Saldiven's page

So, I was in an online game today, and the topic of Succubi came up, so I had to bring up this thread. I was gratified to know that the thread hasn't yet died. It'll be ten years old next Saturday.

Pathfinder 1e may be no more, but this thread lives on.

I would think you should be able to. The "Buy Equipment" step for character creation comes after the "Choose a Class" and "Record Class Details" steps.

Under the "Choose a Class" step, in the "Character Sheet" highlighted section, it states, "...then write a '1' in the Level boxy to indicate that your character is 1st level."

Under the "Record Class Details" step, it states, "See the class advancement table in your class entry to learn the class features your character gains at first level...."

Under the "Buy Equipment" step, it states, "At 1st level, your character has 15 gold pieces...."

So, by the time you get to the Buy Equipment step, you are already considered 1st level.

Saldiven wrote:

I would argue that the main reason D&D magic systems have been unbalanced is because of a combination of their sheer size (based on number of spells) and power creep over time during an edition as opposed to a failing in the basic nature of the system.

This would suggest that things start out okay and get worse over time as the edition ages, but many of the most problematic elements of various editions of D&D come straight from the original ruleset.

When even the core books have literally hundreds of spells, volume of spells is an issue for balancing from the very beginning of each edition. As editions go on, the number of unbalanced spells increase.

Saldiven wrote:

but in my experience, Vancian magic allows for better game balance than other options.

I feel like the entire history of D&D disagrees a bit. There are a lot of things to like about the series, but good balance has never been one of them.

Systems like the one I mention with Hero allowed for a very high level of optimization that is terribly difficult to balance.

I would argue that the main reason D&D magic systems have been unbalanced is because of a combination of their sheer size (based on number of spells) and power creep over time during an edition as opposed to a failing in the basic nature of the system.

Like I said, I have not seen any system in a game that I would categorically call superior, but I have not played every TTRPG in the last 42 years of my gaming life, so I would be completely willing to take suggestions.

2. The d20 has a particular probability distribution

The odds of rolling the maximum value on a d20 are 1/20th. The odds of rolling maximum value on a d6 are 1/6th. The odds of rolling max on 3d6 would be (1/6)*(1/6)*(1/6)=1/216th.

Meanwhile, the odds of rolling middle values (10-11) on a d20 are 2/20th, on a d6 (3-4) they're 2/6th. 3d6 has an average score of 10.5, just like a d20, but the odds of getting a result of 10 or 11 is 54/216 = 1/4th.

So using a 3d6 model for example, makes maximum (and minimum) results really rare and medium results really common. If you see how much PF2 leans on critical results, that would make it an entirely different game, far more focused on reliable results instead of chancy gambles.

I wanted to dig into this a bit more to explain why switching from a d20 to a d6 based system (using, for example, 3d6 to get a comparable result range of 3-18) would require significant changes to the core system of Pathfinder.

Assume for a moment that a d20 system has a core mechanic where at any given level, the average assumed score for a check has "easy," "average," and "hard" potential levels of difficulty. Easy requires a 5 on the die, medium requires a 10, and hard requires a 15. In this system, the average person will succeed on an easy check 80% of the time, an average check 55% of the time, and a hard check 30% of the time.

If you switch over to a 3d6 system without completely changing the rest of the system, just merely using the same rolls and modifiers, the successes change to 98.16% for the easy difficulty, 65.31% for an average difficulty, and 9.23% for the hard difficulty.

Any way you think of it, using d6's rather than the d20 would require a complete re-work of the entire game mechanic from the bottom up. It would fundamentally become a different game.

Replacing d20 with d6 would result in a dramatically different game, functionally speaking. And, IMO, RPG's that use d6's as the primary random die for checks have always been inferior, mechanically speaking, whether it's a system that uses the sum of the d6 rolls or one that uses multiple d6 checks against a target with number of successes determining the outcome.

The d6 doesn't provide enough variation. Using a number-of-success type model has issues with upward scaling as characters advance because of the low range variable range. Using a sum-of-dice method creates a bell-curve distribution of results rather than an even distribution, which makes the math for creating a balanced core system more difficult.

Choosing the d6 just because it's more common at a time when you can get a d20 for $0.25 USD is an odd concept. It's not like d20's are something new. They've been around for 50 years.

Not sure if this has been done (am not an expert on all the AP's that have been done), but here's one I would like:

An AP focusing on the Mana Wastes and the dwarves of Alkenstar. Maybe a situation where the conflict between Geb and Nex is flaring up again, threatening another war in the Mana Wastes, while the party works with Alkenstar to try to keep the city-state from being overrun by the two significantly larger armies.

