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Hi All

Just clarifying for a local player at my PFS lodge, does Spellshot have any access requirements besides possibly using the ACP boon? This is a level 1 character they're setting up. Thanks in advance

Characters with a Home Region of Alkenstar, Dongun Hold, or the Shackles have access to all archetypes from Chapter 3 with the exception of beast gunner, fireworks technician, and spellshot.

Characters with a Home Region of Arcadia have access to the beast gunner and spellshot archetypes in addition to the above.

So, per the character options page, if you make a character from one of the above regions (or purchase the world traveler boon for one of these regions if you really want to be somewhere else), you can make your gunslinger a spellshot, no additional ACP required.

Yeah, the communication on that was awful. I think it was necessary to have some additional rulings since the legacy classes wouldn't interact with updated feats and spells with the same name, but they handled it in the most frustrating way possible.

Squark wrote:

x x 342 wrote:

So why does aonprd not override any requirement to 'own the source material'?

Turn the question around. "If archives of Nethys overrode the ownership requirement, and AoN is freely available to everyone, why would the ownership requirement exist?"

You are free to use any material you want in home games. But if you want to participate in the official organized play program that paizo spends additional money producing content for to promote the game, it's not unreasonable for them to ask you to purchase some of their products if you want to use more than the fairly generous resources in the Core Assumption.

I believe SFS and PFS scenarii are not available for free though.

As I understand it, they're still a loss leader. There are also rules in place for GMs to borrow scenarios from organizers if they are not in the financial position to purchase them.

So why does aonprd not override any requirement to 'own the source material'?

Turn the question around. "If archives of Nethys overrode the ownership requirement, and AoN is freely available to everyone, why would the ownership requirement exist?"

You are free to use any material you want in home games. But if you want to participate in the official organized play program that paizo spends additional money producing content for to promote the game, it's not unreasonable for them to ask you to purchase some of their products if you want to use more than the fairly generous resources in the Core Assumption.

So why does aonprd not override any requirement to 'own the source material'?

From https://paizo.com/pathfindersociety/characteroptions

''To use an option from any source other than those discussed above in Pathfinder Society play, you must bring any one of the following to your game table:

-A physical copy of the book you wish to use
-A name-watermarked PDF copy of the book
-Name-watermarked printouts of all relevant pages you wish to use from the PDF
-ACCESS TO THE RULES YOU WISH TO USE IN THE FORM OF EITHER ELECTRONIC ACCESS TO THE PATHFINDER REFERENCE DOCUMENT (PAIZO.COM/PRD), another official rules source such as Pathfinder Nexus, or a photocopy of the relevant pages, along with proof of purchase, such as a receipt from a game store or a screenshot of your My Downloads page on paizo.com.''

My all CAPS. paizo.com/prd redirects to aonprd

Archives of Nethys can serve as a copy of the rules for reference if you bring evidence of a proof of purchase but don't have the actual PDFs/physical books with you. I've bolded the relevant part of the sentence inyour quote.

Like Aristophanes says, Access overrides rarity, not ownership requirements. For another example Dwarven Weapon Familiarity grants access to uncommon weapons, like the Dwarven Waraxe and Dwarven Dorn-Dergar. Being in Player Core 1, the Dwarven Waraxe is part of the Core Assumption and anyone with this feat purchase it in PFS. But the Dwarven Dorn-Dergar is from Treasure Vault, so while the feat gives you access to it, you still need a copy of the book to purchase it.

Another option in 2e would be to use Xenometric Android Versatile Heritage* from the upcoming Galactic Ancestries book with the Awakened Animal Ancestry.

*At least, it sounds like it's a versatile heritage from the book description.

While putting Secrets of Magic's classes in the same book as the Impossible Playtest makes a lot of sense to me, too, I'm a little worried people are getting a little too certain about the theory. We might want to temper expectations a bit to avoid too much disappointment.

"Replace the text of the shadow snap spell (page 376) with the following:"

There's no heightening (at all) listed anymore. Is this intended?

