Rekijan's page

Right in the feels

Rekijan wrote:

So the one-shot comes with pre-gen. How well does it work for a group of people who wants to use their own characters for it?

Probably not the right adventure for this. The pre-gens are quite tied into the history of the adventure. Well, you can play it with random characters, if you want to, but doesn't really make much sense.

Well I was wondering more mechanically than RP. It shouldn't be too hard to copy paste a background onto a different stat block for example. But it is quite another thing if they need spell X to progress which one of the pre-gens just happens to have.

So the one-shot comes with pre-gen. How well does it work for a group of people who wants to use their own characters for it?

That was my initial reaction as well.

So a brutish shove gives you the effect of a shove if you hit (or a critical succes shove, if the hit was a crit). But what happens when you also have polearm crit specialization?

Do both trigger? And do you apply both or only the highest?

Does one trigger first and the second only if you are still in range? If so which triggers first?

So a brutish shove gives you the effect of a shove if you hit (or a critical succes shove, if the hit was a crit). But what happens when you also have polearm crit specialization?

Do both trigger? And do you apply both or only the highest?

Does one trigger first and the second only if you are still in range? If so which triggers first?

Hmm they look a bit too busy on screen, but maybe it looks better on paper. I might prefer a cleaner one though.

Sudden charge has the flourish trait.

And for shields I don't think they have hardness with which they reduce damage they take. What Jason said was:

"Your shield can take 20 points of damage before its broken. If that damage was in excess to 8 you would take some of that damage."

So I think the damage dealt to the shield isn't reduced by hardness, he never even mentioned the term hardness. Only that there is a value (8) and if the damage is higher than that, the PC takes the excess damage.

The grab monster ability requires no attack roll, it also doesn't have the attack tag. But it is very similar to the grapple action. So I think, RAW, its exempt for the multi attack penalty. But should it be?

Also the texts says 'The monster automatically Grabs the target'. But the action is Grapple and the condition is Grabbed. So does it want to refer to Grapple and infer the attack tag or not? Grabs doesn't seem to be a keyword.

Well yeah the indentation makes it look like its part of the activation. Also don't bring other stuff into this.

Can the noisy armor trait be negated by lessening the ACP one or more below its starting value? For example if you can lower the ACP to -1.

Maybe add a tag for when a magic item has varying trait in its text? So you can scan/search easier when going through them. For example dragon’s breath potion or the robe of the archmagi.

Shouldn’t the necklace of fireballs have the consumable trait?

Can you use mail of luck on the critical hit that makes the gem active again (assuming you haven’t used it that day yet)?

The way demon armor is formatted it almost makes it look as if you only get the drained if you use the once per day ability. Because its on the same line as the 1/day activation

In the chapter for magic items how many pieces do you get for ammunition at the listed price? Is it just one? Or the normal amount when buying non-magical ammunition?

Since the 1.3 update it has been clarified that it does not have any charges, Logan Bonner even said on twitch its a one time purchase.

I don't see what is confusing about this. The arrow does 1d8 regular damage when it hits, and applies 1d6 persistant acid damage. All persistant damage only occurs at the end of the affected player's turn, before they do the flat 20 check to remove it.

Because its all on one line. When you hit you do x damage plus x persistent damage. On the hit. It doesn't say you do X damage and some persistent damage later.

There is no need for memorization or conversion of anything other than the cut off points.

32, 12, -20, -80 for cold
95, 105, 115, 140 for heat

As I mentioned, a post-it note with those 8 conversions is all you need to figure out temps for the game.

I don't want to have post-it notes when its easy to add a few more numbers to the text.

The feat to become a half-orc or half-elf is hardly a feat tax as it both grants acces to twice as many ancestry feats but also gives bonuses on its own.

They already stated that they are only available to humans in the Golorian setting only. So if you want to have dwarven based half-orcs you can do so for your campaign as simply as saying dwarves can take the half-orc ancestry.

Which is the whole reason they are feats now and not their own ancestry. So you can easily do that without having to make a separate half-dwarf half-orc ancestry.

The poisoned dart gallery is confusing. Does it shoot everyone on its turn and then again for each action a player makes? The trap deactivates and resets after 1 minute. So it resets itself in the same time it takes to deactivate?

Please provide temperatures in degrees of Celsius as well. I would rather not have to do the conversions each time when I reference the rules.