It's a great spell to exist so that NPC's can use it to confuse and confound the players.

The usefulness of spells differ for PC's and NPC's as their goals are pretty different. There have always been lots of spells that, on the surface, don't really have enough obvious usefulness for a PC to use them, but help give a mechanical explanation for how an NPC can accomplish his or her ends.

Like in this case, the party keeps meeting a variety of different women of varying ages that appear like they might be all related to one another. They first meet a motherly matron and have a role playing interaction. Later, they meet a young girl who says, "Oh, Aunt Bee told me all about you!" and have an interaction with her. Later on, they meet an old crone who calls herself Granny Ceecee and have further interactions.

Little does the party know that they are all the same Witch using the different guises to tease out information, deceive the group, and advance her hidden agenda.

CrimsonKnight wrote:

/snip

A canine ancestry (after all we already have mangy cat things and rat)

/snip

Apparently Shoonies are in the third Extinction Curse adventure book, though they are a Rare ancestry and not PFS legal like 2 ways. But for home game purposes they're on AoN.

Shoony Ancestry

I don't think I can create my fearsome canine warrior concept when I'm stuck with a small statured anthropomorphic pug.

And, seriously, if the art is accurate to the concept, the ancestry should take a penalty to stealth because they constantly snuffle when they breath.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree.

To me, there is zero "neat" about the concept of the flickmace. I find it dumb from every angle. It's particularly so because the game has come up with a bunch of original fantasy weapons that actually are interesting with a high "cool" factor. The flickmace has great mechanical features in game, but the concept is just kind of dumb.

My issue with the flickmace isn't the mechanics.

It's just a stupid weapon idea, conceptually.

"More a flail than a mace, this weapon has a short handle attached to a length of chain with a ball at the end. The ball is propelled to its reach with the flick of the wrist, the momentum of which brings the ball back to the wielder after the strike."

Flails with long chains and short handles are more dangerous to the user than the opponent. There is a reason that historical flails pretty much universally have longer handles that the combined length of the head and the chain. If the chain/head is longer than the handle, the user is going to end up hitting his/her own hand or arm with alarming frequency. A longer chain also allows for far less predictable deflections of the head when it hits an opponent's armor. Historically, the ball-and-chain type flail has very little actual evidence of use in warfare, probably because of the issues mentioned above.

Then there's the whole flicking a wrist to send out the ball which miraculously reverses momentum to return to the wielder. Is chain elastic or something? Also, if the chain is that long, how is merely "flicking" the wrist enough to send the ball flying towards an enemy. As an experiment, get a yoyo and let it hang and full length. Then, without any other movement, "flick" your wrist and see how far the yoyo moves.

The description of the weapon and how it works is complete nonsense.

Yeah, yeah, I know, fantasy-blah-blah-blah. It's still a stupid concept from that perspective because it isn't even a cool idea. Rather, it's just a fundamental misunderstanding of how flails work. The Rule of Cool (though highly impractical) works for things like the Dwarven Waraxe (big ax with two bits), Orc Necksplitter (huge ax reminiscent of a bardiche with serrated blade), or Rhoka Sword (sword with two parallel blades). The flickmace is a ball attached to a short stick by a chain.

To me, the number of deities is less important than the pantheon making sense.

One of the big problems with Golarion's gods (and, honestly, every set of pantheons ever created for D&D before Pathfinder existed) is that the pantheon just didn't make sense. I've written about this in the past, so won't repeat myself.

Make sure your pantheon has internal logic. Have a story for the origin of the universe that supports not only the existence of gods in general, but the existence of those specific gods. Explain the relationship between the gods, who are allies, who are foes, and why. This will play into how their followers react to each other in the world and help justify the world's geopolitical situation.

Some might not agree with me, but avoid the silly practice of having greater gods solely dedicated to some silly fantasy trope like "murder" or "darkness." Sure, a god might have multiple aspects, and one of those aspects might include that, but you don't need an entire divinity dedicated to nothing but darkness. Or, maybe a minor god that serves another greater god could have sway over such a minor sphere of influence.

I personally prefer smaller, tighter pantheons just for simplicity in creation and ease of maintaining internal logic, but the real world definitely has examples of much larger pantheons (such as China's celestial bureaucracy, where if counting every named divinity will get you over 1,000). When I create small pantheons, I will give them multiple aspects that effectively create multiple gods without having more actual gods. From a historical example, look at Zeus; he was the god of the sky, lightning, king of the gods, honor and justice, and creator of the laws the gods had to follow. (Which is all kind of funny considering how much he cheated on his wife.) But, the point would be that in fantasy setting, a cleric could serve in a temple that revers Zeus specifically in his facet as the god of thunder and lightning, and the character tailor himself around that, while another follower of Zeus could revere him in the aspect of the king of the gods.

