QuidEst's page

Scent-blind sighted investigator through a comm unit translation: "Please describe the person you observed near the airlock."

Vision-blind smelling witness, having smelled a barathu: "They were a barathu."

Investigator, knowing roughly what barathu look like: "How big were they?"

Witness, having not smelled anything stronger than usual: "Not much bigger than me, in terms of overall size."

Investigator, writing down "medium size": "And can you tell me what color they were?"

Witness, not knowing what smells map to what colors but knowing some details of what they smelled: "No, but they were pretty old and had a strongly medicinal smell to them."

Investigator, not knowing what knowing what an old vs. young barathu smells like but knowing that older barathu tend to turn more gray, writing down "grayish(?) with manufacturer heritage": "Thank you, that should be enough to get started on."

But how would such a vlaka describe things because if they can't see what a person looks like, only smell them that could lead to some problems later on if they are needing to describe a person and they can only say what they smelled like.

They would still smell what ancestry the person is, what materials they are wearing, how large the person is, probably some other things like hair/fur length because that has its own smell, along with some other useful details like perhaps what the person ate- not as useful for picking someone out in a crowd by sight, but more useful for running purchase histories at the local diner. They would certainly be able to recognize the person later.

If they know in advance they'll need to relay a description to scent-blind people, they could take a picture with their suit comm.

If there's time afterwards to give a description, they can give it to a sighted vlaka artist, and use scent-based terminology that can then be turned into a black and white sketch. Communicate over the comm, even- the artist doesn't have to be there physically.

Or, an olfactory description might work fine on its own. It certainly would be more useful to other vlaka than a visual description, and they're not the only ancestry with a good sense of smell.

Good luck with the campaign!

Technically Blinded says:

Quote:

All normal terrain is difficult terrain to you.

But I think we all understand that assumes no other precise sense. Which Vlaka have.

That's the blinded condition specifically, which the rules call out as not being what you use for a character who has been blind for a long time.

Hey, I dunno what else to tell you. A precise sense is defined as "a sense that can be used to perceive the world in nuanced detail", and average eyesight is the example. If the vlaka in your head is missing major things like stairs and holes in the ground, then according to the rules, the sense of smell you're imagining for them isn't good enough yet.

Don't worry too much about edge cases. Vision has edge cases like "what if something is transparent", "what if somebody has a bag over their head", "what if there isn't a light source", and "what if the thing is around a corner".

I never said read lips was powergamey. That's your assumption you came up with on the fly. Its not because you would still have to know the language being spoken and what happens if said creature doesn't have lips or their mouth is covered?

snip
Also no one answered about if you're deaf and then get the hearing aid at lvl 1, does that cancel out the advantages you got from being deaf?

You said that getting the benefits of being deaf while removing deafness would be power-gaming. The benefits of being deaf are the Read Lips feat, and I don't think that would be power-gamey; that was me answering the question. The other benefits come from being blind. If you're talking about a deaf-blind vlaka removing the deaf portion and getting to keep precise scent instead of precise hearing... I don't see that as a big difference? They're still range-limited and losing out on a more common precise vision, and they don't get the benefits of the Read Lips feat.

I'm not sold on deafblind vlaka being able to "see" things they really would have trouble with detecting. It's getting silly.

From a rules standpoint, it's a precise sense. If you're not making sighted characters roll to not walk into clear glass windows or to find a black object when the lights are on, don't do the equivalent for precise scent.

If we were actually being realistic, precise scent would come with a lot of benefits, like being able to tell who had been in the area recently, sensing things around corners, etc. There's some simplification going on in both directions.

Mangaholic13 wrote:

R3st8 wrote:

moosher12 wrote:

R3st8 wrote:

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "pinecone"? Are you referring to an open pine cone or a closed one? The spiky type or the smoother type? Yellow, brown, reddish, or dark? I'm a bit confused because not only is it hard to picture a pine cone dragon, but it’s also not exactly the first image that comes to mind when someone says "rune dragon." The first image that pops into my head is a dragon covered in glowing neon full-body tattoos, like magical runes carved into its body. I’m curious about what design they came up with.

bazelgeuse-like

Monster hunter dragons are quite unique but but so long as there is a classical looking dragon it will be great, maybe the cinder dragon will do the job, the iconic red fire breathing dragon is such as staple you can't really go wrong with it.

That's definitely gonna be Primal's area.

...Diabolic Dragon not enough?

technically speaking alignment is gone but when you put diabolical in the name, put its the will of hell incarnate in the description and give a skull face that looks like diablo its really becomes hard to roleplay otherwise, also that spike in the chest just look like its going to impale the neck and make it impossible to sleep laying down I cant unsee it, I want a neutral normal looking dragon just that.

There's a cinder dragon on the Shining Kingdoms cover. It's definitely a dragon-flavored dragon.

How would a blind and deaf Vlaka "see" things like say stairs?

An abrupt angling of the scents of people who've passed by, and probably a shift in the way the air moves their own scent around- a stronger concentration for an ascending staircase blocking its spread, and a weaker concentration for a descending staircase opening up more air ahead.

A hole in the ground they are going to fall into? Seems they wouldn't.

It wouldn't smell like the ground there. Their own scent would have more space to diffuse out into. And of course, how do people avoid falling into holes in the dark? By not putting their feet somewhere without feeling first. That, with a lifetime of practice.

