OrochiFuror's page

Imagine how foolish you'd feel if you missed a chance to display yourself properly because you had extra unnecessary covering.

A Bakuwa Iruxi likely has no need of clothes.
My unseen Iruxi only wears "leaf" armor for camo and runes, no extra layers.

If splint mail was allowed you could get that with typical starting funds and a weapon.

What's the point of giving heavy armor proficiency if there's no level 0 heavy armor? Will some be added in the book this comes in? Otherwise the only way to use heavy armor is with an armor skirt. Is this just to ensure Slayers don't have access to Bulwark since they have terrible reflex saves? If that's the case level 1 armor keeps bulwark off the table while giving some freedom of armor choices.

I just have to full disagree. Keeping a lock of a loved ones hair is good luck, because it is freely given. Every bit of slayer is taking part of an enemy to gain their strength. Same as you use herbs grown from plants, ore from the earth, meat from animals.

A large part of many hunter stories is about how monsters pretend to be "human", but aren't. Personally I don't think such distinctions should exist, for the greatest monster is MAN. After all most stories about humanoid monsters are just cautionary tales about the strangers within.

So even taking something they own or wear works, you just need something that is connected physically to them. On the other hand, it's literally called trophies, like a serial killer would take, so you might not get around some level of discomfort in that respect. That doesn't mean it has to be grisly, however.

Fur, hair, claws. I don't see why you ever need to be grisly if you don't want.

Could it also be interesting to have a monster journal, many hunter/slayer type stories also include writing down what you know about monsters. So after meeting a certain required amount of lore in your book you can one action or for free when rolling initiative mark quarry on something you know well. So you have a list of creatures that you know well enough to always be ready for them.

with eidolon wrath and elemental burst summoner could have decent damage in opening turn of combat

still 2 dc lower than regular caster spam focus spell

doesn't really feel nice to jump over so much convoluted hoop just to end up as worse than both basic martial and caster

Eidolons wrath is one of, if not the best damage focus spell, so it's fine.

Combining the bloodletting feats, upping reinforce, adding a defensive reaction like shield block and adding more attack feats would help make Eidolons feel more like combatants.
Even having feat lines keyed off from requiring boost or reinforce be active to use them could help to allow people to specialize their Eidolon to their party needs.

I would rather Alacritous action be default then Tandem movement. Eidolons feel slow compared to what most high level characters are going to have. Fleet+any status boost makes 35 the minimum speed.

More Eidolon abilities and better buffs from the summoner would be nice.

Spell+two Eidolon attacks is peak damage, even if you use a cantrip. Two action Eidolon abilities like dragon breath or dragon frenzy, do noticeably less damage even with boost Eidolon. This means boost Eidolon doesn't make enough of a difference to bother using most of the time, and the ways to make it last are detrimental, Bloodletting claws+Blood letting, or too difficult to rely on, Extend boost.
Reinforce Eidolon is the same as the bards Rallying anthem cantrip, except the bards targets an aoe. Reinforce Eidolon could be a bit better.

There's lots of little touch ups Summoner could get. I just hope it gets the page space and at least some thought put into improvements. Most classes that are fine haven't seemed to get much from the remaster.
I can't imagine gish MCs ever being worth much, the classes are already stretched thin, so hard to get both a tiny drop of martial and a tiny drop of casting and be worth it IMO.

I would rather a shifter have no spell slots, just a mechanic for shifting that has limits on use. Use all your own stats, just gain a forms special abilities and movement. Feats for leaning more doppelganger. Feat lines for general roles, like a stealth line for ambush predators, a tanking line for bruiser creatures, etc. Perhaps each role line requires a subclass, so you pick what sort of role your shifter leans into early on, that way you can't mix and match so those base powers could be stronger.
Depending on how in-depth it gets, a primary focus could be mixing form abilities. Similar to Thaum getting new implements or Kin getting new elements, a class set advancement that lets you gain certain abilities you use with any form. The class needs to stand out as more then just a were creature with one form, more then a druid that can take multiple forms. It needs to be an apex predator, mixing evolutions to create something new. Having certain abilities that you always have in all your forms could accomplish making it feel different enough from current options.
You could be a failed flesh craft experiment, absorbed some form of primal magic, delved too deep into occult knowledge, have some shape changer blood in you, anything that would explain why your physical form is fluid enough to become other things.
Also forms should work just like your regular body, able to speak and do all your usual actions.

