Selsenay's page

I don't know if I'm a fan of : Magically scared, can't cast spells. Regular scared, can cast spells. Especially since there are non-magical effects that can make you frightened or panicked that technically wouldn't limit spell casting, but a magical effect causing the shaken condition would.

I agree that it's weird, but it seems like the intent is one of balance. Demoralizing someone with Intimidate is super easy, and I imagine they didn't want psychic casters shut down just because an enemy put a few ranks in intimidate and knows how psychic magic works. The latter bit about knowledge is something most players are going to play as if they know, so psychic enemies are easily shut down by a balanced party where at least one person put a little into being intimidating. As opposed to arcane or divine magic, where you have to silence them or keep them from moving, both things that are hard to do physically in normal combat, but can be easier to do magically.

Effects only have descriptors if they are effects of spells or spell-like-abilities that have descriptors. A "descriptor" is a specific trait of magic. As such only spells and spell-like-abilities with the fear or emotion descriptors count for preventing psychic magic.

Mark Seifter wrote:

JoelF847 wrote:

I didn't think the question about undercasting as an option for sorcerers is necessarily asking what you want. I answered 1, that I'd stick to arcane components...but that's because I think a sorcerer should stick to being arcane and not psychic. It has nothing to do with if the psychic T & E components are equal and fair to traditional arcane components, which is what I thought the question was about.

If I was going to change how a sorcerer works with psychic magic I'd move undercasting to be an option for all spontaneous casters.

The components question asks whether you would consider the change to be beneficial mechanically. That said, we expect to have some people answer it like you did, so we'll take that into account.

I think it isn't possible to split the mechanics and flavor in this case - having the sorcerer not be an arcane caster essentially is a big mechanical change in itself.

I envision a sorcerer bloodline, like a psychic bloodline. Or maybe it would be an archetype. You essentially cast psychic spells innately due to having it in your blood. I personally view the primary aspect of a sorcerer as the fact that they get power from their bloodline, not that they cast arcane spells. It's a neat idea in concept.

This whole conjuring thing is creating all kinds of problems related to dimensional travel and what not. Why not instead liken the non-aether blasts to evocation? Creates a thing long enough to have an effect and then kind of dissipates.

Evocation: "Evocation spells manipulate magical energy or tap an unseen source of power to produce a desired end. In effect, an evocation draws upon magic to create something out of nothing. Many of these spells produce spectacular effects, and evocation spells can deal large amounts of damage."

Sounds pretty much exactly like the kineticist to me.

Wait, doesn't this mean your blasts should bypass spell resistance?

This post sums up the difference between physical and energy blasts pretty well.

Lock should do it, though that bit about attack forms is kind of weird. I'm not entirely sure what it means.

See the Dwiergeth and the Taotieh for examples of an extradimensional attack form. Potentially also the Cannon Golem's black powder generation as listed in its flavor text. Maybe also a Vortex Dragon's Fragmented Strike depending one how one thinks that functions. The spell Rift of Ruin probably falls into the category of "extradimensional attack form" as well.

Why I asked this question:

"Kineticists are living channels for elemental matter and energy, allowing them to manipulate the world around them by drawing upon inner reserves from their own bodies."

"Terrakineticists manipulate the earth itself, and they are masters of defensive techniques."

"Earth Blast (Sp): You shape earth into clumps or jagged shards and send it flying at a foe as a ranged attack."

Until Mark's clarification, a GM would be well within their purview to say a terrakineticist couldn't use their blast in the middle of the ocean or if they were flying in the sky using the text in the current PT doc.

