Porridge's page

An anonymous Paizo employee posted this comment:

“…there's plenty of concern going around that if a community-beloved employee with a spotless record and 12 years of company loyalty can be fired on an apparent whim, none of us are safe.

By the way, we can see all of the subscription cancellations in the forums too. If that's how you want to express your disapproval with the situation, I can't fault you. I'll even grant you that as much as I wish otherwise, a dip in revenue is probably the only thing that has a chance of motivating the executives to do anything about this. That said, I have serious doubts that any action taken would actually involve anyone in power taking responsibility, and serious concerns that it would negatively impact the people who represent the best that the company has to offer.

But if you do cancel over this … if you feel strongly about this to even consider cancelling … I will ask that you send an email to someone on the executive team and express your concerns. It may not and probably will not make a difference, but when all is said and done, your opinions matter a lot more than ours do. If you genuinely care about Paizo and want to see it do better (now, not in five years), tell the people who can make it happen.”

With this follow-up:

“Posts and CS emails won't be seen by the executive team unless they ask for them, which seems unlikely.

As for who to contact with your concerns, I would recommend anyone at the C-level, particularly Lisa Stevens, Erik Mona, or Jeff Alvarez (firstname.lastname@paizo.com). They may not choose to listen, but at least they'll know you cared enough to try.”

For reference, those email addresses are:

lisa.stevens@paizo.com
erik.mona@paizo.com
jeff.alvarez@paizo.com

I hope those who are cancelling or thinking about cancelling their subscriptions will consider writing an email to one or more of these people. I know it’s more work than just cancelling your subscription. But if we care about Paizo and its employees, I think writing them is time well-spent.

If you do email any of these people, feel free to post the content of your email here. It might encourage others to write their own emails, and provide some helpful guidance for those who are having a hard time putting their thoughts into words.

I love the new Secrets of Magic release. Tons of great options and spells in there.

One spell I'm puzzled by, though, is the Phantom Prison spell. At first glance, it seems worse than the 2nd-level version of Illusory Object in virtually every respect.

You can use Illusory Object(2) to create the illusion of a prison around someone, just like Phantom Prison does. And the target would get a will save to disbelieve when they interacted with the illusion, just like Phantom Prison gives them. And in every other respect, Phantom Prison seems strictly worse than Illusory Object(2):

The online version of Pathbuilder 2e, the popular Pathfinder 2e character creation app, just went live!

It’s in the beta stage, and the developer is taking feedback here.

Really excited this is finally happening. It's nice to finally have an easy way for new players to build characters without having to install android OS emulators or anything like that.

The Starship Operations Manual has some interesting rules for having the PCs fly individual ships. This looks like it could make starship combat more engaging for the whole party. But I’m curious about how it feels in practice.

Has anyone tried these squadron rules out? If so, how did it go? Were there any unexpected problems or modifications you needed to make?

Hi Paizo folks,

This order says it was shipped February 2nd, and was transferred to USPS on February 5th. But it never arrived. Is there anything I can do to try to figure out what happened to it?

UPS tracking shows this package (order 36291849) as being dropped off at the local USPS office on 12/9, but it was never delivered.

The local USPS office said they never received the package from UPS. They told me to call UPS.

UPS said the package was dropped off at the local USPS, and told me to contact the sender.

So that's what I'm doing!

Since no one has posted any playtesting experiences yet, I thought I'd sketch a few encounters, and some thoughts about them. All three of these test encounters pit one of the Battletest conversion mechs against 1-2 creatures from the Alien Archive which are in the same ballpark, CR-wise.

While looking at the mech playtest rules, I thought it would be handy to have a source of pre-generated mechs available to give either to players who don't want to bother building their own, or to use as enemy mechs. I also thought it would be fun to convert some classic mechs from Battletech.

What follows are some pregenerated mechs, converted from Battletech. I've mostly presented them in Alien Archive format, with the build details (for those who want to tweak things) and descriptions of their special PP actions (for those who want cut-and-paste text they can give to give players) at the bottom.