But, to wrap up, just try to make the pantheon make sense. Don't just create a god to have a god for something needed as a plot point in an adventure, never to be used again.

In the first book, there is one city encounter, a series of above ground caste encounters, several underground dungeon encounters, an outdoor encounter with kinda treehouse things, and some natural dungeon encounters.

Tactically - the Paladin soaks up damage by wading into the middle, while the wizard and cleric both free cast as best they can (though the Cleric acts as our second tank). The rogue does buckets of damage, but always manages to be between the boss and a bad place, and take a licking for it. The bard has negligible combat influence, though numerically his inspiring performances do account for a lot of the party damage.

I think this is some of the issue. In P2e, it's really hard to just go in and tank stuff. Enemies' first attacks in higher challenge fights just hit too easily, and the second attack is often better than 50/50 on hitting, too. It also sets up the "tank" to be hit with the bosses' strong 2- and 3-action attacks.

I would suggest in tough one or two enemy fights that the party needs to do things that eat up the enemies' actions. Something as simple as move in, attack, then move away will force the enemy to use at least one action to get into attack range (assuming it's not ranged focused). Other things like shove effects that force the enemy to close distance have the similar effect. Tripping eats up an action to stand up.

Then, there are lots of spells that eat up actions as an effect. At 4th level, Confusion gives Stunned 1 even on a successful save. Hideous Laughter gives Slowed 1 on a failed save and no reactions on a successful save, and is a sustained spell. Things that cause Sickened are good because they give a penalty to rolls, and the enemy can sacrifice an action (also a good thing) to try to remove the penalty. Lots of debuff spells like Fear and Goblin Pox impose a negative state on the enemy even if they pass their saving throw.

If you can find ways to make the enemy only make a single basic attack action each round (rather than multiple basic or any of the 2- or 3-action attacks), beating the enemy with the favorable action economy of the party becomes a lot easier, even for tougher enemies.

I haven't read the whole thread, so others might have already pointed this out.

Instead of having the campaign solely based on the idea that the players mistakenly help the wrong side, how about developing both sides of the plot quite fully. Have neither side be completely virtuous or sinister. Allow the players a chance to know something about the factions involved. Their actions in the initial encounter can give them an opportunity, conscious or otherwise, of which side they wish to ally with.

That way, the players have more agency. Sure, they may fail all the checks to recognize who any of the people are, noble, soldiers, and wizard alike, but if they do fail all the checks, at least they had the chance to figure it out. From a player standpoint, this would be FAR superior to merely hitting the party with a "gotcha" after defeating the wizard.

Kinds of checks:
-Maybe hear the girl crying out to the wizard, or vice versa. (Perception)
-A chance to recognize the wizard; he's high enough level to summon elementals, so might have some notoriety. (Society)
-A chance to recognize the girl by voice alone. (Society or regional Knowledge)
_A chance to hear the noble family's name mentioned by either the soldiers, girl, or wizard. (Perception followed by Society or regional Knowledge)
-A chance to see one of the soldiers take a moment to try to attack into the carriage and be fended off by one of the wizard's spells. (Perception)

Descriptions tend to make players think things are important, so I'd only describe important things. So give a description of the item is magical, made out of a special material, or is particularly valuable.

I agree with this. It's kind of a play on the idea of Chekhov's gun. Giving more elaborate than usual descriptions of items will make the players assume there is something important about the item. If there is not, in fact, anything important about the item, it will waste the players' time trying to make that determination, and then make characters less interested when you give elaborate descriptions in the future.

You don't think you need to? But you did.

You are the one that differentiated between Shoanti, Varisian, Numerian, Chelish, Mwangi, and Osirion, but then lumped the entire continent of Tian into one.

I just suggested that this was silly. You countered that you didn't want "to narrow it down too much," when you had already done so.

I'm not sure why you're defending your decision to be so narrow and specific for one region, but then poo-pooing a similar degree of granularity for another region.

As for Mwangi, it's a tiny region compared to Tian. Mwangi is roughly 20% of the continent upon which it lies. Tian is the largest continent on Golarion. I'll reiterate that lumping Tian into one cultural group would be like lumping all of the Inner Sea region into one group (including Mwangi, Osirion, Absalom, Cheliax, etc. into one group).

Saldiven wrote:

Tian Xia isn't just one culture, I don't believe. It's a continent with a bunch of different nations. The Tian aren't a single ethnic group or single culture.

