Shield

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Our group is fighting a lot of oozes at the moment who have critical immunity and very low AC.

Am I to understand the automatic knock prone critical effects from the flail and hammer still apply to Ooze even when the double damage does not?

And for those with deadly or fatal weapons, do those effects still apply to oozes?

I found some old threads on this I didn’t want to necro and it was still debated. It doesn’t appear to be addressed in the offical FAQ/Eratta. What’s the actual RAW saying here and has there been any word from in high about RAI?


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Well once they are classes they become multiclass archetypes so we’ll have that dedication option too.


Flourish is limited to once a turn, not once a round. So if you use it on an enemies turn it won’t effect you. But if the action is somehow triggered on your turn (readied action maybe?) then you wouldn’t be able to use it if you already power attacked or wouldn’t be able to power attack if you already used this reaction. Seems extremely rare that would come up.


Martialmasters wrote:

Disarm should normally only be allowed within a reaction or readied action is the issue. Or somewhere explained that's how you get value from it.

The fact that this is not explained is sloppy at best.

A player can easily screw themselves over by assuming that it would effect the creature. Then they find out it doesn't.

That player is going to write off disarm entirely.

Weighing it's worth solely off its critical effect makes it obvious something is wrong.

Absolutely nothing wrong with the -2 lasting until the end of the enemies turn. It doesn't unbalance a damn thing.

Using it as a reaction is risky because you need to time it so that if you disarm them they can’t use another action to pick the weapon up. You can improve the success condition but you nerf the critical success.

Unless you had another ally ready an action to pick up any dropped weapons....this is about as complicated as Star Lord’s plan to get the glove off Thanos.


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If the effect on a success lasted until the end of the creatures turn (unless they take an action to regrip) would that make everyone happy or is it too powerful? It’s a -2 to their attack which is like the +2 to raise your shield but in reverse (shield benefits you vs attacks, disarm benefits all allies vs one creature). If that’s too powerful then make it against their 1st attack.

The book maybe printed but I would prefer they change it then leave it like it is. The 1st option (without the option to regrip) can be done with swapping one word.


Class Archetypes rules are in the CRB but there’s none provided. That was just there for future proofing.

The rules are that if they change a lvl1 feature you can take the archetype for “free” and exchange the features at lvl1 but when you hit lvl2 you automatically take the dedication feat as your lvl2 feat choice.


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Lanathar wrote:
It is also always players posting with a very extreme interpretation that is almost alway not reasonable or correct that they are hoping to have validated to force down a GMs throat. Now clearly I have noticed this through the eyes of a “forever GM” and have some bias

Mostly yes, generally GMs don’t need to stretch the rules to suit them because they are given authority to change them. So most of the conversations I’ve seen around that is when it’s gone poorly or wasn’t discussed at session zero. It’s definitely not unique to Pathfinder, I see it in the 5e subreddits and Facebook groups too.

But then you get the real Joe O’Brians of the world who always seem to have the incorrect interpretations that that go against him and his allies all the time.


A caster like a Wizard only goes up to Expert in Defence so they are 2 AC behind a martial like Fighter/Rogue/Ranger and 4 AC behind a Champion or Monk purely on proficiency.

The Fighters & Champions also get Armor Specialisation which gives them some free DR depending on the type of armor worn. The bonus is stronger on heavy armor and non-existent on light.

Unless you want to be a ranged weapon attacker a fighter or champion can ignore Dex and put those stats somewhere more interesting. They don’t need incentives to boost Dex because they shouldn’t be forced to need Dex when they could get Cha for intimation and diplomacy, wisdom for perception and medicine or intelligence for additional skills and knowledge checks. Raising the Dex cap on heavy armors just makes the Fighters/Champions even better at what they are already the best at but at the expense of something interesting they could be good at.


So with the amount of monsters with Grab as an automatic action on a hit one of the suggested ancestry feats I've seen highly recommend is the Halfling ancestry feat "Unfettered Halfling".