How would they communicate? I mean they can't hear or see people, only smell and a person who has been deaf their whole life usually has trouble with speaking?

Vlaka are usually raised in communities that are used to a variety of senses. They can speak, sign, and communicate tactilely just fine. Other Vlaka would normally use tactile communication, and when dealing with people who don't know tactile languages, it's probably easiest for them to communicate via a comm using tactile or haptics output.

If something had no smell to it, wouldn't this Vlaka be effectively totally unable to sense it?

To the same degree that if something is completely black, you can't see it- harder to spot in the dark, but not somehow undetectable. They've got scent as a precise sense, putting it it on par with vision out to 90 feet. That means they can tell where the gaps are too- something blocking the flow of odors without contributing anything of its own.

ALSO does a deaf Vlaka who gets the very easily bought hearing aid lose their advantages they gained from being deaf? Otherwise seems a bit powergamey to take a flaw and then cancel it right out but still get the other advantages?

... The Read Lips skill feat? Nah, I don't think that'd be powergamey. It's unusual for vlakas to do, sure, but if they do, it's not gonna cause an issue.

Apart from some early growing pains as the AP writers adjusted to PF2, the biggest issues I've run into with APs seem to have stemmed from the limitations of the monthly format- bases and locations getting discarded because they weren't ready for the next author, abrupt shifts in tone or theme, important details not getting to the GM until it's too late, that sort of thing. APs are still going to frequently be multi-author, so I don't expect all the wrinkles to be ironed out, but I'll be happy to see the shift in action eventually.

That's interesting. I suppose leveling up speed also influences the appetite for this.

I recently started GMing Strength of Thousands and Sky King's Tomb and I've actually been startled at how fast they're going (at the beginning). We play 5H sessions and don't particularly rush the story, but after three sessions in SKT the players just hit level 3 (by chapter milestone) and in SoT they hit level 2 after session 2 as well.

So that's actually considerably faster than in PFS. I doubt it's gonna continue at exactly that speed, but I've also hit a stride of leveling up every 2-4 sessions as a player in Age of Ashes and Agents of Edgewatch.

Traditionally I think home campaigns tended to move really slowly, I know mine did. If it takes a long time to gain a couple of levels, then I agree you'd like more choices to make when you do level up. PF2 does a bit less per-level than before, but it makes sure there's something every level and the levels seem to come faster.

Let's see... the Season of Ghosts game I'm in is level 7 after a year, so that's a level-up every two months. The Depths of Fort Galest is two years in and level 9, so that's a level-up every three months on average. And finally, The Days of Revelle recently hit level 2 after four months of play. They're all weekly games, but scheduling around different continents and chronic conditions means sessions tend to be three hours.

QuidEst wrote:

But if I'm sitting down to build out a character I'm going to be playing about once a week for the next two or three years, yeah, I do actually usually need both a bit of the class feats and something else to have a good time.

Note, I'm NOT trying to say you're wrong in any way. You get to decide what makes a good time for you. Just expressing my own personal opinion.

I have a significantly different opinion on this. While I agree that lacking Free Archetype can make a small (very small, in my view) number of character concepts unachievable (or at least not achievable in a fun way) there are still zillions of character concepts that actually ARE quite achievable.

If I'm playing in a non FA game I just choose one of the concepts that I CAN build. And there are still a great many concepts that are fun (to me) AND that I haven't played before. Heck, there are still classes that I've never played.
.

Oh yeah, definitely. That's why I initially said "I find" and "it helps". I'm kind of picky with my own classes, and when it comes to helping someone else, I want to have plenty of tools to help represent what they want.

I see, so it's like natural handwraps with natural runes. I like that they are getting creative, but I just hope they don’t go too far toward Disney-style dragons or silly cartoon dragons, like those from How to Train Your Dragon, with the goofy, googly, round eyes and huge, tractor-like lower jaws.

Barrage Dragon was probably the most like that. Definitely has the big tractor-like lower jaw, at any rate. It's not my speed, but my friend definitely appreciated it, and it looks like we're getting a nice variety.

Okay, so, that lovechild, raised on a steady diet of Lovecraft's nightmares, the works of David Cronenberg, and copying the look of a False Hydra?

Yeah, False Hydra is probably closer to the vibes.

I'm guessing the following dragons are in the following Traditions (feel free to correct me):

Arcana:
Barrage
Rune
Sage

Occult:
Despair
Time
Requiem

Divine:
Mocking
Delight
Cinder

Primal:
Bog
Rime
Magma

Also... DnD has Havoc dragons!?

Mocking is occult, and I think Requiem is divine, but I don't know. Cinder is primal. We didn't get all the dragons revealed. Mocking dragons have something of a court jester thing going on, relying more on "being a dragon" to not get in trouble instead of "having the king's personal favor".

D&D doesn't have Havoc dragons; they're PF1. Given all the other PF1-originals have gotten new names, I suspect that Paizo is interested in not leaving an loose OGL connections with shared dragon names, even with their own OGL dragons.

...Sounds like what you'd get if you crossbred a Seregios and a Bazelgeuse from Monster Hunter.

Which is a very terrifying idea.

I'm afraid I couldn't say.

