One of the cool things about the 3e Binder was how it could often pick a vestige in order to get various skill bonuses, not just combat bonuses. I wish the animist could do a similar thing. Maybe something like this:
* Drop Nature as a mandatory skill (this keeps the net additional skills at level 1 to one, as you're getting two from your apparitions).
* Have each apparition provide Trained in one non-Lore skill. If this is too much combined with two Lore skills, say you get your choice of the two Lore skills. So for example the Imposter in Hidden Places would give you Stealth plus either Fortune-telling Lore or Underworld Lore. Only Lore skills would get the automatic skill advancement at levels 8 and 16.
* Add some class feats that let you improve your granted skills. Perhaps a level 2 feat that gives you Expert in your primary apparition's skill, expanding to a second at level 4 and all at level 6 (which is functionally three until level 12 when your fourth apparition comes online), as well as a skill feat in one of your apparition skills. At level 8 you can take a second feat that gives you Master in your primary, expanding to a second at level 10, a third at 14, and boosting your primary to Legendary at 16; plus a second skill feat.
The base level would allow the Animist to adapt not just their spells but also their skills to upcoming challenges. We're infiltrating somewhere? Attune to a Stealth and a Deception apparition. We're traveling through hostile wilderness? Nature and Survival. And so on. The class feats would then allow Animists who so chooses to lean into actually being good at skills, eventually gaining one legendary, two master, and two expert skills above the baseline.
I'm thinking about running another AP, but before settling on one I figured I should check in with the hivemind here about what's good and what isn't. As a reference about previous experiences with PF2 APs and preferences:
1. I've been a player in Age of Ashes up through book 3 and I have enjoyed that, though part is probably because the GM's pretty good at filling things out. I've recognized that some things have been overtuned but we've bumbled through.
2. I've run Extinction Curse book 1 and 2, and did not particularly like it. My two main complaints are (a) there's too much Xulgath stuff and not enough circus stuff, and (b) there are too many dungeons, particularly ones on a timer.
3. I've been a player in Agents of Edgewatch book 1, and that didn't work out well at all. Much overtuned, the end dungeon was way too big, and the adventure (much like Extinction Curse) seemed too afraid to lean into its theme.
4. I have perused Fists of the Ruby Phoenix, but was turned off when I realized that the first installment expects the PCs to gain 4 levels in 4 days. That's a really grueling pace, and one that will leave casters completely exhausted and feeling useless much of the time.
5. I like my dungeons small, like 4-5 encounters. A dungeon that's supposed to get you through a whole level's worth of XP is far too big, and should probably be split into 2-3 stages (even if they might be part of the same physical structure). As a corollary, you generally shouldn't be getting one level in one day even outside of dungeons.
6. Ideally, there should be a mix of dungeon and non-dungeon content. As an example of how not to do it, take Legacy of the Lost God:
Spoiler:
Because of Reasons, the party needs to get into an abandoned temple of Aroden. They first need to locate it and then gain access to it. This takes up about three pages of the adventure, and gives 110 XP. The actual xulgath-infested temple then takes up the next 22 pages, and is supposed to give enough XP to go from early level 6 to level 8. After that, the adventure segues into dealing with its main villain, which is another full-level dungeon (disguised as a carnival/circus, but it's a dungeon – particularly the linear six-room gauntlet before you get to the villain) – this time, one you kind of have to deal with in one go.
It would have been much better to spend maybe half a level bumbling around town looking for the temple, perhaps with some side tracks, and then spend another half level in the actual temple. Then do the same thing again with the actual villain: investigate her circus for about half a level to figure out where she's gone, and then another half level on the actual pursuit.
7. If the adventure has a theme, lean into it. If I'm playing the Circus AP, I want lots of circus stuff. I don't need to also deal with the repercussions of nonsense some god did a couple of millennia ago and villains wanting revenge for it. Or if what seems to be a theme isn't, make that abundantly clear. For example, the 1e Serpent's Skull AP tells the players to make PCs that are, for whatever reason, on a ship heading from the Inner Sea region to Sargava, but spells out that this is a jungle exploration AP, not a seafaring AP.
8. It's good if there are plenty of challenges in the adventure where fighting is at best plan B or C, and which can more easily be solved by figuring out non-violent ways of dealing with them.
So, are there any APs out yet that would suit me? Strength of Thousands looks promising, but are there any others along the same lines?
