Malkyn's page

So my PCs have been impressed with persistent damage whenever it is dealt to them after running them through Fall of Plaguestone. We're converting a PF1 Adventure Path to PF2 and they're making 8th level characters to get a feel for some mid-level play before making their final 12th level characters. My players were looking to make use of persistent damage, and a question came up that I couldn't find an answer to no matter how I trawled the forums. I'm hoping I'm just not seeing where this has been addressed and there's already a solid answer. If that's the case, please provide a link. If there's been no solid answer from Paizo, I'd like to hear how others work it and/or compare the solution I've thought of. Anyway, here's the question.

If a creature takes 2d4 persistent fire damage, the rules say you'll reroll that amount each time they take damage (averaging 5). What if a creature takes rolled persistent damage, but then also proceeds to take a flat value? Say another person then inflicted 4 persistent fire damage. Does the creature treat these as two separate conditions since they're the same damage type but are different potential values? Like rolling a save versus the 2d4 and then another save vs the 4 and taking each as individual damage values? Or are you supposed to treat the average on dice values as being the higher amount?

Has there been any official word on this? My inclination would be to treat the value of a rolled persistent damage effect as the average result for the purposes of determining whether new incoming damage overrides it, but I want to make sure nothing else has been officially clarified.

Prepping an NPC with Channel Smite and the harm font.

Does Channel Smite allow a save against the harm spell to reduce that damage, or is the "save" considered part of the attack roll? Like say your harm spell would do 3d10 negative energy damage. You usually get a basic Fort save to resist.

With Channel Smite, is it just a flat 3d10, no resist roll? If I miss, I obviously deal neither weapon nor harm damage, but if I crit the weapon attack roll, is the 3d10 doubled as though the player got the corresponding crit fail result? Is it a flat 3d10 and the crit has no effect?

Or am I overthinking this and they just always roll the Fort save regardless of the results of the base attack? Seems clunky is all. Since the regular spell makes no attack roll, feel like for the same actions you could just swing your weapon then cast the 1-action harm spell for the rough same effect. Only reason Channel Smite seems useful is maybe that it doesn't trigger Attack of Opportunity since you expend the spell, not cast it (per Channel Smite wording). Am I on the right track there?

Since the Game Mastery Guide should ship next month and activate a fifth subscription, please cancel my Maps subscription going forward unless it would cause me to not have 4 next month. The Game Mastery Guide is being described as "in my sidecart", which is not a meaning I'm confident I understand. Does that mean it's set up to ship when it releases next month?

Got a player trying to play a hellknight signifier alongside another player, a fighter. They're going through Age of Ashes, level 3 now. The wizard started looking into the signifier route. Turns out Signifier needs Armiger, which would be fine and sensical except that Armiger needs heavy armor proficiency, which is a steep path for an elven wizard.

Now we were prepared to write this off as signifiers normally being clerics and wizard being a hard path to take into it. But then several descriptions in Hellknight Hill describe signifiers as wearing robes. Robes implies no armor.

Am I missing something? Are signifiers supposed to be exempt from the heavy armor requirement and not mentioning that is an oversight in the book, or are the Hellknight Hill descriptions inaccurate?

Age of Ashes - Hellknight Hill, Area A13, pg 24, has scrolls of fear and alarm.

Now, the core rulebook mentions that anyone can cast a spell from a scroll as long as it is on their tradition's spell list with a simple Recall Knowledge check of their own Tradition due to shared commonality.

But one of my players is experiencing a pain point on this particular matter. The exact contents of a scroll are kept a bit vague, but the general idea is that they contain a spell that has been cast into the paper and the scroll contains instructions on how to finish casting that spell. The stumbling block comes in where my player, a divine caster, wants to know the Tradition used by the scroll's scribe, because it's strange that an arcane caster can write the instructions to an arcane spell and a divine caster can pick it up, have no knowledge of arcane spells (not be trained in Arcana), and still follow the instructions to finish casting the spell perfectly. Did the arcane spellcaster just also write the instructions for divine casting despite possibly having no knowledge of it themselves? The rules as written just kind of hand-wave it, and that's fine for convenience purposes, but as somebody big on descriptions and IC understanding, the player is having a hard time just letting it go because they are not able to make it an associated (vs disassociated, or OoC) mechanic for their character.