Why not allow class retraining? What if I started out a street urchin rogue but saw the light and want to become a paladin (but without multiclassing) leaving behind my roguish ways? It is even weirder since you can retrain your multiclass (seeing as those are feats) but not the other way around.

Can you use “heave-ho” on another pirate? Seems to go against the flavor of their strong sea legs and all.

Putting the proficiency above secondary casters seems to make a lot more sense to me when scanning for info on the rituals.

Thunder shield is missing what save needs to be rolled (probably reflex?).

Stabilize: The flavor text is confusing as it mentions touch when it isn’t a touch spell. This wouldn’t be an issue if all flavor text was clearly indicated as such (for example being in italic).

This blog doesnt show up under the tag filter of playtest

http://paizo.com/community/blog/tags/pathfinderRoleplayingGame/playtest

Rekijan wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Zorae wrote:

I also don't see why Asmodeus no longer allows LN characters.

Nothing in his Edicts/Anathema are inherently evil... Aside from not allowing you to free slaves; which is kinda iffy but also an anathema to LN Abadar if you're in a country where slaves are legal.

To me this just suggests we screwed up on presenting Asmodeus's Edicts and Anathema. Glancing over them now, yeah, we should make them pretty obviously more evil. Asmodeus is intended to be one of the game's primary villains, and as the ruler of Hell itself he should NOT be someone that you worship without being evil.

I have to say I am ok with this. I always got a strictly L slightly E vibe with Asmodeus because he is willing to work with others etc. If you want to profile him more as evil than LE followers only makes more sense. Though indeed making clear that he is capital EVIL might help with that.

What about other causes though? Like the neutral dawnflower followers of Sarenrae?

The edition change is not only a place to try to clean up rules. It's a great chance for us to clean up some of the flavor that was never intended to be a part of the setting. I get it that some folks like having lawful neutral Asmodeus worshipers or neutral Sarenrae worshipers, but the core assumption is not that. By all means adjust as you will in your game, but we need to pick SOMETHING to serve as the in-world baseline, and in cases like this, choosing those baselines is a big part of my job. I have to make the choices and recommend them to the rest of the team, and to a certain extent I want those choices to be ones I'm comfortable with and want to have happen.

Oh I am totally fine with Asmodeus being for strictly LE baseline as a design choice. He just needs better PR then in his Edicts and Anathema sections to make that a bit more clear. But you already mentioned this so I will wait for the new iteration of that and keep in mind for now what the intent for Asmodeus is.

And as always thanks for your hard work, I really love Golarion as a setting and I know I have you (and your team) to thank for that. Maybe my tone got a bit to criticising? If so my apologies, just trying to help make PF2 the best edition :)

I disagree with that last part. On the good/evil axis good is defined as having respect for life. Owning a slave as such is definitely evil.

DerNils wrote:

Add to that that Counterspelling has IMO improved mechanics, what with it being a reaction now, These are the Things to look out for and save some heightened Dispels for.

Counterspell doesn't work.

it costs a second feat and a reaction to identify a spell being cast. If you uses your reaction to identify the spell, you can't counterspell. If you don't identify the spell, the counterspell feat can't trigger.

The fixed that in the last errata. If you have the spell prepared or have it on your spells known list as a spont caster than you automatically recognise the spell.

Finger of Death, Fatal Aria, and Feeblemind are in fact weak spells.

Finger of Death does 25-50 damage on an expected result. Who cares. If you're casting a 7th level spell at a single enemy that has a decent chance of critical failing you're wasting a resource that could be better spent on actual difficult opponents.

Fatal Aria is the least powerful Bard capstone option, just an autoheightened Power Word Kill. It's bad. Again, you don't need autokill abilities against scrubs, you need things that enhance your ability to survive and kill against equal level opponents. Against enemies that are worth your actions and resources at 20th level you don't want to do only 50 points of damage even with a single action, when that action can't be repeated.

Feeblemind is inferior to a Reach Spell metamagic Touch of Idiocy (level 2 vs. level 6) for most purposes. But if you do critical fail it, of course the GM should control your character, or we'll have a surfeit of weirdly smart mindless PCs flawlessly executing combat tactics and cooperation with their former allies.

I think you are missing the point. I am not writing this from a PC vs NPCs perspective where you optimise your spells and options.

