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What do you all think of the price for the highest level items? A +3 Major Striking weapon or +3 major resilient armor or bracers of armor +3? These items cost so much that you're barely able to afford them at max level.\

Do you make sure the PCs get them as treasure? Or do the PCs save up enough to buy them in your campaigns?

The armor you can at least buy in levels. The bracers of armor +3 are crazy priced. You almost have to hand them out for a PC to have them given the cost.

I hand magic items out to the PCs.

I have run three campaigns under PF2 rules. The first was Ironfang Invasion converted to PF2. The first two modules have the PCs in the Fangwood Forest with no stores available to purchase itemns. Thus, I had to stock treasure caches with the items they needed. I needed to change the items in those caches anyways, because the PF2 items had few matches to the PF1 items listed in the module. When they reached the city of Longshadow in Assault on Longshadow, they had gold to spend on upgrading their items. Instead, they spent their gold on hiring workmen to improve the city defenses, since defending Longshadow was one of their campaign goals. So I had a fey Millindemalion give them magic hats (some had the powers of PF2 magic robes) as their prize for defeating him.

The second campaign was based on the Free RPG Day modules A Fistful of Flowers, A Few Flowers More, and two more chapters I wrote myself. They started each chapter with level-appropriate gear.

My third and current PF2 campaign is Strength of Thousands. The first module, Kindled Magic, deliberately left +1 Handwraps of Mighty Blows in their dormitory laundry room for the party to claim. Instead, the party tracked down the former resident to return the handwraps. She said that she had made them in her Magical Crafting class and would not use them herself, so the party could keep them. The players wanted to roleplay as students at the Magaambya Academy rather than as adventurers, so they did not loot. Instead, we worked out work-study jobs for them that paid half Earn Income wages. And before any dangerous mission, the Magaambya lent them appropriate gear. They do have a few personally owned items, because they used their wages to give Winter Solstice gifts to each other.

Thus, my players and I have not experienced the cost of buying full-level items. However, I noticed that besides the basic magic weapons and armor, the magic items feel lackluster. Most are slightly useful, way below class features in power.

The party in Hurricane's Howl was given 8th-level gear by the Magaambya for their archaeology expedition at the 8th-level start of the module. Then the main adventure started while they were out in the field. The Magaambya is sending them new gear to pick up in the town of Jula in the Sodden Lands so that they don't have to play the 10th- and 11th-levels of this module with below-level equipment. I have been stocking this care package with the gear recommended by this thread. Thank you for the suggestions.

The treadmill of the chance of success against a same-level opponent is constant across all levels (depending on creature type, since some creatures such as oozes have low AC for their level) was deliberately built into Pathfinder 2nd Edition. It keeps the math simple enough to allow the tight math that the developers wanted. During the PF2 playtest Jester David dubbed it with the more colorful name "Red Queen's Race."

ChibiNyan wrote:

I do dislike how despite the big numbers, character's aren't really increasing their odds of success, just staying on the coin-flip treadmill. I believe PCs should get really good at their specialization, ideally fast! Don't think it's about narrative at this point, but fun.

I always preferred “Red Queen’s Race” to treadmill. From Through the Looking Glass:

Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Verisimilitude breaks is when home-grown enemies keep pace with the party's level while the other people in the setting fall several levels behind in the Red Queen's Race. These are enemies whose backstory implies they got their training among the low-level people, rather than fiendish invaders from another dimension or recently-escaped undead formerly sealed in an ancient tomb. However, raising the level of the common people can also break verisimilitude when an underpaid minion could earn good money or be the king of the hill by moving to the pleasant 1st-level settlement where the party started.

I view the plausibility of a combat as relevant to the meaningful-combat topic. Fighting a battle that makes no sense in the context robs the battle of much of its meaning.

pauljathome pointed out that the most-plausible adventure paths move the party to settings where higher-level NPCs and enemies make sense. Start in a peasant village, move to a respectable town, stop by a prosperous city, go to the impressive capital city--each step implies a higher level among the inhabitants. Or send the party into a deep dungeon or lost temple that has been cut off from its surroundings and fill it with party-level monsters that can survive versus each other. Strength of Thousands breaks that mold by starting at a prestigious academy in a prosperous city, but the PCs are sent on easy service missions for training rather than sent against the greatest dangers around. Until they faced major dangers in the city of Nantambu late in the 2nd module, but the PCs were 6th level and had earned a reputation for excelling in combat. A good excuse maintains plausibility.

Another advantage of using Level-3 mooks instead of Level+3 bosses is that mooks are more common and more plausible. High-level threats are supposed to be rare.

I find level creep among enemies to be unbelievable. The PF1 Ironfang Invasion adventure path began with CT 1/2 Ironfang Recruits invading a village. They had a few stronger named characters with them, such as Tukang, Grenadier Trainee CR 1; Semfet, Ironfang Scout CR 1; and Kergri, Ironfang Heavy Trooper, CR 2. When the party and some refugees escape the village into the Fangwood Forest, they have to hide from Ironfang patrols consisting of 1 or 2 Ironfang Scouts CR 1 and twice as many Ironfang Recruits CR 1/2, except for the times they encounter more experienced CR 3 scouts. At the end a battle at an Ironfang camp in the forest has CR 3 and CR 4 Ironfang Soldiers and the CR 7 final boss.

Early in the 2nd module, still in the Fangwood Forest, the party encounters an Ironfang patrol, but this time consisting of an Ironfang Patrol Leader CR 4 and three Ironfang Forest Prowlers CR 2. Why weren't these fellows sent out to hunt down the refugees in the 1st module? Late in the 2nd module, the party takes back Fort Trevalay from Ironfang control, battling Ironfang Forest Soldiers CR 3, Ironfang Squad Sergeants CR 3, a pair of monks CR 4 in the Ironfang Legion, and their leader Eygara CR 6. Okay, I explained away the challenge difference there in that the Ironfang Legion had to use their strongest soldiers to conquer a fortress.

When I converted the Ironfang Invasion adventure path to Pathfinder 2nd Edition, I used the 1st-level Hobgoblin Soldier as the basic unit of the Ironfang Legion. They were tougher than Ironfang Recruits, but rather than inventing a weaker version, I added villagers organized into civilian defense squads to help the party. I did invent Ironfang Heavy Troopers, creature 2, by leveling up a Hobgoblin Soldier and giving them heavy armor. But for increasing the challenge at the party leveled up, I simply threw more Hobgoblin Soldiers and Ironfang Heavy Troopers at them. The theme of the adventure path was about fighting an army, so they found squads of soldiers.

The encounter math of PF2 breaks down below Level-4, so I later built a 5th-level Large-sized troop unit illustrated by a picture for four Hobgoblin Soldiers. I carefully adjusted the numbers to resemble the damage and resilience of 4 Hobgoblin Soldiers in a pack. This was to create the impression that they were still battling squads of Hobgoblin Soldiers. This made more sense for the setting than inventing individual Ironfang soldiers who each fought at 5th-level. When the party hit 9th level, I made a 9th-level Gargantuan troop illustrated by 16 pictures of Hobgoblin Soldiers.

Now I am running Strength of Thousands in which the creatures are already built for PF2. I am encountering the unnatural level inflation in the 3rd module, Hurricane's Howl. A major bandit gang called the Knights of Abendego has its own characters: Abendego Brute, creature 8; Abendego Jailer, Creature 10; Norgorberite Spy, creature 10; and Abendego Priest, creature 11; plus named individuals.

Back in the 2nd module, the party fought a powerful crime boss nicknamed Froglegs (I mentioned her back in comment #5). Froglegs was only 8th level, like the bottom-level Abendego Brutes. Why are the weaklings in the Knights of Adendego powerful enough to lead their own gangs in other locations? The Knights do not practice disciplined training.

I talked with my wife (poor dear has to put up with spoilers) and we decided to add Abendego Trainee Squads to the Knights of Abendego. These troops will be the Bandit Gang from NPC Core shrunk down to Large size and given a few features from the Knights of Abendego. The encounters with the Knights of Abendego need proper mooks. The 8th-level Abendego Brutes will be viewed as experienced bandits sent on an important mission instead of the weakest of the Knights.

Just popping in to remind everyone that, according to encounter guidelines, a fight against eight lesser deaths is considered a moderate threat encounter for a party of four level 20 PCs.

Or, heck, for twenty more ExP in the budget you could substitute out four of those lesser deaths for the Grim Reaper himself, and still not quite reach the budget for a standard severe encounter.

So that is why many 20th-level characters are considered immortal. They can beat the Grim Reaper and his minions. :-)

More seriously, I have run a few sessions with a 20th-level party (chronicle). They are impressively powerful.

A dozen years ago I ran The Hungry Storm in the Jade Regent adventure path, in which the PCs travel in a caravan crossing the ice-covered northern continent, Crown of the World, to reach Tian Xia. A "hungry storm" refers to a morozoki storm, which would kill any unsheltered person caught in it, included caravans with magical protection from cold weather.

What happens when a caravan is caught by a morozoki storm? The module is named after the storms, yet that detail was overlooked. Of course, the party investigated the morozko storm that blocked the Koumissa Gap up to Unaimo by sending their hardiest characters into it.

I decided that a morozoki storm is a ten-mile-wide hurricane filled with sharp ice shards that do 1 point of damage per minute to anyone standing in the wind, slower if the character is protected by medium or heavy armor. In addition, a mile into the storm has supernatural cold that does 1 point of cold damage per minute, too. The ground under it becomes littered with ice shards that make it difficult terrain.

My quotes are taken from my chronicle Amaya of Westcrown, The Hungry Storm Module.

A villain named Katiyana had discovered a base at the north pole with technology that let her create and control morozoki storms. She was deliberately killing travelers. The party discovered this by defeating some of her underlings. It was supposed to be a plot hook.

They did not bite the hook. They wanted to reach Tian Xia to continue their original mission.

North from Iqaliat, the party returned to the original Path of Aganhei to cross the Crown of the World. They did not divert to the Storm Tower to stop Katiyana as the module intended. That was not their job. In fact, I expected this and let them encounter two Snowcaster Elves investigating the morozoki storms and pass the information about Katiyana on to them, so that they did not have to feel guilty.

I had other plans, heh heh.

...

Then a morozoki storm began chasing them. Uksahkka's weather sense verified that it was literally chasing them, veering whenever they tried to move out of its path. Before the storm overran them, a winged figure appeared in the sky. It was Katiyana. ...

The storm caught them. The caravan tried racing sideways and the storm kept its original course at three miles per hour, probably because Katiyana could no longer see them. The passengers were packed into chests to protect them from the ice shards, but the drivers and aurochs were exposed. Soon a crevasse blocked their path. Amaya cast Snow Shape a few times to make an ice ramp down into the crevasse, which protected them from the wind and its ice shards. And she cast Communal Resist Energy on everyone to protect them from the supernatural cold when that arrived. Spreading it across everyone lowered the duration, so she cast it again until she ran out. Then a 4th-level cleric passenger took over by channeling. After three hours, the storm passed with everyone still alive.

Now taking out Katiyana was a personal grudge.

The danger and villainy of Katiyana was abstract to the party, despite it being the central theme of The Hungry Storm. I had to make it personal for it to become a meaningful conflict. This is just like the villain taunting the party as Deriven Firelion suggested. It added emotional stakes to the battle.

I wonder whether the stakes make combat meaningful. A dangerous combat has the stakes of life or death, regardless of whether it is a random encounter with no relevance to the plot. An easy combat lacks those life-or-death stakes. A combat necessary to continue the plot has stakes of the player and their character's investment in the story. A combat related to a particular character's backstory has personal stakes. A pompous, mocking villain creates personal stakes right at the beginning of combat.

That leaves out my players enjoying Moderate-Threat combat encounters just for practicing with their abilities, especially after leveling up. I suppose I could phrase it as emotional stakes in the choices made in leveling up, but that feels like a stretch. My players simply like roleplaying their characters, including in combat.

Dragonchess Player wrote:

I believe, as it was raised in the other thread, that the GM is confusing "meaningful" with "difficult."

TBH I think this is reinforced somewhat by how the game is presented. When's the last time an AP had a combat that wasn't just fighting a group of enemies in a box? Tougher is basically the only knob some GMs might realize exists.

For being such a combat focused game it's weird to me how little PF2 considers environmental design or alternative objectives or monster gimmicks when presenting combat design.

Well, my party is currently outdoors in Hurricane's Howl, so technically they are not in a box. However, the map the module provided for the most recent battle was a 175-foot by 120-foot rectangle of grass with two trees, one big rock, and an extinguished campfire. It might as well have been a box. The starlit-span magus Zandre prefers to shoot from hiding, but the only cover he had was the rock. I regretted that I had not provided a map with better terrain.

For example, for the encounter before that, I had uploaded a map of a full 12-tent camp with supplies, campfires, and lookout sites from the Internet. And before that, I uploaded a map of an 80-foot wide river because I had put bandits and their captives on a boat on the Terwa River rather than on foot as the module had. The players got ahead of the bandits via Umbral Journey/Shadow Walk, scryed their approach with Scrying Ripples, and ambushed them from shore.

A meaningful character story in that battle is the tengu bard JInx Fuun, who grew up on an oceangoing ship, flew over to the boat and took control of the rudder. She was a better sailor than the bandits.

An upcoming map called "Crossing the River" put an angry elite behemoth hippopotamus in a 20-foot-wide creek that they called the Terwa River. Yeah, the so-called river was only 5 feet wider than the hippopotamus. I moved that hippopotamus to the boat encounter where it caught up late in the battle. The party calmed it down after it ate a bandit. The champion had been shoving bandits off the boat.

Running an AP is often less enjoyable unless the GM alters combats because having a good variety of challenges that include things your good against and some your not is needed. Every combat being similar, IE only small numbers of +1 or +2 enemies per encounter, fails to give variety that spreads the challenge around. Having secondary or environmental concerns also add healthy complications to encounters.

Getting to know what the characters can do and who your players are to provide entertaining combats is part of a GMs challenge.

I have to routinely alter adventure paths because I run oversized parties of seven PCs. Against multiple enemies, I can simply add more enemies, but a combat against a single boss requires leveling up the boss or adding minions or having merely a Moderate-Threat encounter with the boss. Spoken in the Song Wind had two plot lines with separate final bosses. I swapped the order of the adventure, so they hit the 9th-level boss at 6th level and the 8th-level boss at 7th level. The challenge of the 8th-level rogue boss changed. Instead of stationary combat, he ran and hid in the forest. They had to spread out to find him, leaving them in a tactically more awkward situation where he could gain sneak attacks from hiding.

Putting meaningfulness aside, I'm more concerned with whether or not the combat is interesting, both as a player and as a gm, regardless of system.

I've long since found that, without a lot going against the party, moderates and below are simply unengaging from a combat execution perspective. They can be handled entirely on autopilot without a single daily resource being spent. That isn't to say that they can't be interesting or meaningful on a narrative level, but in that case there's no need to bother with the combat engine either.

My wife says that Moderate-Threat encounters are her opportunity to experiment with new tactics. The Severe-Threat encounters are challenging and require proven good tactics, but she discovers the good tactics for her current character at their current level by experimenting.

Speaking purely as a player, the advice I see some people give about throwing in lows and such to make the players feel good is positively insulting. The ttrpg equivalent of "this meeting could have been an email."

Sometimes, I throw a formerly difficult monster, which had been Level+2 on the first encounter, at the party after they have leveled up so that the monster is Level-1. This is to show them how much they have improved.

The topic of meaningful combat is interesting, but it does not help Seisuke. Therefore, I created a separate thread for that topic: Meaningful Combat.

A recent discussion in the thread Need help with spell casters raised the question of what makes Pathfinder combat meaningful. I feel that that topic deserves its own thread.

Seisuke wrote:

The actual problem might not even be the class balancing, but the encounter design our GM prefers. Our GM does not like meaningless combat. Which means fights need to be dangerous to a certain extend. Also book keeping lots of enemies is not really fun for the GM. It drags the length of combat. So in practice this often means we have 3 to 4 combats per adventuring day. Almost every combat is atleast a severe difficulty encounter with a few enemies of party level or fewer enemies above party level. Enemies of party level -1 we see rarely. Party level -2 enemies I have never seen in any serious encounter.

If GM is repeatedly applying Severe Encounters...

Severe Encounters (GM Core p75) wrote:

Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters have a good chance to defeat. These encounters are appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Use severe encounters carefully—there's a good chance a character could die, and a small chance the whole group could. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open.

...then what you describe is the system working as intended.

Perhaps your best argumentation is asking them: Q) Does avoiding "meaningless combat" mean every fight must be a "final boss"?

Seisuke stated that their GM believes that combat has to be dangerous to be meaningful, so the GM skips Trivial-, Low-, and Moderate-Threat combats.

I myself base the severity of combat on the setting. If the party is entering an enemy castle by climbing a wall and fighting the guards on watch atop the wall, then the guards are probably Low Threat because they were just keeping watch. When the party descends to the courtyard, all the soldiers in the castle have reacted and regrouped. so the party will face a Severe-Threat or Extreme-Threat challenge. I explained my philosophy in Encounter Balance: The Math and the Monsters, comment #2.