Tian-Shu are somewhat analogous to real world China, so weapons like the Meteor Hammer and Nine Ringed Sword are appropriate there, since they are drawn from Chinese martial arts tradition.

Tian-Min are somewhat analogous to real world Japan, so weapons like the Naginata and Tekko-kagi are appropriate to this group since those weapons are drawn from real world Japanese history.

My point is that it's silly to differentiate between groups like Shoanti and Varisian, or Numerian and Chelish, but then lump an entire continent into one cultural group.

I don't things in the oriental weapons fall so neatly into a single bucket: Take Tekko-Kagi once. There are similar weapons in chinese and indian cultures. Meteor hammers along with Kusari-fundo and manrikigusari are slungshots, all of similar use and construction. The naginata [japan] and the Mei chein doa [china] are nearly identical weapons. Fighting fans are in china, japan, Indonesia, Korea....

I'm not sure I'd want to try to narrow it down too much. I think if you try to go into sub-cultures you'll get bleed over and have items falling under multiple ones. I think it's like “Avistani” or “Mwangi”: a term for the many different residents of several kingdoms and countries, in this case on the distant continent of Tian Xia. If someone wanted to map the tain subcultures to real life areas then map the items to those area, I'd be interested to see the results but it's a finer hair than I'm willing to split myself.

Nice, but totally missing the point.

If we're going to make cultural distinctions in this case between neighboring kingdoms in the Inner Seas region (which is just a part of the continent upon which it is located), it is silly to lump an entire continent (containing multiple different nations) into one single cultural group.

Shoanti and Varisian peoples are no more culturally dissimilar than are the various Tian groups, for example. If we're going to say "Tian" is one single cultural group, we should also say "Inner Sea" is one single cultural group.

Tian Xia isn't just one culture, I don't believe. It's a continent with a bunch of different nations. The Tian aren't a single ethnic group or single culture.

Tian-Shu are somewhat analogous to real world China, so weapons like the Meteor Hammer and Nine Ringed Sword are appropriate there, since they are drawn from Chinese martial arts tradition.

Tian-Min are somewhat analogous to real world Japan, so weapons like the Naginata and Tekko-kagi are appropriate to this group since those weapons are drawn from real world Japanese history.

My point is that it's silly to differentiate between groups like Shoanti and Varisian, or Numerian and Chelish, but then lump an entire continent into one cultural group.

So let's unpack this.

* We're talking about a DC 15 medicine check. So normally, on a total result of 15, you would get a success.

* A '1' on a roll makes the final result one step worse. This usually causes a critical failure.

* Your player has a +14 score, and she just rolled a 1.

=

So, your player's result is a total of 15, which would normally be a success, but because of the '1', it becomes one step worse, which is a normal failure.

To this is the "unusual" case when a 1 doesn't result in a critical failure; because if your player has a +14 modifier, then a DC 15 check is a really really easy task.

And, to extrapolate even farther.

If your character had a modifier of +24, the rolling a 1 would result in a 25 on the check. For a DC 15 skill check, this would normally be a critical success, but the 1 on the roll would reduce it to a normal success.

Hiruma Kai wrote:

Divine Weapon + Any spell (i.e. true strike, heal, etc) + Cold Iron arrows means 2d8+2 (piercing/cold iron)+1d6 (good) +15 weakness vs good + 15 weakness vs cold iron. Average damage is 44.5. Criticals only deal 64.5 on average though.

And average 14.5 damage without weaknesses. Ok, it works against demons, but you can't count on your bow against most monsters. And considering that you haven't put a single stat increase into Wisdom, it's your only way to deal with enemies you can't get into your melee reach easily. So, you'll end up as a healbot very often.

I have to wonder if you're deliberately ignoring the part about the bow being the backup weapon for the WP, so wouldn't be used against the majority of opponents.

Castilliano has the right of it. The square targeting mechanic is just for game purposes. In a "real world" situation, you'd just fire your weapon in that direction, not at a specific volume of space. Honestly, that makes being blind in the game even worse. In a "real world" situation, if I fired in that direction, and they were fleeing directly away from me, I'd still have a chance to hit them. In the game, if I fire at a specific square, and they've moved one square directly away or directly towards me, I have no chance of hitting them, even though the enemy is still exactly in line with the shot.

Remember that the Hellknights aren't an evil organization. They do not revere the Evil aspects of Hell and Asmodeus, but the Lawful aspects of both. There are neutral and even good aligned members of the Hellknight order.

