Paul Zagieboylo's page

The cleanse affliction spell reduces an affliction on the target by one stage, making it easier for the victim to maybe save their way out of it. This is great for whatever sucker has just been poisoned by a giant centipede or whatever. I'm sure he'll appreciate it.

But what about afflictions that don't have stages? For example, lycanthropy. Just to choose a random example. Does the base rank of cleanse affliction just not do anything about the Curse of the Werecreature? Can I still cast higher ranks for the counteract effect, even though the primary part of the spell does nothing?

As a "possibly related" question... is there anything that my players can do about lycanthropy (or any other permanent curse) before 7th level? Asking for a friend. (Yes, I know they could hire someone else to cast cleanse affliction on them, modulo the above answer, but... my players might have to walk a long way to find a friendly 7th-level spellcaster!)

I strongly believe all martial characters should invest at least a Trained advance into Deception for decent Feint checks. It's the only skill action that repeatably does something useful in combat, and even fighters don't really need that 3rd attack in a round. Demoralize by contrast only works once per encounter on each target, and while the frightened status is REALLY mean, it also doesn't last very long. Even if your Charisma sucks, as long as you're trained or expert in Deception, Feint will still work often enough to be worth the effort.

I don't want to necro this thread, but, OH WAIT yes I do. Web has been reprinted in Player Core 2 after all, as an arcane/primal Spell 2. The argument about avoiding trademarks doesn't matter much in this case, because even Hasbro can't trademark a single real English word.

Except... it's terrible. Web is just straight up worse than entangling flora in every way. It's much shorter range, it's a much smaller area, it can be destroyed by people successfully moving through it or wielding torches, AND it's 3 actions instead of two. And for all these disadvantages, its effect against anyone who manages to fail their save (or Athletics check!) is... exactly the same.

What is the point of this new spell? Did Paizo just forget that they'd put entangling flora on the arcane list now? Web seems to be just plain a trash spell. It's honestly worse than the 1st-rank grease, because it's easier for enemies to get rid of; the only advantage is that it's bigger.

The real question about pure gold coins is the actual size of the coin itself. Paizo has previously stated that all types of coins weigh 1/50 of a pound, or slightly over 9 grams. (2e uses Bulk instead of actual measurements, but 1000 coins for 1 Bulk implies that coins are in the neighborhood of 50-200 per pound, which makes the following discussion even worse.)

The problem is that gold is heavy. Like, really heavy. Coincidentally, a pure gold coin 1.5mm thick and 20mm across weighs almost exactly 1/50 of a pound. This is the same thickness and just barely bigger than a US penny (considerably smaller than a nickel), which as we all know is an inconveniently small, easy-to-fumble coin. It would especially be much easier to fumble if it weighed 9.1 grams, instead of the roughly 2.5 grams of a modern copper/zinc penny. Imagine dealing with pennies, except that each one weighs three times as much as it should. How easy would it be for these coins to slip through your fingers? Pretty easy! You'd have a hard time even getting your fingernails under it to pick it up off a table. Platinum coins are in the same fix; the densities of gold and platinum are very similar.

Copper and silver coins are in better shape, because copper and silver are considerably lighter than gold. A 9.1g solid copper coin, 1.5mm thick, is a little over 29mm across (a little bigger than a US quarter), while a similar 9.1g silver coin is almost exactly 27mm. These are a lot more plausible, but gold and platinum coins would be very fiddly to actually work with.

In practice, what probably happens is what happened in real-world countries: in addition to the "one silver piece" coin, nations would mint some larger denominations (2 or 2.5 silver, a half-gold, even possibly a large "silver crown" worth as much as a gold piece, although at 91 grams this would be a pretty big chonker: 2 inches across at 4.5mm thick). The other real problem of a bi-metallic system is exactly what happened to the US in the late 19th century: inflation derived from the differential in value between gold and silver. But presumably the Church of Abadar has some way to keep that under control!

If anyone else wants to try this, spawn zombies faster, or use zombies tougher than standard shamblers, at least for 4th-level characters. Most of my fighters ran out of zombies to fight long before the ritualists managed to finish the ritual as described, because they could mince through them two or three at a time; plus the shamblers couldn't really hit the fighters at all (except for poor Regongar, who got hit a whole bunch just because of unlucky rolls). Maybe a failure should spawn one tougher zombie (a husk zombie or a weakened zombie brute?) on that side, and one wimpy shambler on each other side? In any case, I ended up cheating a tiny bit in the PCs' favor, because the encounter was getting boring.

Yeah, if I hadn't conveniently had casters of each tradition right here ready to hand, I would have set it up differently. But the fact that they've also named Tristian and Octavia as Secretaries of the Republic (of Magic and the Vault, respectively) made it too tempting to build the ritual this way.

I'm still trying to get my bard player, Wilkezag, to understand that his magic isn't just purely about music: music is merely a convenient direct conduit to the emotional and spiritual connections underlying the stories, legends, and beliefs that power occult magic. We'll get there eventually.

As the ritual builds, you can feel the curse building up against it. Moss starts creeping forward behind Dubh, while above Wilkezag the starlight seems to lance down like silver arrows. Tristian's torch burns higher and higher, far above his head now, while the diagrams and runes near Octavia start to glow with an otherworldly yellowish light. But the area within the circle grows progressively darker, in defiance of the torchlight, and the air grows heavier.

Finally, as the first rays of true sunlight peek over the horizon, Tristian calls out. Most of you are far enough away that you shouldn't be able to hear him clearly or at all, but his words vibrate through the ritual structure. "The long Night of this land is ended! The Sun rises on a new day of peace! Glory to Sarenrae, Who lights the flame! Glory to Cayden Cailean, Who breaks the chains! Glory to Pharasma, Who calls the fallen to rest! O Dawnflower, cleanse this land, that we may build anew! In Your name, let this stain be healed!"