I am saying these spells make it possible for a player to lose a PC with one bad dice roll or no roll at all.

So using your 7th level spell against a single NPC is indeed bad in that scenario but a NPC might cast it at PCs and they would die if they ever roll a 1. Same with Fatal Aria. As I said in my opening post a level 20 bard is an encounter that is considered 'appropriate' CR wise against a level 16 party (PC level +4). And it could take out 3 PCs in one round with it, no save.

Like I said in my previous post, these spells probably won't be an issue most of the time. But the fact that they have the possibility to really screw over a PC in a very anti climatic way just rubs me the wrong way.

Zorae wrote:

I also don't see why Asmodeus no longer allows LN characters.

Nothing in his Edicts/Anathema are inherently evil... Aside from not allowing you to free slaves; which is kinda iffy but also an anathema to LN Abadar if you're in a country where slaves are legal.

To me this just suggests we screwed up on presenting Asmodeus's Edicts and Anathema. Glancing over them now, yeah, we should make them pretty obviously more evil. Asmodeus is intended to be one of the game's primary villains, and as the ruler of Hell itself he should NOT be someone that you worship without being evil.

I have to say I am ok with this. I always got a strictly L slightly E vibe with Asmodeus because he is willing to work with others etc. If you want to profile him more as evil than LE followers only makes more sense. Though indeed making clear that he is capital EVIL might help with that.

What about other causes though? Like the neutral dawnflower followers of Sarenrae?

Fatal Aria as mentioned is Uncommon Level 10, so on the Level of Wish and Miracle. You are entering Cheese Country.

Feeblemind is a curse, so I would expect a heightened Remove Curse to remove it's effects.

Finger of Death: Save or Die being relegated to Critfails is a step Forward. This is 2 Levels after Death Ward, which would give you some serious protection from it.

Power Words. Uncommon. Meaning you must explicitly allow them in your game, not the other way around.

Add to that that Counterspelling has IMO improved mechanics, what with it being a reaction now, These are the Things to look out for and save some heightened Dispels for.

I am not really convinced on the whole uncommon part. Just because its uncommon doesn't mean it should never be used. And I think a big part of this is learning uncommon spells from enemies you defeat, so you would have to face them first. Granted it doesn't have to go that way, but it could and even if it doesn't it is still not unreasonable to give such an epic spell to a BBEG. Or if doing so is extremely cheesy then doesn't that prove my point that the spell is not fair?

For feeblemind I will concede that I misread the duration as instantaneous. But its permanent in the crit fail part. Though the NPC being under the GM's control from the failed save on is just so weird.

As to finger of death and death ward. Death ward has a duration of a measly minute. So chances are you cannot count on having that buff up. And even with it up you can still potentially crit fail it and get slain instantly.

As to counterspelling. Only the sorc and wizard have that ability. So that would be very limiting in design if those classes would be mandatory just to deal with it. In addition some of these are uncommon spells, so the PC might not even know (them all). While counterspell is a reaction now, you only get one and you cant use dispel magic anymore as a catch all try and negate the spell.

All in all in don't expect a ton of deaths from these spells but the fact that it could happen (a PC dying from one bad roll or no roll at all) is just bad design in my honest opinion.

I suppose that makes sense.

I feel like I considerably prefer the new method to the traditional "one-step" approach. I suppose some of that however is because I have a pantheon of my own I'm itching to use, many of which make zero sense with one-step (e.g. a LN conflict inducing goddess who demands her followers pick a side, accepting LG, NG, LE, NE but not LN or N).

Is there any particular reason for a fair few N deities still effectively accepting only one-step, or is it more tradition by this point?

I agree that the system is better than the one step but just think some gods went too restrictive. Asmodeus for example used to include NE which I think is odd because his main shtick seems to be about law. But now they made him LE only, whereas LN should also be an option in my opinion.

Rekijan wrote:

Dimensional lock says it attempts to dispel but doesn’t clarify how it does this. Is it like dispel magic that references page 197?

Yes, all dispelling/counteracting uses the same rules now (pages 197 & 319).

Should probably reference that page then don't you agree?

Oh it indeed answers my question thank you.

Freedom of movements works of spell level but doesn't have a heighten, can you still cast it a higher level for greater effect?

[..] unless it’s a magical effect of a higher level than the freedom of movement spell.