Out of two dozen or so PCs I've played with only one had kip up, it was my druid in FotRP and it got used in one fight. I've never seen a need for it otherwise. The opportunity cost of boosting acrobatics on a heavy armor class (fighter)is fairly high. If your going down enough for the free stand to have a big impact you might need a change in tactics.

Having played a few APs, including a good chunk of AoA I've never seen an NPC with a similar free stand ability that wasn't built to mimic players, FotRP has some of that. Could be that such NPCs never hit the ground so couldn't use it.

It's easier to debuff AC then reflex, so getting a hit off as a fighter and free prone is always easier then any combo of trip and hit.

For low level feats, sudden charge and lunge are good, the rest are kinda whatever for me. I don't feel like I've lost much compared to building slam down to crank out damage and debuffs. You would never not have Tactical Reflexes with slam down, that's just maximizing your damage potential. Same with Fearsome Brute. Few other high level fighter feats compare to what they get at 10 for a slam down build.

Because of the complexity of characters in SF2 (as there are so many moving parts), my thought would be to just use the base mechanics of each class (like aim, suppressing shot, spellcasting, etc.) and give them a starship action, often tied to a role. Then do the same to some skill feats, and then a list of general actions (here under the starship rider are some actions collected by CSS which would work as baselines for general crew role actions).

I would suggest using a martials weapon proficiency for offensive actions, a sturdy characters armor proficiency for defense actions, a casters spell attack/dc for various cc, attack or auxiliary actions. Keep the base system simple and working with the progression every class has, then add depth from there.

As much as I enjoy Void War (FTL like game)), I'm not sure how that would translate to SF2. In that you just need someone at each station and time your recharging weapons to all salvo at the same time. Otherwise board the enemy ship with teleportation, via tech or magic, or shoot your troops in a boarding drill. The latter option just turns it into a standard adventure, while the former I kinda struggle to see how that gets over the problems mentioned here.

Having roles on a ship that mirror what your class normally does feels like the easiest way to make it work so everyone has something to do regardless of build.
Adding a separate starship section to each class that gives them solid starting space could work, while trying to make a modular system that can fit every build and party comp sounds like a really high bar.

I hope it doesn't become some sort of draw a random hazard type of system because using skills to overcome hazards is rarely fun in my experience.

Quality getting worse.
like strength based animal companions not scaling after level 14?
Battle forms having terrible language for what you do and don't use to calculate your damage?
Or instances of damage?

There's still things from the Core rule book that haven't been fixed, so the amount of stuff that needs fixing now feels par for the course. The problem is that it all compiles and stacks. It feels bad because the rate of fixing errors doesn't match up to the amount of errors being made, so there's always just more and more errors.

Classes have gotten much better, seeing how Guardian flipped around gives me hope that I might enjoy Necromancer. ATs have always been all over the place, some are just flavor, some are too hyper focused without breaking the design limits even when they are super limited, others are extremely useful and make the others look bad in comparison.

Several experimental projects, Kingdom building and Mythic rules most notably, desperately needed a play test because they have a ton of problems. I hope that instead of shying away from such attempts, they put more time into them going forward.

I think that touches on the big problem, time. They likely don't have the time to fix all the fires (OGL, Diamond, etc) as well as keeping workflow and workforce strong while keeping the pace to keep revenue flowing. That means cutting corners to make do, yet I don't feel product quality has been one of those corners.

As an aside, I don't miss Mark.
I follow both his and RFC's discord and YouTube channels. I think the work he's done since leaving is more flavorful and better designed, especially after they remastered dragons.

With that in mind, I hope the designers at Paizo get to have the time and space they need to have their passion for the work flourish.

Drake rider doesn't have any feats to give your dragon specializations.
Animal companions are already a mess with 2 point to hit and 7 point AC differences between Strength based and Dexterity based companions. Drop an extra 2 stat points and it gets so much worse.

