Scarablob's page

This lame take is certainly in line with this forum. They didn't "make the game easier", they removed unintended interactions between flavour and rules. Worshippers of Urgathoa weren't supposed to be unable to play Blood Lords because it primarily features undead opponents. Worshippers of Pharasma are supposed to be able to play in most Adventure Paths, which tend to involve looting at least one tomb.

Agree with you on Urgathoa, Desna and Nethys, but Pharasma does feel a bit weird, because while the tomb looting was rare enought to not come up too much (but enough to make the anathema an interesting conundrum), the new formulation feel like it refer to any looting of dead body... which include any opponent you just killed. And as we all know, looting your opponent is basically the fundation upon which the whole pathfinder economy is build, so preventing the pharasmin believer to loot at all is rough. The formulation also make it weird, as I don't really see how someone can loot the dead in "good" or "bad" faith. They can do so for good reason or because of greed, but "in bad faith" imply that they lie about their true intention.

As if you could rob any tomb or corpse just to sell it latter as long as you're open that you're a tomb robber, but that if you pretend to be a tomb robber, but are instead someone tring to get these item back to their original owner, then you suddenly violate the anathema because you were acting in bad faith.

I'd just say to express in the Playtest Survey what you're like to see in the complete class.

I don't really get what is your point here, aren't these forum made specifically for people to tell what they think about the iteration of the class that's being playtested?

Sure, interaction with already released element of the game need less playtesting, but it still need some of it if they want to use these elements in uncommon ways. And these forum are made for us to talk about how we feel about the current iteration of the class, so i'm reporting (and I'm not the only one), that from my perspective, the necromancer don't interact enough with necromancy in general, instead focussing solely on it's own special feature. So I'm expressing that I would like more feature, no matter the form they take, that allow for this class to make better use of the already released necromancy option.

A better version of the shambling horror focus spell would fix a lot of those feel problems. A focus spell that's basically summon undead except it has to target a corpse. Unlikely, even if they lowered the level of the summon to not be top tier spell, it would then fall right into the useless bin for a lot of players.

Honestly, given how "not meta" summon spells are (for good reason), I feel like having a feat that turn them into focus spell (and thus allow you to cast them at max heigtenning without having to lose your other top level slot) would be far from broken.

Druids already have a subclass that take two spells (pest and animal form), smash them together and turn them into a focus spell (with even added upside), with the possibility of adding even more spell to the pile and adding even more upside to them through other feats, so turning normal spells into focus spell isn't broken by itself, it depend on the specific spell. And summon spells have enough restriction I feel to make them fine as focus.

Do note that I say that in the necromancer thread, but I'm not talking solely for them. Summoners, sloth wizard, and druid all deserve a way to get such upside I think, even if it cost them a couple of feats to get to it. Because right now, summon really doesn't feel worth using.

I think Ragathiel "swapping" is now more unlikely than ever. Even if Ragathiel as "good" was kinda debatable, he was a bit too extreme and I can see how it felt weird for one like him to be considered "cosmically good", he absolutely picked a side in the war between holy and unholy, and it sure wasn't the unholy side. I feel like Ragathiel is an incarnation of the "angel going overboard in their crusade to smite all evil" trope, and that despite the edge and possible moral dubiousnes of such character, they can't not be holy.

it's one of the case where I feel like calling these side "holy and unholy" instead of good and evil actually enrich the world, because it allow for less than ideal divinity or character to be holy as long as they stand against the "unholy" side, and for unholy divinity or character to still show some amount of virtue or moral backbone, as long as they stand against the "holy" side. While before, having a "good" god that was morally not that great felt like a complete oxymoron.

But you can just take reanimator or undead master and add those options in? What benefits is gained by printing them again outside of vibes?

To make the class more connected to the rest of the system instead of being an odd duck that doesn't interact with anything other than it's own special rules?

Beside, "vibe" is a quality in itself. A class that all about summoning, controlling and exploiting undeath but doesn't actually interact with any undeath option outside it's own chasis feel fake. It's as if the "undead" theme was just a paintjob and could be swapped with literally anything else without changing the class at all. Giving them features (be they feats or class ability) that actually interact with the rest of the game undead option ground the class theme much more.

Look at the druid for exemple, the primal spells and their focus spells give them a "nature" feel, sure, but it doesn't stop here. They have feats that allow them to talk to any animals or plant, not just their special companion or the one they summons. That allow them to ignore any strong wind, or to swim in any body of water, to ignore any plant based difficult terrain, etc etc. Their "one with nature" feel don't just stop at their own ability, it's connected to the rest of the game system. Likewise for alchemist, what they do is directly connected to the alchemical item anyone can get, it's not limited to special decoction only them can brew.

Beside, it's not as if these change need to be a big power jump. Between affecting the class special ability that they always have access to, or some more niche thing that they must specifically "buy into", like undead summons or an undead companion, the latter will always be more conditional and require more investment to work, so it balance itself out. But even just having the class synergize, even a tiny bit, to these option would go a long way to make the fantasy more "real", and feel less isolated and disconnected from the actual world.

EDIT : On reread, I feel like you have misread me, I'm not advocating for adding undead companion feat tree to the necromancer here (I think it would be nice, but it's not necessarily needed, as long as there are available enought archetype). What I'm saying is that the necromancer feats and feature need to account for undead companion or summon instead of just being only about thralls, thralls, thralls. A lot of these feature could easily be written as "target thrall or undead minion you control" instead of just thrall, and it would make the class feel more flavorfull, more connected to the rest of the system, for a very low power boost (as setting up before using the incredibly easy to create thrall is inherently easier than undead summons or undead companion). Likewise, it could easily have a handfull of feats that doesn't interact with thralls but with other undead themed part of the game (like a feat giving them better access to the summon undead spell, or to the harm spell), like the summoner feats that interact with summons spell instead of their eidolons.

Nice to see this!

However, I have to point out that the advanced maneuver of the giant wasp animal companion from Howl of the Wild is still broken, in that it offer no benefit over simply using one action to fly then one action to attack (or the reverse).