__________

The 20 ton (Tier 4) Locust Light Mech, a speedy scout/recon mech:

__________

The 45 ton (Tier 9) Hatchetman Medium Mech, a mech built for both ranged and melee combat:

__________

The 75 ton (Tier 15) Marauder Heavy Mech, a ranged combat mech that can use dual strikes to lay down a hail of devastating blasts:

__________

The 100 ton (Tier 20) Atlas Assault Mech, a heavily armored mech for front-line fighting:

Although I'm relatively content with where magic ended up in PF2, I know a lot of PF1 players are not. And it would be nice to have some house rules which:

• 1. Boost magic to a level that PF1 players would be more satisfied with,
• 2. Are simple and unified way (not a piecemeal list of changes to dozens of spells),
• 3. Don't allow magic to break the game.

After some discussion and playtesting, here's what what I've come up. Things have worked well so far with my group, but I'm curious to hear what other think. If you're one of the people who's generally unsatisfied with the power level of magic in PF2, does this house rule boost things to a level that would make you happy? Are there game-breaking consequences of this house rule that I've missed?

____________________

Supercharging Magic: Every time someone casts a spell, they can Supercharge it in one of these 5 ways:

So almost 5 starfinder APs have now come out (Dead Suns, Against the Aeon Throne, Signal of Screams, Dawn of Flame, Attack of the Swarm). How would you rank them?

(I ask in part because I'm curious, but also because I'm considering running one of them, and would like a feel for which of the APs people are most enthusiastic about.)

Unfortunately, my complementary Starfinder subscriptions aren't showing up in my downloads (though they are showing up for purchase when I got to the product web-page). Is there any chance someone could check up on that when it's convenient?

(And just to forestall any confusion, I have already received shipments from all 4 of my subscriptions.)

While there's been a lot of discussion about spells that have been nerfed in PF2, there hasn't been much discussion about spells that have been buffed in PF2. But I've come across several spells which have been improved in some important respects, as compared to their PF1 counterparts. What buffs to spells have you found?

(NOTE: Although it would also be interesting to see a list of spells that have been nerfed, that's not what this thread is about. So if you want to talk about nerfs to spells, that might be best done in a different thread devoted to that topic.)

_______

Charm, Suggestion: Once spell manifestations became an explicit part of the PF1 rules, spells like Charm Person and Suggestion became too risky to use against anyone who wasn't already hostile, since the target would know you're casting the spell, and if they made their save, would get pissed off. In PF2, Charm now states that unless the target critically succeeds they think you've only cast a harmless spell. And with Suggestion unless they critically succeed they won't even realize you're casting a spell.

Now, Charm is weaker duration-wise in PF2, since it now lasts one hour instead of 1 hour/lvl. But the 4th level version of Charm lasts until you next perform your daily preparations. From p480, it looks like doing your daily prep is optional, so if you decline to do that it you could extend the duration of this Charm indefinitely... a great thing for a Wizard to do on some key figures before he retires!

Water Breathing: In PF2 this is now a second level spell, giving an hour of water breathing to up to 5 targets, making underwater adventures feasible at lower levels. And the third level version gives you all 8 hours of water breathing, while the fourth level version gives you all water breathing until your next daily preparation, which you could put off indefinitely...

Now, the PF1 version was more flexible, since it gave you 2*lvl hours of water breathing to spread out as you like. But it wouldn't allow you to give 8 hours to 5 people until level 20, and so generally falls far short of the PF2 same-level version with respect to total person-hours it can provide.

Shrink Item: In PF2 this spell lets you shrink any item up to 20 cubic feet in volume, and up to 80 bulk to the size of a coin. In PF1 the shrinking was to 1/16th the size of the original object, making it a little less convenient for certain things (the 20' long scepter of the Storm Giant King is still over a foot long, making harder than a coin to smuggle out of the throne room). That said, the PF1 version would allow you to make ordinary objects (like a coin you're trying to steal) really small, which the PF2 version does not. Call it a wash.

But it's duration which makes the PF2 version shine. The PF1 version lasts 1 day/lvl. The PF2 version lasts 1 day. But the object only expands if it's in a location large enough to accommodate it's normal size. So by putting the Storm Giant King scepter in a small box, you can keep it in its shrunken down state indefinitely. Pretty neat!