I somewhat disagree. It doesn't say that it requires a nearby source of dirt or stone. It says it shapes earth into clumps. The earth can still be conjured from nothing, shaped, and thrown. I can see the confusion, but my interpretation is that if it doesn't say it actually requires a particular component, I don't impose that restriction. Compare that to the Move Earth talent which states "earth or unworked stone within 30 feet", which states specifically that it requires a nearby source of stuff to pull from. Without any sort of distance restriction, it's unreasonable to interpret the blast as requiring nearby material. If I see the moon, can I pull the earth off of it? Reasonably, the answer is no, but nothing in the rules states that I can't. Given that it doesn't have any sort of distance restriction on where the earth material is, I feel like it's reasonable to state that there is no requirement of earth, because the alternative is completely absurd in its conclusion.

blahpers wrote:

Onyxlion wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

They can pull it in through the Ethereal or use ambient elemental matter. The only way to completely stop a kineticist from having their element is to cut off the Ethereal dimensionally and send them to a place like you describe.

This need to be made into a concrete rule for kineticists, without it being so, some GMs will render kineticists useless with just a "there's no x around". I don't like rules abuse from either side and I'm of the opinion that explicitly concise is best.

Why? Nothing in the text suggests this. Restricting them in such a way would be a GM invention.

Yet the question has been brought up which means that it's answer wasn't clear enough. I've seen too many open ended statements that hurt the game and the player/gm. So why not be clear to begin with? I agree that I wouldn't just cut them off because of no ambient elements around but I know others might so why not address it now?

Simply put, because it doesn't need to be addressed because there needs to be no answer because the rules don't allow for such a restriction. If a GM invents a rule that hinders a player, and that player disagrees, it's up to them to discuss the invented rule. Any GM who enforces something not explicitly stated in the rules as they are written is inventing rules, and just like any other invented rule, that's not the devs' responsibility to address unless they feel so inclined on a rules question post. If the devs want to invent a new rule for that class that restricts the kineticist, they can do that. But they don't need to create new rules whose sole reason is that it means that GMs can't create a contrary rule.

Selsenay wrote:

Within the rules, we have shown that things fall at the same rate as in real life

actually, in the pathfinder world, all objects fall at the same rate [500'/6 seconds], regardless of weight. That's a fairly large (pardon the pun) different between real world physics and Golarion physics.

let me put it a different way:
Pick any of newton's laws, the 4 fundamental forces, so on. You can probably find at least one example of a spell or magical power that ignores or violates one or more of those laws.

Pathfinder assumes a terminal velocity for falling objects, which is actually a really really common assumption to use to make the math easier for objects falling a far distance. Pathfinder basically assumes that objects reach terminal velocity after 6 seconds. It doesn't mean that Pathfinder doesn't obey real world physics, it means that the devs didn't want you to have to do the hugely complex calculations it takes to determine the acceleration, drag force, and eventually terminal velocity of a given falling thing at each point in the initiative.

Have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps the Pathfinder books aren't supposed to be full textbooks filled with all of the science and knowledge of the world and that sometimes we have to look outside of the rules for answers to strange questions that might come up once in a while like what to do when a PC drops 50000 tons of water on something? If you need a rulebook or a dev to /explicitly/ tell you that F=ma is a law that still holds true in this universe, you're probably playing a little /too/ by the book.

Unless anyone has anything new to add to the conversation, I think this thread is done. Going back and forth between "Physics doesn't exist!" and "Yeah it does!" is not adding to the quality of this playtest. The problems with the ability have been noted; our work here is far past done.

But we can't say one way or the other about the way that things work. The only information about the way the laws of the physical world work are to use the rules in the corebook.

Within the rules, we have shown that things fall at the same rate as in real life (so gravity is essentially equivalent) and water has the same density as in real life (so water has the same mass per unit volume). Inches, feet, etc are all the same as real life as shown by the fact that humans' heights in this game (as per the rules, still) are in inches and feet and are similar to humans in real life, so it follows then volume is equivalent too. Meaning that the mass of water is equivalent between Pathfinder and real life. Given that things weigh pounds in this game (a unit of force, not mass), and humans (definitely in the rules, mind you) have a listed weight in pounds similar to the weight of humans in real life, then force functions equivalently. And given that Force = mass * acceleration (Weight = mass * gravity) in real life, then for our water problem that involves these terms, and the fact that all of these terms are equivalent between Pathfinder and real life, then it follows that force equations (and the Newtonian physics that are derived from them) are also equivalent. QED.

