Mr.Dragon's page

Any word if the 2e Kingmaker will use these GMG rules, of if it will have custom rules?

There's rules for 2e kingmaker coming?

January is still a bit away though. While they're only level 1.7 right now (thank you PF2 for a very nice and streamlined exp system, my players are enjoying it greatly over our previous mile-stone system) I'd like to prepare a little before we get to another third of a year later.

So I'm running a 2e version of a campaign I'd been planning for a while.

However one of the main core mechanics is going to be involving constructing buildings, settlements and eventually growing into a minor political power.

PF2e has a much nicer more sensible economy, but at glance it looks like using UC rules, I should reduce almost all the costs to 10% of the original to come out similar.

Anybody got thoughts/warnings to share. I'd love some second opinions on this.

Well, I'll just talk to my players about it and we'll come up with a ruling. The cleric may want to become an "oracle" instead by switching to divine sorc. If so I'll just help her rebuild her character.

The druid seems to have already been aware of the change and just shrugged.

Thank you all for the replies.

Isn't that an enormous nerf to prepared casters?
How are you supposed to Intuit as my players when they might need certain situational spells the morning before the adventure?

For our cleric and druid in this case.

As the title suggests.
How do empty spell slots work this edition?
I can't find the rules anywhere for leaving slots open which is a fundamental part of playing a good prepared caster.

Can anybody enlighten me on where the rules are located and what they are?
So far I've just houseruled the 15min prep for a single empty slot.

No credit card to buy from the Paizo store and apparently shipping to Europe is delayed by 1 to 4 weeks. FML

Well Kobolds are dripping in flavour from my old D&D books, PF1 content and other misc sources, building this ancestry shouldn't be difficult at all.
It's more a question of what to cut than what to add with just how much juicy flavour and mechanical history kobolds have.

And as for bard, I might suggest to her considering the Bard dedication but the core concept really doesn't fit Bard directly mechanically.
The fact that Soothe is an inferior form of healing would also turn her off.
But yeah... as a MC feat... that has potential.
Especially with my setting's dragons being renowned for their songs and aerial dancing forming essential parts of their courtship and magic.
Certainly worth exploring more at least, maybe she will change her mind.

Then I suppose it's best I try my best at a solid kobold ancestry homebrew. unless the rest of the party throws her a curveball, that's her preferred species for this character. She wanted to try something very inhuman and kobolds are adorable and fit her religion's infatuation with dragons.

I'd like to just take a post to thank everybody for the advice so far.
It's why I love these forums even if I frequent them too rarely.

With everything mentioned so far I'm feeling confident when I get the book this Thursday and visit her we can start drafting up that character quickly, now knowing what places to start looking.

I do however have one quick question:
Does the Bestiary still include some mention of "as a character race" for things such as Orcs, Kobolds*, Lizardfolk, Drow etc?

(Kobold* being the relevant one for her, most likely.)

She could go with diabolic/infernal bloodline to get Divine list. Gets some command/mental influence spells and domain powers and a lil fire if she wants.

That actually sounds perfect for her character concept. I'll try pitching that one to her.

Besides spell-list being the same for a Divine bloodline sorc and a cleric... what are the other major differences in terms of class features?
She really wants to hit hard on team play but her character's religion and very clan/family/tribal mentality makes Angelic a poor fit.
She really is quite vicious towards people who have not earned her trust or respect.
I.E. to people in her party and from her temple and town, she's a lovely angel but to the rest of the world she's a real.... piece of work.

@jquest716
Very lovely and detailed response for more build-centric advice but you seem to have missed the point about low-wisdom.

What bloodlines gain the divine spell list?

Celestial seems off flavour for a very long and complicated reason to exhaustive to list but let's for now say that while her character will be really nice and friendly to the rest of the party and people she likes. She will be a vicious little s#*& to those outside her 'clan' so to speak.... which may or may not be as a result of her deity being more neutral leaning than good and her currently imagined species being Kobold. (already hard to work on a Kobold ancestry for her)

Demonic also gets the divine spell list right? Could be more on-brand. Any others?