Despair dragons sound like the unholy lovechild of Grand Fisher and that monster from the Spongebob Movie.

Not creepy enough; think creepier. Also fleshier.

Interesting. You know what we can expect for Primal and Divine?

Lemme go look it up, since I'm mainly here for occult and arcane, with an honorary shoutout to Starfinder's host dragon for catching my attention.

Requiem
Barrage
Mocking (previously Copper)
Delight (previously Havoc)
Time
Despair
Rune
Magma
Sage (previously Bronze)
Cinder (previously Red)
Rime (previously White)
Bog (previously Black)

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "pinecone"? Are you referring to an open pine cone or a closed one? The spiky type or the smoother type? Yellow, brown, reddish, or dark? I'm a bit confused because not only is it hard to picture a pine cone dragon, but it’s also not exactly the first image that comes to mind when someone says "rune dragon." The first image that pops into my head is a dragon covered in glowing neon full-body tattoos, like magical runes carved into its body. I’m curious about what design they came up with.

The rune dragons have oversized scales that don't lay entirely flat, each with a rune on it. They're a bronze-y color, and look distinctly like they shed scales individually. One is put in mind of pinecones and leg warmers.

QuidEst wrote:

Free archetype allows for a lot more character customization and options. Without it, it can feel like you're just picking from a few pre-fabricated versions of your class. Relatedly, it's also something that's more valuable for players who aren't new to the game- trying out PF2 Fighter or Thaumaturge for the first time, the new system provides some of the novelty. Once that wears off, I find free archetype helps keep things fresh and varied.

If the group enjoys free archetype that's fine of course. But I don't agree that it's required to overcome this staleness problem. I think the root cause of the staleness problem is people feeling that some of their main class feats are already locked in. That you couldn't take a "paid" archetype because you MUST take so many of your regular class feats.

Can't you live without them? Doesn't the "paid" archetype give you something comparably good?

I'm having trouble with the idea that on the one hand the archetype isn't good enough to take if you had to pay for it, but on the other hand that without it the game isn't fun enough. Is it valuable or not?

(I'm not against enjoying free archetype, but I'm skeptical of "needing" it.)

For some classes, sure. I can throw away every single Thaumaturge feat without a second thought- a quarter of their feats are already just archetype feats, and the class has plenty of customization with their implements. Trying to play a Kineticist or Summoner that way? Definitely not for me. So much of what their class is is tied up in those class feats. And, in fairness, those are classes with feats that provide more in-class variety.

It's also not really a matter of "is the archetype worth it or not". It's "without free archetype, it'd be several months of playing with a half-baked implementation for a concept that requires both". Starting at higher levels is also a very valid way to address the same issue.

Obviously, that's not the case for everyone. And I should probably mention that this isn't really an opinion I hold for PFS. The levels are a lot faster and it's not just one character. But if I'm sitting down to build out a character I'm going to be playing about once a week for the next two or three years, yeah, I do actually usually need both a bit of the class feats and something else to have a good time.

Free archetype allows for a lot more character customization and options. Without it, it can feel like you're just picking from a few pre-fabricated versions of your class. Relatedly, it's also something that's more valuable for players who aren't new to the game- trying out PF2 Fighter or Thaumaturge for the first time, the new system provides some of the novelty. Once that wears off, I find free archetype helps keep things fresh and varied.

Tying the archetypes to kingdom role is a nice thematic choice. You can always post a thread where you list the roles and the archetypes you're thinking about in order to get some input and suggestions. If you get enough, then you can even off your choice of two for each role.

Free archetype does up the customization, which means you can get a wider divide between somebody coming in with a power-gaming mindset and somebody making choices for thematic reasons first. It would be something to keep an eye on normally depending on your players, but in this case, the pre-selected archetypes will mostly avoid that.

keftiu wrote:

Lost Omens: Draconic Codex was announced a few months ago.

I just took a look at the page, anything other news? I haven't been paying a lot of attention to pf2 or ttrpg recently.

Judging from the page the most interesting part seems to be the new dragonet ancestry.

Conspirator dragon wasn't weird and messed up enough, so they're making despair dragons with person-shaped lures at the end of their tongues.

We're also getting pinecone-esque rune dragons and gunboat-esque barrage dragons over in arcane.

Outside of remaster stuff, any hints as to what changes were made?

On the stream, they mentioned addressing wood Kineticist potentially trivializing some scarcity issues as an example of feedback that was taken into account.

Eh, sure- but you can't eat in our space suits, or fight effectively, and they have pretty limited use-time. And taking slashing or piercing damage in one becomes a pretty urgent problem...

I can certainly understand the frustration, though. For me, it's wanting playable undead to feel more undead and have some of those unbalanced immunities.

I think a nice addition would be a hazmat suit that does provide those broad immunities, but comes with some of the drawbacks that are why people don't wear that sort of thing normally.

QuidEst wrote:

It wasn't done for PF2 compatibility, it was done because of their experience with SF1 environmental protections being too strong (and immunities in general being too common with things like SROs). It's something they talked a little about.

I can appreciate that....but I still don't like it. A bit for legacy reasons, but also simply because of how environmental protections should work, and the narrative dissonance I mentioned of being fine not breathing in space (for potentially their whole life span) but somehow the inhaled poison hurts them despite not breathing.