I just noted a weird thing in the blog post announcing Starfinder 2e: "The mystic is a spellcasting class that focuses on the divine and primal traditions and has the unique ability to form a bond with their closest allies."
This, to me, seems like the designers have completely misunderstood the mystic, or want to make it something different. To begin, look at what Starfinder 1 has to say about mystics:
"You understand that what most people call magic is simply an expression of the innate connection between all things, and you intuitively tap into this unseen power to create strange effects. You may conceptualize the source of your magic as divine grace, a manipulation of fundamental energy, or an unlocking of psychic potential, but always with the knowledge that you are a conduit channeling forces greater than yourself. Though you may study, you understand that spellcasting—like all existence—is messy and intuitive, and you specialize in biology and mental systems too complex to be perfectly understood by science. You sense the intangible and exploit your bonds with others, whether to bolster them or bend them to your will."
And then let's look at the occult treatise from PF2's Secrets of Magic:
"These misguided studies so often approach the occult as if it were the arcane: as unfathomable power locked in a cosmic puzzle box awaiting some brilliant but dry solution. That misses half the point. Occult power stems not from isolation but from connection. Peel away all the regalia, the sheet music, the chanting, the wiggling fingers, and the mystery, and what do you have? A story.
Ideas, art, and expression form metaphysical threads, each woven into a grander tapestry of culture, tradition, and community. Every thinking being develops some twist on this vocabulary—every painful lesson of cause and effect, every bedtime tale laughed off or taken to heart, every syntactic rule that dictates our logic, every object that carries even a semblance of symbolism—all strained through the myriad combination of senses we each experience. Each of these elements forms your narrative language, rooted in your thoughts and emotions. Each is a tool to create and manipulate a story."
If you have to include the four traditions in Starfinder, which I think would be an unfortunate regression (in SF1, magic is just magic, and the arcane/divine distinction is explicitly abandoned), I think mystics should primarily be occult casters. I mean, look at the core book spell list of the mystic. It's full of things that deal with spirits and psychic stuff, and has pretty much nothing I'd call out as primal. Later books seem to have added more primal-themed stuff to them, but there's pretty much nothing in the core book.
In addition, look at the connections a Mystic can choose in core SF1: Akashic, Empath, Healer, Mindbreaker, Overlord, Star Shaman, and Xenodruid. The last one is admittedly somewhat fairly primal, but the others scream "occult" to me. Making the mystic a divine/primal caster would IMO completely miss what the class is about, other than an idea that because they do healing they have to be divine casters.
Treat Wounds is a bit of a mess. It was changed around quite a bit in the playtest, and I'm not sure it ended up in a good place.
PF2 encounter balance assumes that PCs get into each encounter at full health. Since Treat Wounds, along with focus spells like lay on hands and goodberry let you do sort of unlimited healing with only time as the limit, that's a fair assumption. But Treat Wounds goes about the whole thing in a way that makes things a chore, particularly at low levels. A 3rd level PC has like 25-30 hp, and assuming you've lost half that's like two successful Treat Wound checks (or 3+ to get back from 0). Each check has like a 25-35% chance to fail, and a cooldown of one hour for any individual. If your whole party is down an average of half their hp, it will probably take about 3-4 hours to top up everyone and require something like 10-15 checks. That's a lot of time taken, both in game and at the table, for something that ultimately isn't all that exciting.
So in the interest of streamlining, here's what I'm considering if I ever get around to running PF2 again:
Treat Wounds
Exploration, Healing, Manipulate
Requirements: You are trained in Medicine and have a healer's toolkit.
You spend 10 minutes treating the wounds of a living creature. That creature heals 10 hp and removes the Wounded condition. Depending on your Medicine proficiency you may heal more: 20 hp at Expert, 40 hp at Master, and 60 hp at Legendary.
So: no roll, no cooldown, and no need for the Continual Recovery feat tax. It still allows for Ward Medic to speed things up. Battle Medicine would not be directly affected by this.
It's been a while since I last played my elemental sorcerer, but when I did I had recently gotten my hands on the dragon form spell, which polymorphs you into a dragon battle form with a variety of natural attacks that all do more or less the same damage, and with a variety of breath weapons.
One of these is the Brass dragon form, whose breath weapon deals 15d4 damage. I ask you, who wants to roll and count that many d4s? No-one should ever need to roll more than 4d4, tops. If you need more damage than that, use half as many d8s instead or something. Or just use d6es.