Dear Paizo staff,

Due to a website bug, I haven't been able to have my subscriptions start with only 2e products. (It insists on starting the subscription with Midwives to Death and Druma, Profit and Prophecy.) Can you ensure that my subscriptions just start with the 2e products? Thanks!

Order #4620707

PF2 has tried to give skills a bigger role to play in the game, which is great. But there's been a lot of dissatisfaction regarding the way skills currently feel in the game. This dissatisfaction seems to stem from three issues:

A number of people have raised reasonable concerns regarding the sorcerer: worries that they compare poorly to other classes with the same spell lists, worries that they have fewer class feats than most classes, worries that their class feats aren't a good fit for non-arcane spell lists, and so on. While I share many of these concerns, I want to raise a different concern.

Most spell-using characters in fantasy literature are not Vancian. They don't change what spells they can cast daily, they're not locked into casting a spell at only one particular level of strength, they don't lose the ability to cast a spell as soon as they've cast it, and so on.

The point of having a Sorcerer class, IMO, is to allow us to create non-Vancian magic-users along these lines. Thus two desiderata for the Sorcerer class are:

First, let me say that I'm loving most of what I'm seeing so far in the playtest book. But this is a question about something I'm a bit puzzled by.

In PF1, composite longbows were vastly superior to any other ranged option for martial characters. One of the big things I was hoping to see in PF2 was for crossbows and slings to become viable options for ranged martial characters.

Instead, it's looking like crossbows and slings are strictly worse than before. Namely, they've retained the same big disadvantage (requiring 1-2 actions to reload each time), but there are no longer feat options to speed this up.

I was hoping that perhaps crossbows and slings might get some interesting special weapon properties to make them palatable. Sadly, while composite longbows get a number of special weapon properties that make them even better (Deadly d10, Propulsive, Volley 50), slings get a strict subset of these properties (Propulsive), and crossbows don't get any special properties at all.

__________

Now, I'm hoping (and half expecting) to be missing something here. There must be something that's supposed to make crossbows and slings appealing...

But I'm having a hard time seeing what it is. Any thoughts?

Here’s a pair of questions/potential concerns regarding the Starship combat blocks given in the CRB.

In the Starship combat blocks, the crew are given a Gunnery modifier. Given the rules on p320, this modifier would seem to be determined by: (BAB or ranks in Piloting skill, whichever is higher) + (dexterity bonus).

So calculating the maximium Gunnery modifier for a PC, by level, gives us:

• Lvl 1: +5 = +1 BAB +4 Dex (18 Dex)
  
• Lvl 2: +6 = +2 BAB +4 Dex (18 Dex)
  
• Lvl 3: +8 = +3 BAB +5 Dex (20 Dex)
  
• Lvl 4: +9 = +4 BAB +5 Dex (20 Dex)
  
• Lvl 5: +10 = +5 BAB +5 Dex (21 Dex)
  
• Lvl 6: +11 = +6 BAB +5 Dex (21 Dex)
  
• Lvl 7: +13 = +7 BAB +6 Dex (23 Dex)
  
• Lvl 8: +14 = +8 BAB +6 Dex (23 Dex)
  
• Lvl 9: +15 = +9 BAB +6 Dex (23 Dex)
  
• Lvl 10: +17 = +10 BAB +7 Dex (24 Dex)
  
• Lvl 11: +18 = +11 BAB +7 Dex (24 Dex)
  
• Lvl 12: +19 = +12 BAB +7 Dex (24 Dex)
  
• Lvl 13: +20 = +13 BAB +7 Dex (24 Dex)
  
• Lvl 14: +22 = +14 BAB +8 Dex (26 Dex)
  
• Lvl 15: +23 = +15 BAB +8 Dex (27 Dex)
  
• Lvl 16: +24 = +16 BAB +8 Dex (27 Dex)
  
• Lvl 17: +25 = +17 BAB +8 Dex (27 Dex)
  
• Lvl 18: +26 = +18 BAB +8 Dex (27 Dex)
  
• Lvl 19: +27 = +19 BAB +8 Dex (27 Dex)
  
• Lvl 20: +29 = +20 BAB +9 Dex (28 Dex)