Previously it heightened 1d10-10d10, which was outrageous compared to a witch and psychic spell that did a similar attack at 1d10-4d10 and didn't have the extra reactive strike/disrupt on a crit option. But a flat d10 forever is pretty anemic unless the intent is for this just to be used for the "stalk" effect to crit fish for disrupts.

Huh. Was changing the scaling intended at all? Or were they just trying to prevent you from sustainign the spell twice to get two MAP-less strikes.

WatersLethe wrote:

The reason they're combined is so that they're not utterly boned by resistances. You're already not guaranteed to hit both attacks, so trying to overcome resistance is already punishing as heck.

Press Strike rotations are one of the more powerful ways to build Fighter, and they still have to deal with resistances double dipping on their damage. I would think the advantage of Double Slice over that would be more accurate attacks, not necessarily piercing resistances.

WatersLethe wrote:

Finally landing both strikes only for the full damage to be eaten to no effect would have people flipping the table. Also, a lot of dual wielders and monks invest heavily in dexterity for various reasons, meaning their strength might not be maxed out, further reducing their peak damage numbers.

That does make sense. Though with that in mind, how come Double Slice prevents double dipping on precision damage but *not* Strength, when many Dex-focused classes rely on precision damage to offset lower Strength values?

Almost certainly because double slice is a fighter feat, and they were being cautious about it being used by other classes. Rogues who want a dual wielding feat that will let them apply precision damage to both strikes cam pick up Twin Takedown instead.

Circling back around here to say that Paizo has released errata today, and the overwhelming brunt of power level changes was about the Space Pirate Archetype. To summarize:

-The holo-roger now has half the range and can only target one person

-The passive benefit to Coercing has been replaced with an intimidation bonus that only works "while your flag is projected onto a starship".

-Press-Gang The Soul, despite claiming to be "at-will" still, now " requires and permanently releases one soul press-ganged with your phase cutlass."

No guidance is given on what "projected onto a starship" means- as in "using it while you are inside a ship"? As in "using it on top of your own ship?"? As in "display it on an opponents ship with some kind of projector"?

I don't know what to say about this, to be honest. While the Space Pirate archetype WAS stronger than the typical galaxy guide archetype, these changes just really bum me out. It kneecaps the two feats we all came together to praise and hold up as a shining example of fun and exciting options. It doesn't address what I would consider the ACTUAL design flaws of the Space Pirate archetype, such as the big gulf between the "fun pirate feats" and the "two hander sword + gun" feats.

I really don't like this. I think people were briefly mildly hypothetically concerned about the power level of the archetype, and in the almost year since release, I have not seen a single person actually say it has negatively affected anything.

I'm not even angry or upset, as much as just..confused and disappointed. Maybe Paizo really hasn't learned anything, and we were just projecting a new design philosophy on what they see as a mistake.

I haven't complained about it in the last year because nobody I've played with has used it, either because the cheese factor scared people off or the flavor of the archetype was totally off for the characters people had in mind (Conversely I have seen tbe much more balanced and less supernaturally icky PF2 Pirate archetype used). So bringing it up would have just made me feel like Grampa Simpson yelling at a cloud.

It's the same reason I can't muster up that much bile for PF2's exemplar dedication. I've only seen it in the wild once, and there it was being used to enable something weird instead of slap two more damage /die on a fighter with a maul

The feature is standard on most feats that let you pair strikes (The Ranger's Hunt Prey and Twin Takedown, A spirit Warrior's Overwhelming Combination). It's a nice perk for warriors that might struggle to generate big numbers to overrcome hardness or resistance otherwise, since all of these can be used by Dex based characters.

The errata to Master Gunner missed unarmed strikes when giving operatives critical specialization with anything their expert in, leading to some very said unarmed strike using operatives.

The Guns Blazing Envoy directive "Ready Arms!" Is incorrectly referred to as "Deadly Arms".