Raiztt raised the question of meaningful combat in that Encounter Balance thread at comment #58:

So, this is a sprawling discussion of math and balance, but I notice that something very important to encounter design is absent:

Is the encounter fun or engaging?

As a DM of almost 20 years, I can say that after you've figured out your math you've still got several important things to consider:

1.) Enemy motivation/goals - Alternate Lose Conditions
2.) Player motivations/goals - Alternate Win Conditions
3.) Unusual or impactful terrain
4.) Interactables
5.) Diverse enemy types/abilities

Without one or more of these elements, no matter how perfectly tuned your encounter is, it will be boring.

Numbers 1 and 2 are especially important. When I'm creating an encounter, I make sure that the encounter matters beyond whether or not the PCs live or die. If you're going to be running a long campaign, you need to have ways for your PCs to 'lose' that does not involve a TPK and the campaign ending.

I piggyback the importance of the combat encounter on the party's mission. I remember a time in the module Forest of Spirits when the party was supposed to go deep underground below the House of Withered Blossoms to investigate a mystery. The house itself was occupied by hostiles, but the party sent their stealthy characters inside and eavesdropped to learn that the hostiles had nothing to do with the mystery. So they skipped the house itself and went directly underground. Combat in the aboveground house would have been a waste of time and resources in my players' opinion.

Another time in Spoken on the Song Wind, second module in Strength of Thousands, they decided to conduct a sting operation to capture some robbers stealing musical instruments from street buskers. They teamed up with some buskers, advertised a performance by the buskers, and blended into the crowd. They jumped the robbers, captured two immediately, and sent their familiars to follow the others to their hideout. The plot as written in the module simply had them Gathering Information to locate the hideout, but my players' idea was more fun. This was an easy combat, because they caught only the two weakest robbers and others would rather escape than fight, but it was very meaningful. Further details are available at Virgil Tibbs, Playtest Runesmith, comment #8.

By Raiztt's five points, the robbers' motive was to grab loot and escape. Some failed at that and some thought they succeeded. The player characters' motives were to identify and capture the robbers, and they were on the path to success. The escapes were only a temporary setback because they had planned for their stealthy familiars to follow. The unusual terrain was a marketplace full of people, so no Fireballs. The robbers interacted with the loot, which was a cheap drum off to the side disguised as an expensive drum via Item Facade. This encounter had some fairly ordinary robbers, but due to the playtest I added a playtest necromancer at the hideout as an ally of the robbers.

On the other hand, the battle at the hideout was a Severe-Threat encounter. The module set it up as three separate encounters: Low Threat against the two missing robbers, Low Threat against the third robber, and Moderate Threat against the fourth robber, but I grouped the last two together and added the necromancer. It came out as only Severe Threat because the party had seven members and the playtest runesmith. I figured the battle would be more meaningful with the robbers fighting side by side.

When is a combat meaningful to your characters?

I also watched some of ThrabenU and Mathfinder's videos on spell casters. But these actually just confirmed my observations. There seem to be a few fall back spells that work at least for a round, change the environment to create some disadvantage for the enemies and some feat combinations to play the system better. But it looks like the class balance is finely tuned to work with a specific encounter design. One where fighting several severe fights one after another against fewer, stronger enemies should not be the norm.

On September 11, 2023, in Michael Sayre on Casters, Balance and Wizards, from Twitter, comment #114 Paizo design manager Michael Sayre explained:

pi4t wrote:

Can I politely suggest putting that information in the revised rulebooks somewhere? It's about half the number of encounters per day recommended in 5e or PF1, and I think groups coming from those systems try to run the number of encounters per day they're used to and end up finding spellcasters aren't able to contribute properly.

That's a broad generalization of the guidelines that are already in the rulebook.

Quote:

Moderate-threat encounters are a serious challenge to the characters, though unlikely to overpower them completely. Characters usually need to use sound tactics and manage their resources wisely to come out of a moderate-threat encounter ready to continue on and face a harder challenge without resting.

Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters can consistently defeat. These encounters are most appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources due to prior encounters can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open.

Extreme-threat encounters are so dangerous that they are likely to be an even match for the characters, particularly if the characters are low on resources. This makes them too challenging for most uses. An extreme-threat encounter might be appropriate for a fully rested group of characters that can go all-out, for the climactic encounter at the end of an entire campaign, or for a group of veteran players using advanced tactics and teamwork.

Generally that means that your party should be loaded with enough "ammunition" to successfully tackle 3 Moderate encounters. Low and Trivial encounters don't really require any resource expenditure.

There's a lot of possible permutations to the formula and no "one true way" to assemble encounters, which is why we avoid simplifying things to that degree in the rulebook. You can stretch or compress that number based on the type and severity of the encounters that you put in your adventure.

I have seen further explanations that that is why three spell slots per rank is standard for spellcasters. That is enough to cast one top-rank spell per tough encounter, because an adventuring day should have only three tough encounters.

My own players have mastered the art of resource management and can handle ten Moderate-Threat encounters a day. But a Severe-Threat encounter will consume a major part of their daily resources. They could reliably manage only two Severe-Threat encounters per day.

Spellcasters feeling weak or just not fun in these kind of combats, seems to be a mixture of statistical disadvantage and investment of effort. A martial swinging for 3 rounds and hitting nothing is bad luck, but nothing of importance is lost. A caster using his highest spell slots and seeing the enemy save 3 times feels real bad, because now your strongest resources barely did anything and you don’t get them back. The one thing to do in these situations are reliable buffs and heals or spells like Synesthesia or Slow that work at least for a round and be satisfied with that. Or maybe wall off half of the enemies to buy time.

Have you considered a 15-minute workday for your party? This is an old problem in Pathfinder 1st Edition and Dungeons & Dragons in which the party handles just a few encounters at nearly full strength, and then when their resources, especially top-rank spell slots, are depleted, they leave the dungeon and camp in a safe location for the rest of the day. Pathfinder 2nd Edition introduced more renewable resources--Treat Wounds to restore hit points, Refocus to recharge focus spells, and automatically heightening cantrips that never run out--to prevent the 15-minute workday, but it is a solution to the problem of every encounter being Severe. A 15-minute workday means that the spellcasters can cast all their top-rank spells in one or two encounters, retire for the night, and then do that again the next day.

The common Dungeon Master counter-reaction to a 15-minute workday is to attack the campsite. Back in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, parties used to "spike the door." They would go to a dungeon room with only one door and nail the door shut to prevent random encounters from entering the room. In the morning they would pull out the nails and resume exploring the dungeon.

By the way, "A martial swinging for 3 rounds and hitting nothing is bad luck, but nothing of importance is lost," is not just bad luck. It is also bad tactics. Three rounds of attacks with reasonable distribution of dice rolls is enough statistical data to demonstrate that the enemy's AC is too high. And that enemy is probably hitting back with plenty of critical hits. This is a time to run away.

Okay, Seisuke probably meant one of those combats where the unlucky player could not roll above a 10 on a d20 for each first Strike and not above a 15 for each second Strike. That has a chance of (10/20)^3*(15/20)^3 = 0.0527. That will happen one combat out of 20 for a particular martial character. It happens more often for a spellcaster who casts only one spell per round, (10/20)^3 = 0.125, one combat out of 8. But the tactics is that the spellcaster is supposed to need only one top-rank spell per ordinary combat, so why is the spellcaster burning themselves out by casting three top-rank spells in a single combat? At the very least, one of those spells should be the spellcaster's focus spell, which can be Refocused before the next combat. The spellcaster can reasonably say, "Hey, the dice gods are protecting the enemy from my spells, so I am saving my good spells for later and switching to cantrips." Or prepare Force Barrage in the lower-rank spell slots and avoid thosse dice rolls.

Reading benwilsher18's six points, I realized that I had houseruled most of them away. My hazards still suffer from Point #1: if a hazard is the only threat, then the worst case of taking full damage from the hazard is simply resolved by Treat Wounds afterwards. Because of that, I typically use hazards only for flavor: a treasure vault will have traps and sometimes the outdoors has environmental hazards ("Don't climb the cliff there. You would trigger a rockfall.").

When I converted the Ironfang Invasion adventure path to Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules, I replaced its PF1 hazards with PF2 hazards. Enemy-occupied Fort Nunder had an armory at the end of a heavily trapped twisty corridor, but ordinarily the party would deal with the enemy before trying for the armory. I replaced the CR 6 Lunging Strikes Trap with a Hundred Arrows trap, hazard 6. I cannot find this trap in the Archives of Nethys, so I guess I designed it myself.

HUNDRED ARROWS TRAP hazard 6
MECHANICAL TRAP
Complexity Simple
Stealth DC 25 (trained)
Description A hidden panel (also a pressure plate) pops up in the last one third of area K9 and a hundred arrows shoot the length of the hallway NW from there. Anyone on the hidden panel is safe.
Disable Thievery DC 24 (trained) to disable the trap at the hidden panel or Thievery DC 30 (expert) Find hidden off switch before the pressure plates.
AC 21; Fort +12, Ref +8
Hardness 12, HP 48 (BT 24); Immunities critical hits, object immunities, precision damage
Many Arrows [reaction] (attack); Trigger Pressure is applied to any floor tile in area K9. Effect Arrows +19 Damage 4d8+14 piercing; no multiple attack penalty.
Reset The trap can fire twice without reset. After 2nd firing, the wood golem in area K11 comes out, opens the hidden panel safely, and reloads it in 100 rounds (1 minute 40 seconds) with arrows from its endless quiver. The golem will attack if it finds any intruders unaccompanied by Chernasardo Rangers.

Note that this hazard summons a guardian--the wooden golem further down the corridor around a corner. This would have created time pressure (Point #2) with the party forced into a fight while still injured from the hazard. Except that one of the party members was a Chernasardo Ranger in training and wearing the right uniform.

The trap-finder rogue Sam in the party did spot the pressure plates, but failed the Thievery check to deactivate the pressure plate or find the hidden off switch. So Sam used a pole to trigger the pressure plates from an adjacent square, with others behind him. They learned the hard way that the arrows went down that entire straight section of hallway. The trap rolled a critical hit on Sam, who dropped unconscious. That did give the trap a moment of seriousness.

Further ahead, a side corridor had a key on the wall behind a hidden pit trap. Sam spotted that trap, too. While the party was discussing how to disable the pit trap, the champion Tikti simply climbed along the wall to bypass the trap and fetch the key. She was a monkey goblin with a Climb Speed.

That's my first houserule about traps: if the players invent a plausible alternative method of disabling the trap, then I allow it. The DC might be higher than the default DC, but it will probably play into the PCs' skills better. This fixes Point #3 because of the dynamic discussion to invent a way to disable the trap and Point #5 about having the wrong skills. This method, however, does require experienced GM skills to invent the DC and other conditions on the fly.

One complaint in Point #6 is requiring multiple checks to succeed. No, I always rely on single checks. Pathfinder is built around the difficulty classes being linear, so that a -1 mean 5% worse chance. Requiring two success changes that linearity to quadratic, three success change that to cubic, etc. So a -1 would mean a 10% or 20% worse chance. It creates a threshold in which a +10 could have a high chance of failure and a +12 could have a high chance of success. I simply dislike that math, so I use single checks. If I don't want repeats to make the check easy, then the single check can be conducted only once.

Something I've always wondered is if Leshies are a golarian-only thing. Primal magic is accessible anywhere in the Universe, presumably, so I reckon you could pull the ritual off to create a leshy anywhere with a plant.

My campaigns have developed a private mythos about that. Independent leshies had been rare both on Golarion and off Golarion. They became more common on Golarion recent indirectly due to the Darkness following the Earthfall of the Starstone. The gods invented the new profession of Druid to preserve nature during the Darkness (and also kami over in Tian Xia). The druids often created leshy familiars. Over the millennia, a few nature spirits that had once been leshies for the lifetime of one druid remembered the experience pleasantly, volunteered to become familiars again and again, and eventually developed the ability to become leshies on their own.

The leshy water-and-wood kineticist Monet in my mini-campaign Playtesting in A Fistful of Flowers with 7 Leshies made gardens that would encourage nature spirits to become leshies. They were part of a leshy community in the Verduran Forest that cared for young leshies.

I would slip in plans for One Thousand and One Golarion Nights. The frame story of this book is that three newbie Pathfinder players and one wise and experienced player Scheherazade are playing a rather haphazard Pathfinder campaign under the gamemaster Shahryar. The game sessions are one hour every night for almost three years. Shahryar is willing to kill off player characters, but Scheherazade helps the newbies build their characters to survive. They start with simple scenarios but improve to advanced tactics later. Some nights are simply Shahryar sharing interesting Golarion lore with the party for a break from the grind. One Thousand and One Golarion Nights is secretly a primer in Pathfinder builds and tactics.

I have altered my curriculum spells to use Loreguard's idea of not restricting them to curriculum slots but instead enhancing them in curriculum slots. Which means that I had to diminish them so that their original version becomes the enhanced version.

* Very Short Gate now transports only the caster, except in the curriculum slot. Since a wizard going into a room alone would be terribly risky (except at the College of Dimensional Studies), the spell would be mostly used for a Step onto difficult terrain. I renamed it Gated Step.
* Coax Monologue gained the incapacitation trait, except in the curriculum slot. Not only can it substitute for Recall Knowledge, it can deprive strong opponents of an action.
* Liberating Step now no longer triggers against attacks; instead, it triggers against area of effects and grabbing. In the curriculum slot, it will trigger against attacks. I renamed it Emergency Yank.
* Share Skill no longer grants proficiency in the skill required for the skill feat, except in the curriculum slot.
* Spellsurge takes two actions to cast, but still only one action in the curriculum slot.
* Workday now only doubles the duration and can affect only the caster's own spells, except in the curriculum slot. I renamed it Double Duration.

Gated Step [one-action] Spell 1
Uncommon, Concentrate, Teleportation
Based on PF1 Time Flicker
Tradition arcane
Access Wizard in School of The Boundary only.
You step through the ethereal plane. You Step through an ethereal gate to an adjacent square, bypassing all obstacles, such as walls, except for force effects. Treat the destination square as flat terrain unless the square cannot be safely occupied. This square can also be 5 feet up or down from your current level. If the square cannot be safely occupied, such as filled with solid rock, occupied by another creature, atop a fall, or the square is blocked by a force effect, the spell fails. If you prepared Gated Step in your curriculum slot, you can cast this spell with two actions so that the gate endures for 1 round and you could retreat or others could follow through the gate.
Heightened (3rd) The destination square can be 10 feet away rather than adjacent. Stepping or otherwise moving through the gate still counts as one square of movement.

Coax Monologue [two-actions] Spell 1
Uncommon, Concentrate, Incapacitation, Linguistic, Manipulate, Mental, Subtle
Based on Suggestion Player Core pg. 360
Tradition arcane
Range 30 feet; Targets 1 creature
Defense Will; Duration 1 round
Access Wizard in Emerald Boughs branch of School of Rooted Wisdom only.
A simple query leads a creature to talk more than it intends. The target attempts a Will save against responding. The target will respond in a language you understand, if they can. If you prepared Coax Monloogue in your curriculum slot, the spell loses the incapacitation trait.
Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target spends one action on its next turn on Demoralize.
Failure The target spends one action on its next turn describing information that you would have gained from a successful Recall Knowledge check to identify it.
Critical Failure As failure, but the target provides critically important additional information.

Double Duration [two-actions] Spell 1
Uncommon, Concentrate, Manipulate
Tradition arcane
Range 30 feet; Targets One arcane spell you cast with duration of at least 1 minute and at most 1 hour.
Access Wizard in Rain-Scribes branch of School of Rooted Wisdom only.
You reinforce a spell to last twice as long. The duration of target spell doubles. If you prepared Double Duration in a curriculum slot, you can target spells cast by anyone and the duration lengthens to the next common duration longer than or equal to double duration: 10 minutes, 1 hour, or 8 hours.

Emergency Yank [reaction] Spell 1
Uncommon, Concentrate
Based on Liberating Step Player Core 2 pg. 92
Tradition arcane
Access Wizard in Tempest-Sun Mage branch of School of Rooted Wisdom only.
Range 30 feet; Targets one target creature
Trigger Your ally is in an area of effect or has been grabbed or restrained by an enemy
You nudge an ally out of danger. The ally can attempt to break free of effects grabbing, restraining, immobilizing, or paralyzing them with a +1 status bonus. They either attempt a new save against one such effect that allows a save, or attempt to Escape from one effect as a free action. Whether or not they needed to escape, the ally can then either Step as a free action if they are able to move or else gain resistance 3 to the damage of the triggering effect. If you prepared Emergency Yank in a curriculum slot, an enemy damaging an ally with an attack can also trigger this spell, and the ally can both Step and gain the damage resistance.
Heighten (+1) The status bonus to break free increases by 1 and the damage resistance increases by 3.