With PF1 you seemed to have made a point of removing a lot of save-or-die stuff. I liked that because losing a character with a single roll always seemed way too unfair to me. I hoped that with PF2 you would want to improve on this more but some spells still seem unfair.

Fatal aria: No save? 16th level or lower just insta-die no save? I mean I know its a rare level 10 spell, but still insta-kill mechanics are never fun. The rules for encounters list a scenario of CR being equal to PC levels +4. So a level 20 bard against a level 16 party could kill 3 PCs in a single turn with no defense?

Feeblemind: Losing a PC over one (critically) failed save seems way too harsh, not to mention on a level 6 spell. And unlike other spells it actually makes you a NPC so its not like you can ress the poor thing to fix it either.

Finger of death: Again dying to a single failed dice roll is lame.

Power word spells: The fact that they are level only, and offer no defense make them feel really unfun. Like fatal aria but less severe.

False vision:

Any scrying spell sees, hears, smells, and otherwise detects whatever you wish within the area, rather than what is actually in the area. You can Concentrate on the Spell each round to change the illusion as you desire, including playing out a complex scene. If the scrying spell is of a higher level than false vision, you can attempt a Perception check to disbelieve the illusion, though even if you’re successful, you can’t learn what’s truly going on in the area.

Shouldn’t ‘you’ be the person trying the scrying?

Enlarge: Can you choose, with heightened 6, to only make them grow to large instead of huge? For example so its harder to dispel.

Dragon wings: Do the dragon claws also heighten to the level you are casting dragon wings at?

Dimensional lock says it attempts to dispel but doesn’t clarify how it does this. Is it like dispel magic that references page 197?

Acid arrow (and other stuff): “On a hit, you deal acid damage equal to 1d8 plus your spellcasting ability modifier plus 1d6 persistent acid damage.”

Seems to indicate it happens on hit, but that seems to conflict with persistent damage. Maybe write ‘and x persistent damage’ instead of the ‘plus x persistent damage’?

The only reference to retching in the playtest rules is on page 324, under the definition of "Sick". Retching is an action you can take to reduce and eventually remove the Sick condition. There doesn't appear to be anything more to it than that.

You would think retching would provoke. But I guess it doesn't right now.

David knott 242 wrote:

Rekijan wrote:

Tarik Blackhands wrote:

Because Asmodeus is about using lawful means to enslave, corrupt, and diminish others in order to enrich yourself which is decidedly not neutral. If you want someone who just believes in order and structure while not being a total malefactor Abadar is over that way.

I am going to have to disagree. You could totally be someone who sees that the laws a place like Cheliax provides are better than anarchy without being an Abadar follower or being an evil person yourself.

But there is a big difference between respecting and revering Asmodeus as the bringer of order and actually accepting him as your patron. The lawful good Chelish noble I played in our last campaign paid very close attention to that distinction.

This. Especially in PF2, you don't get to be a cleric of a god by scalpeling out parts of your patron deity that you like and ignore the ones you don't (outside of guys like Norgorber anyway). You're a cleric of Asmodeus, you're a full supporter and enabler of his ethoses and those ethoses are being ordred and a jerk to put it succinctly. Lay worshippers can toss a prayer to Asmo thanking him that Cheliax isn't Galt or whatever, but if you're getting divine powers, you're expected to be a corrupt bastard exploiting every loophole in the book to enrich yourself and by extension Asmodeus, aka be LE.

There isn't much in Asmodeus description that makes me feel like you definitely have to be LE though. A LN character would make sense. And as PCScipio pointed out the neutral dawnflower followers of Sarenrae also suddenly don't make sense anymore.

Because Asmodeus is about using lawful means to enslave, corrupt, and diminish others in order to enrich yourself which is decidedly not neutral. If you want someone who just believes in order and structure while not being a total malefactor Abadar is over that way.

I am going to have to disagree. You could totally be someone who sees that the laws a place like Cheliax provides are better than anarchy without being an Abadar follower or being an evil person yourself.

Good question -- but wouldn't a person have some idea of which direction an auditory effect that they can hear comes from?

True but that does beg the question, do you flee from where your character thinks the source is. Or do you use out of game knowledge (possible the GM determines this) to flee from the actual source.

“Stunned - Your body is unresponsive. You can’t act.”

Probably should say can’t take actions (or you don’t regain them) instead of critiquing my acting skills?