Also, for any confused Strike operatives looking for the buff mentioned in the announcement article, Eagle Eyed members of the community noticed that they're almost certainly referring to the change to the Master Gunner feature, ensuring you now have the critical specialization with melee weapons you'd think you should.

Yeah, this has the potential to backfire horribly. A level 1 PC being expert in athletics* (or worse, master, if you're getting athletics proficiency from your ancestry, background, and class) is incredibly overpowered, but at the same time you could end up with a lot of the PCs helpless in exploration. So it's not even really MinMaxing because you're Adding new weaknesses, not minimizing them.

*Athletics is probably the most notable offender, but a number of other skills like Intimidation, Diplomacy, and Deception could have outsized effects if PCs ate able to break the normal proficiency boundaries.

Yeah, they are almost certainly in the unnamed but confirmed GenCon 2026 release. The remastered releases of old rulebooks have not contained substantial amounts of new content compared to their old versions.

Rarity is entirely the purvue of the GM. If you want an item to be available in large quantities, it can be.

I would highly encourage the OP to look into ThrabenU and Mathfinder's videos on this subject. They are very useful and some of the campaigns they play in are similar in nature to the ones the OP described, and they talk about how to deal with these issues.

They also counter a lot of the commonly repeated community advice you'll see here, like, "Casters aren't good at single target damage." (They compare quite well to ranged martials, actually. Melee martials have better sustained damage on paper* due to the increased risks they take)

I will add one thing, though- Your GM is doing the system a disservice by overlooking PL-2 and PL-3 enemies, especially in higher level play. Uses judiciously, large groups of enemies can be incredibly threatening.

*I say on paper because the advantages ranged martials and casters have don't show up in simple white room scenarios.

I'm looking for someone from Paizo who can answer my questions about systems. For example: is it possible to exceed the 10d6 fireball maximum with the Arcanist's Potent Magic exploit?

No. The exploit increases your caster level, but that won't change the spell's cap on damage dice. The exploit would actually have to say it did something like that, instead of just, "Whenever the arcanist expends one point from her arcane reservoir to increase the caster level of a spell, the caster level increases by 2 instead of 1."

The only penalty I am aware of is that you are off guard while climbing if you don't have a climb speed (or the combat climber feat), and if you're knocked unconscious you're going to fall. Given how high climbing monster's athletics modifiers can get, I suspect the rule was abandoned as needlessly punishing to players.

With the announcement of (at least) 8 metaplot scenarios in the 3-4 level range, I feel this discussion should be revived. Some degree of warning as to whether you should play all of the scenarios slow or only 4 of them slow and the rest at normal would be needed, of course, but it will be really unfortunate if people can't experience the entire metaplot on one character, especially when there were rumors there was an attempt to accomodate this.

Level 5-6 adventures were confirmed. We still have 4 more scenarios in season 1, so there's no reason to worry. Ensuring that people who started at level 1 could play all the new content on release as long as they'd kept up was important to appease the grognards like me who care about things like progression and character development (Although even I feel they could have released the first 3-4 scenario a month earlier)

The 8 level 3-4 metaplot scenarios is... disappointing. But it doesn't appear to be a mistake.

I think the links just broke in the site update. I've forwarded your concerns on to Alex Spiedel of the Organized Play team via the Venture Officer discord, so hopefully it can be fixed soon.

In case anyone was still wondering about this but hadn't seen it yet - upcoming scenarios are back on the Starfinder Society scenarios store page :)

(And there's even a suspicious absence, between 1-18 and 1-20!!! Ominous XD Did somebody say 1-19: Perplexity Two: Perplexity, Too?)
Yes I know there was a Perplexity 2, and apparently even 3, in 1e, don't @ me, it's just wordplay :D

Alex posted in the Venture Officer discord that 1-19 was cancelled. No, 2e's first Perplexity scenario is 1-99 again, and if you're at a con with Thurston Hillman you may get a chance to playtest it.

Squark wrote:

-The Beast Lord Mythic Destiny has major issues due to not making the companion mythic, in contrast to the Apocalypse Rider destiny.