At level 20 a Dexterity companion maxes at 33 to hit and 43 AC.
While a Strength based companion maxes at 31 to hit and 36 AC.
While your standard martial PC has 38 to hit and 44 AC.

Without specialization a riding drake gets into auto crit territory, that can't be intended.
Also fix the upgrades for all non nimble companions.

Ajaxius wrote:

Tridus wrote:

The thralls should just not take up space and not hinder movement.

I feel as though this might negatively impact class fantasy for Necromancer players. They were already complaining that thralls were "totems" instead of undead because they couldn't move (despite moving being a trap option when you could instead summon them to where you want to move them.)

Goodness gracious minionmancers are hard to balance.

Was the class fantasy really conjuring stationary meatbags that function as walls and otherwise do nothing on their own, though? Like, I think that ship has already sailed. That's another one of my issues with it: you could just call the thralls "shrubs" and change the class to Primal and it basically works exactly the same.

So I kind of feel like that ship has already sailed in terms of that part of the class fantasy. Whatever gets made now has to result in a functional game, and "clog the room with so many tokens that nothing can move unless the GM starts busting out aoe/hazardous terrain to clear the board" isn't great.

I'm in the same boat, I adore minion master and necromancer flavor. The play test was just a lot of thematic fan service with rather terrible mechanics IMO. I hope they can pull another Guardian pivot to make it fun.

I've never done focus spell strike with either magus I've played, strange discussion.
Meanwhile, I'm hoping for more Eidolon martial options. My current fey Eidolon with a d6 main attack feels rather meh.

Since it's unknown how much page space each class will get. I do hope all 4 can get enough to be impressive on their own with more modern class design ideas. Would love to see some nice additions to Summoner and Magus to better fulfil their core ideal in different ways.

Scaling item DC is possible. Look at the dread rune. Even without the set DC it has a scaling effect.
On top of that every item should scale to your level with its own set proficiency level, trained for minor, expert for moderate, master for greater and legendary for major.
Example: Proficiency=item training value +characters level +characters relevant stat.
Then the items quality matters, as well as the level of who's using it. Items will last longer but you still have incentive to upgrade.

Items would be much more interesting if they had increasing effects as well as better scaling DCs for higher level items.

As for stats, there needs to be good ways to show your the strong one, smart one or agile one. Stats are the clearest way to do that. If you get rid of them then you need some other method of showing you fit that role. It's one of the things that puts me off from narrative systems where you just describe yourself as being strong or agile but there aren't enough mechanics that prove it out.
I would rather the stats be much better implemented, we have three required stats for defense, two of those have many skills attached, one has none but double dips on defense. We have three that have no defensive value, one has offensive value and a skill that's very thematic, one has value for innate spells some skills and invested items, then one that has the potential for the most skills but they don't scale with level.
That's a mess. It needs a lot of rebalancing, decoupling accuracy might help for certain things but there's just too much overlap with class ability. Each stat needs to be equally desirable, otherwise having your class ability being a less desirable ability is a problem.
Even making things take the higher of X or Y stat could help in this area. The optional rules for saves help a little, but I think a lot more work needs to be put into what stats do and represent for a character in a new addition. That might mean adding more or completely changing what they effect. There's a lot they could do, but it needs to be a corner stone of the whole system, that everything else interacts with, they take up a large portion of your character sheet to not be important. Or be replaced with something else.

More maneuvers and effects like bon mot for every stat could help for variety in cool things any character can do in combat. Trip, intimidate and bon mot do great work with your group, more ways to generally apply specific buffs and debuffs could help a lot, a few Int based abilities would be very welcome.

Geb would easily join against the whispering tyrant. Getting all the living more indebted to him so he has more leverage against Nex while not having to send troops, just supplies. Lots of upsides there.

When comparing aid in a war, Geb has the best resource to trade, armies run on their stomachs (living ones anybow). I don't think Nex could offer enough constructs or mages to compete. It might be a risk using up supplies to support a war and expect any of those countries to really want to help you back. I would love to see Geb and Nex working to gain allies and such for their war, build up favors before going all out. Would be interesting to see.

