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Orikkro's page
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Driftbourne wrote: Many of my characters still favor ranged over the melee, especially with a 3-action economy and +10 = crit. Some creatures have special attacks that I wold never want to get into melee range of like paralize. Also if you are in melee with a creature it would need a really good reason to not keep attacking you. In ranged combat, there is less certainty you will be the target of an attack each round.
I don't mind Hardness and resistance as long as they have weaknesses to balance them out. Using recall knowledge feels much better with 3 actions so it's not using up half your turn like it does in SF1e. I like having to learn alien creatures' weaknesses, not knowing makes them feel more alien. I do think the DC for recall knowledge should go down if you have already attacked a creature and triggered its resistance, or it's used its special abilities.
The other side of the issue with lots of creatures having resistances, is do the PCs have ways to deal with them. In a Sci-fi setting a lot of that could be through equipment. Grenades are great for that, especially now that they are simple weapons in the playtest. The only thing I don't like about grenades in the playtest is that creatures with high Reflex saves are almost immune to grenades. Since guns are a big part of the game having ammo with different damage types could help, or ammo with more than one damage type.
Spells that could debuff resistances, immunities, or hardness would help too.
I do like Teridax's idea for adding to damage, kind of something like Harrying Fire for damage.
As per the rules identifying a creature which is using a skill is done as part of another action so it shouldn't be taking up any of your action economy in SF1e. You can do it as part of a move or as part of retrieving something from your inventory etc.
Driftbourne wrote: Bad dice rolls suck that hasn't changed in 50 years. Even if you added a deadly d10 to every weapon you're still sometimes going to roll all 1s for damage.
Starfinder survival guide, use recall knowledge often and have weapons to cover more than one damage type. Doesn't matter if they are ranged or melee if something is immune to that damage type. Whenever you find a creature with immunity or resistance that's a good time to check for weaknesses.
You're not going to find one weapon that can overcome all of this. I left out the names of the creatures to not spoil them, this covers all creatures from 2 of the playtest scenarios and second contact, there were only about 5 or 6 that didn't have some resistance or immunity. NOTE there are 2 immunities I didn't list so as to not spoil them, but I'll give a hint, some creatures have weaknesses to certain skill checks.
Two things in a "Cosmic Birthday" have hardness. One of 5 and one of 10. The 10 is impossible to damage.. period at level 1. The other the ranged players just basically got to watch the melee player play while the Mystic kept him up. Unlike resistances, hardness applies to all damage types.
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Lord Fyre wrote: A much bigger problem with firearms in Starfinder 2E is magazine sizes (it has been mentioned before).
B.T.W., larger Ammo Clips can actually help with "bad rolls" as it will allow more attacks.
More attacks don't help when all you get to ever roll is dice + a small weapon specialization (much later on). Where melee gets to add str mod, which on a crit would get doubled. It works in PF2e because it is a more melee focused realm. But in Starfinder melee should actually be the rarity imho. Just like you don't see people wielding swords on a modern battlefield.
And for me this issue just adds to the reality that SF2e is becoming a campaign skin for Pathfinder 2e and dropping what made it stand apart. All the people I GM for and play under don't care about crossplay. If we ever wanted to cross play stuff from PF2e and SF2e we look as that being on the GM and players to make it work.
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Since the only thing that guns get to add to damage in the playtest is weapon specialization (or precision with operative) it makes them very underwhelming especially if you face anything with DR or Hardness such as the playtest adventures. Rolling two ones on a critical and getting 4 damage because you rolled 2 ones which can't even beat 5hardness/DR just absolutely sucks the fun out of playing a 'science fiction' game. Might as well just be playing pathfinder and using a bow. This makes the playtest and future of SF2e prioritize melee over ranged and thus it just becomes a 'skin' for PF2e.
Abomination Vaults is wonderfully setup that a party does not have to fight everything. If they choose to fight everything and know they are not robust then that is on them. Death is sometimes the best lesson provider. It's also the factor that puts the suspense into the game. It's why we use dice to add a random factor into the story. Not every 'hero' of the tale survives. Just like most medals of honor are posthumous.
