Oakblade's page

The reference

After all these years, the wait is finally over.

The Inventor looks amazing.

I like swords!

A lot of builds rely on true strike spam one can get from a shifting staff of divination to make this class work.

Such a specific item dependency is problematic.

Maybe the magus should have a feat or other mechanic that lets them turn high level spell slots into true strikes, rather than rely on gamemasters knowing which item fixes the class?

Since you can't raise a tome and have a free hand if you have a weapon, you either need to have prehensile tail, a second set of arms or be a magumonk.

An idea for a build came to mind.

Take Magus with sliding synthesis, and punch people in the face for non-lethal damage at first level, while raising your special book in defense. At second level get Weapon Improviser Dedication.

And from there on out, your spell book is all the weapon you need. Maybe add a monk dedication down the road.

If you find a useful staff, slap shifting rune on it and turn it into a book.

Silly, yes, functional? Does it matter?

The important part is having fun. What could be more fun than playing a brainless religious zealot? Can't think of anything so there you go.

So, a cleric of Gorum and a magus walk into a bar... and nobody's surprised when they bring swords to a bar fight.

If both of them use two-handed weapons, it begs the comparison on how they function.

Cleric of Gorum pre-Channel Smite: pretty much like a fighter, i.e. Strike, Strike again, maybe Demoralize. Might also do 'cast True Strike', then Strike, then maybe 'Cast Shield'.

But at level 4, they get Channel Smite. Which lets them burn a heal or harm to do extra damage on a Strike for the low cost of 2 actions. No extra to-hit or resist rolls, no chance for extra crit, just burn a spell slot and get more damage dice, and you have one action left for movement or other useful things like healing or demoralizing.

What does a magus get?
For two actions, prime a Striking Spell, then as a third action, Strike. If you miss, you don't burn the spell and can try again three times next turn. But the spell you cast is probably more reliable if it requires a save because MAP can make it hard to land both the spell and the strike in case of consecutive misses. The magus also gets to do this from level 1. And if they are using a two-hander like the cleric, they also get some temporary hitpoints, at the cost of mobility. At level 10, healer's steel also heals them a little bit. But it's comparable to burning 1-action heals by the cleric, admittedly at the cost of spell slots. Last but not least, a magus can get a lot of mileage from cantrip strikes, whereas the cleric has to burn actual spells for Channel Smite. But Cleric has a lot more slots to burn.

Cleric:
+mobility or flexibility from the third action
+more spell slots
+one stat dependency: strength; +charisma helps for extra spells, dump wisdom
+no double jeopardy on channel smite, just bonus damage dice
+Emblazon Armament, 2nd level feat: can cast 3-action spells without taking hands off weapon
-burns through a lot of spells
-healing isn't free
-all or nothing on channel smite, must burn true strike or a hero point for second chances
-slightly less weapon training in certain level bands (esp after level 14)

Magus:
+cantrip nukes for days
+almost (but not quite) free healing
+second chances on missed attacks
+better weapon training in some level bands
-few spell slots
-needs both high str and int, which means your defenses or other utility will suffer
-double jeopardy: if your strike hit, doesn't mean your spell will
-clunky mobility with a two-hander
-no big heals
-concentrate trait on Striking Spell makes them vulnerable against a specific fighter build with Disruptive Stance feat

Who would win? My money is on the cleric.

With certain feats the two-handed weapon magus can be very tanky, and might even defeat an equal level cleric in a duel if they get overconfident with heals and get spiked down by a crit, but against a mobile enemy the magus may have a hard time, especially if that mobile enemy has ranged attacks.

The cleric has a lot more resources to throw at a problem and can get strong heals on demand, along with better, more flexible action economy. I feel like the cleric would be more enjoyable to play if not outright better in some ways.

Some copy pasta happened, thankfully it doesn't affect understanding, just grammar structure got messed up...