Now, after discussion with one player in my game who frequently GMs 5e, we did come up with one possible solution, but checking the rulebook makes this one fall a bit apart too. The way this other player put it, a scroll could be thought of as a spell that has been sealed into a piece of paper, and the scroll itself just has a simple incantation that unlocks the spell and causes it to be cast. Your particular Tradition gives you the training to put your magic into the spell, so that's why it gains the descriptor of your Tradition and why a Recall Knowledge check based on your own Tradition does the job.

To support this, the 5e GM player pointed out that to add a scroll to their spellbook, the scroll is destroyed as an arcane caster takes the spell in the scroll apart to learn it and write it into their spellbook. But then I checked the rulebook. In PF2e, copying a scroll into a spellbook does not harm the scroll. This implies a scroll is largely instructions on how to cast a spell, and then we're back to "Is a scroll just automatically written for all the Traditions it can be associated with, even if the scribe doesn't know anything about the Traditions not their own?"

Which is the question I'm here to farm out an answer to.

TL;DR: Player having a hard time parsing scrolls being able to be used by anyone not trained in the Tradition the scribe used, even if they have a separate Tradition technically shared by the spell itself. How does the "commonality" there work?

Is there much (if any) incentive for a heavy armor user to increase Dex above 12 outside of Reflex save or skills?

I'm bringing Dex to Damage back up because I agreed to see what the Swashbuckler looked like before I voiced my thoughts further on this matter. Can't help but notice something: It does not have Dex to Damage... But the Rogue Thief racket does.

So which is it? Is Dex to Damage so overpowered that you can't give it to the other class that begs for it, or is it magically fine for the Rogue? It can't be that the Swash has a source of bonus damage; the rogue has sneak attack. It seems like an elegant solution to do one of four things: either make dex to damage something that applies to all finesse weapons, make it a level 3 general feat, give it to the Swash, or replace it with something else on the Rogue entirely if you want to stick with claims it breaks the game (math has shown it doesn't, and I assume from the fact it's in the game at all that designers at Paizo would agree).

I like the first or second options because they don't hose the other dex-inclined classes like Investigator or Ranger, whereas the third option does. I don't like the fourth option, but I'd take it over limiting it to be class-specific, considering this system is supposed to be very modular and open and limiting this seems weird.

Serious replies only, please. I'm not a power gamer, I'm the GM for my groups a solid 90% of the time it feels like, I'd like more than a single option to present to my players when they say they want a dex-based melee character that wouldn't have an asterisk saying they'd actually be better off going Strength-based.

Order 8082343, Ambush Sites Multi-Pack, was never received. My delivery address did not change and I have received other mailers before. The tracking number included has it somewhere nowhere near me and not moving. Is a new one able to sent, are you able to send word for the mailing of the current package, what?

This order for the Condition Cards has been pending for over two weeks.

Also, am I supposed to have received the Pathfinder Society scenarios in my downloads? Don't see them. Did I miss something regarding selecting them or something?

Planning on running an open table Fall of Plaguestone game at my local game shop to let people try the system. Was making an Alchemist when I ran into some oddities. Feel free to link me to other threads where these have already been answered.

1. I found that the Alchemist kit does not line up with the breakdown of items. Has there been an official correction on the matter? Pretty sure otherwise the Alchemist I made for people to use is going to be permanently over-Bulked (though I'm planning to compensate for that by making the excess into a bag). Alternatively, are the kits supposed to be under-Bulked as a result of good packaging or something? I know the PF1 kits were similarly wonky in terms of not matching up to their breakdown.

2. Does the Basic Crafter's Book give an Alchemist the level 1 alchemical items in that chapter? The book says "any common item in this chapter". Literally two pages later it lists some of the more common level 1 alchemical items, and the distinction seems to be an odd case of stepping on the alchemist's toes. It either grants the level 1 alchemical items mentioned there, or it's basically worthless to alchemists because there are no level 0 alchemical items that I noticed.

3. Where do I find the pre-gen character stat-blocks? I'd been planning on making a character for each class for people to pick up, but it'll save me a lot of trouble if I can just crib the pre-gens.

Apologies in advance if this isn't quite the right category for this topic, but I figure it is somewhat relevant since subscriptions are being changed a little.