By Pathfinder rules, using only listed values and rules in the books, we have enough equivalencies to create everything needed to prove equivalency for Newtonian physics (which is what this whole thread uses) between the Pathfinder universe and ours.

But even if the weave exists, it would still violate the law of phyics that states that you can neither create nor destroy matter. With magic, it's pretty clear that you can create matter. Hence, different physics.

There’s this thing called mass-energy equivalency. It states that where there’s mass, there is an equivalent amount of energy (and vice versa) as described by the equation E=mc^2. You may have heard of it.

and we haven't even covered the fact that a 0 level spell lets you ignore gravity on an object. reverse gravity can make a smaller object have more gravitational pull than a large one.

The effect of gravity is related to two objects’ mass. And we’ve already shown above that we can alter mass. Alternatively, it’s just as possible that spells like mage hand and reverse gravity subject a force on the target (or targets in the area) equivalent to that needed to counteract gravity.

actually, the more I think about it, the more I think that the physics of a typical dnd/pathfinder world would have to be different. After all, in our world, there is no known way to say words, move your hands around and produce explosions, or to fly, or so on, or to change the very nature of your being, or to create something from nothing, and so on. Magic is commonplace in a fantasy world. I have yet to read or see compelling evidence that a person could create such effects without some form of tool to do so. Or spontaneously gain mass, for that matter.

Imma just restate that you go to Earth in an official Pathfinder adventure and the physics are the same. Laws of thermodynamics and conservation of mass can still exist in the Pathfinder world. Who's to say that when you create mass or energy in the material plane, it doesn't also disappear in like amounts from some unknown plane of existence? That's basically how magic in the Forgotten Realms setting works. There's the Weave that permeates everything that is this raw energy that casters tap into. I don't know of an official published equivalent in Pathfinder (somebody speak up if they know), but it wouldn't surprise me if Pathfinder functioned similarly.

There are perfectly good rules about falling objects. a colossal object does 10d6 damage, half that if it is not particularly dense. even maxing out the damage and the GM saying that falling water bypasses the hardness of wood, you're still out of luck, at least on initial pass.

We also can't assume that the physics of our world are the same as the physics of Golarion, so we can only reasonably rely on the information that we have in the rulebooks.

Of course, rule 1 is rule 1, but if you want an answer without table variance, you have to go with what the books say.

Oh huh, I didn't see the falling objects chart before. That chart is so hilariously bad I don't even know how to respond. If that's the basis we are going on for how destructive falling things are, then it's no wonder why we're having this argument in the first place.

Also, the whole "can't assume physics are the same" thing is kind of a weak argument to run with given that there is a lot of precedent for the physics working pretty much exactly the same. Create Water describes the density of water as being basically the same as on Earth. Things fall at basically the same rate. Also, the AP book [REDACTED] takes the players to the very same Earth that we are on right now, and physics and the abilities of players don't magically change while on Earth compared to Golarion. It's all the same material plane as far as Pathfinder is concerned.

Edited to remove the name of the AP for spoiler's sake.

Also I can't help but think of the XKCD What-If about giant rain drops: https://what-if.xkcd.com/12/

A few orders of magnitude different, but still. Gives a good idea about what happens when a crapton of water gets dropped suddenly. In our case it just happens on a much smaller scale.

the other thing is that rules as written the water couldn't even destroy a wooden house

Wait seriously? Ok yeah. By RAW a random meteor falling out of the sky can't destroy a house either following that logic. Neither can a giant spaceship. If you're looking for a RAW answer to "what happens if I drop 50000 tons of water on something", you're out of luck and I'm honestly surprised you're even trying to argue from that perspective given how absurd it makes everything having to do with falling objects that don't have explicit rules attached to them on how they fall.

So you're walking across the land, moving water into the air every round, and you don't think someone is going to notice that, or respond? Now, instead of just going to the dungeon and dealing with things there, the adventure has become you dragging water across the landscape, trying to deal with encounters that pop up in your way.

