Stack's page

Make it Hampstering Sweeps and you stuff hampsters in people's pockets.

Go for the eyes, Boo!

And shout out to contributor Andrew Stoeckle for writing Alchemy Unleashed's 'bottled monstrosities' spread on page 56!

And a few other things too.

Might be worth assembling an outline with notes for what you are looking for. A number of freelancers do hang out on the boards here (I have done a bit over the years myself).

I would expect the odd one here and there, but any large number would probably have to wait for an equipment-related book.

kaid wrote:

Sanityfaerie wrote:

I'd try to work in Deadly Simplicity, except that there just aren't any gods out there that have favored Weapon: Waffle Iron

I am sure some halfling deity somewhere uses waffle irons as their favored weapon.

I'd be more inclined to say they'd use the waffles as weapons. ;)

Not sure you can make dwarf bread in a waffle iron...

It seems to be a definite oversite on the designers to have the Feat allow for four 2nd level tattoos, and there being exactly ZERO tattoos less then 3rd level.

That is POOR writing, making the early levels of the Tattoo artist of ZERO effectiveness. There needs to be SOME remedy for this oversite. Maybe the designer(s) can publish a list of tattoos on the SRD site, or maybe an official way to convert spells to Tattoos.

I expect someone (or multiple someones) wrote the archetype and the tattoo options, then they got split up later in the process for space and other editing reasons. Still not good result though.

I would allow it. Cremate says you add damage when damaging undead. Castigation says you damage fiends as if they were undead. Seems like it transfers.

In this case, I would err on the side of the player. Its a small thing (fiends with fire resistance will basically ignore it anyway and the damage is small regardless unless the target has weakness).

Michael Sayre wrote:

Stack wrote:

I think there will be siege weapons in Guns and Gears, due out this year. I would assume that the ballista is on the list, but don't know for sure.

Ballista is on the list.

Any spoilers please? ;D I might need this for my caravan homebrew

Spoiler: its shoots big pointy things.

I think there will be siege weapons in Guns and Gears, due out this year. I would assume that the ballista is on the list, but don't know for sure.

Looking forward to seeing how the art comes out.

I honestly don't know why they didn't make class traits for weapons, the way they did for feats. Give a weapon the Rogue trait, say that rogues are proficient with all weapons with the Rogue trait, and then you're set for life. P1E's unchained monk even did this, really expected it in P2E too.

It would create a long list of traits to add to every weapon and every new class (and Paizo does like making new classes) would require adding a trait to a pile of weapons. Broad categories in the class (simple, martial) are lower word-counts.

The gunslinger, as it is designed, should be a class archetype modifying fighter or just a set of fighter feats. It does nothing that doesn't fit into those frameworks with trivial adjustments.

This won't happen, since Paizo seems committed to making it a stand-alone class regardless.

Part of the issue is that "fighter" covers a great breadth of concepts, but even if you fragmented fighter into discrete functions, I still don't like basing a class on a weapon group. That level of focus should be constrained to archetypes if needed at all.

Arquebuss seems pretty bad for an uncommon, martial weapon. Unsteady is too big of a drawback to what the weapon offers in comparison to the musket. With firearm Ace, you are trading 40ft of Range and 1 + number of hit dice average damage on a crit for what It seems like the worst negative weapon trait yet to be seen.

Taking into consideration that musket is already mediocre, arguably worse than a crossbow, I don't think Arquebuss current state is justifiable.

Rarity shouldn't effect power. Marital weapons should balance against martial weapons regardless of rarity.

Agatha doesn't build one thing and cling to it through her entire career. She is constantly building different machines of all kinds and modifying them on the fly. The inventor we have looks very little like that.

Simple firearms should be on par with other simple weapons, likewise martial with martial. The flintlock is worse than a crossbow unless you crit (d8 crossbow vs d6 flintlock, 120 vs 40 ft range, both reload 1, flintlock gets fatal d10 and versatile B), so it is a garbage weapon unless you are a fighter or gunslinger who crits more often.

Cauterize, blast lock, and other niche utility should either be baked into the class or bundled into a utility feat.

The fact that several classes start with the Shield Block feat does not obligate them to use it, nor does it mean that they are "wasting" it by not doing so.

The Shield Block feat essentially replaced Shield Proficiency- its no less optional than any of the other weapon or armor proficiencies you choose not to utilize.

Which is to say, its absolutely totally optional.

From a class design perspective, giving shield block as part of the class does carry a cost, so not using it is 'wasting' a portion of your classes assigned abilities. Nothing is really free. If shield block didn't have some design value attached to it, it would be a built-in function of shields rather than a feat. Maybe a given person doesn't care and maybe the designers assigned a low value to it in class design and balance considerations, but it is a non-zero value.

