'Conscious Mind' says "You automatically add the spells listed here to your spell repertoire, in addition to those you gain through psychic spellcasting. At 1st level, you gain a 1st-level spell, and you learn the other spells on the list as soon as you gain the ability to cast psychic spells of that level, learning the 2nd-level spell at 3rd level, the 3rd-level spell at 5th level, and so on."
'Swapping Spells in Your Repertoire' says "As you gain new spells in your repertoire, you might want to replace some of the spells you previously learned. Each time you gain a level and learn new spells, you can swap out one of your old spells for a different spell of the same level. This spell can be a cantrip. You can also swap out spells by retraining during downtime."
I can't decide if I'm allowed to swap or not, the discord seems to say that this is an oversight and it should not be allowed.
A friend of mine wants to run a final fantasy inspired game, so I've been working on some classes inspired by classes from that series. So far I've got the Geomancer and the Dark Knight, let me know what you think.
So the Varisian dancing scarves (https://aonprd.com/EquipmentArmorDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Varisian%20dancing% 20scarves) say:
"Varisian dancing scarves provide no benefit while you are standing still. Whenever you move at least 10 feet during your turn, you gain a +2 armor bonus to AC until the beginning of your next turn. Varisian dancing scarves add their enhancement bonus to this armor bonus instead of providing a constant benefit; other magical enhancements (such as light fortification) apply whether or not you are moving."
So, the scarves apply their enhancement bonus as an additional armor bonus when your activate them. Could you potentially stack an enhancement bonus to armor from another source, because the scarves are not adding an enhancement bonus, but increasing the armor bonus?
If so, could you just wear a cheap enchanted set of armor underneath them?
I'm thinking of taking the Pyrokineticist prestige class from Dreamscarred Press, and one of their abilities is throwing me through a loop. So this is the Pyrokineticist's Fire Lash ability:
Fire Lash:
Fire Lash (Ps)
A pyrokineticist gains the ability to fashion a 15-foot-long whip of fire from unstable ectoplasm as a move-equivalent action. She takes no damage from a fire lash she creates, and if she releases her hold, it immediately dissipates. The lash deals 1d8 points of fire damage to a target within 15 feet on a successful ranged touch attack. A pyrokineticist can take Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization (if she otherwise meets the prerequisites) in conjunction with the fire lash, as well as any feats that apply to the use of a standard whip. The whip remains in existence as long as the pyrokineticist holds it and is treated for mechanical purposes as a whip.
If the character has the ability to fashion a mind blade and has the Altered Blade blade skill, her fire lash may be treated as her mind blade for mechanical purposes such as enhanced mind blade and other class abilities. All damage dealt by the mind blade in this form, including psychic strike damage and bonus damage from weapon abilities, is fire damage, and the pyrokineticist may not use the fire lash to perform disarm or trip attempts unless she has selected the appropriate Weapon Special blade skill.
I've got a few questions, but they all boil down to "What is this thing?"
Is this a ranged weapon because it makes ranged touch attacks?
Is this a melee weapon that just happens to make ranged touch attacks? Is it just a strange whip?
Do you need precise shot for it? Does it benefit from point-black shot?
If you are a Soulknife and this is your mind blade, do you need the ranged trip feat to make trip attempts with it?
I was looking for a conversion of IotSV, but couldn't find one anywhere, so I made one using the rules from the conversion guide. There are three differences between this conversion and the original, and I wanted to explain my reasoning behind them:
1.) The DCs for wardings were made to be equal to an equivalent level abjuration spell cast by the initiate. I did this because the original value of 18+primary casting modifier seemed arbitrary and didn't match up to the example IotSV given in Complete Arcane. I feel like this works better with how DCs are calculated in pathfinder and is easier to remember for the players, as each veil already has an associated spell level.
2.) Initiates get an additional use of warding per day at every level, increasing their total wardings from 4 to 7. I did this because Pathfinder designers often discuss how prestige classes are particularly bad for spellcasters, and 4 uses per day isn't enough to match Pathfinder's recommended 6 daily encounters. Once per level matches IotSV's '7' theme and feels better for the more powerful Pathfinder spellcasting classes.
I've rolled this back, although I'm not sure that 4 uses of a single ability is worth 7 class levels for classes like sorcerer or arcanist. I might be looking to over-tune though, more feedback is needed from experienced players.