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Some of the ancestry feats from the Ancestry Guide are in Core 2. While others are not.
Feats from Ancestry Guide in Core 2.
Mariner's Fire
Uncanny Agility
Magpie Snatch
Tengu Feather Fan
Wind God's Fan
Thunder God's Fan
Harbinger's Caw
Jinx Glutton
Favor of Heaven
Soaring Form
Hurricane Swing
Trickster Tengu
Feats from Ancestry Guide rolled into other Feats in Core 2
Eclectic Sword Training (rolled into Tengu Weapon Familiarity)
Missing Feats from Ancestry Guide in Core 2
Waxed Feathers
Dogfang Bite
Eclectic Sword Mastery (pre-req Eclectic Sword Training)
The last three seem like.. odd omissions considering two are specific feats to enhance heritages.
Finoan wrote: TTRPG game rules are not a reality simulator.
Also, we are talking about a universe where magic and magitech are both readily available. Surely there is room in the narrative for a portable form of environmental protections are able to get the job done without being a space suit from Earth's 1970s or modern (and cumbersome) SCBA gear. And that such portable, ubiquitously available magitech-based environmental protections are only capable of the basic life support listed in the rules.
A vacuum is a thin atmosphere. By default for something to protect you against a vacuum it has to function in any atmospheric density from standard to partial and even full vacuum doesn't matter how it is achieved the most simple physics dictate it and Starfinder is more technology based then magic.
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"On basic enviromental protections:
Some armors do this through an environmental field (a minor force field specially tuned to protect from a vacuum that doesn’t reduce damage from attacks), while others can be closed with helmets and airtight seals. While using your armor’s environmental protections, your armor can protect you from the dangerous environmental effects of a vacuum and can facilitate self-contained breathing. This allows you to survive and breathe while within a vacuum or a submerged area of non-damaging liquid. This protection doesn’t protect you from smoke inhalation, inhaled poisons, thick or thin atmospheres, toxic atmospheres, or corrosive atmospheres."
Thin atmospheres... you know what a vacuum is.. airtight.. if a O2 molecule can't slip through then how is a complete chemical poison compound. Self contained breathing... you mean like fire fighters wear to not die from smoke inhalation.
Corrosive is the only one that makes sense at least for a physical protection as it would attack said airtight seals.
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Bluemagetim wrote: PC1 pg 444 wrote: Fatigued
You’re tired and can’t summon much energy. You take a
–1 status penalty to AC and saving throws. You can’t use
exploration activities performed while traveling, such as
those on pages 438–439.
You recover from fatigue after a full night’s rest.
I find it odd this condition doesn't apply a status penalty of any amount to encounter movement speed.
It does make it so a pc can't hustle among other things in exploration at least but no speed reduction in combat. Adrenaline will overcome fatigue for a short duration. As any soldier that's spend 48 hours awake waiting for something to happen and it finally happens. Remember combats rarely even last half a minute. Fatigue is more handicapping to long term awareness and activity. Hence why you are prevented from doing exploration activities.
Long term it would be better to package the ancestries from Ancestry Guide and their feats, the classes form the remaining books, as well as items into another player core or GM core or something. It would just help make the game itself less confusing to new folks and not require a GM to intervene 'remastering' a class for them or ancestry that might require some changes here and there.
But as always Paizo is only going to do it if there is interest enough to buy it as they are in a business of selling books. And considering how out of the 4 people I personally game with that had subscriptions that 3 of them have cancelled them (mostly due to the various side bar lore changes to satisfy critics of previous content that don't even buy their books) Paizo is going to have to get pickier about the books they focus on to make money on the road they've chosen.
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The core chassis of the oracle class got major improvements. Especially at lower levels. However, the cost of this was that the mysteries both in their boons and flavor were absolutely gutted. On the plus side certain mysteries are no longer heads and shoulders above others (life, cosmos) but they also don't have the flare and unique play as before. And battle oracle.. wow.. Mark must really not want to allow spellcasters to be melee capable except the not a spellcaster but is a spellcaster kineticist.