Share Skill Spell 1
Uncommon, Linguistic, Manipulate
Based on Share Lore Divine Mysteries pg. 259
Tradition arcane
Cast 1 minute
Range 30 feet; Targets up to 3 creatures
Duration 10 minutes
Access Wizard in Uzunjati branch of School of Rooted Wisdom only.
You tell a story that provides temporary enlightenment about a skill. Select a skill feat you know that requires a skill proficiency in its prerequisites. The target creatures who satisfy the prerequisites of that feat gain that feat for the duration of the spell. If you prepared Share Skill in your curriculum slot, the spell also grants them your proficiency rank in a skill required for the skill feat.

Spellsurge [two-actions] Spell 1
Uncommon, Concentrate
Based on Haste Player Core pg. 335
Tradition arcane
Range 30 feet; Targets 1 creature
Duration until the end of your next turn
Access Wizard in Cascade Bearers branch of School of Rooted Wisdom only.
Your research enables more flexibility in spellcasting. The target creature gains the quickened condition on their next turn and can use the extra action for only a Sustain action or in a Cast a Spell activity. If you prepared Spellsurge in a curriculum slot, it takes only one action to cast.

If curriculum spells become more desired, then wizards might want access to curriculum spells from other schools. I myself attended three different universities in earning my Ph.D., so if those were wizard schools, shouldn't I have the curriculum from each of them? Thus, we need feats to gain a second school. Golarion lore has some people, such as Kassi Aziril from Lost Omens Legends and Izem Mezitani from Secrets of the Temple-City, who attended more than one university. I am surprised that the Remastered wizard feats did not already include any feats about attending multiple schools. In the pre-Remastered schools of abjuration, conjuration, divination, etc. I can understand schools being exclusive, but the Remastered schools are institutions that take in students.

Additional Curriculum Feat 4
Wizard
You study the curriculum at another school of wizardry. Select an arcane school other than your own. You gain access to all spells from that school's curriculum, and you learn one spell of each rank that you can cast from that school's curriculum. As soon as you gain a new rank of spells, you learn one additional spell of that rank from that curriculum. You can prepare curriculum spells from that school in your curriculum spell slots. This does not increase your number of curriculum spell slots.
Special You can take this feat multiple times. Each time you do, you must choose a different arcane school.

Additional Schooling Feat 4
Wizard
You study the unique magic of another school of wizardry. Select an arcane school other than your own. You learn the initial school spell of that school. You can take Advanced School Spell feat more than once. Each time you gain the advanced school spell of one arcane school for which you know the initial school spell.
Special You can take this feat multiple times. Each time you do, you must choose a different arcane school.

Breadth of Schooling Feat 8
Wizard
Based on Bloodline Breadth Player Core 2 pg. 181
Prerequisite You have Additional Curriculum and Additional Schooling for the same arcane school
Your continued studies have expanded your magical capacity. Increase the number of your curriculum spell slots by 1 for each spell rank other than your two highest wizard spell ranks.

I am returning to the original topic to respond to a good comment by Ascalaphus. I replaced their bullet marks with numbers for easier reference.

All that to say, curriculums really need to be published with a good starting set of spells in order to get off the ground, because they probably don't get a lot of extras later on.

I think the curriculum class feature had a lot of potential. You could write a bunch of generic, fairly setting-independent curriculums and then also make some really specific ones for specific guilds in your setting. All you had to do was make sure you put a good selection of spells in it...

What makes for a good selection of spells?

(1) They need to be broadly useful during an adventuring day. If you aren't regularly using your curriculum bonus slots because all the spells are terribly niche, then they're dud bonus slots.

(2) You need spells that age well in low-rank slots. A damaging spell doesn't age well in a low-rank slot because they need to be heightened to do enough damage to justify the action economy. Nor does a counteract spell from a low-rank slot. So you need some of those spells that stay relevant, like Sure Strike or Laughing Fit.

(3) You need the curriculum to be special. Other wizards from different schools, and even other spellcasters, should be curious about the secrets of your school. So "uncommon because it's exotic" spells (not "uncommon because it pulls the rug out from under your plot", please). Or maybe spells that aren't normally on the arcane list. I mean, sorcerers get out-of-tradition blood magic, clerics get odd spells from their deity, oracles have a way to dip into other lists, and so forth. It's an easy way to make the other wizards envious of your school's curriculum.

I feel like this has largely not happened. Some vaguely thematic spells got shoved into a curriculum with little attention paid to usefulness or excitement value.

The D&D/PF1 wizard schools of adjuration, conjuration, divination, etc. were designed to offer specializations to wizards. I remember the gnome illusionist in AD&D, a wizard that specialized in illusions. A wizard would have a specialty school and lacked two forbidden schools. Their justification is that different schools of magic required learning different magic. But as D&D advanced into new editions and into Pathfinder, the exclusivity of the schools faded, and the specialty school just became a line of bonus spells. Fortunately, since the bonus spells covered one seventh of all arcane spells, it was easy to satisfy Ascalaphus's first two points. The third point about curriculum feeling special was mostly satisfied by that curriculum being a fundamental division of arcane magic.

In contrast, the curriculums in the Remastered Player Core wizard schools felt generic to me. They failed the third point.

I presume that that was a deliberate design choice to allow the Player Core wizard to fit into many different campaigns, but the result lost a lot of flavor about attending the school itself. Furthermore, the spells chosen for many schools often often had only a loose connection to the school's theme, diluting the impact. This might be because of the limited number of spells in Player Core alone, but the designers could have made more effort to include the arcane spells that are best for each school.

School of Ars Grammatica had verbal spells, either speaking such as command or writing such as runic weapon. This theme was not a playstyle based around effects, but more an academic style about a minor feature of the spells.
School of Battle Magic is about spells for war. This is a coherent theme that any damage spell will fit into. Good for a blaster wizard.
School of the Boundary had spells built on teleportation and extraplanar travel. This was a coherent playstyle, but the 4th-level translocate is the first spell that is solidly in that theme. The lower rank spells feel like filler.
School of Civic Wizardry has a construction and demolition theme. But most of the curriculum spells did not fit the theme, so the list has lots of filler. What do 2nd-rank revealing light and water walk have to do with construction?
School of Mentalism focuses on mental spells. This theme is coherent, but bards and other occult casters feel better at it.
School of Protean Form has a transformation theme. This is a coherent theme with some good representative spells, such as pest form and enlarge. But the self-only transformations lead the wizard, with only 6+CON hit points, to risk themselves in melee. The 10 temporary hit point of 5th-level elemental form don't last long against 9th-level damage.
School of Unified Magical Theory gains a 1st-level feat and extra uses of Drain Bonded Item instead of a curriculum. This is a nod to the previous universalist wizard, but its theme is a lack of a specific flavorful theme.

My Strength of Thousands campaign began in March 2024, so those were the Remastered options available for playing a student wizard at the Magaambya Academy. Instead, the player of wizard Idris chose a pre-Remaster divination wizard. Idris has used his free archetype for two Magaambya-centric archetypes: Magaambyan Attendent and Halycon Speaker. Idris has been roleplayed as a dedicated student who spent most of his time in the library learning new spells. His spellcasting favorites have been divination, hour-long buffs, and illusion spells for his theater classes. Idris also learned a lot of self-protection magic because he had fewer hit points than the bard/druid's animal companion. None of the Player Core schools fit Idris.

The first new school was Red Mantis Magic School from standalone adventure Prey for Death August 2024. I don't own that book, so all I know about it is its Archives of Nethys entry: "While any thug can commit a murder, proper assassination requires finesse and guile. Deep within the Crimson Citadel, the Red Mantis assassins have developed a specific selection of spells they teach to all magically capable members. These spells complement the assassins’ clandestine and deadly methods." The spells in its curriculum fit that assassin theme.

Paizo released Lost Omens Rival Academies in March 2025. This lorebook tells of a convocation of six magic schools at Nerosyan, Mendev: The Academy of the Reclamation from Sarkoris Scar, Cobyslarni from the First World, Kitharodian Academy from Taldor, the Magaambya from the Mwangi Expanse, the Monastery of Unbreaking Waves from Jalmeray, and the the University of Lepidstadt from Ustalav. Some less prominent school participated, too, such as the Bloodstone Conservatory from Irrisen, the Academy of the Sublime from the plane Axis, and the Sidhedron Spires from New Thassilon.

The book is very flavorful about the many academies, but it provided only three new wizard schools.

The School of Rooted Wisdom for the Magaambya is split into five branches. I am very familiar with those branches from my Strength of Thousands campaign. The Cascade Bearers focus on arcane research, and their wizard school forces on telekinesis. That is a mismatch, but the telekinetic theme is coherent. The Emerald Boughs focus in studying culture and society, and that includes serving as spies. Their wizard school goes for the spy theme with illusion and scrying magic. Rain-Scribes are the experts in exploration and logistics. Their wizard school focuses on staying equipped and comfortable on the road. The Tempest-Sun Mages are the defenders of the Magaambya and their wizard school offers combat spells. The Uzunjati are the storytellers and historians. Their school has two new buff spells designed specifically for them: Kgalaserke's Axes and Ibex's Harvest. The rest of the Uzunjati curriculum spells are mostly telepathy.

These five curriculums have coherent themes, despite two mismatches with the branch themes.

The Academy of the Reclamation offers the wizard School of the Reclamation. "Your study of magic in the service of rediscovering lost knowledge for the Sarkoris Reclamation has taught you that much that was once lost can still be found,..." declares a theme of archaeology in hostile territory. And its curriculum gains the four new spells mental map, overwhelming memory, bridge of vines, and restore ground. They and the other spells fit the theme.

The School of Thassilonian Rune Magic is associated with the minor academy Sidhedron Spires, but Thassilonian sin magic is well established in Golarion lore and I am unsurprised that Paizo developers granted it a school. Like the School of Rooted Wisdom, the School of Thassilonian Rune Magic is divided into branches. These branches conver the seven cardinal sins. The common curriculum offers some scrying and combat spells. Envy offers debuff spells, including the new thief of fortune. Gluttony offers ghoulish spells on a devouring theme, including the new devouring void. Greed is less focussed in its theme, offering illusions of treasure, ways to carry real treasure, and the new spell chrysopoetic curse, which hinders weapons and armor by tempoarily transmuting them to gold. Lust's curriculum is loaded with charm and suggestion spells. including the new spell love's sacrifice. Pride's curriculum is loaded with illusion spells. Sloth's curriculum offers sleep-themed debuff spells, such as the new indolent haze, and spells that summon creature for work and comfy shelters for rest. Wrath's curriculum offers damage spells.

The Archives of Nethys currently lacks the branch details of the School of Rooted Wisdom and School of Thassilonian Rune Magic.

Imagine Idris built with School of Rooted Wisdom. Idris joined the Rain-Scribes branch in my campaign. The player explained to me that this was to represent Idris being a small-town anadi who was more comfortable in the countryside than in the city. Idris is largely a Boy Scout with the motto, "Always be prepared," so Rain-Scribes fits.

Common Magaambya Curriculum
cantrips: detect magic; 1st: alarm; 2nd: dispel magic; 3rd: safe passage; 4th: mountain resilience; 5th: control water; 6th: truesight; 7th: energy aegis; 8th: quandary
Rain-Scribes Additional Curriculum
cantrips: light; 1st: mending, summon animal; 2nd: shape wood; 3rd: cozy cabin; 4th: liminal doorway, unfettered movement; 5th: magic passage, summon dragon; 6th: chain lightning; 7th: planar palace; 8th: earthquake; 9th: metamorphosis
School Spells
initial: halcyon mists; advanced: call the ten

Detect magic and light are commonly-used cantrips, though light assumes the character lacks darkvision. At 1st level, alarm represents camping out--odd that it comes from the Magaambya curriculum rather than the Rain-Scribes curriculum. Mending is useful for repairing non-magical gear in the field, but fails Ascalaphus's point #2 because it ages out since higher-level gear is magical. Summon animal does not fit the Rain-Scribes theme of exploration, because explorers discover native animals. A Rain-Scribe could use a good pack horse, but not one that lasts for only one minute. 2nd-level shape wood could make a ladder or a shelter, but the shelter usage will be superseded by the 3rd-level cozy cabin, which in turn will be superseded by the 7th-level planar palace.

Ascalaphus's point #2 is hammered home by the Rain-Scribes curriculum. We have a nice chain of getting better spells for shelter on the road, but what would the Rain-Scribe wizard do with the lower-level slots afterwards?

Practicality is best measured in actual gameplay. Currently in my campaign the 9th-level party is chasing 8th-level bandits. The exploration and logistics of Rain-Scribes should be good for such a quest. In a homebrew scene, the party used a bard's Umbral Journey to get ahead of bandits in a stolen boat and ambushed them on the river. Idris provided divination on their location and buffed the party as the boat arrived at their location. Only two 5th-level curriculum spells, control water and summon dragon, would have helped. Maybe an alarm spell planted upstream would have warned of the boat's approach, but the chance of false alarm would be high. For the other group of bandits on foot, Idris could summon a tracking animal such as a bloodhound to follow their trail. mountain resilience does fit Idris's self-protection needs. Utility is there, but less than I hoped.

June 2025 saw the release of two more sources of wizard schools.

School of Gates from Lost Omens lorebook Shining Kingdoms is inspired by the elf gates of Kyonin, but it is basically a teleportation school like the School of the Boundary. It was newer spells, some new ones along side it in Shining Kingdoms. One of those new spells, 2nd-level warping pull is what I would expect from a solid teleporation curriculum.
School of Kalistrade also from Shining Kingdoms is about putting on a good show as a wealthy mage. The spells are good choices for the theme, but I suspect that few player characters will find that theme to be practical.
School of Magical Technologies from To Blot Out the Sun in the Shades of Blood adventure path I know only from its Archives of Nethys entry. The curriculum spells on the theme of magical technology are merely conjuration of objects, but they are reasonably useful spells. They also include mending, which would be useful at high levels if the wizard used non-magical technology.

The more recent schools are closer to satisfying Ascalaphus's three points, but they do not meet the mark.

I wrote up my experience in playing the Pathfinder 1st Edition Beginner Box with some 10-year-old children at Beginner Box in Sunday School. The Beginner Box has changed for 2nd Edition, but perhaps you can gain some insights from my report.

Yesterday, I wrote:

A duskwood branch can be used to make a duskwood shield, an 8th-level item, so the branch is an 8th-level item, too, costing 500 gp.

Today, I realized that Paizo's math is wrong. 500 gp is the price of an 8th-level permanent item. The duskwood branch is a consumable item, since it is consumed in making a shield, armor, weapon, or other object. (It can also count as a trade good, which affects resale price.) Consumables are cheaper by level. An 8th-level consumable item costs only 100 gp.

So part of the shocking price of a duskwood branch is an error.

Ironically, this error does not affect crafting with duskwood. Duskwood is not measured by bulk for crafting. Instead, the duskwood items measures duskwood by price, such as "The initial raw materials must include duskwood worth at least 200 gp + 20 gp per Bulk [of the armor crafted]." If a duskwood branch cost 100 gp instead of 500 gp, then the crafter would need 2.2 branches for one-bulk armor rather than 0.44 branches.

The Duskwood material entry in Archives of Nethys leaves off the size of a duskwood branch and duskwood lumber, but the GM Core says on page 254: Type duskwood branch; Price 500 gp; Bulk L; Type duskwood lumber; Price 5,000 gp; Bulk 1. Needing 2.2 branches for a suit of armor does sound more realistic. Otherwise, we have as shroudb said:

also do note that the "branch" is not a small twig, given that a 1 bulk object (which is alredy processed) is only 350gp, it's safe to assume that the "branch" refers to one of the main branches of a tree at least.

The other precious materials in the GM Core are metals sold in light-bulk chunks and one-bulk ingots. Adamantine and dawnsilver are also 8th-level materials, and they have the same 500 gp for a light-bulk chunk error. Cold iron and silver are 2nd-level materials, and they cost 10 gp per chunk. 2nd-level consumables typically cost 7 gp, but 10 gp is closer to that 7-gp consumable price than the 35-gp permanent item price. 17th-level orichalcum is the other precious material and costs 1,000 gp per chunk. 17th-level consumable items typically cost around 2,500 gp, and 17th-level permanent items typically cost around 13,000 gp.

I deal with the issue by never using precious materials in Pathfinder 2nd Edition.

This is in contrast to my PF1 Iron Gods campaign. The seven skymetals--abysium, adamantine, djezet, inubrix, noqual, orichalcum, and siccatite--are important in that story. The PCs soon acquired adamantine weapons in order to cut through the hardness of robots. They never had to worry about the price of those materials, because the metals could be found in the crashed spaceships that they explored and the PCs could craft the items themselves (Iron Gods has a lot of downtime between modules.) Later, my NPC party member Val Baine eventually made herself a mithral armored coat for weird rules reasons discussed at PF1 Bloodrager Val Baine Converted to PF2.

