Snickersnax's page

Lately I've been wrestling with perception and stealth and hiding and +1/ LVL skill increases.

It seems broken to me that creatures like a Mu Spore have a +28 hide and sneak. How could you not notice a Mu spore?

Or that a hill giant (+7 sneak) is quieter than a Bobcat (+5 sneak).

The additional problem is since these skills (perception and stealth) are the most commonly used for initiative, and the transition from exploration mode to encounter mode is so rapid, low level creatures and characters have very little chance of avoiding the notice of or escaping from higher level creatures. I think this has the potential to be a huge narrative problem.

I'm not sure how to fix it.

Reflexively I want to say no more +1/lvl for any skills, just use TEML proficiency. To be fair, I think +1/lvl works great for attacks. I love how boss encounters feel tough and I'd like to keep it that way. The problem comes where skills and combat overlap like grappling. Anyone have a grand solution?

Unlike other spells that target objects that specifically call out "unattended object" like disintegrate, dispel magic, grease, levitate, light, mage hand, magic weapon, and telekinetic projectile,

Telekinetic Haul doesn't have this stipulation. I assume this means that it can be used to "move the enemy's sword 20' up in the air". The person now has a choice to hold onto the sword and be levitated or let go.

Also the way this spell is worded it seems like a 500lb boat filled with 4 people can be telekinetic hauled. Only the targeted object's weight is considered.

Are these interpretations intended? I hope so because I'd like magic to be a little cooler.

So in our last game one of the characters summoned a water elemental not touching water. A water elemental is Waterbound and when not touching water is slowed 1. I ruled that since the summoned elemental has 2 actions and is slowed 1, that it would only have 1 action per round.

The player argued that the summoned creature is already a slowed version of the creature and thus was already slowed 1 as a summoned creature and that the effects shouldn't stack.

Obviously we ended up with the DM ruling, but what is the intention here? Is a slow spell an effective counter to summoned creatures because they only get two actions? or are summoned creatures immune to slow spells unless they get slowed 2?

I am prepping for The Mirrored Moon and one of my players has a Goblin Bard. He has warned me in advance that he taking Dubious Knowledge and Hypercognition.

I know that he will be using Recall Knowledge checks at every opportunity and he may be constructing his character to have good chances to fail, but not critically fail by taking Unmistakable Lore in order to maximize his Dubious Knowledge.

There are some real gray areas on how these feats and spells interact.

For example:

HYPERCOGNITION
If you have any special abilities or free actions that would trigger when you Recall Knowledge, you can’t use them for these actions.

It seems obvious that the intention of the wording here is to preclude powers like Lorekeeper's Fortune and Lorekeeper's Recall from interacting with hypercognition.

but how about

Dubious Knowledge: appears to come into play only on a FAILED Recall Knowledge check.

or Eclectic Skill: You can attempt any skill check that normally requires you to be trained, even if you are untrained.

interacting with Unmistakable Lore: You never get information wrong when it comes to your narrow areas of expertise. When you Recall Knowledge for any Lore subcategory in which you’re trained, you treat a critical failure as a failure.

Any thoughts?

Pray for me and Gods save us from the Goblin Bards

So what happens after 1 minute if I put the shrunk creature in a locked box or the tiny creature crawls in a mouse hole in a stone building?. Does the spell continue like shrink item? Is the box destroyed? Is the creature damaged or killed?

I really wanted to use this as a quality of life spell for dealing with my warhorse in impassable terrain. But 1 minute was useless

The motive for the killer in this adventure seems really lame.

Here is a alternative plan for getting knocked and dying.

1) You die at the beginning of your next turn after you have reached negative your maximum hit points.

2) If you get knocked to zero hit points or below you are knocked unconscious and suffer a persistent damage effect equal to the number below zero that you got knocked (bigger hits below zero kill you faster).

3) If you take additional damage while dying, it adds to the persistent damage effect.

4) If you are healed or stabilize, you stop the persistent damage.

5) On your turn you have a chance to stabilize which ends the persistent damage. DC = 10

6) When you are healed to 1 hit point you become conscious with Slow 1. This gives you enough actions to pick up your sword and stand up or crawl away and stand up or pick up your sword and attack once from a prone position.

