Lyoto Machida's page

I want to answer this, but I feel like with no experience playing past level 4 I can't give anything close to a fair opinion.

I feel like the effect of one stat bonus is minimal, since it won't let you get your highest stat past 22, it will just let you hit 22 five levels early or hit 22 if you start with a 16.

Why can't you get a stat past 22? Is there a cap spelled out somewhere in the CRB?

What happens when you click on "Product Reviews"? There should be a link for writing a review under that.

Ah I see it now. For whatever reason, all I could see were the actual reviews, not a place to write my own. Thank you!

I'm sorry if it's a really easy answer in that there's just a button I'm missing, but I can't figure out how to review a scenario.

I'm trying to post a review for a Starfinder scenario and I can't figure out how. Is there a qualification I need to be able to post a review or some other criteria? I'm just wondering how to do it.

Thank you for the help, my apologies if this is the wrong place for this post.

Never tried it myself personally but Illusiory Creature is actually closer to first edition shadow summons than it is to major image. The illusion can do damage now!

Charles Scholz wrote:

Lyoto Machida wrote:

I miss that variant of goblins that were shown in ROTR and "Wrath of the Fleshwarped Queen," "The Emerald Spire" and many featured prominently in many other adventures. I hope they will make a return sooner than later!

The PC Goblins are the exceptions, not the normal.

I figure PC Goblins as outcasts.

Actually if you read Lost Omens Characters Guide the Scarps of Varisia are peculiar in that they've always been treated as vermin by humans, have fought and lost a lot of battles, and the consequence is that they're all very young and that their less evil elders, who kept the wisdom and traditions of their culture, all died in those skirmishes. The humans (and Shalelu, here) don't give them time to grow old and take back their old ways, so they're a culture of teenage delinquents at best.

That said, I confess I think the Scarps are fun. At the same time, I'm having troubles with Pathfinder's characterization of different species (thankfully the word race has been mostly thrown out of the window). It is mostly essentialist: how do ogres behave? How do lamias behave? How do goblins behave? Culture is tied to species/ancestry/"race". Sure, there are variations, but even dwarves and elves fall prey to this mischaracterization. I can almost get behind that because the common ancestries have lots of ethnicities with different cultures, but hobgoblins, for instance, are all a species of efficiency-minded magic-hating ruthless soldiers. I know they were created to be that, but with time they could have become different. More varied, as humans are. As most ancestries could be.

Fantasy has this bad habit of treating different species as monolithic. All lamias are evil. Almost all Avistani orcs are evil. Almost all elves are chaotic good. Humans are the only ones who seem to be molded by their life experiences, as they should, everyone else is seen through an essentialist lens that goes back to Tolkien at the least.

Isn't it time we fought...

I'm not advocating that goblins should be evil and vicious monsters. My complaint (an admittedly minor issue) is that it's been nearly a year since PF 2 came out and I haven't seen any examples of the classic ankle-biter goblin.

Maybe I just missed it? I haven't bought all the Second Edition material, but my experience is now goblins are monolithic in the opposite direction. All the goblins I run into are either sympathetic, helpful or generally good-hearted to the point where I feel like the existence of the evil psycho goblin got ret-conned out of Golarion.

The differences don't necessarily have to be major and you can use a light touch if you don't want to craft extra encounters that might be skipped.

Let's say you have a fantastic encounter you want the players to experience, but you also want to have some choices or skill checks along the way. That's fine, but how about if the party goes left and charges straight ahead then you can have the bad guys on high ground with ranged weapons pelting the party as soon as they enter the hall.

If they go right and use stealth/survival or something like that they can catch the bad guys unaware on level ground, forcing some of them to go melee while the others get into position for the ranged assault. You can use the same monsters and keep the encounter mostly the same IMO, but have some tweaks to terrain, tactics, items etc. depending on when they run into encounter and how they get there.