When it comes to the subscriptions, is buying every release required if you are subscribed? Asking because my understanding is that having the right/enough subscriptions can get you discounts, but how does that work versus actually buying the product? Are you just billed and sent everything automatically? Are you alerted that the thing has been released and can elect to buy/not-buy at your leisure? How, in essence, does a subscription work? And while most of my games are online on Roll20, I have been thinking of running some games at my local game shop. So a follow-up question is whether or not any discounts apply to pdfs and the like too?

TL;DR Please explain subscriptions and discount interactions. Maybe also how that interacts with regards to physical vs digital media. Will also accept a link if all this is definitely explained somewhere and I'm being dumb and missing it.

First: has any official changelog as far as rules at large goes been compiled yet? I don't mean specific player options, but more grand scale changes? Asking as the usual GM of my group. Planning to do a full read-through, naturally, but is there a cliffnotes on the noteworthy differences from the playtest?

Second - and serious answers only, thanks: has there been any word on why the design team decided to limit an entire - and rather vast in terms of examples - heroic archetype (the dex fighter) behind one subclass of Rogue? I could see the limitation if the idea is to release future subclasses that grant it for the sake of controlling what has access to it in the name of balance, but I'm otherwise a bit stumped why they didn't release a version of it that's a general feat requiring level 3 and... I dunno, 12 Strength if they're worried about a single ability boost's difference which doesn't make up the damage die size loss anyway. It can't be too powerful or they wouldn't have let the Rogue keep it. And you can't dump Strength to drive up Dex with the way character creation works in PF2. Not that Paizo has any issue with stat dumps evidentally, since my understanding is that they let Charisma go back to being one. Point being, have they said they might playtest it in the Advanced Player's Guide or given an official reasoning for the limitation that holds up under examination?

TL;DR: is there a changelog from the playtest, and what's the word regarding making the Rogue (Thief) ability more generically available?

As per the title. As a xenomorph fan, I'm immensely curious if we know what the thing on the cover of Planar Adventures is? Haven't seen anyone else ask, and I've searched. I'm prepared to feel stupid when someone enlightens me.

Dex to Damage: the option so underwhelming that the only class to get it had people clamoring for an option to get out of it.

Seriously, the numbers have been run, and dex to damage would not break the current system of PF2. I know further playtesting is going private at Paizo, but consider making the rogue "finesse striker" ability a 3rd level general feat and see how it does. In the interest of providing holistic suggestions, maybe keep the base ability as something a rogue can also elect to get as a class option at level 1, granting early access and not eating a general feat slot. In any event, the above link has some solid math that supports this and ties in nicely to the idea that PF2 will be a game with tighter math. As a bonus, enabling it means an entire character concept is not being shut down. Answering "I want to play an agile melee fighter" with "so you're locked into a singular rogue branch" is underwhelming.

And for the record, I'm not asking for dex-to-damage options to receive anything to close the damage gap. I'd just be happy to have the option to play a dex fighter. One of the things I enjoy about PF1 is the ability to have a player bring me a concept and me knowing exactly how to implement it, usually in several different ways depending on what the player wanted.

I very much like some of the ideas behind PF2. I especially look forward to the re-tooled monster math that ideally makes combat feel less like throwing numbers at each other until something dies. What I don't like is the entirely likely scenario of a player asking to play a concept based on any number of sword-wielders in popular media and telling them "Do you like rogues? Because I otherwise have nothing."

Per the title. Does the Greater Shadow's Shadow Spawn power make another Greater Shadow, or a regular Shadow? Session in like -3 minutes, could use a speedy answer, if possible. Prepped all the stat blocks, was reading through them, didn't catch this question until just now.

So. I decided to start a playtest thread. As I write this, my players have just wrapped up Part 2, and this week Sunday we start Affair at Sombrefell Hall.

My next post shall see my write-up of Part 1: The Ashen Ossuary.

About me as a GM: I don't run all my monsters with the most absurdly difficult tactics allowed under the rules. When deciding their actions, I try to take things like morale, intelligence, and aggression into account. If a monster's whole kit reads like the monster favors hit-and-run tactics, I try to run it as using hit-and-run tactics, adjusting its strategy based on what the PCs do. By extension, I try to run my monsters with a measure of self-preservation: my monsters try to flee or fight more defensively when they sense things are going downhill, and depending on the scenario may even surrender. If a module or adventure path calls for a creature to behave a certain way, I try to stick to that within reason.