Octavia replies from the far side of the site, less strident but even more unstoppable. "WHEREAS the misrule of Gyronna is ended, and Her cultists banished from this place; WHEREAS the bodies that now guard this place are centuries dead; WHEREAS the Laws of mortals, and gods, and the universe demand the end of the previous rule to make room for the new; THEREFORE let the dead now quit their claims, and let the Hag Queen release her grip and turn away Her sight, and let this land be released from all previous liens or restrictions, that Caydenlund might grow as its new rulers and take its place among the nations of the world. By my Will and my Skill, so mote it be!"

Wilkezag has been playing and singing steadily, a variation of a drinking song about Cayden Cailean, and possibly created by Him. The song counts His beers, and is designed to get louder and stronger on each round, each with a different heroic action. As he reaches 40, Will is bellowing at the limits of his voice, "Cayden strikes down the Hag Queen, never again will She be seen. Hi Ho! Dippity Doo! Cayden downs forty-two!"

As Dubh chants quietly, you hear behind his words the fluttering wings of bats, the happy buzz of bees, the chitter of the squirrel finding the nuts it stored for the long winter. These sounds get louder and louder, until with a shout, the druid somehow produces the battle cries of every animal in the forest all at once: the howl of the wolf, the bugling call of the elk, the roar of the forest lion, the eagle's screech, and more.

I've just added a little vignette for my players to undo Gyronna's curse around the Stag Lord's old fort. They've dealt with the big guy, no problem (they mostly pointed Beaky at him, it was great), but it didn't make sense to me that they could just move in after that without doing something permanent to get rid of the zombies. After all, even if they set it off (which they did because Beaky ran away; they just closed the gates and the druid and kineticist blasted away at them from the watchtower for a few minutes), it must have some way to replenish itself, or how do the bandits know to avoid it?

So I decided to write them a little ritual scene to get rid of it for good. My cast of PCs, all 4th level:
Dubh: untamed/animal druid (also playing Valerie for this scene)
Sophia: 1H/wrestler fighter
Telric: earth/water kineticist
Wilkezag: maestro/polymath bard (also playing Regongar for this scene)

Here's the intro.

Tristian walks you over toward the Stag Lord's old hill fort, to point out the huge diagram laid out around it, almost two hundred yards from the walls in all directions. "Octavia and I have been working on this since you left last week. Personally, I don't think the precisely-drawn circles and mystic runes and whatnot are really necessary, but they made her happy, and they certainly won't do any harm. My Lady sees us no matter what conceits or illusions we may cloak ourselves in." He points out the closest of the major nodes in Octavia's diagram. "My plan is to have four primary ritualists, one on each side of the structure. I'll be in the east, to greet my Lady as she rises and channel Her light to cleanse Gyronna's darkness and spite, renewing this land and granting it a new beginning. Dubh, your place is here in the south, representing daytime and the relentless growth of nature, to rebuke the undead with the vigor of the living world. Octavia will take the western node herself. Her arcane magic stems directly from the laws of the multiverse, as the boundless potential of day solidifies into the unforgiving certainty of evening: in particular, the law that the dead should remain dead, and a goddess that abuses Her followers should fade into obscurity."

He turns to Wilkezag, uncharacteristically uncertain. "Wilkezag, your part will be perhaps the trickiest, symbolically. Your place in the north represents the mystery of midnight and the unknown; and as you know, your power channels the stories we tell ourselves to believe that the bumps and howls we hear in the night have no power over us. Ordinarily this would be the curse's domain of strength, especially as Gyronna, goddess of hags, is closely associated with stories and the occult Herself. But that's why we waited for the full moon to try this. (ed. note: 29th Desnus, 4710 AR; I've already established that the zombies from the curse regenerate at the new moon.) It should still be barely visible in the western sky tomorrow morning, which will help suppress the influence of true darkness. Your duty will be to hold open the door of spirits, to invite the undead to rest and pass on into the River of Souls and the embrace of the Lady of Graves. But take care not to let any power come the other way! I would have taken this role myself if I could, but my Lady Sarenrae is hardly a goddess of mystery or the night! Personally I would recommend calling on Her Lover, Desna of the stars, to aid you, but it's up to you."

"Now, I don't expect the curse to just lie down and let us get on with this! Its spite has incarnated itself as the walking dead before, and that's what I expect to see tomorrow as well. We've avoided discharging it, because it's dangerous and I don't think it would help; the struggle against our cleansing ritual would have granted the curse the strength of desperation no matter what. At least this way we know what to expect! However, what to expect is zombies, and the four primary ritualists will be too busy to fight for themselves. While having additional people inside the ritual bounds is a slight risk, I think it's one we have to take. We've left space for one guard defending each of the performers. Telric, your elemental magic is primal in nature, as you know, and it will be best if you support Dubh. Regongar will of course protect Octavia; it's the best choice anyway, and I wouldn't have looked forward to trying to convince him not to! Valerie admitted, with some reluctance she didn't explain, that she has experience supporting divine rituals, so she has agreed to stand at my side. Which leaves you, Sophia, to guard Wilkezag with cold steel and skill at arms. As long as the ritual stays mostly balanced, the curse's defenses should split equally as well; I wouldn't expect more than three or four shamblers on each side, which should not be too much trouble for any of you. Just keep your head, and cut them down as they rise."

Tristian turns to look at each of you in turn, and seems satisfied with what he sees. "Any questions? Get a good night's sleep; I don't want to miss the dawn tomorrow. I'll be spending the day in prayer and meditation, to prepare. Any of you are of course welcome to join me, or to prepare in whatever other way you find appropriate. Sarenrae teaches that the paths to enlightenment and wisdom are many and varied, just as the paths to corruption are. I'll admit I was skeptical when I heard about a curse that's lasted without weakening for over a century, but Octavia pointed out that it's lasted because it's relatively weak to begin with, and designed mostly to renew itself. A stronger curse would probably burn out faster. So we should have a solid chance at this." The morning sun flashes in his eyes as he nods to the group.