Now, the Starship combat blocks seem to describe crew whose level equals the tier of the ship (e.g., they have as many ranks in any given skill as the ship has tiers). And starting with the Tier 1 ships, their Gunnery modifiers are as follows:

• Tier 1 Kevolari Venture/Starhive Drone Mk III: +5 Gunnery (0 higher than PC max)
  
• Tier 2 BMC Mauler: +12 Gunnery (6 higher than PC max)
  
• Tier 4 Idaran Vanserai: +10 Gunnery (1 higher than PC max)
  
• Tier 5 Blackwind Sepulcher: +11 Gunnery (1 higher than PC max)
  
• Tier 6 UIE Hiveguard: +13 Gunnery (2 higher than PC max)
  
• Tier 8 Norikama Dropship: +16 Gunnery (2 higher than PC max)
  
• Tier 9 Hivonyx Titan Hauler: +17 Gunnery (2 higher than PC max)
  
• Tier 10 Atech Immortal: +24 Gunnery (7 higher than PC max)
  
• Tier 12 Idaran Millennia +22 Gunnery (3 higher than PC max)
  
• Tier 14 Thaumtech Omenbringer: +25 Gunnery (3 higher than PC max)
  
• Tier 16 Vindicas Tyrant: +33 Gunnery (9 higher than PC max)

Q1. Are some of these Gunnery numbers typos?

After Tier 1, all of these Gunnery modifiers are higher than it’s possible for a PC to have. For the most part it’s 1-3 points higher than the PC max. But the BMC Mauler, Atech Immortal and Vindicas Tyrant have Gunnery modifiers 6, 7 and 9(!) points higher than the maximium PC modifier at the corresponding levels. This seems way out of whack, leading me to think these values may be mistakes.

Q2. How are PCs supposed to survive against these ships?

Now, we know that monsters are generated in a different manner than PCs in Starfinder, and aren’t constrained by the same limitations. And we know that this is balanced by the fact that they’re also made weaker than PCs in certain respects (e.g., they don’t get both Stamina and HPs, don’t get Resolve, etc.), so everything plays out fine.

Now, these crew stats also seem to be generated in a different manner than the PCs, and (with respect to Gunnery modifiers, anyway) seem to be strictly better than a PC could be at the same level. But unlike monsters, these ships aren’t weaker than PC-built ships in other respects. These ships appear to be made by the same rules as PC ships. This suggests that enemy ships have a substantial built-in advantage over PC ships of the same level.

So what do you think? Does it seems like these are typos, or reasons to be concerned? Or am I just missing something that makes this less worrying?

Question: The fluff describing the Solarian's Radiation revelation describes it as a low-level radiation that can potentially sicken nearby creatures. What, if anything does this have to do with the levels of radiation described in the environmental rules section?

Some relevant points:

--In the environmental rules section, the level of radiation is tied to the DC to resist it. But the DC of the Solarian's ability is determined by an entirely different batch of rules.

--In the environmental rules section, radiation can cause radiation sickness, which moves people along the physical disease track. But none of those effects line up with the effect of the Solarian's Radiation revelation (Sickened, but no other effect).

--Every set of modern armor protects against low levels of radiation (and references the environmental rules to determine what low levels of radiation means). So if the Solarian's ability should be understood as only emitting a low level of radiation in that sense, then the ability would not work against anyone wearing armor.

Here’s a question I’ve been thinking about for the last couple days:

TLDR: Why do you think the designers choose to make some spells variable-level (e.g., Flight, Mystic Cure or Planar Binding) but not others (e.g., the Remove Condition spells, the Restoration spells, the Dispel Magic spells)?

Inspired by Mashallah’s thread, I thought it would be interesting to see people’s takes on the Solarian. Mashallah makes some interesting remarks here, but they’re kind of lost amidst discussions of other parts of the book. So here’s a separate thread to pull together discussion of the Solarian in particular.

Here’s my take: The Solarian is basically Starfinder’s Unchained Monk. It’s a full BAB class with good HP (same as the Soldier) and two good saves. It’s a lightly armored melee-focused fighter who gets special class abilities that allow them to make more (and more accurate) attacks when full-attacking. And it gets the analog of ki powers (revelations) every other level, several of which are very similar to ki powers available to the monk.

