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Like PF2 could absolutely do a Magaambya book, it's just that between Strength of Thousands and the (really, really good) Mwangi Expanse book, they've already covered quite a bit of what they'd want to cover in that book. The Knights of Lastwall got pushed to the front because "What's Tar Baphon gonna do" is one of the main metaplots of 2e. Then the Firebrands probably got more attention than the Hellknights because they're new and they're kind of more fun.
I'm not sure that people would bother with Athletics if it did less than it does though. Like if you split off the combat maneuver stuff from the climb/swim stuff, people would rarely bother to get better than trained at the latter.
I wonder how much of the SF2 playtest is going to involve "playtesting the multi-armed species and the rules for them." Like the default rules in the playtest were basically "you can switch which pair of arms you're using with an interact action" with the caveat that ancestry feats will potentially make you better at this. The "better at this" bit is something that probably requires playtesting. Since, like, the prospect of being able to use a shield with a 2h weapon is *really* strong in PF2 at least.
In the beginning of PF2 there were 4 meta-factions laid out as important to the setting. 2 of them have had setting books devoted to them and one of them has had an entire AP devoted to them. The other one is the Hellknights. So if there are "Hell-oriented specific tools for fighting demons" (or just people who threaten order in general) they're probably going to be in that book. It's just that the Hellknights got the spotlight last of the four probably because what they're about is less interesting to Paizo folks for whatever reason than the other three.
Yeah, the spell says "unocccupied" specifically to point out that you can't conjure a tree underneath, say, the ogre thus inconveniencing/impaling them. Basically if something would need to move out of the way of the tree in order for the tree to grow there, you can't grow a tree there.
I mean, nobody ever put more than one or two ranks in climb or swim in 1e, because eventually you got to the point where spells do better than skills. You also couldn't have combat maneuvers work the same way as they did in Pathfinder 1e since BAB is no longer a thing and your CMB was already STR+BAB(+Size+Misc). So it's not a huge leap to say that the skill that makes you good at climbing is the same as the skill that makes you good at swimming is the same as the skill that makes you good at wrestling and all of those things were Str based to begin with.
I think the pain point they're trying to address with subtle spells is that if you're invisible, and you want to cast invisibility again then you shouldn't have a light show accompany the spell. Likewise some actual subtle spells, like Charm, would most likely carry significant social stigma if people knew you were casting them which is a disincentive to use those spells. The spells that come pre-loaded with subtle are mostly fine to be uncounterable. Making conceal spell give the subtle trait is the simplest way to make this sort of thing work, for sure, but I'm not sure all of the consequences were considered. Probably the fix is to change the counterspell rule allowing you to counter a subtle fireball when you see the ball of fire forming rather than when the caster would wiggle their fingers, etc.
The nature of subtle spells appears to be "you don't notice when someone is in the process of casting the spell, but you can notice what it does." Which suggests that more "countering the spell as it is cast" you'd be more interested in a counteract check to dispel the effect. Like if someone is lurking around while invisible, or you found out the duke has been mind controlled you want to end the magical effect, not "prevent it from being cast in the first place" because of how causality works. This is, I think, how subtle spells are supposed to work. It's less clear how this is supposed to work with "using conceal spell to make fireball subtle."
Yeah, the Phytokineticist is useful in a siege both because of their ability to produce fresh, untainted food as well as their unlimited ability to create trees *as a building material". But if you're churning out trees to be turned into pallisades or shafts for spears and arrows, then the limiting factor is going to be more "how fast can you process a tree into useful material" than "how fast can you grow trees." One reason there was a wide open space around basically all castles in addition to the aforementioned "you don't want to give the invaders cover or materials" is that wood is also very useful to you.
Yeah, and the Marilith needing two actions to use it's "hit you with all its swords" ability but still being bound by the same three actions everybody else gets makes it so that Slow plus "nobody ends their turn within the Marilith's reach" is an effective tactic to "keeping it from doing that". If it just had six actions because of six arms, there wouldn't be a tactical way to keep it from attacking with a bunch of swords and fighting it would be less interesting.