30th Desnus: Two hours before dawn, Tristian wakes everyone up, carrying a bundle of six-foot ritual torches. He guides you in a circuit around the ruined monastery, starting in the east, planting a lit torch in the ground in front of each main node in the diagram. When he returns to his own position, he gathers the other three casters together and touches the back of your hands, leaving a golden sunburst sigil which flares slightly before fading. "The sigil will flare again exactly an hour before sunrise. That will be the signal to begin channeling your magic into the torch, and from there into the ritual. It's designed to build for an hour, and fully release just as Her sun crests the horizon. Remember, we need to keep the ritual balanced: any side which is too strong will either attract more attention to itself, or force too much of the curse toward the others, I'm really not sure which. It depends on how the curse is structured, and obviously there was only so much we could to do investigate that. When the sun rises, that's when to apply the final push."

He thinks for a moment, then shrugs. "I don't think there's anything more to say. Go with the Gods. Together we will forge a new dawn for this land." Valerie follows him to his position, standing in front of the torch as he kneels before it, meditating or praying one last time for guidance.

They're about to roll initiative at the climax of the ritual, at which point they'll get three zombies spawned on each side, similar to the way the trap worked originally. At the end of each round, the casters will have to make an appropriate skill check (Arcana, Nature, Occultism, or Religion respectively). I haven't decided the exact DC but it will start out fairly difficult, gradually getting easier as more sides succeed.

Critical Success: As success, and other casters' failures or critical failures do not spawn additional zombies this round.
Success: The DC for all casters (including you) decreases by 2 in future rounds. This can happen only once per caster.
Failure: Spawn an additional zombie on your side of the ritual.
Critical Failure: Spawn two additional zombies on your side of the ritual. If you have previously succeeded, increase the DC for all casters (including you) by 1 in future rounds; you must succeed again to remove this increase.

The ritual continues until all four casters succeed on the same round (which will be quite easy once most of them have the credit for succeeding at least once), at which point the casters can join in on the fun mopping up any remaining zombies, if they want to.

What do you think?

Losing a Progress Point on a normal failure is not typical for these kinds of Progress Point-based situations. I'm not sure why this one is written this way. Maybe just remove that? It should work much better that way, at least for people who get a success on a 14. I'm definitely going to do that when my players get to this scene (in September, probably).

Also, +8 to +10 in social skills probably means that none of your players took on the "party face" role, because a party face should be a bit higher than this at their preferred skill at 4th level. My 4th level bard is going to have +13 Diplomacy to Make an Impression, assuming he gets to use his maestro's lyre with Versatile Performance. Yes, this is completely ridiculous. But even a more normal sorcerer or rogue party face should have +11 or +12, as long as they remembered to put on their high-fashion fine clothing and/or ventriloquist's ring!

DC 24 is still Very Hard for 4th-level characters, though; even very focused characters are going to have a tough time with it. I would consider bumping this down to 23, which is a Standard DC for Grigori's level. But I think just not reducing progress on a standard failure is probably enough.

The highest level for any of the magic immunity wisps is 9th level. It is very reasonable for any character to still have a weapon to use at this point, probably with at least a striking rune on it. All of the wisps of this type have very low AC.

No they don't? The specific creature we started talking about, the will o' wisp, has AC 27, which is "extreme" for a 6th-level creature. Even fighters are going to have a tough time hitting it reliably, and anyone else is looking at a 30% hit chance at best, if they can even find the thing in the first place. It has incredibly low, trash-tier HP, but... that doesn't matter if you can't deal any damage at all.

Actually Fire Elementals are immune to all effects with the Fire trait though:

Quote:

When you have immunity to a specific type of damage, you ignore all damage of that type. If you have immunity to a specific condition or type of effect, you can't be affected by that condition or any effect of that type. You can still be targeted by an ability that includes an ability that includes an effect or condition you are immune to; you just don't apply that particular effect or condition.

If you have immunity to effects with a certain trait (such as death effects, poison, or disease), you are unaffected by effects with that trait. Often, an effect both has a trait and deals that type of damage (such as a lightning bolt spell). In these cases, the immunity applies to the effect corresponding to the trait, not just the damage. However, some complex effects might have parts that affect you even if you're immune to one of the effect's traits; for instance, a spell that deals both fire and acid damage can still deal acid damage to you even if you're immune to fire.

That is... sure enough, what Immunity says, Player Core p. 408. But the last sentence just completely turns the rest of the second paragraph on its head. Surely, an effect that deals both acid and fire damage would invariably have both the acid and fire traits, which would mean a creature immune to "fire" would be immune to the entire effect. Honestly I think most of the second paragraph here is just total nonsense, because it's clearly self-contradictory. I feel like this is verbiage left over from a previous version, that wasn't thought about too hard.

A compound complication in this discussion is that extract elements has specific wording to undo immunity.

If you 'extract' air, the wording is that a creature you have done that to that was immune to your impulses is now no longer immune.

This ability is 100% useless if it can't be used on something immune to your impulses - as it's use is to make something that was immune to you, no longer immune.

So... either extract elements is useless, or there's wording that needs to be cleaned up.

No, this is straightforward enough. Normal elementals (example: fire elementals) aren't immune to effects that have the "fire" tag. They're only immune or highly resistant to the vast majority of the damage that such effects deal. You can still zap them with impulses no problem, and you'll get any ancillary effects the impulse might inflict (conditions or whatever); just not the damage. This is the immunity or resistance that Extract Elements defeats, which is fine because that's what the vast majority of creatures have. "If the target normally has a resistance that would apply to damage from one of your impulses, ignore that resistance; if it normally would be immune to that damage type, it instead has resistance equal to its level to damage from the impulse." (emphasis added)

That's not what a will o' wisp has, though. The wisp is just straight up immune to the entire ability. It can't even be targeted (well, it can, it just doesn't do anything). It is just plain completely immune to most spells, and, as an impulse, Extract Elements is spell-like enough to qualify.

I really don't know. I just wanted to confirm that I was reading this right, and it looks like I am. The problem isn't limited to kineticists, either; pretty much all casters can just go out for pizza in a fight with a will o' wisp, once someone's managed to stick revealing light.