AONPRD

Core Rulebook pg. 52 wrote:

Unfettered Halfling

You were forced into service as a laborer, either pressed into indentured servitude or shackled by the evils of slavery, but you’ve since escaped and have trained to ensure you’ll never be caught again. Whenever you roll a success on a check to Escape or a saving throw against an effect that would impose the grabbed or restrained condition on you, you get a critical success instead. Whenever a creature rolls a failure on a check to Grapple you, they get a critical failure instead. If a creature uses the Grab ability on you, it must succeed at an Athletics check to grab you instead of automatically grabbing you.

I'm interested in this athletics check to grab you. Is it doesn't actually state what the DC is. Is like like a grapple where it's via Fort DC? I assume it doesn't have the the grapples 4 degrees of success otherwise you are opening yourself up to getting restrained.

That's how I would rule it anyway. It's verse Fort DC & it's only pass/fail no crib success or failure options. Is this how everyone else reads it?


Laran wrote:
Rysky wrote:
Probably this:
Elf Atavism wrote:
Your elven blood runs particularly strong, granting you features far more elven than those of a typical half-elf. You may also have been raised among elves, steeped in your elven ancestors’ heritage. You gain the benefits of the elf heritage of your elven parent or ancestors. You typically can’t select a heritage that depends on or improves an elven feature you don’t have. For example, you couldn’t gain the cavern elf’s darkvision ability if you didn’t have low-light vision. In these cases, at the GM’s discretion, you might gain a different benefit.
It'll most likely be GM call though.
But a half elf does get low light vision so it is explicitly permitted to take the cavern elf atavism for darkvision " ... you couldn’t gain the cavern elf’s darkvision ability if you didn’t have low-light vision ..."

It is a super weird example since it doesn’t apply based on what’s in the CRB. I get what it’s saying because it makes sense but it’s a bad example.


Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:
Does something about the Ancient Elf heritage prevent a half-elf from gaining its benefits via Elf Atavism? (Like an explicit ban on exactly that.)

We’ll have to see the final text to see if they put an age limit on it or if it just falls under the “elven feature you don’t have” that Rysky highlighted.

I would certainly limit to just elves in my games unless a player really wanted it and was committed to playing an elderly half-elf way past their prime and wasn’t just looking for the most powerful combinations.


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Heritage can be quite powerful too. The upcoming Ancient Elf heritage gives you a multi-class dedication feat at lvl1 which if you are planning to multi-class at lvl2 anyway is worth that feat slot.

I think the system is flexible enough to build something awesome.

Let’s say a Elf Strength Fighter
A: 12 Str; 12 Dex; 8 Con; 12 Int; 10 Wis; 10 Cha
B: 14 Str; 12 Dex; 10 Con; 12 Int; 10 Wis; 10 Cha
C: 16 Str; 12 Dex; 10 Con; 12 Int; 10 Wis; 10 Cha
Lvl1: 18 Str; 12 Dex; 12 Con; 14 Int; 12 Wis; 10 Cha

You could have taken a hit to Int and Wis or Cha (or a double hit to Int) to boost that Con to 14 but that’s only 1hp at first level.

With this build with an Ancient Elf heritage and the Nimble Elf ancestry feat you’ve got a possible Fighter/Wizard, Fighter/Alchemist or Fighter/Ranger with 35ft movement at lvl 1. Bump that Con at 5, 10 & 15 and leave it at 18, pick up toughness if your going down too often. Picking up fleet gets that base movement speed up to 40.

That’s just one example of something you can only make with an elf. Even without the Ancient Elf heritage there’s plenty of other builds you can make that utilise Elf feats.

Half-Elves get multi-talented at lvl9 which is very nice as you don’t need to meet the prerequisites however:
1) that’s a long time to wait
2) Ancient Elf lets you use your 4th level class feat to pick up at 1st or 2nd level feat from your new class. Multi-talented requires 10th or higher level class slots for the same feat. That’s a high price to pay.


The sword’s flat footed crit specialisation is pretty limited to the fact a Rogue needs to have the target flat footed already for the crit specialisation to take effect. Also if you are flanking it provides no further benefit. Where as something like clumsy from the spears stacks with flat footed.