For those unaware, the Giant wasp have a fly speed of 40 feet, and it's advanced manoeuver take two action to either fly for 15 feet then strike, or strike then fly for 15 feet. It doesn't have any other effect, and doesn't offer any action compression or any kind of upside over simply flying then striking in any order, in fact, it's strictly worse since the fly speed in this action is less than half of the wasp base fly speed.

I'm pointing this one out specifically because unlike a lot of obvious mistake, this one is actually a bit difficult to homebrew, as it doesn't gives off a clear idea of what the manoeuver was supposed to be. Maybe it was supposed to take one action to do this, and thus be simple action compression, or it was supposed to be a "skirmish" ability that allow the wasp to strike at any point during it's movement (and thus allow them to do a "get close, strike, get away" in only two action, even if the move speed was reduced). Or it could even be supposed to be a movement that doesn't trigger reaction. But as it stand, it's difficult to make a call, as it's difficult to decide which one is the intended ability.

A public "future errata" page,

A monthly dev roundup Q&A (delayed and curated community Q & dev A reverses the prior incentive for toxic alarmism; incendiary comments don't get picked, while insightful ones do),
etc,
all can systematically reduce the toxicity.

While I do agree that Paizo could be a bit clearer on "what problem they are aware of and looking forward to fix, and what they don't consider a problem", I do have to point out that a "rule pending for future errata" list could be far more noxious than the current level of toxicity if handled incorrectly.

Publishing such list would create very clear expectation, and if they struggle to find a satisfying "fix" for one of these issue, or worse, change their mind about a certain issue and decide that they actually don't want to errata it anymore, it can very quickly be seen as "betrayal" for the fans that expect these rules to be errata'd in the very next rollout when they see that they aren't (or worse, when they see that the rule is taken away from the "to be fixed" list). Furthermore, all contentious rules that does not appear in such list could then grow even more toxicity, as the part of the community that consider this a problem and want this rule changed would now feel vindicated, as Paizo would be openly disregarding their concerns by ommiting it from "the list".

These two issues also create a big problem, as Paizo would only want to post the rules they are 100% certain they will errata shortly in such list to avoid the first issue, but doing so will amplify the second one as most of the rules people are unsatisfied with fatally won't show up there.

So not only doing this would require a lot more work from Paizo, it's could also be a double edged sword, so I understand that they are wary about how to approach this. Personally, I think it could be nice if they introduced a short "errata preview" telling us of the biggest things they are 100% working on and are certain will be part of the next errata wave, so that we know what to expect, but it would be far from a magic "fix toxicity" button, and they need to clearly set expectation with it.

Injection weapons for Alchemists definitely sound cool! I'm still trying to perfect my paintball potions in a slingshot idea, and injection weapons sound like a fun departure for more chaotic alignments, due to feelings around needles.

Speaking of slingshot, I can't believe we don't have any feat or ability yet that allow the player to use alchemical bombs as sling amunition (even if all it does is letting you use the sling weapon range increment and/or potency rune for the bomb). Not only is it an obvious combo, it would help carve a niche for the slings weapons, which is a bit lacking for the moment.

Other than that, I agree with botbrain here, it's nice to see these feat offering a broader range of weapon to access, I hope it's a sign that weapon proficiency get a bit easier to get by as non-human moving forward. I understand why advanced weapon had to cost at least a feat for non-fighter, free access to them is one of the core fighter feature after all, but it always felt bad that you had to play a human if you wanted true access to 99% of them, because the ancestry specific feats were extremely specific and only the human feat "unconventional weapon" actually allowed normal scalling for basically any weapon you wanted. I always felt like either the ancestry feat had to be expanded to englobe whole weapon subtypes to actually measure up to that versatility, or that the "weapon proficiency" general feat should have allowed you normal scalling for the weapon you chose, not that "trained from 1-10, expert for 11-20".

I mean, the Summoner doesn't really incentivize the class to summon anything either but that's what we got.

The summoner do get a few feats that incentive using summon spells, which is more than I can presentely say for the necromancer and undead options as of now.

But also, I think you're right, it's true that the summoner don't actually insentivise summon that much. But I'm of the opinion that this is somewhat of a flavor fail, and that if summoner is to be remastered, it should be touched up a little to make it better at summonning (well, I'm of the opinion that summons spells in general should be modified a bit to not hog the top level slot and jump in utility so much depending on your level, but I think that battle is lost).

So I'd like if the necromancer class was a bit more in tune with necromancy, instead of being solely focussed on it's special mechanic to the exclusion of everything else. Most of the chassis and power can come from thralls, no problem with that, but it shouldn't be so entirely closed to every other form of necromancy.

Now that I think about it some more, I think the main issue the devs are warry for with moving the thralls is less about "in combat" balance, and more about exploration. If the necromancer can freely create thralls, and then freely move them, a necromancer could have a pair of "always summoned" thrall that move with the group, the necromancer would have to stop to ressumon them every minute, and to slow down to take time to command it's thralls, but it would be "technically possible". So even if in combat, the action of moving your already summoned thrall wouldn't be that broken, it could be if it allow you to always start all of your battle with a pair of presummoned thrall.

So while I still think that some normal way to move the thralls are needed, I get now why they are warry. They would probably have to make that way really innefficient action wise, or include some other trick in order to make sure that people don't try to "game" the system by having thralls always summoned in exploration.

Personally, I think one of the issue with the flavor of this class is that despite being a "necromancer", it actually doesn't interact with necromantic option beyond those that are specific to the class. All the feats only ever interact with the thralls, and never with things like summoned undead minion, undead companion or familiar. Necromancer, as it stand, don't have any more mechanical insentive to use the "summon undead" spell than a bard, which is a bit of a flavor miss for me.

The isolation of the class mean that it could be reflavored in anything, an oozemancer, a totem-mancer, a floating-magical-star-mancer, and the mechanic could stay the exact same while reflavoring only the "visual" of it and it would still make sense. Making the class less isolated, by making it interact with the other, non necromancer specific, undead options would go a long way to strenghten the theme.

It could be as easy as changing a few of the feats and cantrip to say "selected thrall or undead minion you control" instead of just "selected thrall". It wouldn't work for all feats or focus spells, but it would for a good amount of them, like Reach of the Dead, Necrotic Bomb, or even the Consume Thrall class ability.