They are nothing like Nazis. Hellknights do not engage in genocide, do not believe in a "master race," and do not actively wage wars of aggression against their neighbors. See the below description of Hellknights, cobbled together from a variety of sources:

"Regardless of their severity, Hellknights are not an inherently evil group; they are wholly unconcerned with morality. Although there are numerous evil members—particularly among their upper echelons—the majority of the orders are impartial arbiters and enforcers of order and justice. They see the study of Hell's tenets and even the summoning of devils as tools meant to intimidate and strengthen the individual resolve of the orders' members.[8] Hellknights are taught to replace emotion with steely discipline,[9] and are not interested in methods: only the end results matter.[1]

While Hellknights are widely feared and respected, the common Hellknight joins out of a sense of duty and a wish to be a part of something greater, seeing a world ruled by laws and free of rampaging beasts and cheating thieves as a future well-worth striving toward, even at the sacrifice of freedom. Countries and rulers sometimes invite Hellknights into their lands, leaving the dirty business of harsh law enforcement to an already loathed third party, although convincing Hellknights to leave once they have been welcomed sometimes proves problematic for more freedom-loving societies.[8]"

(From the Pathfinder wiki.)

That's fine. There is no penalty in the campaign if they distrust him, and even kill him. Let them do it, and then they can rebuild the castle after taking it from the devil-worshipping cult of the Hellknights.

This is completely unnecessary. Alak has no interest in the castle beyond that stated in his back story. The Hellknight order has washed their hands of the place, and it is specifically stated in the AP module that Alak will make no objection if the party takes over ownership of the place.

"By default, half-elves and half-orcs descend from humans, but your GM might allow you to be the offspring of an elf, orc, or different ancestry. In these cases, the GM will let you select the half-elf or half-orc heritage as the heritage for this other ancestry. The most likely other parent of a half-elf are gnomes and halflings, and the most likely parents of a half-orc are goblins, halflings, and dwarves."

Begin with this as a base:

Start with a half-orc Dwarf.

Get Toughness, Mountain Stoutness, Orc Ferocity, and Incredible Ferocity.

This gives you a bunch of extra hit points, you can avoid getting knocked out once per hour, and your stabilize on a 6+ if you are knocked out.

Ten10 wrote:

tivadar27 wrote:

Ten10 wrote:

Seannoss wrote:

Sounds like he shouldn't be in the front. You have said that a +1 doesn't matter. Surely he knows this too.

Actually, what I said was:

"A +1 to hit only comes into play when two people roll the exact same number and one hits the other misses. And what is the odds of two people rolling the exact same number enough times to make that even noteworthy?"

Well, the odds of them rolling the exact same number is 5%, since we're talking about d20's here. So...

Um... better check those maths again. So...

Listen, seriously, you literally don't know what you're talking about here. This is the second time that you've posted something that you think is mathematically correct, and it's not. The odds of two people rolling the same number on a d20 is 5%, 1/20. Do you have some better "maths" to show me?

The chance for one person to roll a 10 on a d20 is 1/20 or 5%.

The chance for two people to roll a 10 on a d20 is:

(1/20)(1/20) = 1/400 = 0.25%.

edit: ninja'd....

Saldiven wrote:

jplukich wrote:

Ten10 wrote:

No matter how many ways I have tried to explain to him, "sure buddy you do 22% better damage at ranged you are, however, giving the enemy a +5 to hit"

So wait... this is a team game, but you try to dictate how other people play their characters? Did this player volunteer to tank? If so there is some merit to the discussion. If not, why assume they would?

Um...because it's a team game, and the Cleric's decision is making things slightly better for himself while making it simultaneously far worse for the party, thereby increasing the likelihood that the entire party fails?

That doesn't answer the question though. If the cleric didn't want to play a tank, trying to impose it on them is ridiculous. The assumption they would tank is the failing (unless they volunteered to and aren't for some reason).

I have to admit, the fact that you're using "it's a team game" as a justification for an individual player to do whatever he/she wants is kind of funny. Usually, in "team games," individuals make sacrifices of their individual desires for the betterment of the group.

Ten10 wrote:

No matter how many ways I have tried to explain to him, "sure buddy you do 22% better damage at ranged you are, however, giving the enemy a +5 to hit"

So wait... this is a team game, but you try to dictate how other people play their characters? Did this player volunteer to tank? If so there is some merit to the discussion. If not, why assume they would?

Um...because it's a team game, and the Cleric's decision is making things slightly better for himself while making it simultaneously far worse for the party, thereby increasing the likelihood that the entire party fails?

As a GM, is it wrong to sigh in exasperation when the players you're introducing to Pathfinder 2nd Edition FOR THE FIRST TIME show up with a lizardfolk, a leshay, and a gnelf?

