OrochiFuror's page

Because that's what people are looking for when they have a companion. Lower the HP and keep their to hit and AC closer to caster levels.

Conversely, my 5 class feats that worked once or twice then I might need a week+ of downtime getting them to function again.

I rather like that step, the super slow calculated and careful movement option, tends to keep you safe from things.

What if hydra have a "second" brain? I forget what the term was but a backup brain in their torso/along the spine. Would make sense for a repository to copy for each regenerating head. It would basically just be a subconscious so still wouldn't make them "conscious" most likely, but might be an interesting idea.

I think when the idea of the game is balanced it really just means the math works out at all levels. There's a soft ceiling everyone can get to and going over that has massive diminishing returns.

The level of effectiveness for sub classes and even in some class options can be a bit all over the place, but doesn't stray to far from the underlying math.

Eastern dragons are just flying skinks, just like meso has flying serpents. Doesn't matter, we need more of all of them.

We don't need most of the old D&D dragons. Gold's can be folded into sovereign dragons. Copper, bronze and brass can be scrapped and use the personality and quirks for brand new dragons that actually stand apart. Chromatic are just elemental dragons so easy to redo or fold into existing elemental dragons. I would like to see Silver dragons return, perhaps mixed with mirror/iron dragon themes., A mythril dragon that tends to be a combination of social butterfly and social justice warrior or oppressor depending on how they view the communities they play with.

Then all we need is all the old pathfinder specific dragons back, there's plenty of those. Add more new ones or stat up the RFC dragons and that's a full dragon book.

It will be interesting to see how full melee groups fair against full ranged and mixed. It seems difficult for an all ranged group to go against a full melee encounter with the short ranges, low damage and lack of accessible "overwatch" type reactions. I wonder how much focus firing, even through melee, would change things.

Just wanted to bring up the fact that animal companions in PF2 are fundamentally broken once you get into specializations. It's easy to have companions that are 2-5 points behind player armor class and hit bonus, with strength based companions always ending up behind in both areas.

This is because specialization gives lop sided stat buffs that you can stack multiple times, with dex based companions getting a proficiency boost to AC as well.

I hope the SF crew take this into consideration and make sure all companions are on par mathematically. Either make the stats the same and choose between proficiency enhancers if you need for them to feel more agile nor more beefy, or just keep them all the same stat wise and give different ability and upgrade options to make them feel different.
They don't need to be on par with players, but at the very least on par for every choice you make and closer then 5 points off for armor class of players because that just makes them crit bait for boss enemies and that feels terrible.

Indeed, I don't think that would make them feel more tech based though. Modify is a much more interesting design space then just money saving abilities. IMO the class/archetype/feats that just produce things you could buy aren't very interesting, most of those types of effects are very low powered. Having played two characters to 20 and more then a half dozen to various low levels I have never found a talisman that was worth the time to use. Those type of abilities are fine as tertiary abilities because they can be fun, but I don't think it really enriches the core of the class. Opening modify to have mods that last up to 10 minutes and running more then one as you level would be much more interesting to me. Something similar in scope to summoners evolution surge where it gives you options for helpful temporary abilities.

If you can make up the damage of your strike elsewhere with buffs then maybe. But that's generally not how things work out, and what do you do when you can't reach people to buff?

Move might not work, but stand up or leave their square would. Because move could be seen as including waving or even swinging a weapon. As players I think we all know what we generally mean when we say move though, exit their square to get to another.

Interesting question, would step counter a movement focused ready trigger? Be real hard to make it function but still a potential option.

Any dragon who would ascend to God hood should fit the bill. We have whole pantheons for giants and such. To me dragon gods would make more sense to be broader and larger in scope, covering more ideas.
Like greed as a base would also include organizing things, designing things, construction, creation and self improvement. Focused on an interest in getting more, getting better, and being efficient.

A broader scope would make it harder for shorter lived creatures to get as much out of, but longer lived creatures would have a naturally wider and longer lens to view from. What would a dragon who ascends take as their interests and domains? I think that's a very interesting thing to delve into.

More.