That gives a fair amount of additional mechanical power is the problem. Suddenly one character has 5+ mobile units that can flank and you can choose which one attacks.

I believe that's why they simply didn't give them this option.

I mean, the necromancer already have a single action "create a body and make it attack" right from level 1, which is better than making one already created body move and then attack, because it leave you with one more body at the end of this action (and it isn't restricted by possible terrain effect). The necromancer already have a number of unit that can flank and attack, and the possibility of moving one of these unit from one point to another is inherently less powerfull than the innate ability to simply endlessly create more of them exactly where you want them to appear.

The only real upside for moving thralls would be to reach beyond that 30 feet range, and that can easily be tuned by making the necromancer control range dependant. Of course, they would need to limit the number of thrall you can move at once, since moving all your thralls in a single action would be far too powerfull, but I do think this is an action that wouldn't add much power to the necromancer but make them feel much more flavorfull.

Personally, I think a cantrip like:

1 action
Up to 2 thrall you control within 20 feet of you can move up to 15 feet each. Then, one of the thrall you moved can make an attack for the same DC and damage as create thrall, this strike use and count toward your mutiple attack penalty. You can move up to 3 thralls if you have expert necromancy, to 4 if you have master, or to 5 if you have legendary.

would be worth testing, as I don't think that it would increase the power of the necromancer much, but make the thralls feels much more like actual summoned creates, and not just "totems". it would be a rather cheap way to "fix" the perceived flavor issue of the class.

I feel like most of the issue people have with the flavor of the class could be easily fixed without either completely overhauling the thrall mechanic or buffing it's power too much. Something as easy as giving an aditional action that allow the necromancer to move it's thrall would go a long way making them feel like more than just "totems". Altho to make this action worth using at all, there would need to be some manner of upside over just creating more thrall where you want to send them, but it could be as simple as allowing you move "x+1" thrall, where "x" is the number of thrall you can raise in a single action.

As for the actual subject of this thread, I do think an easy way to get an undead companion is kinda needed for the flavor of the class. If the undead companion isn't already "baked in" the class as it is for the druid, then they need to reprint and update the undead master archetype, and to probably remove the "only evil/unholy" restriction. Having a main monster following you is just too big of a necromancer fantasy to completely ignore I feel like.

Also, I think the idea The Ronyon gave, about allowing the necromancer to count any undead minion as thrall is really worth exploring, and it would go a long way to make the necromancer feel like an actual necromancer. If only their own special class ressource count as "undead under their control" for all of their abilties, it create a rupture in the way the world work. In world, thralls raised in a hurry, the special zombie the necromancer have been tinkering, and those creature they summoned through summon undead are all undead under the necromancer power, so they all should be possible recipient of that power. Even if gameplay-wise it's an edge case as it's far more efficient to use up the thrall that cost no ressource instead of your costly summons or unique undead companion, simply openning up this possibility can do a lot for the versimilitude of the game and the fantasy of the class.

The way I like to draw them, If you didnt have reference objects in the art you wouldnt be able to tell they were 3 feet tall.

Same actually, I like to envision gnome with the more cartoonish feature, like the bigger head and eyes, but halfling as basically "half as tall human". But I understand why this version of them makes it very difficult for them to actually differentiate halfling and human when on a neutral background, so at least some level of dismorphism is to be expected. But some of it goes a bit too far for my taste, like the halfling priestess portrait in the owlcat games.

Speaking of the lost Omen world guide, the character at page 130 really show the issue quite clearly. I assume it's a gnome since she have a very big head and wear shoes, but it could very well be a halfling since some of them are shown to have just as large a head, and clothes (or the lack of them) shouldn't be the sole "tell" of an ancestry. In the grand scheme of things it's a rather small issue, but I'd like if it was made a bit clearer.

Altho to be perfectly honest, my "fix" of simply making sure that halfling heads are kept smaller than the gnome's isn't solely about this. It's also because while I think that the big head "fit" the gnome, with their more cartoonish feature (bigger eye, the color and flow of their hair and eyebrows...), I find that it often just look weird on the halflings. It's not always the case, but often enough that I think their head should be a bit smaller as a baseline. I get that the big head is an easy way of indicating that "this is a small character" when they are just alone on the page and without any point of comparison, but I can't help but think that there must be a more elegant way to do it.

Back on the actual subject of this thread, I think the issue with physically differentiating gnomes and halfling better might be solved not by changing the gnomes, but the halfling instead.

Right now, from what I can see by scouring every pathfinder halfling picture I can get my hand on, they are represented sometime with adult human proportion but smaller, and sometime with a disproportionally large head compared to their body (like, a head almost as large as their entire body). Gnomes meanwhile, always have a that big head, and the picture of characters that seems ambiguous on wether they are halfling or gnome all have that big head. So to me, the simplest "fix" for that issue would be to decide that "small head halfling" is the canonical way they look in golarion.

Now, while I say "simplest", I do get that each artist have their own vision of what each ancestry looks like, which is probably what created this "small head vs big head halfling" discrepancy in the first place. So even if it's the simplest choice on paper, it might not be the easiest to implement (as shown by the fact that even today, elves with "human" eyes show up in pathfinder books every now and again, despite the monocolor eye being their canon look since the launch of pathfinder).

The coke vs pepsi comparison quite aptly describe how I felt about the gnome/halfling, because to me they seemed so close in flavor that if you like one over the other, you have basically no reason to ever try the other. I didn't have such issue with the dwarves or elves for exemple, despite prefering halfling over them, there were still elves/dwarves character concept that I though about that didn't really fited halfling.

One errata I think is as "objectively" needed as it can be is for the Giant Wasp animal companion. It's advanced manoeuver take two action to either fly for half of it's speed, then strike, or strike, then fly for half of it's speed, with no added benefit what so ever. Meaning that it's actually strictly worse than simply using two separate action to fly and strike in any order without using that maneuver. There are probably other small issues like that that are quite obviously oversight that need errata, but it's the only one I can think of.

