list should be arbitrarily set to include more of the most useful spells within that theme, no matter the Type of magic, the number of spells in the 'theoretical list' should absolutely be shorter than the old magic category type schools, since they should be more curated in order to be more valuable choices in the first place.

Some other things we may not know details on. Is any other features potentially tied to curriculum. What if for instance for each Rank of spell below your highest, you get to pick a single spell of your choice that you 'already' know (so it doesn't impact the free known spells) to be considered part of your Personal Curriculum, and that spell then counts as part of your curriculum for purposes of spell slot use? Having a Personal curriculum should insure you always have a spell you consider worthwhile in your curriculum you can place in a slot.

As an [Uncommon] rule set, I'd also specify that if someone researches their own new spell, after completing all the requirements to create the unique spell, that spell would become an additional part of your Personal Curriculum.

Something else that could come into play would be to allow Thesis choice potentially adding a small set of themed spells to one's curriculum, similar to how college degrees can include 'Minors' as well as Majors. I could see the Improved Familiar Attunement one potentially having spells themed towards helping your familiar. Others are hard to think of specific spell themes however so maybe difficult to balance as those might not be able to contribute to the character's curriculum effectively.

I'm a little perplexed, since it seems like it isn't so much a OGL issue with the schools, since the concept of having spells have schools associated with them and those be the eight names we know has been placed in Creative Commons, right? I don't know the specific school descriptions text are in Creative Commons, but that just gives them the ability to refine the lines in the way Paizo would have wanted, and left opportunity for spells to be able to be part of more than one school.

Worse, it is removing those schools from not only the Arcane list, but also removing it from the other lists. It takes away aspects that were detectable in the past, that eeked out a small bit of information about a magical effect that could be helpful, but not necessarily outright reveal of the full details.

I'm not particularly exited for this loss. I would have been fine with the concept of renaming or even shuffling some of the schools. (and the sin/virtue names would have been potentially obvious possibility names if they had wanted renaming) I have to say I find it really hard to imagine looking at an aura and having the GM tell me, it has a Battle magic aura, or it looks like it has a Civics aura. It seems like we are actually full out losing something here that was truly valuable in the long run.

The ability to have potentially have classes or archetypes that could easily be limited to 'primal spells' of Evocation School would have been perfectly functional and valuable mechanic. My understanding although I can't list them from my own experience, we already will be experiencing from the sounds of it a breaking the ways existing archetypes work.

I'll confess I don't mind the concept of schools of magic having spells they commonly teach, and those crossing scopes of more general types of spells is perfectly fine to me. If they had gotten rid of the old default 'schools' which would have more in world been tied back to Runelords past. I have no problem with modern schools tending to be oriented differently, having war schools and civic schools with their 'core curriculum lists'. But if spells still had schools or 'factors' which would represent some of the basic elements the that would be consistent parts of the spells of all the different 'traditions'.

Then someone asks, but how do I make an old school built off the Runelords of Lust. Ohh.. they say, that is easy, they get this focus spell over here and everything Arcane with the factor of Enchantment is considered part of their curriculum. This can be done at any time after the remaster since the needed information would/could be there. Make new ones/factors such as Elemental and/or something else, and allow spells to include more than one factor. Honestly, I'd expect that the spells factors play into the spell signatures that are supposed to magically arise and appear during casting. I don't imagine them showing up together and having a rune/sign that would commonly appear because a dozen like minded mages all agree they like the spell and should generally teach it to their pupils. That doesn't makes sense, either in game-wise or world-lore wise. Now having easy access to a set curricular spells during level up and easier learning of such spells and even easier casting yes, that makes sense.

So I look forward to seeing what they do... but I don't look forward to losing the tags of Enchantment/Conjuration/Necromancy and such as they were things that were, at least for me, regularly used, both as player and GM. While coming up with a categorization for an odd spell here and there that might not have been categorized in a source, or had been placed in a group that didn't sit well with me wouldn't have been a big concern of mine. But they idea of it being removed from all spells across all tradition is sad for me.

I'll hope they change their mind on the outright removing the categorization, and will look at positively as I can for the new school mechanics from the bonus spell mechanics side that will most likely still be in place somehow.

Influence Encounters on Archives of Nethys

I believe he is talking about the Gamemastery Guide pg. 151 which has some subsystems/optional rules/toolkits to expand what types of encounters/challenges you may put your players through. You may well enjoy getting the book. But I'd suggest you go ahead and look at the rules first at the Archives of Nethys to get an idea.

Then is the term Anemthema being reworked so that it is no longer used in cases where there ARE actual mechanical consequences so that this kind of confusion is avoided or are they recycling "plain language" with mechanical terms?

