SlackC's page

I finally managed to put a Fetchling NPC into a game last weekend, and the players loved it. I decided the dealer of black onyx to a particular necromancer was a fetchling smuggler, and while his 'material' body was careful not to reveal any information, one of the player characters managed to strike up a conversation in signs with his shadow, who was happy to give them a lead. Lots of potential in that concept!

Tiny creatures with zero reach have to enter the target creature's square to be in reach. The Sprite ancestry entry specifically references that.

Ah! Thanks. That's what I was missing.

That wouldn't have occurred to me, but now I'm curious if I'm missing a written rule. Can a tiny creature end its turn within melee range of another creature, even if its reach is less than 5 feet? Does each creature have to be located in the *center* of its own square?
The quoted text says to use the center of your square to determine whether you're on opposite sides of a creature, but doesn't say you have to use the center of the square to determine if you're in melee range.

1e-wise, Planar Adventures has a Shadow Plane section and Distant Realms has a section on Shadow Absalom. (There might be something else hiding in some AP backmatter or other book but those are the two main ones I know of.)

Fetchlings have me excited as well! I just made a fetchling bard character whose performances are shadow puppetry, which I'm extremely looking forward to seeing in play.

Thanks! And I love that idea about the shadow puppets.

This book is rad! Now I need to start playing Lizardfolk. Also, the Fetchling section makes me want more source materials about the Shadow Plane. Is there anything published?

I like to start by asking players what they remember from the last session. I have some players who keep good notes, which are helpful for recaps, but it helps me to hear what stuck in their memory and what didn't.

I generally alternate between using D&D's dungeon tiles, PF flip-tiles, and hand-drawn map as the session demands. If I've got a scripted scene I can reasonably well replicate with tiles, I prefer to go that route, but hand-drawn is always trusty and reliable. That said, I've found tiles really helpful for getting random encounters moving quickly. I don't have to spend extra time drawing in details like trees or inclines or other obstacles, and they generally just look nice. With dungeon tiles, they also come with a lot of pawn-like accessories you'd get with Dungeon Decor. I might pick them up though, as I'm looking to sell dungeon tiles off before long.

Shows you how often I check these responses, right? :) That's helpful to hear, and I've found the same thing--the tiles are excellent for quick, smallish encounter spaces. Can't wait till we can all do more in-person games so I can experiment with them more. I keep wanting to make larger layouts with them, but I haven't quite found my stride.

This is great! FWIW, I appreciate that this post is a list of Black creatives who are actually getting *paid* to bring their vision to the Paizo universe. Thanks for all the gorgeous artwork and writing!

This spell made me wonder about the order of Counteracting and spell effects triggered by it.
If my cleric casts a high-level divine Dispel or Remove Curse on someone permanently affected by Spiritual Epidemic, and it succeeds, does the cleric still have to make a save against the effects of the spell? I can't find a clear rule about the order of resolution for those effects, so should I assume the spell description, being the more specific rule, takes precedence?
Thanks!

You curse the target, sapping its spirit and leaving a contagious

trap in its essence. The target must attempt a Will save. Any
creature that casts a divine or occult spell on the target while
it’s affected is targeted by spiritual epidemic and must also
attempt a Will save. The curse continues to spread in this way.

Going to throw my hat in there for a mansion/dungeon/castle interior pack.

I'd like that too, but I'm skeptical that they could pull it off. In 42 double-sided tiles, it seems like there's room to provide a couple of kinds of enclosed spaces, a couple of kinds of open spaces, and two or three 'interesting thing in the middle of a space' tiles. I'm not sure that'd be enough.

Then again, have you tried the dungeon tiles and the Dungeon Decor pawns? I can see something castle-ey emerging with those.

There are things I really like about flip tiles, but I haven't had much success really using them. The end result doesn't feel much more immersive than a map drawn in marker on a mat, which gives me way more flexibility. If they're working well for you, I'd love to hear more about it.

Narratively, I can get behind the explanation that a snare isn't just the device, it's also the terrain it's set into. Plus a bunch of judgments about placing and concealing it. IRL, if I "disassemble" a snare trap, I'm just holding a rope.
Bummer that the idea was left half-baked in the rules as written, though.

It definitely isn't a ready-made snare but what you'd find is the "unassembled" materials a PC would need to use to make said snare...

Presumably, snares were originally planned to distinct items you could find and when they changed their minds on that, they neglected to update the Treasure tables / adventures that were already written...

That would explain it. Sounds like an incomplete feature, and since none of my PCs have Snare Crafting at this point, I'll just avoid it. Thanks!

I was putting together a list of treasure for an upcoming session, and noticed that the Treasure tables in the CRB include several types of snares. If a character opens a chest and finds a snare, then what, exactly, do they have? What can they do with it? If there's a way to take a snare from your inventory and place it on the battlefield, what is that action?
The rules for crafting snares don't seem to leave much room for a portable, ready-made snare.