Halfings Rogues have it pretty good with their Filcher’s Fork as unlike most ancestral weapon feats you can apply the crit specialisation without further feats. It’s very good for a Thief Halfling Rogue who puts a returning rune on it.


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I can only add from my own perspective. I really struggled with a lisp growing up and even in my 30s I am pretty self-conscious of my speech even though the lisp is barely noticeable now. But personally I was not offended.

That said, I’m a huge GCP fan and by extension the Eric & Jason who for me have been part of the show from the beginning (as I discovered the show via the Everflame playtest preview). I don’t want the show to tone down it’s content of fear of offending people. So maybe I’m okay with a lot more then someone who wasn’t already a fan.

I think it helps that while Arkonis may speak with a lisp and “speaking funny” is taken for laughs the character is never subject to teasing or exclusion from the PCs or NPCs. If Jason had said something like “you have a % chance of spell failure because you can’t pronounce the words properly” then that would be entirely inappropriate. Thankfully the group is nothing like that, they playfully make fun of each other but never anything like that.


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And keep in mind while you start the day with 2, you can only recover 1 by refocusing during the day until you pick up the Lvl 12 feat Inspirational Focus. So don't plan on using 2 every combat. Maybe plan on one per combat assuming you can get the rest in and saving the 2nd point for emergencies or the final fight of the day etc.


Weapons with the trip trait allow you to use them without a free hand. The war flail for instance is pretty deadly.


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Quandary wrote:
But it's fine for ability to also refer to itself as plural attacks?

Yes, one abilities come in all shapes and sizes. They can be:

Multiple attacks for a single action (eg Hunted Shot)
Multiple attacks for multiple actions actions (Double Slice)
Single attack for a single action (Exacting Strike)
Single attack for multiple actions (Intimidating Strike)

Each ability that involves multiple attacks tells you how to apply MAP.

If Swipe couldn’t attack two creatures at the highest attack bonus then it would be a waste of a feat, because it would be no different then using two single action strikes.

The wording on this feat is very clear.


Look at Power Attack:

CRB 144 wrote:
You unleash a particularly powerful attack that clobbers your foe but leaves you a bit unsteady. Make a melee Strike. This counts as two attacks when calculating your multiple attack penalty. If this Strike hits, you deal an extra die of weapon damage. If you’re at least 10th level, increase this to two extra dice, and if you’re at least 18th level, increase it to three extra dice.

Power Attack is a single hit but counts as two attacks for MAP (which can be adjusted to one by a later feat).

Swipe has the same wording. You roll once and apply that roll for 2 attacks. But now if you use your third action to attack it’s at -10 (-8 if agile) just like if you had used power attack.

So yes, true strike can be used for swipe. It can be used for power attack or a 2 action spell like Disintegrate. It’s a very handy 1st level spell but you can’t use it all day because of limited spell slots.


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Your alchemist sounds like a jack of all trades. You’ll have the chance of doing anything but you’ll struggle to reach the high lvl DCs without the luck of the die. When you need a 12 on the die to succeed but the legendary skilled character can succeed on a 6 and crit on a 16 you’ll be wondering if maybe you should have specialised more.


Igor Horvat wrote:
1d8+2 is more reliable than 1d12.

They might both be equal in damage on on-magical weapons but 4d12 vs 4d8+2 is an increase of 30% average damage.


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Once you get to higher levels the difference between untrained and trained gets bigger and bigger. And at that point a mid-level character who has high dex and is trained in stealth can’t really be called not sneaky even if they aren’t as trained as the rogue.


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thenobledrake wrote:

Where is that "clicking once" happening, though? Didn't you have to get a particular part of the PDF before making that happen, much like you can click on the "spell descriptions" bookmark before doing the ctrl+F for whichever spell and typically find it as the first result?

Note: I'm not saying it's perfect as-is or that hyper-links aren't useful... just that the "difficulty" of navigating a PDF without hyper-links is being exaggerated.

Yes sorry, I was too interested in seeing how many times those spells actually turned up to consider the context of how the book was being used here. I’m the case of “I need to open the PDF and look up what Fireball does” then you would need either use the bookmarks or use Ctrl-F to find the first instance of Fireball and click on it to jump to the entry. It would still help that you don’t need to next>next>next until you find what you are looking for.