I'd argue that there is no realistic world where that word can be considered plain as it is not a commonly known term at all which itself represents a problem if the Ancestry articles are meant to be understood at a base-level reading. Middle or High School age kids are 100% going to have to stop reading the Ancestry section in order to google the term if it isn't properly explained what it means right up front, context is helpful here but it won't be a panacea for less well read consumers or most youth.

One of the things that I like(d) about role-playing games was that they seemed to have a natural effect of naturally expanding the vocabulary of the people who played it. When I was myself in Junior high, about the only others around my age (and yes, it was a long time ago) the only people my age I could have discussions about 'Probability' were gamers. I would never hold, having someone taking the time to look up a word or two to understand its meaning better as a bad thing in my view.

Winkie_Phace wrote:

It literally calls them out as specifically being "popular". Not biologically essential.

And it sounds like a replacement for the existing "You might..." and "Others probably..." roleplay hooks, they also serve no mechanical benefit.

Actually, they could serve the 'mechanical' benefit of encouraging players to think through their character to give their motivations more depth and therefore give the whole story for other players a more believable/enjoyable play.

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

I like the sound of having 'popular/commonplace' edits and anathemas for typical members of the ancestry (or specific heritages). It seems obvious they are as presented not required for all members of the ancestry. I also am glad they aren't all whitewashed away and can have some grey to them. I wouldn't want them written to be unconditionally vile, but for typical non-holy ancestries, why would their cultures be unblemished? Anyone honestly know of any culture with no blemish in their past when their past is fully known. With the particular Edict in question, maybe replacing 'hunt' with something less dehumanizing might be a worthwhile consideration. 'Crush', 'Suppress', or 'Repulse' might be options that some might view as leaving open options other than 'inhumane-termination' which some might associate with the term hunt, especially one with knowledge of past dwarven portrayal.

I think some of the fact that since they are presented as suggested/optional/examples, the Vagueness is quite intentional and important. For instance... the wording of enemies and people are both vague enough it could be interpreted by a particular individual of that ancestry in completely different manners but might represent a common cultural value, but different life experience. Also take for instance the mention of family, rather than Clan... this is because some individuals might focus more on their close-knit family, while others might focus on their clan as a whole. Others yet might care not about the desires of any of their current clan-mates and instead care only about brining THEIR CLAN back into what they perceived its former GLORY from their past!

I love the idea of Backgrounds being able to include suggested Edicts and Anathemas too. I presume that the classes where violation of Edicts and Anathemas will clearly indicate that only violations of applicable class-based violations would impact class-based abilities mechanically.

Just thinking about it, I wonder if might makes sense for certain 'lessons' for witches might have options that might have Anathema or Edicts that might come with the particular feats/choices? As a consequence of your having access to this sort of magic you might have a specific anathema or edict tied to your ability to use that ability.

Even non-witches might have access to some sort of Fae Pact type feats that might impose some Edict or Anathema on the individual partaking of the Pact, and having access to some 'benefit' that the Pact gives them.

I like the whole concept as it makes it so Anathema and Edicts are no longer a Paladin thing (or spread from Paladin to other clerics, etc.). But as mentioned a way to help portray your character, but in some cases it may also give an opportunity for certain mechanical benefits, if opting into it by class choice or other such selection.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Is there reason to believe all Minotaurs aren't medium?

Like I'm pretty sure if we get a Large ancestry it won't be of the "get free reach" variety, which a biped probably would be.

Unclear at the moment.

However, if the Large version is a 'roided up version of a hypothetical baseline Medium minotaur, that would sense as to why they appear in an antagonist role.

EDIT: Maybe like the Ikeshti in Starfinder?

My guess would be similar to the sprite... the baseline ancestry and most heritages would be medium, but they might have a Heritage that makes you large and explains what that means for you as a PC. (and I would agree that getting reach from it, probably wouldn't be in its base-line, but who knows might be available with the ancestry as a prerequisite at some higher level)

I sort of imagine this being true about both Minotaurs and Centaurs, potentially each defaulting to medium, but potentially having an opt-in option to become large.

It might be something as simple as allowing one to recover a focus point if you have used a focus point since your last refocus (or it as been at least one hour since you last refocused) Thereby making time relevant, but not eliminating the ability to recover the extra focus points.

This would weaken the relevance of the current focus point boosting feats, potentially either allowing them to come in at a lower level, or otherwise leaving room for them to have some other form of bonus by some relevant class specific perk relating to focus points.

Also, why not allow the three-point recovery feat 'supersede' the 2-point recovery feat, rather than require it as a prerequisite. that would allow you to when you invest into that higher level feat, allows you to in addition to boosting your ability to the next tier, would let you get a new lower level ability added into your character.

