Saedar's page

Draco18s wrote:

Garretmander wrote:

(the pesky leftover level 2 slot can be turned into two cantrips)

...of Create Fire?

"Can I research a new cantrip? I want to call it Lil Fireball"

smol-derball /pundog

People who refuse to make their best effort to read and understand the rules are toxic.
Toxic people have no place in a game.
If you are the GM, boot him from the game. If you aren't, talk to whoever is.

Not sure where to put this, so here it is. Feel free to flag.

Where can I buy Paizo products from that is best for Paizo? I'm thinking of getting 2e CRB, bestiary, and maybe some pawn boxes. Is the website where the most revenue gets back to Paizo?

Just trying to maximize support through my dollars.

Direct from publisher is typically the best way to get the most dollars back to the company. So, the Paizo Webstore is probably the best place.

Hot Take: Blood Money and similar problems (from anyone in the group) should just be resolved by tossing toxic people out of your group. ez

Like... Seriously, people. Just talk to the people in your group. If someone is notably disruptive, tell them to take a hike forever.

I think the main thing with these anathema is that they shouldn't be hard and fast gotcha rules. Intent is important. CC is a CG god who gets to peek inside your head because you invited him. You aren't going to legalese him into submission.

Dice and Slice has discussion episodes in addition to their AP content.

David knott 242 wrote:

I guess they are meant to encourage you to get together with good aligned allies.

Aura of Faith is a poor pick if you have no good allies.

Litany Against Wrath works fine if you can get into the face of the enemy that you used it on in order to be able to punish it for inflicting damage on you.

Yeah, but every spells that allow metagaming to circumvent the problem is just bad design imo.

It may not be design you like but that doesn't make it bad design. Like the above people have indicated, it is likely intended to inform/reinforce the party composition.

Just steal the Fronts and Countdown Clocks concepts from Apocalypse World.

In short...

Fronts: Groups/individuals/animate concepts/etc have motivations and things they want to accomplish.
Countdown Clock: A graphical clock with different complications/consequences that a given Front accomplishes due to the party taking specific actions, during downtime, etc.

Soooo...

Front: Mine-Dwelling Kobold Clan (they like to mine, set traps, be surrounded by other kobolds)
Countdown Clock:
3 o'clock: More traps get set in the "dungeon" as the kobolds sneak around doing their thing.
6 o'clock: A new, much more lethal trap gets constructed at an important place in the "dungeon".
9 o'clock: Kobolds swarm the player camp in waves or take proactive steps in getting rid of the intruders.
12 o'clock: Add a "boss" to the dungeon.

Disclaimer: This kind of thing is for when time should be a meaningful narrative constraint. If you don't care about the passage of time, let them rest however long they want.

Any suggestions on how to determine a creature's character level? I don't think creature level is necessarily going to be the same as character level.

They should be roughly equivalent, depending on what you mean by "creature".

One possible way to do it is through an ancestry paired with a single archetype or multiple archetypes that require the ancestry, maybe even like the hell knight archetypes that build on each other. So a dragon ancestry with a young dragon archetype, adult dragon archetype, and ancient dragon archetype.

Really the challenge here is that in the fiction progression is supposed to take a very long time. You really should not become an ancient dragon in the span of a couple years.

On the flipside, like with more standard ancestries, adventurer dragons are pretty unique relative to their peers. Most dragons spend time chilling with their hordes, hunting their meal of choice. They fat and lazy, like me.

Adventurer Dragons, though, are Important™ and advance more quickly because they are constantly testing themselves against ever-increasing odds.

For the purposes of continued discussion about this and other archetypes, it looks like PF2 d20PFSRD has them up, sans lore content.

Hellknight Armiger

So, I was reading through the Lost Omens World Guide and hit the part where they make vague reference to the kingdom that gets created during Kingmaker. I really liked that they included it and figured it might be fun to write up my version of the River Kingdom that I built.

My River Kingdom - Solvaheim

If anyone wants to post their own, I think it would be cool to read and discuss! It could also serve as inspiration for people's home games if they didn't do Kingmaker or just needs a little inspiration.