I think the intention here is that "your special stuff doesn't work on this this thing, only basic attacks", so if I were designing the will o' wisp anew, I would say that its spell immunity doesn't apply to cantrips (as well as force barrage, revealing light, and quandary), and Elemental Blast (but not other impulses) is considered a cantrip. And I would probably give the will o' wisp an amount of HP somewhat more commensurate with its level, instead of the absurdly low amount it has right now, since this change would make it much easier for many character types to attack it. But that's clearly not how it was actually written.

And maybe its actual purpose is "this is where you pure martial characters get to shine", which would be a shame to take away; it's just that the kineticist in particular feels like a martial character otherwise but gets totally whammied by this. In fairness, my untamed order druid is supposed to be a primary caster but will have no problem with this one! I don't hate Gortle's house rule that a Weapon Infusion Elemental Blast counts as a weapon instead of a spell. It seems like a hideous patch though, and makes Weapon Infusion even stronger (it's already on the strong side as a feat, at least assuming that you've made some kind of ruling to let the added traits do literally anything).

Extract Elements is still an Impulse, so it would presumably be covered under the rule I quoted above, making the will o' wisp immune to the entire effect in the first place. The resistance-ignoring effect it provides pretty clearly applies specifically to immunities or resistances to particular damage types, which is not what the will o' wisp has. It's not that the will o' wisp is immune to the damage from your spells by virtue of being an Air creature (which is the kind of immunity common to elementals that Extract Element is supposed to beat); it's just immune to the entire effect right from the word "go."

(It wouldn't help anyway because my kineticist won't have Air until 5th level, and they'll be finding this guy well before that, probably. But the bard is taking Esoteric Polymath at 4th, so maybe I can convince him to prepare revealing light temporarily as well!)

A kineticist's impulses (particularly including Elemental Blast and Extract Element) are treated as spells in some situations:

Abilities that restrict you from casting spells (such as being polymorphed into a battle form) or protect against spells (such as a spell that protects against other spells or a creature’s bonus to saves against spells) also apply to impulses.

Will o' wisps, of course, are immune to almost all spells.

Magic Immunity A will-o’-wisp is immune to all spells except force barrage, quandary, and revealing light.

Does this mean my kineticist player is just basically helpless against a will o' wisp? Do I need to get one of the other players to casually recommend that the poor guy carry a spear or something, despite the fact that he's essentially useless with it?

How much of a disadvantage you see Large size as depends mostly on how cramped your typical adventure location is. Paizo, at least for the last several seasons, has written very, very cramped adventures, presumably to weaken archers (which were historically overpowered in PF1). The number of times I've tried to set up a sensible battle with 4 PCs, the druid's pet, a boss, and 5 mooks in a 20'x20' room...

So it makes sense that an ancestry which is typically Large would have other advantages to make up for what Paizo sees as the serious shortcoming of "being too big to fit in published adventures". That said, I'm not sure it's quite as much of a disadvantage as Paizo seems to think, especially if you're playing anything other than the absurdly cramped adventures they produce. If there's enough space that the wizard can cast spells without being up in the boss's face all the time, there's enough space for the minotaur. So I agree that the minotaur, as printed, seems more than a little overtuned. But pretending that Large size is always an advantage, rather than a disadvantage, is a bit disingenuous too, unless your adventurers never go cave crawling (and a lot of the minotaur's power comes to its strength in enclosed stone spaces i.e. exactly the places minotaurs don't really fit).

Not too sure on the specific interaction you mentioned. Each weakness can def only be triggered once. If a swarm has weakness to "area damage" then that can only happen once total. If the incoming damage is multiple types of area damage, they may all be compatible to trigger the weakness, but "area damage" is still a single weakness.

Then why would a resistance to "all damage" apply to each type separately? This is the example specifically mentioned in the RAW, and I refuse to believe that resistances and weaknesses are not supposed to be exactly reciprocal.

I had a similar problem with weaknesses and abilities that deal multiple type of damage, e.g. feral shades vs. spider swarms. In this case the RAW is fairly clear: each type of damage is its own "instance" of damage, and the victim's weakness applies to each of them separately, or at least that's how it works for resistances. Which makes area spells with multiple damage types (feral shades, cataclysm, I think there are others) absolutely brutal against swarms!

I know this was mentioned earlier but it's still true. Archetype-based multiclassing is the way it always should have been done, and it works so, so well. Every class has its "core kit" that you can't change, and then class feats are how you make your bard different from every other bard in the universe.

"My bard can play two songs at once, on a single instrument."
"My bard knows everything that has ever happened, every story ever told around a campfire or to a child in her cradle."
"My bard channels Sarenrae's holy sunlight to redeem the repentant and punish the guilty."
"My bard has a spellbook to hold all of the goofy, special-purpose stuff that I don't need very often."

You see how neatly the multiclass archetype fits in with the others? Making your "uniquifier" be "a weakened version of another class" just works.

I don't know, I think having to take hours and hours to fail makes perfect sense. Just think of it, a wizard slaving over their spellbook for hours on something that they can normally dash off in a few minutes: "This doesn't make sense! Why does it not work? Ugh, maybe I dropped a comma or negative sign or something in this section, let me do it out the long boring way... ... ... What in the Abyss, it still doesn't work!?" &c for several hours until they step away from it to clear their head.

(Yes, I am a mathematician and programmer, why do you ask?)

An addendum: Training DCs for Army Tactics are mentioned in the Train Army activity, but are completely undefined. This isn't your fault; it's this way in the printed version as well. I assume it's supposed to be a Standard DC based on the tactic's level. You also forgot to include anything about attaching special units to the Train Army activity.

The Skirmisher and Siege basic units don't actually have an amount of ammo listed for their ranged attacks; it should presumably be 5 shots in both cases.

The skirmisher example in Record Statistics under Recruiting an Army seems to be referring to a level 5 army, not level 1.

Time to necro this thread! I transferred this into a more accessible format for my players, and encountered a handful of typos, questions, and so forth while doing so.

• Does Irrigation have any purpose? It doesn't seem like it, if the rivers created are normally considered non-navigable (which I assume is true because of the Boating feat Canal Aptitude, which makes them navigable). I added a bonus 1/2 Food production for any farmland that shares a hex with a river (including an Irrigation canal) or freshwater lake.
  