Seems unlikely they would fit 4 (non-core) classes in one book. Especially with the kinds of fixes and extra content people expect for summoner and magus. Would leave far less page space for anything else. I do hope the two remaster classes get a great book and some TLC, however it happens.

Tridus,you might be putting far more weight to errata then it deserves. There's still people who buy the books and play as is, errata isn't even a thing for them. Many playing on VTTs likely just know the rules from that or their group and don't look into changes. So the financial impact of errata is likely very small, especially for long term as that's harder to track.

Thenobledrake, talking about obtuse and then saying setting up rules as written not being a Paizo issue is wild. People use VTTs for the automation, otherwise there's easier programs to use for maps or just TotM. As unicore pointed out, there's things that don't even have numbers for you to fix, and other automation that is implemented as best they can. You might not think it's an issue, but I have experienced people being frustrated by things not working because of vague rules.

The cancellation of the fall errata suggests that it's a small issue to them. Similar to how wizard polls well for them everywhere but the forums, errata might just be an issue for diehard gamers. I do hope they can figure out a system to make it easier for them to tackle, the more opportunity for table variation in the RAW mechanics effects someone like me who plays in lots of random groups rather negatively.

thenobledrake wrote:

For every "it only takes a few minutes to answer" there is a "you're going to house-rule it if you don't like the answer" proving that the answer isn't as needed as people are claiming.

We don't need to know how many spells a spellcaster knows because someone might house rule it?

I mean, if the answer is "we won't bother correcting errors because people might house rule it anyway", why have rules at all? Every rule can be house ruled, after all.

The whole point of having a system is so there's a common understanding of how the rules work and a standard implementation for folks to use. Tables that don't like a given thing are free to house rule it, which is great. But it's not an excuse for the core rules contradicting themselves to the point that two different tables will come up with two different answers to something this simple (and important if you're playing an Oracle).

Errors in books are going to happen. It's a fact of life. The whole point of changing the errata process in the first place was so they could fix stuff like this without having it connected to a book reprint. The entire stated point was to help get errata out in a more timely, predictable manner.

So... yeah. That failed in 2025.

We also have more people then ever playing in spaces, VTTs, where they can't house rule things. So a lot of the core functions need to be clear for people to play, or your just being forced into some one persons interpretation of the rule, and that person isn't even your GM.

I understand that getting the whole team together for something that has no direct impact on sales can seem very low priority. However at some point you might start driving people away if they don't like how a perceived vague rule is implemented into the only place they can play. Even just the perceived negligence toward it being a problem might start eroding trust with some customers.

IMO, PF2 isn't a good system for purely difficult combats. Fighting +4 or +5 enemies isn't fun if you don't have the tools for it. Difficult being you fail all your spells and miss most of your attacks because the numbers are against you is the definition of not fun for me. Barely surviving this sort of fight takes all the joy out of playing for me.

Bunches of -2 to +1 enemies with story context, environmental concerns, secondary objectives and such is far more enjoyable. The more things involved in combat other then the encounter building rules the better.

The game can't calculate that stuff though, so GMs need to figure out how to setup good combats personalized for their group.

Depends on the character, player and situation. Sometimes being a badass is fun, sometimes failing a side objective is engaging, sometimes struggling and overcome something is satisfying. Sometimes it's the die rolls, sometimes it's the banter and sometimes it's the consequences of your actions.

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

Currently for me both my ranger and summoner feel good when they can use their abilities. My ranger mostly just sneaks about and turrets, so getting stealth and hitting two bow shots while my dino gets two hits in is the highlight of my turns. While my summoner prevented a down from a crit and managed to do some nice aoe damage so felt nice and useful.

Many classes have issues with mythic, that's a mythic problem not summoner.

Eidolon opportunity, best reaction you could want.
Summoners call isn't terrible either.

Energy heart gives you options for different damage types. You already get extra damage from runes. Persistent damage almost always scales to be useless so bad idea.

Eidolon wrath is one of the best focus spells in the game, an auto scaling fireball -1d6. Nothing compares damage wise, just tricky to use.

Bloodletting claws as a feat line is a cool idea but the implementation is terrible. The persistent damage scaling is useless for the first feat. The rage is simple to trigger, just get a wounding rune, it's the fact it does -2 AC (barbarians don't even get a rage penalty anymore) and the damage buff isn't great for 2 feats.