Ok so I'm looking for some advice on this problem.

Player wants to play a very cute, naive, book-smart cleric.
So this sounds like a relatively low-wis person, it in fact sounds more like a wizardly type.
She characterised her as a bit of a hippy but also nerdy type.

In pathfinder 2, based on what we know so far, is there a way to maybe play a caster, very very very strong preference for the cleric class, with a strong emphasis on divine magic and supportive class features that doesn't rely on Wisdom?
She wants to play the overly-friendly healer type who is very optimistic and kind, a little flirty and has no idea how the world actually works.
Basically all her actual training and skill as a practitioner of her faith and the associated powers come from studying her holy book and participating in the rituals of her faith. Practically raised by the temple more than any real family.

In my head I can absolutely see this character exist and in PF1 I'd in a heartbeat just use one of the many tricks to make her use Cha or Int to cast spells that clerics have access to but in PF2 I'm clueless if this might be possible.

Important Edit: This is very much a homebrew friendly campaign in my own setting with plenty of custom content.
I will accept answers like "Just make it an archtype/replace class feature thing, do a feat tax, etc" just please do add some detail or make it otherwise constructive rather than dismissive.
Apologies if that sounds very demanding. Thank you very much.
My hard-copy won't arrive till Thursday and I do not have a PDF because I ordered the books on Bol.com for the netherlands as I lack a credit card.
Me and the player in question are already super excited and hoping we can figure something out in advance to hit the ground running and get this new campaign up asap.

...

I think asymmetrical 'power' is much less important ...

Can't seem to edit my old post so I'll just reply to myself to fix the double negative.

I'm fine with trying to make different species more balanced for players but I feel overall the current playable species are all a bit too... bland, safe, flat.
Compare PF2 elves to PF1 elves for the absolute base level species.
PF1 Elves simply just have more content in their statblock baseline, making them feel very different from the Dwarf or Gnome in the party.

I don't think asymmetrical 'power' is much less important than asymmetry in general and if different species simply had more numbers and features to tweak and dial things would already be more satisfying.

Now this is a real stretch I know but I want a dedicated class for.... with lack of a better word... creature.
Like a Summoner Eidolon, but as a stand-alone class.
I always feel there's a lack of non-humanoid representation among playables.

There's all sorts of tricks to get something truly weird and exotic such as Awakening but that requires a lot of workarounds as is.
Golarion, and most fantasy settings have so many non-humanoid creatures with equal or even better int scores than humans that could make for very interesting and unusual heroes.

A class that helps explore such design space would be a dream come true.

I just love all the kobolds unconditionally. Both new and old designs and I am planning on using both designs going forward, just for different clans/tribes in different parts of my own setting.

How's the state of Ancestry feats specifically according to the most recent information we have?
Because the growing into your physiological traits part, by which I mean dwarf things we expect every dwarf to have from birth, is something that really just ground my gears.

Physiological diversity is such a fun thing in our campaigns. It really helps sell the fantasy and immerse us into a very different and strange world.

So having dropped out of the playtest relatively early on I've lost a bit of track of where Ancestries are now.
I read about the first major change where they broke each one up into a number of sub-ancestries but that still kind of seemed terrible to me.
Do we have any indication of what sort of Ancestry system will be shipping in the book?
Because the last version I saw is a complete deal-breaker for me with level 1 ancestries being anaemic at best and almost entirely irrelevant most of the time.

Bit of context: Me and my friends love playing some really exotic and strange creatures from time to time but always try to keep them somewhere near balanced with races from the core rulebook and various supplements as measuring sticks.
Races with crazy inherent abilities were not that hard to balance against the powerful core benefits of just regular humans in PF1e.

So almost 3/4 year later after the previous time I brought this up this is still an issue?
This to me is still the biggest oversight in the entire system and a non-starter for me.