• Wooden Walls have no skill entry for construction; it should be Defense DC 15.
  
• Planning Bureau has no description.
  
• The descriptions and effects for Thieves' Den and Thieves' Guild seem to be pretty much copied from one another.
  
• I regularized the "improved shopping" effect of buildings, because it was just too confusing. All "improved shopping" effects stack to a limit of three levels above the settlement's real level. If my players want to build multiple temples in one city, I don't care enough to stop them.
  
• I regularized the "upgrade multiple structures" effect too, just for Temples, Castles, and Universities. This also has the effect of being able to upgrade two identical small structures into a single big structure; I'm fine with this.
  
• Trade Commodities was incompletely renamed to Sell Commodities throughout. I recommend a big search.
  
• A few missing entries in the big table at the top of Skills, most notably Build Structure (but there were a few others, I didn't take notes, sorry!)

On the whole: thank you so much for putting this all together so concisely!

At the very least you'd expect some sort of expansionist power to gobble up Galt. Their military consists of angry mobs.

I mostly agree with you but this one in particular I think is justified in-universe. Cheliax still considers Galt to be imperial territory. Cheliax's internal problems (having to do with House Thrune and resistance thereof) mean that they don't have the time or determination to fix the Red Revolution properly, but all of the other nearby powers (particularly Taldor) know that if they try to conquer the place, Cheliax will get over its own problems to come tell them off. Although it seems likely that Druma is secretly buying up major portions of Galt, just like they're doing to Isger.

What rank is Octavia's unique vision of beauty spell? It's written as Spell 4, but it says Octavia shares it when she reaches 3rd level, when she would not have access to 4th-rank spells herself. Also, it seems extremely low-power for a 4th-rank spell: it's a weaker and shorter-duration version of the 2nd-rank stupefy combined with a single-target, shorter-duration version of the 3rd-rank hypnotize. I think this is actually supposed to be a 2nd-rank spell? Or am I missing something that makes it much better than I think it is?

Do warpriests get convenient access to the fighter (or champion) feats that make shields not an abysmal drain on action economy? Or are you just expected to take Champion Dedication to get access to those, like you did before? I admit, it is a little less bad for warpriests because of Emblazon Armament and Raise Symbol, which at least makes raising your shield really good for the action cost.

Can a Champion become Sanctified? If so, do they do this the same way as Clerics?

I would tend to assume that a Champion must be Sanctified, and equally, must choose a deity that allows this. Certainly that's how I would rule in my game at the moment, if I had any players who wanted to be champions. Unless at some point we ever get rules for Champions of Neutrality, which... doesn't really make a lot of sense. Champions were always more about alignment and only incidentally about worship, just as most clerics were primarily about worship and only incidentally about alignment. But we'll see what actually happens with them when Player Core 2 comes out next year.

It just feels bad if I play a Human Bard with a falcata because he's from Taldor and was taught the traditional rondelero dueling style and have that falcata end up basically being only for show because his proficiency with it won't be able to keep up with the enemies advancing in power, and there's no "Cultural Weapon Familiarity" feat line to act as a band-aid!

I would certainly allow Unconventional Weaponry to apply in such a situation, both the old version and the Remastered one (they're equivalent in this respect). It already says you can choose a weapon which is "common in another culture", although it's really not clear what this means. Another culture compared to... what? The "generic culture" defined by the typical availability and classification of weapons? Is this Absalom, or Cheliax, or what? In any case, I think it's clear that this is meant to cover cultural weapons such as the falcata, in addition to things like sawtooth sabres or katanas.

The druid feat Reactive Transformation allows a druid with Dragon Shape to use it automatically if he takes acid, cold, electricity, fire, or poison damage to transform in to a shape from dragon form that resists the incoming damage. However, the sidebar for the new types of dragons available doesn't include any that resist acid, cold, or electricity: only fire and poison are present, as well as some other goofier things like force or bludgeoning. It seems like neither this feat nor Dragon Shape were really updated with the new menagerie of tradition-based dragons in mind; they're still focused on the old chromatic/metallic system of dragons. The dragon form spell itself is in great shape, though!

The druid feat Form Control no longer requires Strength +2. I guess that's nice! But Perfect Form Control still requires Strength +4, which was always kind of a tough lift for druids who were planning to spend most of their time in battle form anyway. This just seems kind of inconsistent.

(One of my PCs is a druid, can you tell?)

I don't know if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I didn't see it: frostbite still has the Attack trait from ray of frost despite now being purely save-based.

Without the party's interference, Tartuccio will EVENTUALLY lead the Sootscales to victory over the mitflits. After all, he can almost mince through the whole hive with his own sickle, if he ever gets off his duff and starts actually helping. After this, under his leadership the Sootscales will quickly become a serious problem for the newborn nation. I would have Tartuccio build his own kingdom starting from the Sootscale Mine hex (probably RIGHT NEXT to the PCs), attracting any remnants of the Stag Lord bandits, other kobold and goblinoid tribes, and possibly even the Lizard King's followers, and opening diplomatic relations with M'botuu. No one says he needs a charter, if he's charismatic enough to attract followers all on his own. (Well, the King-Regent would probably say that he needs a charter, but... too bad for him.) This would set up quite some diplomatic tensions as the two realms race to grab land, possibly from each other. It might even give you an excuse to introduce the warfare rules early!

I don't think you'll ever see Svetlana's wedding ring again, though!

Thanks for the clarification about Foreign Aid. I think it's reasonable either way, although your interpretation makes cultivating multiple allies less valuable; but I think Manage Trade Agreements is probably a good enough reason to have multiple allies, with Foreign Aid reserved for more emergency situations. In this case I would recommend changing the paragraph describing the neediness penalty to read "cumulatively increases the DC of further attempts from all groups by 2" (emphasis indicates added text).

That's a reasonable opinion about the split for the mechanism of investment bonuses. I disagree, but I certainly see where you're coming from. I will probably change this for my group, because I would prefer to emphasize training rather than natural ability for kingdom leadership, but it's clearly a matter of taste.