In case of spells or feats I like to put the page number on the character sheet so it’s a quick look up either way.

Hyperlinks are more for when you are already in the PDF and it refers to another rule in another section you can quickly jump to that point. The final CRB is a lot better laid out then the playtest but it purposely uses things like Traits, Basic Saves, Basic Spellcasting Benefits & Proficiency where you explain a rule once and don’t need repeat it when mentioned again. Having each time those terms pop up get hyperlinked to the description makes referencing rules much easier.


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Corvo Spiritwind wrote:
Dinky_Dog wrote:
I must have been spoiled with the annotated playtest pdf and was sorely disappointed that there weren't in text link. Right now spells are the biggest chore so sometimes I utilize the physical with the pdf.

Isn't spells the easiest one to solve with CTRL+F?

Can't be that many "Fireball" words in the book, or "Magic Missile"?

Fireball is in the PDF over 40 times. The term Magic Missile is used roughly 10 times before you get to it’s description, and is likely in the book a few more dozen times after that.

That still involves opening the search function and typing in the words verses clicking once. This becomes an even bigger handle on mobiles and tablets.


The key thing to get your head around it’s not about how many actions you’ve taken. It’s based on the number of attacks made which can include strikes, trip & disarm attempts and some spells. You can always look at the action to see if it has the attack trait.

Abilities like Hunted Shot or Flurry of Blows give you two strikes for 1 action so those are taken at 0 & -5 (-4 if agile etc). There are exceptions to the rule like Power Attack which is one powerful strike but counts as two but those will be detailed in the text for that ability.


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It’s still something that can be addressed and fixed. Unlike printing mistakes, updating the PDF with hyperlinks does not require a recall and reissuing of books. They can update the file online like they would after any reprinting changes and we can update our files.

As mentioned above, if fans can do it for free and quickly during the playtest then a professional company can hire someone to do it. It isn’t game design, they don’t need Jason, Mark and Logan to take time from their next project to work on this.

Hyperlinks would be a huge improvement to the PDFs, I think it’s okay that people keep asking for them until Paizo can give a response.


The alchemist’s free items not scaling is such a big problem it makes multi-classing into one useless. The archetype is recommended for Rogues for free poisons but the DC on those poisons make them useless. They should already be balanced by having less damage being roughly 5 lvls behind the curve, they don’t need to almost autofail on top.


The alchemist’s free items not scaling is such a big problem it makes multi-classing into one useless. The archetype is recommended for Rogues for free poisons but the DC on those poisons make them useless.


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tivadar27 wrote:
Deadmanwalking wrote:
citricking wrote:
Rogues are equal to fighters and barbarians at the tops of the damage charts when everyone is attacking a flat footed target.
Damage wise, that seems reasonable, yeah. That's somewhat conditional and their HP remain notably lower, however.

I don't think this is correct, I do actually think rogues suffer relative to fighters/barbarians. First, the obvious numbers:

* Barbarians can scale up to +19 damage with a two-handed weapon (d12), or get +15 with a 1-handed weapon (animal instinct, also d12). Rogues are constrained to +14 (average of 4d6) with either a one- or two-handed weapon, and their best options there are d6 and d8 respectively. Barbarians win out.
* Fighters have less flat bonuses to damage, but are starting at +2 from legendary greater weapon specialization and +4 from being able to use a d8 one-handed relative to d6, or +8 considering a d12 relative to d8. They get a bit less flat damage (+6 or +10 relative to +14), but at +10% chance to both hit and crit... I think the numbers pan out better for fighters overall, though that's highly dependent on AC.

This is *strictly* looking at damage. If you then consider that rogues are *much* squishier than these classes (they're probably the squishiest of the straight martials, at least monks have better AC...), then yeah, I do think rogues aren't the "glass cannons" they used to be, and are meant more as debuffers and skills support.

Note, I'm not factoring in the rogues ability to debuff, which is obviously a *huge* asset, but counting that doesn't seem fair when comparing straight-up damage.