I hope that eventual class archetypes give options to trade it out (same with heavy/medium armor on DEX fighters, etc.).

Obviously you keep a special shield in one hand and a sturdy shield in the other.

Which is idiotic looking.

Curios what scale the minis will be in; if they are similar to the PF Deep Cuts minis, they could be useful for several games.

As for the game itself, there are a lot of board games out there; have to see what they come up with.

Sounds interesting. Can't wait for more information.

First Hero Quest returns and now this.

I still have HeroQuest and play it, but there have been a lot of dungeoncrawler board games since then. HeroQuest, I expect, funded mostly on nostalgia rather than being competitive with more modern competition.

Coming from the much larger board game world, I don't know any main-stream board game that uses d20s. Literally the only people I know that have ever seen a d20 are tabletop RPG gamers, and they're a niche group here. Or board gamers who see them lying around in the RPG...

Frostgrave, Ghost Archipelago, and Rangers of Shadowdeep use a d20 as a core mechanic. All by the same author using the same base mechanical framework and would be considered 'indie' games, though Frostgrave is a big fish in a small pond.

Heroscape hasn't been in print for years, but used a d20 for initiative and special abilities. It was widely available in non-gaming stores (Walmart carried it, for example) so was relatively mainstream (as main stream as a miniatures skirmish game gets), though used custom d6 for most combat resolution.

Because it's the only Stance that lets you dump dexterity to 10 at level 1. That is mechanically powerful.

I wouldn't call it that powerful. You are spending a class feat to get heavy armor that you have to activate with an action every fight. Building for it also locks you out of most combat uses for every other stance. Hope you don't get attacked before you get it started either; no Dex and no armor means crits.

I think the restriction is fluff. Fluff that makes an interesting build choice a headache.

Hmm, animated heavy crossbow, you command it to load (1 action) and it does (2 minion actions). So we just need a crossbow familiar option.

Uh no. I dont want "40 feats over the course of 20 levels" I want base line customization. Not simply "options spread out over the course of time"

Sorry, this is the PF2 board. You must be looking for some other system.

I want the summoner and eidolon to work together, acting dynamically to support and set the other up. Right now, the eidolon is a second-rate beatstick and the summoner hides and heals/buffs from a safe spot. Your 4 spells don't go very far (best case is probably dropping good battlefield control once per fight).

Let the eidolon open an enemy up to the summoner's spells, let the summoner be able to survive staying close to the eidolon. Look at 1st ed. teamwork feats as a start, but give each body something to do with its actions that is worth doing each turn (beyond "okay, you get a damage bonus).

Frankly, if a class is called 'summoner', I would rather it actually focus on summoning, but for the eidoloniturge class we have, lean in to the tandem nature. If that means no built-in high-level spells, fine.

Not sure how much of an exploit it is to repeatedly get yourself knocked out. Unless I missed a special rule for the summoner, each time you hit 0, you go to dying X, and each time you get back up, you get wounded +1, making actually dying that much easier next time. Sure, you are in a presumably more convenient location, but not something I would lean into.

Magus Potency and Runic Impression are situational bandaids for when you don't have an appropriate weapon for the situation, you shouldn't be relying on them as replacements for a level-appropriate magic weapon.

Best use I can think of for them is to do an end-around the ridiculous pricing on high-level special materials. Turn your cheap silver sword into +X Striking when you need to fight a silver-vulnerable enemy. Runic impression still keeps rune limits, so is less useful for that application.

The daikyu is a mistake, one way or another. It is flatly inferior to martial weapon options as an advanced weapon. Your proficiency will be behind your martial weapon prof, wiping out the advantage from lacking volley. Hopefully errata will clear it up, but currently it is useless.

Congratulations from your old 3pp buddy. I knew Michael waaay back during the Akashic Mysteries playtest. He keeps moving up!

Sounds like we already have an elephandom.

Stack wrote:

Cintra Bristol wrote:

What? No Heffalumps?

Only if we also get woozles.

Minitaurs are cuter.

Minitaurs...excuse me while I go write up an ancestry.

Miniature elephant swarms.

Archetype at most. Giving access to appropriate gear is really all you need to turn existing classes into samurai. A resolute warrior archetype could work, to bring that PF1 mechanic back.

I hope that any alternate magic structures are as robustly supported as words of power in 1st edition.

I mean, we already have psychic magic baked into the core rules with the occult magical tradition.

Half-baked. The change to the components is a big part of psychic magic and you could conceivably have primal or other tradition psychic casters.

The bit about enchanting arrow was in response to NemoNoName, I should have included a quote to make that clear. (previous post edited to include quote)

As for the late entry preserving the old prestige class design, the late entry into arcane archer in PF1 was due to it being a D&D 3rd edition prestige class. Creating PF2 allows the design team to jettison unnecessary legacies.

