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Would house ruling to allow a drifter to use a two handed firearm with a bayonet or reinforced stock be too strong or too weak? Initial deed allows the draw of a two handed firearm instead of two weapons. Abilities that call out a melee strike or weapon are redworded to reference the attached weapon, and anything referencing a one handed firearm is changed to twohanded.

Reloading Strike: strike with attached weapon and reload
Into the fray: draw a twohanded firearm and start your first turn with a stride
Drifters Juke: (unchanged) step strike step strike. One trike with firearm one with melee weapon
Finish the Job: missed a firearm strike then attempt a melee strike with attached weapon without MAP increase
Drifters Wake: stride and make three strikes during stride, firearm and attached weapon for strikes. (mostly unchanged)

I’m trying to create a magic item that grants fast healing and I’m somewhat uncertain about balance. After looking at current spells, feats and equipment that grant fast healing I have two rough ideas.

1) permanent fast healing equal to half item level

2) once a day fast healing equal to item level

My party has access to lay on hands and a master in medicine with multiple medicine skill feats and an alchemist with healing elixirs. 10 or 20 minutes after every fight they’re back to full so I personally am unconcerned with the out of combat consequences of permanent fast healing. I’m more concerned with having it for every encounter vs one encounter a day.

So I'm looking to design an encounter where the players must survive multiple waves of low level creatures with less than 10 minutes between waves. I'm thinking 4-6 waves of creatures at approx party level -2. I cant just sum the creature xp and use standard encounter budgets.

Has anyone run/designed an encounter like this? Are there any published adventures featuring anything like this?

Shield boss is listed as a weapon right. Could you use your drifter initiative ability to draw a shield boss (and in turn the shield attached to it)? Could you use the drifter reload to reload and strike with the shield boss?

So if you use hit the dirt and leap to end up prone and the you get a new reaction from slingers reflexes with the next creatures turn can you then hit the dirt again? Hit the dirt has no requirement that you not be prone. A prone character leaping feels a little weird, almost like it shouldn’t work but I can’t find anything in the rules to prevent it.

I guess my question boils down to “can a prone character leap?”

Finally got a chance to build and test a thaumaturge. We fought a pair of giant tarantulas at level 6.

Thaum 6
Human/Aasimar
Str 18 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 10 Wis 12 Cha 18
Wearing +1 scalemail
Rocking a +1 striking longsword in one hand and my amulet in the other.
Took the wand as my second implement but it never came up in combat.
Fighter dedication at 2 and dueling parry at 4
Rule of 3 at 6

Rest of the party is a Animal Barb, Archer Ranger and Caster Cleric.

Round one Barb and Ranger square off against spider one while cleric and I square off on spider two. I succeed at find flaws so I get my antithesis for free. I stride up to the spider and strike. +15 to hit and dealing 2d8+13 I felt pretty solid. And as the fight went on I only got more accurate because of rule of three. Amulet is a great implement, used that reaction every round. The cleric added a bit of damage, and the Ranger swapped to spider 2 in round 4 after the barb killed spider 1 in round 3. Leaving me to finish off the spider in the middle of round 4. I did about 2/3 of the damage to it, maybe 1/2. Walked away with 25 hit points when all was said and done.

Conclusion.
The fight was largely satisfying. The amulet is great and between the antithesis and empowerment I felt like I did a lot of damage. Rule of 3 was really cool too. Building the character was less satisfying. I felt really MAD and ended up starting with a 16 in cha and 16 in str. I’ve never started with less than an 18 in my attack stat, I don’t like the idea of being behind for 10 of 20 levels, thankfully 6 wasn’t one of them. I felt forced to invest my skill increases only in Recall skills, not leaving me a lot of interesting skill feat choices. I got lucky that the spiders were a nature check (one I boosted to expert). I feel like the thaum needs additional skill increases even if they are restricted to the recall skills. And maybe something to ease the MAD problem, cha instead of str on attack rolls? Less dependence on cha so that it’s feasible to start with a 14? I don’t even like the solutions I’m throwing out I just don’t know what the fix would be.

Building my first Thaumaturge and the first thing I do is put the runescarred archetype on him for magic tattoos. Got me to thinking magic tattoos feel so on brand why aren't they part of the core class? Could even do it better that way by making the spells draw from the occult list and drop the thassilion flavor.

I'm building a laughing shadow magus for a one shot/short adventure. I love the concept and flavor of the laughing shadow. High mobility striker teleporting and stabing folks, sounds great to me. But when I try to put all the pieces together I feel like I'm missing something, I'm not seeing an obvious combat flow.