Personally, I have always hated the Mos Eisley Cantina feel of the Pathfinder world. I won't go into my reasoning why, because it's rather long and involved, and relates to philosophies surrounding world building and maintaining in-universe logic, and how that is at loggerheads with a business model that revolves around constant addition of new material.

But, no, I do not think you're "wrong" in any way, but you and your players might not be looking for the same kind of experience from the game.

My party doesn't even bother with Recall Knowledge, and hardly bothered with the previous incarnation in PF1.

They just learn as they go, and remember for the next time they run into the same or similar creatures. Never really caused any problems; nobody died because they didn't know that critter has DR5/silver.

I wouldn't think badger; spiders don't strike me as something that would rage like a badger.

I would think it would need to be something with a single attack, since spiders use their legs for movement and manipulation, not slashing or stabbing.

Snake wouldn't actually be a bad chassis. It's a bit slow with only 20' movement, but it has a climb and swim speed (some spiders can actually walk across water, though it's more of a function of their small size than anything else). The snake's constrict at later levels can be re-skinned as being wrapped in silk. It's support benefit could be described as all it's legs interfering with the target's ability to react.

Edit: To make it more spidery, start with snake, ditch the scent and swim ability, then replace both with either "All Around Vision" (lots of eyes all over its head), or short range "Tremorsense," (spiders are very sensitive to vibrations).

Might also replace the advanced Constrict ability with an appropriate Poison, but would require more work to find a poison that was comparable in effect to the constrict.

In my Age of Ashes campaign, I have to players running Goblins with the Half-Orc addition. Rather than the obvious progenitors, their father is a high level Goblin Bard, and their mother is an Orc with an excessive fondness for troubadours. Part of their back-story for becoming adventurers is the desire to chase down their father and give him a good beating for running off on their mom before they were born.

So far, there hasn't really been anything game-breaking, and the role playing aspect of it has been pretty fun.

I disagree with your definition of meta-gaming, entirely. Meta-gaming is not "altering your course of action because of out of game knowledge." Meta-gaming is a character making use of knowledge that the character has no way of having.

Examples of meta-gaming:

Your character has never seen a troll before, but you as a player automatically choose to attack it with fire or acid because you (the player) know that stops trolls' regeneration.

Your character has no experience with demons, but you automatically pull out your cold iron dagger you've never attacked anything with before since you (the player) know demons' weakness.

(More extreme) Your character chooses to go out of his/her way to search a particular out-of-the-way location in a dungeon multiple times until successful because you (the player) have run this AP in the past and know there is a juicy piece of treasure there.

Examples of not meta-gaming:

Any time a character chooses to not do something he's bad at and doesn't have a good likelihood of succeeding, such as:

Wizard chooses to not try to climb the outside of a castle wall at first level because his Athletics skill is -1, meaning the best thing that can happen is he/she fails before he gets high enough to cause damage.

Dex based character chooses to not wield the nice 2-hand sword he just found because his Strength is low, and he's not proficient with martial weapons, anyway, so it's unlikely he'll hit with it.

A character with mediocre to bad knowledge skills attempting knowledge checks when the character is fully aware that he/she doesn't really know much about the subject matter.

Funnily enough, I'm the opposite and always love to see more deities with more complex relationships between each other.

For my own setting, I basically explain some of the overlap as being due to the gods not agreeing on things while they were putting the world back together (long story), and thus self-segregating among different regions of the world (including making different afterlife systems). Then add in some mortals ascending to deity status, deities migrating from other planes, and existing deities taking on additional roles within their region to cover for a gap.

I'll expand my position to make more sense.

Usually, when published material add new deities, they do not bother giving any particular explanation for the relationships with the other gods. They might give a brief synopsis about one or to particularly significant relationships, but that's about it.

Pathfinder 1E had over 200 possible deities that could be worshiped, there is significant overlap among them, and almost none of them have any meaningful amount of explanation. They exist, largely, to pad published material and provide some mechanical combinations of favored weapon, alignment, and domains.

Let's look at some of the silly deities and their areas of control; I say, "silly," because, seriously, who would ever worship them:

Nameless: Delusions of Authority (anyone with such a delusion wouldn't think they were delusional, so would not worship this guy, and anyone with real authority wouldn't, either).

Doloras: Pain (poor man's Zon-Kuthon).

Phlegyas: Atheists (seriously).

Nightripper: Botched executions and pits (why?).

I could keep going on. If the deity has an area of control that would actually be something sentient beings would either revere out of admiration or revere out of fear (praying to a god of disease in hopes of avoiding the disease, for example), there are a half dozen or more deities that cover that area.