Ideally, only d6es should be used en masse as well, and maybe d10s (despite them being abominations unto Plato) because they're both available in bulk. But d4s have the additional advantage of being really inconvenient to roll and count.
Having played a primal sorcerer for a while (11th level now, though the campaign is on hold for a bit), I was at first really impressed with the polymorph spells like Animal Form. But having played around with them for a few levels, I have noticed one glaring weakness: hit points.
Animal form and its ilk are mostly designed around druids, an 8 hp/level class. Functionally, the intention is to turn the caster into a martial for the duration, with Animal Form being slightly offensively slanted. Martials generally have 10 hp/level, so one of the things polymorph spells usually does is to provide temporary hit points, about 2 hp per level (rounded to a multiple of 5).
But druids aren't the only ones who have access to these spells: wizards, sorcerers, and witches also do. But those are 6 hp/level classes, so turning into a beast (or whatever) doesn't give them martial-level staying power the way it does druids. So I'm thinking that there maybe should be a feat available to these classes that does – something like this:
Resilient Shapechanger — Feat X
Sorcerer Witch Wizard
When you cast a polymorph spell that gives you temporary hit points, double the number of temporary hit points you get.
What would be an appropriate level for this feat? I'm thinking 4th, as that's where sorcerers have their Evolution feats which can direct their future development by quite a bit, and which generally have effects that scale well.
OK, this organization of the store front is a bit weird. Let's say I'm in the market for some Pathfinder 2e rule books. I go to the menu on top of the screen, click on Pathfinder -> Rulebooks -> Second edition rulebooks.
The first thing that shows up on my screen is a subscription option. The second is three sub-categories: hardcover, special editions, and pocket editions. Below that is a list of "see also" things", and only THEN do I get to the actual rule books, after more than one full page on my desktop screen.
Except, I'm not shown rule books I can actually buy. There are four tabs: All products, Recent, Available now, and Pre-order, and Pre-order is the one that's pre-selected. And if I click on Recent, the offers currently on hand are various versions of Book of the Dead, Guns and Gear, and Secrets of Magic, none of which are actually available (well, Secrets of Magic probably will be by the time you read this).
The reasonable thing, assuming you actually want to sell things in the web store, would be to have the actual books up top, and to show me books that are actually available. Books that are only available for pre-order should only show up on the pre-order tab, not under Recent or Available. Recent ought to show the things released in the last, say, six months or so. The default tab should probably be either Available or Recent, not Pre-order.
These are just some friendly tips on how to make your store more user-friendly. I mean no offense – if the language seems harsh, it's probably because it's late and I'm not very good at smoothing out language even when I'm not tired and cranky.
Rally lets someone spend 1 minute giving a willing ally a pep talk, and then roll Diplomacy, Intimidation, or Performance, with the potential outcomes:
Critical Success The ally can spend 1 Resolve Point to regain all their Stamina Points.
Success You can continue encouraging your ally for a total of 10 minutes. If you do, they can spend 1 Resolve Point to regain all their Stamina Points.
Critical Failure The ally takes 1d8 mental damage, but this can reduce only Stamina Points, never Hit Points.
I might be missing something, but I don't really see the point of this. On a success, you can spend a total of 10 minutes and have them pay 1 RP to regain their Stamina... but they can do that anyway with Take a Breather. The only real point I see is that since the default DC is fairly low (DC 15), a mid-level party will have a pretty good chance of getting a critical success, thereby reducing the time to 1 minute. You might also interpret it to only take time for the Rallyer, not the Rallyee (who would then be free to take some other Exploration action), but that doesn't seem all that reasonable. I know that if I was trying to figure out how a thing worked (Identify Magic), or was trying to stitch up someone's injuries (Treat Wounds), the last thing I'd want is some drill sergeant wannabe screaming in my face. Is there some other interaction I'm missing?
Back in the day, Paizo produced a number of decks of "Face cards", some generic and others specific to particular APs. When it was suggested that Paizo release them in digital format, the official response was "Several of us believe that if we offered our map and card products in PDF form, a significant number of gamers would choose the PDF edition exclusively over the print edition, which would mean smaller print runs for the print edition, which—since print costs are based largely on volume—would in turn mean higher costs for the print edition, which would lead to even smaller sales for it, which would mean we wouldn't have a profitable line anymore."
That's a fair assessment, but it seems to have been reconsidered when it comes to maps (who are now sold as PDFs), and the face cards have been out of print for years by now. Perhaps it's time to reconsider it for cards too? Ideally, they'd be sold as packs of images, not as PDFs.