PF1 Val's armored coat was a weird story that lost its weirdness in PF2. She decided to try a technological scatterlight suit for armor against energy weapons. The suit was merely +1 armor against physical attacks, so she wore a PF1 armored coat over it for its +4 armor bonus. But an armored coat was medium armor, and her PF1 sylph's Wings of Air let her fly only while wearing no armor or light armor. So she would take off her coat and carry it in her arms for non-combat flight. She gave up on the scatterlight suit and switched to a Robe of Arcane Heritage under her armored coat. And she made a mithral armored coat that counted as light armor for movement purposes, such as flight. PF2 Val kept the armored coat to maintain her style, but had no reason to make it out of mithral.

The ridiculous price of duskwood comes from the ridiculous economics of Pathfinder, which were copied from the similar economics of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. Magic items and precious-material items are level capped. We don't want a 1st-level wizard becoming overpowered by casting 3rd-rank spells from a wand nor a 1st-level fighter becoming especially hard to hit with +2 fundamental armor runes. But rather than making a blatant rule that player characters cannot buy items higher than their level, the rules hid the restriction by making those items too expensive for the low-level characters to buy.

The price of items from 2nd level and up is based on their level, not on the difficulty of crafting them or the cost of materials. 2nd-level permanent items cost 35 gp, 3rd-level permanent items cost 70 gp, 4th-level permanent items cost 100 gp, 5th-level permanent items cost 150 gp, 6th-level items cost 200 gp, 7th-level permanent items cost 300 gp, 8th-level permanent items cost 500 gp, etc. The prices vary within a band of prices, and consumable items have their own cheaper price schedule. The prices roughly double every 2 levels, just like experience points from defeating a Level+2 enemy, except that the developers like round numbers for prices; therefore, over 6 levels the multiplier is 10 rather than 8.

A duskwood branch can be used to make a duskwood shield, an 8th-level item, so the branch is an 8th-level item, too, costing 500 gp. Strangely, an 8th-level duskwood shield requires only 55 gp of duskwood, so that branch provides enough material for 9 shields. Equally strange, an 8th-level duskwood shield has the same stats as a 0th-level steel shield rather than a 0th-level wooden shield.

But why is a duskwood shield an 8th-level item? What marvelous advantage does it give? Its only advantage over the 0th-level steel shield is lightness, bulk L rather than bulk 1. If we go back to PF1, the Darkwood entry says, "The armor check penalty of a darkwood shield is lessened by 2 compared to an ordinary shield of its type." And as a reminder about PF1 armor check penalty:

Armor Check Penalty: Any armor heavier than leather, as well as any shield, hurts a character’s ability to use Dexterity- and Strength-based skills. An armor check penalty applies to all Dexterity- and Strength-based skill checks. A character’s encumbrance may also incur an armor check penalty.

Shields: If a character is wearing armor and using a shield, both armor check penalties apply.

Duskwood is 8th level because it reduces a shield's armor check penalty that does not exist in PF2. An equivalent bonus in PF2 would be, "Duskwood is so light that Raise a Shield with a duskwood shield is a free action," but no-one wrote that rule.

In contrast, PF2 duskwood armor does offer a real advantage in a very narrow niche: "It’s easier to wear than normal wood armor, reducing the Strength modifier necessary to ignore its check penalty by 1 and reducing its Speed penalty by 5 feet." Thus, a character trained in light and medium armor but with low attribute scores of STR +1 and DEX +2 could upgrade from Studded Leather Armor (+2, dex cap +3, STR req +1) to Duskwood Wooden Breastplate (+3, dex cap +2, STR req +2) to increase their AC by 1 without an armor check penalty. I don't know why anyone would build a character with such stats, but it might be plausible for an Inventor or Thaumaturge.

All I know about Paizo Plus is from two web pages: Paizo Blog: Introducing Paizo Plus and the Paizo Plus page itself. I was surprised when I received emails from Paizo Plus reminding me of my purchases and suggesting that I could write reviews. Those two sources had said nothing about email invitations suggesting that I write a review.

The first one was Wednesday, November 19:

Your Recent Paizo Purchase

Hello Erin!

Thanks for your recent purchase of Pathfinder Battlecry! PDF. We'd love to have you review that product for other players!

If you are a member of the Paizo Plus program, you will earn 5 gold for each review you complete (up to 5 gold/week). If you're not a member yet, just click the Paizo Plus link on the main store page.

Thanks again for supporting Paizo!

followed by an interactive form for submitting a review.

I have not yet read through my copy of Battlecry!, so I did not write a review. The second email was on Monday, November 24, and it suggested that I write a review for my purchase of Pathfinder Society Scenario #6-03: Godsrain in a Godless Land.

I did write that review. I tried to submit it via the form in the email, but the next page glitched. It demanded that I fill out the number of stars, but I had already done so. But I had written the review in a separate text file, an old habit from relying on buggy computers. So I submitted the review on the purchase page for Godsrain in a Godless Land. Soon I received an email, "Please verify your review," and I did so by clicking a button.

Nothing happened for a day. The next day, the review appeared and my Paizo Plus page displayed that I had exactly 5 gold. Technically, having exactly 5 gold was a glitch, too, since some of my other actions should have provided more gold. That has been repaired and now I have 245 gold in Paizo Plus.

I have also learned that the reviews do not apply the BBCode markup used in the Paizo forums, so my review has gratuitous i's and /i's instead of italic text and b's and /b's instead of bold text. And it lost all my line breaks, so the paragraphs run together into one big block of text. Can anyone tell me how to format text in Paizo product reviews?

I will write reviews in the future. My reviews will be odd for Pathfinder Society materials because I bought them to supplement my Strength of Thousands campaign rather than playing them as is. I wonder how far back the email reminders will track my purchases and whether they will mention my purchases of especially old materials such as GameMastery Module W2: River into Darkness.

It's just nonsense that spell attack rolls start of kinda great thanks to Gouging Claw, TK Projectile, etc, and slowly get worse and worse across the game.

There is no reason for that kind of "creeping failure" and we all know exactly why it happens, once upon a time playtesters didn't like the lack of magic weapons affecting core math, so the Paizo devs reworked their system to add weapon runes. Unarmed attacks were thereafter blursed with needing Handwraps; even if it's an ancestry spit attack, gotta wrap those hands.

But oops, Paizo forgot about spell attacks.

No, the original Pathfinder 2nd Edition playtest included runes.

RUNES

Some magic weapons and armor gain their enhancements from potent eldritch runes etched into them. These runes allow for in-depth customization of items.

Runes must be physically engraved on items through a special process to convey their benefits. They take two forms: potency runes and property runes. ...

In fact, the potency runes in the playtest went up to +5. Furthermore, extra weapon damage dice was an automatic effect of the weapon potencty runes.

The spellcasters never had a PF2 item to improve their spell attack bonuses or spell DCs. I think that the playtest was experimenting with spells that have a short-lived result on a Failure, so the developers wanted the spell DCs to stay low for the playtest. I guess they were satisfied with the experiment and decided that low spell DC were fine.

Mathmuse wrote:

... After 2 pages of establishing this plot hook, the scene jumps 75 miles north to deep in the Fangwood. My players objected to that, because that 75 miles would be heading through territory conquered by the Ironfang Legion and they wanted to fight the legion on the way north. So I wrote new material for that journey.

Perhaps author Amanda Hamon Kunz skipped that journey to reduce the page count. Or maybe she skipped it because she would have had to review the first three modules and the overall invasion plan in order to write material that fits the main theme of the adventure path but would be only a side theme to Prisoners of the Blight.
...

It was handwaved on p8 "At this point, the PCs likely have access to magical means of transportation, such as greater teleport or overland flight."

Expectation IMHO is that if the party didn't have access to that sort of magical transportation, that Karburtin could play Uber-driver for them.
But yes it did seem like a big assumption and side quest.

I converted Ironfang Invasion adventure path to Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules, which has more restrictions on teleportation. Teleport, spell 6, can transport only 5 people. The party had 7 PCs and 2 animal companions. Furthermore, both full-rank spellcasters had primal tradition, which is worst at transportation. They typically summoned Phantom Steeds for long-distance travel.

Nevertheless, I did provide alternative transportation for reaching the Fangwood. After the players negotiated peace between Kraggodan and Molthune, General Cadmius Ortho offered the party a ride on a Molthune ship down the Inkwater River to the Fangwood. The party accepted the offer, except that they asked the ship to make a side trip up the Platter River so that they could free some villages from Ironfang control. They wanted to fight the Ironfang Invasion on the way north rather than effortlessly reach their destination via a spell or a ship.

I have noticed that Paizo modules assume that the PCs seek adventure for the sake of adventure. The modules skip the mundane stuff, such as routine travel, or spice up the routine with random encounters. My own players, in contrast, adopt a goal, Adventure is only the means. Their goal in Ironfang Invasion was to free Nirmathas from the invasion. Their goal in Strength of Thousands is to apply their growing skills as students and researchers to help common people. Their goal in Starfinder's Skitter Shot series was to run a successful salvage and rescue business. They immerse themselves in the narrative and find excitement in pursuing a theme that is not pure adventure.

In a basin between two mountain ranges, where the wind blows from one range to the other, the clouds seldom rain. Nevada in the United States between the Sierra Nevada range to the west and the Rocky Mountains to the east is an example of this. Belkzen has this geography, too, resting between the Mindspin Mountains to the west and the Tusk Mountains to the east.

In addition, Belkzen is fairly far north. Its northern edge is the frigid Algid Wastes. Such a location often means a short growing season, though in real-world geography warm trade winds or warm ocean currents can extend the growing season. The mountains around Belkzen prevent such warming.

The river down the middle of Belkzen is called the Flood Road because it is dry 10 months of the 12-month year. And its banks are unstable for the wet two months, which makes irrigation of adjacent land via water channels difficult.

I'll explain my rationale with an example.

Imagine you go to a restaurant where you must choose three different dishes for them to prepare for you. After a short wait, the dishes arrive and you start eating. The food is great, but you’re already full by the time you reach the third dish, so you leave it untouched. You enjoy the place so much that you keep coming back at least once a week. However, every time you visit, the same thing happens: you can never finish the third dish because you’re always full by then. The restaurant has a policy of throwing away any leftovers, so each visit ends up costing them money since that uneaten dish is wasted every time you go.

With that said, I want to ask; why does the restaurant keep preparing three dishes for every customer if most people only end up eating two?

This is a bad analogy because the aspect that makes the three dishes bad is not an aspect of the three ikons. The third dish has a cost to prepare, so ignoring that dish wastes money. The third ikon has no cost, so ignoring it merely means you would rather use other ikons.

Let me change the analogy. Suppose I have three pots in my kitchen for cooking on my stove: a pan, a pot, and a steamer. I use the pan every day for frying eggs and cabbage for breakfast. I use the pot often for making soup and stew and mashed potatoes. I seldom use the steamer, because I use that only for steaming vegetables about once a month. Should I complain that I own a steamer?

In Pathfinder 2nd Edition, the spell Heal is used primarily for healing allies. But it can also damage undead opponents. I almost never use Heal to damage undead, because my weapon does that job just fine and I want to save my Heal spells for healing. Should I complain about the extra feature on Heal that harms undead?

I suppose someone could imagine that if the Exemplar lacked the third ikon, then the Exemplar could get a new feature to replace it. That would give the ikon an opportunity cost. But that is not how Pathfinder design works. Each class is designed for an exact degree of combat effectiveness by level. If the alternative feature would make the Exemplar more effective at combat than the standard, then the developers won't give the Exemplar that extra feature.

The steamer in my kitchen is there because I sometimes eat steamed vegetables. The harm-undead feature in the Heal spell is there because the heal font cleric has twin themes of preventing death and defeating undead monsters that represent death. This is about flavor of my meals or of a Pathfinder class, not about power.

The flavor of the exemplar is that they are empowered by a spark of the divine. The ikon represents that spark mechanically. Due to the power cap by level on all character classes, the ikon is limited in its power. Transcendence lets the exemplar exert a little more power in a carefully limited fashion to give the ikon more drama. Making transcendence more convenient would require putting a different limit on the effectiveness of transcendence, and that different limit might diminish the divine-spark theme of the exemplar class. Having a third ikon that is not used as often as the other two does not increase power, yet it still highlights the spark, so it plays to the theme of the class.

Many players have pointed out that gaining an advantage out of Assurance is difficult to manage. Gaining a 10 instead of a d20 roll would be nice and assuring, but losing all bonuses except proficiency (which includes level) means that the attribute modifier bonus no longer applies. Ordinarily, Assurance could worth using only when a really low roll would be a disaster or to ignore a very heavy penalty, because Assurance is worse than rolling a natural 7.

Assurance Feat 1

Fortune General Skill
Source Player Core pg. 252 2.0
Prerequisites trained in at least one skill
Even in the worst circumstances, you can perform basic tasks. Choose a skill you’re trained in. You can forgo rolling a skill check for that skill to instead receive a result of 10 + your proficiency bonus (do not apply any other bonuses, penalties, or modifiers).

[/b]Special[/b] You can select this feat multiple times. Each time, choose a different skill and gain the benefits for that skill.

On the other hand, the rogue Roshan in my current campaign took Assurance in Athletics because she was maximizing her Athletics proficiency. She added Assurance and Automatic Knowledge in Nature, Society, and Arcana so that she can tell which creatures are better to Grapple and which creatures are better to Trip as a free action if their level is low enough. So not all players are disappointed with Assurance.

The feat Seasoned perplexes me as written, but maybe I just don't understand the rules.

Seasoned[/b] Feat 1

General Skill
Source Player Core pg. 262 2.0
Prerequisites trained in Crafting, Alcohol Lore, or Cooking Lore
You’ve mastered the preparation of many types of food and drink. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to checks to Craft food and drink, including elixirs if you have Alchemical Crafting and potions if you have Magical Crafting. If you are a master in one of the prerequisite skills, this bonus increases to +2.

The perplexing issue is what are the Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules for Crafting food and drink? The usual Craft downtime activity takes "2 days of work setting up, or 1 day if you have the item's formula." Using that method to Craft food would have everyone waiting at least a day for dinner. I presume most people simply ask for a Crafting check after an hour, but that is a houserule. My own houserule is to make a Survival check for preparing food and drink, since Survival already has a Subsist activity to feed oneself.

Furthermore, even with quick Craft for food and drink, does a player character who qualified for Seasoned based on Alcohol Lore or Cooking Lore have to roll a Craft check or can they roll their Lore? I would just replace the word "Craft" in Seasoned with "make."

One the other hand no short hand what so ever means a lot of work to classify it ahead of time. Creatures will have a cultural set of beliefs which define them. Even if they break from the norm it would define that break. Maybe the best way to handle this is have the gods each have their own philosophy tied to the religion they preach and this formulates the ideologies which then defines the enemies and allies of each god.

The edicts and anathema of each god serve as a shorthand for their philosophy.

For example, at the moment Uvuko (The Diamond Ring) is important in my Strength of Thousands campaign. His edicts are, "Embrace change and the future, master adversity with flexibility, foster freedom and progress for others." His anathema are, "Allow yourself and your surroundings to stagnate, crush an egg, use vile or cruel language." The party met some Mbe'ke dwarves whose great-grandparents migrated from Cloudspire and one is a cleric of Uvuko. The party is studying the ruins of Bloodsalt, a dead city that once had several Dragon Disciples. An archaeological secret I am adding is that the city was settled by human and cloud dragon worshipers of Uvuko to embrace a future in which dragons and humans work together. The city is in an area of natural disasters, which spelled its doom, but they were hopeful that the interspecies cooperation could overcome the disasters. The anathema against crushing an egg is symbolic, because to dragons their eggs represent the future, but it resulted in the weird custom that followers of Uvuko do not eat eggs, not even chicken eggs.

A bigger plot about the philosphy of a god was my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign. The Monster Division of the Molthune military, led by hobgoblin General Azaersi, rebelled against the Molthunes, who treated them as third-class citizens, and sought to carve their own nation of monstrous humanoids out of parts of Nirmathas and Molthune. Most of her hobgoblins followed Hadregash, the Lawful Evil barghest hero-god of tyranny and slavery. The other three hero-gods and their boss Lamashtu were Chaotic Evil, but tyranny controls through lawful authority. The campaign was supposed to end with a treaty between Azaersi and Nirmathas, but my players rejected any truce while the Ironfang Legion still held war captives as slave labor. I had to enact cultural change on the Ironfang Legion by letting the party defeat Hadregash himself to strip slavery from his domains. Amusingly, the Remastered PF2 version of Hadregash is no longer a god of slavery, but still has chain and manacle as his holy symbol.
Edicts Conquer everything you see, rule with an iron fist, fight tactically
Anathema Bow before others, let others control your actions, permit insubordination
Areas of Concern Conquest, invasion, war
Domains ambition, might, pain, tyranny

PathfinderWiki has a list of the Lost Omens lore books at https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Pathfinder_Lost_Omens. And PathfinderWiki is also a good source of lore.