A couple key questions, and my initial take on the answers:

Question: Why choose to be a Solarian over a melee-focused Soldier?

Answer: If you want to be the most effective melee-focused combatant you can be, you probably shouldn’t be a Solarian. The Soldier is better. But if you want to be a pretty good melee-focused combatant, with a bit more skill-focus, more out of combat utility powers, and some different kinds of combat oriented powers, the Solarian might be up your alley.

Question: What excites you about the class?

Answer: It’s flavor is awesome. And some of the powers you can pick seem decent and pretty fun.

For example, Radiation (available at 2nd) allows you to kick in an aura that potentially sickens any creatures that get near you; a nice debuff for a melee combatant.

For another example, Gravity Surge (available at 6th) lets you perform a trip or disarm maneuver (with a bonus) against a creature within 30’, with a couple of minor (but neat) effects if you succeed.

For a third example, Stealth Warp (available at 10th) offers a nice out-of-combat stealth bonus, and helps you perform some potentially neat in-combat disappearing tricks.

Question: What dissapoints you about the class?

Answer: As one might expect, there’s fair amount of variation in how attractive the various revelations you can choose from are, but (in my opinion) the majority of them are at least interesting options. That said, there are two classes of revelations that stand out as being disappointingly weak (though these are just first impressions, that might change after playing for a while).

First, there are a couple revelations that allow you to use gravity-based powers to increase your mobility. This is really important for a melee-focused fighter, since to really shine you need to be able to get next to your opponents. And, like the mobility-increasing powers available to the Unchained Monk, the flavor of these abilities is pretty cool and cinematic. Unfortunately, like the mobility-increasing powers available to the Unchained Monk, the Solarian’s mobility powers seem pretty underwhelming.

For example: the best mobility-boosting power they can choose to get (at 6th level) is Defy Gravity, which allows them to spend a move action to fly up to their speed… but after that, they fall if they’re not on solid ground. So if you need to get close to a flying opponent to unleash the melee full attacks which are your specialty you’re out of luck. First, you need to use a move action to get close to them, and so can’t full attack. Second, you immediately fall if you’re not on solid ground, so (as I read it) you won’t even get the chance to attack them once. And all of this is moot if the flying opponent is more than your speed (say 30’) above you.

Now, at 12th level, the ability improves, and allows you to use both your move and standard actions to effectively fly up to double your speed… after which you fall if you’re not on solid ground. Again, if you want to make your melee full attack, you’re out of luck: you’ve used up all of your actions to get near them (assuming they’re within twice your speed, say 60’ of you), and after doing so you don’t have any actions left to attack with, and fall.

As a powerful master of the elemental force of gravity, especially one focused on making melee full attacks, it seems that they should be able to get something better than this — say, the ability to actually fly up to your opponent. And since any Solarian worth their salt is going to need to be able to do this, they’ll have to obtain some other means of actually flying, making these revelations poor choices.

Second, there are several “tricks-in-combat”-style revelations (e.g., Flare, Crush, etc) that seem hard to justify choosing. Roughly speaking, these abilities require you to trade an action of yours in order to have a chance of inflicting a minor disappoints on one of your opponents, usually for 1-round. (And if they last longer than that, they generally allow another save each turn, and require you to continue spending actions to keep them debuffed.) It’s hard to imagine many cases where these abilities are worth it (perhaps against a big-bad boss who happens to have really bad saves?). And since these abilities require you to spend a precious revelation to acquire, I suspect these are options that virtually no one will choose.

(Though to be fair, perhaps this reflects my lack of familiarity with the system. If, for example, opponents tend to be really hard to hit, and so attacking with your action probably won’t do much, using one of these abilities might be something that it’s worth spending your standard action on.)

Interesting... I wonder how the Mercenary theme (which suggests a collaboration-angle) will compare to the Envoy's ally-boosting abilities...

Pathfinder's classes offer broad templates to use when fleshing out characters of a certain kind. Most archetypes usually modify the base class in a way that allows you to "zoom in" on a particular kind of character idea that class might cover (e.g., the Crusader cleric archetype, or the Merciful Healer cleric archetype). And a few archetypes modify the base class so that it allows you play a completely different kind of character (e.g., the Dandy ranger archetype).

