The nature of runes will also likely fall into another unfortunate pitfall that impulses do; unlike spells which are constantly being added, we will likely see the runes printed on release and then none for years (maybe a couple niche ones in an ap).
I get the concern but that's not so much a pitfall as just a design feature of the game. Nobody really gets long term support except casters via spells. It's not wrong to say we won't see a steady stream of runes, but we won't see a steady stream of exemplar ikons or inventor modifications or barbarian feats either. So I'm not sure how much sense it makes to frame this as some special problem only runesmiths and kineticists have.
If you are reaching to this level of abstraction, the class will begin to have basic functionality issues.
Any aid whatsoever they lend to the party would then count as indirect harm.
I disagree that summoning a rampaging fire elemental to kill your enemies is particularly far down the abstraction table here. I'd probably be fine with it, but it's not really that much of a logical jump for a class that's not supposed to use elemental power to harm people.
... It's also a pretty big leap to say that being discouraged from summoning elementals somehow loses basic functionality.
"My anathema says I can't harm people with elemental magic... so I summon a fire elemental to attack" definitely feels like something I can see someone getting side eyes over, and I wouldn't be all that surprised to see a GM calling that a no go.
Squark wrote:
Remember to look back at the old prohibited schools.
Looking back at depreciated rules that don't count anymore only seems like a way to cause confusion. I think "don't" is better advice than "remember to" because the rules are different now.
I'd caution against that, taking away a chunk of someone's class features is a big deal and shouldn't be something that's too ambiguous about.
Especially in this case where the rule itself has a lot of disagreement over it. Letting someone push their luck on a clearly worded anathema is one thing, but getting a player after the fact over an out of character disagreement on what a rule means feels a little antagonistic.
- Fury Cocktail and Bestial Mutagen, among other comparisons. To me, this illustrates there’s no mechanical divide between food and non-food, and so probably fine to just allow most elixirs.
TBH I get the opposite conclusion here. The fact that food gets its own subheading, we have an archetype that interacts exclusively with food, and that only certain items have food analogs, tells me that the distinction is meant to matter.
If the goal was to let Wandering Chefs make everything but flavored as food, the archetype could just say that.
When I first read the anathema, I read it as no fire/acid/cold/electric/void damage. That is how I would run it for my players.
My problem with this version is that it means an Envy runelord could freely use elemental air and earth spells that do physical damage, which seems fundamentally contrary to the anathema, while blocking certain spells that have no elemental connection (like lightning bolt).
Plus like, if what they meant was "no energy damage except sonic, vitality, and force" they could have just said that.
Elements and the Elemental Cycles are explicit concepts within the setting, so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to look at an ability that talks about 'elements' and ignore that.
Because yes, the line between "beverage" and "drinkable medicine" is imo an arbitrary distinction that doesn't really work.
I mean I get where you're coming from but I also imagine you'd get some weird looks if you tried serving someone pepto-bismol when they asked for a drink.
I remember people being upset that Elementalists didn't get Lightning Bolt (admittedly far down the list of issues with that) back then.
I don't think there's any leg to turn around and say "well it counts now sort of" ... Paizo's been pretty clear.
The best way to adjudicate this anathema imo is to use the existing framework for elements: Air, Earth, Water, Fire, Wood, and Metal spells are off limits.
Damage type doesn't matter. After all, most Water and Earth elemental spells do things like bludgeoning damage, which would be fine in other contexts.
1. What makes the Animalistic Fury Cocktail acceptable as food, but the Bestial Mutagen not acceptable? (Edit: Or, Firefoot Popcorn acceptable, but Energy Mutagen not?) I think any reason besides “flavor text” has to address this satisfactorily.
I don't think it's reasonable to say "besides flavor text" when flavor text is the driving distinction here.
Like that may not be ideal but that's clearly how these items are defined in practice.
It's kind of weird to see people pretending we didn't have literal years of "casters are worthless" discourse predicated along the OP's point of issues with low level play and a lack of experience with the system. Discourse that has somewhat faded as people have gained more knowledge about the system and experienced the game at a wider variety of levels.
Some of the posters in this very thread have been involved in those debates, and in fact have pointed to the way casters mature as they level up in previous discussions.