I've played several oracles and nothing in the remaster wants me to play another since the mysteries act more like bloodlines with a penalty now. Also makes me feel like it really steps on the divine sorcerer a lot.
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Bluemagetim wrote: Swap actually didnt change the way the game is played, it just made playing the game the way people were already playing it make more sense.
Players were dropping weapons to switch from whatever was in their hand to something worn. So stuff on the floor was part of the game perhaps more than it should be only because thats how the rules in the past made changing weapons work with the fewest actions taken.
Swap fixed it so players dont have to drop things anymore. It removed the weirdness. Not extending swap to quickdraw leaves in place the weirdness of dropping things for players who pick up the quickdraw feat.
I'm ruling swap as an acceptable sub action choice for my games, it just makes more sense than making quick draw players live in the past before swap.
You can choose to do whatever you want at your table however quickdraw compresses drawing a weapon and striking with it into one action instead of two. So no I will not be allowing swapping during a quickdraw at mine. Because that compresses putting away an item, drawing an item, and striking with said item into one action.
Martials already get crazy action compression while spellcasters get none, giving them even more just makes those that try to play non martials feel even worse while they are effectively stuck still playing 3.5 Standard action and move action.
Quickdraw is for when you have a free hand and want to draw something and strike with one action. Such as you have a two handed weapon, free action release, quickdraw and throw a javelin, quickdraw again for a second attack, and then still have a third action. Or if you aren't walking around with a weapon in your hand 24/7 which.. I don't let my players do unless they are expecting danger.
Swap is if you want to switch items in your hands and does not include a strike. So if you are there hiking along a trail and get attacked without warning swap is no better then draw.
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Dubious Scholar wrote: I think Investigator's chassis is fine, the real issue is their class feats. Almost all of them are purely for improving their skill checks in some way it feels like, and very few contribute directly to combat. Like, Shared Strategem and Didactic Strike are legitimately good options, and then... what else? There's other feats that apply to combat, but they feel narrow or weak (like, retry a Seek check, or reroll a Feint by... spending another action?)
Compare their list of options to what rogues get and there's a dramatic difference in how much of rogue's list is about new and innovative ways to put a knife in someone's back.
Rogue + Investigator Archetype makes a better skill monkey then straight investigator because investigator while having as many skill feats as rogue is more restricted in that half of them are locked to charisma, int, and wisdom based skills.
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Played an investigator completely through Agents of Edgewatch. Only redeeming feature was the Forensic Acumen allowing to be a combat medic god. While making it a free action its a drop in the bucket.The entire class revolves around spending actions and locking you into a target to do the same amount of precision damage a rogue can do just by flanking.
Also It's an absolutely garbage class for the APs as anything important will be stuck to the wall so it can't be missed. (Literally twice in AoE ((What a badly written AP))). In fact as written the only pre-written adventure I can even picture Investigator's class features coming into play is Malevolence.
Btw, if you are ever wanting to torment yourself playing an investigator in a adventure path absolutely take red herring. What might have seen as too meta to you at start will instead preserve your sanity when you can turn to the GM and just ask them if it's a genuine clue or not and they by the class rules have to tell you. I say this because so many things in Agents of Edgewatch appeared to be clues which as written ended up with no resolution or factor so Red Herring was a class mechanic to actually stop wasting time investigating pointless stuff because there was nothing ever to investigate.
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If this online only format is what Paizo is sticking with as a company please send your speakers decent audio equipment and have it setup and tested before had. The audio is so poor I gave up listening and just started listening to podcasts.
It's already disconnected from the community since questions get filtered instead of asked before a panel at least make it so the prepared information and things talked about is pleasant to listen to.
A number of people here don't seem to understand how cursebound works.
Until level 11 an oracle cannot cast more then 2 focus spells even though they have three focus point before refocusing without becoming overwhelmed and unable to use focus spells for the rest of the day. And they can only do that ONCE as you cannot reduce below minor curse level between daily preparations. So after the first time you use a focus spell you are going to be limited to just 1 per encounter unless you want to be stripped of the whole mechanical part of being an oracle for the rest of the day.