If you're allowing the anarchic rune in your game, you're going to also have to decide how it works. You can just continue to play with alignment, the rules for that are in the pre-remaster books. It's just that you're going to need to guess as to the alignments of things that are in the post-remaster books.
So having been on both sides of this, the way you deal with "A Kineticist wants to prepare to resist a siege" the better standard than "what do the rules strictly allow" and more "how to thread the needle between making the kineticist player feel powerful, but also not trivialize the challenge." Like with igneogenesis and enough time you can construct 100' solid stone walls in front of deep moats. You don't really want the sieging army to just look at that, and decide to go home since it's not worth it. But in this specific case I would not that "there's a bunch of trees" is probably to the benefit of the sieging forces, since it provides them cover from arrow fire and materials for siegecraft. So I would probably rule something like a conversion rate between "hours spent in exploration mode" and "number of squares you make difficult" knowing that this will eventually benefit the attackers.
I cant imagine that those rules will allow Kasatha to break the basic 3-action economy that everyone else has. So multi-attack would be off the table. Yeah, you're probably going to be able to invest ancestry feats in "better than the baseline" which is "it costs an action to change your active pair of hands" but that's probably going to remain the baseline. Remember that PF2 and SF2 are going to be compatible, but not necessarily balanced against each other. A character using "a polearm and a shield" is not really what Starfinder is worried about (but we should be) but they're concerned about "your Skittermander starts combat with three loaded rocket launchers". But anyway, you're still going to be limited by MAP so you're not going to want to make a ton of attacks barring something like the ranger's near capstone "Impossible Flurry."
I mean, experts will tell you that the best ways to tell if someone is lying are things like changes in speech pattern/tone, incongruent gestures, offering too many details or not enough, etc. Sense motive being a perception check is just an question of "do you notice it when someone does that." Which makes sense, since it's not a fundamentally different skill-set than "do you notice that noise that's out of place" that indicates someone sneaking around. If you need a mystical way to intuit someone isn't lying, then skills aren't for that sort of thing.
There are no current PF2 ancestries that have more than 1 pair of arms (though Conrasu are a question here.) The closest thing we have for an ancestry like that would be in the Starfinder 2nd Edition Playtest document which read:
But the Starfinder 2e playtest is going to start eventually and that will have rules (possibly different rules) for Kasatha, etc. which you could use in your PF2 game. But it's a tricky thing since Pathfinder 2e clearly treats "doesn't leave you with a free hand" as a cost for 2h weapons. So if you're using a big d12 weapon or a d10 polearm, that comes at the cost of having a free hand to grapple, use a shield, etc.
I mean, the Gunslinger is built around "you get to combine something else with your reload action" whether it's moving or your special way ability. It's possible there should be more options to multitask like that, but it's not like the reload action is supposed to be a complete tax on those classes. It's a pretty strong disincentive to picking up a reload weapon on a class that doesn't get something like that though.
I don't agree that reload weapons are bad. Even with the best weapons in the game, I rarely see characters making more than 2 attacks per round which someone with a reload weapon can do half the time (more with risky reload). Like the crossbow precision ranger seems fine to me. If anything needs to be addressed about reload weapons it's the use-cases for the lower damage ones. Like it's not clear to me what the purpose of the flintlock pistol or the air repeater is. The Sniper Gunslinger with the Arquebus can actually be hellaciously effective in my experience.
I mean, doesn't "good against individuals, struggles against groups because of no AoE options" also describe the Fighter, a class most people agree might be too good? To me, the Gunslinger as it is seems to exist in order to make a version of the fighter that fixes that "+2 to hit is an overwhelming advantage on other classes" issue.