The neutering of the options of what is possible on a racial level.
It basically renders the entire system incompatible with my setting that has a large number of playable species with unusual anatomical traits including flight, swimspeeds, higher than standard movement, carapace, armoured hide, telepathy, extra eyes, inherent shapeshifting, rapid adaptation to new environments, all sorts of natural weapons, limited regeneration, sapient plants ETC.
None of this works at all in PF2e but in PF, I found ways to balance such things against PF core races in ways to not make them seem massively broken. (at least not in the hands of non-power gamers.)

As somebody who has since for ever treated orcs as a core race in my homebrew and made the half-orcs (and half-elves) a very niche and rare existence that is considered remarkable rather than mundane.
I've experienced my players having a much deeper appreciation for all three.
Half-breeds are more special while people who want to play a beefy race that is truly defined by it feel much more at home in their orcy-orc rather than diet-orc.
I'm all for it even though it's essentially pointless for me as I homebrewed them in already anyway. Having official support is always nice though.

I was playing a few homebrew adventures using PF2E rules and have very nearly killed characters in what I assumed would be rather easy encounters.
A lone ghoul in a pool over water in a dark cave against a 4man level 1 party very nearly killed two of them without them doing anything particularly stupid.
Clerics have proven to be essential, I can't imagine the other classes capable of healing having produced enough output to compensate at level 1.

While the +1/level on EVERYTHING does bother me a bit I can work with/around that easily. I'm more concerned about the damage scaling being too harsh on players not too soft.

Personally I do feel I'd like to add a way to maybe get an extra boost in exchange for an extra penalty on ability scores. (but respecting the max 18 at level 1 rule)

Still I'd say it's far from Helicopter GM, leaning more towards the opposite.

Mr.Dragon wrote:

Say you introduce a race that simply has superior physiology, like a species that has can breathe both air and water and has a swim speed but isn't slower or more frail than many of the common ancestries. How do you balance that?

You can balance that out by giving disadvantages somewhere else. Maybe that race can't see very well and has to apply dim light rules - concealment for every opponent. Maybe their mental abilities are lower so they get more flaws than other races. Maybe they can only speak one language, count as undead, or can only move 10 feet when they don't fly, etc.

Balancing that isn't a problem. It's only a problem when you want to create a superior race that only has benefits and no flaws. And that kind of race is not fun for all the other players on the table who stick to their normal races.

You didn't read my post. In PF1 you didn't have to give them drawbacks because core races had lots of perks baked in by default like the infamous human bonus feat.

My personal bugbear with ancestries I bumped into when adapting some of the species of my own setting for the playtest was as follows and I think would be fixed with many of these suggested tweaks, for example: to front-load more ancestry feats.

Say you introduce a race that simply has superior physiology, like a species that has can breathe both air and water and has a swim speed but isn't slower or more frail than many of the common ancestries. How do you balance that?
Under the current system the thing I basically said was: They don't get ancestry feats, period. Which will overtime balance them out if you count each trait like the extra movement option, the breath and the general robustness and speed as ancestry feats but it still frontloads them with HUGE benefits at low level.
I have many more... monstrous species running around my setting that are perfectly civilized and in PF1e were strong, but not crazy much stronger than any core race option, still within the what I'd like to call "fluff over crunch benefit zone" where their associated rules didn't make them tempting to play for players not interested in their fluff. Where you could expect everybody at the table to not regard another player's race choice with jealousy.

PF2e however my Aljhari species for example, wouldn't fly. They're faster and tougher than elves, which already makes them an objectively better choice before we even get to feats.
So... I dock them their first level feat, easy right? Not quite, see they also have conscious control of the chromatophores in their skin and heal their wounds abnormally fast. (I gave them level hp/day fast healing 1 in PF1e)
These aren't things members of their race "train" or "opt in to" or something, this is a core part of their physiology.
In PF1e I could balance this against the many perks elves get just for being an elf like their SR penetration, sleep immunity etc.

PF2e I can't balance this within what I'd like to think of as an acceptable margin of imbalance, the "fluff over crunch" zone basically.

So yeah, as somebody with a wide-range of sapient species running around my setting, most of which I have always kept open as options for players, the PF2e system really messes with balance for this in a way I don't like as an amateur game designer.
Making all these just raw physical traits feats just really doesn't sit with me fluff-wise.