Merciless rend is mostly just good for Dex Eidolons since they aren't losing die size for choosing to just use secondary attacks.It could be better, but you aren't getting more action compression or any MAP benefits with something like this.

The class desperately needs more Eidolon specific feats. Phantom has some options, there just needs to be some for every type of Eidolon.

If Bloodletting claws, blood frenzy and merciless rend were better it would be a good start for options to make your Eidolon good in melee. There's just not much room to min/max your Eidolon since they get nothing from archetypes. More monster or monster like abilities would be great. Special attacks for some types of Eidolons. Open some room for doing more then simple strikes in combat.

Great ideas, will enjoy the mechanics and lore for all these dragons.
However, just want to mention again that the visual design is very much not for me. It kinda makes them look goofy with how over the top it's trying to be perhaps.

The vorpal dragon in that position would slice into it's own neck if it opened its jaws. Eating is likely a massive chore with that chinblade. Its front legs are useless for the majority of things dragon front legs are there for.

The coral dragon is a frog Barroth.

I get you want to make these new things instantly recognizable, but you might be trying too hard. At least for my taste.

Noooooooo, what will I do on my break time at work? Read some books that I have piling up that need reviews? Ugh, fine.

I have an idea that will blow your mind.

When you spend an action to strike, you can say your large sized barbarian chops into the enemy with one mighty swing of their giant sized ax, while your kobold dragon barbarian takes a smaller ax and with far greater speed does nearly identical damage with multiple hits.

Spending one action, doing a strike, are just game terms to lead you to rolling damage. If you can't find a way to flavor things to make sense to you, that's largely a you problem.

I agree that trying more enemies of lower level will help this party greatly.
You only have one single target damage dealer and they are squishy.
If the kin is earth then they can take some hits and athletics to control some but that's still a weak front line.
So making your bosses be minion masters who either send wave after wave of minions, create minions every round or somehow have a way to keep lots of -2 or -3 minions around would give your 4 AOE capable characters some juicy targets.

Otherwise, casters can often fit into the role of force multiplier, meaning that without a strong fighter/barbarian/etc to be the base force in your group, you aren't getting much out of your efforts.

OrochiFuror, "natural weapon" is a PF1 designation that might lead to thinking an unarmed attack counts as a weapon in PF2. It doesn't, so you can't put your Banner on it (w/o GM permission of course).

I never played PF1, so no, your assumption is wrong.

It's not a big deal as a second look over my build there's only 2 or 3 abilities with brandish that I would miss, everything else still works.

Feels strange that a fan works but hand wraps don't, banner streamers on your wrists feels fitting for this sort of thing to me.

On the side topic of sales, it would be really stupid for any shop to not try and fulfill a reasonable order of things they normally carry, with reasonable increasing after multiple purchases. Shops don't want to miss potential sales like that, supplies might be a limiting factor though.

Since you can use them on one handed or two handed weapons, what is this limitation trying to prevent? Just to make sure you don't have two free hands? To what point?

I have an idea for a character who uses their banner on a natural weapon, there are still a good number of non brandish tactics, but I wonder why? What could you do with handless brandish that would warrant such a restriction?

Nothing against the art so far, but I hope we get dragons that have sleeker and more regal looks and not so craggy. To me scales are about smoothness, all snakes are extremely smooth and most lizards are as well. Some feathers could be nice as well.

I hope there will be some support for summoners to choose all four traditions while using dragons. Hopefully where ever they might be planning to fully remaster summoner is at least in the conceptual phase to tie in with any changes that might effect Eidolon choice. Also new dragon specific feats for summoner would be awesome, one of the most notable things summoner needs IMO (more Eidolon specific feats, not just dragons).

Honestly, I'm of the opposite opinion. I want to see fewer niche ancestral languages. The proliferation that language is tied to race (rather than culture) is a bit of an outdated idea. It also creates this kind of weird idea that dwarves, regardless of where you find them, will speak one common language in Dwarvish. Really, there should be multiple dialects of Dwarvish, and off-shoot languages, and and and... I'm getting ahead of myself.