Sure. I'm coming from the other direction, I suppose. In the playtest, androids couldn't survive in space unprotected for any amount of time. Now they can. I much prefer having the consistency of "androids in both SF1 and SF2 can take a casual space-walk" over the avoiding the breathing weirdness by always requiring breathing.

It wasn't done for PF2 compatibility, it was done because of their experience with SF1 environmental protections being too strong (and immunities in general being too common with things like SROs). It's something they talked a little about.

Tridus wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I think they will build the psychic like the new Oracle with a third resource pool that keys off their psychic abilities. I think that fits the class much better as well.

Feels unlikely given the constraints on updates to these books. I'm thinking closer to "tweaks" than "major functional changes."

Why would you think this when the only reason to redo these books is to make substantial changes?

Psychic is one of the classes that needs some serious improvements. With what they did with the oracle and witch, not sure why they would redo the psychic to keep them pretty much the same.

I expect pretty massive changes to the psychic as it doesn't play very well.

Oracle and Witch aren't the point of comparison, though. They got new books, and this is not a new book. Guns & Gears is the actual point of comparison- no new book name, everybody who owned the PDF received a free updated copy, and very few things changed. Inventor was in a similar boat to Psychic, and only received some small number tweaks that allowed it to be changed without changing any page numbers.

"The only reason to redo the books is to make substantial changes" is the premise I don't agree with. It's being redone because it was under OGL license, and did things like mention owlbears, alignment, flat-footed, and other odds-and-ends that need cleaning up in the move to ORC. So, a little more substantial than a usual reprint cycle, but less significant than Player Core 1 or 2.

Energy weapons do scale their capacity. Projectile weapons will eventually have their own advantage in the form of special ammo. (We'll actually get some in an AP this year.) I wouldn't be surprised to see an ammo-focused archetype at some point.

I would like to see a Fulu Scribe archetype. One that lets you make a number of free fulus per day.

We kind of got a free fulu archetype already, it is just a bit more involved. Familiar Sage, Fulu Familiar.

If a summoner takes the Hulking and Towering Size, does the condensed form have a Large and Huge size and the dispersed form a Huge and Gargantuan size ?

With magical understudy/adept/master, can an eidolon choose an uncommon or rare spell ?

Yep!

Same restrictions as uncommon and rare spells for casters, probably.

It's worth noting that the GM determines if you can use reactions before your first turn "depending on the situation in which the encounter happens". So if you aren't ambushed, it's pretty safe to presume on the party having reactions. Commander can always hand one out if not.

I'll leave my old playtest thread here for shenanigan options.

I'd talk with the player, of course. I think the problem is that this player probably would be fine with "my character won't accept your reactions" or someone's character refusing divine healing for character reasons. As a result, those won't be useful examples. It's probably good to know how much of the anti-war thing is at a character level, and how much is the player being uncomfortable playing a soldier.

Assuming that they won't change, it's okay to go forward in an unoptimized fashion. Having a companion around will at least let you take advantage of two martial allies, even if one is mostly flanking. In-character, I would probably have your character see it as a holier-than-thou uncooperative nature, but that this is too important to stoop to their level. Try to persuade the champion that cooperation is necessary to defeat evil, and see if it can be an arc.

Witchwarper, by SF1 lore, should probably be arcane-only, pulling information, objects, energy, and creatures from other realities. However, the class also rolls in the thematically similar Precog, and that's where we get the occult elements.

The implications of making the class occult only would be a non-starter.
- Witchwarper wouldn't be able to temporarily pull in objects or energy from other realities.
- The core rulebook wouldn't have any way to use the arcane list.

I'm gonna give it a bit. I certainly expect Operative to get its subclasses looked at again. I don't necessarily expect the sniper specialization itself to get a change, but we do have the possibility of getting a a sniper rifle with different traits that isn't available at low levels.

Even with the class losing its move-on-reload ability, the end result still works a lot better for the barathu sniper I played in the playtest. Grab the traversal move-on-aim feat, and now they can aim, fly, shoot, and reload.

I wouldn't mind some more action compression or a two-shot sniper rifle for flexibility, but in the meantime, I'll keep my eye on special ammo and hope for an ammo-crafter archetype. Reloading every round does provide some benefits after all.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

There's limits to how far you can push the gameism to break immersion and being fine with walking on the moon but your armor can't help you stand on top of mount everest doesn't just break that it nukes it.

I just now started looking into Starfinder since it is technically PF2 compatible.

And basically the first thing I end up seeing in the rule-book is that a character is in a fine-unless-they-aren't situation when it comes to being outside of typical breathable atmospheric conditions.

Need to do repairs outside your starship? The basic protections imply you are fine by saying you're protected from vacuum. Yet if you're standing in vacuum and totally not having your air supply sucked out into said vacuum and someone tosses a gas grenade at you the environment outside your suit is no longer fully separate from the environment inside your suit.

Then add the thermal capacitor upgrade to the mix and either we land on player expectation and genre shattered together as "I'll go out and repair the ship" turns lethal because the vacuum of space has an extreme temperature the character isn't actually protected from. Or else it tells us that actually, in this space fantasy setting, space is normally a comfortably moderate temperature so you don't need protection from temperature just to be able to exist safely in it.