It seems like the 'level' of a feat is a relevant 'value' and so there is a very reasonable difference in resource investments such as between spending a 12th level feat, vs. an 18th level feet, vs. both an 12th & 18th level feats. (just grabbing arbitrary levels for examples)

edit:
TBH I don't have a problem with the idea of max recovered focus points becoming higher just as a baseline process for many classes, but I can see it being something that could be argued could be something people could lean into, and thus want to spend feats on.

Perhaps not a print Errata, but there was a 'picture' of the Lorespire on Absalom Station with Golarion floating in the background, with ships coming and going that was used in a blog post.

A new image popped up after a relatively short time with the world gone. But that was just a blog post/image.

Typically, when something is off about a species, the in universe 'explanation' ends up being that it was an Astrazoan's misinterpretation.

Is this saying that if we get a Print Item on sale during this time, that we get the PDF of it as well?

Blog above says:
"This opportunity is like the one we give to subscribers—buy the print version and get a complimentary PDF—or a buy one, get one!"

As to the prior posts, I agree, Yes, you seem to have to follow the link. It also seems like I'm seeing more things showing up, so they may be manually making items available as part of the sale. I've also sometimes followed a link and the price didn't show a sale price available for it, and then refreshed or went back to the link and dug down again, and saw it offered at the sale price.

OGL clearly releases you from risks from you re-using the rules content, mechanical aspects of the rules. (things that likely wouldn't have been a problem, especially if you re-worded things in your own words, but the OGL allows you the simple chance to pick up the pieces you want as they are.

What it doesn't give you, is the ability to use anything designated as IP (Intellectual Property) or images. So the OGL lets you play a game that plays exactly like Pathfinder or other OGL games, using all the same mechanics. However, things Proper Names, that aren't already considered Public Domain, you don't have any right to use as is. So you can talk about a goddess of fire, or even goddess of dawn, but you can't just grab and say the Goddess of the Dawn Sarenrae. You can talk about the Archdevel Asmo.... (sorry old habit of not invoking the name) because that name is an old cultural reference that is public domain, not attributable to anyone who can claim to own it as PI>

So the OGL gives you the game mechanics. The Pathfinder Compatibility license gives you the ability to use a given logo owned by Paizo, but it also involves you agreeing to certain limitations with your products. (I'm not completely sure of all the limitations, but I'm pretty sure most of it involves NOT seeming to imply that you represent Paizo. I think you can't use any specific setting IP with the compatibility license. You have to come up with all your own 'setting' which means you may need to replace components of some rule language to have generic, or replacement IP in various material that it exists in.

Pathfinder Infinite, gives you the ability to publish using all the OGL material, and even allows you to use much of the setting and other aspects of Paizo's IP, but you agree to limit yourself to publishing out of the given Pathfinder Infinite publisher, and the publisher and Paizo get cuts of any sales. I believe it also gives them the ability to insure your product doesn't violate certain Terms of your Agreement, with respect to the type of material you create with the agreement. The Infinite program includes access to a lot of the Paizo IP, including some baseline artwork that can be used.

The Community Use Policy is another important thing that someone could leverage if they want to publish some things that include more than just OGL components but includes a subset of Paizo IP such as their setting. The Community Use Policy allows people to a subset of the Paizo IP, including lots of setting lore as well as the ability to use a lot of images if they are non-photographs that have been used on their BLOGs. The big limitation there is that what you produce has to be non-commercial/free and includes stipulations that it can't be free/behind a paywall, etc.

They talk about there being other commercial licenses, but don't go into details except for that they normally only work with established companies. I think with small start-ups, the Infinite program would be the go-to program if you are looking to do something commercially. If you were wanting to do free and Non-Commercial you could look at the CUP(Community Use).

If you are breaking completely clear of any Paizo Lore/WorldBuilding/etc. and just using to rule framework, and creating your own setting that people could use, playing Pathfinder, I think you're probably pretty safe publishing Pay-What-You want via simple OGL or Compatibility License, however you would like. But if you want to build off of some of Paizo's IP, especially to start with, you should probably look into the Infinite program. I believe it would be able to offer you a Pay-what-you like option. I don't know what all the requirements are for leveraging it. Otherwise, if you are just starting off creating content for free to start, you can probably get started using the CUP, limiting yourself to free items until you get more familiar with insuring you aren't accidently using Paizo IP when you aren't meaning to.

I'd say before you ever start accepting payments for things, it probably a valuable thing to sincerely talk to a lawyerly sort of person to make sure you aren't making an expensive mistake.

You can also start by having homebrew discussions in the Pathfinder homebrew forum to get reactions from people on your thoughts.