Right now, the forums for each AP generally opens at the release of the first part. This means that a fair bit of pre-release discussion goes down in the general AP forum, where it won't be easy to find if you're coming in later. I think it would be better to open each AP forum once the AP is announced—so for Pathfinder, that would mean opening up the Ruby Phoenix and Strength of Thousands forums now, and likely the next one in May (assuming the AP after Strength of Thousands gets announced at PaizoCon).
Pathfinder 2 did a lot of good for the bard class, but one of its bigger flaws is that the best bard cantrip didn't make it in (despite being in the 5e SRD). So, in order to rectify that, I present:
You unleash a string of enchantment-laden insults at the target, dealing mental damage equal to 1d4 plus your spellcasting modifier. The target attempts a basic Will save, but on a failure it also takes a -1 status penalty to all attacks and offensive DCs until the end of its next turn, unless those attacks include you as a target or in its area.
Heightened (+1) The damage increases by 1d4.
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I figure this should be reasonably balanced. The damage is pretty standard cantrip fare - having a basic save makes it better than having an attack roll, but on the other hand it's quite limited in what it can affect by the Emotion and Linguistic traits. On the plus side, it doesn't have somatic components (but still takes two actions to cast), and has an interesting debuff component that the target can avoid by attacking the caster.
A thought occurred to me. Martial guns are pretty expensive, particularly for a first level character. It's impossible to buy two dueling pistols, and even buying one plus an adventurer's kit only leaves 15 sp for armor, ammo, and other gear.
Now, don't get me wrong, guns are relatively advanced tech, and it makes sense to make them expensive. You could also treat them like composite bows — you start out with a so-so item (regular bow or flintlock pistol) and once you get some money, you upgrade to the good stuff (composite bow or dueling pistol). But there is an issue here.
If you're going to be a gunslinger in Golarion, you're likely to be from the Shackles, Alkenstar, Ustalav, or farther away. That's also where guns are easily available. But those aren't where most adventures are happening. So in many campaigns, the gunslinger will be an outsider. That means they're likely to be stuck with their starting gun, so they'd better get whatever gun they're planning to use right away.
In 1e, this was handled by giving gunslingers both a free starting firearm and the ability (via the Gunsmithing feat) to build and upgrade firearms and ammunition at half cost. I think the 2e class could use something similar.
A second thought then showed up in my mind. This could also open up room for a fourth Way: Way of the Gunsmith. Where other gunslinger Ways have basic crafting skills (enough to get by in foreign places) but mainly focuses on shooting, the Gunsmith could be like the Investigator with the Alchemical Sciences methodology — they build cool special ammo, and maybe upgrade their weapon with science stuff bordering on what the Inventor does, instead of cool shooting tricks. This could also be a good place for some of the more outlandish feats — some might think that shooting a regular bullet in order to assist a jump with the recoil is weird, but if you load some special rocket juice into the barrel that's a different story.
One of the issues I see with fighters is that their main mechanic for doing extra damage is linked to proficiency, and as such is limited to a particular weapon group. That's not something other classes do in general, so I am considering giving fighters an option for broadening their weapon skills. The two options I am considering are:
1. Two feats: one at 6th level that lets them apply Fighter Weapon Mastery (and later Weapon Legend) to an additional weapon group, and another at 8th or 10th that expands it to all weapons (still with the inherently lower proficiency with advanced weapons).
2. Just one feat at 6th level that expands Fighter Weapon Mastery and Weapon Legend to all weapons.
In both cases there would be some limitation that prevents you from using multi-class shenanigans to grab the feats. Adding Fighter Weapon Mastery as a prerequisite ought to do the trick.
I'm aware that proficiency increases are generally not something you get from feats, but given that these feats don't increase your highest proficiencies and only broaden others to catch up I feel they ought to be OK. I'm just not sure if applying fighter proficiencies to all weapons should have an intermediate step or not.
My PCs have been looking into getting some more wagons for their circus in Extinction Curse. I remembered that the GMG was supposed to have rules for vehicles, so I looked them up and... I can't say I was impressed.
For one thing, there is no description of the things. I mean, I know what a wagon is, more or less, but it would be useful to know if the thing we have stats for is an open wagon, a covered wagon prairie-style, or a Varisian-style wagon that's essentially a small house on wheels. And that's not even going into esoteric stuff like airships or steam giants.