Another issue that is much more subjective but I think need an errata is untamed form, and the feat "insect shape". Given that like animal form, it heighten up to the 5th level, have the exact same powercurve, and doesn't give any additional utility (no new move speed that animal form can't get, no new senses that animal form can't get), I don't understand why it need a whole new feat to be added into untamed form. It strikes me as a simple "flavor tax", taking one more feat for the druid that want to be specifically insect themed, for no actual power increase. So I think the feat should be retired, and that untamed form should have a third level heigtenning that add the forms listed in insect form in it's list.

Yeah, I think the "hook" was the issue for me at least. I know that some peoples liked gnomes and played them in dnd, but I had trouble getting what the gnome "hook" was supposed to be appart from "slightly more whimsical halfling". Pathfinder tying them more to the feys, and giving them a very different lifecycle and outlook on life when compared to the other core ancestry meanwhile really made them standout on their own, and made me consider actually playing one instead of defaulting to halfling for all my smallfolk needs.

Now that I'm actually taking time to think about them, I guess that "gnome are whimsical while halfling are more grounded" have always been how they've been defined (or at least, in the editions I touched), but I still think that the dnd version lacked something to trully set them appart.

Yeah, I never really understood why in DnD gnome were a "core race" like the human, elves, dwarves and halfling. They seemed to only exist to be "halfling, but magical", as if since halfling were stereotyped into being only rogues and bards, they had to have this other small race that made good wizard, druid and cleric. But making your halfling a full magic user was still perfectly viable, just a bit subpar compared to races with int or wis bonus, so I didn't get why the gnome had to be here.

Pathfinder really gave them an identity that make them feel like an actually worthwhile addition to the lineup, and not like just an overgrown halfling subtype.

EDIT : I just posted this so I feel a bit silly to immediately edit it, but now that I though about it some more, the original inclusion of the gnome in the "core" lineup in dnd probably had something to do with the race/class limitation of the second edition. I remember that only very few classes were open to halfling in the OG baldur gates, so I guess that in that system "halfling but open to magical class" really was something necessary. And if that's the case, I guess that the edition just grandfathered gnome in the core lineup even if they didn't really had a strong reason to exist once that limtation was removed.

On the other side of things, all the new Tian Xia content has this year has been *stellar*. The Tian Xia World Guide is one of the best RPG books I've read in years.

Yup, the only "flaw" of the Tian Xia books is that they aren't even longer. It's good to see that the region books are still so good.

From an "in world" perspective, either side actually winning would make the victorious country a threat to their other neighbors.

Would it? Beyond their rivalry, neither country seems expansionist in the least, they both seems quite content in their position. I would expect that if one side "won" and absorbed the other, they would then spend decades if not century "integrating" it into their territory to secure an absolute victory with no possibility of rebellion, but that they would afterward remain mostly isolationist, trading with the rest of the world but not bothering trying to invade or conquer them.

After all, the reason of the conflict don't seems to be a power or land grab, but a mere ego war. They both could invade much "easier" neighbor to deal with if they actually wanted to expand, instead of focussing on the one neighboring country with a mastery of magic that rival theirs.

Yeah with Golarion humanocentrism, I expected it, which is why it didn't surprise me, but it still disapointed me a bit. I guess it was innevitable, and out all all the stories we might have gotten, I really like this one.

It does seems to create a bit of inconsistency in the relationship between Norgorber and Thamir, because they seemed to actually respect each other here, with Thamir being his tutor and helping him quite a lot and Norgorber causing his ascension... but then the recent divine mystery book state that Norgorber "view Thamir with disdain", and paint a very different relationship. I guess the apparent dislike could be a front because "god of secrets" and all that, but I don't really see what either of them stand to gain by doing that.

(One could even read into that the fact that as god of humanity, Aroden setting this up could even have weighed the odds of fate toward human ascensions via the starstone, but that's an apocryphal side effect and not the initial design intent.)

This is going to sound like a joke but I'm absolutely serious, but I fully expect that everything in the starstone cathedral to be solely human scaled (and more precisely, scaled for a human as tall as Aroden). I expect every single stair, door, furniture to be build for the exact same height, and that all the possible night impossible challenges countained within were crafted with the assumption that a human-sized being would be taking them (and thus that some may be far easier or even more difficult for those that doesn't actually fit these criteria).

While just outright setting the stone to refuse non-human seems out of character for Aroden, crafting a "fair" challenge that's actually only account for humans seems completely in character for him.

I was under the impression that all that's alive in the pathfinder universe have soul, even if animal/plants/nonsapient life have "smaller" ones. So daemons are indeed fundamentally opposed to all life, not just sentient one.

But also, even if I agree that druids are indeed akin to "nature's cleric", I don't think "nature" in pathfinder is as personified as gods are. It's not a single entity that take snap decision to cut off your power because "you sided with it's ennemies", like Pharasma could do if you sided with daemons. I think that for druids to lose their power, they don't just need to "take side" with something that's opposed to nature, they need to take action that oppose nature directly, they need to sever themselves their link to the natural world.

So I think that in a relatively small time frame (like for a single campaign that doesn't last long "in world"), a character could both have druidic and apocalypse rider powers at once. I 100% agree that at term, such power would corrupt the druid enought that their link to the natural world will be severed and they will lose their druidic power (such corruption could be represented first in game by them starting to lose the ability to understand windsong, as their link with the natural world grow more tenuous), but I don't think it would be an instant "become an Apocalypse Rider -> lose your druid license" deal like trip is saying.

I do have to point out that "para-" titles are apparently non-hereditary, meaning that your outcast can't come from a noble line of para-something.

However, a character that is the child of some Count or something, that was disowned for some reason but then given the title of "Paracount" by the Thrune could create some juicy family dynamics. It could also be a way for the Thrune to publicaly insult a familly while remaining perfectly cordial, by visibly getting involved in their private business to reward their black sheep.

That's a completely nonsensical complaint. 12 lvl doesn't hit like that because of equipment. Yes, equipment helps. But they actually hit like that because they are 12th level. If levels are real for PCs and give them so much power, complaining that same levels give comparable power to NPCs makes no sense. It makes PCs and NPCs closer, not more different.