All that being said, I do agree on Kobolds. However, rather than just saying, "They speak Kobold unilaterally across the world," I'd like to see a small section of various Kobold languages, possibly based on the source of their obsession or locales. Again, dialects would be great, here.

I know all of this is a bit moot, since the core philosophy is, "The game needs to have...

Agree.

So having an ancestral language often makes sense only in a physiological sense, not a cultural one. I don't think most humanoid ancestors should be able to fully speak draconic, they just don't have the mouth shape and other anatomy to make the same sounds dragons would use for communication.
So with the tag system that Paizo uses, languages should often have tags associated with them for physical requirements to speak it, and denoting a language that has many dialects. So a language that might have started with one ancestry could have physical limitations and dozens of dialects that some might be mixes of other languages. So any dwelling of creatures could be denoted as having X dialect of Y core language.

Language is complicated and often just a hassle in game terms, but having a setup for people really interested in those sorts of things would be interesting, especially if there were anyone at Paizo with an interest in fleshing it out more. I understand that it's far easier to leave the broad strokes of ancestry language and leave it open to any GM to infer or make those specific adjustments, or to denote specifically for any one settlement when such a thing is noticeable.

Making them elite is a genius keyhole solution, I love that

I was able to summon an elite silver dragon since I asked my GM if I could summon max level for the spell and do ice damage since everything in the spell range was fire and he took pity on me. It still did nothing, enemy crit saved against breath, it missed 6 attacks and two AoO. It's still a good start to a solution for high level summons though.

Teridax,
1:that's part of the point of a summon is to have a monster that goes all out.
2: bone croupier is not a valid summon due to being uncommon. Find a few examples of common creatures that have powerful abilities that still work with a level difference of 5-7.
3: as with #2 the majority of abilities a monster can bring are made near useless by the fact they will be five to seven or more levels bellow what you are fighting. Any summon against a boss or mini boss is edging close to a full level of success behind on all checks. That makes them so far away from solo an enemy that they struggle to make any offensive effect on the battlefield.

Raising the level of what you can summon means not only will their checks be better, but their abilities and raw numbers will as well, so I don't think that's a good solution. I think after level 10 when your summoning things -5 level to you, increasing their effective level by one or two via elite template would help keep their math relevant to your fights while not bringing in powerful abilities.
Their should be some level of buy in, like a feat or item, but summons should be more then buffers and roadblocks.

I'm not really a caster guy mainly because I don't like vancian casting, but also because I dread the idea of having to micromanage 10+ spell slots from 7th level onwards when I could be playing a martial or kineticist for a simpler, and arguably more efficient, experience.

Non-casters were always easier to play than casters but the excuse used to be that casters were more complex but also stronger. That isn't the case (necessarily) in PF2e anymore, so I feel vancian should be tweaked or removed in a future edition to streamline it a bit.

That or offer an alternative for those that don't like vancian like I do.

I don't even think casters are all that complex, at least in a turn for turn combat to combat sense. You only have 2-4 slots per level and only the top two, sometimes 3 are ever worth casting for pure number effects. So even out of 12 slots it's fairly easy to tell if you have the right tool for the situation your in. I played a druid to 20 and was surprised by how often most of my spells were not great for the situation I was in. Easily puts you in the mindset of just bring the best of the best spells. It's fairly easy to opt out and just bring chain lighting, fear and slow in all your slots and still be useful.

I think caster super complexity is an illusion of the fantasy of the perfect caster that has all the right spells in the right slot for every occasion. I have yet to see that happen, it's far more likely you need the thing you didn't take or need something you took once multiple times.
So it might actually be better to try and make things as simple as possible.

Casting might do better in future editions being more like the kineticist, even if it's flavored like a wizard adding to his spell book via feats. Otherwise casters should be able to specialize in certain spells the way martials specialize in weapons and tactics that fit with their stats and abilities.
A strength based fighter isn't going to be tumbling through with a dagger the same way an illusionist shouldn't be throwing fireballs around. There can be different mechanics in play effecting how and why you build but I think that loops back into the primary topic of the ways and rate that you acquire power.

Could it be better if items either give you the power scaling or complexity so you have more control over the power level of your game?