I mean, I would get the tons of deities if it were a Chinese celestial bureaucracy type thing, but there's no organization to ANY of the published pantheons that have been done by TSR, Wizards, or Paizo. They're completely lacking in any apparent internal logic, and they never provide enough explanation for them to make sense. As I said previously, I'm convinced they're only created to provide mechanical uses, and dang the fallout. There isn't a single published pantheon I've ever seen that I would use in a home campaign.

My setting has its own 21 gods, and anyone outside that is usually a demigod, but I love Urgathoa and Norgober so much that I wanted them to have a place in my world.

I'm a fan of this kind of thing, too. Ever since the days of TSR, published material always ended up having way too many different divine creatures; it just got to the point of the absurd. Lots of the "gods" were incredibly niche that were only created because of a writer's desire for some unique god for some specific adventure or other publication, and those gods almost never have any sort of internal cohesiveness between them.

To me, I always thought that was immersion crushing when it's supposed to be on a world where gods physically exist. I mean, it makes sense for one god to be worshiped under a variety of different names among different cultures, but it's eye-rolling for every single culture to have it's own God of X.

I have to chuckle at people saying it is impossible to fire a bow while prone, as if the bow staff has to be perpendicular to the ground to function.

Let's ignore the entire class of "foot bows" that were designed specifically to be fired while laying on the shooter's back using the feet to brace the bow staff and both hands to draw back the string.

Imagine a right handed bowman. Picture him drawing back the bow as normal, but placing the arrow on the right side of the staff instead of the left. Then imagine that person laying on his left side rather than standing vertically. This would function perfectly well for firing. The mechanics of the bow are completely unaffected by fact that the staff is parallel to the ground, and the arrow is laying on what is now the top of the staff, so it won't fall off.

Also, the bow can be fired from a half-sit-up position with the bow parallel to the ground.

In either of these cases, it is an atypical method of firing the bow, which would sensibly make the shot more difficult than normal (hence a to-hit penalty), but it's kind of silly to say that it's impossible to do.

(For the doubters, just google search "prone archery" to find discussion of the topic. It's something bow hunters use from time to time.)

In addition, I want to point out a key, but honestly insane point about the jump spell. "You must land on a space of solid ground within 30 feet of you, or else you fall after using your next action."

I think, at best, you could use it twice before falling prone. It says "after using your next action." If you next action is casting Jump, you fall prone immediately after completing that action. There's nothing that indicates a second casting of the spell delays the "fall prone" timing of the first casting.

To the OP:

Am late to the party so haven't read all the way through the thread. This is just my opinion.

Casting such a spell on someone wouldn't be inherently evil, I don't think. However, from a social, in-world standpoint, I think it would get that paladin punched in the nose. In a world that has so much magic, and much of it is dangerous to the target, or otherwise invasive, I cannot imagine ANYONE being content with someone randomly casting spells at them, regardless of whether or not the effects weren't damaging.

It would be similar to walking around and randomly swabbing people with one of those test swabs to see if the person had been handling explosives recently. Nobody would be comfortable with you doing that, despite the fact that the swabs are completely harmless.

God forbid a Champion need other party members to help them keep their HP up.....

Mountain Stance reduces all your speeds by 5 feet.

And Monks get +10' movement at 3rd level and +5' every four levels thereafter.

It's not that terrible a negative for two whole levels.

Nothing requires you to take a damage dealing cantrip that has a DC.

Detect Magic, Shield, Mage Hand, Message, and Guidance are all pretty darn good spells for a Rogue to have at his/her disposal, and probably of far more long term use than a damage dealing cantrip. A Rogue has other ways to do damage besides cantrips.

So, what we've established is that different combinations of DC and skill modifier will have varying rates of occurrence for crit fails and crit successes.

for those wondering about the origins of catch 22 and what it actually means, it's from a vietnam book.

i forget that exact narrative but a character is remarking over a strange phenomenon.

Those who are clinically insane are discharged back to america and since only the insane would want to stay in vietnam anyone who wants to stay is sent home and anyone who wants to go home is forced to stay.

it's a system which specifically finds a way to make all involved forced out of what they'd like to do or find preferable.

*sigh*

The book is called Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. It's about the European theater of World War II, not Vietnam.

Here is the quote from the book loosely referenced above:

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle."

A true Catch-22 is an inescapable loop.

Edit: Another definition of Catch-22 in the novel that has always stuck out in my mind is one that is something like: "They can do anything to you they want to that you can't stop them from doing."

Resource management and number of encounters per day really aren't necessarily the same thing.

Some players constantly nova their abilities, even when unnecessary, thereby always hitting far fewer than the theoretical encounters per day before deciding they need to rest.