I will say, even just giving the option for the party to use bluff/stealth/diplomacy etc means you're probably doing just fine. I understand you can't do this on every encounter. If you have a badass boss fight, you shouldn't have it be easily bypassed by a diplomancer. But please try to make so that choices leading up to the boss fight have some impact, even marginally on the fight itself.

In the Devil at the Crossroads scenario, which I thought was a little lame, AFAIK, (correct me if I'm wrong) the fight happens the same way, on the same terrain, with the same villain and the same tactics regardless of what the party during the hours leading up to the fight.

And if you do want a scenario with three straight fights you think are cool that are the same. I honestly can live with that as long the plot is up front about it. I just dislike feeling like there's a bunch of windrow dressing to hides the facts you're fight three battles no matter what you do.

Disclaimer: (I'm not a professional scenario writer or anything like that, I'm just one guy with his own strong preferences to I like certain adventures.)

I hate feeling like choices I make are totally meaningless. That's my main overarching point.

Sounds like you want a pure fighter, but if you're willing to look at other classes, a Paladin with full plate, a sword and shield that takes the "Shield other" spell combined with the Fey Foundling and Extra Lay on Hands Feats will make it really difficult for a gm to kill anyone with hit point damage.

Whenever either you or your shielded buddy get hit, just LOH the damage away and watch your gm roll his eyes in annoyance.

Some railroading is good because you don't want players just wandering in circles, but excessive railroading means the parties choices don't matter. Just played a new PFS scenario, Devil in the Crossroads, where it kind of felt like no matter what we did, we were going to have to deal with all the fights/hazards. I get PFS sometimes has to be railroady for time constraints and for certain missions. (Wouldn't make sense not to kill the Runelord in the Waking Rune)

but the game is at it's worst when it feels like clever or diplomatic solutions just don't exist, especially when it feels like it's supposed to be a murder mystery or a political intrigue scenario as opposed to a dungeon delve.

I just can't stand it when an adventure gives players a choice to go left or right and the same monster is behind both doors. If you're going to make players face a certain amount of fights, just be up front about it. Have one hallway with three fights in larger spaces like this ----0----0----0.

It would have been a mistake to dismiss the goblin as a joke, though. People died for such mistakes. That toy horse’s neck was smeared with real blood; those tails had been collected from real dogs, and some of them looked like they’d been big and fierce. The grisly kneecaps that served as the goblin’s pauldrons were real flesh and bone, and from their ragged edges had probably been chewed off human legs. Maybe live ones.

That was the danger with goblins, Shalelu thought. You laughed at them, thinking they were stupid and big-headed and preposterous, and then they slashed your ankles and pulled you down and cut your throat before you realized that they were, actually, serious as murder.

I miss this version of the Goblin race a lot nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I know a lot of people who enjoy playing the little buggers. And it's totally fair that not every member with a certain ancestry should behave the same.

But recently it feels like Pathfinder has only shown examples of the good and relatively kind goblins. While the stupid, yet vicious goblin villains who loved to sing as they tried to chop off your legs or burn you to death with firebombs have vanished.

I miss that variant of goblins that were shown in ROTR and "Wrath of the Fleshwarped Queen," "The Emerald Spire" and many featured prominently in many other adventures. I hope they will make a return sooner than later!

I hated Dex to damage in PFS 1, to be honest, It made strength a nearly pointless stat for so many builds it became obnoxious.

You shouldn't get to have Better AC, Better Reflex saves, Better acrobatics/thievery/stealth AND still get to do as much damage as a person who invested in strength. (It was worse in PFS 1 when Dex also gave you the best initiative.)

Characters are just as defined by what they can't do as by what they can do.

If you don't want to pump both Strength and Dex and Con to get a social stat, you can pump Strength and con, go Mountain Stance and be slightly slower moving, less nimble brute with KO power and an iron chin.

Or you can dump con and live with your strong and nimble monk having a glass jaw.

Or you can pump Dex and Con, ignore strength and live with being a quick and tough-as-nails martial artist who lacks one-hitter-quitter power.