Second, they seem pretty small. Both wagons and carriages only carry a driver and two passengers, and that's for something that needs two horses or oxen to pull it.
And third, those prices are really high. 25 gp for a wagon? 100 gp for a carriage - and one that only takes two passengers, to boot? Personally, I think that paying three times as much for a wagon as you'd do for a riding horse seems off. If we look at vehicle prices in PF1, from Ultimate Combat, we see that a wagon costs 50/75/100 gp for a light/medium/heavy one - and those are PF1 prices, which are roughly 10x as high for mundane items. A PF1 carriage costs 100 gp, which is the same as the PF2 price (meaning a relative 10x increase), and can carry four passengers in addition to a driver and a coachman. Ships are also ridiculously expensive, 2000 gp for a sailing ship or 3000 gp for a galley (each 10,000 gp in PF1).
One of the things that's been a little hard for me to come to terms with in PF2 has been the relative dearth of skills for classes that used to be good at skills, but not quite as good as a rogue — primarily bards and rangers. Swashbucklers probably fit well here too.
One of the problems is that while they start off with many skills (6 + Int trained, compared to the 8 + Int trained for a rogue and the 4 + Int that's the default), their skill progression is the same as everyone else. At high levels, they are likely to be amazing at three skills, and suck at the others because they are left at trained. In addition, they are classes that are likely to have certain skills "locked in" — bards are likely to push Performance and/or Occultism, and rangers Survival and Nature. They don't have to take those skills, but they feel more expected to than other classes.
So I'm considering options for allowing additional skill access for these characters, because skills are fun and many of the things I envision bards and rangers doing fall under skills rather than combat things. The easiest option would be to give them a class feat that lets them expand on their skills, but I'm not quite sure how to implement that.
One way would be to simply give them access to the Skill Mastery feat from the Rogue and Investigator dedications, which would let them boost one Expert to Master, one Trained to Expert, and gain a skill feat associated with one of those skills. Another would be a lower-level feat that lets them auto-scale one skill at, say, levels 4, 10, and 18 — this would provide more skill increases overall, but no additional skill feat, and would have a bit of delayed gratification feel to it.
So, hivemind, how would you go about "skilling up" existing classes?
So, we got a new round of errata for the CRB, which was very welcome. But of course, nothing is ever perfect. So what things are still unresolved?
I'll start:
How do item bonuses interact with Polymorph effects? Notably, do you include attack bonuses from handwraps of mighty blows when you calculate your unarmed attack bonus before you compare it to the bonus granted by spells like animal form? Does a barbarian using Dragon Transformation get to include their weapon's item bonus when using their "own attack modifier"?
What about oracles and divine sorcerers who don't worship a deity? Are they just SOL when it comes to divine blasting spells?
Can a spontaneous caster use a higher-level slot to cast a lower-level spell that isn't a signature spell, without getting the heightened effect?
Do chirurgeon alchemists and characters with Natural Medicine need to advance the Medicine skill to access the Expert and higher uses of Treat Wounds, or does raising Crafting/Nature suffice? Relatedly, do chirurgeons need Healer's Tools to Treat Wounds or do their Alchemist's Tools suffice?
Edit: I'd like to keep this thread clear of debate about how to interpret these rules. If there's a clear answer that someone has missed, by all means post it, but things like "Of course you get to use your handwraps when wild shaped, any other interpretation would be underpowered" aren't helpful. There are many other threads where we can discuss, and have discussed, what the interpretation ought to be, but this thread should be about pointing out where the room for that debate still exists.
It might be just me, but I feel that the Player's Guides for the various APs have become less and less useful over time.
For example, take the Serpent's Skull AP. First, it's 12 pages long. There's one page that has an overview of Sargava and why one might be traveling there, and then it moves on to two pages on how various races fit in and 4½ pages about various classes. The class section has things like "For a sorcerer, these bloodlines will be particularly thematic" or "Clerics of these deities will have particularly interesting experiences at certain points" or "Remember that a paladin's mount might have significant troubles traveling through jungles." Finally, you had a few campaign traits that explained why you had found yourself on a ship heading for Sargava.
Jade Regent was a whopping 28 pages. It had pretty much the same stuff as Serpent's Skull, but the campaign traits were all connected to one of four NPCs that were also presented in the guide. There was a system for exploring your connection to these NPCs, and finally a significant portion of the book was dedicated to a system for managing caravans.
