Skorn Hammerfel's page

Due to the Irish postal service leveling new heavy duties on importing anything labelled games/dice/mats I regretfully need to cancel several of my Pathfinder subscriptions.

Its frustrating as I've been a long term subscriber and like supporting the company but the cost has spiraled out of control and I'm paying a quarter of the total price of the package if it contains ANYTHING that isn't a book.

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So I was thinking about the Magus feats, namely how Raise a Tome and Spell Parry are super cool, but Magus will rarely use them because the class tends to anchor around a three action sequence of Striking Spell -> Cast a Spell-> Make a Strike.

How about if that three action sequence stays the heart of the class, but some of their one action feats gain the Synthesis trait and you can gain the benefit of one Synthesis effect when you use Striking Spell.
So if you have Slide Casting and Spell Parry, when you use Striking Spell and Cast a Spell, you can use Slide Casting OR Spell Parry.

Basically the three actions sequence is the heart of the class, but you can choose from a variety of Synthesis effects as the bonus you get on that three action sequence.

Would open up the class a bit tactically, where which synthesis effect you activate can be context sensitive and add a bit of Fighter flavour to it of getting to customize how your Magus plays.

I was thinking about turn by turn play with the Magus.

The first thing I think people will try to do with their Magus is find a way to get into position to do a three action combo of Striking Spell -> Cast a Spell -> Strike.

Shooting Star just needs to be in range, Slide Casting gets a bonus Stride and Sustaining Steel needs to work for it, but lets assume they find a way to regularly be in range of a target and free to hit the combo.

Ok so lets assume they stay in range 2 rounds in a row to execute their combo.

Scenario A
Round 1: Striking Spell -> Cast a Spell -> Strike. Strike hits, you do your damage and then you make an attack with your spell of choice. If you use a cantrip spell your damage is lower than a marital succeeding at two attacks but your accuracy with the spell attack varies between comparable and superior. This all assumes you hit on the first attack.
Round 2: Repeat tactics from Round 1.

Scenario B
Round 1: Striking Spell -> Cast a Spell -> Strike. Strike misses. Baring Haste, your turn is over. This is worse than a martial who at least has the option to try another attack or invest in some defensive tactics like raising a shield but has one silver lining, your cantrip is still cast in your weapon.
Round 2: If you are still in range, optimally you should just Strike here, if you hit you have delivered 1 melee strike and 1 cantrips worth of damage, but you still have two actions to play with. I think the optimal play here is to Cast a Spell without using Striking Spell. Any spell with an attack roll will have a -10 MAP penalty but save spells are unaffected, so our ideal cantrip here is electric arc. This way we potentially can deal 1 melee strike and 2 cantrips worth of damage to a single target. This recoups some of the losses for Round 1 and delivers a bumper Round 2

Scenario C
Round 1: Striking Spell -> Cast a Spell -> Strike. Strike misses.
Round 2: Nothing is in range, the most likely turn of events here is Stride, Strike and then find something to do with that third action. It would be nice if Energize Strikes was available on these kind of off turns.

Scenario D
Round 1: Striking Spell -> Cast a Spell -> Strike. Strike misses.
Round 2: Target in range. Strike (miss) Strike again and hit. We again have an orphaned action.

I'm going to check this out in play at Level 1 and Level 11 and see does it actually play like this.
I'm also going to compare it to a hypothetical character just Striking and casting Electric Arc every turn.

Ordered a second Pathfinder 2e corebook before Gencon, intending to pick it up with my order there but it didn’t go through presumably for logistic reasons so I just bought a second one there.
Therefore there is an extra corebook on my next order, was wondering if I could get it removed if possible.
Thank you for your time.

Was just looking at Grapple in the PF2 Playtest book. Making a target up to two sizes larger than you flat footed and immobile isn't a bad deal, but I was wondering.
A classic visual in fantasy is the warrior or rogue climbing up a huge adversary to deliver a blow to a vulnerable spot or hang on while the beast takes the skies. I've also had many a player ask how can they do it when taking on a flying adversary or something really large and I can usually fudge something but it'd be nice to have something official to do it with.