Which is to say this is a weird thing to need to house-rule in an "space adventure" kind of game. Not a hard house-rule to figure out, just awkward to have to.

Apologies in advance for the long-winded reply, but space being "cold" isn't actually a big deal, and it should at worst be "severe cold" for minor cold damage once per hour- with the VERY important note that this is only as long as you have a suit of some kind keeping everything from boiling off.

Here on earth, we're used to being surrounded by air (citation needed). When the air around us is much colder than us, heat transfers from us to the air to even things out through a mixture of conduction (warming the air around us), convection (colder air replacing the warmed air), and just a little bit of radiation that we can write off as unimportant for anything but thermal cameras.

In space, there are certainly some stray particles, but not really anything we need to concern ourselves with. Space is mostly nothing, and it's a little impractical to talk about the temperature of nothing (given how temperature is generally defined)- so when space is given a temperature, it's generally the energy of cosmic background radiation, since unheated objects left in space eventually cool down to that after hundreds of years.

If you put somebody sealed (or whatever approximation of sealed Starfinder space suits are) out into that vacuum, their heat doesn't have any way to transfer except by radiating off as infrared light. There's nothing to conduct it to and no convection occurring. There's a reason that vacuum-sealed thermoses offer excellent thermal insulation, after all. (Lying down on an airless asteroid that has had ages to cool down to the background radiation temperature? Terrible idea- no more thermos protection. That's probably outside of what the rules aim to handle, though.)

Using a few online calculators, if we take a liter of water at boiling temperature, stick it in a bubble that it can't get out of, and stick it in space, it'll take about three times as long to hit freezing temperature than if we stuck it in a regular freezer with the temperature of a cold Siberian day (-40 C, instead of space's nominal -270 C). That makes space [i]less[i] of a cold problem than the "extreme cold" category, severe at worst.

I'm hoping that the GM Core includes a little tidbit on why the cold of space isn't something that characters need to worry about in the short-term, even with just basic environmental protections. If not, I'm not too worried.

For the rest, I'm good with a hand-wavey "particles can go in easier than out", since the devs said that SF1's environmental protections posed actual problems for scenario writing. Trying to use gas weapons in open vacuum should just result in immediate dispersal of the gas anyway, so I'm never expecting to run into the bizarre situation of "protecting against the vacuum while at the same time not the gas".

I think there's maybe also some underestimating of how many people don't want to be sold Wizard a third time in the same edition.

I know I personally would prefer a new class (for example, a dedicated magical researcher class) to getting a Wizard overhaul. It's just not very interesting to talk about how I'm generally okay with Wizard. I can understand people who do want an overhaul, it's just less interesting to me than something brand new, or more space being used for options in a hypothetical options book.

I knew it. Also... while it's arguable if it's RAI, it is RAW that... well... nothing says the mines have to go on the GROUND. attach them to walls, let them float in air.

The rules do actually say that things fall down, so I don't really see how mines staying in the air is RAW.

Like Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous but Starfinder instead?

I will bet you a million dollars there will be.

Full disclosure: I don't have a million dollars, and they announced a Starfinder CRPG kickstarter at GenCon.

2. I believe that contemplative generally use forcefield-based armor to protect their brains. Stuff like lashunta mind mail. Source: Era of the Eclipse.

If I have an option that heals or gives temporary hp on a strike, the coolest option (in my entirely subjective opinion) is for that to be on a jaws strike. Kholos with Crunch, bestial mutagen aficionados, awakened leeches, dhampirs- they all appreciate the theming.

We're three for three on that getting shut down, though.

First off, the remaster took Glutton's Jaws and swapped it from giving you a jaws strike granting temp HP, making it make some separate jaws. Good for Sorcerer, bad for my weird multiclass Thaumaturge builds. Fair enough- it's on the Sorcerer, so it should be good for Sorcerer.

Exemplar's Barrow's Edge is piercing or slashing, but it's weapons only so it won't work with jaws or claws.

And, most recently, an item called "Leeching Fangs" is also weapon-only, so you can't use it to have actual leeching fangs.

(Semi-related, dhampirs didn't get their uncommon blood-drinking feat for temp HP reprinted in the remaster. That one isn't actually tied to a jaws strike, but it's in the same ballpark.)

To properly embody entropy, everyone must use a random password generator to create the name of the class as it exists for their character.

Justnobodyfqwl wrote:

"Vlakas who witnessed the rebirth of their dying sun, Sota, are marked with starburst patterns that match their natural blessing to kindle light."

That's right everyone.... LASER WOLVES 2.0

And at the Festival of Rekindling, you can buy a miniature replica of the star, Sota.

Yes, that means you can have a...

MINI SOTA.

Makes me wonder if the core is a ball of twine...

QuidEst wrote:

keftiu wrote:

This being the team's first game is a little worrying.

Kingmaker was Owlcat's first game, and they followed it up by getting Wrath of the Righteous solidly into the top ten CRPGs on Steam. So, I'm not gonna worry too much about it being this studio's first game. It worked out pretty well last time, and I think SF2 will involve... less wrangling of the system than PF1, let's say?

I do not think it is impolite or incorrect to say that Starfinder 2e feels HEAVILY made to be a video game, while Pathfinder 1e is a loose collection of agreements between people to pretend that there's a functioning game.