Definitely a bummer. My druid went to the lodge and pre-ordered the scrolls, but it sounds like they won't even be shipping until Neth or Kuthona.

Oh, thanks! The page you linked to has some great background.

I have a player whose character's backstory ties into the Mendevian Crusades, and I'd love to build some hooks around that in our campaign. But I haven't found much lore about the crusades, beyond the sidebars in the _Lost Omens World Guide_. Any pointers?

I haven't seen this spelled out anywhere, but it's worth noting that these tiles match up perfectly with the grass texture from the Flip Mat: Basic Terrain pack. Good tools for customizing forest encounters.

Cool! Will these overlap at all with what's in the Beginner Box?

Count me in! The earlier pack of class-specific character sheets has been really useful to me. Great product to have in electronic form.

...So Quintessence == aligned planar matter, outsiders, and the fuel for soul creation.

Well, that clears that up. ;)

For those of us who just woke up and haven't had our coffee: Does this mean the second strike in Twin Feint does NOT get the additional precision damage die from Sneak Attack?

Cool! Thanks for the responses. I like lore, I just get nervous when I see a big box with lists and I'm not sure how it's supposed to work. :)

Put together a baby-sitting circle with the families of other gamers with children...

Yeah, we've done that for other events, back before the plague. Good idea.

Also: Plan for shorter sessions. 2-3 hours instead of 3-4.

^Wisdom.

The most obvious answer is time-trading.

Good advice. We certainly apply that idea for occasional activities, but I'm not sure either of us have set up a regular 'night out' since we've had kids, so it'll be a new undertaking.

Thanks for the advice and encouragement. One of these days, I'll have a group again!

On p 300 in the CRB, there's box that says "Scholars of magic widely agree that all of existence is composed of some combination of four essences," namely Matter, Spirit, Mind, and Life. Does this actually come up anywhere in rules? Seems silly to add one more layer of categories on top of tradition and school, but I can't find any other reference to this concept in any spell or rule. What are these for?

Two-parent household or one-parent?

Both parents gamers? Both parents in the same gaming group?
Any other adults in the household?

Two parents. My partner isn't as much of a gamer. Nobody else in the household.

Howdy, neighbor! Drop me a line if you have an empty seat, sometime. I'd love to play some Pathfinder with local people.

I'm trying to get back into tabletop games after a few years, and one of the big changes since I last played is parenting. I have 2 kids under 6, they are wonderful, and they make it very hard to schedule things in multi-hour blocks. I know I'm not the only one in this situation, so I just wanted to open the question up to the board. If you are a gamer with small kids, what has worked well for you? Particularly if you're in an online group. Is your game night strictly a "hire a sitter" activity, or have you found other things that worked? Do you warn your GM/group there's a nonzero risk of screaming children? Have you found other players sympathetic?

The rule about the level requirement for feats is one easily overlooked sentence on page 18 of the PF2 Core Rulebook.

That's the one! I knew I'd read it somewhere. Thanks, folks.

This seems common-sense, but I can't find it spelled out in the core rulebook: A feat's level is a minimum required level to acquire that feat, right? So in addition to all other requirements for a feat, I can't pick a level-3 feat until I'm level 3 or higher?
Again, seems obvious, but I can't seem to find the rule. Thanks!

Only if you take the Wizard thesis that grants the familiar. Otherwise they are independent.

Got it! Thanks.

Helpful analysis! Familiars seem cool to me. And from a pure roleplaying perspective, I think they open up a lot of cool possibilities.
Speaking of familiars: are they mutually exclusive with Arcane Bond, for wizards? I read a comment somewhere that implied that, but I can't find a rule. (1st-edition thing, maybe?)

The rules for Surprise Attack on P. 181 in the CRB say that creatures who have not yet "acted" get the flat-footed penalty. If I choose to Delay, have I acted? Is there a reason it's worded this way instead of being tied to initiative? What are the edge cases I should be thinking about?

Nocte ex Mortis wrote:

Yeah, the original idea during the play test was... not good, to put it nicely.

The idea wasn't bad; the implemetation on the other hand could best be described as "train wreck".

_
glass.

I'm just assuming there was a bitter, scorched-earth argument over someone wanting to strap on their eleventh magical item in the middle of a battle, and this set of rules is the solution everyone could live with. Good enough for me!

I'm new to Pathfinder, working my way through the rulebook, and I'm trying to wrap my head around item investiture. My CRB says on page 531 that "Certain magic items convey their magical benefits only when worn and invested using the Invest an Item activity." Can all characters do that? Is an "activity" a term I should be aware of?
Thanks!

The wizard could learn spells that are on both the arcane and primal spell list from the druid, though.

That's helpful to hear. Is it safe to assume that spells with the same name are always the same spell, when they appear in multiple lists?