As for mythic, I haven't played yet but it felt to me like the mythic powers should have just been wider in scope. Do more and be more useful in general then normal abilities. Not trying to be better numbers, but more effective in outcome. Most of them should be written like the versatile cantrips or kineticists apex abilities, having a half dozen bullet points of what you could do with that power instead of a basic save or strike. Having more flexible or more capacity in the success, like instead of lifting a rock you lift a pillar or side of a house) is kinda the only way mythic makes sense in a game about mathematical balance IMO.

PWL definitely flattens the curve for accuracy, for sure. It doesn't touch on a number of other factors, though, such as damage, so your level 20 caster casting desiccate would still wipe out most of an army of level 1 creatures. I also think power tiers go beyond numbers, as well, such that high-level characters can do things low-level characters can only dream of, like teleport across the planet or create natural disasters. If the GM's intent is to let the party progress in a way that keeps them at the same general power tier, then the variant would only cover part of that goal.

Having played through a few PWL games it doesn't really solve the problem, just makes it take a lot longer to scale out of control mathematically. The abilities, like teleport, are always going to be at the level of power they are set and there isn't much you can do about that.

I don't think high level FA games make characters so complex that they take longer to play. It's far more likely you forget the niche things you can do because they hardly ever come up, you keep just doing the few things you designed your character to do.

Thus I have some issues with how you can, with certain classes, double and triple down on an ability and forgo a fair amount of complexity while other classes don't have much room for that but excel at just grabbing lots of different abilities.
The difference in min-maxing a fighter compared to a summoner is night and day. Both gain power every level, and can be built to be more complex and more specialized respectively, but would generally be much weaker for it.

High level summons only being good because of free spell slots is a bit of an issue IMO. Otherwise the numbers are so bad that your summon can easily be ignored by the enemy because the potential threat is so low.

Wizard and Reanimator have options for broad +1 for summons, giving similar to the master summon feat line for Summoners and perhaps an item that all casters could use (say level 12 item or so) could help out higher level summons a good deal. Make it something you need to invest in. Just the option to make them elite, or anything that makes them have higher numbers without increasing the powers of what you can summon while also not fighting against party status buffs would be a huge help.

I would take that to mean the art of building, especially with FA, to fit the feats in early to get out of the AT earlier. Usually to grab another AT asap, likely to fit more ATs in then you could otherwise or to prioritize certain feats later on.

If you have overwhelming speed, then it's hard to argue with. I remember trying to use dragon form to get around a ground hazard. The reasoning for not allowing it was fair, as it was a test of enduring and overcoming, not avoiding. But in most other situations, it would be hard to say your 90+ speed doesn't matter.
As you get to higher levels, solving around problems should get more common then only resolving through them.

I don't think that is fair, people didn’t opt to worship a deity or be bound by their rules; they chose to play a class with healer mechanics and then had the deity and anathema forced on them. Their only option was to either accept those two or not play the class.

Some players may be hardcore atheists who strongly dislike the concept of worshiping anything and find it humiliating. Others may be very religious and find the concept too close to idolatry (remember the satanic panic). Some players simply played healers in other games, like MMOs, as a white mage or something similar, and wanted to do the same here. I don’t see the point of forcing a vegan to eat meat, and I don’t see the point of forcing someone who doesn’t want to worship gods into pledging divine servitude to a fictional character.

As others have pointed out, you literally chose the god servant class and then complain about serving a god. The cleric isn't even a healing class, if you end up with harm font then at best your as good as any class that gets access to the divine list.

It sounds like you don't know much about PF2, because just taking a quick glance at a class and assuming that it does X and that's your only option is going to hurt you and your players. Others have already given some examples of how to build healers with other classes.
Now that we have Guardians, we can finally say that there is always more then one option to fulfill even the most hard coded old-school quad of tank, mage, healer, skill monkey.

If you want more help on the subject I'd suggest doing a search in advice for creating a healer, it's been tackled a few times. Or start a new thread with a note on avoiding anathema or similar effects.