Do note that I precised "a fully geared up level 12 PC", not just "a level 12 PC". Anyone playing this game understand very quickly the importance of runes in the math, especially damage wise, so when a humanoid NPC quite visibly hit with an attack power equivalent to a greater striking rune (something PC immediately experience when they get hit), but end up carrying entirely mundane equipment, it does indeed "break the illusion".

Also I didn't think that out of my whole comment that specific portion would be the one people take issue with, given that in this very thread devs already chimmed in on this topic to state that they indeed try to give NPC gears that make sense with their stats (which is why this specific issue was mostly one for early 2e AP, and not so much for the more recent ones). I specifically used that exemple because it was one that was baked up by dev comment in this very thread.

I feel like, from a worldbuilding perspective, either side actually winning in a geb vs nex war would end up making golarion "worse" because the existence of the two country feels more interesting than either of the two winning over the other (or crumbling onto itself).

However, what could be interesting would be if they "traded blow" and managed to gain a foothold on each others land before reaching a new truce or other wise freezing the war for X or Y reason. Something like the fleshforge city falling under gebbite leadership, and the northern citadel city of Geb bieng seized by nexian forces both open up some very interesting possibilities.

Which is why I think that "two AP, one for each side" would work great for a conflict like that. Each can take place in a different region and end up with the party securing a massive victory for their side... which is balanced by the other AP securing a massive victory in another region for the opposite side. And having each of the country now own an "enclave" in the other territory, separated from their main land by the mana waste, which they struggle to control (and exploit) can make for great future stories.

I won't argue and say that strict simulationist design is better than what we have in PF2, but there is a certain elegance that arise when the rules flawlessly mesh into the world, especially in immersive tabletop game such as this one, and that PF2 strict adherence to "balance before all" do often lack this element, making it more difficult to get immersed into it's world. And whenever a NPC visibly demonstrate that they work on different "physics" than the PC, it further harm this immersion.

To me, a game like this one should ideally find a good balance that allow for the gameplay to be easy to grasp and run smoothly while still showing a world that feel "real" and alive beyond what the player experience. Despite it's failing, and despite the fact that player and NPC ar build on entirely different rules, PF2 mostly manage to protect that "realness" by having the the NPC act in gameplay in ways that feel consistent with the players own possible action, but because they are built on different rule, it's all an illusionist act that must be performed carefully. If it's not, you have things like human soldier NPC that hit like a fully geared up level 12 PC but carry entirely mundane equipment.

Personally, I think that PF2 fail often enought to maintain the act that I can't consider it "strictly better" than the first edition (which is why I play both). Ease of building and more balanced combat is nice, but the world feel more vivid to me when I'm playing with 1e rules. Altho maybe GMing 2e will make me change my mind, I've run (almost) an entire 1e AP as GM but still only ever played 2e as a player.

I must disclaim that I haven't played or run this AP, as so far I have only read it in order to maybe run it latter. But to me, it's clear that the Sihedron greatest power isn't the flat bonus it give to the one it currently support, but the "jump" it can do between people, both dishing out healing and a buff, and also increasing the team synergy.

let's look at what it does :

- It give two flat buff to the one it support (+2 insight AC and reflex bonus and fast healing 5)

- Depending on it's "ascendant" branch, it give another, bigger, flat buff , as well as a spell like ability.

- The person can use a standard action (pretty much using their whole turn) to turn the branch and use another one of the "big buff", provided it's not one of the opposite side (in which case they have to do two jump, and thus use two turns).

- It can be "thrown" to another person once per round, to support them, as an immediate action (using much less of your turn, and allowing you to use this ability if needed even outside your turn). When you do so, both the one that throw the star and the other person get a +2 to all saving throw for a round and get a burst of healing. Also, the one receiving the star can rotate it for free, to get any of the branch, even if it's opposite to the one you were using.

- It resurect the one it currently support, up to once per day. Coupled with the fact that throwing it is an immediate action, it can be used to save a party member right when they are about to die.

All this put together tell me that the artifact is really good when used by a single person, but far, far better when the party keep throwing it around once per turn to heal each other and get access to it's various buff at critical moments. So honestly, unless you think that a player is likely to want to "hog" the artifact and never throw it to the others, I don't think it's an issue. The artifact basically scream "team play", and all the player should get to use it pretty frequently.

As for the fact that the reforging will deprive all team member of their shard, I think it's fine, for the individual shard powers will be rather inconsequential by the time they get to craft the full Sihedron. Shards may be level 25 artifacts, but their effect, even including the Ioun stone embeded in them, is at most the equivalent of a level 12 item. I think that by that point, even if you players did end up relying on the shard buff, they can easily buy item that grant equivalent ones. Or you can give it to them in some way (like through the Lord Mayor as reward for gathering all the shard in the beggining of book 6) if you are concerned about them feeling deprived of power.

When I ran that campaign many years ago, I felt that the joining of the Sihedron would have been a great conclusion to the campaign. Book 6 felt unnecessary and "tacked on" to the end of the story.

I feel like the campaign can't end just after the forging, it would be too much of a tease if the players never got to actually use the Sihedron. Since the whole campaign is about forging it, having the story end the moment they do without letting the player use that awesome artifact would feel bad I think. But maybe a whole module was too long and felt drawn out, maybe a single chapter would have been enought. You actually ran this campaign and not me (yet), so you're probably right if you felt that the pacing of the last book was off.

Yeah, I like his personal story very much, but I'm disapointed that he's yet another human. I'm not a fan of the "4 halfling" thing because I find it more interesting to have a singular being with four drastically different identity, but him being a single halfling with a somewhat similar backstory would have elevated him a lot.

There's something of an issue with core ancestry representation. Humans (now) got all the core ascended (as well as lots of non core deity, the single most important dead god of the setting, etc etc), elves got 2 core gods (calistra and urgathoa) as well as a whole pantheon, dwarves got a single core god and a whole pantheon behind, halfling god two non core demideity that are very much presented as sidekick to other "greater" gods (Chaldira and Cayden, Thamir and Norgorber). Only gnome got it worse with only a noncore demideity, but the fey theme mean that all of the Eldest fit them as well. Even the newer core inclusion (orcs, goblins and leshy) all come with their own pantheon.