The Lost Omens World Guide is the first of the Pathfinder 2nd Edition lore books and a solid introduction to the most familiar countries of Golarion and a review of its history. Its nine chapters divide the continents of Avistan and Garund into nine regions.

The ninth chapter "Shining Kindgoms" and the book Lost Omens Shinging Kingdoms covers the nations of Taldor (old empire that is the source of the Taldoran common language), Andoran (democratic nation), Druma (mercantile theocracy), Five Kings Mountains (dwarven kingdom), Kyonin (elven kingdom), and Galt (permanent French revolution).

Three other books that cover the same territories as chapters of Lost Omens World Guide are Absalom, City of Lost Omens, Lost Omens Mwangi Expanse, and Lost Omens Impossible Lands.

Lost Omens Tian Xia World Guide amd Lost Omens Tian Xia Character Guide move to a third contient, Tian Xia, based on Earth's Far East.

The Remastering of Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules renamed the terminology borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons so the lore books published before 2024 use different names for mechanics than the lore books published 2024 and later. This matters more for rule books than for lore books, but some lore books have new ancestry and background options, so they present mechanics for them.

Lore books written for Pathfinder 1st Edition have valid history but their presentday is set a decade in the past. For example, Wrath of the Righteous adventure path closed the Worldwound, but PF1 lore has it still active and PF2 lore has the location rebuilding itself as Sarkoris Scar.

My experience with an Exemplar is from the playtest, in which my younger daughter played a leshy exemplar named Nightshade: Playtesting in a Fistful of Flowers with 7 Leshies. She predicted the not-best-at-anything that Ravingdork describes.

Mechanics: The ikons are fun. It's a very flexible class for what specific build you end up with since you are picking three options out of their respective pools. It generally seems to fall as DPS with the ability to off-tank and/or support as well. You can build more pure DPS with your choices, but it's likely that you won't be quite as good at DPS compared to a class like barbarian, which is all about that. Instead, you get more utility and flexibility. ...

Thus, it is a martially flexible class rather than a martially powerful class. That makes it strong in my campaigns, because my PCs alternate between playing the spearpoint of the party in which their abilities are exactly what is needed to defeat the enemies and playing the haft of the spear in which their abilities serve to support the spearpoint characters.

My daughter's views were that playing an exemplar felt cool. And "mechanically, it's a middle complexity martial fighter class with tank/support options. Enjoyable to play for people who know what they are doing and not going to suck completely even if you don't since none of the options are bad."

Let's look at the dragons in the first Monster Core.
Page 108 "Adamantine dragons are typically steadfast and loyal. Once they commit to a certain purpose, changing their minds is nigh impossible."
Page 110 "These dragons are schemers, always looking to manipulate and control others, either for personal gain or simply for the thrill of watching their machinations play out. Conspirator dragons see themselves above others and typically speak with infantilizing tones and words."
Page 112 "Whether this is true or whether diabolical dragons are simply the reborn souls of dragons sent to Hell, the fact remains that these dragons are powerful, cunning, and tyrannical. Every diabolic dragon’s goal is to further Hell’s will, though how this happens can vary."
Page 114 "Using the blessings of Heaven, empyreal dragons protect others and intercede against wickedness. Empyreal dragons are wise, considerate, and compassionate. When speaking with others, empyreal dragons are patient and understanding."
Page 117 "Fortune dragons are seekers of novel experiences. This desire for originality leads fortune dragons to approach visitors of other ancestries with curiosity, though this initial interest quickly wanes if a visitor lacks exciting qualities."
Page 119 "They are generally contemplative and have a fixation on knowledge and self-discipline, traits belied by their bestial appearance. As a result, horned dragons are generally more open to speaking with outsiders."
Page 121 "Mirage dragons are vain and egotistical figures. They ultimately care more about themselves than others."
Page 123 "Omen dragons have a natural compulsion to share the futures they see. These dragons have no compunctions about what the visions show and share their knowledge equally with innocent villagers as they do with wicked tyrants."

Those descriptions provide more roleplaying information than alignments did.

In Monster Core 2 we find:
Page 118 "Among the largest and fiercest dragons, cinder dragons are typically volatile, demanding respect—even deference—from lesser creatures. Cinder dragons’ appearance evokes their flame, often in scales with mixed patterns of red, orange, and yellow. Many cinder dragons dwell in active volcanoes and similarly fiery locales. Cinder dragons prefer treasures that can withstand the heat of their bodies and lairs, with gemstones, gold, and silver common among their hoards."

The description outright states that a cinder dragon is fierce and volatile. Are they selfish? Their demand for deference probably means that they like gifts from supplicants, but the description does not label them as selfish. Are they kind-hearted? Even if a particular cinder dragon is kind-hearted, their volatile nature means that their anger will often overrule their kindness. They may apologize later. Are they stern yet fair? No, too volatile for that. Are they reckless? That is one way of roleplaying volatile. Are they passionate? That is one way of roleplaying fierce.

Culture matters especially in fantasy because it is about the great conflict Good vs Evil, Law vs Chaos. Alignment was a shorthand that helped to flesh all of that out.

Cinder Dragons are CE, Ok the are cruel and selfish like a red dragon, LE ok then they are ordered and believe in discipline and conquest, N, they are balanced and react as mother nature, their personality dormant until they erupt.

Culture matters less in Pathfinder because most dragons are opponents to defeat. But my players like to interact more, often negotiating with hostile creatures, so I do have to consider culture.

For example, in my Strength of Thousands campaign, the PCs will soon fight a Graveknight. They are students of the Magaambya Academy and will likely recall, "A graveknight can only be permanently destroyed by obliterating their armor (such as with disintegrate), transporting it to the Forge of Creation, or throwing it into the heart of a volcano." One PC took a Magaambya course named, "Making the Undead Stay Dead." Fortunately, they are near the Shackles, which has volcanic islands. Imagine they headed to a volcanic island and encountered a young cinder dragon.

The cinder dragon would fiercely demand that the party explain their intrusion on his volcano. The party is good at Diplomacy and if they roll Recall Knowledge well they will learn, "Cinder dragons are fierce and volatile, demanding respect—even deference—from lesser creatures." The Diplomatic members are also performers (Theater majors), so they might offer the dragon the gift of songs that praise dragons, altering lines to make the songs specifically about cinder dragons. They will point out that only the power of a volcano, which reflects the power of the cinder dragon living there, can destroy the cursed graveknight armor (leaving off the other two possibilities).

And if Diplomacy and Performance fail due to bad dice rolls, then the fierce dragon will declare that his volcano is not a trash dump and he will destroy the party for the insult. Yet he will plan that if he is victorious, he will dump the graveknight armor into the volcano himself rather than deal with a graveknight rejuvenating nearby. The 9th-level party will be able to defeat the dragon. If they spare him (they hate killing intelligent creatures), he will keep his humiliation secret, never telling another dragon and never seeking revenge.

My campaign is only in the 3rd module of Strength of Thousands, but we will need the answer to this question ourselves in about a year real-time.

I searched the 5th module, Doorway to the Red Star, on the word "acclimate" to see when the PCs would eventually acclimate to the thin atmosphere. The only two instances of "acclimate" are in the Atmosphere section that SayPikaPika quoted behind a spoiler mask. This means that no-one except PCs legendary in Athletics will acclimate until the GM grows tired of fatigued PCs.

I also searched for "atmosphere," "atmospheric," "pressure," "pressurized," "suit," and "seal" and did not find anything helpful. I guess the module does not provide a method for, "This fatigued condition ends after the character gets a full night’s rest in a familiar atmosphere." The text mentions that the air bubble spell and bottled air item only delay the fatigue from thin atmosphere. Well, air bubble lasts only 1 minute regardless.

I am familiar with air bubble and cleanse air because my PCs regularly prepare those while they are performing archaeology in Bloodsalt, which has waves of poisonous gas from volcanic Terwa Lake on rare occasions. I added such a wave in last week's game session, for the excitement of using their preparations.

I searched for other solutions. Gas Mask of Clean Air merely filters out poison gases. On the other hand, Everair Mask says that it enriches the air with oxygen pulled from the Plane of Air, so it should compensate for the thin atmosphere. The Everair Masks have limited duration but can be used once a day. The greater Everair Mask, item 10, price 160 gp, creates breathable air for 8 hours, enough for a good night's sleep to remove fatigue. The major Everair Mask, item 14, price 625 gp, creates breathable air for 24 hours, so the wearer has breathable air all day. These are invested magic items, but a PCs who can afford to invest 3 more items could just rotate 3 greater Everair Masks, total price 480 gp. The 5th-level uncommon arcane, divine, primal spell Lashunta's Life Bubble creates a replenishing protective bubble of fresh air around one creature for 8 hours, and heightened to 6th level it lasts all day.

As for Breath Control general feat 1, its effect on holding one's breath underwater or against inhaled poisons won't matter for Akiton's thin atmosphere. But it indicates training in breathing. The module says that advanced training in Athletics helps a PC breathe the thin air, so by common sense dedicated training in breathing itself should help, too. I would add a houserule for my players that training in Athletics plus Breathe Control would add up to master proficiency in breathing for resisting the fatigue for 24 hours (great to combine with greater Everair Mask or 5th-level Lashunta's Life Bubble), and master in Athletics plus Breath Control would add up to legendary proficiency in breathing for instant acclimation to the thin air. My excuse is that one paragraph on Atmosphere is too short to cover every case, so it ended with a statement about GM’s discretion. We GMs have to rule on the cases that the paragraph skipped.

Meanwhile, what I'd describe as heroic play is more the gameplay of PF2e, where even level 1 adventurers are a distinct cut above average and often engage in overt heroics (or villainy!). At the same time, the party at those levels isn't necessarily doing massively over-the-top things either, which I think is what starts to define epic or superheroic play. Mythic I think goes a step even beyond that, where your actions effectively redefine the setting. This creates different considerations for canon and West March-style games as well: although it can be possible to run even superhero adventures alongside each other in a shared canon, mythic play I'd say ought to need accommodation as their own canon for each given adventure, simply because any given party could create, destroy, or irreversably change entire nations, worlds, or planes of existence.

Level 1 NPC townfolk have almost the same ability scores as Level 1 PC adventures. We had a thread about that in April 2023: Is 10 in a stat still the basic human average? Instead, the difference is that the PCs trained in adventuring abilities while the townsfolk trained in non-combat abilities.

The adversaries of the PCs seem even more impressive. The monster's hit points, AC, and attack bonus numbers are typically higher than the numbers for same-level PCs. This is to balance that the PCs have a wide variety of combat tactics but the monsters have only two or three different tactics. The more an opponent resembles a PC with more tactics, the lower the numbers, except for dragons.

I had a recent example of that in Hurricane's Howl. The 8th-level party confronted 9th-level Thiarvo the Quick and his four 5th-level Mudwringer mercenaries who use Tomb Raider stats. The Mudwringers have Melee [one-action] kukri +15 [+11/+7] (agile, trip), Damage 1d6+9 slashing (average 12.5 damage) and Ranged [one-action] hand crossbow +15 [+10/+5] (range increment 60 feet, reload 1), Damage 1d6+6 piercing. In comparison the 8th-level champion Wilfred has a +17 to hit with his +1 striking longsword and deals 2d8+6 piercing damage (average 15 damage). Rather than chasing off the Mudwringers as the module intended, the party allied with them against an undead monster. Despite being 3 levels lower, the Mudwringers contributed well to the combat.

Opponents of the PCs have to follow the same power curve as the PCs so that we GMs can properly judge the threat of the encounter. But this means that the PCs are not a distinct cut above average of any potential opponent of the same level. Level 1 PCs are more powerful than Level -1 commoners but not more powerful than a level 1 barkeep, who in a bar fight against the party hits almost as well as a level 1 fighter and has a whopping 25 hit points.

Game balance keeps Pathfinder 2nd Edition more grounded.

I think some of the elements you mention are more differences in genre and flavor rather than power: cozy fantasy for instance is something you could apply to any power level, because opening a coffee shop at your local fantasy village and becoming a barista to the gods themselves are both valid expressions of that. I also think what you describe as wonder tales and heroic play fall into the more grounded tier of power I was thinking about, in the sense that those kinds of adventures are about ordinary people whose abilities an average player could conceivably see themselves having (plus whichever level of magic would be considered ordinary in a high fantasy environment, if that is indeed the setting).

I like Teridax's wording, "the more grounded tier of power," so let the starting tier of power be called "grounded." Then comes heroic, which includes power fantasy. I have heard the phrase "epic" for the superheroic level, but that also means above 20th level, so I am going to call it "saga."

That gives a list of grounded, heroic, saga, and mythic.

Let me give an example of grounded play from my Discord server. I used the Tree Stump Library as an earlier example because I had been talking about it in Discord. I replaced player names with character names.

November 1, 2025
GM — 3:19 PM
The Forgotten Map
The upcoming encounter with the A8 egg-shaped tower [in Hurricane's Howl] has a note that some items will be handy, including "The map of area B6 from page 36 of Kindled Magic." I don't think I mentioned that map, because the party had their own spin on the adventure in the Tree Stump Library.

Room B6, The Reading Nook, in the Tree Stump Libary is the room with three spellskeins. I believe you adopted those spellskeins and added them to the two spellskeins in Cara and Jinx's room. I guess someone else in the Spire Dormitory is caring for them now. However, the room also said:

The piles here contain several books relating to the ruined city of Bloodsalt, whose long-vanished inhabitants supposedly sprouted wings and flew away. Also among the scattered stacks are ancillary works on Mwangi residents and dragons, bookmarked for useful cross-referencing. Both Studies on the Habits and Migration Patterns of Birds and Drakes of the Continent of Garund and An Expanded History of the Lesser-Known Peoples of the Mwangi Expanse are here. A slim folio contains a partial map of the ruined city; though this cartography might not seem of much interest now, note whether the heroes take it (whether to keep or to give to Takulu), as it proves helpful in Pathfinder Adventure Path #171: Hurricane’s Howl.

Unless you have a better idea, I rule that copies of the map were given out in the class A Tale of A Triply Lost City, and both Nhyira and Cara have a copy.

Jinx Fuun — 3:43 PM
ooh! Migration Patterns of Birds!

Idris — 5:22 PM
Makes sense. All of those books were sorted, but Idris had no reason to pay them particular interest over the other books and certainly wouldn't have been taking anything away

GM — 6:45 PM
The modules were written with the assumption that the PCs loot like adventurers. I am enjoying that I do not have to adjust or point out the loot, and can just provide appropriate gear from the Magaambya.

Jinx Fuun — 7:12 PM
I think you can assume that Jinx read the bird book if Idris mentioned it. Granted, she may have read ONLY the bird chapters.

November 2, 2025
GM — 10:45 AM
I speculate that Studies on the Habits and Migration Patterns of Birds and Drakes of the Continent of Garund might be old, predating the permanent hurricane called the Eye of Abendego. That hurricane would have changed the migration patterns of many birds. Someone (hint, hint) should research how those patterns changed.

Jinx Fuun — 1:03 PM
Studying the local birds was indeed her favorite part of the research

... One thing that I'd like to flesh out, which in a development pipeline would likely be much farther down the line after any sort of MVP, is the differences between power tiers: what are the essential qualities of a grounded, more OSR-style adventure that make the characters feel vulnerable and forced to resort to cunning over heroics? What are the quintessential aspects of mythic play that allow the party to feel like demigods? Heroic play I think is easier to conceptualize, as that's the foundation for PF2e's gameplay, so that could make for a solid starting point.

What are the tiers of play?

I searched the Internet for "heroic and mythic" and found that World of Warcraft uses normal, heroic, and mythic for raid difficulties. I play Elder Scrolls Online which has the difficulty levels of normal, veteran, and veteran with hard mode, which don't sound as exciting. I don't think that a label of "normal" fits fantasy roleplaying games.

My Strength of Thousands campaign has a lot of gameplay below the heroic level. My players told me that they wanted to roleplay as students rather than adventurers. They had as much fun participating in an annual sailboat race (which I added myself) as they did battling giant insects. One mission in the 1st module, Kindled Magic, had the party sent to a forgotten archive called the Tree Stump Library to fetch some old reference books, and they fought an infestation of giant insects and swarms of insects there. But the PCs were most aghast that the insects had destroyed or damaged many books! Two players advocated that their characters wanted a project to repair the damaged books, so I created such a project under the guidance of archaeologist Izem Mezitani. That is a different tier of play than heroic.

I am currently reading the novel Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. It falls under a category called cozy fantasy. I have read 100 pages so far, and except for the prologue of the protagonist's adventuring days before she retired to open a coffee shop, the story has had no combat nor danger. I suggest that the bottom tier of play could be called "cozy."