Special Units: I LOVE this idea, although I'm not a huge fan of the name: I would suggest something like Auxiliary Platoons. I have two questions:

• Are all the possible special units provided by kingdom feats? Or did I miss one somewhere that's just always available?
  
• Is there a cost to add a special unit? It seems like there should be; at least it should require either a Train Army or Outfit Army activity (or something equivalent), but most of them are good enough that I feel they should come with some persistent cost.

I still have to go through the feats in detail; I'll hopefully get to this next week.

I do want to make clear: I'm sorry if it feels like I'm picking at nits here! I wouldn't bother with detailed feedback if I didn't think that this was mostly pretty good already. I mostly give feedback not because I absolutely think something is wrong, but because I think you might not have thought something through enough in your own mind, and I like to force game designers to do that. Even if I end up changing a handful of things in... like 4 months when my PCs get to this point, you have saved me SO MUCH effort I can't even imagine.

Investment bonuses: As previously mentioned, I love that you added these, and I also love that they don't matter THAT much, so it's not so critical when you don't have them available. But given that they exist, I think it's very strange that half are based on the official's abilities, and half on the official's skill training. It should be all one or the other; I vote for skill training. That's definitely the way I'm going to rewrite it for my party, but I'm curious about your opinion.

I still... don't love the wording on Request Foreign Aid. Maybe I'm being excessively obtuse and/or pedantic, but it's just not really clear to me how it's supposed to work. Suppose I have three allies: Brevoy, Mivon, and Gralton. For the sake of example, we'll say they're all normally DC 20 allies. Now, some kingdom turn, things are going poorly, so I Request Aid from Brevoy. This is clearly a DC 22 Statecraft check; so far so good. Let's suppose it fails. That sucks, I really needed the help, so now I call up Mivon. Is this check now at DC 22 (as would be standard for Mivon) or DC 24 (with one cumulative penalty)? Your comments here suggest that it should work separately, so this second request would be against DC 22 and increase only Mivon's penalty, but I would want to see this spelled out more clearly. I get the aid I need and go on with my life.

However, on the next kingdom turn, something even more ridiculous occurs and I need more aid. Obviously I can't ask Brevoy or Mivon because they're all tapped out, so I call up Gralton for some help. This would clearly be the same situation as Mivon before. However, at the end of this turn, do the penalties for Brevoy and Mivon decrease? Sure, I've Requested Aid from someone, but not from them... I personally feel that they shouldn't; the "neediness" penalties should only decrease when you make it through an entire turn without begging for help at all from anyone. Does that make sense? So having more allies still helps if you're constantly in need of Foreign Aid, but only to a certain point; you really have to start standing on your own at some point.

Just the change to Take Charge that it now gives you an *extra* Region or Civic activity in place of your Leadership activity fixes so many problems it is not even funny. Why did I not think of that? It's interesting that you made it so that a substituted activity now requires two checks instead of one (a first to Take Charge successfully, and then a second to actually do the thing). I've decided I like this.

I disagree with not putting Plains in the terrain costs table. Even if it's not very rough (it's 1 RP in the original printing), it needs to have SOME cost. Is it your intention that Preparing, Fortifying, Building Roads (!), Irrigating, or Establishing a Work Site (!!) should be completely free in Plains hexes without rivers? Because that's what you've got right now.

I agree that declaring Amiri as a good Warden always seemed weird to me, too. I think Paizo got Amiri and Valerie backwards.

More comments later but I have to get to work!

A lack of useful repeatable Leadership actions was one of the big issues in the base rules as well.

Yes, that's how I knew to watch out for it. This revision helps some, but I'm not convinced it's enough. Although I guess I left out Purchase Commodities in my list above for some reason. That's quite repeatable and you'll probably need to quite often, unless you're VERY diligent in getting your work sites set up. I would want to see how many commodities you really need, compared to how many are easy to get.

Provide Care: The results on this seem wacky. It reduces Unrest on a success (an important and hard-to-get effect), but on a critical success it INSTEAD reduces a Ruin (a not-so-important and easy to spam effect). Should it also reduce Unrest on a critical success?

Spammable Leadership actions: With respect to my previous question, I went through and looked for all the actions that might actually be worth doing over and over, every Kingdom turn. Here's what I ended up with:

• Craft Luxuries: While this is "spammable", there's no reason to do so because you can do as much as you want in one action. Also, Purchase Commodities for Luxuries (8 RP for 2 Luxuries is 4:1) is slightly more efficient than Crafting them except for small kingdoms (d8 RP for 1 Luxury is 4.5:1), unless your Arts or Industry skill is much better than Trade. I think the ratio on Craft Luxuries is right and Purchasing them should be even more expensive.
  
• Focused Attention: it's the Leadership version of Aid, it's fine I guess and needs to be there, but try to find something better to do
  
• Quell Unrest: is this once total per Kingdom turn, or once for each leader? Seems like it's intended to be once overall, but other actions (e.g. Provide Care) call that out clearly and this one doesn't. I'm assuming it's once per turn, total; Unrest is supposed to be hard to get rid of.
  
• Repair Reputation: yup, spam this like crazy, it won't go out of style
  
• Take Charge: probably spammable but why bother? Unless you have a specific Region or Civic activity you want to Take Charge of, it only generates a tiny amount of RP. Also, Taking Charge of a Region or Civic activity should require you to use the same skill for Take Charge as you plan to use for that other activity.
  
• Hire Adventurers: depends on the prevalence of continuing events, but you're unlikely to need this more than 2 or 3 times per turn
  
• Infiltration: I like this one. I don't know how useful it will actually be, but it makes sense and it's quite spammable (assuming you're good enough at Intrigue that you're mostly safe from critical failures)
  
• Supernatural Solution: basically similar to Focused Attention, it's good but needs something to support
  
• Creative Solution: see Supernatural Solution
  
• Request Foreign Aid: does the cumulative penalty apply overall, or tracked separately for each foreign partner? Either way, there should be a penalty for doing this TOO much.
  
• Manage Trade Agreements: should probably forbid managing the same trade agreement more than once per turn. Also, if we need more spammable actions (which we do!), this could be changed to be just one trade agreement per action; it seems pretty powerful if you have a lot of trade agreements.