Apocalypse Rider doesn't make your companion mythic either.

... I have no idea where I got that idea, sorry.

Driftbourne wrote:

A few more points to add to this debate/request.

1. Starbuilder APP gets released. At least locally, I feel this will be the real launch of SF2e.

Lucky for you this has happened. Starbuilder 2E is an extension of Pathbuilder 2E so now we just need AP chronicles for SF2E, otherwise Paizo is saying that Starfinder is not as important as Pathfinder.

I believe the operative word in that sentence was "App". The Android and IOS versions of Starbuilder are delayed until 2026 due to persistent bugs.

But, "otherwise Paizo is saying that Starfinder is not as important as Pathfinder," is actually a pretty good summation of how the lack of AP chronicles makes me feel. Paizo providing more incentives to run Pathfinder games compared to Starfinder games feels bad. It also disadvantages the system when GMs are making the decision as to what to run, which isn't great when Pathfinded already has a much larger backlog of content for you to choose from and support for a much wider array of player fantasies.

Oracle repertoire size is inconsistent with its own text. Part of it uses the numbers two and three, like the number of spell slots used to. It also says you gain a new repertoire spell every time you gain a new spell slot, which is inconsistent with the numbers given.

That's much more eloquently put than how I described it above. Appreciate it.

New thread has been created

Created per the request of Maya Coleman

Guidelines:

1) Please be specific about problems
2) Linit discussion of issues to a minimum
3) Be respectful.
4) OGL Dark Archive errata is not particularly helpful as the Remastered version is due to relase at the beginning of next year. Errata for the remastered version when it drops is welcome.

Fall 25 Thread

Spring 2025 thread

Major unresolved issues from previous threads

The mythic system has a number of compatibility issues
-The Beast Lord Mythic and Apocalypse Destinies have major issues due to companions having limited interaction with the mythic system.

-Kineticists do not have a good way to interact with the mythic system.

-Classes and fighting styles that are disproportionately reliant on "Meta-strikes" like a Swashbuckler's finishers, a Magus's Spellstrikes, or even just a one-handed fighter's many feats are at a major disadvantage compared to classes and styles that do not (e.g. Rogues, Two-hand fighters, barbarians). Summoners have a similar problem with an inability to have their eidilon do Mythic things.

It is unclear how many spells known the oracle is supposed to have per rank.

The Swashbuckler archetype gives the Bravado class feature, but this doesn't do anything on its own.

1) Players have access to cold iron, silver and stone (although regular stone armor cannot be refined above low grade and thus cannot be enchanted past a certain point). Materials with a rarity will generally require the Special Materials access boon if they're available at all.

2) The items a material can be used for can be found in the material's entry in a rulebook or Archives of Nethys. If a material (like Silver) doesn't specify, then you default to the general rule of using metal for metal armor, wood for wood armor, etc. For cloth armor specifically, only Grisantian Pelt s and Dreamweb are a valid choice. However, Dreamweb, being tied to a unique Mythic creature, is not currently available (Maybe if the aociety encounters the Weaver of Webs in a future adventure it will appear as a chronicle boon), so if you want a robe made out of a precious material for your society character, it's Grisiantian Pelt or nothing.

While I wouldn't want it to come out for a year or two to give SF2 time to be it's own thing, I'd love to do a book about the rest of the Golarion System circa ~4726 AR.

On a less drastic note, I'd love to see Arcadia, Garund, and Casmaron get the treatment Tian Xia got.

No, the animal companion feats are beyond the scope of what an ancestry feat could support. There are a few other archetypes that give animal companions like Cavilier, Drake Rider, and Undead Master, but those won't help with a shortage of feats.

I don't think one general feat would break the game. Is it necessary? Maybe. Not in every encounter. But there have definitely been a few fights with enemies with strong ranged attacks that would be very scary if they crit, and would have a good chance of doing so vs. an unarmored caster.