Eidolons can be human shaped. Therefore all eidolons can do what human eidolons can otherwise it wouldn't be balanced.
Having extra traits on their attacks just opens minor benefits and qualifies for a few feats. They get about as much value from those traits as most monks. The biggest thing this gives is using your weapon item bonus for the maneuver instead of your item bonus to the related skill, freeing you up to not get a skill boosting item if your summoner has no use for it.

For me it boils down 100% to the fact that having any anathema in the first place is opt in. There's only a few classes that have them in the first place, and in some cases are mostly ignorable. Looking at you Barbarian instincts!

Anyway, the fact that its opt in for me means you can't really argue against it. If you're not interested in dealing with the edicts or anathema, play a different class. Yes, it amounts to enforced flavor. But you're choosing that flavor by choosing the class.

Agree. All the anathema are opt in, and they are almost universally things a character choosing the associated option would naturally be inclined to do.

If you want a character to have an option but not it's associated anathema, you should think why a character would be drawn to that option and what beliefs they have. What would make them want that option but not it's anathema.
If the answer pans out to be because your making something silly or contrarian, then you should recognise that such things don't generally fit into Golarian, and you should talk with your GM about it.

Will and sometimes fort at low levels, will and reflex at higher levels. I would venture a guess that a majority of creatures you just need to look at them and you'll know what is their highest, if not then will is the safe bet.
Finding the low is often a bit harder, and if the medium is still slightly high with the low being very low then even the safe bet might not be great. Then that's when RK becomes important.

I also tell players the skills the scenario says they can use, but I also tell them that if they want to try other skills, they can. I make a DC call based on how they describe using the skill in the case they want to try something outside the encounter stat block.

I try to mix the gamist and narrative approaches.

Agree. Only allowing 2 or 3 skills, because the group should have most covered, is bad design IMO. Every character should get a chance to do Something in the encounter, even if it's a long shot.

Getting into a situation where you don't have the skills for a skill challenge so you have to roll 18+ sucks. Been there, done that, it's miserable and demoralizing as a player. It's part of your job as a GM to make sure the adventure doesn't dip into the un fun for everyone due to things not matching up. The only exception is when you foreshadow/signpost that going here and doing this will require x, y or z otherwise you will have a very bad time. Because then it becomes a clear choice to engage with that situation.

I hope you get to play often and have that connection flourish.

I have a friend who lost both parents in his 30's. It's been several years and I've done my best to be a good supportive friend since he has no other family around, none worth mentioning. I buried his dog for him earlier this year. He's very distant and makes it hard to connect and help though.
Hopefully everyone has people they can lean on in times of need, and aren't afraid to do so.

If your going to limit the FA to do with whatever role they have in government, then it will be unlikely to have much effect. You basically have to curate the list of options and thus prevent broken combos.

Taking all multi class options off the table did wonders for a few APs I've played through. That's where a lot of the power imbalance comes from.

Skill monkeys already have too much and regular characters are starved for skills past 7. Three skills maxed doesn't make for a well balanced character at all, specially when you have to choose between filling a weakness in the group and actually supporting your characters theme and personality.

This rule however massively favors skills that have more feats as well as those with feats that are more generally useful like aforementioned medicine and intimidate. While nature and survival would just give you some niche rarely usable options.

It's a step in the right direction, and it's infinitely more useful to have good printed variants then hope a GM has their own homebrew that you like.

So pretty much the animal companion is treated like a constuct.

They are a rules mechanic, and thus are made to be balanced for action economy and investment cost. This basically means they are an NPC that does what the GM wants until you use your abilities to get it to do things you want it to do. This means a LOT is up to GM preference.

Then again, sometimes it isn't always obvious which PC is 'the wizard'. Even before the war mage class archetype, the sentinel archetype (and using a general feat on Weapon Proficiency, such as with a human with the Versatile heritage or taking General Training as their 1st level ancestry feat) allowed 'the wizard' (or sorcerer, or psychic, etc.) to wear medium (or heavy with additional feat investment) armor and wield a martial weapon (like a dancer's spear) with very little investment...

If historically robed wizards got killed because of their ability to effect change, what intelligent wizard would still wear robes and not try to appear as something else. That's just survival.

The moment you drop a fireball or eclipse burst though, you invite trouble.

Can I get Double prey on my ranger for free while your at it?