But recently I've noticed a third kind of archetype: "default" archetypes that modify the base class in order to make it do a better job of doing what the base class was supposed to do. These are the kinds of archetypes which make you think "this should have been what the base class was like", or "this should be the default for anyone playing this class".

I've only noticed a few, but there are hundreds (thousands?) of archetypes. What have you noticed? Are there any archetypes you've come across which strike you as arguably doing a better job of capturing the idea behind a class than the original class does?

This is an attempt to get an official FAQ/errata verdict on the following question:

"Does the DR granted by the Invulnerable Rager archetype stack with the DR granted (while raging) by the Increased Damage Reduction rage power?"

Reason to think they don't stack: Hero Lab doesn't allow them to stack. When I reported this, they emailed me the following:

We've gotten this question before and sought clarification from paizo. Based on that, the implementation is correct as things stand now. Here is the text of our question and Paizo's answer.

Question:
This question revolves around the text of the Increased Damage Reduction barbarian rage power. The text reads as follows:

CRB Barbarian Power
The barbarian's damage reduction increases by 1/—. This increase is always active while the barbarian is raging.

Unchained Barbarian Power
The barbarian’s damage reduction increases by 2/— whenever she is raging.

Our question is, what is the meaning of "barbarian's damage reduction" in these sentances? Is that referring specifically to the "damage reduction" class ability of barbarians, or is it referring to any untyped damage reduction the barbarian gets from any source (like the Resurgent Transformation spell, that grants DR 5/-)?

A - Refers to the Class special ability
If it refers to the class special ability, then the rage power would not affect any barbarian that had used an archetype to replace the class ability (even with something very similar). For example, the Invulnerable Rager archetype replaces the Damage Reduction class ability with the following:

Invulnerability
At 2nd level, the invulnerable rager gains DR/— equal to half her barbarian level. This damage reduction is doubled against nonlethal damage. This ability replaces uncanny dodge, improved uncanny dodge, and damage reduction.
Under this interpretation, Increased Damage Reduction has no interaction with Invulnerability, and thus no effect.

B - Refers to DR X/- in general
Under this interpretation, the increase when raging would apply to any granted DR /- including that from spells, items (adamantine armor) or the invulnerable rager archetype's ability.

Paizo's Answer
It should only apply to the barbarian’s damage reduction ability. Invulnerable rager archetype probably wants it to apply, and if it was written to modern standards, it would probably say that it “alters” rather than “replaces” damage reduction, but it doesn’t, so technically they don’t stack. Honestly invulnerable rager gets more than enough DR already anyway, but you’re right that it would need a FAQ or errata to work together at this point.

Reason to think they were intended to stack: The description of the Invulnerable Rager archetype ends with:

Rage Powers: The following rage powers complement the invulnerable rager archetype: come and get me, guarded life, increased damage reduction*, inspire ferocity, reckless abandon, and renewed vigor*.

To sum up: RAW, it seems they do not stack. But it also seems that they were intended to stack. To make this correction official would require an official verdict from the Pathfinder Design Team. So if you would like to see such a correction (so they can stack, as intended, in Hero Lab, PFS, etc), please FAQ this post.

The Armor Master's Handbook introduced three Shield Gauntlet Style feats. I really like the idea behind these feats, and they seem pretty good, but I'm having a hard time thinking of the a build that really takes advantage of all of the different things these feats do.

A brief description of the feats:

The Armor Master's Handbook introduces a number of powerful new feats. One of them, Unhindered Shield, allows you to effectively get the shield bonus from a buckler without in anyway tying up the use of that hand, making this a viable option for two-handed fighters, two-weapon fighters, monks, spellcasters, and so on.

There was some interesting discussion in the Armor Master's Handbook thread on how good this feat was, and indeed, whether this feat was so powerful that it should be banned and/or errata-ed.

So what do you think?

Some background: I'm one of those who really wanted to like the mythic rules. But given the number of problems I had running a party through the first five and half books of Wrath of the Righteous, it's hard for me to imagine using them again.