Coming of age stories fit into the tier between cozy and heroic, but "coming of age" is too narrow a label for an entire tier. That is the tier that my players wanted for the first two modules of Strength of Thousands, except that the module adds many moments of heroic gameplay. This tier includes fairy tales and the part of the Hero's Journey before the heroism. The Wikipedia entry on fairy tales says, "Some folklorists prefer to use the German term Märchen or "wonder tale"[10] to refer to the genre rather than fairy tale," so let me dub this tier as "wonder tale." The protagonist does not need to be any more powerful than an ordinary adult but must encounter fantastic elements.

I view heroic tier as the tier in which characters are in danger and forced to resort to cunning and daring to overcome that danger. If the character can overcome danger through sheer power, then that is power fantasy. In mythic the characters go beyond power to reality bending to accommodate their theme or destiny.

So far my list is cozy, wonder tale, heroic, power fantasy, and mythic. Is that too many or too few?

The game clearly tell us all the types of actions:

[quote}There are four types of actions: single actions, activities, reactions, and free actions.

That sentence came from the Player Core, Chapter 8 Playing the Game, Actions, page 414. It is part of a larger description:

ou will need to track your actions carefully in an encounter. At the start of each turn you take in an encounter, you regain 3 actions and 1 reaction to spend that round. (Regaining your actions is described in detail here.) You can spend your actions in many different ways.

There are four types of actions: single actions, activities, reactions, and free actions.

Single actions can be completed in a very short time. They're self-contained, and their effects are generated within the span of that single action.

Activities usually take longer and require using multiple actions, which must be spent in succession. Stride is a single action, but Sudden Charge is an activity in which you use both the Stride and Strike actions to generate its effect. ...

Note that the last sentence that I quoted called the Strike subordinate action in Sudden Charge an "action."

Further down the page, it gives the Action Icon Key for Single Action, Two-Action Activity, Three-Action Activity, Reaction, and Free Action. That section skips any icon for one-minute activities, since those actions are not part of tracking actions during Encounter Mode. It also skips any icons for subordinate actions.

My interpretation is that subordinate actions are actions, but they are not tracked as part of the 3 actions and 1 reaction gained per round. Thus, the section of the rulebook that describes how to track actions skipped them.

Further down the same page is a section called Activities, which has the first mention of subordinate actions.

Activities

An activity typically involves using multiple actions to create an effect greater than you can produce with a single action, or combining multiple single actions to produce an effect that's different from merely the sum of those actions. In some cases, usually when spellcasting, an activity can consist of only 1 action, 1 reaction, or even 1 free action.

An activity might cause you to use specific actions within it. You don't have to spend additional actions to perform them—they're already factored into the activity's required actions. (See Subordinate Actions.)
...

It calls subordinate actions "actions," too.

The Subordinate Actions in sidebox on page 415 says:

Subordinate Actions

An action might allow you to use a simpler action—usually one of the Basic Actions—in a different circumstance or with different effects. This subordinate action still has its normal traits and effects, but it's modified in any ways listed in the larger action. For example, an activity that tells you to Stride up to half your Speed alters the normal distance you can move in a Stride. The Stride would still have the move trait, would still trigger reactions that occur based on movement, and so on. The subordinate action doesn't gain any of the traits of the larger action unless specified. The action that allows you to use a subordinate action doesn't require you to spend more actions or reactions to do so; that cost is already factored in.

Using an activity is not the same as using any of its subordinate actions. For example, the quickened condition you get from the haste spell lets you spend an extra action each turn to Stride or Strike, but you couldn't use the extra action for an activity that includes a Stride or Strike. As another example, if you used an action that specified, “If the next action you use is a Strike,” an activity that includes a Strike wouldn't count, because the next thing you are doing is starting an activity, not using the Strike basic action.

SuperParkourio pointed out that the Sneak action contains a subordinate Stride, yet this Strike does not break the hidden condition from Hide. My interpretation is that Sneak modifies the subordinate Stride so that it also does not break the hidden condition.

Mathmuse wrote:

This example illustrates that higher level does not give wider scope or higher intensity. The stakes become more important to more people, but the personal stakes of the party are always the risk of death to them and the people they protect. What truly increases with level is the difficulty of the challenges.

Forgive me, but I don't think anyone here is discussing concrete mechanics for roleplaying personal stakes. That's quite beside the point when the subject of discussion is how making the party more powerful tends to entail greater levels of influence over the world, and how that is balanced by higher external stakes, greater dangers, and a larger world altogether in the adventure. That personal stakes stay fairly consistent throughout is a quality of all stories that has very little to do with the crunchier, mechanical aspects of tabletop games.

Yet I have seen people arguing that having more power, the ability to defeat stronger enemies, is the narrative. Teridax said, "power level is narrative scope," though he might have been arguing about PF2 as is rather than hopes for the future.

I also don't think the examples you listed really illustrate your point at all: convening with a war council may not seem intense to you, but the stakes are certainly very high when the future of entire nations rests in your hands. Similarly, preventing an alliance between two nations in a potentially all-consuming war is a similarly high-stakes challenge that a party of commoners would be unlikely to even attempt. It seems to me like you're conflating your level of personal interest in what seems to be mainly out-of-combat challenges with the scale of an adventure, which I don't think makes for a very reliable yardstick when the standard is this subjective.

At the beginning of Vault of the Onyx Citadel the PCs received a message from Weslen Gavirk, Forest Marshal of Nirmathas, saying that he wants to convene a war council in their name. The heart of the message said, " The people of Nirmathas ... need more than an elected officer to unite them against the forward march of the Ironfang Legion: they need legends, and yours are the legends being told around soldiers’ campfires these days. More practically, your forces have been at war with the Ironfang Legion longer than anyone else’s, and you have won more victories against them than anyone else. I would like to meet with you and, if you indeed measure up to your legends, offer you command of the Nirmathi forces until the Legion is turned back or destroyed."

The PCs never directly commanded Nirmathi forces. They kept operating as a party instead, though the module said, "The adventure assumes the PCs use whatever forces they’ve collected to harry the other three Ironfang fortresses while they approach Fort Phaendar."

As for the intensity of the war council, the headings of the seven pages describing the council are: Gaining Influence, War Council Guests, EVENTS AT THE WAR COUNCIL, Day 0: The Council Opens, Day 1: Politics as Usual, Day 2: Uninvited Guest, Day 3: Edge of Civility, Day 4: Boastful Proclamations, Day 5: Tragic News, and The Summit’s End. Six days of talking to gain influence with a little betrayal-induced combat for excitement. The Boastful Proclamations event was emissary Gossamer from the Fangwood Forest announcing that fey were taking action against the Ironfang Legion entering fey territory--and the module expected the party to spend another day talking while this happened. No, my PCs teleported over to the incursion, along with some council observers, and fought back in person. I had to create the battlemap and enemy forces myself.

The stakes were high during the war council, but the influence mechanics had no intensity. The players had more excitement in a side quest breaking into the decades-old secret records of the Forest Marshall's office to find the fate of PC Zinfandel's missing-in-action sister (groundwork for a 20th-level Continuing the Adventure quest).

This is not about my level of personal interest. This was about offering my players an enjoyable game session. I used the influence notes on the delegates to give them personalities and interests, so that the players could find enjoyment in roleplaying, though I asked for the influence skill checks after the roleplaying. The others who did not care for roleplaying had the heist of breaking into secret records and the combat in the Fangwood Forest.

Nevertheless, remember the main issue of this thread is the relationship between power level and game complexity. Complexity is a cost because managing the mechanics can slow down player enjoyment. The influence system was an additional complexity that reduced intensity. And it had little to do with power level. The PCs needed a high enough level to be viewed as legends, but that could have happened back at 8th level (it did happen with the city leadership of Longshadow) rather than at 15th level.

In other words, the powers really need to revolve so closely around the adventure the GM is running that the GM needs to be pretty hands on with setting the players up to have mythic powers that fit with the adventure enough not to completely trivialize the entire campaign or create so many artificial restrictions around when the mountain cutter can and cannot cut open the mountain that the player feels like they don’t even have the ability. Having a party choose amazing mythic powers that have nothing to do with each other can really exacerbate the whole angel summoner/BMX Hero dilemma if some powers are getting used all the time and others never do.

I feel we should have a link to the Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit skit.

Unicore's point is supported by the mythic veins in my campaigns. Those campaigns grew mythic only around themes that the players had established.

In PF1 Jade Regent the players were really big on Japanese-based Minkaian tradition. Several players created characters who grew up in Tian Xian culture: ninja Ebony Blossom was from Minkai itself, kitsune Nathan/Nuriko was from the Forest of Spirits, fighter Jao was descended from an exiled Minkaian general, and samurai Lu was from the Jade Quarter of Karlsgard. Their change in the plot of Tide of Honor was to rely on that tradition rather than war.

In PF1 Iron Gods the players wanted to play with the alien high technology. Dwarf Boffin was a gunslinger with Experimental Gunsmith archetype who took every technological feat, magus Elric was the field agent of the technologist-wizard Khonnir Baine, fighter/investigator Kheld mastered mundane crafting and founded a workshop, and they recruited Khonnir Baine's daughter Val as a party member and crafting assistant. Restoring a small spaceship to flight condition was fully in line with their hopes for the campaign, which is why I enabled it.

In PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion at the end of the 4th module, the players insisted that they had to remove slavery from the territory conquered by the Ironfang Legion. We had a delightful heist adventure where they rescued the war captives from their starting village Phaendar. I wracked my brain trying different ideas to get the hobgoblin worshippers of Hadregash, barghest hero-god of slavery, to change their culture. The party rescuing the goddess Gendowyn and PC Honey expressing hope of becoming like Gendowyn opened up a mythic subplot that would change pro-slavery culture by defeating Hadregash himself.

In my PF2 A Fistful of Flowers mini-campaign, I kept up the theme of basing chapters on classic movies. Cinematic elements are a lot like mythic elements.

In PF2 Strength of Thousands the PCs are not yet mythic, but I have been emphasizing that the Magaambya Academy is a mythic organization. For example, when players ask me for permission for an uncommon or rare spell (mostly Roshan's player who is sticking to a fire-and-ice theme), I said to roleplay asking the librarians at the Archhorn Library on campus to find a copy and then apply Learn a Spell to study it. If in the future they trivialize a plot with a rare spell, well, they are Magaambya mages, so that is to be expected.

2e Paizo does not, and from the start of this system has NEVER, wanted players to be able to have serious narrative control over the flow of the campaigns they're running unless the GM wills it. All of that stuff you brought up, Mathmuse? The examples of the heroes of myth who engaged in physics-breaking acts of heroics, like Hercules changing the course of a mighty river in order to clean those stables? Even with Mythic, those kinds of feats would be entirely too narrative and world changing (and thus giving way too much power in the hands of players) for Paizo in its current form to give the idea ANY credence or thought.

Breaking the narrative was standard policy in my PF1 Iron Gods campaign, Iron Gods among Scientists. In the 1st game session the three PCs tracked down the power broadcast hidden in a warehouse when the warehouse encounter was on page 42. In the 2nd session they recruited a teenaged NPC Val Baine as a fourth party member. She was supposed to be a sympathetic but helpless innkeeper managing some living space for the party during her father's absence. I statted her as a bloodrager, and she stayed with the party at the players' request all through the adventure. They entered Scrapwall, a former bandit camp turned shantytown, in the 2nd module by pretending to be refugees in hiding from the law, which derailed the "scrapworth" reputation system in the module. Instead, they gained their reputation by hosting a concert. And so on.

For the impossible tasks I let them accomplish, they renovated a buried shuttle-sized spaceship in Scrapwall called "The Haunted Wreck" even though the module called it irreparable. Then they flew off in it. In the 6th module, The Divinity Drive, they flew their spaceship past the crashed mile-long spaceship The Divinity and the final boss Unity contacted them over ship-to-ship radio. The party's technologist Boffin asked for a job and Unity hired them as repair crew. They were supposed to sneak into the tail end of The Divinity and fight their way through monsters and robots to reach Unity for a final battle. Instead, they befriended half of Unity's minions while making major repairs using technology I invented on the fly. In the end, they broke an unbreakable lock on a control system by communing with the goddess Desna and asking her for the code after Boffin read the manual and learned that Desna had designed the system.

My players love narrative control but they are polite enough to not end the campaign with their changes. They make suggestions and I improvise from there. They could have suggested altering the course of a river if they had a way to dig a new channel. They did repair a canal and its locks in my Ironfang Invasion campaign. And the nation of Oprak does not exist in my campaign world. Instead, the Ironfang Legion settled in the new province of Oprak under Nirmathi rule.

I don't need control as a GM. I run the setting not the outcomes. My players rewrite outcomes. And that seems a good template for mythic games.

exequiel759 wrote:

I didnd't say it was a useless skill for bards. In fact, its the only class that I think would ever want to ever use it (besides those that take it for flavor ofc). I said it was a useless skill. Period. Arguably more useless than Survival which is the one most people mention being the worst skill.

You know it's a useless skill because the only reason it's good on bards is because they're forced to use it for their class features. Take that away and it's got very little, for bard or anyone else. Bit of an artificial "usefulness"

My Strength of Thousands party uses Performance regularly. The seven-member party contains two bards, but other party members trained Performance, too. An interesting case is a service project called "Forced Migration, Moderate 6" in Spoken on the Song Wind.

Currently, in Hurricane's Howl the party is on the road in a field expedition. They Perform plays at the villages they visit in order to generate goodwill.

Survival was also mentioned as a useless skill. If a party uses Survival only for foraging, then it is of marginal use, since rations are cheap. But my party most recently used Survival to properly butcher a pair of Krooths to recover their alchemical ingredients at full value: "Krooth Guts In addition to naturalists, the strange enzymes and other chemicals found in the internal organs of male krooths, particularly the liver, pancreas, and kidneys, are of great value to alchemists who seek to concoct elixirs and potions with transmutation effects. A single male krooth's organs, properly harvested and preserved, can be sold to an interested alchemist or naturalist for as much as 80 gp."

I did say that my players like to use their skills outside of combat.

The ability for the GM to handwave any encounter into a single die roll is always a tool in the GM’s tool kit that can be helpful (even for combat encounters!) but it is also something that can hit the players hard, especially when it feels arbitrary and like it is undermining choices the players made to be prepared for those kinds of encounters. It is important players learn what things a GM tends to ignore/handwave/house rule around before committing resources to it.

I already talked about how many of the out of combat feats fail because they are not designed around the kind of situations in which players would actually use them, but a huge part of that is that because no skill feats are designed to work around social encounters, chases, races, research, infiltrations or investigations. They are instead designed around specific actions/activities that have turned out not to be the way most GMs (and adventure writers) handle those skills in the kinds of tense moments we break out into encounter mode around. When the game was being developed, those skill activities were imagined to be a bigger part of the game than the adventure writers have ended up using and that is a big part of why out of combat skill feat options keep missing the mark.

My players love using their character's skills outside combat. Thus, I try to create opportunities for those skills.

On the other hand, the out-of-combat feats don't necessarily fit the opportunities I provide. For example, my players seldom use Gather Information, because they would rather roleplay talking to some interesting townsfolk rather than make only a Diplomacy check. Therefore, Hobnobber, Streetwise, and Discreet Inquiry skill feats are useless to them, except for Streetwise being a feat tax to gain Criminal Connections. I sometimes create secondary uses for feats that fit the players' styles better, "Since you are streetwise, you find a safe inn to spend the night."

Pages 74 and 75 of War of Immortals are a section called "Telling A Mythic Story." The steps are Calling, Trials, The Final Approach, The Ordeal, and Immortality. Let me illustrate this with Johnny Appleseed. Most internet pages about him tell of the real man under the legend, but I want the legend here, such as the one at the USC Digital Folklore Archives.

The Calling: Working in an apple orchard, young Johnny Chapman heard the call of the frontier, packed light, and headed west to Licking River, Ohio. The call of the frontier is not specific to Johnny Appleseed, but it is well supported in the tales of the American Frontier. He brings apple seeds with him and plants an orchard.

Trials: Johnny Appleseed did not fight, but he did face challenges. He had to clear land for apple orchards. He sold most of his orchards and made others, so he had business dealings. He was on good relations with both the Native Americans and the U.S. settlers, and resolved disputes between them. One story is that he took shelter from a snowstorm in a gigantic hollow log and found a family of bears there, so he retreated safely.

The Final Approach and The Ordeal: These don't exist for Johnny Appleseed. His victory was that He planted apple orchards across several states and was said to be welcome in every home.

Immortality: Johhny Appleseed died of old age. His story lived on, becoming more legendary until scholars realized that the real story of John Chapman was just as interesting as the legend. His apple orchards are gone, because his variety of apple was best for alcoholic hard cider and banned during anti-alcohol Prohibition, but new apple orchards replaced them.

Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, and most other tall-tales characters lacked The Ordeal. They had continuing adventures until they died. A mythic warrior could have a greatest battle of their life, but that is not necessarily at the end of their tale. For example, Odysseus fought in the Trojan War, but the Odyssey came afterwards. Odysseus's final confrontation against the suitors of his supposed-widow Penelope was a small battle rather than The Ordeal. We could view George Washington as a mythic hero in U.S. history, but he went on to become the first president well after the battles of the U.S. Revolutionary War.