Wait, let me get this straight. This is a world where PCs can be all manner of races that come under negative scrutiny. Where dragons and giants and huge magical effects and dieties are commonplace. Where entire nations are either ruled by demons or rule "beside" devils. Where guns and tech and magical boats are uncommon, but still very much exist. Where people can summon swarms of fiendish minions at the drop of a hat. And "person walking around with a big ball of water" is where you draw the line on what people are going to freak out about and make a fuss over? Yeah, if the GM didn't want you to use the ability like that, that would be a way to keep a PC from abusing the power. But really, if I was a farmer I'd probably just back the heck away from that. If I was anything short of a high powered something I'd back away from that. And one doesn't usually run across ancient dragons and powerful wizards randomly in the wilderness unless they were looking for you anyway.

Because nobody's even trying to do this and we're already starting arguments at the table. :p.

Oh believe me, I'm playtesting a hydromancer in the next couple of weeks solely because of the ideas I've had as a result of thinking about this thread :P

But yeah, I agree with removing the weaponizing ability of it in some form or fashion. I don't know if 1 cube per level is too far nerfing the other cool aspects of the ability to move mass amounts of water though. It's a tough question.

Spell-like Abilities are purely mental actions that provoke AoOs. Mental does not equal not provokable.

Psychic spells are spells, and spells always provoke.

Vrog Skyreaver wrote:

Water Manipulator wrote:

When you cease concentrating, the water flows normally,

Your quote talks about characters, not objects. I can't find a maximum distance fallen in a round for objects. It also has to fall, as per the spell description, meaning that every round you're recasting it.

as far as S&S goes, you can characters can already cast control water (which creates a whirlpool).

An average object will fall about 550-600 feet in 6 seconds, depending on the objects wind resistance.

Precisely. The 500 feet rule is based off of approximate fall speed in 6 seconds [d=.5gt^2 = .5(32.2)(6^2) = 580 feet assuming a vacuum]. Water doesn't magically fall faster than everything else, and a standard action by definition doesn't take longer than 6 seconds.

From the rules for falling: "A character cannot cast a spell while falling, unless the fall is greater than 500 feet or the spell is an immediate action, such as feather fall."

A sixth level character can hold the water 640 feet in the air. So even if it drops the allowed 500 feet, you can still use a standard action to grab it and lift it back up, if the GM rules that it falls at all.

Selsenay wrote:

I think you /heavily/ underestimate the desire of players to try and make use of every utility of every ability.

I think that a lot of people theorycraft things like this, but it doesn't see a ton of actual table play in my experience (and to be fair I play a lot of pathfinder with fairly creative people).

You obviously don’t play with the people in my city then :P

Selsenay wrote:

Every single thing you mentioned is limited by uses per day.

oh, it's true, they're limited. But I'm also not hampered by being exhausted while trying to pull water miles away from it's starting location (situation dependant, of course).

There are a million and one ways to overcome the need to sleep

Selsenay wrote:

And what about moving slowly? 30 feet a round instead of 60 feet isn't really "slow". And like I said, all you need is a mount or a strong party member to carry you around and you can go as fast as them since there is currently no limitation to how fast you can move the water aside from the long range of the spell.

Having someone carry you isn't as feasible as you think, since with their gear even a strong person is going to become at least medium encumbered while carrying you, dropping them to at least 40' a round (assuming a double move).

A gnome with a handy haversack and a small sized chain shirt weigh a total of 40+5+12=57 pounds. A 16 strength medium creature can carry 76 pounds as a light load. The monk players I’ve always played with have 18+ strength and of course huge base move speeds. For medium sized kineticists, Ant Haul lasts a hella long time for the monk and basically takes care of the problem.

That's not even dealing with the fact that you're basically creating a lake every time you cast this spell. It's a standard to move the water, and a standard to keep the water in the place you moved it by concentrating, so you can't do both, and the water flows normally when you're not concentrating on it.