I'm kinda surprised more people aren't like, heads over heels excited about this. This means a level of trust and confidence in keeping Starfinder 2e around for many years. This means a whole new onboarding process for new players to enjoy Starfinder 2e. This means that new players to the 2efinder system will start with the funny and friendly Starfinder 2e as their first!

I think that's a GREAT business move from Paizo- at this point, Pathfinder 2e is really daunting for a new player. Several DOZENS of classes, trying to understand Pre-Master vs Remaster, and 5 years of changing design principles makes the game just kind of... unfriendly.

I've had SO much more luck pitching Starfinder 2e to my friends. Look, it's funny! It's got personality and a sense of humor! And by the way, it's new, so you don't have a lot of stuff to learn or filter through!

I suspect that this new CRPG will achieve something similar for a wider gaming audience. I can't wait, and I wish the team the best of luck!

Oh, I'm absolutely head-over-heels excited for this- I'm planning on getting my friend a copy, since they played through Wrath of the Righteous a bunch despite not knowing PF1. I'll be streaming my own playthrough for them- hoping to be able to play some approximation of my deadly undead gameshow host for it.

I'm expecting the three-action system to mean a very satisfying play experience in combat.

It's also worth noting that you can pretty effectively turn Mystic into a 10 hitpoint class with no healing pool using Network Shield. The fact that in the playtest it could effectively be a 12-16 hitpoint class... might have something to do with some of the changes.

This being the team's first game is a little worrying.

Kingmaker was Owlcat's first game, and they followed it up by getting Wrath of the Righteous solidly into the top ten CRPGs on Steam. So, I'm not gonna worry too much about it being this studio's first game. It worked out pretty well last time, and I think SF2 will involve... less wrangling of the system than PF1, let's say?

Mystic's feature is a much bigger impact that Witchwarper's, and I think that cut had to go somewhere.

Another possibility is that it's necessary with that perpetually regenerating pool of health. An at-will one action heal means that nobody is ever out of the fight until either the Mystic is unconscious or characters are dead dead. If Mystic is the lowest nominal health, it might help a little with that.

Hmm. As for why I think it'd be the more common reaction- I'm used to seeing people excited about when a new option comes out that overlaps with what their existing character already does, rather than being disappointed. Wanting that consensus... well, I'm somebody who enjoys out-of-combat options, and avoiding overlap with permanent choices really cuts down on those.

It's clearly not as universal as I'd thought, so I'll go ahead and drop the topic. Sorry to have been so dismissive; it wasn't the appropriate tone. My preferences aren't of any greater weight than anyone else's.

Good point on Snare Genius- I only looked at skill feats; I didn't check over the Kobold feats. In this case, that sounds like it'd be pretty relevant, and Survival would have to wait after all.

What's a "mega-adventure", as opposed to an adventure path?

I'm personally more inclined towards "stuck in a situation" adventures where I have a wider variety of options for characters. Signal of Screams is a good example where you can play a contest winner, celebrity, corporate rep, etc., rather than just someone set on vanquishing a foe. I certainly expect SF2 will have its share of vanquishing, of course.

I've generally used Thaumaturge when I need a playable merchant character. They're charsima-based, they have some semi-unique items, and they have two chains of feats for free item creation.

Alchemist is certainly a solid contender as well, better able to hand items out to allies for them to use, and intelligence makes for good Earn a Living rolls off of a Lore.

Prescient Planner and Prescient Consumable are a big way to make a merchant character feel like one- especially if used for something like selling somebody exactly what they need when they need it.

It’s been a really bad last 2 days for me. Is anyone complaining boiling notes about Gencon reveals? Or is that all happening in specific product threads?

This GenCon seems pretty focused on giving Starfinder time to shine during its launch. We got an upcoming Kickstarter for a Starfinder CRPG, and a few details about a book of Starfinder ancestries (and expansions to the core ancestries).

Pathfinder preview/announcement stuff will be in a stream on the 15th.

So, you're not missing too much, at least in terms of "things that get put into GenCon reveal summaries". There have been plenty of interviews and chats and streamers talking about new or recent material.

Hmm, maybe I should take another look at a PFS animist with focus on "so what's missing in today's party?"

I wasn't that impressed with the PF1 Medium which also tried to do the "what build am I today" but most of them that I saw ended up locked into the same build every day. Maybe PF2 does it better though.

Animist seems to do two major things better than Medium, and one minor thing.

- There's more on the chassis itself. It's a full caster with medium armor, and none of the apparitions lock you out of using any of that. Even if you completely whiff on your spirit selection for the day, you have divine spells and at least some useful off-list spells.

Medium was barely a caster and barely a martial, with their spirit of the day getting them up to "a partial caster" or "a weak martial". If you picked the wrong spirit, there wasn't much to fall back on, and using some of the spirits too much locked you out of some of that baseline.

- On the other side, the apparitions are doing less, and there's more flexibility within the day for them. You've got two-to-four apparitions giving you your spontaneous spells- amongst all of them, you probably have something useful for those slots. The only thing your primary apparition does is give you a focus spell. Rather than Medium trying to completely redefine itself, Animist just bends in one direction or another. You also pick from two-to-four roles that you can bend towards during the day, and you have the ability to flex between them during the day, instead of only one.