Other then modify, I don't really see how they could interact with tech more without stealing from skill feats. Getting some low level repair or hacking enhancers could help the same way inventor gets repair feats and gadgets.
A few 10 minute style exploration mods could fill that avenue perfectly.

Hopefully robots take into account how base PF2 animal companions are busted when it comes to specializations. Adding a single point to one stat critically puts off their math, leaving those with low starting dex or who don't have a finesse attack lagging behind after level 14.
Making robots all have the same stats and progression would fix the math, then just give them unique abilities and optional upgrade functions.

I still haven't really noticed anything that works to incorporate cover into actual game play. Gunslinger has an option to reload and hide/take cover for example. If most characters third action is going to be take cover, or be stuck in cover where you don't have LOS to shoot (like at the edge of a corner), then I'm not sure how enjoyable a lot of combat will be. Even the turret blocks your own shots if your using it for cover.

Really like the ideas, just a bit iffy on implementation and intended functionality.

This will be happening this time around as well!

I hope so, there's a few aspects that desperately need it to get solid data from people. I know your trying to push for more communication, there's plenty here who are grateful and others that don't understand what a task that is for all those involved. Hopefully things will continue to improve.

Heh, I'm older and don't have a choice. So I've been noticing all the... social and psychological differences and issues people have. While fascinating it's not conductive to good group dynamics. Such is life though.

Sorry for the tangent.

You shouldn't have to do anything, that's what being trustworthy is about. If all your other players vouch for you then even if someone comes in after all foreshadowing has been done then that should be enough.

It does seem however that many people who are used to playing with people they know don't know what it's like playing with random people online. Most of the "horror stories" type bits tend to come from those situations. Many of them are so crazy you might not believe them, but many new and especially younger GMs(and players) just don't have the knowledge and experience to understand the social contract.

It's something I've noticed where people who are in their safe and secure friend groups are all on the same page so have a different outlook then someone who has learned to be weary of new groups where they might not be able to get on that same page. One would likely view the OPs question as an unnecessary means to accomplish a plot hook, while the other likely would question if the motivation is to pull one over on their players.

Dr. Frank Funkelstein wrote:

Don't ask LLMs for game rules

Or anything else that needs to be factually correct.

I just want to triple down on this. "AI" isn't designed to answer your question. Some like chatgpt are just there to mimic speech, others like Google search just recover data from other places and isn't capable of any nuance.

This isn't just for the OP but everyone who might read it, way too many people don't know what these processes do.

If you don't cauterize the stumps it will heal and survive. It will "rest" the night and regain HP, at that point it would be presumed to be able to regrow heads with enough HP. This is not a typical game scenario so isn't put into the rules, IMO. For rules purpose you either kill it properly or you don't.

then I'm going to find other players.

I understand some people (players) may not trust someone new to them, but the group I play with has been friends for a long time, and we generally trust each other to not intentionally try to cause an unfun situation for anyone, so we offer leeway with each other when it comes to story telling.

If I have a new player that isn't willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, then I would ultimately say my game isn't the place for them.

I think this is a big issue talking about peoples experiences and norms playing TTRPGs. Some people play with the same people for years, others are in and out of games all the time.

To the topic at hand, there is an anti teleport grapple in the wrestler archetype. So even your perfect railroad "by the rules" can fail. Thus it's better to make sure it fits in with your story and expectations for your group before you pull it off.

Even if your readied action goes off nearly all effects require a roll so are still able to fail. If someone finds a good tactic with ready then after using it once most intelligent creatures could figure out how to outright prevent it's activation. So there's a lot of risk vs reward going on for these types of scenarios.

Good to know the champion runes work the same way they use to.
Kinda light on updates considering all the suggestions.

I really like that most modify and drone upgrades seem to focus more on effects instead of status bonuses to things. I hope we get a lot more similar things both for mechanic and in general.

Far as I can tell, I think the best you can do is report that the abilities are broken, and that you (or if you are the player, your GM) had to make a call on what to do in your survey. They'll handle it from there. I almost never see staff coming in to make these clarifications outside of official errata, so if an errata is not planned, I don't anticipate any of that being given until the book is released.

While that does seem to be the only option currently, both in APG and Secrets of magic we had errata and clarifications during the test.