I think this is where the crux of our disagreement is. By my interpretation of the rules, you can float the water in the air, and then on your turn cease concentrating and then pick up the mass of water immediately and continue to move it without it dropping enough to fall to the ground. If that’s not the intent of the ability, that needs to be made clear. Even if my interpretation is incorrect, the entire Skull and Shackles adventure, as well as significant sections of other adventures and modules, can make super use of the ability without traversing long distances. This one 6th level ability essentially wins all ship to ship combat, as well as any combat or dungeon or adventure location that takes places within a few hundred feet of some water.

It's an interesting option, and certainly could disrupt a nautical campaign, but my guess is that no one will really even try to use it in such a way (I could certainly be wrong, however).

I think you /heavily/ underestimate the desire of players to try and make use of every utility of every ability.

Let's look at other spells and effects that are in the same spell level, that people can currently cast:

...

I don't need to move water across an area slowly, making myself a target: I can just make deathclouds or fields of spikes when I show up that will have a much greater effect.

Every single thing you mentioned is limited by uses per day. Water Manipulation is limitless. Cloudkill might deal some damage to a room or kill a bunch of goblins, but Water Manip will destroy a house at level 6, and far more at higher levels. Spikestones is laughable power-wise in comparison to 345 cubes of water. Control Winds is pretty good, but no one can get that until level 9, and can't cause the same level of destruction as a 6th level hydrokineticist until level 15.

And what about moving slowly? 30 feet a round instead of 60 feet isn't really "slow". And like I said, all you need is a mount or a strong party member to carry you around and you can go as fast as them since there is currently no limitation to how fast you can move the water aside from the long range of the spell.

I really think you underestimate the destructive power of 2680000 pounds of water, especially for a level 6 character. Level 6 characters don't even have access to 4th level spells. And this is essentially a cantrip. It would be completely absurd to think that Water Manipulation doesn't need some sort of balance.

The minimum level is 6, not 4 like I've been saying. That's 345 cubes and 1340 tons. My bad on that. Still though.

Surely another system to carry element is required, and it should be able to move massive amounts of it. To prevent abuse, it should be tiring and slow to move that much stuff. But consider that pretty much every full caster can break the game at that level, causing cataclysms that can destroy a city.

You don't even need to be level 20. At level 10 you get 1600 cubes of water. That's more than enough to do pretty much anything short of destroy an entire city in one action. At level 4, you still get 102 cubes, almost 400 tons. 400 tons will easily destroy a house. Or fill a dungeon with water and watch everyone try to get out before they drown. The potential for the ability as it stands is /huge/ for a single ability that you can do limitless amounts of times.

there's a perfectly good rule that prevents that: you aren't going to have all of your adventures at sea or in a river or lake.

Yes, but some adventures will. You can't have a class that works fine for one adventure path and is completely broken in another.

And you can only effect an area of water that is (at 20th level) 200'x200'x40' (per control water).

Perhaps you missed my post where even at 4th level you can carry 102 5ft cubes of water? That's still a crapton of water.

Not sure how you're moving 2400' a round, since you're taking a standard action every round to maintain control of all that water (per water manipulator).

That's why I said "potentially". The range limit of control water at level 20 is 1200 feet. If you pick up water at one side of the circle and move it to the other, that's 2400 feet. For rounds after that you are limited by how far you can move using your move action. But being able to go 30 ft per round, 5 ft/s (3.4 mph, pretty much walking speed) carrying hundreds of tons of anything is pretty absurd. Even faster if your base speed is faster or you are on the shoulders of a running monk or something.

And that's not even talking about anything or anyone who's gonna be pissed for having you drag that much water over their land/fields/cities.

You say "drag", but the ability says "move". Now, "move" may imply "drag", but "move" can also be any number of other modes of travel. Like lifting over and around things. Up to interpretation there. Could use some clarification, maybe.