The Final Approach and The Ordeal are more about Pathfinder campaigns than about mythic stories. So let me try this with a mythic player character from my campaigns, Gold-Flame Honeysuckle Vine.

The Calling: Gold-Flame Honeysuckle Vine joined my campaign at 6th level along with the catfolk monk Ren'zar-jo. I gave them a mission: they were escorting refugees from the destroyed town of Redburrow to the supposed safety of Fort Nunder (Honey grew up in the Fangwood Forest and knew the locations of the secret Chernasardo forts). The other PCs had just liberated Fort Nunder from enemy occupation, but an empty fort was a poor refuge. The party learned from the Redburrow refugees that an army of the Ironfang Legion was next going to conquer Radya's Hollow, the home village of the ranger in the party. This gave the party a new mission: stop the conquest of Radya's Hollw. Honey and Ren joined the party for this mission.

Trials: The rest of the Ironfang Invasion adventure path.

The Final Approach: In the last module, Vault of the Onyx Citadel, the party had traveled to the Elemental Plane of Earth where the Ironfang command was based in the Onyx Citadel, tapping the geomantic power of the region to open mystic gates to move their armies. Honey had already met gods, Gendowyn and Alseta, and had expressed interest in godhood. On the way to the citadel the party fought an Immortal Ichor, a creature that grew out of the shed blood a dead evil deity. After their victory Grandmother Spider appeared and told Honey that to start on the path to godhood, she could absorb divine essence from the Immortal Ichor. She did so, and Honey retrained to the first of the godhood feats that I had invented.

The Ordeal: In the assault on the Onyx Citadel Azlowe, greater barghest warpriest of Hadregash, cast Avatar to directly tap the power of his god. Instead, Azlowe disappeared and a real avatar of Hadregash appeared. Hadregash wanted to destroy Honey before she achieved immortality. The 19th-level party fought the 23rd-level avatar and won.

Immortality: The party leveled up to 20th level, and Honey gained a feat and retrained others for a total of 4 godhood feats to become a very minor immortal god in the new Fangwood pantheon. In my next campaign based on the leshy adventure A Fistful of Flowers, many of those leshies worshipped Honey.

Now, let's try to apply the Mythic Callings to these pre-War of Immortals mythic characters. Johnny Appleseed could have the Demagogue's Calling because he once prevented a battle with words, but he is more suited for a Pioneer's Calling. Honey could have the Caretaker's Calling, because she was the party healer, but she was quite bloodthirsty in battle. She became the god of familiars and subordinates not a god of healing.

Not only are the selections of Mythic Callings too few to fit our sample mythic characters, their benefits don't fit the mythology. The Paizo developers wrote them to fit combat. But the mythic aspects of the characters are seldom about combat. Even with a warrior like Hercules, his famous Twelve Labors had killing in only three labors. He also had to capture and bring back several beasts, but one of the labors was cleaning the Augean stables in a single day (he rerouted a river for this labor).

Thus, I imagine Mythic Callings build around the pace of mythic stories rather than the pace of combat.

Pioneer's Calling
Uncommon, Calling, Mythic
You seek the frontier, lands to explore and tame. Whenever you Make an Impression in a place new to you, if you offer a heartfelt gift, such as a product of your labors, you can make the check with mythic proficiency. Growing crops also uses mythic proficiency.

Minion's Calling
Uncommon, Calling, Mythic
You serve others of your free will. You can Aid without a preliminary action to prepare. Select a skill or lore specialty. When you become expert in that skill or lore, you may select an additional skill or lore, and repeat this whenever you become master and legendary in the original skill or lore. Whenever you use one of those skills or lores in an activity that takes at least one minute and helps another person, you make the check with mythic proficiency.

I had some time to think about what mythic means. War of Immortals is mostly about the Godsrain rather than Mythic, but pages 72 to 75 are titled, "What is Mythic?"

What is Mythic?

In Pathfinder, all PCs are figures of heroic stature, able to fight monsters and face down dangers that would overwhelm an average person. You could be a human farmer who takes up the sword to fend off marauding xulgaths as you begin your journey towards becoming a legendary warrior. You could be a newly-accepted acolyte of Nethys who repels bandits with your first casting of force barrage before starting your path towards becoming a powerful and renowned wizard. While such stories are far from mundane and may encapsulate high fantasy themes, they still fall short of being truly mythic.

Mythic adventures take their inspiration from stories and legends that are drawn from folktales and storytelling traditions around the world. These tales
use wordplay and rarefied prose to convey moral lessons and tell stories that often defy logic. Mythic heroes and villains, even at lower levels of play, possess fantastical powers that are unbound by physics, and their ability to impact the narrative of the game world is often much more profound than is typical for a PC or NPC.

Mythic adventures use a combination of mechanics, tone, and changes to the narrative expectations of the game to create a truly spectacular experience.

Narrative
The ability to directly affect, and in some instances even control, the narrative of the game world is one of the key signifiers of a mythic character. Many mythic abilities speak to this, such as the decree feats of the prophesied monarch mythic destiny (page 135), which have both an immediate mechanical effect and long-term effect that dictates changes within the environment of the game world, affecting the moods, prosperity, and outlooks of NPCs over a wide area.

A mythic campaign is one in which the players and GM work together much more closely to shape their shared story than might otherwise be the case. The players have an increased responsibility to work with the GM and each other to make sure the shared stories of their characters combine into a cohesive whole, while the GM must release some of their control over the game world to the players and their PCs, as the very nature of the world is shaped and changed by the players’ actions.

Mythic Destinies
Mythic characters are assumed to have great tasks and challenges they will inevitably face, culminating in their mythic destiny (Chapter 4 Paths to Immortality, page 102). While characters won’t gain a mythic destiny until they choose a destiny feat at 12th level, it can be helpful for both the players and GM to start considering what the characters’ destinies might be earlier in the campaign. ...

Mythic figures of ancient legend include Gilgamesh, Hercules, Odysseus, Sun Wukong, Sinbad, Jesus of Nazareth, Roland, King Arthur, and Baba Yaga. Folktales of the United States, known as Tall Tales, provide Paul Bunyan, Windwagon Smith, Pecos Bill, and Johnny Appleseed. Johnny Appleseed is an interesting case because he is based on a well-documented person, John Chapman. Mythic people do not have to be 20th-level powerful. Instead, they inspire stories to grow around them after the fact. And as {b]War of Immortals[/b] said, "These tales ... tell stories that often defy logic. Mythic heroes and villains, even at lower levels of play, possess fantastical powers that are unbound by physics, .." I remember a tall tale that Paul Bunyan once harnessed his giant blue ox Babe to a wavy logging road and pulled it straight ("He also used Babe to pull the kinks out of the crooked logging roads").

Players CANNOT defy game physics in Pathfinder because those are defined by the game rules. Pathfinder can add new mythic rules, but they simply become the new physics. Thus, we have instructions about the players and GM working together "to shape their shared story." They will be playing the metagame above the campaign to make the campaign mythic.

Mythic in folklore is not about power level. Johnny Appleseed can be modeled as a 2nd-level cleric or druid (John Chapman was a missionary) with Farmsteader background. Windwagon Smith could be a 2nd-level Inventor with Deckhand or Sailor background. Paul Bunyan was a giant rather than human and he would need more levels in ranger to gain Babe the Blue Ox as mature megafauna, but that is all that is necessary. Rather than power, the tall tales exemplify Johnny Appleseed as a pioneer, Windwagon Smith as a migrant, and Paul Bunyan as a lumberjack.

My players take control of the narrative often and our campaigns end up more mythic than the adventure path as written. In Tide of Honer in my Jade Regent campaign, they decided not to lead a rebellion against the Jade Regent. They had the true heir to the throne in the party and Minkai had such strong traditions that if they revealed her heritage they would have to give her the throne. The difficulty was getting her accepted without her enemies assassinating her, so the party became folk heroes getting the approval of the common people and making secret alliances with the honest governors rather than fighting the innocent soldiers of Minkai. In my Iron Gods campaign the players wanted to play with the alien high technology in Numeria, so they became technological crafters adopting secret identities for self-protection. Yet when they would have fought their way through the mile-long crashed spaceship Divinity in The Divinity Drive, they instead got hired by the villain Unity as repair crew for that spaceship and undermined Unity from the inside. In my current Strength of Thousands campaign, they stuck to the plot as written, but they asked me to emphasize their role as students rather than adventurers. Thus, the first two modules was about learning to be Magaambyan students, and the current 3rd module they are learning to associate with people as Magaambya mages. The reputation and traditions of the millenia-old Magaambya Academy are iconic to this campaign.

The most mythic of my campaigns was a mini-campaign based on the Free RPG Day modules A Fistful of Flowers and A Few Flowers More. The players played experienced 2nd-level leshies protecting their community. This was also my War of Immortals playtest campaign, Playtesting in A Fistful of Flowers with 7 Leshies, and we had a leshy animist and a leshy exemplar. I stopped chronicling the adventure after the playtest, but we continued for two more chapters, one at 4th level based on The Scarlet Pimpernel and one at 5th level based on The Seven Samurai. The Scarlet Pimpernel adventure was a little too railroady, because the Scarlet Pimpernel himself, a pimpernel leshy, made the plans, but the PCs took control of the Seven Samurai chapter and went beyond the plot in their dauntless protection of a small village. These leshies went beyond heroic into mythic, in both their dealings with ordinary people and their combat with dangerous foes.

My PF2-convernted Ironfang Invasion campaign was mostly heroic, with the PCs going up to 20th level so that their heroism was stupendously impressive. However, my players read the Lost Omens World Guide, learned that the canonical ending of Ironfang Invasion led to General Azaersi ruling Oprak, and did not like that the adventure path left thousands of villagers under Ironfang control as enslaved war captives. I tried many directions in trying to end slavery in Oprak. The direction that worked was mythic. The leshy sorcerer Gold-Flame Honeysuckle Vine had a backstory that she began as a honeysuckle vine awakened by a druid as his familiar. She remained intelligent after the druid died. After meeting the goddess Gendowyn, Honey wanted to become like the goddess. I invented rules for godhood (this was before War of Immortals was published) and Honey battled Hadredgash, the hobgoblins' god of tyranny and slavery, and defeated him to remove slavery from his domains. Amusingly, in the Remastered Divine Mysteries Hadregash no longer is a god of slavery.

Asking about the PC's stats is the #1 noobie troubleshooter question over on reddit. That is proof positive that the existing text guidance on stats is simply not sufficient to do its job.

Sometimes players do clue into the KAS memo, but are playing something like Inventor/Alch/Investigator/etc where your KAS is not your attack stat, creating understandably frustrated players struggling with +2 or +1 in their attack stat, even when they dodged the KAS pitfall.

Sometimes pf2 does go above the GM screen to offer outright guidance, in a "most of the time, you'll want to ___" manner, but it's far too rare.

IMO, it's just too obvious that Backgrounds altering stats should not exist as a mechanic. It's way too much of a trap / bait to see that perfectly fitting backstory for your character, and to pick it when it doesn't match your stat needs.

Backgrounds are one of the weaker aspects for Pathfinder 2nd Edition design. My own objection to them is that they do not matter after the 1st-level build is completed. The character gains some attribute boosts, training in one skill, and related skill feat. Afterwards, the only way Background matters is through those attributes, the skill, and the skill feat, never directly. We easily forget the Background provided them. My wife had a suggestion during the public playtest of Pathfinder 2nd Edition, Enhanced Roleplaying via Backgrounds, to bring backgrounds to the forefront, but it was not implemented.

Hm, digging up that old link also provided Tridus's PF2 playtest suggestion Should Background selection be divorced from Ability Scores? Tridus foresaw Trip.H's attribute-boost complaints back in 2018.

Once again, "it's not as bad as it used to be" is being used as an excuse.

I use the closely-related excuse that the designers did not know better, because the earlier systems that guided them were flawed. I offer the same excuse for flawed Mythic Destinies.

Mathmuse wrote:

As a former resident of the ivory tower of academia, I am bewildered by the ivory tower metaphor here. The American Heritage Dictionary defines ivory tower as "A sheltered, overly-academic existence or perspective, implying a disconnection or lack of awareness of reality or practical considerations." "Ivory tower design" is essentially saying that Dungeons & Dragons and Paizo developers lacked awareness about practical gameplay in roleplaying games.

That is not at all what I'm referring to. Monte Cook, one of the designers for D&D 3e, posted an article on his website referring to Ivory Tower Game Design: this was a design methodology he applied to D&D where the game artificially creates system mastery by inserting deliberately suboptimal or hyper-synergistic character options.

I followed the link you provided. That article itself said, "I call the concept Ivory Tower Game Design. (Perhaps a bit of misnomer, but it's got a ring to it.)" Using a misnomer without clarification is bewildering.

I used to regularly play Magic: the Gathering and had a subscription to The Duelist magazine, later renamed Top Deck. I read the original article by Mark Rosewater about the psychographic profiles Timmy, Johnny, and Spike. Timmy likes impressive cards, Johnny likes clever combos, and Spike likes to win games by any tactic. A card that Timmy loves is not necessarily a game-winning card, but it keeps some of their customers happy, so it is good to publish.

The customization in Pathfinder, both 1st and 2nd Edition, follows this kind of profiling. Some players are interested in playing colorful characters, so a Untamed Order druid who shapechanges would be more exciting to them then a Stone Order druid with a connection to stone and earth. But this does not mean that a untamed druid ought to be weaker than a stone druid. Instead, the Paizo designers carefully balanced each druidic order. Nevertheless, shapechanging is more complicated than manipulating the earth. The designers were willing to let some classes and subclasses be harder to play.

Players who mastered the game's mechanics would then be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, and be rewarded with incredibly powerful builds as a result. This methodology did not at all age well, because nobody likes getting saddled with a weak build while another party member who copied a strong build online dominates every play session. Because this methodology was foundational to 3e and thus 3.5e, some of it unfortunately carried over to PF1e, which was built off of D&D 3.5e, but thankfully PF2e does not follow this design methodology at all.

Part of the fun of each new Magic: The Gathering set is figuring out the power of the new cards with new mechanics and how they work together. But PF2 is more about selecting the ancestry and class for the roleplaying the player wants than finding the most powerful ancestry and class.

Mathmuse wrote:

As the PCs level up, they encounter weirder enemies than the animals and bandits they fought at low levels, such as flying creatures, incorporeal undead, walking plants, and spellcasters. The party needs to adapt, and the ability to adapt comes from having many abilities. Thus, the complexity of many abilities is necessary.

I question this assumption, as what wins encounters isn't necessarily the sheer amount of abilities a party has, but the right abilities for the situation. There are only a limited number of actions a party will be able to take in a given encounter, so there are only a limited number of abilities you will be able to use. A party with a smaller number of abilities could therefore still win encounters handily if those abilities are up to the task, and as Tridus mentions above, martial classes tend to be particularly well-suited for this given how they don't get hard-countered easily. I think it could be quite helpful to let the party retrain abilities more dynamically, i.e. within the adventuring day rather than over the course of lengthy downtime periods, and that could allow characters to dynamically adapt to circumstances while still keeping complexity low.

More abilities overall or a few abilities with more versatile effects increase the chance of having the right abilities for the situation. Each spellcaster had only a limited number of actions during the combat with the dezullon but casting a fire spell that deactivates the dezullon's regeneration is a more effective activity than casting an acid spell against a creature that resistances acid 20. The kineticist set up a Thermal Nimbus to damage the hard-to-hit dezullon. Upon learning about the dezullon's regeneration deactivated by fire, the player said that he was glad he chose fire damage for the nimbus rather than cold damage. He chose thermal nimbus as his action because its damage is automatic and the dezullon had already demonstrated high AC and saving throws.

Pathfinder 1st Edition allows players to overspecialize their characters. For example, they could build a paladin who is an absolute master at annihilating the undead but would be mediocre at defeating living cultists. This gives the GM a dilemma: should the next encounter be a battle against undead where the paladin totally dominates and the other PCs feel like dead weight (pun intended), or should the next encounter have no undead and the paladin will underperform. A PF2 GM has fewer worries about restricting variety in foes than a PF1 GM.

As for having the ability to dynamically retrain martial abilities, that is still more abilities, but requires advance investigation to prepare properly.

Although 2e does away with the ivory tower design that defined the D&D 3e-to-PF1e era -- and thank goodness for that --

As a former resident of the ivory tower of academia, I am bewildered by the ivory tower metaphor here. The American Heritage Dictionary defines ivory tower as "A sheltered, overly-academic existence or perspective, implying a disconnection or lack of awareness of reality or practical considerations." "Ivory tower design" is essentially saying that Dungeons & Dragons and Paizo developers lacked awareness about practical gameplay in roleplaying games.