There may be another way to spin this.

If the Ancestry/Heritage is known for wielding Large weapons, does that necessarily mean that they ALL do that? Instead of providing a flat damage bonus or the ability to wield Large weapons, why not provide something that intentionally compliments the type of character who would pick a Giant-Instinct Barbarian or otherwise is fond of big (but Medium-sized) two-handers?

Some quick and dirty ideas:
* Something like the Indestructible Goblin where you get more HP than normal for your Ancestry.
* Situational boost to Demoralize checks.
* Situational bonus to bend bars/lift gates (or other similar tasks).
* Grant them an unarmed attack (either their Horns or a Slam). Less useful to a Giant-Instinct Barbarian but still fitting the theme.

This way all members of the Heritage are known for being physically imposing. The legendary members of the Heritage, though, take on the Giant Instinct and can grow to great size and wield incredible weapons.

I mean. I'm happy to brainstorm an Ancestry here with you.

If one is going for Rollplay over Roleplay, then yeah, Runescarred uses a horrible stat.

This idea needs to die in a fire. Mechanical competency and strong character motivation are not mutually exclusive.

That aside...
I thought the archetypes were interesting. The Runescarred/its art struck me as interesting and I kind of want to build a Varisian Rogue (Scoundrel) / Runescarred.

I just flipped through the existing Heritages and couldn't find any example of a flat (or really even situational) damage boosts. That would make this particular Heritage one-of-if-not-the-strongest option for smashing fools. Seems a tad overpowered, relative to existing Heritage options which seem to grant either situational bonuses, additional scaling survival features, or some quirk that increases options.

I could see something like the above as a series of Ancestry feats that expand options around being "just wow big".

Having said all that...

Let's go, dude. Keep in mind that overlapping options are thing and are part of the design conceit of the game.

If I wanted to build this as a Heritage, I might consider something like...

Giant-Blooded [AncestryName]
The blood of a giant runs through your veins, giving you the ability to wield weapons of a larger size than normal. You gain Access to a single Large weapon at character creation. Additionally, gain a +2 status bonus to weapon damage while under half health and wielding a Larger or larger weapon. If you are a Giant-Instinct barbarian, instead of the above bonuses, you ignore the clumsy effect of the Instinct Ability.

I still think this is on the high-power side of Heritage abilities.

(Also: Flagging this as wrong forum, as it should probably be in Homebrew.)

What's there to project? "they're evil so their skin turned black" is flat out racist.

There's been a lot of dogpile on your, but I'm 100% on board with (I think) everything you've said in this thread.

Dark=Evil should die in a fire.

Ssalarn wrote:

As DMW mentioned, there's no reason you can't drop into encounter mode when it's appropriate to do so.

I'd really like to see more information from Paizo though on how they intend Encounter and Exploration mode to interact. There are a lot of abilities or features that only really have rules for encounter mode described.

Dropping in and out at will makes sense for a lot of them, but I'm not sure if that's how the developers intend the game to be played. There are also other things that don't really work with that paradigm and I'm not sure if the rules just aren't explicit or if they aren't intended to interact with exploration mode at all or what.

Worth Noting: If you are going to question how the devs intend things to be played, be aware of who you are responding to. Ssalarn IS a dev. Organized play, perhaps, but they all work alongside one another and a new edition is pretty all-hands.

It is a useful if odd power but I am just confused why they bothered to leave it as a focus spell. The whole focus mechanic seems based on in combat encounter type powers that come back often but everything about goodberry makes that not viable for it.

The game is primarily a miniatures combat sim. I'd imagine they'll hit with more utility/non-combat stuff as time goes on.

I make characters to learn the rules of games. One of my attempts was to make a goblin character for each of the classes.

1st Level Goblins

Disclaimer: I made very little attempt to optimize. These should be considered functional. They may not be entirely complete and haven't been updated to account for the clarifications from last week's stream.