Or you pump all physical stats accept that your monk spent most of his life training to be in peak physical condition so he isn't well versed in other intellectual or social pursuits.

But somewhere along the way, you have to figure out what you're willing to live with your character being bad at.

Couple Updates for Western Massachusetts. Remove The Oddysey bookshop link from South Hadley, but add Off The Wall Games in Hadley.

Off The Wall Games:
Located in: Hadley Village Barn Shops
Address: 41 Russell St, Hadley, MA 01035

It's warhorn link is this Western Ma Warhorn.

GM Wageslave wrote:

There is a danger in table variation and average WBL if a GM 'gotchas' players every time they run while another GM is much more rational about such things.

You HAVE to warn the player before they do it.

If people are still doing it anyway often enough to be a significant kick in your WBL either the DM is being too strict(we're indiana jones, not the harpers) and the players are rebelling or the players are going to be a bunch of murderhobos no matter what. The former needs an intervention from higher up anyway and the latter deserve the dip in WBL.

I hope I didn't imply I would "gotcha' players. I would just straight up tell them if you go ahead with this course of action you will need an atonement. Obviously if they keep doing stuff that is evil it could be questioned, but forcing a tax for the occasionally dicey act seems fair to me.

Atonement isn't really all that expensive for most PCs. If characters want to push the boundaries, without going into slaughter the innocent territory, I think asking for atonement is a perfectly fair way to handle it.

(as there is quite a bit GM shortage/domotiivation to GM PF2 over SFS)

May I ask why? Don't you get a chronicle sheet for the adventure to apply to your own character in both settings? So why would there be less interest? Is it harder to prepare Or is there just a lot of starfinder around your area? (Don't get me wrong, Starfinder is great, I'm just curious why there's less motivation for PF2E)

Is your party making use of the faction boons that help out low level characters in a part of higher level characters?

My GM's understanding of the level bump is that it applies to players who are the lowest possible level for the spread. Hence, you if I was level one I would get the bump, but because I was level 2 in the 3-4 tier I did not. Is that incorrect? Either way, still feels bad to get zero extra reward for playing with heightened danger.

I'm looking forward very much to playing around once more options become available. The three action thing is cool, but at low levels there's only so many choices. I don't think our tactics will get much better due to it being PFS (No fault on any dev or designer, just the nature of pick up games), but hopefully that doesn't doom us.

The only other (major) issue/concern I've had is how bad it felt to play in the higher tier when you're a level below. I played a level 2 monk in the 3/4 tier of Burden of Envy and while it was fine for most of the scenario, I felt real useless in combat; I couldn't even grapple a wizard despite a 10 on the die and +8 modifier. And getting no extra money despite increased risk was a feels bad moment.

I might be worrying over nothing of course since it's just low level, since being level 7 in an 8-9 tier or whatever usually isn't nearly as bad since you'll have more options.

BTW, I know it sounds like I'm nervous/critical, but I have definitely had some fun experiences in 2E so far and think it's got a lot of potential and the exploration mode seems to run a lot smoother. I'm amazed how much easier it seems to play adventures that take place over several days and how all the skill checks really make a difference.

Anecdotally, my home group is tackling the last book of Age of Ashes and the common refrain from all the players is "this is so much better than PF1!"

That's not to rag on PF1 (which is still one of my favorite games and one I still support with 3pp content), but what I've been hearing from my players is that the fighter feels more heroic and like his impact on the fight is a lot more meaningful as he tanks and dishes out crits right and left, the barbarian turns into a dragon when she rages (often accompanied by villainous cackling and phrases like "Flee puny mortals!"), the sorcerer's favorite trick is yelling "Continuous energy bullets!" while flying before unleashing 15 magic missiles, and the druid spent most of last session transformed into a phoenix.

So at least from their perspective, high level is super epic and they all love that they're still only taking a couple minutes per turn so that we're finishing at least two fights per session (which never happened in high level PF1 games).