One of the thief debuffs adds an extra 2d6 damage to each flat footed hit. One of the ruffian debuffs adds weakness 5 of their chosen type which is practically a raw damage increase which also adds to allies if they use the same damage type. These don’t apply to the first flat-footed attack but once it’s applied on your first flat footed hit you just need to hit once a round to refresh.

I don’t think they can (or should) out damage Fighters or Barbarians but I think they are certainly close enough to be extremely valuable party members.


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I AM GROOT!


If you were considering Fighter for your ruffian rogue then look at Combat Grab as your lvl4 feat and make sure your athletics skill is raised whenever possible. This means they are flat-footed to everyone, can’t move and any manipulate actions have a 20% failure chance. They can spend their actions trying to escape which are actions spent not doing anything useful, these escapes also suffer from MAP. Just reapply each round.

Pretty sure if you were going with spike gauntlets you could use this twice on two different enemies in a round, but since it’s press it’s with your 2nd and 3rd actions.


Unicore wrote:

Except they changed this language from the play test to the CRB. They did not say “falls below the DC by 10” they said “fails by 10 or more.” Which heavily implied to me that you would have to consider the first value that is a failure before counting.

As has been mentioned a lot. You can’t fail by 0, that’s just success.Your first failure is failing by 1. If they were going to make it DC -11 they would have kept the old language and changed the number.


Lord Bowser wrote:
Rek Rollington wrote:

The centre for success/failure and the centre for crits cannot be the same. So they mirror each other differently.

Well, right there you've hit upon the underlying issue of this thread: why shouldn't they be the same? That would seem like the most natural design choice. But for that to be accomplished, we need to have DC-10 still be a failure, and DC-11 be the first crit fail. Then, starting from the dividing line between success and failure, there are ten numbers in either direction before we hit either crit range. Having one side be ten numbers to crit and the other only nine just doesn't make as much sense.

Probably comes down to ease of play. +10/-10 is easier to remember and probably sounds fair on paper. DC 15 and you crit on a 25 and crit fail on a 5 is easier to process on the fly. So I think it’s a more natural play experience.

The two chances odds being equal at the same point aren’t as important as ease of play for a couple of reasons. 1) +10 and -10 never come up on the same die roll. 2) the rule is consistent across the game including PCs, NPCs & Monsters so nobody is unfairly advantaged 3) the game doesn’t seem to balance itself around DC11 + or - any number.

An untrained simple DC is DC10. A 1st lvl DC is 15 which is somewhere between really hard if you are untrained with a bad attribute (-1 or 0 to the roll) or easy if you are trained with 18 in the stat (+7) to the roll. The book says these easier as you go up in level.

So with 9 numbers between crit fail and fail and 10 numbers between success and crit success are you more likely to crit fail more or crit succeed more? That depends entirely on the DC and your modifier.


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Because success is determined by an even sided die the average is never going to be a whole number. But DCs have to be while numbers, and obviously so does the DC +10 or -10 (or -11 if you support that).

There is no mathematical way therefore to have a DC that is both equally likely to succeed/fail and equally likely to be +10/-10 of the DC.

My mirroring above was equal crit success & failure chances.

For equal positive results to negative results the DC11 gives you 50/50. If you needed to exceed the DC instead of meet it then the 50/50 DC would be DC10. As I mentioned in a previous post DC10 & 11 mirror each other for crit chances. Because of the natural 1 & 20 rule in either of these set ups the 50/50 DC is perfectly even.

The centre for success/failure and the centre for crits cannot be the same. So they mirror each other differently.

The only time you are ever going to be dealing with 50/50 chances the crit success and failure is the same (natural 1 or 20). When it’s not a 50/50 roll it all comes down to the DC that had been set.


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Simple way to remember it, if you are doing ancestry first you can’t have anything over a 12 or anything below an 8.


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Temperans wrote:
So yes, I agree that the title is problematic, the basic premise of "crit failures are more likely" is definitely true;

It is definitely untrue. It’s entirely dependent on the DC.