We do not known. The errata threads are created by community members both to consolidate suggestions and to quarantine discussion. I do not know how much if any attention is paid to these threads by the dev team.

Spamotron wrote:

Another oddity is that we were promised a playtest for the Starship Rules in Tech Core which most people predict to also be released at GenCon. Given times to print even if we see it in January they’re cutting that awfully close.

We were told there would be a playtest for the Starship rules, but if I remember correctly, the Starship Rules aren't going to be in Tech Core.

According to the GM Core, tactical spaceship combat and upgradable ships are coming in Tech Core.

No, there's no exception to the rules for Restricted Deities regarding Raised by Belief, unfortunately.

I don't understand the choice for the breath for the draconic bloodline.

The mocking dragon has a breath with laughing gaz or slippery bloodine, and for the bloodline, it is a cone of bludgeoning.
The time dragon has a breath with an slowed effect and the bloddline has a cone of force.
The vorpal has no breath and for the bloodline,it is a cone of void.

Is it possible for a vizier dragon to use the words abilities with the pact of the herald and host ?

Quote:

Once per day, from any distance, your bound dragon can

choose to take control of your voice. They dictate everything you
say (or don’t say) for up to 10 minutes. They can choose to speak
in any language you or they know, though they can’t use your
voice to cast spells or activate items.

Vorpal Dragons do have a breath weapon, they just inhale instead of exhaling. Vorpal Dragonbloods do likewise. As for the others... Player abilities that grant breath weapons all have to follow a much stricter format than dragon breath weapons do. That's also why dragons who have burst breath weapons still give cones or lines.

If I had to invent lore for the other two drwgons you mentioned...
1) Mocking Dragonbloods still expel a viscous fluid, but not with the same degree of control that lets Mocking Dragons set up Pratfalls. So they get a bludgeoning breath weapon similar to a sea dragon.
2) The weak temporal effect of a Time Dragonblood's breath weapon is uneven, causing somw degree of sheering if the enemy can't overpower the dragonblood's will.

No, a vizier dragon's abilities require the target to be close to the dragon and likely require the dragon to use their own voice. Pact of Herald and Host uses the Herald's voice.

1) Somebody copied and pasted from another breath weapon most likely.
2) GM Discretion. I think the bestowed gifts section in Treasure Vault (p.166) would provide the best guidance.
3) Yes. You rebuild your character as a Sorcerer with the draconic bloodline tied to the dragon in question. I would use the rules for Rebuilding a character found on Lorespire.

Edit: Upon rereading the linked section, it's not as helpful as I thought. The text of the "Career Change" boon that cam be found in The Achievement Points and Boon sections of the Pathfinder Society faq page is what you're looking for.

To summarize, in such a rebuild a character's Ancestry, Background, and Heritage should remain the same, but pretty much all other character building choices could be changed, including the allocation of attribute boosts. Unlike in Society play, providing a rebuild of items might be impractical, but having the dragon claim some of the character's old gear and provide suitable replacements is a good work around.

Were I your GM, I *might* also consider letting a player making these decisions change their heritage to dragonblood, but that'd be a house ruling on my part.

Squark wrote:

At the risk of going even further off topic, I don't think wands are good for the game at all. They end up being horribly overpriced for casters* to balance out people poaching them with trick magic item/dedications. As a result, they become trap options for casters. If a magical effect is so desperately needed that it's make or break for a casterless party, then the effect should be available in a non-spell format. Making wands into permanent spell catalysts would be much more interesting.

You... do know that wands are priced simply because that's what a infinite source of a consumable is worth, right? There's a rule for making wands of any kind of consumable, called Gardens. It has nothing to do with trick magic items, except inasmuch as people with 2nd rank slots like 3rd rank scrolls more relatively than people with 4th rank slots, but that's not a problem with wands

Huh. I had never heard of these. They're terrible. Like, let's take all the problems that make 95% of wands trash and then make it non portable. But if I feel like talking about that, I'm going to have to make a new thread.