All I'm saying is that there should be some kind of rule that keeps hyrdokineticists from wrecking everything. A speed per round limitation that is less than potentially 2400ft at level 20, and/or a maximum number of rounds per day or maximum amount of rounds at a time or something. Because otherwise I'm going to carry 12800 cubes of water from the lake/ocean/sea to my next adventuring spot. Have my cleric friend keep me from being fatigued. When I get there, I'm going to use those 12800 cubes (still 102 cubes at level 4) and drop them on my foe. Or drop them on/in his lair. GM intervention shouldn't be required to keep a player from using a single 4th level ability to break the game.

Pretty much every ability your discussing is a copy of a wizard spell (telekinesis, floating disk, and mage hand for Aether, Control winds for air, move earth for earth, control water for water, and I couldn't really find anything for fire that involved moving or lifting objects). All of these things, team wizard/sorcerer can already do.

Actually Water Manipulation is different than Control Water is that you can instead move an equivalent amount of water to another place in range. Which is kind of a big deal :P

the Hydro can manage a whopping 128 cubes (someone check my math)

40 squares wide x 40 squares long x 8 squares tall is 12800 cubes

49600 tons is 99200000 pounds. Let's multiply that by 4.448 to get Newtons because it's easier. That's 441.2 MN of force. Divide by 9.81 to get 44974 kg of mass. You can move the water to another location in range, that's 1200 feet. Let's be nice and say you move it 1000 feet (304.8 meters) in the air. Potential energy is Mass*Height*GravityConstant, or 44974 kg*304.8m*9.81m/s^2 = 134477760 kgm^2/s^2 = 134 megajoules (MJ) of energy. If you could convert that to electricity with even a 33% energy efficiency, you could power 1 American home for a full year. With a single standard action.

Flood caves, crush houses, transport large amounts of aquatic creatures. With just a few standard actions and some pain, you too can wipe out pretty much anything you wanted.

RogueMortal wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

The only thing that I am certain of at the moment is that tricks as they stand need to be overhauled or dropped for something else.

Agreed. The tricks, to me, feel like something fitting for a tactician sort of class, while the name Mesmerist conjures up images of mind control, both subtle and blatant. As others have said, it would be nice to implant negative Tricks into those you target with the Stare, but even that feels like a weak option, given that the tricks themselves are generally minor, or if they added damage according to recent suggestions, would scale with the penalty on Will saves to +3. Perhaps AC and damage abilities might have their own scale?

I don't expect the Mesmerist to change much, but an archetype that could use more Enchantment effects through the Stare would be most welcome. Maybe something with Hexes so they can get a Slumber effect?

Well, that is one thing that a lot of people bring up; they don't think the buffs fit. I don't mind the buffs. The buffs are just so situational that they are kind of like a non-ability to me. You are either wasting standard actions in combat or throwing your trick charges into the pit of uncertainty.

Depressingly, I also don't expect it to change that much beyond the possibility of the precision damage thing.

I really like the tricks. Yeah, they're situational, but you can generally expect that a melee party member is going to get attacked and so mirror images are good. And you can expect that casters and ranged attackers might need to get away from enemies and rogues need to outflank and so alacrity for free movement is good. In the playtesting I've done so far tricks have been super effective. You just have to think ahead a couple steps. I'd rather not have another witch variant that puts hexes on enemies. If I would change anything about tricks it would be to extend the implant duration to permanent until discharged or overridden. Or at the very least 10 minutes per level so you can push through an area to try to keep from wasting a pre-combat buff.

I played a long one-shot session with a level 7 Gathlain Mesmerist and just wanted to say that I had loads of fun. I think I only dealt direct damage once the entire session (Blistering Invective), but I found the tricks and offensive non-damage spells more than enough to make a super effective character, especially when combined with other classes that utilize abilities with Will saves. I'm not really opposed to the idea of doing something like adding precision damage with a stare, but I really enjoy being able to sit back and play puppeteer and commander and let my allies and enemies do the damage. Maybe an option to allow allies to trigger that extra precision damage or something would fit along those lines if you went that direction. Or maybe an archetype that didn't have that extra damage and got something else instead.

Absolutely great class by the way! Already it's easily in the running for favorite class ever. I had so much fun and I look forward to playing the mesmerist more!