Region Activities: Assuming that "most" of the time, kingdoms will want to spend as many region activities on Claim Hex as possible... there are too many other things that you would need precious region activities to do, that just don't even come close to competing with Claim Hex. Yes, Claim Hex has the bonus "this action is free" on a critical success, but that's not something to count on. Maybe Claim Hex should be moved into its own category, so it stops outcompeting all the more interesting (but less powerful) region activities. This would also help all the weird verbiage about the number of times you can Claim Hex per turn.

Establish Settlement: should probably mention that the hex needs to be claimed, also for several other region activities, unless that's intended to be the default, in which case the "remove a danger" use of Clear Hex needs to call out that it can be used outside your borders.

Clear Hex: I know Paizo glued the two uses of this together into a single activity, but it was a mistake and just causes lots of confusion elsewhere. Just separate them into two activities: Clear Terrain and Remove Danger.

Boating: is still trash and needs a lot of propping up. Making Go Fishing a leadership activity instead of a region activity would help. Probably not enough, but it would help.

Trade Commodities: consider renaming to Sell Commodities.

Wilderness: better than Boating but still kind of bad. Making Hunt and Forage a leadership activity would help here too (and should definitely be done if Go Fishing is changed).

Claim Hex: the action (Skills p. 3) states that it grants 10 Kingdom XP, but Table K-1 Kingdom Size (General p. 2) suggests that this should scale inversely with kingdom size. I prefer the scaling, a lot. Small kingdoms are just too hard to level up otherwise.

Craft Luxuries critical success effect: This sentence contains the word "number" three times. I recommend: "Gain d4 Luxuries for each Resource Die rolled."

Pledge of Loyalty: The description suggests that certain groups may be more or less susceptible to approaches involving each of the skills, but no guidance on this is actually given.

This looks really good! My group will be starting their kingdom sometime in the next few months so I'm looking for improvements and fixes (since the printed rules are.... not amazing). I'll definitely want to read through this more carefully, but here are some initial questions and observations:

NPCs in Leadership Roles: Do NPCs get 2-3 leadership actions every Kingdom turn, just like the PCs? It seems like it would be a pretty significant balance dependency on the number of PCs if they do not, but I'm not sure how many of the leadership actions are actually worth spamming 24 times per turn.

The General Kingdom Rules (p. 9) give restrictions on which NPC leadership roles are automatically invested, stating that more invested roles may be added or changed with the New Leadership activity. However, the New Leadership activity (Skills p. 4) doesn't provide any way to invest a role without changing the current officeholder. Is this intentional?

Additionally, most of the companions explicitly max out at 8 Influence Points (or even 6) in their original social encounters, but you've set the requirement for investment at 12 IP. Maybe I'll have to tell my players to start chatting up Amiri again! Just curious about the reasoning behind this decision. 12 IP seems REALLY high, unless players are constantly dragging companions along on adventures to chat them up every night (which I have generally discouraged my players from doing).

Additionally, the bonuses that the officeholder gives to some of the roles (which I really love! I was going to do something like this myself) don't quite match up with the provided recommendations in some cases. In particular, Linzi is no longer a competent Counselor (although she's a good Ruler or Magister), nor is Amiri an especially good Warden (or anything else but General). On the other hand, Ekundayo and Jubilost are now pretty good Viceroys, which they honestly should always have been in the first place! (In the printed version, no companion enjoys the Viceroy role.) "Half of the proficiency bonus excluding level" is too confusing for Warden; just spell it out.

I think you may be seeing the Counselor role a little bit differently than Paizo intended, in that you seem to be focusing on the "advise others" portion (Int/Wis based) while Paizo clearly leaned more into the "liaison with the populace" role (which would be Int/Cha-based using Performance or Society). Honestly I might just mostly swap the Ruler and Counselor investment benefits, so the Counselor can spend an action to gather input from the people on the kingdom's problems while relying on their own Society or Performance training, while the Ruler can always use Statecraft and their own Int/Wis bonus to back up any of the other leaders.

Feats: The Crush Opposition feat (Warfare) is listed in the table, but doesn't seem to exist. I generally love what you did with the feats though; there are so many and they are actually somewhat balanced (looking at you, Practical Magic).

Building On Rough Terrain sidebar: Deserts is misspelled, and Plains/Grassland isn't listed. I don't know what "Shorelines" is supposed to represent that would be different from "Lakes".

Focused Attention action: seems to have the effects in the description, as well as in the actual effects (and they don't match).

Table K-X4 Army Gear: I know you just alphabetized this table and went on with your life, but please put Vision Enhancers in level order instead, because this arrangement is too ridiculous.

Enhanced Weapons: the individual items list "enhanced armor".

Special Armies: you didn't include any statblocks for them. Are you just assuming that the ones given in the printed version are fine? You're probably right; it doesn't seem like you made too many changes to this area in the first place.

I have a lot more careful reading to do on Skills, Buildings, and maybe Events, but I'm really liking what I see so far!

I suspected that's how the Players' Guide was constructed, and that seems like a perfectly reasonable way to do it. Fortunately none of my players picked Necril (because, you know, undead), and the one who picked Iruxi (a very language-dependent bard) will appreciate the Lizard King plotline when it comes up. I had just managed to flip past that when I was looking the first time!

All right, I missed the fact that most of the evil fey speak Aklo. Still, almost everything in this book that speaks Aklo also speaks Sylvan, so if the PCs are worried about communicating with something, Sylvan is the way to go.

The only iruxi I can find in the entire book are in the village on the Isle of the Lizard King, which I guess I had also missed. They also all speak Draconic, although I'm not totally sure why.

But thanks, you've convinced me enough that I won't bother making my players change it. I'll give them a scroll of comprehend language or something so they can understand Garuum, whom they'll trip over relatively soon here, although they won't actually be able to talk with him because comprehend language is only one-way at 2nd rank. That might be even more fun to make them roleplay!

I would certainly argue against any interpretation that treats Backswing and Sweep differently, no matter how they happen to be worded. I think it's quite clear that the original wording never considered that a weapon might change traits from attack to attack, because... that just wasn't possible, and no one thought about it.