This gives me a lot of hope! I'm assuming your players aren't ROFL stomping encounters and that the enemies can match roughly match their power level. I love high level, high power combat in PF1 (I primarily play PFS), but I can't deny the final fights of some of my favorite scenarios took several hours to resolve.

FWIW, I haven't played any high level pf2 yet, but I hope those scenarios are able to match the epic scale and heart pumping excitement of some of the best PF1 scenarios ala Salvation of the Sages or the Waking Rune.

I loved those "battle of the gods" style fights, and I hope that sensation remains at high levels. I'm a little nervous the gated math and nerfed spells will neuter that sensation. I'm not saying I worried the fights will be too easy, hell about 90 percent of the battles in the 1-4 scenarios wind up with two PCs unconscious. I'm just worried it will lack that world shaking sensation. Hopefully I'm just paranoid though.

Sorry for the Necro, but I'm running this in about a week and I'm not sure where else to get advice on this.

One of the encounters features a Paladin who detect evil on them when they enter a library. it says "Once Pradnyara detects no evil among
the party, her attitude becomes indifferent." So the PCs can try diplomacy on her

The issue is some of members of the party got a Ioun Stone from the Refuge of Time, which was written after this scenario. The stone gives an extra feat, but also radiates an aura of evil that her detect evil should pick up.

The scenario gives no guidance for what I should do when the Paladin does detect that evil aura. Should I allow the diplomacy check at a penalty? Or should I just have the paladin detect the evil, assume they're thieves and fight them to the death? Also, I'm pretty sure her smite evil won't work, but I'd like to double check.

I love Matt Duval What Prestige is Worth is pretty deadly/challenging, especially on high tier. More so than the typical scenario, at least.

I didn't find it to be that challenging when I played it, (Maybe I played low tier? I can't remember, definitely a ton of roleplay though.) Every 7-11 scenario has some potential for deadliness with an unprepared or an inexperienced party, especially on high tier, so your mileage may vary.

I love Matt Duval scenarios and will always volunteer to run them, but they do require a longer time slot and your GM/players' A-games. Anything by Matt is on my favorites list, to be honest.

Co-Sign! I'm a little biased because I'm lucky enough to live in the area where Matt GMs, but his scenarios are awesome!. They might take a little extra time and effort, but its absolutely worth it. Just don't try and run them cold. (Not that you should ever run a 7-11 scenario cold!)

Depends on what you are looking for in a scenario, but here are a couple of my favorites for each style.

Looking for a challenging, epic fight? "The Waking Rune" and "Salvation of the Sages" are two of the most intense and challenging scenarios that can be ran for high level players. If possible, run the lead-ups to them for maximum impact (Almost every season 4 7-11 for the The Waking Rune, Beacon Below and Ancients Anguish for Salvation of the sages.)

Looking for scenarios with a wacky final and memorable final monster? Check out "What Sleeps in Stone" Or "Of Kirin and Kraken,"

Looking for scenarios with more roleplay and less deadliness in a fun setting? Season 10 is great at this. What Prestige is Worth" is a scenario with lots of different roleplaying opportunities and some opportunities for dark bargains and Tapestries' Trial has some really fun interactions with some NPCs who have been influencing the Society's storyline for years.

Hope these help a little bit!

This Guy is. Been running some 5-9 and 7-11 PFS Scenarios to get people ready for the Waking Rune and eventually play some of the 12-15 scenarios. People around here aren't ready to just toss away their characters just yet.

Of course, we do also play some second edition as well. It's not an either or proposition.

I have some initial thoughts, I can't criticize the relative lack of options in 2e because it doesn't have nearly as much material as 1e, but here's some other initial thoughts.

I like how fast paced and dynamic combat is in 2e, feels like there's a lot more combinations of actions that are possible and it makes for interesting fights. I like how weapons feels different and I like how each class appears to have several play styles within itself.