- The minor thing is wandering feats. If there were better coverage for these, or better "defaults" if you don't have any of the right apparitions, I'd factor these more heavily, but it's still nice to be able to shift some feats around in response to the roles you have picked out for the day. Medium I think had some expensive abilities to kind of do that, but the large feat chains of PF1 made it difficult to use effectively.

In other words, you have to undo your permanent build decisions, work with your GM to let you retrain your permanent build decisions, and remain saddled with permanent build decisions that bring comparatively far less value until you do. What happens when the adventure you're in doesn't give you the downtime to retrain, and your GM doesn't just let you rebuild your character on the spot? Don't you think this is likely to cause problems?

I definitely don't think it's likely to cause problems, no. I have never played with a GM who disallows integrating new material into a character if it does a better job. If a GM doesn't allow new content to be integrated, though, then that's something to beef with the GM over, not something for Paizo to avoid publishing certain options over. The idea that something coming out that fits your character better than what you have being a bad thing just doesn't make sense to me- whether a permanent choice or a flexible one.

It does sound like a fundamental difference in our views, though- if you're coming in with an assumption of not being able to adjust around a new option, and something better-but-redundant existing makes those permanent choices feel worse, me saying "just change" or "just don't worry about it" isn't going to change your view, and vice versa.

Just because they're not in the same game does not mean it doesn't feel bad that your permanent build options are suddenly a lot less valuable and you're made to retrain. It is also very much a reduction to build diversity when it makes Crafting and Thievery much less attractive to build on an Animist. As it stands, the Animist is the class in the game with the least amount of permanent build decisions to make: their spells are prepared freely from the divine list, their apparitions can be swapped out daily, and even their feats feature wandering feats that can be retrained daily as well. Skill increases and skill feats are one of the very few permanent decisions they can make, which makes it especially poor form when those decisions are devalued.

Eh, see, I just couldn't view it that way. I'm not being made to retrain, I have the opportunity to do so and get a better representation of the game.

A little bit of Crafting and Thievery investment go a lot further with Crafter in the Vault because it leverages those skill feats better without tying down the more limited skill increases. I wouldn't expect most Animists to be looking at those usually, but now they have a reason to consider them.

This very example highlights the problem. Putting aside how the Animist very much doesn't have one of the best Perceptions in the game -- Clerics and Druids get Perception expertise much sooner, whereas classes with expert-to-legendary Perception need can continually match or exceed the Animist -- your kobold Animist finds themselves having the core of their build decisions devalued by an apparition that provides a huge number of skill increases -- and tools -- for free, and this is without accounting for the crafting portion of the vessel spell either that can't be replicated with skill feats. If your character were to accommodate that apparition, they'd want to retrain their skills as you mention in your first paragraph, and even if the GM is gracious enough to allow that heavy amount of retraining in one go, that devaluation ends up running even deeper, because your trapper kobold finds themselves having to either commit redundant skill increases to gain certain feats, or abandoning that track -- and the reason you picked that ancestry in the first place -- altogether. I would be willing to bet that the player would not be very happy with this, and I would use your very same example as a cautionary tale of why we shouldn't be designing additions to the game that devalue existing builds, to any extent.

Whoops! I saw somebody mention Animist getting master perception on a wisdom class, and didn't go verify that. Yeah, scrap that part of the hypothetical then- our hypothetical trapper kobold is an Animist to consult the spirits of the tunnels, then.

I definitely disagree with your conclusions, though. I used an example that I could see myself playing, and I'd be thrilled by the hypothetical new addition- and I at least think that would be the more common reaction. When I sat down to build my Animist trap specialist, I'd be annoyed that I couldn't fit Crafting, Thievery, and Stealth all on the same character until very high levels. So when the spirit came out, I would be really happy that I could reduce my Crafting and Thievery investments without being any worse at the skills, while increasing Stealth much earlier. There's only one redundant skill increase (not counting getting something to trained, since those are relative cheap)- Thievery needs to be Expert for a feat for better disarming. It's a very minor cost to "waste" one trained-to-expert increase to get another trained-to-expert increase and a trained-to-master increase.

Trained Crafting and expert Thievery is enough to get all the relevant skill feats. And as far as the availability of the rebuild goes, if an option comes out that fits my concept perfectly, I do expect a GM to let me adjust to accommodate it. Maybe that's not as common as my experience suggests, and perhaps I'm undervaluing the envy aspect. At least for me, this sort of thing is a positive, and I welcome any new apparitions with out-of-combat utility, regardless of whether it replicates build choices. But it's not like my opinion has any meaningful sway with Paizo's writers, so it's not that big of a deal if I'm wrong.

QuidEst wrote:

If I were playing a trapper/crafter Animist and they released Crafter in the Vault, I'd be over the moon! You're telling me that I can retrain my primary skills, dedicate an off-spirit, and scale my trained Crafting and untrained Thievery up to a secondary skill,

I'm sorry, but wouldn't you be a pretty poor trapper/crafter Animist if your Crafting proficiency were stuck at trained and your Thievery skill were untrained? What would this Animist even be doing with their permanent build options in a world where Crafter in the Vault didn't exist?