The benefits of this system are:

1) It avoids the weirdness of someone taking a huge hit that would have knocked them to negative BIG numbers and then being healed for 1 hit point and is back to conscious.

2) Because it may require more healing than the current system to bring someone back to the fight, it puts a soft brake on Whack-a-Mole.

3) Dying quickly happens from taking a big hit that knocks you significantly below zero not from a high monster DC

4) It avoids having to track the DC of the creature that knocked a PC down and revealing the monster level to the PCs.

5) It avoids shifting the initiative order.

6) Automatically incorporates Death From Massive Damage . No specific rule about death from massive damage needs to be added.

Monster special abilities are giving some wonderful flavor to monsters. I feel like this is one of the great successes of the PF2 play test.

AND

I wouldn't mind seeing a few more...

I don't know why but it really bothers me that cats don't have Catfall.

Or that Barbarian rage is described as "The fury of a wild predator fills you when you Rage, granting you uncanny unarmed attacks."

But beasts (other than badgers) don't rage... Everything on the list that possesses Barbarians when they are raging should be able to rage too.

Except snakes, WTH are snakes doing on the rage list? :) maybe take deer off the list too.

And take a look at adding a few more raging monsters: Owlbears and Lycanthropes for sure.

Hoping to stream-line the character creation process, especially for those new to the play test, I have created this simplified alternative outline to speed up the initial part of character creation.***

C: Concept Choose a class and race that you would like to play.

A: Ability Scores Choose an ability score array from the choices below:***

Human:
18 16 12 12 10 10
18 14 14 12 10 10

Non-humans have access to the following additional arrays:
18 16 14 12 10 8
18 16 14 10 10 10

Arrange the scores by putting your highest score in a key ability for your class.

Non-humans put their ability flaw in a score of 8 or 10. ***

Non-humans assign their boosted abilities to scores from the array higher than 10. (the key ability and boosted ability scores can't all be physical (Str, Dex, Con) or all be mental (Int, Wis, Cha)

Fill in the remaining ability scores as you wish:

* Dexterity for armor class and ranged spell attack bonus and reflex saves
* Charisma for resonance
* Constitution for hit points and fortitude saves
* Strength for melee attack and damage
* Wisdom for perception and will saves
* Intelligence for an extra language (at 14)

B: Background Consult the following chart to decide which backgrounds you may have using only your two highest scores. ******

Strength: Acrobat, Blacksmith, Gladiator, Laborer, Sailor, Warrior
Dexterity: Acrobat, Criminal, Entertainer, Hunter, Sailor, Scout, Street Urchin
Constitution: Acolyte, Barkeep, Farm Hand, Laborer, Nomad, Warrior
Intelligence: Blacksmith, Criminal, Merchant, Noble, Scholar, Street Urchin
Wisdom: Acolyte, Animal whisperer, Farmhand, Hunter, Nomad, Scholar, Scout
Charisma: Animal Whisperer, Barkeep, Entertainer, Gladiator, Merchant, Noble

Finally: Quick check that your build works using the standard build process

*** This doesn't include all available options. For example an ability flaw can be put in a score higher than 10. This is a simplified character creation guide if you want to do something more complex, you probably don't need this guide.

****** Backgrounds generally don't have any useful skills so don't worry to much about that part.

I'm curious what kind of Armor Class characters are having in the play test. Starting with part 2 our group made a commitment to high AC to lower damage, and limit the need for healing.

Part 2: Our ACs ranged from 19 to 21 without conditional or circumstantial modifiers

Part 3: Our ACs ranged from 23 to 26 without modifiers.

I'm wondering how those might compare to groups who had a harder time.

In a recent adventure our party wanted to use restoration to remove conditions, but the casting time is 10 MINUTES.

Restoration (4th) level is supposed to be able to reduce the level of toxins, but in 10 minutes many poisons and toxins are acting in a time frame that makes restoration useless.

I'm not sure why the casting time on restoration isn't 2 or 3 actions...