What I don't like how important level is in 2E though. If something is one level higher than you, it's really noticeable like when fighting skeletal champions at level one. Maybe this changes at higher levels, when more spells and equipment are available, but it seems like if you aren't built optimally, you'll get crit to death really fast.

I hope I can get to play at higher levels soon, so I can have a better informed opinion.

Here's the exact wording for Lunge copy-pasted from AON.

PFS Legal Lunge Single Action Feat 2
Fighter
Source Core Rulebook pg. 146
Requirements You are wielding a melee weapon.
Extending your body to its limits, you attack an enemy that would normally be beyond your reach. Make a Strike with a melee weapon, increasing your reach by 5 feet for that Strike. If the weapon has the disarm, shove, or trip trait, you can use the corresponding action instead of a Strike.

My interpretation is that I since the lunge comes with a strike baked into it, I can use lunge to basically decide If I want to hit them from 10 feet away or five feet away. But that seems really powerful with no drawback, so I wanted to check if I had missed something.

From a gameplay standpoint it was all the the things they got and the versatility, they weren't super specialized but it was easy to fit them into any role, tank, damage, healer, skills.

Plus the thematic skill boosts and abilities, like Bane vs whatever you wanted + unique spell list.

Out of mechanics I'd say divine tracker/assassin/investigator.

Just out of curiosity, How would you build an inquisitor as a healer? I know they can cast the "cure" series, but I don't feel like there is anything that actually makes them good at healing.

If your GM is fine with you controlling 25 HD worth of creatures at level five go nuts.

But a rules interpretation that makes a fifth level Packlord Druids essentially as strong as an entire party of level five adventurers is extremely suspicious.

lets see, you could have the lower level henchmen to cast dispel magic while the demon lord attacks. You could give the Demon have teleport magic.

You could add smoke or other visual impairments that make targeting difficult.

Maybe the ground is rumbling due to earthquakes and the wind is howling to force them to make concentration checks?

Hell, if it's a demon lord, doesn't he have some wish magic? Couldn't he just use that to screw over the party?

I will say that kineticists look very intimidating because of all that text, but google N Jolly's guide to the kineticist and that will spell it out.

In play they are actually pretty simple. You gather power, apply an infusion and do the listed amount of damage. They actually have an extremely high floor that's makes them quite easy to play.

Concentration checks, The grappling flowchart and spell components. No one remembers what components are used for what spells.

Slayers, Stalker Vigilantes, Investigators, Ninjas and the Sanctified Slayer Inquisitor archetype all fit at least one of these qualities. (Ok the vigiliante doesn't technically get sneak attack, but it's basically the same thing.)

There's a ton of classes who can be stealthy, have good perception and a decent amount of skill points even if they don't have sneak attack or trapfinding.

Inquisitors are amazing because you can make practically any build or style of character work. Two handed weapon smasher, ranged DPS, caster, finesse fighter all are viable trees to build from. Of course, it also can lead to option paralysis.

Without knowing a lot more about what you're doing, might I direct you to the Inquisitor's symposium.. It's basically an encyclopedia for Inquisitors and has more information than you'll know what to do with, but check out the fighting styles and domain chapters for some suggestions.

Hopefully this helps a little bit.

I'm going to miss all the occult classes. I adored the kineticist, the mesmerist, the medium and the whole flavor of the book. I liked the unique style of casting and I adored the general weird sensations they provided.

I know the bard will have occult casting, but somehow it just doesn't feel quite the same to me.

I'm also deeply going to miss the Inquisitor. Probably my favorite class in terms of playstyle and balance with sixth level casting and decent martial skill. You can build an inquisitor to focus on just about any combat style and have it be reasonably effective.

I'm not going to miss the convoluted animal companion rules not to mention their power level. We've had so many discussions over how much control players have over them, what they are able to do and what types of items they can have it's annoying. Plus it always seemed overpowered that a ninth level caster essentially got its own personal fighter with zero drawbacks.

I think Molthune and Nirmathas have some parallels to colonial America and Britain, though it's not relevant at all in Rise of the Runelords.