You can’t compare DC15 & DC7 because they are 4 away DC11 because DC11 is not the middle.

For instance, if I mistook the middle for DC10:

At DC 14 (DC10+4) you get: 6 points of success (14-19), 9 points of failure (5-13), 1 point of crit success (20), and 4 points of crit failure (1-4).
At DC 6 (DC10-4) you get: 10 points of success (6-15), 4 points of failure (2-5), 5 points of crit success (16-20), 1 point of crit failure (1).

This now makes Crit success look more likely then critical failure. The truth is DC10 isn’t the middle, the middle is 10.5 which is equally in between DC10 & DC11.

If you want to compare numbers on either side of average you need to do so by rounding that 10.5 up and down respective of the direction you are going.

Compare:
DC11 with DC10 (Rounded up with Rounded Down)
DC12 with DC9 (Up+1 with Down-1)
DC15 with DC6 (Up+4 with Down-4)

You and I already broke that last one down:
At DC 15 (DC11+4) you get: 5 points of success (15-19), 9 points of failure (6-14), 1 point of crit success (20), and 5 points of crit failure (1-5).
At DC 6 (DC10-4) you get: 10 points of success (6-15), 4 points of failure (2-5), 5 points of crit success (16-20), 1 point of crit failure (1).

The critical success and failure mirror each other here perfectly. However you are more likely to succeed then fail because of ties going to the roller.


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Unicore wrote:
And I am honestly surprised so many people feel like the intention is for the range of failure to be only 9 / for ties only to go go to the roller at the line of success/failure, and for the line between failure/critical failure to be intentionally punitive.

It’s because those that understand the math know it’s not punitive at all. The fact that meeting the DC is a success means there’s 1 additional success over failure. That’s the opposite of punitive.

Using DC 15 again, but let’s say instead of a success the 15 is a reroll. You’ve now got 9 numbers for success (16-24) and 9 for failure (14-6) and infinite numbers for critical sin either direction (25 and above & 5 and below). Each side is now exactly equal. Let’s now look at the 15 again, do you want that to be a success (and give you 10 successes) or a failure (and give you 10 failures)? There’s no mathematical reason you would choose to make it a failure.

So why does a flat DC11 make me more likely to critically fail then critically succeed if you remove the the natural 1 & 20 rules? Because the average flat d20 roll is 10.5 so any flat DC above it is skewed to critical failure. A DC10 flat check is just as skewed to critical success as the DC11 was skewed to critical failure but thanks to meeting the DC being a success the DC10 is also more likely to succeed.

Given the 10.5 average d20 roll (and the limit of the number of sides) you cannot have a DC that is equally as likely to succeed by 10 and fail by 10. The natural 1 & 20 rules mean DC10 & DC11 have equal crit success & fail chances which makes DC11 the perfect 50/50 roll. Like with any math equation you can add numbers that cancel out on each side. So +5 bonus for AC16 is still 50/50.

Because DC 10 & 11 are mirrored for crit chances DC 12 the mirror of DC 9. The mirror is being equal sides of that 10.5 average d20 roll.

Hope that helps.


I noticed this on day one and worked out if you changed the wording on Half-Orc and Halfing to the same as every other ancestry then it wouldn’t make a difference with the current weapon options. The Orc Knuckle Daggers for instance are agile so you can use them for sneak attack already, so getting treated as simple in terms of proficiency allows you to wield them just as well as them being straight up simple weapons.

Where as if you went the other way and made all the other ancestries work like Half-Orc and Halfing you suddenly get a lot more ruffian options. The Horsehopper being one such increasingly powerful upgrade. So it’s probably not going to be done this way.


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Ubertron_X wrote:


Vol. & anc. flaw: 18 16 16 10 08 08

I don’t think you can do this one. The boost from taking a vol flaw can’t go into something already getting an ancestry boost (unless it’s also the ancestry flaw).

So after ancestry the highest you can get is 12. Backgrounds and class only boost 2 & 1 stat respectively so to get 16 in the 3rd stat you have to give up the 18 in the main stat. So you are more looking like 18 16 14 12 08 08 or 16 16 16 12 08 08. The benefit of taking the voluntary flaws is it can allow that 18 to be in Str for a halfing or Wis for a goblin.