But how about if instead of grappling the monster to immobilise it, you could grapple on to the monster to hang on to it.

So a skill feat like this would be appreciated

Involuntary Mount
Skill Feat 4
Prerequisite: One Handed Climber
You gain access to the following action
Scale Foe <Attack> <1 action>
Requirements You must have one hand free. Your target must be at least two sizes larger than you.
You attempt to scale your foe. Scaling requires you to roll an Athletics check against the opponents Reflex DC. This is considered a Grapple.
Success: Your opponent is flat footed until the end of your next turn unless you move or your opponent Escapes using Acrobatics or Breaks the Grapple with Athletics. While your foe is scaled when they move you move along with them ignoring restrictions.
Critical Success: Your next attack this turn ignores the MAP.
Failure: You fail to scale your opponent. If you were already scaling your opponent you fall off ending the scale.
Critical Failure: As above and your opponent can grab you as if they succeeded at a Grapple action or make you fall prone.

I'm a big fan of the new critical system for weapons, I think the 10 over target number makes to-hit bonuses incredibly valuable and results in crit city when you take on lower level bad guys, which feeds into player power fantasies nicely.

However I'm a little disappointed with the lack of weapons that can crit more often, weapons with some inherent attack bonus beyond the normal would clearly be overpowered but I was very interested in examining how the keen rune interacted with it. I was quite disappointed as the design of "Crit on a 19 or 20 so long as the attack hits" was quite clunky and sidestepped the 4 degrees of success rule.

Additionally once again daggers are the poor cousin of short swords, while you can throw them, they are otherwise inferior. The archetypical knife wielding class, the rogue has almost no reason to use them. Many new players would logically choose their rogue to wield daggers as it fits the class fantasy, but the lower damage becomes increasingly notable as the damage scales.

So I was thinking about a new weapon trait, Lethal which would make weapons crit more often.
A Lethal weapon would either give you +1 to hit on an attack that successfully hit, so upgrading your attack to a crit, or if this makes wording easier, critical hit on an attack that hits by 9 over AC/TAC rather than 10. This makes crits with the weapon 5% more likely while not altering the hit rate.

The humble dagger could then become
1d4 P Agile, finesse, thrown 10ft, versatile S and lethal
This way, there is an argument to use it over a shortsword.
I know its late in the playtest, but the idea has been rattling around for a while and I wanted to throw it out there.

At the moment no other character comes close to the performance of a positive energy cleric in terms of healing delivered and thus ability to keep adventuring. That's an issue as that makes Cleric an almost mandatory choice.
Alchemists atm struggle with healing as to extend the adventuring day they should really conserve their Resonance for Elixirs of Life, which limits the classes freedom to spend their own resources. Had an idea while trying to build an Alchemist that does healing. What if when another character drinks an Elixir of Life created by an Alchemist with Quick Alchemy and they spend a Resonance, the Alchemist then gains a point of Resonance. That way they Alchemist can regain Resonance spent on healing other characters.

Currently Capstone Abilities are unique class features each class receives at level 20. They represent a significant power upgrade for the class, often the ultimate expression of that class. They also almost never come up in play, unlike an MMO or other video game with "Ultimate" abilities, Pathfinder has almost no official content aimed at 20th level characters. Even games that get to level 20, will in the vast majority play a few sessions at that level and then finish. Capstone abilities are on the page to tempt you, but you never get to use them.

Proposal: Move capstone abilities to a lower level, maybe 15 where you might actually get to use them. If need be require someone using a capstone to be a single classed character.

If my Solarion Bull Rushes (pg246) a Goblin and successfully moves the Goblin back 5 feet, moving him out of my threatened space. Do I get an Attack of Opportunity using my reaction? (pg248)

I'm struggling to find anything that prevents it.

I just added the Starfinder subscriptions so I wonder if I could get the following items removed from my sidecart

Starfinder Core Rulebook Hardcover
Starfinder Adventure Path: Incident at Absalom Station (Dead Suns 1 of 6)
Starfinder Core Rulebook Pawn Collection

and Path of War Expanded black and white softcover

I was wondering can I cancel one book off of a pending order? It was a birthday present and someone else purchased the book.