I believe I've heard it said that this site is only one source of many from where Paizo gets their input, as a lot of input is performed in person at cons and whatnot, instead of with our independent games, and that we're a pretty small proportion of the information they get.

They still need to get survey data from people who are not posting actively on this site, as our point of view on it might not always coincide with the point of view of the actual majority of players.

Point of view and opinion do not matter when things are broken. There's several parts of the mechanic that can make it unplayable beyond basic shooting guns everyone can do. Lack of info makes multiple abilities complete guesswork to how they are actually supposed to work.

What about them? They don't interact with the feat in any way.

Broken for turret could mean the gun doesn't work but everything else does, or it could mean it's reduced to spare parts on the ground that do nothing. That's a huge area of interpretation. Hope a lot of this gets cleared up soon, short play test with no clarifications means low quality feed back.

It says your drone uses the stored item, sounds like you can only use those limited items stored in your rig that the feat gives you.

If your group enjoys your story telling then let your npcs do what they need to within the context of the story.
If you don't have that trust with your players then wait for it to happen naturally with random bad guy 47 who becomes the returning bad guy because of chance. Players will likely accept some fudging of things after random chance has had its say once or twice, it becomes a shared spontaneous story element and people tend to enjoy that.

1:No.

2:Because Healing Robot.

3:spend action get result. Your rig gives items/upgrades to your exocortex device for the purpose of mechanical use.

4: Storing to use in a specific way, yes. View it more as ammo or charges for the two abilities the feat gives you.

What would be the draw to a non smart mechanic? Like what are you looking for. Looking at a wizard/inventor/mechanic and saying I want to be that but less smart when all of them are highly educated smart person classes.

This is what I'm disagreeing with. It sounds like you are wanting to put limitations in just for the sake of Int dependence. Why? It is unnecessary.

I think the class is already very dependent on int, I don't think there's a problem. If a lot of the upgrades or mods tie into class DC for drones then they follow as well.

I think having a class able to drop it's KAS to 0 and function well is the worst design you could do. Forcing it to have the stat instead of rewarding it for the stat is also poor design. There should be ways to lower it a little and still be effective for certain builds and play styles, but overall your KAS should be a defining trait of any character that chooses it.

I get the feeling a lot of people will until they start playing it.
It looks like int might be the difference between crushed in one hit by anything halfway threatening and operating at peak performance. Will need to play to see where that peak is relative to on level threats as you level.
Seeing how many animal companions can lag behind at later levels I tend to worry about these types of things. Robots right now are kind of a mess but the fact I didn't see any of the mods giving stats is promising, just need to standardize a baseline as they level.

Still better then similar abilities that practically blind you.

I think a turret *can* get by without int (there's plenty of third actions to use other than the +damage mod, and Self Destruct/Area Denial System are excellent but not strictly necessary), but certainly I don't recommend only doing strikes and utility/defense stuff.

Without int it has familiar levels of health, 2 per level, I don't think that's survivable when it breaks at half HP. You also lose that much AC and saves.

There needs to be something that says your turret only provides one way cover. Getting the wall to have allies with you and having it provide cover both ways, as all things do, kinda defeats the purpose. The smoke screen points out you and your turret are immune, far better then most similar abilities.

You can't get by without int for turret or mines, so drones just need something tied to int for progression by default and problem solved. Int is very important to the class to do any relevant mechanic themed stuff and needed for 2 out of 3 subclasses, so I don't see the issue.

I deploy myself from bed every morning and I generally end up on the ground for a reason. To expect any other outcome without something changing that baseline is silly IMO.

Bouncing Betty type mines could help with the flight issue.

I could've missed something, but I've gotta say: I don't really know what Intelligence is supposed to be doing for a turrets Mechanic.

Some kind of Int-to-hit mechanic could help bring back some of the old "I hacked my brain and eyes" Exocortex flavor, too!

HP per level and AC. Also saves for aoe attacks.

Miracles, in what way does letting someone roll perception or roll stealth for initiative after triggering combat not do the exact same things your talking about?
If your sneaking around and someone spots you, you know somethings up. The only exception might be them playing it off as not noticing to turn the tables on you, but that's a very involved non standard situation.