If they had made eldritch archer more accessible and given a similar melee archetype, they wouldn't need a magus class. But sure, lets stick with the PF1 'add a class for everything' design.

My first impression of the eldritch archer is quite negative.

I dislike the late entry - level 6 at the earliest, so you aren't getting your core concept-enabling feature until late. If you get in at level 6, you aren't actually a spell-casting class, since you need to be expert in bows. Classes that can get in at 6 will have very limited casting (cantrips from feats or some focus spells from class).

So non-casters getting in have casting ranging from 'limited' to 'garbage' depending on entry. You can get more casting in-archetype, but basic casting at level 8 is 4 levels past just grabbing casting from another archetype. You can't get another dedication in before 6th either, not enough feats, so you are stuck with whatever you can get in-class or from ancestry for a long time.

Most casters don't get expert in any weapons until late (11th level, mostly), so you don't start Eldritch Archer until 12th. You have lost more than half the game at this point and despite the increased max level of APGs, a lot of games still aren't going to hit this point.

Warpriest with a deity that favors bows is probably your best bet, getting you started at 8th, though I am not sure how many cleric spells are really good with it without digging a bit.

Magic arrow at 8th is nice, but is competing with getting actual spells on a martial entry and the limit to 4th level items means you mostly use it for utility stuff since the DCs of anything with a save will be worthless.

I fear the design of this archetype creates a very undesirable bench-mark for future magus/gish/spellblade type materials. Anything that gives a similar spell-strike type mechanic will be compared to this one, so designers will be inclined to force late entry. This makes playing such a character far more difficult that I would like, turning a popular archetype into a mid/late-game only option. Any material that grants a similar option earlier will be seen as power creep and elicit complaints of not being balanced against previous material (which would be true).

Note that I am not speaking against the limits to proficiency inherent in each class. I am fine with a fighter/eldritch archer never getting legendary spellcasting or a wizard eldritch archer not getting master in bows. That is inherent in the system. I just want concepts to be somewhat functional before mid-levels.

Am I missing something about this archetype?

For me, I think my character will be a Shoony Investigator named McGruff.

Better than being Spayed Sam.

Battlelord
Luchadore

Both are by Paizo's own Michael Sayre.

I have several things in the works, but the only product released is the modest sorcerer bloodlines: blood of giants

Common darkvision also takes away attention for the ability if the rules to handle non-visual precise senses. Having dark-dwelling creatures with precise scent or hearing is more interesting to me than blanket darkvision.

Awesome!

Regarding the LOWG, I am having a hard time seeing the point in the magic warrior archetype when you can take druid dedication. The highest magic warrior feat is...casting a 3rd level spell that is on the primal list. Lower level feats are wild shape, but only for 1 animal. +1 vs. Divination isn't much of a bonus.

Luke Styer wrote:

We recently converted my home game from 1e to 2E, and one player has a Paladin of Serenrae who is missing his old ability to Detecf Evil at will. He recently multi classes to Sorcerer and picked up Divine Lance as a Cantrip. Since good damage only harms evil aligned creatures, he’s taken to shooting creatures with Divine Lance as a sort of poor man’s Detect Evil.

Putting aside the first time he did it, when he actually talked someone into consenting, which seems sort of crazy, but the target was sure he wasn’t evil, do folks agree that doing this unprovoked to a non-combatant is an evil act?

Think of it this way. You're going to put a gun to each person's head, and pull the trigger. You have no idea whether the shot is going to be a blank or not.

How many people would let you do this?
How many people would think that this scenario is crazy?

If you have a gun to someone's head, the difference between bullet and blank is mostly academic. At that range, blanks are quite sufficiently deadly.

Which is completely tangent to your point, just one of those gun myths that irk me.

Non-ability scores really are a pain to design around, so I am glad to see them gone.

Obviously Paizo assumes you will use two shields at once, one for shield block, one for special effects.

Making lower level enemies a greater threat also means blasting spells not heightened to max level remain useful. When spell damage only scales with slot level, low level damage spells age terribly as enemy HP increases. Having 20 low level enemies be something other than scenery means your unheightened fireball has a reason to exist in the mid to late gane.

I expect multiclassing and archetypes are intended to replace the various classes that mixed competencies. Fighter with wizard dedication and wizard with fighter dedication in place of magus, maybe prestige and archetype support down the line.

I haven't dug into all the class feats, but I recall thinking in the playtest that grabbing a few spells seemed a lot better than most of what martial characters could get otherwise.

Hey neat! It's that thing Stack and I wrote!

eh, I had a little help...

;D

I can see them fine and still don't like them. Shouldn't let graphic design supercede useability and words or letters/numbers would be more natural.

As far as a seperate accessibility document, do you really want to be obligated to make one for every single release? Because every book is going to have some abilities in it.