... I'd still quite like complexity to be something that can be easily tuned for everyone, independently of how long they've been playing or what the tone of the campaign is. Some of my players have been playing tabletop games for years and would be quite happy to jump into a complex character build right off the bat, without having to play a base template for several weeks or months that they already used for other characters many times already. Meanwhile, some of my players get overwhelmed by large amounts of options to choose from, and the solution I found that worked well was to write down their character's most important abilities on a handful of cards that they could then hold: with a literal handful of cards, this works fine, but past that amount it starts to get overwhelming again. I'd quite like it if adding or subtracting complexity to characters were something that could easily be done on the fly, even tuned independently of each character. This doesn't mean every character needs to automatically be super-simple, but it does mean complexity in my opinion shouldn't be something that's expected to inevitably happen over time, nor something that should be automatically locked away from certain character builds until much later.

Some complexity comes from character customization, a major selling point of Pathfinder. The character design needs enough complexity to let people distinguish between an elf character based on Legolas from Lord of the Rings and an elf character based on Link from Legend of Zelda.

My first Pathfinder 2nd Edition campaign consisted of converting the PF1 Ironfang Invasion adventure path to PF2 rules. I learned quickly that PF2 monsters are deliberately designed for low complexity. A strong example is the Hobgoblin Archer. It appears to be a hobgoblin ranger with a crossbow and precision edge. But it lacks the iconic ranger's Hunt Prey ability, because Hunt Prey is too complex for a GM handling multiple hostile NPCs.

My PCs win combat against NPC opponents by switching to tactics that the NPCs are not designed to handle. For example, this week my party fought a 10th-level Dezullon that has regeneration 15 (deactivated by fire) and a 30-foot-range acid glob attack with amnesia venom. But the 8th-level oversized party is mostly spellcasters who prepared 60-foot-range cantrips, a magus who prefers longbow range, and a fire kineticist. Poor dezullon. The PCs took their most damage from a party member confused by the amnesia venom, and that occurred after the dezullon was dead.

The party ended the game session after encountering Thiarvo the Quick and his hireling, who want to loot archaeological ruins for treasure. Strangely, Thiarvo is trained in Acrobatics, Athletics, Deception, Diplomacy, Stealth,, Survival, and Thievery, but nothing effective for finding or identifying treasure buried under rubble. The writer designed him for a social encounter that might become a combat encounter, but left out the parts that would let him succeed in his mission. Simplicity can lead to unexpected gaps.

Even a 1st-level party is more complicated than their opponents. The party typically has four different character classes, but the enemy typically consists of copies of the same creature entry. The NPCs are given better numbers to balance them against the party whose versatility gives them better tactics.

As the PCs level up, they encounter weirder enemies than the animals and bandits they fought at low levels, such as flying creatures, incorporeal undead, walking plants, and spellcasters. The party needs to adapt, and the ability to adapt comes from having many abilities. Thus, the complexity of many abilities is necessary.

the only way to work this campaign as written, imho, is for the party to be ambassadors from Galt/Taldor/Andoran, and they are trying to fight for the status quo - not for the factions on the inside of the forest. they align themselves with the moderates against the radicals.

you can run that game. it does make the 'magical forest' stuff a lot more interesting, and everything would be new to the PCs, which is a big benefit to the table. but i don't think a lot of players would be happy about it v. some kind of Ferngully campaign.

I am considering Wardens of Wildwood as our next campaign after we finish Strength of Thousands in about 2 and a half years. However, I want to have my players revive their leshy characters from A Fistful of Flowers, chronicled at Playtesting in A Fistful of Flowers with 7 Leshies. These particular leshy characters viewed themselves as the protectors of a leshy community in the western Verduran Forest. Thus, they want stability in the forest, including treaties that could last a thousand years, rather than conflict with people who want to harvest mindless trees or haphazard relationships with clueless neighboring humans.

Of course, we have other adventure paths competing for our attention, so I might never run this campaign.

As others have explained, spells fall into traditions and spellcasters can learn any common spells of their tradition. Uncommon spells are usually available, too, but the Uncommon trait means that the GM can forbid that spell. Also, some Uncommon spells are restricted to certain classes, but none on BG2's list fall into that group.

Object Reading, Spell 1, Traditions occult, also granted as divine to clerics of Aerekostes and Cosmic Caravan
Detect Alignment, Uncommon Spell 1, Traditions divine, occult
Impeccable Flow, Uncommon Spell 2, Traditions arcane, divine
Locate, Uncommon Spell 3, Traditions arcane, divine, occult
Ring of Truth, Uncommon Spell 3, Traditions divine, occult
Discern Lies, Uncommon Spell 4, Traditions arcane, divine, occult
Scouting Eye, Spell 5, Traditions arcane, divine, occult
Pinpoint, Uncommon Spell 8, Traditions arcane, divine, occult
Proliferating Eyes, Spell 9, Traditions arcane, divine, occult

Let me add some caveats. Alignment was dropped in the PF2 Remastering, so unless the campaign is using pre-Remastered Legacy rules, Detect Alignment has nothing to detect. And spellcasting from an archetype goes up to only 8th rank, so Proliferating Eyes is not available via archetype.

Let me explain how spellcasting archetypes usually work. The 2nd-level Dedication feat that begins the archetype grants 2 cantrips of the class's tradition. A 4th-level Basic Spellcasting feat grants basic spellcating benefits. These basic spellcasting benefits start wtih a single 1st-rank spell slot and a spell to fill that slot. The different classes offer different ways to learn additional spells, but for a spontaneous class, the gains from spellcasting benefits are the only way. At 6th level, that 4th-level feat also grants you a 2nd-rank spell slot, and at 8th level it grants you a 3rd-rank spell slot, no additional feat required. At 10th level, nothing happens. Instead, at 12th level the spellcasting archetype offers an Expert Spellcasting feat that grants a 4th-rank slot at 12th level, a 5th-rank slot at 14th level, and an 6th-rank slot at 16th level. At 18th level the spellcasting archetype offers a Master Spellcasting feat that grants a 7th-rank slot at 18th level and an 8th-rank slot at 20th level. The archetype does not provide a way to get 9th-rank or 10th-rank spells.

Suppose BG2's investigator decided on Witch Multiclass Archetype, because Witch is an Int-based spellcaster that with the right patron can learn occult spells. At 2nd level, the investigator gains a familiar and one cantrip--fewer cantrips than most archetypes because of getting the familiar, too. Though the investigator can prepare only one cantrip a day, they and their familiar can use the Learn a Spell activity to learn a variety of occult cantrips. At 4th level, the investigator takes Basic Witch Spellcasting to learn the Object Reading occult spell. Yep, the investigator has to wait for 4th level to gain the 1st spell on BG2's list.

At 6th level, the investigator with witch multiclass can learn a 2nd-rank spell, but not Impeccable Flow, because that is only in the arcane and divine traditions. At 8th level, the investigator can learn Locate and Ring of Truth. However, Basic Witch Spellcasting provides only common spells for free, and those two are uncommon. That means that the GM has to agree that the investigator found instructions on those spells in a library or from a fellow spellcaster and used the Learn a Spell activity. In summary, the investigator has to do a lot of research and study, but that should be routine for an investigator, right?

Fortunately, the investigator has an alternative route. They could buy a wand of the spell. A wand of a 3rd-rank spell, such as Locate, is an item 7 costing only 360 gp. GMs typically let 8th-level characters buy 7th-level items.

Meanwhile, if another party member is a divine or occult caster, that party member could have teamed up with the investigator to cast Locate or Ring of Truth back at 5th level. The investigator might decide that they themself don't need to learn the spell.

This character design has the investigator learning spells to accomplish tasks that an investigator is already good at. That is not an efficient strategy. On the other hand, the investigator could learn magic for other purposes, such as dealing damage with a spell when they rolled low on Devise a Stratagem, and the occasional casting of Object Reading would be for convenience rather than efficiency.

Back in comment #28 I mentioned that the Lost Omens Travel Guide had some information on infrastructure. Page 34 has a map of the major international trade routes near the Inner Sea and page 36 has a text description of them. For example, the North Tack is the ship route that follows the north coast of the Inner Sea and the South Tack follows the south coast of the Inner Sea. The Path of Aganhei goes over the northern ice cap to connect Avistan and Tian Xia. The Sellen Passage is the River Sellen through Taldor and all its major tributaries further north.

Most of these trade routes do appear to rely in sea or river transporation, with portages to connect headwaters of separate river systems.

Concerning Castilliano's comment #60 Dragonchess Player replied,

Logistics part 2: Operating costs.

You mentioned using a roc for transportation. What do you feed it? Probably the equivalent of a team of oxen every couple weeks. When you could just keep two teams of oxen to draw a pair of wagons, replacing them every 5-10 years, instead of going through 25 teams of oxen every year.

This thread has repeated reminded me how much my players care about infrastructure and logistics, because I keep finding examples related to this dicussion.

In Fangs of War, 2nd module of Ironfang Invasion, the 7th-level party had to fight three Ironfang rangers with fledgling roc animal companions. These rocs were only the size of large owls, but I felt that calling a bird a roc required a bigger size. I changed them to Large and gave them enough strength to carry a humanoid in their talons but they had to drop the person at the end of turn. The party killed two of the rangers though the 3rd escaped. And the stormborn druid Stormdancer adopted one of the orphaned fledgling rocs, Roxie, as an animal companion, on a promise to gain Animal Order via Order Explorer on her next level-up. I declared that Stormdancer's Stormwind Flight order spell could be applied to Roxie so that she was able to carry Stormdancer as a rider for ten minutes, at which time Stormdancer would have restored a focus point to recast Stormwind Flight. This mitigated a logistics problem that the 7-member party was too large for most transportation spells, so the sorcerer typically had to summon six Phantasmal Steeds/Marvelous Mounts with six spells (the monk was fast enough to run instead of ride). Roxie reduced the necessary number of Marvelous Mounts to five.

Stormdancer tried to give the other orphaned fledgling roc to an NPC ranger, but the ranger passed the roc Rocko to a teenaged girl Menolly.

In the 2nd module of my Strength of Thousands campaign, I had Menolly enroll at the Magaambya Academy as a druid student assigned to the same dormitory as the PCs. She showed up two weeks early before the Academy was ready to feed Rocko. The PCs immediately sprang to action, making a deal with some farmers that they had once helped to care for a flock of sheep that Rocko could eat. Back in Nirmathas Menolly and Rocko hunted in the wild forest to feed Rocko, but near the city of Nantambu animals were property.

A Large fledgling roc is much easier to feed than a Gargantuan adult roc, which are known in folklore for eating elephants. But a Str +8 gargantuan Roc that can lift an elephant and still fly would be great for transporting container-sized loads over impassable terrain such as a mountain pass and might be worth the cost to weekly feed them oxen, especially if the roc and its handler could sometimes take a day off to hunt wild monsters for free food.

Today I attended a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal. The Buffalo Maritime Center built a replica of the first canal boat, the Seneca Chief, to traverse the Erie Canal and is sending it down the canal from Buffalo to New York City. My wife and I visited it in Baldwinsville, New York.

I will know more about building canals in 1825 AD after I read the books I bought.

I once added a canal with a lock system to my Ironfang Invasion campaign. The 3rd module Assault on Longshadow says that Longshadow has a significant river shipping industry on the Marideth River. It also has a smelting industry for the ores mined in the Mindspin Mountains and the Hollow Hills, and since its road system is minimal, shipping the refined metals by river would make the most sense. Unfortunately, the text description of the Marideth River om the 1st module describes it has having waterfalls, and the endpaper map of the region found in all six modules shows a major waterfall downriver from Longshadow. Upstream is only sparsely inhabited mountains. I described this problem in my thread River Shipping from Longshadow, but no-one had an answer.

The reason for the problem is that most maps of the Marideth River are on a scale where all rivers are flat blue squiggles with no details, so no-one knows the location of the waterfalls. They could be in the mountains upstream of Longshadow. The artist of the endpaper maps chose to put a waterfall where the uplands of the Hollow Hills ended, which is downriver from Longshadow. That artist probably did not see the article on Longshadow, and the writer of the article probably did not see the detailed map.

My PCs had already visited the waterfall, so I kept it. I put a canal alongside the waterfall with a system of locks. These canals were in disrepair because the Ironfang Legions monster handlers had released three bulettes to destroy the locks and isolate Longshadow from reinforcements. After the siege of Longshadow, the PCs fought the bulettes so that the city could repair the locks.

I think the thing that the high-level PC party is bad at (and is still important in war) is "holding territory for as long as it takes" since that basically requires the PCs to stay in one place and that means they can't go solve problems elsewhere.

The Ironfang Invasion adventure path is a war story. The Ironfang Legion is trying to conquer a corner of Nirmathas and a corner of Molthune to form the nation of Oprak. The 1st module has the PCs as refugees from a conquered Nirmathi town, the 2nd module has them solving the mystery of why Nirmathas's Chernasardo Ranger defenders failed, but the 3rd module, Assault on Longshadow, is outright war as they defend the city of Longshadow from an Ironfang army.

Technically, the holding-territory issue can be handwaved, because the territory is returned to its original inhabitants. But my players were not satisfied with that omission. And their answer was infrastructure, both physical and social.

In the first two modules, they regularly defeated Ironfang patrols. They look the weapons and armor from the patrollers and gave them to civilians. Assault on Longshadow had a section were the PCs repaired the city walls of Longshadow, a physical infrastructure activity. They trained Longshadow civilians to help defend the city. And after that battle, they re-established the Chernasardo Rangers from the surviving rangers that they had rescued in the 2nd module.

The Chernasardo Rangers were descended from a group of revolutionaries who had fought for independence from Molthune rule about 60 years beforehand. They lived hidden in the forest so that the Molthune troops could not find their bases. That became a weakness in Ironfang Invasion because the Ironfang Legion had taken them down before their main invasion without any village or town getting word of the incursion. My PCs re-established the Chernasardo Rangers in the villages and cities, both for easier recruiting of new members and to more directly defend the villages.

Another piece of social infrastructure they created was a mail service. One of the PCs, gnome rogue Binny, had a backstory as a messenger. When the PCs retired after defeating the Ironfang Legion (the nation of Oprak did not get founded in my campaign world), Binny returned to messenger duty, but now she was a 20th-level rogue/mammoth lord with a Jubjub Bird animal companion. She inspired others and they formed the Monster Rider Messenger Service.

The PCs also founded a standing army. They had to do something with the Ironfang invaders still alive. The PCs had no problem with the hobgoblins and other so-called uncivilized species settling down in Nirmathas. Their objection had been to them taking land from Nirmathi residents and enslaving those residents. The government of Nirmathas is best described as cooperative anarchy: groups would volunteer for traditional government duties such as the Chernasardo Rangers volunteering for civil defense. The PCs formed the surviving Ironfangs into another civil defense group to give them a place in Nirmathi society. The monster-handlers in the Ironfang Legion mostly joined the Monster Riders instead.

Some of my players are strong roleplayers. I am more interested in seeing how they develop a consistent character with their own values than how they stick to an outside standard.

None have played a cleric, but one played a druid (both Animal and Storm Orders and two played a champion (one Liberator champion following Grandmother Spider and one Redeemer champion following Cayden Cailean), and one played a barbarian (Giant Instinct). We also had a monk, but that class has no anathemas.

The Animal-and-Storm druid threw a lot of Produce Flame and Fireball spells, but technically, that was not against the Storm Order's no-air-pollution anathema. The player of the Grandmother Spider champion carefully searched through descriptions of several gods until she found one that fit how her champion would act. The Cayden Cailean champion attends the Magaambya Academy and roleplays as a a frat boy, i.e., an athlete who parties with alcoholic drinks. The barbarian was a cute little pine leshy who wielded a big stick, so no-one was interested in challenging her.

In contrast, my Strength of Thousands party at the Magaambya Academy adopted a code of never killing an intelligent creature. This campaign started in a city where criminals could be jailed rather than killed. Their principles may change now that they are away from the city on a field expedition, but when the party encountered their first group of bandits, they laughed at the bandits' attempt to rob the party via Intimidation and gave them directions to Whitebridge Station where they could find honest work.

And edicts and anathemas sometimes have unintended side effects. Currently, I am fleshing out a friendly NPC cleric of Uvulo. The anathema for Uvulo forbids, "crush an egg." That is because Uvulo is a dragon god who represents peace with dragons and hope for the future. To dragons, eggs are a symbol of future generations (at least, that is my interpretation). The weird side effect is that a cleric of Uvulo cannot cook with eggs, because that involves cracking open an egg. But that is no stranger than many dietary restrictions in real-world religions.

In Prisoners of the Blight my Ironfang Invasion party rescued Gendowyn, a fairy goddess with a physical body, from seven centuries of imprisonment by Queen Arlantia, an agent of Cyth-V’sug. In serving Cyth-V’sug Arlantia had created a blighted region in the Fangwood. Therefore, Gendowyn's edicts include, "destroy blighted fey and agents of Cyth-V’sug." But many of the blighted fey were blighted against their will. The party talked Gendowyn into curing them rather than destroying them. This altered Gendowyn's edict in my campaign world to, "protect the forest from corruption especially by agents of Cyth V'sug."