In the end complaining about it serve no purpose because what's done is done and I'm absolutely certain that Paizo won't be changing that bit of lore, but it's still a massive missed opportunity in my eyes.

Ignoring the meme, I'm actually a bit sad that Norgorber wasn't a halfling (one, not four in a trenchcoat). Having all the ascended core gods be humans is a bit boring, and having his secrecy stem from a kind of inferiority complex (or be a calculatted play stemming from the fact that halfling gods wouldn't be that respected or worshiped by non-halfling, as Thamir and Chaldira show pretty obviously) would have been interesting. Also, I love halflings, and I really enjoy how they are underclass "salt of the earth" kind of people in this setting, rather than the "funny happy guys" from dnd, but I feel like out of the (original) core ancestries, they are the most underused by far.

Beyond that disapointment tho, his story of Norgorber was really good, he feel like he could genuinely have been a player character from an actual pathfinder/dnd game, or the main character of a fantasy book serie that manage to ascend to godhood, which to me is what every ascended god is meant to represent. Managing to do that without making him feel like a "Gary Stue" was impressive, and I think it work so well specifically because it also show some of his greatest failure, and how other people (his parents) had to bail him out and pay the price for his mistakes.

Honestly, even if it was just a summary, his history in Vyre reminded me of Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy, which is pretty high praise. It made me want a novelisation of that story, even if I know that it being actually as good as that trilogy is very unlikely.

I feel like the nex-geb conflict would be even easier to have an AP for each side because while "cheliax vs rebel" is clearly evil vs good (and fighting good people isn't that popular), Geb (the country) feel only marginally more evil than Nex, so it's more easy to have the party "fight bad guys" no matter what side of the war they are on. Since both side are monstruous, it become easy to have an adventure where the "main villain" is something trully evil that even a party of pure hero would want to destroy, while keeping the "monstruous" part of their own side far from the party.

They could even split it in three AP, one where the player work for Geb against Nex (and where they get to use the undead options again), one where it's the opposite, and one where the party come from Alkensar or the Mana Waste and the goal is to stop the war before it trully goes back to how it was before and it devastate everything once again.

I believe the Hell's Rebel AP describe the Kintaro noble household quite a lot, both in the free player guide and then in more detail latter in the AP (the third volume I think, the one where the PCs are supposed to gather support). Likewise, Hell's Vengeance fourth volume talk quite a lot about the noble in Egorian (Cheliax capital), and I think may be the best reference to see the dynamic of nobles in cheliax. unfortunately, I don't think there's a backmatter article specifically about cheliaxian nobility, so you'll have to scour the "social chapters" to see all the info you can scrap.

Maybe some campaign book like "Cheliax, the infernal empire" could also give you the info you want, but I don't have it so I'm not sure.

How can Paizo know what the GM has done with the NPCs? What if the NPC dies? What if they PCs don't even bother talking with that NPC and they create a relationship with some other NPC Paizo wasn't expecting?

I do have to point out that quite a lot of the 1e AP did have NPC keeping their role between books, and simply said "we assume that NPC is still alive and important, if they're not, NPC X or Y can fill the role, if they can't, you have to make up some way to reach the same effect". So this argument is kinda moot.

However, NPC dissapearing aren't that much of an issue in the few 2e AP I read, blood lord, curtain call, season of ghost and warden all mention NPC from previous books rather often, so it might just be an "early 2e" problem? In the end, I think the crux of the issue here is mostly that the writers for latter modules didn't have a lot of info on what was happenning in the early ones, so they didn't necessarily knew the important NPC of these module and thus create new ones, even if they filled the exact same role. And from what I saw, it seems that this issuehave been mostly fixed in the recent APs.

Altho I do have to say, NPC that could actively travel with the party and become "lesser party member" is something I miss in the 2e APs. I get why they aren't as many of them, there isn't any cohort and the math is much, much tighter, but these NPCs were the most memorable in 1e and their absence here is felt.

For Brevoy, I know it's a risk of making it a Game of Thrones clone, but I feel like making it one of the few places in Golarion where Apsu and Dahak have a significant worship base would help make it distinct from other areas.

I'm starting to think that it's possible that Choral return and reconquer the country to turn it into a dragon-ruled land "off camera", or at least that we won't have an adventure where the players are able to prevent the takeover.

A "dragon land" ruled by a very powerfull draconic tyran might be more conductive to adventuring than "game of throne land". And the noble houses could then be split between those that decided to support the new order to keep their position, and those that were forced "underground" because they want to continue the fight and drive off Choral.

At the end, it circle back to the same thing, the fundamental goal of Daemonhood is irreconciliable with druidic philosophy, because it demand a complete destruction of the natural order (along with everything else).

But it doesn't matter for the Apocalypse Rider mythic destiny, because it doesn't ask you to believe or to want to follow that goal. It only ask that you relinquish your soul, and only become an instrument of destruction going forward. A druid that seek power in order to face (what they consider) ennemies of nature may find it here, and as long as they focus all of their attention (and destructiveness) to these ennemies of nature, they'll respect both their druidic and Apocalyspe Rider vows.

The destiny is fine for druids, because it appeal to the druids that want to either take revenge on foes of nature, or to destroy them, while confident that the wild will reclaim it afterward. Wether they'll actually manage to avoid harming nature in their rampage is another story entirely.

Ironically, despite considering the daemons "the worse evil" for the Pathfinder cosmology, I think that Apocalypse Rider is far easier to justify as a member of a "good" party than an Archfiend. The Archfiend as presented feel like it only fit for characters that is at home with said fiends, someone that already was evil and whose evilness and mythic power mixed into giving them archfiend power, while the Rider feels like it could fit for any desperate character that want or need power and accepted to damn themselves to obtain it, something that work even for fully heroic characters (or at least, fully heroic until they became Riders, of course).

I'd like to see an expansion of the "variant druidic orders" included in Warden of Wildwood, the spore and cultivation order were really interesting, but with only a single feat and two focus spell (one for the cultivation one), it kinda limit the theme. In general, I think druid is in need of expansion because most of it's feat are order locked, leaving the player narrower choice of feat than the other class once they pick their starting order, unless they pick order explorer to unlock more option, which works fine but is a bit underwhelming when the orders don't actually interact with one another.