I think the OP has a reasonable point: Level 1 Pathfinder players wildly differently than the game does at pretty much any other breakpoint. Even level 2 changes a lot of assumptions about the game and by level 5 and up you're in an entirely different world.
Yet lots of new players have washed out because of those very specific low level experiences, or had their entire view of the game defined by them.
We've had each of those discussions so many times it's kind of wild to me to see people arguing that it's not true. Is it just that it's framed as a criticism of the system and people are having a kneejerk reaction to it?
I don't believe it makes sense to treat "after you spark" to mean before you actually perform your transcendence activity. Transcendence is the full text of the ability you activate.
3 seems like the correct answer. The rule limits what spells a creature can cast, but the spell in question is never being cast in the first place, so it's an irrelevant restriction here. It's just a passive ability of the creature.
So the rules say that benefits from crits aren't doubled...which would suggest the answer is no.
But the game seems to treat damage increases differently, like the increased die size from Fatal doesn't shut down double damage for the whole strike (Fatal would be really atrocious if it did) and in this case Unfailing is clearly just modifying the base damage, not adding an extra source like Deadly or the other benefit of Fatal.
So you could try to argue yes on that basis, though I think no is the answer you're more likely to come across (no is also the Foundry automation answer, fwiw).
I haven't verified the character level, feat level, and resulting heightening level yet, but it may be that you can get a domain spell at what is normally its minimum rank, but then the rule to heighten it one level lower means that you can't cast the spell at that level.
That's definitely possible, though I also think there's a potential argument to be made that since you're casting the spell at base rank the heightening rule doesn't apply, since you aren't heightening it at all.
The other effects mentioned, such as Frightened, have varying amounts of other characters turns that it applies during.
This is a case where we instead have a varying amount of your own character's actions that it applies to. That is a different scenario.
It's not really different though. In both cases we just have "end of your turn" being a variable amount of time because it's not fixed relative to when you gain it.
"Varying amounts of your own actions" can even happen if you gain Frightened during your own turn, rendering the debuff not working properly because it decreases before it does anything.
Treating them differently also means you could have multiple effects that all change at the end of your turn but end at different times because you're defining end of turn arbitrarily from ability to ability. That's clearly not right.
There's nothing new or strange about the issue of timing here, except that people are getting anxious about it because it might provide some minor benefit to the player character maybe.
I'm not sure why that's important for answering the core question here. There are lots of "end of your turn" effects that can get applied during someone else's turn, and depending on the specific timing that can radically change how long that ability lasts. When has that ever been a problem?
Either unnerf Multiclass Monk Archetype Flurry or nerf Spirit Warrior's Combined Strikes. Sure it is not as powerful but being able to use a d10 Finesse weapon into a 1d6 Agile Fist is kinda silly and makes MC Monk Flurry of Blows seem silly to nerf when it is a level 10 feat vs a level 2 Dedication ability.
Which by the way 1d10 Finesse weapon into a 1d6 Agile Fist is the same as 1d8 Tiger/Wolf Stance twice with Flurry of Blows.
What d10 finesse weapon is there??? I haven't seen one from Paizo above a d8 or is there something else pumping up the die size?
Whoops I meant D8, I somehow keep thinking Elven Curved Blade is d10 but still level 2 for 1d8 + 1d6 for 8 levels before Flurry of Blows with 1d4 Cooldown, on average that's on average 4-8 more damage if you use Tiger/Wolf stance vs Spirit Warrior Dedication, is it really by level 20. Is the Nerf really needed?
I don't think you can use an elven curved blade with overwhelming combination as it requires 2 hands to wield
Curve Blade is finesse and Overwhelming Combination requires a one-handed or a weapon with finesse or agile. Should be fine.
"until the end of your turn" is pretty self descriptive.
It becomes a lot less defined when the ability is used when it isn't your turn. When is 'the end of your turn' in that case? Define by self descriptive RAW, of course.
"until the end of your turn" is pretty self descriptive. I can appreciate why someone might want to change it, but it's clearly not an 'equally valid reading' to just pretend it says something completely different.
As for the effect itself... Yeah, if you use it in this scenario it lasts longer than normal, but that's not really materially different to the way, say, frightened can last much longer or much shorter based on the relative position to the player I'm not sure how much of a problem it is. Abilities with turn based timing having inconsistent durations is an intentional part of the game's design.