Had a lot of fun with most of them but bard and alchemist were...ehhhh....

Evil Hat does linking with all/almost-all of their PDFs. Keywords are hyperlinked, as are pages. I'm not a layout designer but I imagine that InDesign has markup options for mapping one part of the document to another.

That said, it is probably expensive and time consuming to do it well. The question is whether or not the added benefit justifies the cost. Personally, PDFs and online resources are almost exclusively how I consume RPG stuff, so it would be a huge benefit to me. I also think it makes for a more polished product.

A good point Rysky made above, though, is the added cost for when they do reprints. Probably not a huge amount of extra overhead but certainly non-zero.

I just wanted to get feedback on the the special bound books. I do not mind paying the $20 extra per book, but only if the quality of SE book warrants it.

Any feedback on that?

Thank you

Major factors seem to be:

An innate Divine spell NOT on the divine list will bother some people.

Any given thing at all has the potential to bother some people. The core rules of the game allow for rare and entirely unique options. If they don't like it, their options are deal, homebrew, work with the GM to find that option, or find a different game. /shrug

I think I'd probably use them much like you suggest in OP.

I really like the rarity system and using it for special rewards/prestige access/group membership benefits, etc feels really fresh.

Saedar wrote:

I'm not playing tabletop games to play in a GM's mental/narrative/Fantasy Heartbreaker™/solo-sandbox. Are there people who enjoy that? Sure, but I would say that the game is an excuse for tabletop improv rather than a game to play directly.

Elements of those things are part of any game run and adjudicated by a human. Unless you are playing a cooperative board game like Mansions of Madness that has an app adjudicating for you, you are playing a game that is run through the lens of another human's perception. I wouldn't use the "heartbreaker" pejorative here but you want to stamp your point, so whatever.

From my perspective, I put in far more work into a campaign as a DM than the players do. All they have to do is show up. If they aren't willing to work with how I decide the game works, they aren't welcome at my table. *shrug*

Sure. Any game run by a human will have some drift, but that isn't the game. That is you and your group. The game might encourage it through intentional or unintentional design choices but it isn't the game. Also, the my-way-or-highway style of GMing is very consistent with the XDM tone and can be pretty hostile. If your group is down with that, fine, but it doesn't work for me.

To me, gaming is about collaboration and fun. When I run a game, I get pretty close to perfect information with my players. If the thing I'm running isn't fitting with what the other people are wanting, I run something else. NBD

All of this is just a long way of saying: either approach to gaming isn't good or bad in and of itself. Do what works for you and yours.

Saedar wrote:

From what I remember, XDM advocates for a very hostile relationship between players and GM.

Two things:

(1) That was not my take from the book. But it might make an interesting side discussion where you can point to where exactly it says this. Ultimately, it does state that the XDM does get rid of rules or even players that impede the good time had by most at the table. I wouldn't call that adversarial. That's just good advice.

(2) I used XDM to illustrate how Hickman boiled the game down to target numbers (not in reference to the DM/player relationship). You may have been mixing issues a bit there.

My Point Is This: A game is only its rules. If the mechanics of the game don't do something, the game itself doesn't do that thing. I'm not playing tabletop games to play in a GM's mental/narrative/Fantasy Heartbreaker™/solo-sandbox. Are there people who enjoy that? Sure, but I would say that the game is an excuse for tabletop improv rather than a game to play directly.

For some people, like Graystone, all they have when deciding whether a game is for them is the rules in the book. PF2 may not fill that individual's need, which is sad they were looking forward to the thing, but isn't bad on a design level.

graystone wrote:

I'll advocate to get every ambiguity possible removed. DM fiat/table variation might not be an issue for you as you play a home game but it's an issue for those of us that play with strangers

I like Matt Colville's take on it: there are no Dungeons or Dragons. The entire game is what comes out of the DM's mouth and mind. Its all DM fiat. Tracy Hickman in his excellent XDM made much the same point when he boiled down the entire game to target numbers that the DM feels is appropriate for whatever situations he presents.