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But if you can hit them on your turn why would you ready an action to hit them if they move? Battlefield control? Seems like a waste of actions.


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If Nethys is going to be updated with errata they should have a section at the bottom of that page listing “In the original printing it was worded....but has been corrected to.....on DD/MM//YY (or the American savage date system MM/DD/YY).

That way we don’t need to debate if Nethys has a typo or is a more updated ruling.


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Most of the time I would hand wave what exactly the raw materials are unless it’s a situation where resources shouldn’t be available to characters. Like they are locked in a cell but have their tools and some potions which they break down and try and craft it into a sword I’m going to ask them where the metal is coming from. But that’s a real edge case. If they can access a town they should be able to swap out raw materials.

That said, I’m not a huge fan of trading in consumables for permanent items. I think both should serve a purpose for a player. I’m happy the suggestion earlier that consumables are bad to buy but almost impossible to sell. Let them to dungeon drops that you find and use and move on. I think I would allow crafting to use the raw materials rule to exchange them into other consumable items. Either way, it’s something you set up at session zero so players know what to expect.


Blave wrote:
If a crit failure or crit success is not spelled out to have any other effect, it does have the same effect as a regular failure or success, respectively.

What about Exacting Strike?

“Failure This attack does not count toward your multiple attack penalty.”

So it does this on any failure including critical?


Also Thief Dex to Damage only applies to melee weapon attacks which rules out unarmed attacks. Unfortunately the rackets don’t do you much good as a unarmed character.


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Yeah the book is clear about what wielding is:

PG 272 wrote:

Wielding Items

Some abilities require you to wield an item, typically a weapon. You’re wielding an item any time you’re holding it in the number of hands needed to use it effectively. When wielding an item, you’re not just carrying it around—you’re ready to use it. Other abilities might require you to merely carry or have an item. These apply as long as you have the item on your person; you don’t have to wield it.


Zwordsman wrote:


I still wonder what happens if you don't strike by the time limit. Clearly intended to mean it doesnt' work anymore. But it doesnt state that. (Also it feels like a strangely arbitrary limit indeed)

Pretty clear it only works if you do it by the end of your next turn. So the poison is wasted. Thematically either the poison drips off the blade by then or is rendered inert by the contact with air. Balance wise this helps with pre-combat over-buffing. Having buffs on a very short timer means you can’t stack them up high before you start an encounter.

What I’ve been looking at though is the “recommended” use of the alchemist archetype to get a bunch of free poisons for Rogues. Yes, it appears rogues can apply these poisons as a single action but otherwise they work very differently then the simple injury poison. They all require Fort saving throws but the saving through is based on the item level not alchemist DC (unless at lvl16 you pick up Powerful Alchemy which requires Quick Alchemy and that requires an extra action and halves your poison count). Assuming you pick up the feats when first available then at most levels your items are 5 levels behind. At lvl4 you may have a 50/50 shot of getting the poison off but at higher levels I see a lot of auto-passes.

Not sure if anyone else has read it differently but Rogue/Alchemist for poisons seems like a waste of feats and actions. Free low level potions is never a bad thing though.


Yeah scoundrel requires a good Cha to make the feint reliable which is pretty difficult when you need high Str & Dex and save something for Con. With all the movement options available as Rogue/Monk flanking shouldn’t be too difficult as long as you have a flanking buddy.

Doesn’t seem like any of the rackets 1st lvl options add anything to the Rogue/Monk so if will come down to those later feats.

You can’t apply sneak attack to Mountain Style as they are not finesse or agile unarmed attacks and the Ruffian racket allows all simple weapons which unarmed attacks do not fall into.

So it seems unavoidable you’ll need to go high str and dex and pick the racket that gives you the best feat options later down the line.


Xethik wrote:

I do not believe that a Thief racket rogue would get Dexterity to damage, as a word of warning.

Quote:

When you attack with a finesse melee weapon, you can add your Dexterity modifier to damage rolls instead of your Strength modifier.