Other players will only use limited resources when absolutely necessary, making due as well as possible by coming up with clever tactics to replace those resources. These players will often see far more encounters per day than the theoretical number.

The number of players who will tailor their play style around the expected encounters per day is so vanishingly small as to be irrelevant.

Granted, anecdotal evidence is always suspect, but I'll give it to show my experience. I have been playing D&D since 1978. I've played Basic, AD&D, AD&D 2E, D&D 3e, D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, D&D 5e, and now Pathfnider 2e. At no point in that 41 year period have I ever worried about hitting a theoretical "encounters per day" number as either a player or as a DM designing home-brew adventures. It's not necessary. As a player, I do what I need to do to achieve the adventure results without dying; if that means one big combat in a day or 20 small combats, so be it. As a DM, I'm far more concerned about having interesting combats and compelling story lines than I am about whether or not I'm hitting an "encounters per day" number; the players themselves will determine how many encounters they're willing to deal with on a daily basis.

I think the problem is less that this weapon exists and more on the mindset of people who think you need to hyper-optimize everything you do in a pen-and-paper RPG played with a group of other humans. Yes, I understand that some people enjoy doing this, which is fine. What I don't understand is people that think you MUST do this.

A character doesn't need to be perfectly optimized to be useful to the party and fun to play.

And man these thread titles. I think it would be faster to just write 'is pf2 a trap option'

I agree. People are so melodramatic. Everything that isn't the best possible option is apparently "garbage" or a "trap."

These topics have amused me for years; they came up since the beginning of these forums.

If option A is mathematically the strongest, a vocal group will assert that options B-Z are all "garbage."

If one weapon build has a DPR of 10, and another has 8.5, the latter is "unusable."

This place needs eye-roll emojis.

In English:

The opposite of friendly (high CHA) is arrogant/rude/demanding (also high CHA). That doesn't match.

Low CHA is actually 'forgettable' or 'socially inept'. But this doesn't fit the pattern.

High CHA doesn't necessarily mean friendly. Being charismatic means you have a certain compelling ability to influence other people. Some people are charismatic and jerks (Steve Jobs), some are charismatic and murderous (Hitler, Charles Manson), some are charismatic, likable, and humble (Abraham Lincoln), some were charismatic but brusque (Arthur Wellesley the Duke of Wellington), etc.

There is zero requirement for someone to be friendly to be highly charismatic. The two concepts are unrelated to one another.

My suggestion is to always rebuild a dragon's feats, especially if you're using a Bestiary (first one) dragon. There are so many amazing feats available now that didn't exist in the beginning of Pathfinder, and a lot of the feats on the Bestiary dragon entries kind of suck for utility.

Consider a combination of Fly By Attack, Snatch, and Snatch and Drop.

Also, redo their spells, especially defensive spells. Consider adding a combination of Displacement and Mirror Image.

Consider the above combination in the following scenario:

Dragon prepares for fight by buffing with defensive spells including Mirror Image and Displacement.

Dragon ends first round flying 40' or so away and casts an offensive spell or a control spell. Maybe something like a create pit or wall spell to get the party split from each other. Dragon takes round of attacks in return using defensive buffs to (hopefully) survive the round.

Round two, dragon targets a character, preferably a caster (since they cause the most problems) for a Fly By Attack bite. If successful, free Grapple attempt, then continue flying another 80' (most dragons have 200' of Fly) before making a forced landing, doing a bit of extra damage to both dragon and grappled character. Party hustles to get closer, and a few should be able to make attacks. Defenses should still be up and mitigating a lot of the damage.

Round three, dragon uses breath weapon, denying the grappled character any saving throw due to the effect of the Snatch feat. Free action to drop the character (who might very well now be out of the fight) and fly away 200'.

Rinse, repeat. Teleport or cast Invisibility and fly away if things start to go sideways. Come back later for revenge, if necessary.

The biggest mistake you can ever make is allowing your party to fight a dragon in a "lair" where the dragon just has to sit there and get melee'd to death. If a lair fight is on the table, make darn sure the dragon has Teleport of Dimension Door to be able to get outside if necessary, where the dragon can then wait on the party to attack them when they come out.

I've been running D&D/Pathfinder for 35 years. I've never had a party ever tell me that dragons are easy after encountering one I've run. Usually, dragons end up being the most hated creatures by all my players. They about throw a party when they finally manage to kill one.

Back in 3.0/3.5, the way this was discouraged was with the exp penalty. It made single level dipping and having more than two classes far more difficult.

People seemed to dislike that, for some reason (I never had a problem with it, myself).

Should that be brought back?