3.) The wording of Kaleidoscopic Doom was changed to reflect the change in the way greater dispel magic works in pathfinder, to maintain the ability's original functionality. The initiate can make a dispel attempt against each active spell effect, as was the function of dispel magic in D&D 3.5.
So, one of my players really wanted to play a divine caster with arcanist style casting. We searched through, but realized that there aren't any. So, I decided to try my hand at making one.
The paragon class is a mixture of the arcanist and oracle, using cleric, oracle, and shaman mechanics to create something that is hopefully very close in scope and power level to other pathfinder classes. You can read the full class description here:
Hey everyone! One of my players really wants to play a poison based vishkanya ninja. Poisons are not very well supported by the ninja class, so here is my adaption of the Toxicant alchemist archetype as a ninja.
Poison Dragon:
Poison Tricks
A poison dragon may select the Celestial Poisons, Concentrate Poison, Designer Poison, Elemental Destabilizers, Enduring Toxin, Malignant Poison, Poison Conversion, Precise Poison, or Sticky Poison alchemist discoveries in place of a ninja trick. The poison dragon treats their ninja level as their alchemist level for the purpose meeting the level requirement of one of these discoveries. The poison dragon uses their Charisma modifier in place of their Intelligence modifier for any discoveries gained this way.
Toxic Secretion (Ex)
At 2nd level, a poison dragon has learned to harness the potential of their natural ability to produce harmful toxins. Once per day, in a process that takes 10 minutes, the poison dragon can create and imbibe a tincture that causes their skin to secrete a more powerful version of their natural vishkanya toxin. The poison dragon is immune to this secretion, but any creature that hits them with a natural attack or unarmed strike must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC = 10 + 1/2 the poison dragon’s ninja level + the poison dragon’s Charisma modifier). On a failed save, the target takes an amount of damage equal to the poison dragon’s Charisma modifier.
As a swift action, the poison dragon can collect and concentrate this secretion into a poison they can deliver as a touch attack or apply to a weapon. Targets of such attacks must attempt saving throws as if they had touched the poison dragon’s toxic secretion. The poison dragon can do this a number of times per day equal to their ninja level + their Charisma modifier.
This is a poison effect. The poison dragon can suppress this secretion as a standard action, in which case it remains suppressed for 1 hour or until the poison dragon reactivates it as a standard action.
This ability replaces the the ninja trick gained at 2nd level.
Improved Secretion (Ex)
At 3rd level, a target that fails its save against the poison dragon's toxic secretion must succeed at a second save 1 round later or take the same amount of damage again. This effect repeats as long as the target continues to fail its saving throws, to a maximum number of rounds equal to 1 + 1 for every 3 ninja levels the poison dragon possesses (to a maximum of 6 rounds at 18th level).
Additionally, 3rd level and every 3 levels thereafter, the poison dragon can choose a condition to have their toxic secretion impose. This choice is made when the tincture is imbibed and can’t be changed for the remainder of the day. A creature that fails its save against the toxic secretion also gains the condition until it succeeds at a save against the secretion, or until the toxin’s duration ends. At higher ninja levels, the poison dragon gains access to stronger conditions. The following conditions are available at the given ninja levels: 3rd—bleed (1d6), dazzled, fatigued, or sickened; 6th—dazed or shaken; 9th—blinded or staggered; 12th—exhausted; 18th—stunned.
This ability replaces the no trace ability.
Toxic Digestion (Ex)
At 14th level, a poison dragon can drink a poison as a standard action and suspend it within their own body. They are not affected by the poison, and do not need to attempt saving throws against it. When the poison dragon next uses their toxic secretion on a creature that attacks them with a natural or unarmed attack, they can expose the attacker to the digested poison (with that poison‘s normal duration, effects, and save DC) rather than their normal toxic secretion, even if the digested poison isn’t normally a contact poison. The poison dragon can maintain only a single digested poison at a time. If they digest a new poison, any older digested poison is lost.
This ability replaces the ninja trick gained at 14th level.
Does anyone else find it strange that wizards get less trained skills than any other class? Most classes begin the game trained in 4 skills +int-mod, the Bard and Ranger get 6 skills +int-mod, and the Rogue gets 8 +int-mod. That makes sense to me, but for some reason the Wizard only gets 3 trained skills +int-mod.