It's both an advantage and a disadvantage that the many nations in Golarion are so distinct and disconnected from each other they might as well be different planets. For example, Nex and Cheliax have barely any connection. Same with Geb and Irrisen, or Jalmeray and Brevoy. Upside is adventuring in each of those places feels like a totally unique experience, the downside is it sometimes doesn't always feel like a fully connected world.

Honestly, I wouldn't go out of my way to give them too much of the lore outside of maybe recommending they get the Inner Sea World Guide. As they progress in Pathfinder, they'll naturally learn more and ask questions if they get interested.

Golarian is so massive and detailed it's nearly impossible to fill them in all the lore without overwhelming them. It's better imo to release it slowly and stick to things they ask about.

Arachnofiend wrote:

Lyoto Machida wrote:

I'd rule charisma affects physical appearance simply to dissuade the "beautiful woman who justifies low charisma by being a knob to everyone" character from showing up.

I don't want to play with that character and I don't want to run a game for that character. If you insist on being the beautiful jerkass, I will make you spend the charisma to do so.

Have you considered having an adult conversation about why you don't like to play with this type of character rather than being passive aggressive about it and reaching to tie game mechanics to your personal pet peeves

At the least, if a GM doesn't want a player playing that kind of character, it seems more sensible to ban it rather than introduce restrictions. If the player grudgingly accepts those restrictions, then both GM and player are unhappy, and that's worse than the original problem.

First off, I don't I'm twisting the rules since in the book it says charisma affects appearance.

Anyway, the thing that always happens (in my own experience admittedly) is once the player with the pretty character has charisma, that player doesn't feel the need to be a jerk to justify the avatar beauty and lack of charisma. They just start playing their character like they have, well, charisma.

Yes, I could just ban people from having excessively pretty avatars which always snuffs that archetype. But I guess I prefer trying work out a compromise rather than going for the sledgehammer approach.

I'd rule charisma affects physical appearance simply to dissuade the "beautiful woman who justifies low charisma by being a knob to everyone" character from showing up.

I don't want to play with that character and I don't want to run a game for that character. If you insist on being the beautiful jerkass, I will make you spend the charisma to do so.

Getting ready to run the scenario this weekend, and one of the things I'm hung up on is the heresy devil. He really seems primed to shred a party that's not ready to deal with deeper darkness. "...he avoids using his blasphemous bile and summon abilities, nor does he cast any of the following spells: stinking cloud, unhallow, or unholy blight." Of course he's not going to use unhallow, it has a 24 hour casting time. But he's got blasphemy, and against a 7-8 party that will be devastating. Did other GM's just stick with searing words or was there another approach?

The party can rip down the curtains to raise the light level one step for each curtain they rip down in the event nobody has an oil of daylight. It mentions that in the scenario as an option, it takes a strength check and some way to get onto the 20 foot tall bookshelves IIRC.

Also, I stuck with just the searing words when I ran it, that seemed like the intent.

Is this a theoretical most HP build or a practical one? Because in theory you do all that barbarian stuff above and put skill points into UMD and activate a wand of false life for up to 13 more hit points.

But realistically, you won't have access to a wand of false life by level 4.

Lyoto Machida wrote:

I don't have a ton of experience as a cleric, but one piece of advice I would give you to never prepare any of the cure light/moderate/serious wounds spells. You can always cast those anyway by dumping another spell.

That is assuming that you have the Spontaneous Casting ability for positive energy.

I am not recommending selecting negative energy, since that is far less useful than positive energy in most campaigns -- but there are useful archetypes that trade away the Spontaneous Casting ability completely. If for some reason you pick one of those archetypes, you will need to prepare Cure spells.

But you definitely never need to prepare any spell that you can cast spontaneously.

I think OP said in his post he was going pure cleric, so I assumed he hadn't ditched the spontaneous casting. If OP is using an archetype that ditches spontaneous casting, ignore what I said.