Part of it is the magus itself being restrictive, but part of it is just the options not having enough juice on their own.
Ultimately, if you want to introduce feats and options to change how you play a character, then at the end of the road that alternative playstyle should be about as strong (or stronger) than a 'normal' character spending feats to improve their 'normal' style.
... but Resurgent Maelstrom struggles to compete with just normal weapons.
There's this implied gameplay loop of breaking your weapon with Shattering Spellstrike or Turbulent Tide, then augmenting it with Surface Tension to effectively bump you up a couple die sizes (ish) before just wailing away to take advantage of forceful or backstabber/agile. It's a cool idea and plays differently than a standard Magus
but none of the options are strong enough when put together to make it particularly worthwhile, especially considering the cost of resetting your routine, or the fact that this is essentially replacing rather than stacking with your martial gimmick because it wants you to spellstrike less.
Maybe if Shattering scaled better, or Turbulent was good, or the Cascade benefit gave a more direct power spike, or Whirlpool came online earlier (or was even just baseline).
But understand the following. As already mentioned in another post, the rogue, the barbarian, the thaumaturge and other martial artists have a more specific and better defined personality/archetype than the fighter, who has the idea of being more generic and comprehensive.
Only because you're internalizing the restrictions on other classes as important to their identity but not to the fighter.
Which is ultimately as arbitrary as anything else here.
Like you go explain why it definitely doesn't make sense to have barbarian archers (isn't that just shutting down players with a specific thematic vision) but we could just as easily say that it doesn't make sense that a class focused around specializing in the use of a certain category of weapon to the point of being more accurate and deadly than anyone else should get other types of proficiencies.
It's just you've decided internally the latter justification doesn't count for some reason. You have to admit it's somewhat strange to claim that a class' core and to some extent only real defining mechanic is antithetical to what the class should be because on some level that mechanic is the class.
Personally I think it's telling that there's only one class in PF that can use any weapon without limitation with their combat gimmick, and that maybe it's okay to just let that be part of their thing instead of insisting the fighter poach it.
You could make the same sort of argument about a Rogue who wants to use a halberd, a barbarian or thaumaturge who wishes they could effectively wield a bow, or a swashbuckler who wants a greatsword.
It's all arbitrary. Game design is like 40% arbitrary decision making. I'm not seeing why the Fighter in particular deserves this extra special consideration and desperately needs a change.
But if we narrow it down and focus on the main point, the whole question is, is fighter focus starting from level 5 onwards on a weapon group necessary or not?
I mean it wouldn't be the end of the world if they change it, but the Fighter is already a highly functional class and doesn't really need improvements either.
The OP's suggestion of giving fighters a damage buff seems especially unnecessary and out of place.
Generally speaking most martials have some sort of limitation on the weapons they can use and I'm not sure the OP has really articulated why it should be so important for Fighters to lose theirs.
Off the top of my head the only martial whose combat gimmicks work without any incentive or restriction innately is a ranger's Edge. Maybe that's the answer if you want to be able to use any weapon without restriction, just play a Ranger.
Probably. Don't want to risk making them the best option for stacking damage.
I mean you can already kind of do that by just picking a different deity.
The whole point of deadly simplicity is to lessen the sense of mechanical penalty from picking a deity with a weaker weapon. The same logic that applies to clerics and champions works the same for Avengers.
-damage up to and including d10s with agile and finesse options and traits galore and a plethora of damage types.
So I want to single this out as I think it's a key problem with the debate.
What you're describing are not unarmed attacks broadly, but a specific monk feat.
Tiger Stance, Dragon Stance, Whatever. Those are very strong attacks.
But most unarmed attacks are not those.
The default unarmed attack is d4 agile finesse unarmed, which puts it a parity/slightly worse than your average simple weapon. Lots of other unarmed attack fit in this same basic profile.
The problem you and Paizo are both making is generalizing the benefits of a specific feat (that you have to spend actions to activate every combat, are mutually exclusive with other stances, and require multiple feats for most characters to take) and generalizing them to a whole category of attack, in such a way that renders a bunch of mechanics needlessly unintuitive and cripples a bunch of character ideas for no benefit.