And since Oracle has the least amount of oracle class feats, the focus spells and curse really are the only thing that sets them apart form a divine sorcerer.
From level 11 to 17 you can cast 3 and then two after casting the first one of the day. This makes actually committing to using focus spells for an oracle quite difficult in Paizo Adventures that don't follow in any way the recommended amount of encounters in a 24 hour period so you are compelled to save all the time. Meaning utility focus spells are rarely used.
And since every class now gets their baked in ability to recoup all their focus points between encounters they will need a major rework to even be desirable to play, which I am genuinely looking forward to see for Oracles even though I have played a Life Oracle and am playing a Lore oracle in Extinction Curse and will likely not play another one for a long long time.
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Personally I really dislike this. A dragon wearing elegant jewelry and accents to what should be a majestic creature is one thing. Randomly sticking things over itself and stabbing weapons through itself comes across as punk goth emo dragon. Not to mention how hindering all that stuff would be.
pauljathome wrote: The animist playtest introduced an interesting new mechanic.
Scaling status bonus to hit without having to jump through hoops.
Having to sustain Wild shape but
1) Being able to get a fair bit of movement from the sustain
2) Being able to change shape (within a spell) when sustaining.
I really loved it the few games I managed to play with the playtest. The flexibility REALLY hit my shapeshifting fanatasy.
I wait with bated breath to see how much of that makes it to the actual book
Doesn't help that the Druid is already set in Core 1. Honestly, it would just further drive a drift between the new classes (Kineticist, Animist, etc.) being both mechanically and playability better then the older cores.
Deriven Firelion wrote: Calliope5431 wrote: Yeah I did the math for most common options a while back. Shapes at top level are equal to a boring martial with a greatsword assuming you can benefit from property runes (flaming and frost and such) on hand wraps while shaped.
I can dig up the math later. Do we have any rulings that indicate they can benefit from property runes on handwraps? I usually don't allow it. Damage is specifically stated in the spell and cannot be modified. The only thing that is a grey area is if potency runes can apply to unarmed attack which can be used in lieu of stats not specified in the spell.
Sy Kerraduess wrote: The advantage of RK classes is that they have better action economy with RK, not that they succeed at their RK where others fail. As such, a reroll rule is more beneficial for them, since they can retry much more often.
The Investigator can use that reroll rule together with their 5 RK check action (Reason Rapidly) to guarantee success on anything below "incredibly hard".
I can tell you've never played either to any meaningful level. First off Reason Rapidly is a level 12 feat. How it functions is also entirely left to GM fiat, if the GM decides they are sequential and you fail on the first RK then the other 4 get shut down as per RAW. Second off 'free' recall knowledge checks that classes like Investigator get on Devise a Stratagem come at the cost of dreadful combat contribution.
Lore Oracle does not get any recall knowledge action economy. They simply get focus spells to get a better chance at succeeding. Both of them come at an addition action economy cost of either using up their reaction or costing another action to gain a lore access and thus being unable to anything that round.
So my point still stands is if you make RK easy for all classes and just dump all the knowledge of a creature on a success then you make said classes absolutely pointless to play within encounters, leaving the play feeling as if they do not have a good role or contribution.
No published 2e Adventure Path or Adventure is good for Wild Order. The environments are too crowded and enclosed for the creatures places in them to encounter let alone a player attempting to use forms.
It's only viable for a self made campaign and world or one of the open world 1e adventure paths that have been converted.
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No, full of errors, misprints and typos. Get the pdfs at most those will get updated with each printing. Plus they are searchable.
However, since we only have a fraction of the the game 'remastered' at the moment I haven't even bothered to change the games I run as I'm not going to let some players get new toys and others still having to deal with the design issues of their class.
Basically I've only implemented the swap, reposition, and first aid from the remaster and you don't need the book for that.
Deriven Firelion wrote: As a DM, I let the characters keep rolling if they fail. I don't see why they can't keep spending an action to keep trying to remember some detail. It's not like they gain some immense advantage from it that someone isn't already taking care of.