"runes than you could have from handwraps of mighty blows,
one of the existing property runes is similarly suppressed.
one of the existing property runes (you choose), "

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the whole point of having this feat is to give a break to people using two-handers, so they don't have to do the "free hand" - "interact" shuffle to cast a three-action spell with a material component and eat attacks of opportunity doing so while wasting precious actions.

Instead it specifically requires a free hand. Who would use this?

The baby got thrown out with the water.

To add insult to injury, raise a tome feat requires you to hold a book. Do any of the published ancestries have access to prehensile tails?

Or is this only something an unarmed magumonk would use?

My google fu has failed me. Is there a mailing list or something similar to participate in this? The information I see doesn't seem official, is it all just rumors at this point? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but I am.

Bonus giggles: anyone notice how class kits in the core rulebook don't include any clothes? Who let bards and barbarians set the fashion expectations in 2e? :)

I'm confused, maybe someone here knows the answer.

At GenCon I've played two scenarios as a level 1 character, and a third scenario as a level 3 pregen. I would like to give credit to the level 1 character. My chronicle is giving me too much gold, I think, but I don't know the right amount.

Here's what I have so far:

http://www.organizedplayfoundation.org/encyclopedia/pfs2edplayer-basics/

On this page it says:
"Credit for playing a higher-level pregenerated character must be assigned to a Pathfinder Society character of a lower level than the pregenerated character."

So far so good.

Further down below in "Apply Credit" in the same page it says:
"You can apply credit from a higher-tier adventure to a 1st-level Pathfinder Society character. When doing so, you gain only the gold appropriate to a 1st-level character. You do not benefit from any boons until your Pathfinder Society character reaches the minimum level listed on the Chronicle sheet, unless otherwise noted."

What is the gold appropriate to a 1st level character?

My first two chronicles awarded me 14.08 gp and 14.16gp. The third level chronicle gave 40.4 gp (38 for adventure and 2.4 for job roll).

How do I fix it? I don't really care about the money, I just want to apply the XP so I can hit level 2.

Thank you for reading!

I just recently got into this playtest. I may not see the big picture yet.

I really love the 3 action economy going on. This is a great new change that makes things simpler.

I also really like that some spells take longer to cast than others. That seems like a neat consideration.

And historically, ever since the days of AD&D I had a hate-hate-hate relationship with spell slots and mechanics that imposed hard limits on how often I could cast a spell.

I generally prefer systems like Shadowrun and Mage the Awakening, where your spellcasting resources don't have hard limits, but "soft" ones. By that I mean, you can pace yourself and make your spells less powerful in order to cast more of them, or to really push your luck and potentially blow your own head clean off to deliver a crazy alpha strike. This approach seems more "fun" for me because it's more interesting than "You have 5 spell slots, use them wisely, because after that you're done, I'm cutting you off. Last call, closing time, go home you're drunk."

Apologies if mentioning other systems by way of example is a no-no.

So as I started reading the spell descriptions I realized that most of them don't use the action economy the way I expected and I had a sad moment.

My expectation was that each spell could be cast at "low power" with just one action, and then other actions could be spent to buff it in some way. There are some examples of this, but the use is not widespread. I wish more spells had options to spend extra actions in wild gestures and incantations to make them more powerful and/or dangerous for all involved.

The other way that the dreaded Spell Slots and action economy could interact would be to let a "tapped out" spellcaster spend extra time in an activity channeling to "create" an extra spell slot.

For example, a spell that you already know that usually takes 2 actions to cast if you have a spell slot to burn would now take 4. You don't have 4 actions, so you complete the casting on your next turn, and during this channel time any attack on you can disrupt the cast.

Or, even simpler, you're out of spell slots... it costs 3 actions to create a level 1 spell slot, or 6 actions to create a level 2 spell slot. So you just stand there and meditate in the middle of a fight. But eventually, if you're left to your own devices you can be useful to the team again.

Anyway, action economy good, spell slots bad. Thanks for reading.