I think it's an okay distinction to have in the base game.
Unless you happen to want to play an unarmed character and just get f#!~ed by the rules in a bunch of esoteric ways for basically no benefit to anyone.
I might have poisoned myself ahead of time because I saw the name "Resurgent Maelstrom" and the bit about crushing tides and water magic and had a lot of really evocative and cool ideas pop into my head, none of which were "good at hitting people with chairs" which is kind of a huge let down.
But man this hybrid study is garbo.
It falls into the really classic trap of creating a feat or archetype to enable a playstyle, while forgetting that feats and options should also provide tangible benefits to.
What I mean is that essentially the archetype creates a problem (it's built around using improvised weapons, which suck by design) and then sells you solutions to the problem but doesn't go much beyond that. So while other characters are getting class features and feats that make them better, you're grabbing options that just fix the problems created by your subclass, and many of the options just get you back to where everyone else started.
Paizo unfortunately does this a lot.
It also does this in a second way, because RM's implied gameplay loop is somewhat antithetical to the Magus': It has several things it wants you to spend actions on, and multiple features that add flat damage to your strikes encouraging you to attack as often as possible, while the core Magus is built around its highly restrictive One Big Attack.
The trouble is, again, that these options don't go far enough pushing back against the Magus' inertia, so the result is less "This changes how I play the class" and more "These features don't feel like they work properly and like I could just grab a greatsword and do the same thing without jumping through extra hoops" instead.
below the spoiler I break down my issues with literally everything it gives you:
Breakdown:
Technically you do add traits, but Magi are a martial weapon class and improvised weapons are simple, so the extra traits you're adding are essentially just bringing them up to parity with what you'd otherwise be wielding.
Of course, there's another problem here in the traits they chose. Both Backstabber and Forceful (especially forceful, which does literally nothing on your first attack) are traits that benefit from making as many attacks as possible in a round. The Magus is a class that's built from the ground up around the idea of making one big attack every round and then hitting maximum MAP.
Taking a class built around singular strikes and giving them as their primary class feature a bonus trait that expects you to attack 4 times a round to have real value feels almost malicious.
There's the Conflux Spell ... which gives you a vanilla strike... then destroys your weapon, ruining the action economy benefits of using a conflux spell. In exchange you get, uh, fort save vs a 5 foot push. IDK I just don't feel remotely inspired by a fort save vs a 5 foot push with nothing else going on.
Oh but there's a special clause if your improvised weapon is especially hard to break. In that case- ... you skip the secondary effect. You spend a focus point to make a strike, no notes.
I'm not a huge fan of the Studious Spells but it's far from the only subclass with meh ones. Feel like it could have leaned into the theme more, or given the precedent set by Brocade give the hybrid study some non-arcane water spells.
Which leaves the feats.
Shattering does a better job fulfilling the fantasy of breaking your weapon for a cool effect than the Conflux spell, but the damage scales really badly and I'm still not a fan of the 'nothing happens' clause.
Surface Tension is actually cool, and synergizes well with your break options... but like the base hybrid study benefits it feels like it was made for a different class. You want to make lots of attacks after activating this power and the Magus doesn't, and even if you did given the low base dice you could just pick up a real weapon and hit people a bunch without the extra action economy concerns.
Whirlpool's Pull is fine. Grab a new improvised weapon after destroying yours and cast Shield or Force Fang or whatever in the same action, but again it suffers from sort of just solving a problem the archetype creates for itself. You're not any better off than someone with a normal weapon who just felt like casting Shield, even though you're down a feat
Maelstrom Flow is neat. Bonus rune for a minute is cool. Action economy is a bit problematic on the magus but w/e ... kind of a shame it never scales up to greater runes
All in all not great. A lot of spending budget to solve problems that only exist because of the playstyle you're buying into, and a lot of features that support something the Magus isn't really designed to do.
Coming off this archetype my main feeling is just that it's a shame it means we're never going to get a more focused improvised weapon option and probably never going to get another 'water mage' type magus either.
I'm really trying to think about what the point of having the line about unarmed attacks not being weapons was trying to prevent. I know if PF1 there could have been a lot of shenanigans.
Sometimes it does kind of just feel like a pre-emptive reaction to shenanigans that don't actually exist based on PF1.