For example, martials often obviate the need for Recall Knowledge by taking weapon runes they know are likely to activate weaknesses, bypass weaknesses, or at least not have much resistance to.
And the martials often coordinate to take different runes to handle different weaknesses or resistance.
My particular group always has someone take at least one fire rune weapon, a sonic, and someone gets holy. This handles evil outsiders, lots of regeneration, and has at least one rune that creatures aren't particular resistant to.
So I don't like to limit any caster or class from using Recall Knowledge to give them a cool moment if they make the roll at some point and there is weakness they can exploit.
Problem with being too lose with Recall Knowledge rules is that you run the potential of absolutely gutting the reason for existence of say a Lore Oracle or Investigator. Two examples of a class subtypes whose main shtick is getting extra knowledge on a success or increasing the odds of a success
Letting RK be done after a fail and not increasing the DC after ever success really destroys the whole reason for being out of many of their class features/feats which they lose a ton of other capacity to get. (Literally all of Lore Oracle's specific focus spells are to improve RK).
But no-one is playing them you say? Well.. why would they ever play them as well in the future if you remove a major reason for them to even exist? Something to think about.
ElementalofCuteness wrote: In multiple threads I have looked over since the Remastered PDFs and Books began to be shipped it seemed like there was an overall theme in the background. Simple theme in MAD classes or those that use INT as their KAS (Key Ability Score) are just inherently bad since INt is a "BAD" stat to have. Why? Why, is it bad is the question.
Do people not see the value of Recall Knowledge for any casters to determine "Weakest Save"? Since the Remastered I feel as if this was a theme handed out by Paizo, that 1 action Recall knowledge attempts were a good use for 1 of your 3 actions in any given round so you may figure out rather to use Fireball or Vampiric Feast (Vampiric Touch) or perhaps a different spell to maximize damage and spell slo.
A recent thread on Investigator highlighted INT as a bad stat but i can never figure it out. They get bonus skills, languages, RK checks and their class gimmick uses INT to attack and trigger their version of sneak attack. I do not see how this is a bad thing.
Perhaps I am stuck in my own little world when it comes to building characters in this system. I tend to focus on defensive stats before STR, INT & CHA. Which if one of those are my KAS then it automatically get's focused. Which is why to me Kineticist feels almost like the ultimate balanced character. I had only needed 14 str, 14 dex, to maximize my Metal Carapace Impulse which freeded up so many more options. I had 14 str, 18 con, 14 dex, 10 int, 12 wis, 14 cha by the time that campaign ended.
Which I guess that is why Thief Racket Rogue > Investigator since y ou need only DEX which is a double dipper stat, both offensive and defensive while INT doesn't give you survivaility and that might be the issue. Three of the stats of Pathfinder are not defensive in nature. Str, Int, Cha. They are rather offensive stats in nature being able to RK or add bonus damage to melee or Demoralize/feint.
When would you ever use Int outside of of your main class gimmick in combat. Knowing all the information is...
First off, nothing in the recall knowledge action dictates that a GM will just straight up tell you the lowest save. So doing a recall knowledge for that reason isn't certain. However, knowing what a creature is resistant, weak, or special abilities is always useful. Now with the new question method in remaster asking the question related to saves is easier to do, but not certain.
Second, in relation to that people also forget that once you fail a recall knowledge that is it, no further chances until you've had the chance to gain further potential knowledge. Also it's a secret check and may land you the result of the strongest save if you critically fail. So all in all it's a piss poor argument to base magic casters around.
In relation to INT as a stat. Yes it does give you more skill training, it also gives you more languages. However, it does not change the amount of proficiency increases you get. So on a fighter for example it's less useful then a rogue. INT doesn't impact any save, same as CHA and both of them only impact beyond that skill feats.
