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So I've got a player starting a gunslinger and we're trying to figure out how many actions it is to load and fire. We've run into a snag.

1. Blackpowder ammo is alchemical and has the activate trait.
2. Magical ammunition has to be used the turn its activated.
3. The alchemical trait says its specifically not magical.
4. Most firearms have a reload speed higher than 0.

So how does this actually work?

Ways I can see it:

1. Alchemical ammo is non-magic ammo, so its an action to activate, an action to load, and remains on standby until fired. 3 actions to fire a Reload 1 firearm.

2. Like the above, but works like Magic Ammunition it has to be activated the same turn you want to shoot it. Same 3 actions to fire.

3. It works more or less like any other ranged weapon. If its reload 1, you spend an action to reload and you're off to the races.

AFAIK there's no Errata for it yet and the discussions I can find either focus only on magic ammunition or treat alchemical ammunition is though its magic despite the alchemical trait saying it specifically isn't magic.

I signed onto the Organized Play portal to put in sessions for next month's tables and it says I have way more AcP than I did last time I looked at it. Same applies for Starfinder.

Anyone else seeing this?

I'm having an issue with this class and determining what makes it unique. It feels like three goblins in a trenchcoat pretending to be an investigator. It's gimmick might be more interesting if my players weren't the sort that just regularly bring golf bags full of things to handle weaknesses. As a knowledge character it feels like its only knowledgeable in the exact moment of a fight. Even though it lets you prepare it with research it seems like the ability to use esoteric antithesis falls off if you if you use Find Flaws in a preceding encounter.

It's ability to add damage to something without a weakness limits its support abilities and stack weirdly with Implement Empowerment. You get damage on top of damage in a class that's a step behind other martial characters in hit chance. The theme sections read like "this is the guy who knows how to fight rare creatures" but it seems like you'll struggle to hit in those situations. Comparing it to the investigator (as the other big "know stuff" class) if that's the guy you've got Pursue a Lead tagged on, you're more likely to hit and know their weaknesses.

Comparing it to the things my players normally bring to the table it looks like a hitter that can't hit, a knowledge character who doesn't know anything, and a support character who can't support. GMing for it, I'm not sure what advice to give players.

If I had to propose a fix, make wisdom its key score and swap one of the damage buffs to some kind of hit fix. Everything about "right tool for the job" class screams wisdom to me. Maybe make the antithesis apply an AC penalty to the target if it doesn't have a weakness. Something like the ranger's knowledge feats might work?

I’m just coming back to GMing after hiatus and had seven players after a walk-up. I wasn’t aware that had changed and was made aware of it only after the fact. Just so I’m clear the policy is now to:

1. See if someone else can punt GM with no resources?

2. If they can’t, tell the walk up to take a hike?

As we our local infrastructure has taken a dive (and probably will again with delta on the rise), I can’t say I’m a fan of turning folks away.

So this is a bit of walk.

I'm playing an neutral evil Champion with the Blessed One archetype (the deity has heal/harm). We pulled two encounters and being the sort of player who can do math after a few hits, I tell the party we can't win and they need to run. I'm mostly surrounded and on the wrong side of both groups, but I'm able to at least buy a few rounds. End of the fight comes, my character is unconscious but made recovery saves so is alive. The post-session discussion turns to what to do.

In my opinion, I broke Code. Take Divine Ally and the Focus Pool. General consensus is that's the case.

The question comes down the archetype. Breaking Code says you lose Focus Pool. I'm of the opinion that I lose it all, including from the archetype. There's some discussion as to if that's the case. I can't find rules saying otherwise, but figured I'd through it out there in case there was any clarification.

I've tried repeatedly to add new payment info, reload my address, and done it over different browsers and it repeatedly declines all my cards. How do I fix?

Just throwing my thoughts on the Magus into the void.

Synthesis
-Shooting star’s range limitation is kinda boring. You already lose the spell on the miss, may as well let them use some touch spells.
-The other two: the weapon restrictions feel kinda needless. A two handed magus already has a problem material components and a one handed magus is trading some damage potential for an open hand to use toys with (like a book for a certain first level feat).

Striking Spell
-Given that Int is not a key ability score, maybe make the spell hit if the weapon hits or add the weapon’s item bonus to the spell’s hit or DC.
-Letting it linger until your next turn helps this class’s action economy, which is something because its all over the place.

The spells
-If we’re going to have this spell slot restriction, make it 6 spells instead of 4. You’re taking a first level feat for 9 spells counting cantrips. It just feels bad and add feat taxes to get slots back you already had.
-Magus potency is boring. Because it doesn’t stack all it does is trade money for action economy. Good for having spare weapons, which is an upside. I think if it increased the bonuses, but on a “until the end of your next turn” duration, it’d give it some of the 1E Magus feeling of a being a burst damage specialists.
-Focus spells: A damaging focus spell would be cool.

The feats:
1: Make Arcane Fist a synthesis; as pointed out elsewhere the book block thing doesn’t work with any of the existing syntheses and in general feels worse than the other knowledge feat option at first level. Also, I dig combat assessment.
2: Spirit sheath is great. Feat chains to expand it out would be groovy.
6: The spell slot feats don’t feel great. Pay a tax to get back something you already had is the epitome of negative play experience. Spell parry and its advanced version are super cool.
8: Spell swipe is super cool.
10: The synthesis feats should all be built into class progression a la the alchemist fields. The teleport should be full speed, healing should eat all persistent damage, comet spell is cool.
12: Magic sense feels like a skill feat.
14: School Shroud is cool. More like this would be neat.
16-20: Don’t have enough personal experience with high level play to comment.