The main thing that would happen is that certain abilities that specify weapons would work on unarmed attacks too. Like a ranger could twin takedown with unarmed attacks. Maybe they just really didn't want rangers to punch people.
The other thought is that maybe it's a defensive decision against the fact that monk unarmed stances are somewhat high budget compared to weapon and break normal rules (like d8 agile or d10 that's not 2handed). But that feels like a crummy justification for warping the entire rules system and shafting so many builds.
... It's really kind of awkward for Avengers because unarmed attacks can be a deity's favored weapon, but aren't a weapon, and the text for the avenger sometimes uses the latter term as a shortening of the former.
You know, considering how good Rival Academies is...
I think I'd like to see a martial equivalent.
Something adding a bit more lore to the Aldori Swordschools, Houses of Perfection, gladiator schools, and other places where those interested in the fighting arts go to seek training.
Feels like it could be interesting, considering Battlecry is coming soon.
Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords vibes. That was such a fun book.
This is definitely a neat concept. We have all these schools of martial combat in Golarian dn most of them don't get a lot of attention.
I always thought PF2 lent itself really well to Bo9S style content given feats and feat actions being so integral to the game. From the very first book we had things like Sudden Charge and Power Attack that showed Paizo was willing to give classes unique actions that combined action economy or altered rules, it only felt natural that as the game developed it might build on that foundation.
... but barring the Kineticist and a little bit of the Inventor, Paizo's never seemed more inclined to give us anything more adventurous than that. Even classes I thought would be shoe-ins for getting unique feat actions like Thaumaturges or Magi don't really have much.
Would absolutely love a book that explores some of that space more.
I wouldn't go so far as to say the Fighter's "main gimmick" is to crit like crazy. That's not the stated goal of Fighter's design - it's a knock-on effect of their actual main gimmick (the 960 gp worth of accuracy they start with) being tied (intentionally) to the same system that governs hits and crits.
One issue I keep seeing is how "being good with every weapon" doesn't bring you more advantages.
Like I said, if the Fighter could swap crit effects from one group to another, without having to carry multiple weapons or a Shifting Rune, that would be welcomed. Dude, imagine if the Fighter could ADD weapon traits to weapons with feats. That would also be a good thing.
Essentially, "spear training" should reflect on "polearm training", "sword training" should reflect on "knife training", "hammer training" should reflect on "club training", and so on. THAT's what the Fighter is currently missing. THAT's the "weapon versatility" that should be added.
Most characters carry a melee weapon, a ranged weapon and a small back-up weapon. Carrying more seems pointless. You guys argue that a "golf bag" is required. There's the problem: a Fighter's "one signature weapon" should equal to many.
For instance, a Fighter should be able to deal Piercing damage with every Sword weapon, as not all of them have "Versatile P".
What would you take away from what's already one of the best classes in the game for the pile of extra features you want to give them?
I hope Rival Academies does well and encourages Paizo to look more at themed books that cover a certain concept or institution across a wide region.
Like Rival Academies is sort of Schools of Golarion, so in that direction I'd really like to see.. Restaurants of Golarion/Golarion Cookbook... Museums of Golarion... Ruins of Golarion.
tbh I think a ruins of golarion/archaeology book could go really hard as a combination of dungeon crawling hooks, exploring ancient mysteries, and maybe a bit on the institutions that support these things.
As for more traditional LO content. Vudra, the impossible kingdoms, the place that's been hinted at and vagueposted about for years and seems so ripe for a huge expansion and deep dive. Though I'm also realistic about the fact that it's probably low on the list and one of the most likely regions to just not get a PF2 book at all.
I'd like to see a planar book that explores other planes. I really liked Rage of Elements and would love to see a companion book. I don't think you could do 'the rest of the planes' in one book, but a book focused on the transitive and energy planes or an outer sphere book could be great. Tho with how much divine content we've had lately I think an outer sphere book might be a harder sell.
Transitive plane book with void/aether kineticists, and a new class tied to the first world or shadow plane? IDK sounds cool.
Like the Mythic rules were something they could have playtested, but so are the rules for guns.
One of those works as an entirely new subsystem meant to fundamentally change the tone of the campaign and the other are normal weapons so I'm not sure those elements are really on the same level (though the fact that guns in pf2 are also kind of a flop maybe makes it even worse).