That all said there are no real 'dump' stats in 2E. First because you have to take two flaws ancestral flaws to get another boost and you can't apply a boost to counter either picked flaw. (Not sure what that's a rule as it would be self defeating anyway). Secondly you only need enough DEX to maximize your AC for the armor you will wear and you have to be strategic with your boosts otherwise you'd end up with partial boosts at level 20 that do nothing. So it's very hard to end up with a character that will only have 10 (8 for an ancestry flaw) in more then one stat by level 20 (If they make it that far)
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Xenocrat wrote: Yes, those are two different things. He said identifying it on his turn. You can do that without a feat, but it takes ten minutes to know what that existing spell does. If you witness a spell(which includes hexes and their related features) cast then you can identify the spell at the cost of one action on your following turn with no check if you have it prepared or part of your repertoire. If you do not, then with a skill check with the relative tradition of the caster and learn what spell it was and thus what it does.
There is a feat that means you can do it as a reaction and there is a feat on top of that which allows you to do it as a free action once per turn.
Identifying magic from an item or world breaking permanent magic since that's impossible to do anymore in 2E as a player (Guess Tyrants Grasp Broke Golarion's magic too like D&D's 4e spell plague) is different as you are probing it to figure out how to active it and what activating it will do without witnessing its invocations. On top of this there are feats that again reduce this all the way down to one action depending on proficiency.
As a GM my view on it isn't about recalling knowledge. For a myriad of reasons. Such as the fact that they usually don't have the skills set to do it without me having to fiat. Plus their action economy is already limited.
But here is the thing. Players can recognize when a spell or effect is being used. And they can do Identify Magic as an action on their turn as a base to actually fully identify it.
However a npc with sentience is going to recognize that "Hey when that tiny animal is near me and that enemy casts a spell I get this effect" and can react accordingly. A witch specifically has many ways to protect their familiar and get it out of harms way. Both as reactions and the massive amount of traits they can give the familiar.
And if the worst happens.. it's only gone till the next day. And if it does die its not like you lose anything.
Also if you have a player that is playing a witch then find a way to get them a sleeves of storage if at low level. All they need to do is keep one arm empty and even as an independent action the familiar can flee there if it knows it is safe.
exequiel759 wrote: For those asking for the investigator to become a rogue racket; it's way too late at this point, Paizo isn't going to remove a class in the game lol.
What investigators need is not to be a poor man's rogue though, and their playstyle should be changed accordingly to achieve this goal. First, Pursue a Lead should become a one-action activity like Hunter's Prey, and second, Devise a Stratagem should always be a free action, without GM fiat. This change would allow investigators to be played more like a skill monkey rather than a martial, unlike rogues which are clearly more geared towards martial combat, having access to their +1 and eventually +2 from Pursue a Lead at all times. I wouldn't bother if it increased to +3 at some point even. Free DoS also makes low rolls feel less bad because you didn't waste an action with that and because it would push investigators towards using as many skill actions as they can on their turn. Let's say you free DS → move → Feint, Battle Medicine, Demoralize, Bon Mot, whatever. This would be fantastic if methodologies allowed you to use certain actions more than once per X like Demoralize or Battle Medicine, and also new feats that added new one-action skill activities for certain skills would be welcomed.
This also would be an errata-level change which is likely what Paizo is going to do with investigators (if at all) since they didn't say anything about wanting to overhaul the whole class like the alchemist or witch. I feel this would be simple, straightforward, and a huge improvement over what we already have.
All I am going to say is when Rogue dedicated multiclass Investigator functions and performs better then Investigator the class itself is irrelevant. Also Rogues still are better at skills. Just as many proficiency increases and not locked to charisma, wisdom, intelligence ones like the extra Investigator ones are (Also one of the reasons Rogue - Investigator Dedication is superior.)
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My take on the Remaster Core 1 and GM Core?
Rushed, full of errors, conflicting text, and somehow made things worse than they were that specifically stated they were trying to improve ex. Talismans.
My reaction the Remaster?
I will no longer buy physical rule books, only pdfs. There was 4 printings of the CRB already in a few short years. I foresee at least that much if not more for PC1,2 GM Core. I will only be buying physical books of lore and world books now. Which is sad because I'm probably one of the very few people that even made it worthwhile for the local game shop to even stock them anymore.