If you have some kind of adversarial relationship with your DM and you feel the way to fix the gameplay issues that arise is to make super complex and detailed rules to tamp down on "DM fiat", then, frankly, you arent really addressing the core issues you have at your table.

For the record, I DM for strangers in online games as much as I do home games. I run long campaigns. Everyone has fun. Plenty of DM fiat. I make crap up constantly. *shrug*

Disclaimer: It has been quite a while since I read through XDM.

From what I remember, XDM advocates for a very hostile relationship between players and GM.

You claim that wanting to ask clarifying questions about the game is adversarial because it means you don't trust the GM. Hard disagree. It is entirely reasonable to want to understand the scope of the game you are playing and the GM should be on the same page as their players because they themselves are also a player in the game.

Now, I don't personally have any issues with the "about a week" language because that level of granularity is basically meaningless in terms of a typical PF game. That said, I don't blame Graystone for not being down with that. Their use case for gaming is very different from mine. I'm also fine accepting that not every game is for every person and "vague terms" is as valid a design choice as "explicit tables".

MaxAstro wrote:

Narxiso wrote:

I don’t think a rogue will need impromptu sneak attack since there was the level 14 class feat that made enemies flat footed at the cost of one action.

I forgot about this; this effectively is Impromptu Sneak Attack under another name.

On the Focus spells thing - I don't think all classes should have native access to Focus spells, but I do think all classes except maybe Fighter should have a path that gets them Focus spells. I feel like "X, except with a little magic" should be a thing you can do without needing to multiclass - and more then that, I feel like every class should have its own "little magical things" it can do that are specific to that class.

I mean, if we are expanding the classes that get Focus options I'd actually love to see Fighter get something. Like a supernatural Blademaster kind of aesthetic or something. I was going to suggest an Eldritch Knight path but then remembered Fighters don't have paths.

Tome. Of. Battle.

Eh. I think the writing and ambiguity is fine.

Quote:

This must-have 136-page guidebook for characters of all types introduces three new ancestries to the Second Edition of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game—the regimented and warlike hobgoblin, the plant-like leshy, and the inquisitive lizardfolk.

Darn...I was hoping for Tiefling, Aasimar, and Dhampir. Oh well, maybe we'll get those ancestries in a Bestiary or area-specific manual?

Pretty sure Bestiary Ancestries are out for PF2. I think they've said they want to dedicate word count to more GM-focused content for Bestiaries. All of those "PC Race" options would eat up a lot of word count over the course of the book and we'd get fewer creatures to use in our games.

I could see an interesting drift on the rules for refocusing could be used as a currency for taking advantage of RP opportunities. Might work similarly to Fate Points from Fate or Willpower in World of Darkness.

May not work for an organized play thing, but maybe in APs or Modules.

I had another I'd like to play. Goblin druid follower of Lamashtu, but he worships her in a mother-goddess capacity and brushes off all the evil as "granny being a bit weird".

One of the first characters I am interested in playing is going to be a gnome rogue who focuses on sneak attacking with cantrips. Maybe throw in a sorcerer dedication if I'm feeling froggy.

I just really want to start building characters :c

Same, tbh. Character building is how I grock new D&D-type systems.

What was npc classes before now would be a 'race' level x, without class - giving them prophiciencies as needed

maybe its a 'race x' with 'class' level one or two to give them the basics - lets say one level fighter to emulate the warrior, or one level bard/rogue to emulate a noble or.......

Not even this. You need a blacksmith with stats for some reason? Assign a level them based on how badass they are at the thing they do, give them an appropriate set of related skills at a level appropriate value, and any special effects. Don't even need to focus classes at all.

Also, for PC-like creation, you still wouldn't stack levels like that. Just isn't how classes work in PF2.

Lucas Yew wrote:

Also that in Wuxia stories, bulky & heavily muscular characters usually tend to be a supporting role, not a main protagonist.

At least, the readers of this genre seem to prefer lithe heroes over bulky ones.

Forcing tropes is how the genre dies. It's how player agency dies.