Had a chance to play through Rose Street this weekend and would like to put my thoughts out there. Overall, I think it does a good job of explaining the modes of play that will matter in PFS and gave a pretty good explanation of how things work. More or less, it felt like a PFS scenario but with a few glaring exceptions. I'm worried these exceptions will make PFS a less fun experience going forward.

First is how magic items and identification is handled. Because identification takes an hour, in most scenarios they'll be relegated to gold/silver on the chronicle and play no role in the scenario. Even with quick identification, you're looking at a pretty hefty amount of time to ID loot. In PF1 many scenarios often reward the players with items that will be useful later in the scenario. Unless its handed over by an NPC, loot will not matter in this model if the scenario has any amount of time pressure in the story.

While Quick Identification can alleviate this problem to some extent it takes a long time to get there and with few exceptions is unavailable to 1st level characters and moderate hauls will still take over an hour (in-game time)for most levels of play. My overall impression is that magic items as in-scenario tools will be limited as a narrative device and I worry that this will harm the diversity of scenarios.

The second problem is healing. While clerics are super duper good at it, nobody else is even okay it. While Rose Street is broken up into quests, it made me think that without a cleric or an ability to identify items like potions in a reasonable time, PFS scenarios will be much harder. While we know Paizo is trying to get away from the Holy Stick, doing so has brought us back a state of always needing a cleric. Given the fluid composition of PFS tables, you can't always guarantee one. If Alchemists could be de-coupled from resonance in some way, they may make a good healer as well giving players a non-religious healer. As someone who regularly plays support characters, I'd certainly appreciate that.

Some general impressions how how the game looks to me and a few of my regular players. As is our tradition, we'll start with the bad.

1. Ancestries don't feel good. It seems like Paizo had two goals going into this "make races less front-loaded" and "make racial options". What seems to have come out of that system is largely "take the options you had right away and spread them out". This is really aparaent when you compare feats that replicate old features to new creations. Getting a reaction bonus to certain saves at the cost of a large resonance penalty (that locks you out of magic items until 4th level if you don't bump your cha) seems really bad compared to an elf's ability to just have an arcane spell from jump.

2. Half-Elves/Orcs double this problem. This is my biggest complaint about this book. From a legacy standpoint, it was a bad idea. The actual half-elf/orc feat isn't great from a design point of view (low vision, an RP option, a skill and a buff) as it really feels like an RP penalty to take (I'm a half-elf raised by elves? Guess I'll just take the RP option in place of something usable). Maybe if Orc were a core race alongside the others, it wouldn't seem as bad but as its it looks like there's even less options.

3. The PDF character sheet has that background. It's a pain. I get having it in the book, but make one free of it for people who don't want to fiddle with settings. It'd be a nice quality of life change.

4. Reaction bloat. While I like the increased focus on reactions in the game, I feel like Paizo went crazy with it. Classes like Paladins really suffer from just having too many reactions. Many of these don't scale well (+2 to saves is neat, but boring past early levels). If you don't want to back those into the class's math, rerolls matter more throughout the game, giving your choices more impact and rewards players for taking the ability rather than the Paladin wondering if he needs the save buff before he rolls rather than having the ability to get literal divine intervention after failing. Fighters also seem to suffer from the same problem to an extent, juggling multiple options.

5. The word "Feat". Maybe call class options something different, talent or something. I get the logic, but reading the small print class chart where 30% of the words seem to be "feat" gets old quickly.

Good News

1. Modular class design works. The class feat system works to bake in a path to replicate what were archetypes right into the class, leaving that design space open for universal archetypes, which seem like a neat idea. Even having branching paths like Druid being able to take lesser versions of the other option's abilities provides a lot of versatility to a character.

2. Spell points make for an elegant system (but might need a better name). Having played a lot of classes with "pool" mechanics or uses per day in some combination or another, having that boil down to one resource pool evens things out nicely. It does feel a bit less powerful than 1E, but I haven't spent enough time with it. Only criticism is that "spell points" aren't used to cast spells, they're used to activate powers. So...maybe work on that.

3. Anathemas (should replace alignments). They need some work to allow a wider range of narrative options, but for a playtest I'll take what we're given. Every GM playing a game with an alignment system has had arguments over alignment. You could replace the "lawful good" requirement for Paladin with just "this is your code, this is your gods' anathema. Behave yourself" and you create the same concept without shackling it to an old idea. They're specific enough to matter and lay out consequences clearly.

Ugly.

This is really one minor thing. It'd be nice to have had a blog post or something saying what's been removed. There's been a lot of questions regarding arcane spell failure and oversized weapons that don't seem clearly addressed by the book. Whatever is in the final book, a blog post or document saying "these common assumptions are things you should not assume" would be helpful for many of us. Pathfinder is essentially running an 18 year old engine, its easy to assume. Clarifications help.

I'm having trouble finding the damage for Large Weapons, as described in the Titan Mauler ability on Page 56. Any ideas where it's hiding at?

Thanks in advance.