There's a few activities I would allow the option to keep your previous roll, they need to make sense though. Like athletics, stealth or deception. Otherwise you roll when an encounter starts.

I also feel that a low roll that triggers an encounter should often put you low on initiative, blundering into an encounter and then going first to mitigate that blunder should be a rare thing.

Just be careful your not going too soft because you only see downsides. They could take fighter and grab dual handed assault to get around most of those negatives.
Then it becomes is it worth the cost in feats, but it's something to consider.

Expectations for reactions to weapons/magic will vary depending on where you are and who your around.

Hopefully players won't always be instantly ready for a fight, take quick draw if that's the case.

what character or class (besides monk)'s optimal strategy is ever "attack two times in a turn". The Swashbuckler's class design is to encourage you to take other options, especially since you get a bonus to your skill attacks to things that would give you panache, most of which debuff your enemy. I would think that your best strategy is gain panache, debuff, strike or finisher.

All martials except magus. Two attacks per round is what you should aim for, adjusted for build.

Allowing riposte to use confident finisher and then allowing Combination finisher to allow a single attack after a finisher as a follow up would help a lot with those issues I think.

Why does a region only need to have one dragon? Could be a few from each plane and other worlds that came over like the elves or just migrated on their own. Could get really interesting with it.
Imagine a single species of dragon, the original children of Apsu spreading out at nearly the dawn of time to every possible place in existence and evolving into different modern day dragons. There's nearly unlimited room for ideas.

Climb definitely has a drastic difference between critically failing and failing. I don't think it is the only one either.

The biggest problem is when new players want to Hero Point the miss on a MAP-3 attack and afterwards feel that spending Hero Points are useless.

Even climbs crit fail could mean nothing though if it's your first roll while standing on the ground. Having done 8 campaigns, most of them APs we finished I don't think I've ever climbed anything where there was any serious risk, so that's a big your mileage may very sort of thing. You should always keep a hero point in the tank for saving your life, but from my experience you can't rely on them for anything other then auto stabilizing.

In line with what the OP describes, when your results suck for long periods of time, even hero points don't help, and they sure don't feel heroic. When your entire play session is fail or crit fail, it's extremely demoralizing. Figuring out options that can help without swinging in the opposite direction when your luck comes around is worth a GMs time IMO.

I play a wizard in PFS. About half the time when I cast slow, the enemy crit fails. That's probably why we can't use Hero Points to force rerolls.

Do you think the opposite might be true as well?

Ready
If you have a multiple attack penalty and your readied action is an attack action, your readied attack takes the multiple attack penalty you had at the time you used Ready. This is one of the few times the multiple attack penalty applies when it's not your turn.

Aid
When you use your Aid reaction, attempt a skill check or attack roll of a type decided by the GM. The typical DC is 15, but the GM might adjust this DC for particularly hard or easy tasks. The GM can add any relevant traits to your preparatory action or to your Aid reaction depending on the situation, or even allow you to Aid checks other than skill checks and attack rolls.

Seems to me that you ready at attack on your turn to aid, if using your attack bonus to aid. So adding the attack trait to aid makes sense, then adding in MAP at that point also makes sense. This seems like the logical method of doing attacks to aid.

On another note, I could easily see someone shooting an arrow or bullet to land next to someone's foot as a surprise distraction to aid.

Going to be difficult to do an adventure made to fight a mythically powered enemy without mythic. Will be interesting to see how it turns out with the seemingly inconsistent balance of the higher end mythic options. Hope I get to play it at some point.
The stream was good for someone like me who didn't play 1e to get a bit of background knowledge.

Ravingdork wrote:

Isn't it one of the most powerful and easily accessible buffs in the game?

Not really. Unless you are Legendary, which doesn't happen often, you'll roll for a +3. And you need a critical success, so DC 25, which isn't trivial before the highest levels. It costs an action and a reaction, which is a steep cost, especially at high level where you should have a use for your reaction and interesting third actions.

This right here. It's not that great, people imagine it is but in real situations it doesn't compare well with your other options most of the time.

Going into this with trying to change someone's ways is a sure fire way to fail and likely come off as being adversarial. As others have said, figure out the how and why it's happening before you try to figure out how to get what you want.