Rekijan's page

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The fleeing condition does not state what you need to do if you can't identify the source of the effect, for example if it is simply not visible. This is possible for example because demoralise on a critical succes gives the fleeing condition but only has the auditory but no visual trait.

The table 3–20, is labelled sorcerer spells per day. Emphasis on the sorcerer part. Yet it does not reflect how many spells per day they get because your bloodline gives you one extra spell per level. I could understand if these extra spells would be bloodline only spells but it says:

Whenever you gain a spell from your bloodline, you also gain a spell slot of that level, which you can use to cast any sorcerer spell, not just the spell granted by your bloodline.

I wanted to add to this discussion.

Full plate gives you the same AC as studded leather or a chain shirt with high enough dex. But the lighter have less disadvantages and grant a higher TAC. It's not unless you have a higher type of proficiency that the normal AC gets higher and even then you are still having drawbacks and a lower TAC.

“Armor Traits: Clumsy This armor’s Dexterity modifier cap also applies to Reflex saves and to all Dexterity-based skill and ability checks that don’t have the attack trait.”

Probably should be made clear that it's not your total reflex save is capped to the dex cap value, just the dex bonus part of it?

In addition armor being restrictive is a myth. A properly made full plate doesn’t restrict your mobility. You can still do shoulder rolls and jumping jacks just fine, you can look this up. Full plate was awesome for its time period for a reason, but in PF2 it seems hardly worth it. Which is sad because it diminishes the idea of a knight in full plate.

I am confused on how heighten works for the sorc now.

Sure he can auto-heighten two but what about other spells?

Does he need to learn each version of fireball (like fireball 3, 5 etc)? Considering he already has a limit on spells known isn't this too big a hit?

On that note, how about prepared casters? Do they still only need to learn fireball and then slot it in whichever spell level they want to heighten it?