A little slow, but a great duration, nice to have as a backup if my character gets hit by a dispel.

Heya, I'm playing a level 12 sorcerer who's going to be involved in a large scale naval battle and I'm looking for some scroll advice.

I'm looking for a spell (or multiple spells) to give me long-lasting, high speed, swim speed and water breathing.

So far the best I cam up with was Form of the Exotic Dragon I for a Brine Dragon at 60speed and 1min/level duration. I'm just worried that my obvious bias is causing me to overlook significantly more efficient spells or cheap magic items.

Also suggestions for any obvious or easy ways to sink enemy ships. Skull and Shackles lists Passwall as a solid "make a hole in their hull" tool for example.

I have about 10k gold as budget.

Question: How is it possible for a Hydra to have 10 heads?
Spoiler warning: It's not, it's mathematically impossible. Hydras can only have odd numbers of heads. Every time Heracles cut one off, three grew back. Net gain of 2 and it started with 7.

We built a level 4 Kineticist to start with with a 1shot to break her in and she seemed to take to it well enough.

Planning on scaling it up to 12 soon.

Thanks for all the advice everybody, it's been very helpful.

After some digging on the Kinetecist it looks fairly simple yes but it does have the downside of being a class that's very different from almost anything else and nobody in my group has ever played one.
This will make it harder for my players and me to support her.

By no means does that mean it's off the table, it'll be the first thing I suggest to her.... but I am still shopping around for some more ideas to widen the net. I hope you all don't feel offended by me asking:
Anybody have thoughts to share on any of the divine casters I mentioned?

Also the fighter suggestion, magus suggestion and elemental shifter suggestion are all helpful and appreciated. I hadn't considered the former and latter but going pure martial does simplify a character significantly.

I see there is a Kinetic Whip talent to add that reach to the otherwise melee-only Kinetic Blade.

Right I'm going to read up on the Kineticist (I'm assuming they're easy to use), thanks for the suggestions so far but I'm also hoping there's a few more suggestions for other class-chassis options.
Still, 10/10 on the quick response and helpful advice, always love this forum.

You'd be better off with a Pyrokinetecist.

Basically an Avatar style Firebender.

How good are they with weapons though? Genuinely asking because I have never had a player run a Kinetecist so I don't know much about them.

Indeed a spontaneous caster is in my opinion also newer player friendly as you don't drown them in options so much.

As the title suggests.
I have a new-ish player joining my group and we're already 12 levels in, everybody is really excited and willing to deal with the growing pains. The player herself said she wants to play a character with a whip and lots of fire damage.
In my head this translates to: A Magus with a Scorpion Whip and a bunch of fire spells but I could also see an argument for a Flame Mystery Oracle, Fire Domain Druid, Fire Domain Cleric and Fire Blessing Warpriest.

I'm looking for a class that's easy to use at higher level that can dish out copious amounts of fire damage and has enough feat slots to make a whip work.
Preferably with room for some out-of-combat gimmick or two as my campaign is generally 30% combat or less in an average session.

No need to go in excessive detail but I'm looking for some good places to start building the character with her.
Something with decent to-hit and fire.

For now I instructed her to work on the WHO she wants to play more than the WHAT but I figured asking around for some suggestions at this early stage might already prove useful once she's figured out a bit more.
Not to mention, certain class character archetypes might inspire her.

"Make way for sir.puddleworth"
A man in fancy dress carries a bucket with a mysterious fluid.
The bucket's contents bubble ominously.
"What's that your viscousness?" More bubbling. "Ah yes I see." He pulls a haunch of cured meat from a bag and drops it into the bucket.

... yeah could see that...