While we intend to keep the necromancer firmly as a spellcaster rather than pushing it to “gish” territory, we will be looking into ways to make the occasional scythe attack more engaging.
Excited to hear this. Melee necromancer stuff seems kinda fun, if troubled in the playtest.
... Remember the necromancer is godawful at melee, not only are they full casters but they're already designed to spend MAP on attacks. So there's room to make internal melee support kind of strong and still end up with it not being very good or problematic overall.
Acrobat is also really good for the 'I have plenty of good class feats and aren't playing FA' type characters too since legendary for a feat is pretty unique.
I really like skill increases, so Dandy, Archaeologist, Pathfinder Agent, Investigator/Rogue. Some of them can be kind of a pain to exit easily though.
... I don't like a lot of Archaeologist's feats but you get Expert in Society/Thievery for one feat, then you can grab some decent utility cantrips at level 4 but also pick up Settlement Scholastics as your level 4 skill feat for a slightly stronger additional lore (provided there's a city you want lore from) and then you've satisfied your conditions and can pick a new archetype again at 6.
.. As an aside, it feels kind of weird that it's an Archaeologist dedication but Settlement Scholastics gives you Lore in a town or city and not some ancient culture or whatever.
Rahadoum being a fascist theocratic state would be unacceptable because it's putting the (downright cartoonish) evils of that nation at the blame of a real minority group's unique beliefs.
Rahadoum's dogma doesn't really map to any real world minority group though.
He is claiming that the minority is atheism and that it maps to and that this is anti-atheist propaganda like evanglical christians would say that atheists are atheists just because they hate the Christian God.
But a key tenent of the Laws of Mortality is that gods are real, but represent an alien threat to the mortal world.
While I know in some extraterrestrial groups the idea that religion is misinterpreted alien contact exists, that's still not a great fit and definitely not broadly applicable.
The Laws of Mortality are also highly dogmatic and contain their own core commandments. Atheism, not as a rule but generally speaking, tends to be individualistic and rejects organized dogma. Arguably rejecting organized dogma is the whole point, moreso than just the rejection of the divine (in fact it's not even uncommon for atheists to sometimes hold onto a couple of supernatural or quasi-spiritual beliefs).
Fundamentally, the Law of Mortality is an organized religion. It's even codified in the game as one, with edicts and anethema and favored skills. You can lose your Law of Mortality granted powers if you stray from the faith!
The only connection to atheism here is holding a negative view of the concept of god, but even there there are radical differences in both theory and praxis, which makes it remarkably tenuous outside the most surface level of connections.
I guess you could draw stronger parallels to like... edgy mid 2000s 4chan misotheism, but I don't know why you'd tie yourself to that belief system or try to paint it as representative of nonbelief more broadly, because it clearly isn't.
Rahadoum being a fascist theocratic state would be unacceptable because it's putting the (downright cartoonish) evils of that nation at the blame of a real minority group's unique beliefs.
Rahadoum's dogma doesn't really map to any real world minority group though.
I love the Starlight Sentinel! It's very flavourful, so it is a shame it feels rather weak mechanically.
IDK. A strength based ranged attack is a nice back pocket option for a martial, and focus spell healing is always valuable. Most martials don't have access to good AoE damage either. AoE Demoralize + Dazzled at 8 is pretty good too. So is an almost unconditional fly speed tied to your land speed.
It's really only Blade of the Heart that's a total dud, since all it does is save you a little gold.
But this is a clear case of "you haven't done a crime or anything, we just want to understand what's happening and make sure you're not contagious."
"the rest of Rahadoum believes these people are criminals akin to clerics of any faith, regardless of the involuntary nature of this divine power" does not really read like "we're only locking you up for your own good while we figure out what to do" (which still isn't really a great stance).
It always seems like whenever a fiction setting has a group of hyper-atheists there's some contingent of players that aggressively latch onto them like this.
because that is a crazy bad writing idea to publish.
Between this and your stuff on pharasma earlier I think it's safer to say that you have some very particular opinions about how certain things should be portrayed and ran and this happens to be a writing choice that runs counter to how you think the world should be presented.
But that's not the same thing as "Crazy bad" or even "not good" really. It's just a thing.