If I understand it correctly, unarmed attacks do not count as melee weapons (instead, they are specifically Unarmed Attacks). So unless there is a Thief-only class feat you want, it might not be the best choice for the class.

By crikey I think you’re right.

Oh well, you need 14 Str to get into the monk anyway. Ruffian seems a bit wasted too since you won’t be going for weapons or medium armor. Scoundrel I suppose until a new racket is introduced.


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Certainly permanent items are a lot more valuable, but consumables can’t be super cheap because they can be used again and again. Permanent items like wands have limits to how many times they can be used in a day but one off items don’t now that resonance is gone.

Sure, for effects that last 8 hours your going to want a wand but for quick durations the potions would be too powerful to be super cheap.

Take Haste for example. 360 GP for a wand of haste or 95 GP for a potion. If you made it 1/15th or 1/30th they would be 12-24 GP each. You could pop them into every important fight rather then just once per day.


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Rysky wrote:
You do know you can take lower level feats in higher level slots right?

Yes but there are more cool feats at those higher levels including the multi class archetype feats you now have access to if you pick this heritage.

Maybe other classes are different but there’s loads of good options for the classes I’ve looked at and if I was interested in multi-classing a character in those classes I would take a +2 class feat over any of the heritages I’ve seen. This is on top of Elves getting low light vision and access to some very nice ancestry feats. For example you could go Rogue/Monk and have an arcane cantrip all at first level.

I don’t think it’s so strong that anyone has to be an elf to be viable, but min-maxers will flock to it and you’ll see a high proportion of Ancient Elves in play.


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Rysky wrote:
Arachnofiend wrote:
I don't want to play an elf,
Then don’t.
Quote:
but now they're suddenly way better than any other ancestry if I want to play a Fighter/Wizard.

They’re not. You trade out your Heritage for a Dedication feat, the only requirement waived is the level, you still have to meet the others.

So it works out to you having an extra Class Feat instead of a Heritage. Good, but not broken.

It frees up a lvl 2 class feat. I haven't looked at all the classes lvl 2 feat lists but at least with the Rogue I was building I was backing out of multi-classing because there are already so many class feats at lvl 2 and above I want to take that I can't and the dedications can be really underwhelming on their own.

This heritage really opens up my options, I still need to make sure my stats line up but I'm not taking that boring dedication feat at a level where I could be getting something really cool. I'm excited it's there, as a player I would love it but it may fall into that "too good to be true" territory if it's as good as it looks.


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5/5

When it comes down to it for this product, the questions are; can it attract new players, and will they enjoy it?

Last night I ran the game for four members of the family boardgame/poker card game group (30-40's). Usually when I bring up the idea of D&D or roleplaying, they scoff at the idea. They tried Talisman once.

Last night, they oohed and aahed about the box. "That looks interesting." "Ok, but I don't want to read a bunch of stuff."

Boom, out of the box and we are running. Characters in hand, looking over the sheets, they seemed to really like the linking of the inner character sheet to the discussion paragraphs on the outer sides of the sheets. For once I was not telling them everything about the game and how to play it, they could read along easily and knew what all those numbers meant. Don't get me wrong, they still asked questions, but they were more informed questions and showed they were getting the system. Rather than some of the "What are we doing?" "What is this now?"

So we are in and running. I figure I might get them to do a few rooms, just to get the feeling for it. Nope, a few turns into half the dungeon, and then *they* are telling me that they want to go back to town to rest and get their daily spells back. Really? You understand they are daily spells? Yeah!

"How do we take out these goblins?" a wife asked her husband. After some discussion, they sneaked up on the goblin king and his cohorts. Oh it was great to see the strategy, even if they could have just talked with the goblins, seeing the mage just run in and cast his burning hands spell was a nice from a near 30 year old that never played a roleplaying game before. At 1am, well past our normal gaming time, they finally finished off the dragon (which rolled a few "1's") and couldn't stop discussing their heroic actions as we left my friend's home.

Great product, outstanding even. Success for at least four newbies. Now I'll see if I can get a few to join our other Pathfinder group.