Speaking as somebody who is still extremely excited for Ultimate Wilderness (despite the controversy (which I can understand as I also was hoping for a Master of Many Forms adaptation into a base-class))

This archetype is even with the (rather negative-slanted for understandable reasons) observations still one of my most anticipated pieces but I must say the curiosity is now figuratively killing me.
So while I wait for the pdf to become legally purchasable from a 3rd party website (no credit card) and the physical copy to get shipped to a local store I want to ask the following questions:

What exactly CAN you do in ooze form?
By the sounds of this thread.... not much.
How much of a detriment is ooze-form in combat?
I understand that not being able to speak kills a lot of social potential so that's annoying but might be an interesting challenge to overcome.
What about manipulating objects? Can the ooze work a door-handle for example?

I have in multiple cases waved the feat and just given my players various types of cohorts and followers through plot activities though generally these rarely if ever show up for combat.
I find cohorts to be an excellent tool for character development for characters as they climb in levels.

So the reason I've been lax on leadership restrictions is because generally nobody's ever abused the feat in my games.
Admittedly I have always stated that I generally do not want players to take the feat because of the potential for abuse which my players generally take to heart in their gameplay. So by the time they hit 7+ and it logically makes sense for the narrative, they often end up with followers if applicable.

TLDR: imo Leadership is only an issue when players get cheesy and a great tool when they aren't.

What IS Sobek's favorite weapon?

Wis=Str>Cha>Con>Dex>Int

I would almost suggest dumping Int for extra points would make a flavorful choice since reptiles aren't that bright. You could think slow and give good advice via your high Wisdom.

Sobek's favored weapon is the Falchion in pathfinder.

Edit: For good measure, a quick google search revealed this article that talks about a number of such studies conducted in recent years though I urge people with a passing interest to actually give specifically the study about the maze a read. It's quite interesting to see the variations on the experiment from the actual paper. (such as removing landmarks for the animals to use for navigation.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/science/coldblooded-does-not-mean-stupid. html

Well, she studied magic from an ancient race of demi-gods who are responsible for creating most modern mortal races of my setting.
She used her formidable political power and numerous (unaware of whom they are truly serving) mortal agents to acquire relics, texts and other resources over the course of hundreds of years to learn this.

Literally used a combination of her own essence, essence of a powerful nymph* she respects, almost as a peer, and her own eggshell from a few thousand years ago to create her own daughter. A being that is intellectually formidable enough to keep up with her and yet is distinctly her own entity as she also shares some traits with one of the handful of individuals she acknowledges as being worth her attention.

TLDR: She used ancient, divine magic to create life. Creating a new being out of the essence of herself and another so that it actually is, as is in line with normal reproduction, a mix of two parents.

*Edit: Nymph, not a dryad. I got two fey NPCs mixed up.

Well she's undead and as far as I am aware, within the confines of pathfinder RAW/RAI, I believe only Vampires are ever implied to even be capable of having children with living beings (through not entirely specified methods.)

Now for myself in my setting I've actually had something similar happen as one of my oldest and most important NPCs in the setting is actually a female Dragon (species unspecified as in my setting literally each dragon is unique in it's specific combination of scales/breath/magic) who's had trouble finding a breeding partner. (due to the extreme scarcity of dragons in my setting)
Her solution is however not anything even close to RAW/RAI in any way.
But I can at least relate.

In general though, there is virtually no rule-text that outlines situations like this, even with more conventional dragons what happens when they crossbreed so you're unlikely to get a specific response in line with anything RAW/RAI. These sorts of details tend to be setting/setting-interpretation by you/your GM specific.

I still just want to know how many aspects there are and what they are.
As much as I was joking earlier, I really strongly hope there's some more exotic and interesting animal aspects in there with unusual abilities or qualities.
Bonus points if there's aspects for (ever underrepresented and underrated) vermin and also possibly some magical beasts.

(The following post is worded extra dramatically and should not be taken completely seriously.)

Man the shifter is starting to sound more and more disappointing.
When can a man finally get some non-3pp support for changing into a giant pistol-shrimp, echidna, cuttlefish, deinonychus or heck even just a boar. Cool animals instead of being tied to the usual suspects: Wolf, Bear, Bull, Eagle etc. The 'standard totem' animals that already have entire druid archetypes devoted to them.
And probably no arthropod love again either, typical phylumism.
I want scales, not fur. Carapace, not feathers. Slither, not walk.