PS. I should have said this in my first post, but welcome to the forums and welcome to Pathfinder OP! I hope you found the responses here somewhat helpful and if you need any more specifics just ask, people here enjoy giving advice.

I don't have a ton of experience as a cleric, but one piece of advice I would give you to never prepare any of the cure light/moderate/serious wounds spells. You can always cast those anyway by dumping another spell.

So prepare spells that help you and your party fight, like Bull's Strength, shield of faith, protection from evil, etc. and only use the cure spells in a jam.

Also, if you are going to front line with 10 dexterity, get the heavy armor proficiency feat. If you don't, your ac won't keep up at later levels and with a D8 hit die, you won't be frontlining for long.

Oathbreakers Die from Season 10 might fit. Now there is some combat so if you're looking for a nearly pure social scenario Bid for Alabastrine wins.

Oathbreakers Die is unique in the sense there is a timeline of events that will occur without PC intervention. When and where they intervene and if they spot certain clues makes a large difference in hour things play out.

I never see anyone enforce the exact time for thoroughly searching a room. Most groups just say it takes five minutes or ten minutes to thoroughly search a room and call it a day.

If it's for PFS, around level 6 or 7 you could start spending some gold/prestige for displacement potions. It's might not be as cost effective as armor, but for tough fights it's a great way to be a "tank" in a pinch even if your AC is crap.

How long do you say passes each time they search a room?

My GM says it takes about 10 minutes each time a group makes a perception check to thoroughly search a room and I'd suggest you do the same.

This way he can't just have shield of faith, divine favor, monstrous physique etc. all up and running when a fight starts. If you allow all his 12 minute long buffs to last half the dungeon crawl, it's going to be tough for you to challenge him.

Make him spend the first couple rounds buffing himself to his 38 AC and attack instead of just saying it takes 30 seconds to thoroughly search a room and allowing him to get way more mileage out of his spells than he should.

Quarterbacking to an excessive degree (which I'm sometimes guilty off) is a problem, but I think the term is overused especially when playing with new players.

If a player has never played an inquisitor before and they're playing the level 7 pregen in PFS, is it quarterbacking to ask if they want to activate bane before attacking the final boss?

Is it quarterbacking to remind a new player that if they cast a spell in melee range without casting defensively, that they will get cracked in the mouth with AOO?

I think it's better to give advice to a new player or at the least remind them of possible options instead of staying silent while a newbie playing Ezren does nothing but shoot a crossbow.

I'm more interested on how the two handed weapon Inquisitor has a 38 AC to be honest.

I can see having a 38 to hit or a 38 AC, but I'm not sure how you get both.

It's got an annoying prerequisite of Step Up, but the the Press to the Wall feat in the Melee Tactics Toolbox is insanely good for rogues (and all sneak attack based martials.)

Enemies backing themselves against a wall to avoid flanks? This is a great way to teach em a lesson.

Hello all, I have an archivist bard who regularly adventures with a tiger loving Druid. Problem is my main bardic performance (Naturalist (See below) is language dependent, which means the tiger is unaffected by it normally. My question is if the Druid casts speak with animals on me, (See below) can it benefit from my bardic performance? (My bard speaks Sylvan, if that matters) Or does the Tiger actually have to learn the language?

Alternatively, would a casting of Tongues (see below) on myself or the tiger allow it to benefit?

All descriptions were copied from Archive of Nethys.

Does the initial target of my spellshot take the damage from Arcing surge? or does it only affect other enemies that are in the line of effect?

I guess I'm wondering since the creature I hit is the new "point of origin" Does that mean it doesn't take the damage? If that's the case, I'm way better off going with Explosive blasts or some other Radius spell right?

From the Hao Jin Heirophant 10-11 chronicle:

If I want to use this on a fallen ally, do I need to pay the cost for it by myself before anything happens and have it on hand as an emergency? Or can I have the ally agree to pay me back after I use it? Usually allies can chip in for this type of thing, but I'm not sure how it works for the boon.