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Also, why have all of the threads just become the same conversation stretched across the General boards?

Because there are only ten or so people who bother posting here? It's the same complaints that haven't been (and can't be, due to design principles) addressed, and now it's just the same arguments hashed out over and over and over. No one listens anymore, just stabbing at strawmen and yelling into the void.

I don't even make them roll Recall Knowledge for level, they can just ask / intuit that from the number of enemies. But then I also changed Incap to only upgrade Critical Failure to Failure so I'm probably not the best to ask for what effects the open level thing has had.

The Bladed Gauntlet from Knights of Lastwall is described as having "a dagger attached to a retractable mechanism ... integrated in this gauntlet’s dorsum," which is how Eivor's hidden blade works. The issue is it being a martial weapon that rogues aren't proficient with, but they could be an investigator for a similar progression or the GM could be kind and just grant them proficiency.

I wish Recall Knowledge was more solidly laid out in how it's supposed to work. I hate that telling what save an NPC is weakest in is an almost mandatory house rule because casters do not function if they target an enemy's strong save (at least, my Witch player chose a bunch of cool, thematic spells that all target Fort, and that is an enemy's highest or second highest save throughout all three Age of Ashes books we've played through so far, so she has huge problems with enemies always succeeding).

WatersLethe wrote:

It has also been my experience that casters of all sorts have been way stronger in practice than people have been giving them credit for.

i think the issue is one of perception based on how save spells are balanced. Save spells are designed to fail more than attacks and skill checks, but still get value on a failure. in terms of contibuting to any given combat this is fairly effectivly balanced, but the perception is that your spells are failing all the time, even if you are still getting value and contributing to the fight, the fact that your contributions are so often framed as a failure case makes a lot of people feel like their char just isnt functioning.

Honestly it's been so hard trying to convince my Witch player that she IS contributing when enemies roll success after success after success. She looks at the Swashbuckler and Champion and wonders why they get it so much easier than she does when she's spending resources in combat and they aren't, and saying "half damage on a success is more than they get on a failure (excluding Confident Finisher)" or "But it still lowers their AC" doesn't help when by the measure of the game, she's failing to land her spells.

Excellent! Glad to see more power to the workers!

Feats will usually be very specific about how they alter MAP; Clear the Way not mentioning any alteration means that, to me, you apply MAP normally to each Shove made. Consider that you can get up to five rolls and half a Stride with only two actions and it seems fair to me that you largely rely on luck for the final 3 Shoves.

EDIT: Just out of curiosity, what does the following clause actually restrict?

CRB p.225 wrote:

You don't gain any other abilities from your choice of order.

What does the Dedication not give from the Order?

The Dedication doesn't give you the Focus Spell or the Class Feat associated with the Order.

I run with it as an option each character can take; half the party so far uses it and the other half doesn't, and neither seems to be too far apart in effectiveness, but that might just be the archetypes chosen (Wizard with Hellknight dedication and Druid with Familiar Master vs. Witch and Swashbuckler). Neither the Witch nor Swashbuckler's player have found an archetype worth taking so far, but that might change in the future.

So far it's allowed for characters to expand on something thematic to them without compromising their class identity, and I can't imagine running future games without access to it.

That said, a technical question, I haven't been able to find "Bull" as a statted creature in any Bestiary, or as an animal companion...or at all. Is it still an animal that can be chosen as a Beastkin?

I think you can choose any animal for Beastkin. The only feat I think directly relies on the innate animal would be Animal Shape, and Animal Form fortunately lists "Bull" as one of the options. Odd we don't at least have an aurox or cow stat block yet.

It's very interesting to me to read a lot of these responses genuinely dislike the random chance aspect of tabletop gaming. I have no experience playing 1e, but when I heard that you could optimize the die roll away I figured this was exaggeration. After all, 1e has this reputation of being incredibly complex in terms of its mechanics such that you need to have guides to filter out what actually works for your concept versus what sounds like it works.

But then, if you can do remove random chance why roll dice to begin with? What about the mechanical framework of 1e do you actually use if you can ignore the only operator, and what about 1e is there to use that you couldn't with more abstract systems or just collaborative storytelling with no rules outside of some table limits? Is it just the higher amount of variance in 2e? Genuinely curious here, as someone who plays these games specifically because the random chance provides more unique outcomes than if I had written them myself.

I'd like the skinwalker ancestry to be updated, maybe as a versatile heritage like the aasimar. Something to let me make a character with therianthrope theming that doesn't require an archetype or specific class.