I mean, if you want to be a character in PF2e who has ties to hell and is interested in upholding laws and ending threats to a stable society, but isn't a terrible person then Dispater is right there. He was the Archdevil in 2e that granted spells to LN people and his edicts are basically "Uphold law, perfect your surroundings, be refined" while his anathema are "act above your station, let your guard down, betray a lover." A follower of Dispater would want to make their homeland orderly, safe, and better (from a certain perspective); he's the architect of Hell and is more interested in "setting an example for others" than "conquest." If you're a Chelaxian patriot who is devoted to any of the archdevils, that's going to be accepted because all of them are subservient to Asmodeus anyway. It's probably normal in Cheliax for bankers, say, to devote themselves to Mammon more than Asmodeus.
Asmodeus is supposed to be one of the two "Big Bads" of the entire setting, so you're not going to be getting power from him directly without being wholly committed to the cause of evil; IIRC that's not allowed in PFS and probably will continue to not be. But millions of people in Cheliax are observant of the state religion to varying degrees and don't get infernal power as a result. I mean, Asmodeus is not shy about his agenda being to eliminate free will in the universe and subjugate everything. He's basically Darkseid to Rovagug's Anti-Monitor. The only thing in the setting that's nearly as evil as those two is the Oinodaemon, and Asmodeus is the most active of the three in terms of "working towards his goals." I would say he's a much bigger ultimate villain than Rovagug.
Asmodeus is supposed to be one of the two "Big Bads" of the entire setting, so you're not going to be getting power from him directly without being wholly committed to the cause of evil; IIRC that's not allowed in PFS and probably will continue to not be. But millions of people in Cheliax are observant of the state religion to varying degrees and don't get infernal power as a result.
My favorite is the Lantern King's anathema against "explaining a good joke."
Like the idea behind giving the rogue bespoke weapon proficiencies to begin with was "rogues should be using rogueish weapons". When that changed because bespoke proficiencies are pretty messy when it comes to things like archetypes, the whole "rogues should be using rogueish weapons" thing never changed. Of the martial weapons, d6 and below contains relatively few weapons that are thematically inappropriate for a rogue, whereas d8+ contains a lot of weapons that are thematically inappropriate for a rogue.
I think there was a missed opportunity to cap the Thief at sneak attacking with d6 weapons, honestly. Like the Dueling Spear, Aldori Dueling Sword, and Elven Curve Blade seem more scoundrel weapons anyway.
I mean, the pain point fixed in the remaster was that "specific weapon proficiencies" don't really interact well with the rest of the rules that talk about things like "proficiency in [class] of weapons." So you got rogues with martial proficiency and wizards with simple proficiency. This has benefits in that you can now access, say, the Aldori dueling sword with one feat. Ruffians can effectively use every single weapon they could use pre-remaster, and they can also use some other weapons. This wasn't a nerf, but a buff and people seem perturbed that it was not enough of a buff, which is odd because the pre-remaster rogue was honestly a good class.
The one pause I would have for making the normal thing with spells to add your casting mod to damage is that it would make things like AoE or multitarget spells much, much better. Like a 3 action 5th rank force barrage cast by a 10th level wizard would go from 9*3.5 average to 9*7.5 damage if it were 1d4+Mod instead of 1d4+1. Part of the argument for adding it to cantrips way back in the beginning of PF2 was that those are generally single target.
I think Pathfinder is sort of like Diablo where "Law" and "Chaos" as ideals are both hostile to mortals. So mortals who would prefer to keep things basically livable in their plane probably should not ally with either cause. Like neither Aeons nor Proteans have your interests in mind in any way whatsoever. Angels and Fiends will at least sometimes pretend to offer things in your interests, even if you disagree fundamentally on what's in your best interest.
I think the point about weakness exploitation is about cantrips as a class of spells, rather than a specific tradition. Divine and Occult, lacking material essence, were never supposed to be the traditions that could access a wide array of damage types. They get other things instead and this hasn't really changed (though divine lance got a *lot* better.)
One of the basic reasons to bar polearms from ruffians is "it's hard to be sneaky carrying a 7'pole." Of all the various "it's just long, by design" weapons the easiest one to pass off as something else is the spear since it's got the least ostentatious metal part and it's a precise weapon (unlike, say, a bardiche). But honestly I wouldn't be adverse to not being able to sneak attack with spears either.