That said, I really like the idea behind the mythic ruleset. So I was wondering whether anyone knows of any 3PP offerings for how to run a campaign with a mythic feel, but a more manageable rule-set. (And if so, what people's impressions of these offerings were!)

A question about Ultimate Intrigue: Is it right that without the Quiet Death feat or the Silent Dispatch talent, attacking someone (even stealthily) allows anyone nearby to make a -10 DC Perception check to hear what's going on? And so something anyone within a 100 feet (given the usual distance penalties, and barring obscuring walls, etc.) will automatically hear?

If that's right, it would entail that only a 10+ level rouge (required for the feat) or a 2+ level Vigilante (required for the talent) is capable of quietly disposing of someone. (Or a spellcaster able to cast Silence, of course.)

That would be a bit disappointing.

For example, it would entail that a 20th level Ninja has no way of quietly assassinating someone, for they have no way of getting either that feat or that talent. (A ninja can't quietly assassinate someone?!)

There have been several highly reviewed 3pp products aimed at revamping the rogue. In particular, I have seen multiple recommendations for Rogue Glory from Drop Dead Studios, The Genius Guide to the Talented Rogue from Rogue Genius Games, and Legendary Rogues from Legendary Games.

My question to those of you familiar with these products: What do you think are the main pros and cons of each of these approaches to revamping the rogue? If you had to choose just one, which of these three options would you adopt?

What characters are you excited to try out in Richard Pett's The Blight? Here are some of mine:

• A Psychic (Amnesiac archetype, Pain Discipline) who escaped from the Asylum, but can remember nothing of his past but episodes of searing pain...

• A Spiritualist (Haunted archetype) who made a Faustian bargain to escape the poverty of Toiltown, and now finds himself slowly being taken over by his spiritual "ally" from the Between...

• An aristocratic Barbarian (Flesheater archetype) from the Capitol who must hide his dreadful compulsion to feed on the flesh of those he kills from his peers...

(For those of you who don't know, the kickstarter for The Blight is going on here: The Blight)

Two quick questions:

Wizard 1 tries to cast Wish. Wizard 2 has readied a counterspell action, has Wish memorized, and counterspells it by "casting" the spell.

Q1. Does Wizard 1 still lose the 25k of material component costs?

Q2. Does Wizard 2 also have to pay the 25k of material component costs?

When I first got the new Unchained book, I didn't expect to like, or even really look at, the Grouped skills option. And given the dearth of threads on the option, I suspect that this apathy might be shared by others. But I started playing around with the system recently, and I've found myself falling in love with the "Grouped Skills" option.

Here are some reasons why. Feel free to add your own!

This is intended to be akin to a play-test report of my experiences running the WOTR, to help Paizo get a feel for how these adventures are playing for when they next make a mythic adventure path (which I hope they will!), and to help other GMs who are planning on running it get a feel for what some potential pitfalls are.

I have 4 players---a Paladin, an Urban Ranger, a Separatist Cleric of Milani, and a Groveborn Sorcerer---and I'm using the mythic rules.

Like many people, I was worried about this adventure path being too easy. Following James Jacob's advice, I've been running the adventure path with a number of restrictions: (1) 10 pt buy (and no bonus points for scores below 10), (2) slow XP advancement (this generally puts the players 1-2 levels behind), (3) no crafting of magic items, (4) no purchase of magic items above a city's base value, and (5) mandatory donations (in cash) equal to [PC level wealth for their level on the medium advancement track] - [PC level wealth for their level on the slow advancement track]. (Currently (at level 14) donations have added up to 220,000gp (440,000gp-worth of magic items), but this has turned out not to matter. With restrictions (3) and (4), the party has much more money than they can spend---after donations and expenditures, they still have a 580,000gp stock pile.)

In addition, I've nerfed various spells---protection from evil doesn't provide immunity from charm or possession, blindness has the [evil] descriptor and so isn't available to good players, and so on.

Here's how things have been going, through the first four adventure paths.

The Worldwound Incursion was good and challenging, though to make the end properly trying, I gave them only 1-shot to clear out the Gray Garrison.