So the other night, I was playing a cleric/fighter and the Big Bad had retreated to flying just over the party's head because I was beating the snot out of it. It was my turn and I asked if it was possible to jump up and hit the creature. The DM decided that there was effectively a 5 foot vertical space between us, so I would have to jump 5 feet.

Not knowing if that was going to be difficult or easy, we consulted my character sheet and the rules.

During character creation I had ended up with Assurance in Athletics, Mastery in Athletics, and Quick Jump mostly because there weren't any good choices for Backgrounds or Skill Feats not because I wanted to be a good jumper. But here I was with a +9 in Athletics after armor check penalties, and I figured I might have a good shot at it. With an automatic 20 it might even be a sure thing...

Then we consulted the rules and discovered that jumping more than 3 feet is a DC30 Athletics check and if you fail by 10 you fall prone!!!???

Which meant that if I used my Athletics Mastery Assurance there is a 100% chance I would fall prone trying to jump more than 3 feet. And if I rolled for it there was no way I could jump 5 feet, and a very good chance I would fall prone. Since movement and location are chunked into five foot units, if the creature had been flying any lower I would have been able to hit it without jumping.

Basically unless I had taken the Powerful Leap feat, jumping for the smallest possible extra reach was impossible.

Please re-evaluate the mechanics of this skill.

Right now Natural Healing and Battle Medic aren't fulfilling their roles well as non-magical sources of recuperation between fights.

I think there is an important balance between allowing characters to have some recovery and too much recovery. I think these changes tune up the non-magical recovery methods, alleviating some pressure on healers without making healers obsolete.

Here are my proposed changes:

Resting: (Constitution modifier +1 ) x level for an eight hour rest. If characters have food, water and shelter and are not fatigued, hit point recovery is doubled

1) Right now there is no difference between a con score of 8, 10 or 12. This solves the problem and increases resting for higher constitution scores. Constitutions of 8 (-1 modifier) are frail and require assisted healing to recover. Constitutions of 6 (-2 modifier) are debilitating and characters with constitutions that low will lose hit points instead of gaining them.

Natural Medicine: only requires being trained in Nature, doesn't require a DC check, and heals the same as resting for the night (con modifier +1) x level. Add an additional +1 to the con modifier if applied in the wilderness while not fatigued. Expert adds an additional +1 con mod, Master +2, Legendary +3

1) This allows Natural Medicine to scale with level and provides a short rest mechanic for the party.

2) The combined resting mechanic changes and natural healing changes explain why low constitution elves live in the wilderness and not in cities. 8 constitution elves can heal in the wilderness, but in cities they languish.

Battle Medic: lower the in combat use of Battle Medic to DC 15. Lower the out of combat use of Battle Medic to 5. Make a natural one still a critical failure. Healing is a d10 + wis. Expert is 2d10 +wis, Master is 4d10 +wis, Legendary is 8d10+wis.

Does "You can use this feat to heal a particular creature only once per day." p 169

mean

a particular creature can only be healed by natural medicine once a day?

or

A practitioner of natural medicine can only heal a particular creature once a day, meaning that a particular creature can receive natural medicine multiple times a day as long as they are from different sources?

So I tried to use diplomacy to handle an encounter in a recent game.

In the first situation my druid (with wild empathy)tried to use diplomacy against some animals that had been spotted by his flying leshy familiar.

We walked confidently up to the beasts hoping to make an impression on them.

Initiatives were rolled, and the animals won and attacked us. Even if we had won, somehow we would have had to engage them in conversation for one whole minute to even have a chance to make an impression.

Problem: there is no way for diplomacy to work to diffuse conflicts in actual encounter mode situations. Talking for one minute takes too long.

Solution: make make an impression something that can be accomplished in a single round of actions, preferably one action. Otherwise its useless for attempting to avoid fights.

This cantrip needs a limitation on object size. Otherwise super heavy objects start getting moved around.

My players wanted to use this spell to move anything and everything.

Also, issues like what if I target a party member but I try to miss came up. Arcane casters with a collection of small rodents or insects in cages that can be used as a target to move heavy objects started to be considered as an exploit.

While it was funny to imagine combat where the wizard was using the dead bodies of the enemies as weapons. It seemed a bit much for a cantrip