So having each order be expanded a bit, or given some "payoff" for crossing orders would go a long way. Also, while plant order get lots of great and flavorful plant-related feats beyond simply growing the order central feature (the leshy familiar), the animal and untamed order feats are entirely dedicated to their special feature, which make them feel even narrower. Having a few more animal orders feat that interact with animal in general, not just your companion, would be nice.

Beyond merely expanding what's already here, I'd be interested by some kind of "spooky druid" option. Something like a special order or class archetype adding a bit of primal necromancy to the druid, maybe even letting the player go down the path of a Siabrae. If not for the druid, then for some other primal caster at least, as "natural undeath" is a whole great aestetic that's rather lacking for the moment. Maybe with an animist or necromancer class archetype that swap their spell list for the primal one?

And finally, beyond just the druid class, we need more insects. And more fungus. Swarmkeeper wasn't enough, spore order (as is) wasn't enought. More bug companion, more insect and mushroom themed spells and feats. There isn't enough of them, there will never be enough of them.

Golarion Halflings have been historically held at the bottom of the social ladder, and while I'm not aware of any specific "halfling thief guild", they have very often been represented as member of such organisation, due to their low social standing and them being traditionally good rogues. Furthermore, the Bellflower Network is an "underground railway/resistance type of organisation that is very halfling themed, and have a lot of contacts with such organisation, as they need to rely on underworld connections and undercover actions.

So a "thieves guild", halfling themed AP could work very well as a campaign in golarion, for a more urban and undercover setting where the party must escape the law.

Alas, this wasn't to be then.

Altho the comment about adventure needing to be important to the "meta" of the schedule is making me think. It's true that at least half, if not more, of the APs are directly linked with other close releases, that way the AP hype the lore/rule book and vice versa. So if we can guess the "future meta", we have more of a shot at guessing the AP. Furthermore, if we can influence the following lore/rule books, we get to (indirectly) influence whatever AP might come with them.

We already know what AP will be releasing for the next books we know of (spore war and the vampire AP), and they will cover the NPC codex, reprint of Guns & Gears and magic academy books. Appart from that last one, which may tie into the vampire AP, I don't expect much synergies for the other two books, NPC codex seems like it's going to be widely usefull but too broad to theme an adventure around.

I'm not sure exactly when Starfinder 2e official release is supposed to happen, but since it's apparently completely compatible with Pathfinder 2e, I'd say there's a good chance that we'll see a Numeria AP allowing the players to use some starfinder options around that time. It might also come with a "Lost Omen : Broken Lands" book, in which case we might see another AP in that region follow closely, like what happenned for Blood Lords and Outlaws of Alkensar, and such book would be a good opportunity for a Brevoy or (even better) a River Kingdom AP (I like my swamps and woods). Altho, it might instead be an occasion to go back to Sarkoris, in a "reclaim the land" story, which would tie back to the magic academy book again.

Lots of people are already speculating about the AP that might come with the newly revealed classes, and guessing a Geb/Nex conflict AP, but having a "runic" class along with the necromancer make me think of something more centered on western Avistan, so we might see the Tar Baphon plot being furthered, or an AP in new Thassilon (or both).

Well, I suppose that now all that I have left to do is to champion for a bellflower network "organisation book", or for another nature themed book if I want to see the themes that interest me the most. Since we just got a big nature rulebook, maybe a lorebook instead would do the trick? Something centered on the first world maybe, or the green faith... Altho I wouldn't say no to a second Howl of the Wild.

(For what it's worth, the plans I've had for a Brevoy thing have never been a 1 to 20 Adventure Path, but have for many years been a standalone adventure.)

Oh, a standalone adventure is very different from what I pictured from this region, if you can, mind to tell us what would be the likely level range for that plan? Or at least wether it would be a low, mid or high level one?

Agree with Trip, a druid can't fundamentally agree with daemon ideology, if they do they're not a druid anymore.

However, an Apocalypse Rider don't need to fundamentally agree with the daemons, only to become a purely destructive force going forward. And since daemons whole deal is to prey on short-sightedness, I can see a druid falling for their tricks and taking their power, even with the strings attached, thinking that they'll limit their destruction to the "civilised" and spare the wild, so that the wild can reconquer what they lay to waste.

Basically, the idea for such druid would be that they don't break druid anathema because they're only destroying "unnatural" stuff, and won't break Apocalypse Rider anathema because they're not building anything... only passively allowing nature to reconquer the ruins they leave behind. And when they'll do so, they'll probably think that they "won one" over the daemons, got the power without trully accomplishing their end, and that the only cost is that they personally won't be able to enjoy the renewed nature (and that they are damned of course, but martyr for the cause I guess).

But daemons being daemons, I doubt such things could trully work for long. Such druid will inevitably be corrupted by all the destruction it's doing or end up forgetting what nature trully is due to the fact that they can never go back to it, twisting them until they become "druid" only in name. Even if they manage to stay true to themselves, the daemons will probably plan things so that the destruction they lay in their wake are blighted in such way that nature can never reconquer it, leaving "dead" zones in the world, even worse than when "civilisation" controlled this place. Things like having the druid destroy the equivalent of a nuclear reactor in their crusade against civilisation and technology, making the surrounding land unlivable for both the civilised and the wilderness.

And if the druid manage to avoid corruption, if they manage to cleverly avoid the traps laid out by daemons to use their destructiveness to further the "true end" of the world... then the Horsemen would probably end up cutting the power supply, or altering the anathema so it become "destroy the natural world too or lose your powers". After all, they don't have to uphold their end of the bargain, they're not devils, if a deal isn't working as they intend, they will alter or cancel it as they want.

Because changes always have to have an upside to them? It doesn't always come from a position of positivity. Sometimes changes happen just to happen. Maybe Paizo feels being able to make demiplanes should be relegated to Mythic beings instead of just something some high level lucky person can do. At best any upside change to this comes from a position of speculation, which is no less speculation than the slippery slope counter argument of "Paizo changing rituals means our entire game is going to fall apart" that the other side keeps constantly flailing around at the wall hoping for it to stick.