However, I also have considerable respect for your argument that "abilities should do something", especially abilities that come with investments as heavy as a class feat. And even by your reading, Sweep clearly does absolutely nothing at all (that isn't already covered by Agile), and Backswing only by a pretty tortuous reading. So I would consider supporting an even more generous ruling that adding any of these three traits to your first attack (chosen before you swing) grants you the corresponding bonus on your second and third attacks (regardless of what you add to those ones), especially considering that otherwise the only melee trait that Weapon Infusion usefully adds to your first attack is Reach (which is pretty good, but still). Although I would still rule that Forceful only increases to 2/die on your third attack if both of your first two had it.

I know I'm not running a PFS game, and I can rule however I want. I just wanted to get some discussion going about what rulings would be reasonable.

In the Players' Guide for Kingmaker, it recommends Aklo and Iruxi as suggested languages for players to take. As far as I can tell, these two languages are not used at all, anywhere; not a single NPC in the entire adventure speaks either. Necril is pretty marginal too, useful only against Vordekai and his minions. Two of my players fell for these lies before I realized enough to stop them. Am I missing something critical, or should I ask my players to retroactively change these, hopefully to something more useful?

Actually Dragonborn might be right. Backswing is worded differently than Sweep or Agile. It activates when you miss and gives you a bonus on the next attack.

Hmm. It's clear that the original wording of Backswing never considered the possibility that a weapon might have Backswing for one attack, and then lose it for the next. Still, I think it's unreasonable to expect that an attack without Backswing (or any other similar trait) can still benefit from it.

No, you clearly can't stack Backswing (or Sweep) and Agile. If you want the 2nd blast to benefit from Backswing, it has to actually have Backswing on it.

All right, at least I'm reading that right. It did seem odd but if different elements provided different traits in the playtest, it makes more sense.

But what about Forceful? Does my ruling seem reasonable? Or being even more generous, just treat "Elemental Blast" as all one weapon for the purpose of Forceful, even if earlier Elemental Blasts didn't have it?

How do the backswing, forceful, and sweep traits work for Weapon Infusion? All three traits specify "when you attack again with the same weapon", but (a) Elemental Blast isn't really a weapon, and (b) even if it were, each Weapon Infused Elemental Blast would be its own new weapon, not the same one.

Under the general rule of "assume abilities do something", I would probably rule that you can benefit from forceful on subsequent Blasts as long as you made your first Elemental Blast that round forceful as well. Backswing and sweep really seem to have no purpose at all, even interpreted generously, because even when they work they just give you the same benefit as agile, which Weapon Infusion could also give you.

Am I just misunderstanding this ability? Are these effects more useful while multiclassing, maybe? Agile is certainly quite good, if you're (say) a fighter with Agile Grace multiclassed into kineticist. But I just don't see any useful purpose for backswing or sweep, even if your GM rules that they work at all.

Honestly... I think the mistake is actually earlier. It seems like the wording on the Expert Bounded Spellcasting benefits assumed that the slots you end up with at 12th level are 2 3rd and 1 4th, which would make the rest of it make perfect sense. I understand that they wanted to make the progression from Basic Bounded Spellcasting realllllly slow, but... maybe this is too slow.

I was just going through some edge cases because I can't trust one of my players to be reasonable unless I make him. I'm trying to make sure I understand correctly what spell slots are granted by the bounded spellcasting archetype feats, e.g. the Summoner archetype. As far as I can tell, assuming you pay the appropriate feat taxes at the earliest possible levels, it goes like this:

6th level: Basic Bounded Spellcasting: 1 1st, 1 2nd
8th level: still 1 1st, 1 2nd
10th level: 1 2nd, 1 3rd
12th level: Expert Bounded Spellcasting: 1 2nd, 2 3rd
14th level: 2 4th, 1 5th (this seems like a really big jump)
16th level: 2 5th, 1 6th
18th level: Master Bounded Spellcasting: 2 5th, 2 6th
20th level: 2 6th, 2 7th

My main question is the really big jump at 14th level. Is the improvement from Expert Bounded Spellcasting at 12th level supposed to be better? Just seems strange to me.

Huh? Why would a 3rd Level Item be out of reach for a 3rd Level character?

The guidance for creating a new character at a level higher than 1st assumes that they have just barely reached their current level (which is the case here), and therefore they only have access to items whose level is strictly lower than that during character creation. (CRB p511)

I'm introducing a kineticist (earth/water, if it matters) at the start of 3rd level in my current campaign. The problem I'm having is, I really have no idea what to recommend for 75gp of initial purchases. Kineticists don't need or want weapons, gate attenuators and skill-boosting items are 3rd level so technically out of reach, and... what else would you want that actually costs money? Mundane armor, toolkits and mounts only cost so much, and it's not 75gp, or even 40gp. I'm mostly looking for ideas of other things to suggest and/or grant to this player, particularly for low-level permanent items. Am I just missing an entire category of useful stuff?

What else would you add to the fire element? There isn't really anything else appropriate. At least, having a "fire" blast inflicting cold damage can be explained as the impulse working in reverse: you have such control over the element of fire that you can violently suck it out of your targets, leaving them frozen in place.

The Giant Tick has an Attach ability which allows it to glom onto anything bigger than it. This doesn't seem to do anything against enemies the same size or smaller than the tick. This then prevents it from using Drain Blood against smaller creatures as well, because it would have to be attached first. Even if it wanted to do something like Grapple a smaller creature, that doesn't actually help it attach its hypostome.

Is this intended? It seems like the tick just has no way to drain blood from smaller creatures. Are their veins just too small to get ahold of? This seems like it makes the tick a much less interesting enemy, especially the unique Medium one that my players are fighting right now.

(Why yes, my players DID just reach the fight with Grabbles and Tickleback in Kingmaker, why do you ask? I think I'll rule that Tickleback can still Attach to Medium characters as a normal giant tick could, even though he's a little bigger than normal so Grabbles can ride him around. But I'd still like opinions on the original question.)