Int is the key ability score for Alchemists too, but they still get 4 skills, so it can't be that. I just don't see the point in making Wizard the odd man out here.
In a thread discussing PDF pricing, Sara Marie explained that Paizo has decided to raise the rates of the PDFs to be more fair to third party publishers who cannot afford to discount their pricing the way Paizo can.
I'm going to start by saying that I appreciate Paizo working within the industry to help other publishers. It will bring us more content from more sources and that's a great thing.
As great as that is however, it doesn't change one problem about the increased pricing; My society players can not afford the Lost Omens World Guide. They can not justify purchasing it, and when I asked my group of 7 why, these are the general problems they had.
1.) It did not release as society sanctioned. I understand that every book can not release sanctioned, but this is the first release for pathfinder 2e and none of my players want to get a book they can't use.
2.) Each player would need the book to use it. The group couldn't buy one copy to share among themselves, anyone who wants any feature from the book would need to purchase their own copy.
3.) The book does not have enough content for the price. The draw of the book is the 10 new archetypes, but at this price point that comes out to almost $3 an archetype. There are included backgrounds, but many of them are just slight alterations on core rule book backgrounds, and a characters background isn't that important to begin with.
I honestly have no idea how to sell this book to my players at this price, and so none of them are even considering the new archetypes. It's disappointing and I'm not certain that helping third part publishers is really worth losing access to character options. I brought my book for them to look at and they were excited, but all of them gawked when I told them how much the PDF was, let alone the hardback copy.
Is there a way we can restructure how society players share resources to both help third part publishers and allow groups to feel good about purchasing more expensive PDFs, or can we combine PDFs together online for a bulk discount of some kind to make buying a copy for each member of the group more feasible?
So, a while back I finished a printer friendly version of the expanded character sheet (found here), and today I finally finished a fillable version of it! You can find it here:
It should do a bit of math for you, tracking ability score mods, automatically calculating proficiency, and adding up your bulk for the inventory. I tired to make it as clean as possible and some boxes have drop down menus or scroll bars to allow for more customization or room.
If you notice any errors please leave a comment, I've been staring at it for a few weeks so I'm sure something slipped past me.
The Ancestry request thread came up with a lot of cool ideas a good information about what players want, so let's do it again with a different topic. This time let's talk about Archetypes, the LOWG makes it pretty clear that they are going to be the stand in for Prestige Classes and Templates, allowing you to add flavor and specialized abilities to your character in a slightly different way.
What Archetypes do you want to see? Which Prestige Classes and Templates do you want updated?
For me, I've always loves the Weretiger Template Class (and the entire idea of template classes) from 3.5, so a Lycanthrope Archetype would be great to see. As for Prestige Classes, I really really want to see a return of the Initiate of the Seven Fold Veil. My order of LGBT abjurers must rise again, and jokes aside the protective walls and spheres were super fun to use while being a defensive option.
Does anyone else think that Pathfinder second edition should have gone with the D&D 5e method of spell preparation?
For those of you that don't know, prepared spell casters get to prepare a number of spells, and then can spend a spell slot to cast any appropriately leveled spell. So instead of preparing three magic missiles, you just need to have magic missile prepared today to be able to spend spell slots to cast it.
I think this would have helped people who are coming over from 5e, as well as give prepared casters a little utility after the decrease in spell slots. What does everyone else think?
There doesn't seem to be a way to make a classic summoning Necromancer in 2e right now. Some people are really happy about this because they have caused mechanical problems in the past.
I'd like to propose some alternative ways to give necromancers their summoning powers and flavors without causing the mechanical problems that 1e had. There are two big ones which I think would work well together.
A.) A ranger style companion, powerful enough to be in combat and not be a waste.
B.) Summoning style necromancy, you get them for short periods of time so you never have the mechanical problem of having a ton of low level units to control.
So your necromancer has their 'magnum opus' the undead they are patching and working on as their personal projects, and then the ability to temporarily animate bodies for short term minions in combat. With that, you get all the undead necromancer flavor without mechanically being hard for GMs and other players.
I spent a few hours making this sheet more printer friendly, because I really like how it looks. I'm looking into how to make it fillable with some math, and into doing the Companion and Alchemy sheets if people want them.
You can find it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tfscHXUJGOXFGZALRAAIIyWJ6wvLHXa8