10/10 would buy every book that ever that was released with information on LN, N, and CN demigod-like beings. Agreed about Chronicle of the Righteous being one of the best supplements in existence. I want that book (or two or three of them) for the non-goods & non-evils.

It's in Fires of Creation in the Android article! Also included are other types of Androids and even a bit about UNDEAD Androids! ^_^ I LOVES me some Androids!

Is there any way I could get the info for child androids here?

So I heard something about Child Androids but I didn't see anything in People of the Stars where I would expect. And I've been unable to find any thread anywhere talking about this. Is this in Fires of Creation or is this not actually a thing. The idea of a child-looking android with full intelligence sounds really interesting. But if you just apply the Young template as a house rule that would be harsh (and also means this thread is in the wrong place). Anyone know if there are actually rules in the book for that?

Selsenay wrote:

I was hoping to make a two weapon fighter swashbuckler, but missing out on +level to damage seems like a huge penalty

The real key though is crits. You aren't giving up all your damage from them, so you're ahead on that front, and you're generally getting twice as many chances to land them, which means that much more panache flowing in, so anything you can find that isn't a swift action you can start throwing in along with the usual pommel swipes.

That's actually a really valid point. I like it. Forget the raw damage, I want more panache to do more cool things with.

All I'm saying is that I'd like my Swashbuckler to have a combat style other than wielding one weapon in one hand. I'm fine that it adopts a lot of the Duelist things, but to be forced into what is a prestige class style as a base class seems silly. Swashbuckler has the same limitations as an existing prestige class when base classes are supposed to be able to have some variety. I'm glad archetypes exist and maybe one will replace Precise Strike with other weapon style things. I was just hoping to be able to playtest something that wasn't a Duelist, and I extra hope that they actually do add in other things later.

So this class practically obseletes Duelist? Good to know. I was hoping to make a two weapon fighter swashbuckler, but missing out on +level to damage seems like a huge penalty for not wanting to be a base class Duelist. There aren't many reasons to want to take Duelist anymore now that this exists. Most of the other unique things that Duelist has aren't that great or can be replaced by the bonus feats that Swashbuckler gets if you still want them. I'd love to have an option to make a two-weapon fighting swashbuckler, and I'd be super appreciative if the class wasn't practically forced to play with the exact same weapon style as a Duelist.

Curious now: the name "Arcanist"

what pronounciation do you use?

(a) arr CAN ist

(b) arr CANE ist

(c) ARR can ist

I've never had to say it out loud. Mentally I began with version B but at some point without noticing I've starting using version C and it's stayed that way.

It is definitely objectively b) arr CANE ist. Just about every online dictionary and pronunciation guide says so.

Yeah Jotungrip is pretty clear. You can wield an earth breaker in one hand with that too. So there is precedent for it, both cases so far cause a -2 penalty on attacks. Thunder and Fang takes away that penalty and allows you to one-hand an earth breaker without this archetype or using a small earth breaker. Pretty simple!

So in this case where "weapon damage dice" is the 2d6 taken as a whole, with VS, you roll 2d6 twice and so for MVS the "multiply (..) by the number of weapon damage dice you roll" is a multiplier of 2 because the number of "weapon damage dice" was 2. Again, not at all intuitive and could have been made far more clear with different wording, but this seems to make sense from a rules standpoint as well as what I believe the intent of the feat is.

This book is so full of weird wording. I love the book for sure, but it's taking a little longer to piece through it with certain typos that seem to exist as well as (as in this case) ambiguous wording.

Not really(in my interpretation).

This inconsistency in what "weapon damage dice" is, means it not really RAW to multiply by number of dice you roll, but rather the number of times you roll "weapon damage dice".
Because otherwise vital strike(and improved and greater) with a greatsword would be 2d6, 3d6, 4d6. And then there would still be no 4, 6, 8 multiplication.

RAI: nope
RAW: nope

Vital Strike: "Roll the weapon’s damage dice for the attack twice"

To me, those say two separate things logically.