Hokuto no Ken and JoJo's are excellent examples of enjoyable meathead protagonists.

Also, players are in no way supposed to have the agency of protagonists of standard stories. Sometimes they are supporting, sometimes they are leading.

But allowing for self-expression and mold-breaking is the baseline for any respectable RPG.

Enforcing things because it's "the standard fantasy" is never a justification.

So yeah, let's have all types of monks. But make the balance sensible.

You can have all kinds of monks. They may just have 'Fighter' written on your sheet.

Would BOC and Pink Floyd be Occult or Arcane? I can see it a bit of both ways.

Pink Floyd feels Occult. Queen/Freddie Mercury is Primal, on the basis of Thunderbolts and Lightning. Arcane too stuffy.

Saedar wrote:

CorvusMask wrote:

Doesn't stop them from using D&D demons with names removed though <_<

Which ones are you talking about? A lot of the demon names used in D&D (and other RPGs) are based on real world myths, so can't be easily protected by copyright.

Glabrezu :p

Ah. Got nothing on that one. :)

Fiendish Chipmunks? They lure you in with their cutesy looks and then rip your throat out.

Members of the Foamy Card Cult?

Doesn't stop them from using D&D demons with names removed though <_<

Which ones are you talking about? A lot of the demon names used in D&D (and other RPGs) are based on real world myths, so can't be easily protected by copyright.

His name shall be "Archon".

Does the fighter have access to the focus spell mechanic other classes have? because some focus based special moves would be cool.

Doesn't look like it. They get stances and special strikes.

Largely, I think all ancestries should be roughly the same, though I really like morphail's breakdown above. You could also leverage the rarity system, though that seems like mixing rarity with power. Would let you do things like unlock certain ancestries via campaign play. Help a minotaur tribe? Unlock minotaur. Dunno how common that would be, though.

For additional info, you could always hop over to the Ask James Jacobs thread.

A lot of cool info in there.

** spoiler omitted **

I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG.

All hail Toothy-Bag!

Davido1000 wrote:

0o0o0 O 0o0o0 wrote:

Yes, this. My PF1 Paladin is exactly this. Medium armour for speed. No shield, don't need it. Two-handing a longsword (for Iomedae). Fist into battle, he defended the party by discouraging others from the front line - in a party of four with him, the others would typically be a Wiz, a Rogue and a Divine of sorts, why should they risk their necks or have redundancy in more than one frontliner? PF2 appears to need more than one melee fighter in a party to make the Champion worthwhile.

I dont understand why people are constantly complaining that they cant play classes the way they want to play it when you can quite easily with the multiclassing system. You wanna run head on into battle with a longsword instead of having the paladin reaction?

Take fighter with sudden charge, then take paladin multiclass at level 2, that way you can pick and choose what you want.

because some of us, do not like multiclassing

and its a RP thing too....

Multiclassing doesn't mean the same thing as it did in PF1. More like build your own class.

If it is about RP, I don't get how multiclassing impacts that at all. There's no RP reason why a LG Fighter/Champion can't call themselves a paladin. Or champion. Whatever.

@Saedar

I was not aware that the retraining was significantly changed into a core mechanic and not a "at GMs discretion". I thought changing spells, at least rules as written, was mostly done just at level and then in a restricted manor.

Retraining is a core part of the downtime rules in PF2. I don't remember if spell retraining was a part of that in the playtest.

As far as your worry about changing with the game meta I have not had your experience. We have always been very restrictive about retraining spells outside of leveling and the leveling mechanic is very limiting as by the nature of the game you will want to release an old spell that you have attained their big brother in order to gain a lower level utility spell. If you have a gm letting sorcerers swap out their spells known easily that might be the source of the problem. In PFS it is really expensive to do a rebuild on even a low level spell much less anything level 5 and up.

Do we actually know how PFS is handling PF2 retraining? Retraining is core part of the rules in PF2, so it may be more common and available. If you restrict retraining in your home games, well... You're in homebrew territory. There be monsters.