Because really, if I were a trapper/crafter Animist and Crafter in the Vault did not exist, my best bet would be to increase my Crafting and Thievery... all of which would be severely devalued by the Crafter in the Vault, which would provide the same benefits to any Animist without incurring permanent build commitments. And that's the risk. It's not just an issue of severity, though in the case of Crafter in the Vault I do think it's quite stark, it's also a matter of principle. Even small overrides like these devalue builds and are liable to make players feel bad when what few permanent choices they can make on an Animist become things any Animist can take on at little cost. Ideally, the Animist should be receiving more opportunities to have their permanent build choices truly stand out, not fewer.

"Retrain my primary skills"- to be more explicit, take my maxed out Crafting and Thievery, scale them back down to trained or untrained (depending on the prerequisites for feats needed for the concept), and get some more skills that fit the concept, while dedicating a spirit to bringing those skills back up to the level before.

I don't have to feel bad that "other Animists" are able to also get Crafting and Thievery cheaply- they're not in the same game. It's not even reducing the build diversity, because "Crafter in the Vault specialist that takes enough 'natural' Crafting and/or Thievery to support relevant feats" is still distinct, and it's now varied by whatever two skills they now get to focus on in addition.

For a concrete example, let's say I'm playing a kobold animist that is fully focused on as much of a trap-based build as I can, and I'm using Animist (no Crafter in the Vault yet) because it's one of the best perceptions in the game- Trap-spotting and disabling is the primary focus, and making them is the next most important thing. Thievery and Crafting are the most important skills, of course, but I do have a few things that fit the theme just at trained- Stealth and Survival chief amongst them. We're at level 9, so I finally got both those skills to master!

Crafter in the Vault comes out. Looks nice... Looking at Crafter in the Vault, I can now get both those skills to master just by dedicating a secondary spirit and casting a ten-minute focus spell in the morning? Nice! Time for some retraining. Crafting only has one trap-related skill feat, Snare Crafting, and it just requires trained. So, we can bump Stealth up to master, allowing waiting in ambush. For Thievery, Wary Disarmament requires expert, so we can retrain our increase to master out, and bump Survival to expert, letting us hit master in it two levels earlier than we would have. Now, we're a kobold that can better track where people go, spotting any of their traps, replace them with our own traps, and lie in wait to ambush them. Additionally, we now have Impaling Spike, Creation, Knock, and a portable workshop to better fit our theme.

Wait really!? What did Exemplar get if I may ask?

They're also on Demiplane. Level 7 epithets: Plunderer of the Hive’s Riches and Trespasser in Death’s Realm, along with a bunch of uncommon feats.

yellowpete wrote:

There's an appreciable opportunity cost to selecting the apparition though. For example, if I build for Athletics as an Animist, I'm not feeling any worse due to the existence of the Anemos apparition, since I see that an Animist without my build would have one fewer free apparition choice only to barely mimic me (lower bonus except level 1-2, can't use any of the other, arguably overall better maneuvers).

There's an appreciable opportunity cost to committing skill increases and feats too, though, is the point. The addition of the Shepherd of Errant Winds means that if I currently have an Animist where I've committed a great deal many Athletics skill increases, any other Animist can prepare an apparition to get the same benefit for Shoving, and preparing that apparition is a comparatively small opportunity cost when you can prepare several at a time, and change your loadout every day.

The problem with this kind of design is that is fundamentally subtractive, rather than additive: imagine if the Crafter in the Vault were released now instead of on the Animist's release, and long after players had starting building their Animist. Any character that would have committed skill increases towards Crafting and Thievery to become better at disabling traps would have had all of that devalued by an apparition every Animist can get that provides comparable benefits. The fact that you can get skill increases earlier is not in my opinion a big enough advantage to cover for that issue, and I do think those issues are present in the new apparitions too. My fear now is which permanent character customization options future apparitions will try to replace, and the effect this'll have on the appreciation Animist players will have for their own builds when what few permanent character choices they get to make get devalued.

I view this the exact opposite way.

If I were playing a trapper/crafter Animist and they released Crafter in the Vault, I'd be over the moon! You're telling me that I can retrain my primary skills, dedicate an off-spirit, and scale my trained Crafting and untrained Thievery up to a secondary skill, increasing the benefit of feats like Quick Repair? And I get a mobile crafting station with some restrictions, all without needing to compromise my main pick of primary spirit? That would already be great on its own, but I now have a whole set of spells specifically themed around crafting and traps! You're telling me that would be a bad thing or somehow cheapen the concept? No, it enables it so much better! Now I get two skills freed up to do whatever I had to put on the back burner before.

Anyone who was playing an Animist who relied on spirits for knowledge of questionable reliability now has "The Spirit That Provides You With Knowledge of Questionable Reliability" to add to their regular rotation! It can free up a skill feat if they want, or they can leave it in secondary and just get the thematic skill and spells.

And any Animist who heavily invested in Athletics has no problem at all, because being able to shove well is 5% of what the skill does, tops. It's not even tripping, let alone grappling. This one actually isn't useful for letting an Athletics build focus on other things because shove is such a minor part of the Athletics suite of options. Maybe your campaigns have an inordinate amount of ten-foot-wide rope bridges that fights take place on, though?

Is that all the AP brought weirdly enough? New Animist stuff is kinda crazy!

Nope. We got Exemplar stuff too.