The Sword of Valor started off pretty easy, with a few exceptions (e.g., the Vescavor Swarms). By the middle of the adventure, the players were getting bored. But by grouping various encounters in Citadel Drezen together (grouping the Brimoraks in F1, F14 and the gargoyles in F2 all together; grouping the Thoxels in F16, the minotaurs in F17 and Jestak from F9 all together, and having the occupants of F18 and then F19 each join the battle after 1d4 rounds), and by playing the opposition as intelligently as I could, this part of the adventure remained challenging and exciting.

The Demon's Heresy was a similar story; by grouping all of the opponents in Arueshalae's Redoubt together, and by grouping the opponents in the Ivory Labyrinth into 3 big climactic battles, this part remained exciting and challenging as well.

The Midnight Isles went similarly, but has been harder to keep challenging. I started giving opponents perfect knowledge of what the players buff spells are (due to "spies"), allowing them to target specific buff spells with dispel magic and avoid attacks which buff spells (like death ward and freedom of movement) would make ineffective, and I've been having the opponents automatically win initiative (due to "readied actions"). This, and grouping encounters (e.g., in the Nahyndrian Mine, roughly grouping all of the opponents in area J together, all of the opponents in area K together, and all of the opponents in area L together), with all of them buffing each other beforehand with the appropriate spells and working in concert, made for some challenging battles.

But as it turns out, this was due to a bit of luck on my part. Afterwards, one of the players pointed out that they had forgotten they had the Flexible Counterspell mythic path ability, and this would have made the most challenging battle (against Hepzamirah and a horde of minions) much less challenging, since the player could have countered Hepzamirah's spells every turn.

At this point, we're just starting the Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth.

Here are some thoughts about the adventure path so far.

1. The players are designed to be effective against evil-outsiders, encounters with evil outsiders run about 2 CR easier than encounters against other kinds of opponents. So when grouping and/or boosting encounters, take this into account. (The wardstone shards contribute to this disparity, but even after taking them away---I made Nocticula claim them as the price for being allowed to remain in her domain---evil outsider encounters remain much easier for the party.)

2. Paizo suggests adding half of the party's mythic tiers (MT) to their party level (PL) for the purposes of creating encounters. I've heard people on these boards suggest that this underestimates the amount of power mythic tiers add, and I think this is probably right.

(Even putting that aside, it seems to me that some of these adventure paths have lower CR encounters than Paizo suggests. E.g., I usually take CR = PL encounters to be easy, CR = PL+1 encounters to be moderately difficult, CR = PL+2 encounters to be challenging, and CR = PL+3 encounters to be difficult (boss fights). So in the Nahyndrian Mine (where the party is supposed to be 14th level, and have 6 mythic tiers), I would expect a smattering of CR 17 and 18 encounters, a couple CR 19 encounters, and a CR 20 boss-fight. Instead, the average encounter is CR 15, with only one CR 18 and one CR 19 encounter.)

3. Although this doesn't have much to do with Mythic play per-se, I'll note that at higher levels, concentrated dungeons which allow for the party to buff up before hand run about 1-2 CR easier than encounters where the party runs into things throughout the day, and don't have time to prepare before hand. (My party buffs with wands of Stoneskin and Heroism---which the Riftwarden Orphan trait allows them to recharge easily---followed by Life Bubble, Delay Poison (communal), Freedom of Movement, Air Walk (communal) and Barkskin, and they use a Death Warden's Bandolier and a mythic power to give themselves a daily Death Ward effect.) So encounters in dungeon-like settings need to be boosted more than "wilderness" encounters.

Question: When are the points of spells like stoneskin or protection from arrows used up?

For example: Suppose a 10th level wizard has cast both protection from arrows and stoneskin on herself. Each spell will then only prevent up to 100 points of damage of the appropriate kind, after which that spell will no longer offer her protection.

Suppose the wizard is then hit by a non-magical, non-adamantium arrow for 5 points of damage. Her spells will prevent her from being harmed. Does this reduce the total damage of *both* the protection from arrows and the stoneskin spells? (So now each will only prevent up to 95 points of damage?) Or does it only reduce the total damage that one or the other spell will prevent? (And if so, which one?)