I'm a fan of the Urumi for the Ruffian (access by being from Vudra or Jalmeray). It's d6 martial, but deadly d10.
Geokineticist+Mountain Style Monk could be a fun character. Notably, you can still attack at range in Mountain Stance because Impulses and kinetic blasts are not strikes.
Generally, any time there is a rules update that would require significantly reworking a character, it's better to finish up that character's story before implementing the rules update. Like if you were in the middle of a PF1 campaign when PF2 dropped, it probably was for the best to finish up that PF1 campaign before moving over to PF2. So if you have a 5th level Diviner Wizard, let that player stay a Diviner Wizard as long as they want, because all the rules for playing that are available in existing books released under the OGL.
I think the purpose of having different modes is just to indicate when you shouldn't be tracking things on a round by round basis. There were some weird edge cases in the previous edition that could come up by measuring in distinct 6 second intervals that generally didn't make sense in non-tense scenarios. There are, of course, circumstances when you do want to count in round by round intervals that don't involve combat- like when the guard patrolling this floor just went around the corner, so can you pick the lock and get into the room before they loop back around? I would say that's encounter mode by virtue of "you avoid combat by rolling well enough."
I'm genuinely curious why Force Barrage wasn't 1d6 (average 3.5) instead of 1d4+1 (average 3.5).
I would say that most Law vs. Chaos stories that exist out there in the culture are also not set in a world where "Good" and "Evil" are actual things that objectively exist. Like there aren't angels and demons in Footloose.
It feels like they were deliberately trying to "remove ability mods from cantrips for consistency" not "change how much damage spells tend to do" because it looks like they set the remaster damage as close to the original damage, on average, as they could.If they wanted to do that they'd have changed Cantrips to deal dice + 4 damage. If you can add a fixed +1 to the damage magic missiles do you can do it for cantrips. Don't most spells just do dice in damage? Like Fireball is 6d6, Disintegrate is 12d10, etc. For consistency it's good to have them all be mostly just dice.
It feels like they were deliberately trying to "remove ability mods from cantrips for consistency" not "change how much damage spells tend to do" because it looks like they set the remaster damage as close to the original damage, on average, as they could.
I think they're not particularly interested in supporting "Devils hunting Demons" or "Archons vs. Azatas" because they literally haven't foregrounded that story in any Paizo materials. We always got "CG against LE" or "LG against CE" not Good vs. Good or Evil vs. Evil. But because Paizo doesn't seem interested here, this seems like a perfect opportunity to homebrew your own stuff for these interactions if those are the stories you want to tell.
Another thing about dropping the old "schools of magic" is that it was largely a vestigial system that existed almost exclusively for the Wizard class. Clerics, Bards, Druids, Sorcerers, Psychics, etc. barely cared whether the spells they cast were Abjuration or Necromancy or Transmutation or whatever. Sure there were a few things that keyed off the school of a spell, like the Magus's Arcane Cascade or the Dweomercat familiar but honestly having Arcane Cascade add a small amount of extra mental damage or fire damage instead of force damage honestly wasn't that interesting. It's probably not worth it to have a whole subsystem involving traits that go on lots of things that basically only serves one class, as iconic and important as that class might be.
I really don't see the cantrip nerf to be all that significant. The justification behind it was "it's weird to have most spells not add your casting modifier to damage, but some spells do." For example, Telekinetic Projectile went from 1d6+4 (average 7.5) to 2d6 (average 7)- that's not a huge nerf. Sure, you stat mod will eventually go to +5 and +6 (or +7) but at 10th level and beyond you should be relying on your cantrips much less than you were at low levels.
I feel like if the GM has a good reason to not want to allow teleport in the campaign, they should simply also not allow the school that grants it.
People do go to college to major in civil engineering IRL, you know. Yeah, I think the schools specifically are there to point out that most people go to Wizard school to learn something much more practical than "theory." Your "Pure Mathematics PhD Wizards" are Universalists. Everybody else learned something useful.
