Rengam's page

Hey everyone.

In the deviant feats section, from the Dark Archive and reprinted in the Gatewalkers Players' Guide, the backlash entry for the Dragon classification is called Energetic Meltdown, and its moderate effect says this (emphasis mine):

Energy wracks your body. After taking the damage, you gain weakness to the energy type of your backlash until your next daily preparations. The weakness is equal to one-third of your level. You also lose immunity to the energy type if you had it, until your next daily preparations.

So, it says "After taking the damage", but doesn't say how much damage you take.

For reference, the Mild backlash says this:

You take damage equal to your level as energy scours your body

So it seems like when the Moderate one says "Energy wracks your body" it's intended that you take some damage, but it looks like the amount was omitted. It could be read as referring to the damage from the Mild backlash, but that might have been a long time ago, and it would make the Moderate backlash pretty weak compared to other examples.

What does everyone think, is this just a mistake? Would something like damage equal to twice your level seem fair?

I'm preparing chapter 2 of Broken Promises, and I'm not sure if I'm missing something.

I've been building up the Orb of Gold Dragonkind as a major threat, but it seems that if the party doesn't trust Emaliza, but also doesn't attack her, then she just doesn't show up again after the first meeting, and the orb never comes into play in the story as written. Is that right?

The ranger feat Masterful Companion says this:

Your animal companion shares your incredible hunting skills, allowing it to take down your shared prey with ease. When you Hunt Prey, your animal companion gains the masterful hunter benefit associated with your hunter’s edge, rather than just your original hunter’s edge benefit.

But the flurry ranger's masterful hunter benefit is this:

You can blend your weapon mastery with skillful targeting to make a series of precise attacks. If you have master proficiency with your weapon, your multiple attack penalty for attacks against your hunted prey is –2 (–1 with an agile weapon) on your second attack of the turn, and –4 (–2 with an agile weapon) on your third and subsequent attacks of the turn.

The problem is, animal companions don't get master proficiency in their weapon, so does this do anything for them?

Switching to Foundry is like entering a parallel universe where Roll20 is actually good. The UI is similar enough to make it easy, but everything looks and works better and the PF2e support is fantastic.

I agree the cost of consumables seems way off.

A major thunderstone costs 2,500gp to do 4d4 + 4 splash damage (with a chance to deafen). For that price you can get three horns of blasting (700gp each), each of which can do 3d6 damage every round and 8d6 damage once per day, also with a chance to deafen, and still have 400gp to spare.

Another one that's been raised a few times: Is the "ranged attack" for telekinetic projectile a ranged spell attack, or does it use Dex? (And if it does use Dex, what proficiency does it use?)

Ah, actually the bit from CRB 487 makes me think RAI was for verbal casting to be affected by deafness. Because that section is about characters who have disabilities (e.g. were *born* deaf), and have adapted to it better than someone who just gets deafened in combat. It specifically says "Conditions such as blinded and deafened aren’t a good fit" for such characters.

Why would they need to mention that permanently deaf characters would have "enough practice to supply verbal components for casting spells", if everyone can do that while deaf anyway?

The "all speech is auditory" thing seems completely reasonable to me, but RAW seems pretty clear about which traits get added to the Cast a Spell activity:

The spell components, described in detail below, add traits and requirements to the Cast a Spell activity. If you can’t provide the components, you fail to Cast the Spell.

• Material (manipulate)
• Somatic (manipulate)
• Verbal (concentrate)
• Focus (manipulate)

The deafened condition requires a DC5 flat check to perform an action with the auditory trait.

At first this sounds similar to the 20% spell failure chance from PF1e, but casting spells even with Verbal components doesn't seem to be auditory - Verbal components have just the Concentrate trait. The sidebar says specifically that Cast a Spell becomes auditory if a bard uses a musical instrument (but they could just cast it normally instead).

This seems to make applying deafened pretty useless in combat (so thunderstones, sound burst pretty weak). Am I missing something?

You're still not making an attack roll. You're making a skill check that has the attack trait. Yes, the trait means it "involves an attack". But that doesn't mean the skill check suddenly changes its type of roll to an attack roll.

That may be the 1e definition of an attack roll, but I think that's not true in 2e.

CRBp446 says "When you use a Strike action or any other attack action, you attempt a check called an attack roll. Attack rolls take
a variety of forms..."

So a Trip attempt is a skill check, but it's also an attack roll.

If this weren't the case, MAP would not be taken into account for trips and grapples, as the rules say MAP is applied to attack rolls.

Are there many changes to spells from the playtest? In particular, has the damage of (non-cantrip) blasting spells been changed much?

Hi everyone!

I have a question about the Wall of Ectoplasm spell.

The description says:

A section of the wall whose hit points drop to 0 is breached, but if a section is destroyed, the remaining ectoplasm in the wall immediately fills in any such hole created, reducing the wall’s overall size by one 10-foot square but remaining a contiguous barrier. The wall can also take the form of a sphere or hemisphere whose maximum radius is 1 foot per caster level, and that is as hard to break through as the ectoplasmic plane form.

My question is, what happens when a section of a spherical or hemispherical Wall of Ectoplasm is breached? Does the radius decrease to allow the wall to "remain a contiguous barrier"? Or does a hole form, say, from the top down? If the radius does decrease, what happens to things inside?