After having played an Investigator all the way through Agents of Edgewatch I can say that the way to do the remastered Investigator is simple. Replace Mastermind Racket with Investigator and make it a rogue racket.
I appreciated what was attempted with the class compared to 1e. To make it a true investigator. But it is a class that puts way to much on the GM knowing your meta knowledge ability and is very poor at contributing to combat. It's like someone attempted to make a CoC class for Pathfinder which is never going to have a place in the vast majority of Paizo's published adventures as they have to write them to hand the evidence to the players.
Level 19 currently is basically "You are probably tired of this class now right? So now the GM just has to tell you if there is a clue and it's nature now."
You are overthinking it. Gestures-Manipulate have always been whatever you wished. You could be drawing sigils in the air or simply outstretching a hand towards the intended target.
Mechanically the only point was to provide a trigger for reactions, recognizing the spell, and burning actions so spellcasters are still playing 3.5/1e and only get an action and a move action per turn. I mean.. so they can't cast more then two useful spells per turn unless they are focus based.
Their only use is to be used for a in person table were you use a TV set into the table as a battle map.
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The Raven Black wrote: I think many potential GMs will buy the first book of an AP, and maybe the 2nd too sometimes to be sure, to check if it is worth for them to buy the whole AP. I have several players that are on the subscription and then buy everything purely to support Paizo. Thus myself I don't buy much at all anymore. Though I may have to as a number of them aren't exactly thrilled with the increased prices and having to buy 'core' books again so soon after we all switched and invested into PF2e.
However, I have learned from bad experience as a GM you read the entire Adventure Path before launching it. Agents of Edgewatch is an example of something I'd have given a hard pass on to my players after reading all the books. It starts well and then just keeps falling down the stairs after the second book.
The entire adventure path is practically based on movie tropes. With each book (except the last) essentially attempting to mimic some 'police/crime' movie of old.
I HIGHLY suggest that you read the entire adventure path in entirety before running this and comparing what it presents to your players and their characters. As strange as this sounds for what presents itself as about about law and order, lawful characters are going to be railroaded into doing unlawful things by book 3 if you just follow the books and don't want to spend the effort rewriting the story. Player Agency is repeatedly taken away with the author just saying "Tell your players to just go with it."
And the last book is so disjointed that my table we just ended up reading it out loud as it starts off suggesting your party essentially make all new characters more tailored to the subject at hand.
If your players on the other hand are those that enjoy being lead around, aren't into world immersion, and don't take things to serious then don't worry about it. OH! Advise anyone thinking of playing an Investigator to play something else, there is no investigating to be done in the adventure path. The evidence is usually and quite literally sometimes just stuck on the wall impossible to find, unless you once again spend a lot of your own creative effort to rewrite.
Any adventure path that has featured Devils, Demons, Daemons, will have to be adjusted as by their very nature alignment damage is a big part of them. I will not list APs by name as that will spoil things but a number of the 2E adventure paths feature one of the above significantly at some point in them.
Then spells, creatures, and items that first appeared in an adventure path will need to be looked at. As most of those will not be in Core 1 or 2. Just like Magus, Gunslinger, Inventor, Psychic, Tharmaturge, and Summoner won't be receiving a remaster as of yet.
The Remaster books cover CRB, GMG, and the APG.
Still it will be far easier then covering 1e to 2e as spells won't be significantly depowered or opponents won't be significantly reduced in threat. Many encounters in 1e has to be completely redone for 2e as the lack of attack of opportunity really enhances mobility allowing for large groups of significantly lower level thralls to just be ignored.
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Lord Fyre wrote: Is this a result of designers having to "relearn" how to design adventures?
It is quite a shift from PF 1E.
Some of these APs were published over a year after the initial release. Agents of Edgewatch (The third six book AP) throws level 1-2 characters into 7 encounters 3 which are moderate and one is severe and is expected to be done in one Golarion day.
Many of the Single book adventures still do this. Night of the Gray Death is exceedingly brutal when playing true to the character and without meta knowledge. Expect several instant, no appeal character deaths in that one.