Issue 1 - What am I even doing in my first round of combat.
round one for most classes is clear. The barbarian rages, strides and strikes. The monk takes his stance, strides and flurries. The laughing shadow though...I"m not sure. I want to get into arcane cascade asap for the speed and damage boost. Am I starting with Ray of frost and Arcane Cascade? is that my optimal choice here? arcane casecade says the previous action must be a spell, if I end my first turn casting a spell can I start turn 2 with arcane casecade?

Issue 2 - When should I be using dimensional assault.
If I start outside melee and use it to enter melee or start in melee and use it to gain flank and follow it with a spellstrike not only is my conflux spell no longer recharging my spellstrike but my spellstrike suffers MAP. Do I spellstrike first and then dimensional assault? my conflux spell just recharged my spellstrike sure but if I can spellstrike I don't need to teleport to strike again and now my dimensional assault is suffering MAP of -10. I'd be better off to save the focus point and just use the concentrate action described in spellstrike. Being able to teleport for a focus point from 1st level was what I loved most about the laughing shadow but I'm having trouble seeing it applied practically.

I need a laughing shadow combat for dummies book is what I need.

So interesting idea came up when talking to a friend about megavolt. Inventor themed metamagic. Variable action megavolt. And a 5e warlock casting system for megavolt.

Metamagic
This idea was straight forward. 'Widen spell' on megavolt. This would also encourage the design space of spells as unstable actions and therefore 'metamagic' on those unstable actions.

Variable Action
I REALLY like this idea. Imagine using megavolt one action for a shocking grasp like effect. Two actions for a lightning bolt effect and three actions for a chain lightning effect. Or a simpler example, explosive leap could offer more distance per action used.

5e Warlock style casting
Imagine if your innovation could handle a limited number of unstable actions (equal to your int mod or something, if it were up to me I would use this limit to replace the flat roll.) before requiring some out of combat repair time (10 min or 1 hr or something). This sort of mimics the 5e warlock regaining spell slots on a short rest.

These are admittedly not fully fleshed out ideas but what do people think?

I decided to re run a few adventure path encounters my group recently played to minimize the amount of prep I had to do :p The original group was all 4th level. We had a Champion Tank, Cat Barbarian damage dealer, Persicion Crossbow Ranger damage dealer, Abjuration Wizard support and damage and Alchemist support and damage. In the re run the Ranger was swapped for a drifter gunslinger with a single dueling pistol and the barbarion was swapped for and armor inventor rocking a blunderbuss

We talked after, and some of what I’m sharing are my observations and some of it is what the players expressed to me.

The gunslinger was almost a direct down grade from the ranger. The gunslinger had a higher chance to hit and the possibility of two strikes per turn. A 2d6+2 into a fatal 3d10+2 while the ranger was doing 2d10+1d8+2. When using his 2nd level feat hunters aim (why is the gunslinger version level 8?) his attack bonus was the same as the gunslinger. He enjoyed not having to hunt prey and used risked reload almost every round. He told me that the 8th level deed rebounding strike sounded ridiculous and he wouldn’t use it even if he had it. He had no interest in duel wielding, but wanted to be like the gunslinger from the Idris Elba movie Dark Tower.

I’ll be honest, I kinda twisted the barbarians arm to play the inventor and had to nearly build the character for him but in the end he said he had a ton of fun. I won him over by giving him a shotgun (blunderbus). The resists he gained from only came up once, his innovation almost forgotten about. He loved Overdrive and his unstable actions (explode, explosive leap and megaton strike). He began both fights with overdrive and explosive leap (very similar to rage and sudden charge).

The first fight was against a “big boss” one size larger level 7 baddie. Admittedly the gunslinger was rolling poorly but in 9 strikes they got 2 hits and 1 critical. With an attack bonus 4 lower than the gunslinger the inventor still hit 2 out of 4 strikes, and with the blunderbuss dealing splash on a miss the inventor easily out damaged the gunslinger.

The second fight was against a bunch of “cultists” one leader and 4 mooks. The gunslinger cleaned up in this fight. First strike was a crit that outright killed a mook. This fight he made 6 strikes, 2 crit a and 4 hits resulting in 3 killing blows. The inventor got a megaton strike crit for 42 damage to finish the leader and the fight.

In conclusion the gunslinger felt underwhelmed, even in the second fight largely due to his hits doing the same as the inventors hits. Maybe this just comes down to the pistol vs the blunderbuss? The inventor said to me “I didn’t know inventors were damage dealers, and that unstable stuff was a blast” yes I facepalmed at the pun too.