I mean war of immortals outright states that a significant portion, if not outright majority, of Rahadoum supports the mass incarceration of people altered by the Godsrain because anything divine is inherently criminal.
Alahazra's story is not some uniquely negative take on Rahadoum it's their bread and butter. If there's any outlier it's probably that her parents didn't hand her over to the pure legion themselves.
These are not the hyper enlightened atheists living in a rational utopia that some people on the internet really want to project on them.
You're missing it a bit. No one is having trouble parsing that sentence. If it was the only bit of lore there'd be no issue, because it's relatively straight forward.
The trouble is that numerous other sources tell us that Rahadoum does take issue with divine magic more broadly, and not merely just theism.
So it's only really squaring the circle by just not addressing the actual contradictions.
I don't think this is a case of a change in the lore - for one, it was only ~6 months between releases, so their development was happening at the same time.
That's not much shorter than how long it took them to redesign Anadi. So I'm not sure that's necessarily wholly indicative on its own.
Quote:
The general edicts and anathema of the Laws of Mortality can be to challenge religious power and to resist religious aid, and Rahadoum can allow specific non-deific faiths to operate in their borders.
I think the hangup is less about the green faith and more about their stance on divine magic. The LOWG piece says they don't have a stance on non-theistic divine magic, but their anathema references divine aid broadly, mortal healing stops functioning in the presence of divine magic, and it's even been established in other discussions that post-WoI Rahadoum is struggling to reform its stance on divine energy and issuing new proclamations protecting people unwillingly infused with divine energy in the wake of the godsrain forcibly creating swaths of new nephilim/sorcerers/oracles/exemplars. It doesn't really make sense that they need to change their official position on those things if that was already the case.
It's not a big deal but the statement in the LOWG does feel like it kind of contradicts everything else. So I'm inclined to think it might be in error.
Agree, and I think they'd dislike Divine magic even from non-religious casters, i.e. atheist Sorcerers.
100% Their anathema even says "divine or religious" aid is off limits. So divine sorcerers or exemplars or nephilims casting innate spells whose power is imbued into their being, or oracles who potentially might be acting contrary to the divine order entirely are still on the s#!* list.
Errenor wrote:
For that they would need some divine-meter.
It seems like whatever supernatural force empowers the laws of morality does, to some extent.
The medical training you receive with the Mortal Healing feat physically stops working if there's a lingering presence of any kind of divine magic on the target, and if you ever stop being an atheist you lose the benefits of that training altogether until you repent.
So clearly there's some sort of metaphysical divine sense involved.
The average person might not be able to discern at a glance but clearly there is some kind of mechanism at play that makes it relevant, or at least something to be on guard from.
It has decent impulses but I'm not a huge fan of mono-metal because of its junctions.
Mono-earth is alright though. I like a decent number of its composites so it's fun to take Overlap with (though having it not come online until 8 feels bad).
YuriP wrote:
However, if you go to the gaming universe, the tendency is to go for greater versatility, because the player seeks precisely to cover the character's weaknesses. Even when he wants to specialize in something, he often wants to have a plan B or compensate for a very big weakness.
The 'tendency' is to go for greater versatility in games like PF2 because PF2 actively works to encourage versatility at the expense of specialization, which makes the point kind of circular. The tendency exists because the system actively pushes players that way.
Specialized/focused builds are common enough in games that actively support them.
Maybe it's also the RP dimension that's important? Is the patron ever actually playing a role, communicating desires in any way? Or is it just an abstract game mechanic?
This is one area I think also feels a bit underexplored and even kind of muddied up by the Remaster.
The subtle adjustments to the lore and the change to the Hex feature (you no longer cast Hexes but instead beg your Patron to cast them on your behalf) implies that your patron is directly involved to an absurd degree. A Cleric beseeching their deity for direct intervention is a high level mechanic, a Witch does it every six seconds.
But then there's no anathema, no real work put into defining the Patron as a person or creating mechanics where you interac twith the patron. . Which suggests the Patron itself is not meant to be a major factor of the Witch's story.
Premaster when the Witch cast their own hexes you could kind of safely define the Patron as a background element, a teacher but not necessarily directly involved, and build your narrative around that. Now I think it's in a much stranger position.