Where is this "other side" you speak of that apparently think the entire game is falling appart because of the ritual change? All I've seen in this threads is people criticising this change, people expressing disapointment about it, and people hoping that this kind of change won't be a reoccuring thing, but no one claiming that it's "the end of Pathfinder" or anything. Criticism isn't a death sentence, it doesn't mean you consider the entire thing to be worthless, it just mean pointing out what you think are flaws so that they can be improved upon.

Truthfully, I find this whole counterargument to be bizarre. I'd understand if people disagreed with the criticism because they found the new rule to be a positive for whatever reason, I can understand a difference of opinion or priorities, but you don't even seems to like the new rule, at best you're neutral about it. It seems that you disagree with the criticism merely because it's criticism and criticism is intrinsically bad somehow.

I mean, an AP about the Brevic civil war don't have to result in Brevoy splitting in lots of tiny countries. The country have two big hanging plot threads right now :

- The rising tension between the noble houses, with house Surtova trying to fill up the void left by Choral's line in an obvious powergrab, and other houses wanting to achieve their independance.

- The upcomming return of Choral himself, which have been hinted at since the original Kingmaker release, and was further pushed forward in 2e in the "lost omen legend" book.

In my eyes, the most obvious plot that arrise from this conjecture would be an AP that start as a "civil war" AP where the party support one of the noble house (probably the Aldori/Restov), in a setup close to the "war for the crown" AP, but end with Chorral crashing the party and trying to reconquer "his" kingdom, with the PC goal shifting to supporting a single house to having to unite all of them to face his draconic armies.

Afterward, the status quo of such story likely won't be a balkanisation of the region, but either the house that the PC supported becoming the de facto new rulers of Brevoy, or (more likely) Brevoy transitionning from a central monarchy to a federation of allied kingdoms, that still have a central "ruling council" of some kind that keep unity between all the regions.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if the rise of "3 parter" AP may have been a factor that pushed this one at the back of the line, like James said. This story of civil war turning into a union of all the side against a greater threat seems "too big" for a three parter, but perfect for a full 1-20 campaign.

I have to say that Mythic is not only a 'game' or 'NPC' thing. It's hard to define, but it's a thing that does exist in-world. Forces of Fate that even more powerful than for 'normal' great heroes. Something that gives them a real chance to become really god-like.

Yes, mythic isn't only a gameplay abstraction, but Karzoug wasn't mythic, that's what the "he can do that because he's an NPC and not you" meant.

Speaking of that region, I really really want an adventure in Iobara someday, it seems like there's quite a lot of potential there.

Honestly, runesmith could be CHA given that CHA is the characteristic you need if you want to invest the most magic item, and a runesmith is somewhat a "magic-item-smith". However, being a "special martial" with focus on CHA might be walking on the thaumaturge's toes a bit too much.

And yeah, unless they want the class to be a massive departure from the common idea of a necromancer, them having int for their core score would make the most sense. I could sorta kinda see WIS too, just to give occult caster a WIS class, and because WIS could sort of fit for "nicer" view of necromancer, but I think that INT is more likely, and CHA pretty unlikely.

You know what's not a difficult-to-balance, difficult-to-remember house rule? Deciding not to use content from a specific book, or a specific section of a book. That's how multi-book RPGs work. There are going to be people who don't own a copy of this rulebook who continue to play in this specific way for years, and it's not a houserule. It's just playing with the rules they have.

It's a very specific kind of gamer who doesn't play with a ruleset, but allows that ruleset to overwrite content from their existing game that they then have to throw out. That kind of gamer doesn't make for a great GM, however vigorously you white knight for them. You still own the official books that have the previous version in them. You can still play with those rules. Paizo publishing additional rules didn't take that right away from you by force. Just play with the rules you prefer, like you decided to do when you agreed not to use Mythic in your game.

Once again, I have to point that "this rule is fine because you can ignore it" isn't an argument in favor of the rule. If the only quality of a rule is that it's easy to ignore, then it's not a good rule. Everybody know they can ignore any rule they want in their game, that's not the point here. The point is wether including this rule, tied to these rituals, in the first place was a good idea, from both a gameplay and a lore standpoint.

In short, there are numerous setting devices that merely work because the plot requires them to work, and can do so without any rules behind them, like gods, demiplanes, etc. Mechanics are there for the players and (some) NPC interactions. That is it. The rest can be handled with GM handwaving and setting requirements establishing them for us, mechanics be damned.

I really don't get why "the GM can handwave the requirement away / make up new rules" bring to this conversation. This can be said for every single rule of the game, yes, if the GM want, the GM can change it, everybody knows that, but threads like this are talking about the unmodified rules of the game.

Mythic rituals works on specific rules that prevent anyone nonmythic from casting them, and as long as other nonmythic option to achieve these effect aren't printed, the rule completely forbid nonmythic characters to ever create a demiplane or do anything like the other mythic rituals. Yes, GMs can handwave that rule away, or homebrew some exception or some other way to reach the same effects, but all of these options are outside the current rules of the game. So it's normal that people complain about that rule if they find that it negatively impact the game.

I wonder what the iconics will look like. There was already an iconic necromancer they introduced for Hell's Vengeance, but that was when they were creating "evil iconics" for the evil AP, and she was a wizard necromancer. I wouldn't be mad if they keep her, her design is too good to be left asside, but they might not want a character made to be evil (and to be of a different class) to represent their new class.

Since Orcs and Leshy are new to the core ancestry and don't have any Iconic, I wonder if they're going to be it. I'd be really down for an iconic leshy necromancer.

I does seems more interesting, but I have to ask, do you envision the mythic resistance "reaction" as something the mythic monster can do after they roll their save, or as something to announce before the roll?

As for the major resistance, it seemed too strong at first, but after thinking about it some more, it seems fine. Reaching that level eat more of a monster "budget", making them more vulnerable to spells, require the use of a very limited ressource, and the monster completely shrugging off one hit do bring have a certain "badass" factor to it, which is lacking to most monster mythic ability (they are good, very usefull and mechanically powerfull, but recharging a spell or rerolling a dice don't have that "oomph" factor in my eyes).