If you want to go more in depth, this is a spreadsheet someone made comparing creatures between Monster Core 1 and Bestiary 1.

As you can see, Monster Core is largely reprints with tweaks of Bestiary 1 and 2, with some reprints from other sources and some new creatures. I believe Monster Core 2 is the same but with Bestiary 2 and 3 creatures.

At this point the main value in the old bestiaries is OGL staples like owlbears and mimics, but those you can also just use Nethys for.

Mimics are in MC2. One incredibly important monster that isn't, however, is the skunk.

No, I'm serious. Skunks make summon animal worth casting at low levels, and I'm bummed they're not in Monster Core 2

In terms of stuff I personally like, aside from all the lore and art, I really enjoyed the variant abilities provided for the 16 dragons from the Monster Core. Stuff like a Spore covered horned dragon who can periodically inhale the spores to gain temporary hit points and damage resistance but can't use draconic frenzy, or a despair dragon that doesn't have draconic momentum but makes the memory fuzzy, imposing disadvantage on recall knowledge checks. A lot of flavorful stuff to catch people off guard.

Correct. The two action version of the heal spell does not get a bonus to the damage it does to undead, nor does a two action harm spell get a bonus to damage against the living.

At the risk of going even further off topic, I don't think wands are good for the game at all. They end up being horribly overpriced for casters* to balance out people poaching them with trick magic item/dedications. As a result, they become trap options for casters. If a magical effect is so desperately needed that it's make or break for a casterless party, then the effect should be available in a non-spell format. Making wands into permanent spell catalysts would be much more interesting.

*Compared to scrolls. Outside of maybe two dozen spells that will be spammed for hundreds of casts in a long campaign, how many spells would be more valuable in a wand as compared to 10-15 scrolls of the same spell?

Well, I can't show you what I was talking about because I'm pleased to say this has been fixed- The first adventures with the new time slot are once again at 5.99 USD. I'm glad this got fixed!

When the reduced length of the new scenario format premiering in January was announced, there were concerns of shrinkflation- That is to say, that these new, smaller scenarios would cost the same as the larger scenarios. When the scenarios were revealed on the old store, I was pleased to see that these fears seemed to be ill founded, since the new scenarios were 5.99 USD each, comparable to quests and the SF2 scenarios instead of the 8.99 USD for four hour scenarios. But when the new store launched, upcoming society scenarios were nowhere to be found. And now that they've been added back, it appears they will be listed for 8.99 each!

I would like to know if this price increase is a mistake, or the result of a change in policy. While I admit this change does not impact me personally at this time (Venture Officers recieve the scenarios for free), this is still very concerning to me as someone invested in the growth of organized play.

Yeah. I understand the need to resolve this, but a more specific message would have been appreciated. Do gold redemptions expire? I don't know when my next purchase will be.

Oh, how does the Dragon Acolyte compare to the Dragon Discipline?

They're more or less entirely distinct. Dragon Disciple lets you take on draconic traits. Draconic Acolytes use a token from their Draconic Patron to manifest a spirit of your patron that can get a lot of abilities depending on what feats you take.

Karys wrote:

Favorite thing is I'm really happy to see draconic kobold options to have a bit of the old kobold flavor if anyone wants it

It me. I want it.

Would you mind expanding upon the additional Dragon-Kobold options?

Several old favorites like Kobold Breath and the Dracomancer feats return, but one new feat that stood out gives you Draconic Momentum, and even lets you re-roll the 1s on your breath weapon damage dice if you use it the same round you crit!

At some level, it's self preservation, like Perpdepog says. Occult dragons who aren't able to fulfill their compulsion will physically waste away as if they were starving. At the same times, some are definitely more pleasant to be around than others. A Vizier Dragon's need to cultivate individual's potential or a Sage Dragon's need to gather lore are a lot more pleasant than a Despair Dragon spreading fear* or a Conspiracy Dragon creating their own personal soap opera.

*Although the preview articles did mention that some Despair Dragons choose to focus their powers of fear specifically on those who prey on the innocent.