Not tank the role, tank as in a heavily armored panzer or abrams. When I first heard that inventor was a play test class I envisioned a goblin inventor riding into combat atop a cannon with four legs. I thought maybe riding a construct, but It seems less practical as I read the actual class more, any advice? Is it plausible?

What if instead of the modifications being sorted by innovation, they were presented in a list with a innovation heading that listed the innovations they could be used for. For instance, I think it would be fun to have the climbing limbs construct modification on my armor innovation.

• Climbing Limbs (armor, construct) With appendages that can claw or create suction, you or your construct becomes a capable climber. Your innovation gains or grants a climb Speed equal to half its land Speed.

I had an idea for a magic item but I'm unsure how to go about assigning an item level or gp value to it. I'm looking for more general advice that I could hopefully use for future creations. That said the item I'm currently trying to assign a value to is a magic quiver. It would reduce the reload value of wielded weapons to a minimum of 1. Essentially allowing my player with a crossbow ace ranger to use a heavy crossbow.

I’ve been fond of the idea of a character with a big crossbow ever since the bolt ace gunslinger archetype. So when I read the crossbow ace feat for the ranger I got pretty excited. After crunching the numbers I became instantly less excited. This feat seemed to imply to me that you can focus on crossbows and be at least adequate, but my math showed he did less than half of a archer fighters dpr. Am I missing something here? Three actions used on reload then hunters aim using the precision hunters edge.

My question is about the type restrictions on the polymorph spell. For example 1st level is restricted to animal and humanoid. But neither of these are listed under type and subtype in Appendix 3. So does this mean if I base my form off a specific creature that it needs to be an animal or humanoid? Can I base the form off an aberration and it just doesn't grant the creature type? Why grant creature types that don't grant bonuses as listed in the Appendix?

Does anyone agree that small arms should be viable for more than just Operatives?

Currently Operatives make small arms viable through skills. So the other options would be magic and tech. The simplest way I see is to make a technomancer magic hack and a mechanics mechanic trick.

For balance sake it would be important that they don’t stack with trick shot or with each other. Now trick shot is a full class feature and does competitive damage on its own. The hack and trick, are not full class feature, just a part of one, so my thought is that they stack with other tricks and hacks to produce that same competitive damage.

So how much should this increase the damage? Im thinking these tricks and hacks should make small arms do damage equal to an equivalent long arm. This would be less than the operatives trick shot but both classes have other means of bringing their damage up from there.

How do you prevent it from being stacked with trick shot. Either make it cost a move or standard action or the small arm becomes unwieldy. If the trick and hack called out a non-unwieldy small arm they would not stack with each other. Mechanics would do best using the unwieldy route as the exocortex would be hard up for action economy with tracking and overcharging. The technomancer has the move action to empower and standard to use spell shot, seeking shot or phasing shot so they might also do better with the unwieldy route.

Thoughts? Opinions?

The first level technomancer spell Incompetence (Armory pg 157) makes the target lose proficiency with a class of weapon on a failed will save, If I were to target say "small arms" would they then lose longarm proficiency since small arm proficiency is a prerequisite? would they then also lose heavy weapon proficiency, weapon specialization, weapon focus etc.

A friend of mine is starting a new starfinder campaign and I'm looking to play a support character. None of out pathfinder games have gone past level 6 so I'm looking for low level advice. The party is composed of a Melee Blitz Soldier, A ghost operative using pistols (also playing the party face) and a Ranged Exocortex Mechanic. I've always played stealthy melee types in pathfinder and I'm trying to branch out. I've read a lot about how great battlefield control is and I'd like to try that but I don't really understand how a grease spell can swing the tide of battle. I guess what I'm really looking for is a real break down on What battlefield control really means and how to pull it off well. Some examples maybe. I'm looking at playing a Ysoki Technomancer focused on battlefield control.

Ysoki Technomancer 1
Ace Pilot
(we roll our stats.)
Str 11
Dex 18
Con 11
Int 19
Wis 18
Cha 10

Skills: Computers, Engineering, Life Science, Mysticism, Perception, Physical Science, Piloting, Stealth.

Feats: Long Arm Proficiency

Spells:
0 - Detect Magic, Psychokinetic Hand
1 - Holographic Image, Grease

I'm really unsure of my spell, feat, and magic hack choices. Everyone keeps staying "just play whats fun" yea well being useless is "not fun"