But not confident fighters or barbarians or bards or champions? I mean, IIRC the Player's Guide for Strange Aeons in PF1 suggested not allowing Paladins because of how readily the class becomes immune to fear. It's the same sort of thing- there's a lot of adjustments you need to make with a horror campaign. I'm not saying there's not an exemplar that couldn't work in a horror campaign, but I might want to hear the player's idea of how their character's personal legend would complement the story rather than overshadowing it.
It's worth noting that one of the design principles of PF2 from the very beginning is "complexity is the currency through which we buy depth" with the understanding is depth is inherently good while complexity is not. You could absolutely have a system where a character would be really good with axes and guns, passable with blunt weapons and polearms, but terrible with bows and swords. But that's complexity that doesn't really buy you anything; after all if you want your character to not know how to shoot a bow, you can just have them eschew picking up a bow.
But do you do the same restriction for an Oracle/Sorcerer/Kineticist? I always like to do a session zero or at least talk to people about their characters before the campaign. So yeah, if I was planning something around "surviving in the desert" I might suggest a player not play a dual gate water/wood kineticist since you would completely trivialize a lot of the challenges inherent in that story. But while a wood/water kineticist would be an issue, an earth/fire one really wouldn't so it's not an issue with the class. The big issue with the exemplar is that thematically it sort of runs contrary to games where the PCs are supposed to feel frightened or vulnerable in the circumstances they find themselves in. In large part because it's "abundant confidence, the class."
Having "here is the full list of spells you're extra good at" just front and center is a huge savings in overhead.That was where things like archives of nethys came to the rescue. There was that list you where talking about for pre-remaster as it is the official online resource and allows sort by Level, sort by School and add Heightenable spells in for the level they can be heightened to. That meant you were looking at a manageable list for a particular level and each spell gives a small blurb about what it does so you can narrow down what ones you want to click on for a full description. I mean, sure. But the game should function with just a book without having to use third party software to make it simpler. Plus AoN is really good for "figuring out a specific thing that fits what you need, like "I am looking for a martial weapon with reach and disarm" but if you actually want to do a survey of all the options actually picking through a book (or a PDF) is way better since you don't have to click on every single spell or feat. The new schools having exactly two spells of each tier to look up and learn is a lot easier than "having to look at every spell on your list at a given level to look for traits."
The Remaster schools are the fixed courses for people who cannot / do not want to delve deep into the Wizard's possibilities. They simplify choice where the old system increased it. Yeah, the old schools were "you can prepare an extra spell from the transmutation school" so a lot of people would be like "cool, what spells are those?" which involves hunting through books since those spells aren't actually grouped, you just have to look at the tags on every single spell to find the ones that are the right for you. For a lot of veterans of the game this is NBD, but for new players this kind of sucks. I've been playing games like this since the 80s and I confess that my eyes kind of glaze over when reading long sections that are just spell after spell (or item after item.) Having "here is the full list of spells you're extra good at" just front and center is a huge savings in overhead.
Is this a question about order of operations? Since you'd choose "Dwarf Lore" in step 3 of your Dwarven Cleric but wouldn't choose "Cleric" until step 5 and both train you in religion. I think RAI, you're supposed to be refunded one skill training that way. Since the "building a character" section is more of a set of guidelines than hard and fast rules. I don't see a reason a player could not start out by saying "I'm going to play a Cleric" then choosing an Ancestry and Background afterwards, like that doesn't seem proscripted by rule.
I feel like the whole case for "martial weapons and simple weapons being different" is that "a spear" is the classic peasant weapon in every civilization that went to war. They're easy to make and anybody with half a day of training can use it effectively. This is very different from a sword or a longbow. Most of the simple weapons are "whack them" or "stick them with the pointy end" or "point and shoot" whereas martial weapons are not something anybody can just pick up and use effectively. PF2 is much better about "Martial and Advanced indicate level of training" than exoticism, since like the kusarigama and katana are martial weapons.
Depends on the campaign. In something like a normal heroic campaign, probably. In something like a gritty survival horror campaign, probably not. I wouldn't say "you can't play that character" but more I would suggest saving that particular character to a campaign they are a better match for.
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