In all seriousness though, I hope they either have an extremely broad range of 'aspects' and/or continue to expand upon those with an extra small splatbook like the "blood of" series because I hate being tied down by the very basic, highly regarded and beloved for good reasons, but in my opinion very boring, animal selection.

I'm also rather (perhaps erroneously) disappointed by the very explicit druid-esque nature of the class and hope the archetypes remedy that so you can play an actual shapshifter that isn't strongly tied directly to woodland critters but maybe more aberrant in origin for example.

Ah that explains. I wasn't looking at the dates, my apologies for the hypocrisy.

Or, if your vampire follows Bram Stoker rules. Sunlight doesn't kill, it merely suppresses a Vampire's power to some extent.
European folklore they were just nocturnal and no specific weakness to sunlight is made explicit.
Carmilla (from the novel of the same name, which predates Stoker's Dracula) was also only weakened in daylight.

As for the Stephanie Meyer tomfoolery. The sooner people stop referencing it the sooner we can all collectively forget this blot on vampirism that even Count Chocula finds offensive.

Rocs and Rukhs come to mind.
Aside from that nothing jumps out immediately but you'd want to start with Huge or Gargantuan animals/magical beasts with flight speeds.

After a frank discussion with the party members they told me they don necessarily need one fixed NPC, just want one tagging along every now and then during a story arc.... so I may end up using several of the ideas posted so far.
Thanks for all the suggestions, you've all been quite helpful.

Squires eah? That sounds promising, I'll have a look.
Yes low-powered is fine or even preferable, it is supposed to be the PC's show after all.

Their party composition is:
Conjuration Wizard
Str-build Monk
Ninja
Reach Weapon Hunter with a tanky animal companion.

I am DMing a homebrew campaign for a group of beginners/novices and one veteran player.
We began about a year and a half ago, they are level 6.
Until they hit level 4-5ish they had a helper NPC in the form of a Tiefling Psychic who's fiendish and psychic powers I could keep deliberately vague to make her useful seeming but not very influential in combat. As they progressed I slowly phased her out of the story more and more and eventually she stopped being a presence altogether.
I even OC explained that she was mostly there for some narrative hooks and combat training wheels at the start.

Despite that however, two party members want a support NPC again, both in and out of combat, one party member just wants another regular cast member to talk to and the last party member, the veteran is against a support NPC.
I myself agree with him (the veteran player) but we're having a proper discussion about it tonight.

I found out about this AFTER the players confessed this is what they were doing when they spent an entire session in a tavern talking up bards under the leadership of one of the two strongly pro-support npc players and argued a bard is a relatively subtle influence on combat impact and are now trying to actively recruit a joke character I pulled off the top of my head after needing something for a 1off scene.

Anyway what I'm looking for advice wise is this:
Suggestions for NPC types, classes, intelligent magic items etc that might help.
Preferably something simple that can take care of themselves or doesn't need active looking after and doesn't just stack a bunch of floating combat benefits like a Bard.

Unfortunately disembodied necromancer spirit trapped in a jar is off the table as I have used that one in a previous campaign.

Ok, not really a Conundrum but I used that word for alliteration.

I am going to be playing a Carrion Crown Campaign and I would like to pose a few simple questions in regards to class selection WITHOUT SPOILERS.

Say I want to play a Mesmerist, they do not get the ability to mess with undead, slimes and constructs till 3rd level.
How hosed are you levels 1 through 3 in CC? I don't want to be completely (or borderline) useless in combat at the start.
Should I just play a psychic with a charisma discipline instead to get the same sort of feel? They can mess with undead from level 1 already.

If neither sounds like a good option, feel free to suggest another class that uses Charisma as main or secondary like Sorc, Oracle, Swashbuckler (not bard/skald, we got one of those)
Reason why charisma? we need a party face, and our Skald isn't going to cut it, also I like playing face.

Once again I would like to stress, please avoid spoilers in your responses.