The first says to roll weapon damage dice twice. So if I have a longsword, 1d8 becomes 2d8. If I have a greatsword, 2d6 becomes 4d6. You rolled it twice.

The second says to multiply by number of dice you roll, not the number of times you roll dice. If I have a longsword, I rolled dice twice and roll 2 dice. If I have a greatsword, I rolled dice twice but I rolled 4 dice.

I think you might be on to something, though. "Weapon damage dice" could mean the 2d6, not the actual number of dice rolled. Which is horribly confusing and not intuitive. It might instead read: "multiply the... bonuses that would normally be multiplied on a critical hit by the number of times you roll weapon damage dice". That would work as the playtest feat works while also including IVS and GVS in a similar manner while negating all confusion as to what "weapon damage dice" exactly means.

That's a typo. An Earth Breaker is a 2 handed weapon, and a Klar is treated as a light shield, meaning you normally can't wear a Klar while wielding an Earth Breaker. The feat lets you bypass that.

One way to wield an earth breaker in one hand:

"A weapon's size category isn't the same as its size as an object. Instead, a weapon's size category is keyed to the size of the intended wielder. In general, a light weapon is an object two size categories smaller than the wielder, a one-handed weapon is an object one size category smaller than the wielder, and a two-handed weapon is an object of the same size category as the wielder.

Inappropriately Sized Weapons: A creature can't make optimum use of a weapon that isn't properly sized for it. A cumulative –2 penalty applies on attack rolls for each size category of difference between the size of its intended wielder and the size of its actual wielder. If the creature isn't proficient with the weapon, a –4 nonproficiency penalty also applies."

"Vital Strike (Mythic): Whenever you use Vital Strike, Improved Vital Strike, or Greater Vital Strike, multiply the Strength bonus, magic bonus, and other bonuses that would normally be multiplied on a critical hit by the number of weapon damage dice you roll for that feat.

Extra damage from sources that wouldn’t normally be multiplied on a critical hit isn’t multiplied by this feat."

"Vital Strike: When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage. Roll the weapon’s damage dice for the attack twice and add the results together before adding bonuses from Strength, weapon abilities (such as flaming), precision-based damage, and other damage bonuses. These extra weapon damage dice are not multiplied on a critical hit, but are added to the total."

The mythic version says that you multiply strength, etc, by the number of weapon damage dice you roll for Vital Strike. If I use a greatsword with a weapon damage of 2d6, that means I roll 4d6 weapon damage for the base vital strike. Which would mean because I rolled 4 weapon damage dice, I multiply the strength, etc, bonuses by 4 for mythic vital strike.

Considering the playtest version only mentions the first version of vital strike and not the improved or greater version, it said to multiply by 2. Which leads me to believe that the developers intended the offical mythic vital strike to multiply by 2, 3 for improved, 4 for greater. But with a greatsword, following the rules, it becomes 4 and 6 and 8. Is this working the way the developers intended or were multiple dice damage weapons not considered when writing the text of the feat?

I was reading through and I thought the exact thing. Right now I'm leaning towards typo since I've already found others in the book (e.g. Archmage Speedy Summons says you have to be 3rd tier to take it in its text, but is listed as a 1st tier ability).

The existence of the Business Booms spell (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/business-booms) leads me to believe that the extra capital is added to each day and not split over the days, otherwise the spell would actually do nothing but prolong the time it takes to earn the extra capital, a negative effect.

As an example: Arraina spends 6 Influence and a day of downtime to promote her business. Arraina makes a spellcraft check to earn Magic adding 30 from the spent Influence. Her final check is 51. Rolling 1d6, Arraina rolled a 3 for the days of influx. So for each of those 3 days, Arraina earns 5 additional Magic each of those 3 days in addition to whatever the business normally makes with its check each day. Essentially, Arraina has traded 6 Influence and a day of downtime for the ability spend Earn 15 Magic (spending gold to Earn it as normal).

Cheesecake armor is fine iff there is beefcake armor. Keep it fair and balanced. That way everyone gets what they want and no one accuses anyone of gender inequality.