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willfromamerica wrote: I will continue to voice my support wherever I can for high-level content being as frequently published as low-level content, whether in shorter APs or as part of longer ones.
Unrelated, I'm currently running Gatewalkers into Stolen Fate as my 6th PF2e solo campaign for my fiancée (all have gone from level 1-20) and I think the two go together thematically quite nicely!
To be fair it did not help their sales at all that the first three six book APs had exceedingly high difficulty at the gate and that the APs themselves don't pay any attention to the average 3 encounters per game world day that PF2e is designed around.
And IMHO do to their whirlwind/globetrotting nature really lack the charm of the more localized 1e APs. NPCs are met and forgotten because they will never be met again. All in all I find the APs for 2e to just not be up to the quality of 1e except Abomination Vaults which far exceeds Emerald Spire for a mega dungeon.
Agents of Edgewatch is a train wreck which I cannot be bothered to put in the effort to salvage for a group that is a more immersive be in the world not riding on rails hack and slash table.
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Tying a high and low 3 book AP together is actually far less of an issue then it might appear. People, especially adventurers are extraordinarily mobile in Golarion compared to the real life time period. All it takes is the GM and players coming up with a plausible reason for the characters to have come to a a different region and that feels good with the players. We have carried characters from Fall of Plaguestone to Enmity Cycle just because one character is from near Thuvia and a new character is an old friend of theirs and wrote to them to come visit.
I suspect the starting at 1 adventures will always sell better just because when you are coming into the community you have to start somewhere. And there are certainly stories such as Quest of the Frozen Flame that really do need to start at 1. Conversely, Abomination Vaults which should have started at 4/5 imho given how Ruins of Gauntlight suggests to do Troubles in Otari first and thus have higher comradery with the town. If you didn't run TiO though starting at level 4 makes sense for a group of adventurers looking for adventure given how the AP just starts you out on the doorstep of Gauntlight by default.
Paizo should look at this as an opportunity to show the wider gaming community that high level play doesn't have to be bad with PF2e. Since the system is designed to not fall apart after 14. I'd even be happy with a 3 to 2 ratio of 1-11 / 11-20. Along with spreading the single books around more. My group is already wising there was something level 6-7 to do with these characters after Enmity Cycle.
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While I do remember the statement before 2e release that all the APs would be playable to level 20, I do understand the reasonings behind 3 book Adventure Paths. I genuinely would not be bothered if it wasn't the fact that most of the 3 book Adventure Paths start at level 1.This causes the exact same problem that many people don't like about 5e in that the modules don't go that high. Unlike 5e Paizo took pains to make a playable system up to and at level 20 for a while.
Of the currently 3 book adventure paths released for PF2e 5 of them start at level 1 and only two start at level 11 (Where the others end at usually). I am hearing from my own players how they are getting tired of playing the 'low levels' over and over, plus wanting to keep playing characters to see them grow into high levels. I am not a homebrew DM, I enjoy making stories come alive not making the story itself.
Six book APs becoming more rare wouldn't be an issue if the three book ones were more evenly distributed high and low. And they don't always need to begin at level 1 or 11. One of my biggest pet peeves about Abomination Vaults which is an AP that I feel is the best one yet for PF2e in terms of story and options is that it starts at level 1 all while heavily suggesting you run your players through Troubles in Otari which ends at level 4 (if you don't give them the final level up). There is absolutely no reason that Abomination Vaults could not have started at level 4 even for a group that is bringing fresh characters to the AP.
And as a side note, I'd be more inclined to purchase more of the single book adventures to slide into my campaigns if their level ranges also were more spread out. Currently (not counting 1e remakes into 2e or ones intended for you play 1e modules like Curse of the Crimson Throne first) the book adventures stand at 2 1st level, 1 3rd level, 1 4th level, 1 5th level, 1 at 11th level, and 1 at 16th level starting level. This leaves a lot of them that can't be run sequentially due to competing level ranges. Spreading out future releases starting level ranges would be greatly appreciated with less 6 book APs on the horizon.
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