With regards to players and balance: Balance versus the game is subjective. If my entire group is over-optimized, I can always scale encounters up. If my entire group is playing sub-optimally, I can scale things down. And sometimes, I don't scale things at all (in cases where the enemy is too weak to present any challenge to the party, I tend to just say "you kill them" rather than roll initiative, but I've also run combats where the objective was flee, stall, or alternative in nature). But I digress. I'm running this playtest with an attempt to be faithful to the playtest goals whilst also challenging my players without quite turning things into a meat-grinder (but if things go that way as a result of the playtest being too difficult, so be it; I have yet to encounter this scenario, though).

Experience so far: So far, I haven't particularly pulled my punches with my players, and I can say they have never come exceptionally close to wiping. They have never had a Cleric - though that will naturally change in Part 3 - and I don't particularly hand out Hero Points like candy (if you're ready for session before I am/the appointed time, whichever comes later, you get one more Hero Point at session start. Don't think I've ever handed one out otherwise). Now, my luck with the dice has some renown in our group for being on the terrible side, but law of averages and rolling electronic dice (we play on roll20) should theoretically even that out. This is not to say the PCs have never struggled. The dice having a sudden swing in my favor have boosted the effectiveness of certain encounters immensely. In short, while the monsters do need a balance overhaul regarding level-appropriate skills, combat has mostly felt like luck of the dice is the single biggest factor, and a lot of people have gone into painstaking detail elsewhere as to how the math supports that, so I won't post it here.

But that's enough for tonight, I think. Tomorrow I shall endeavor to post my players' run of Part 1.

As per the topic. It mentions it affects AC, but does not say "ACs." Considering armor adds different values to touch AC than regular AC, I wanted to be sure if the idea was that Elite was supposed to be tougher on touch AC. Ergo, is that deliberate, or a typo? Anyone know, or is it time to pray a Paizo insider sees this?

Maybe I just missed it when I read the book, but does anyone know if items typically go for full or half value when sold in PF2?

(Before you reply, yes, I'm aware PF1 had things sell for half price, but this is a different system, and a Ctrl+F search of the rulebook brought up nothing indicating one way or another. This does lean me towards PF1, but I wanted word from somebody either quoting something I missed in the rulebook or otherwise "in the know", so to speak.)

I'm aware of the post-Gen con errata and the rat removal in Lost Star, but feel like I've seen references to more errata. My google-fu is apparently insufficient, because I haven't found anything else. Is there somewhere it is all currently gathered, or is it a matter of trawling the forums for those few posts from people with design authority? If the latter, I'd intend to start compiling it somewhere, possibly here.

Pun originally not intended.

Joking aside, though, it is a bit awkward that a starting horse gets to be Medium or Large when they're juvenile (as taking "Full-Grown"at level 5 implies them to be), but a bear starts off the same size as a badger, bird, or snake. Are we sure that isn't a typo and bears ought to be Medium? They don't gain any statistical benefit from it, and at worst a Small creature could ride one, but it causes some rules - reality desynchronization when a juvenile bear and a juvenile bird are the same size. Not to mention that they - by extension - can all go from Small to Large means you can have a large bear... or a large badger. Badgers are vicious enough that you could reasonably mistake them for Large in terms of weight class, and while the answer "they're fictional creatures, their sizes are different" is a response one could give, it isn't satisfying.

My player (the one wanting to play a ranger) also finds it a bit awkward that a downed PC who isn't commanding their companion will just watch their companion sit there and not respond to being butchered. Now, I could houserule both the size thing and the "needs a command" thing, but the fact is that if we accept from the outset that a houserule is needed, the rules we were handed were kinda busted from the start.

My proposed solutions on the matter are to let the bear start at Medium, maybe make the Horse special in some way that isn't "you can use it as a mount from level one" (because that feels like a bad prize anyway), and maybe let animal companions take a single action when their PC is down in the name of defending themselves or their PC.

So I was invited to a PFS game, but didn't have a player number yet. I was assigned one, used a character, and survived the scenario. How do I translate that into credit on this site? I was warned not to click on "create character" or something similar, as it'd assign me a new player code different from the one I was given. I have a player code and a confirmation code handy, along with the scenario chronicle sheet. What do?