Fast forward to Extinction Curse. It clocks in at a mere 8 pages - 2/3 of the Serpent's Skull PG and 2/7 of Jade Regent (even less if you don't count the cover and back matter pages). There's one page of general info, and another that covers both ancestries, classes, languages, and skills. What's more, the advice presented on ancestries and classes is so generic as to be nearly useless – it basically boils down to "eh, whatever is fine." Backgrounds fill the same role as campaign traits, and take up roughly as much space, maybe a little more, and then there's a very high-level overview of the Starstone Isles.
Age of Ashes is pretty similar to Extinction Curse, though it is slightly larger on account of Breachhill being given more room than the Starstone Isles.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I miss the tips and hints from older PGs. They provided a tiny taste of things to come, and ensured that players didn't make uninformed choices that turned out to be dumb. Some might say that the information in the old PGs were too spoilery, but I see it more as a way of ensuring people have a good time. For example, if I was homebrewing a campaign with a Desna cleric in it, I would probably include some poignant moments connected to their faith, and if someone was playing a giant-instinct barbarian I'd be sure to have some occasions where they get physically challenged to keep up. But in a pre-made campaign those sorts of things are largely decided already, so it makes sense to adapt the PCs to the coming campaign instead.
From what I read here, it seems the main selling point of the magus, Striking Spell, is a bit underwhelming. I haven't done the math, but it would seem the detractors have a point in that barring certain very specific shenanigans, it's generally inferior to just casting a spell and attacking, or at least not superior enough to make it the main point of the class.
So I'm thinking, why not take the magus in a different direction, one that's less focused on traditional spells and instead gives it various abilities that are magic-flavored without being actual spellcasting? They can still keep the top-level spellcasting they have, but what if you made their class feats be more about doing cool magical things? I'm thinking things like the more mystical variants of the Tome of 9 Swords classes, or things like the 4e Swordmage. The Swordmage in particular had a very interesting blend of magic and fighting, with at-will spells like Lightning Lure (deal a smallish amount of damage to a nearby target and pull it toward you), encounter utility powers like short-range teleports, and limited-use abilities that were a mix of "energized weapon"-type abilities and short-range AOEs.
Something like that would be more interesting than a class that casts the same spells as a wizard and fights like a second-rate fighter. Add in some actual blending of magic and mayhem, and things get a lot more interesting.
I note that neither class has the typical class feats for enhanced Refocus available at levels 12 and 18. Is this intended, an oversight, or just a matter of not including duplicate content?
It would seem particularly important for the magus, which has quite a few focus spells and might want to cast more than one per encounter.
I was looking at possible skill feats to take at 8th level, and came across Consult the Spirits in the APG. At first I thought it would be cool, but then I came across this:
"Spend 10 minutes and attempt a check to Recall Knowledge with the chosen skill; the DC is determined by the GM (usually a very high DC for the level of the highest-level creature you might encounter in the area)."
Since I don't want to spoil myself by looking at the adventure I'm actually playing, I'll look at part 3 of Extinction Curse because that's kind of close to my character's situation. Let's say I'm 9th level, and I want to Consult the Spirits before entering the Wellspring Tower. My Nature check would be about +19 (+15 proficiency, +3 Wis, +1 item). The highest-level creature in the area is 10th level, which would normally be DC 27, but it gets +5 because of the "very hard" DC modifier for a 32. So I'm down to about 40% chance of getting a single-word answer to a single question about the nearby environment. If I was instead looking at the Liferoot Stone, the highest-level creature is 12th which would give me DC 35 which is a 25% chance. And that's a thing I can do once per day.
Does that really seem right for a Master-level skill feat? To me, it would seem much more reasonable to use a fixed DC, maybe 30 (since that's the typical "Master" DC). That would mean that when you first get the feat you have a reasonable chance to succeed, and as you gain levels you will be more and more likely to both succeed and crit (which gives you three questions instead of one).
That would still be significantly inferior to Commune and Commune with Nature, because you're still limited to one or three questions about purely local affairs.
I was looking over the different things that give swashbucklers panache:
Battledancer - Perform.
Braggart - Demoralize.
Fencer - Feint or Create a Diversion.
Wit - Bon Mot.
Gymnast - Grapple, Shove, or Trip.
Now, the Gymnast's options all have the Attack trait, which means they cause and are subject to multiple attack penalty. I see that the Swashbuckler can take a feat to reduce the MAP for maneuvers, but that only helps if you first attack and then regain panache. Are there any other options I'm missing that alleviate the Gymnast's problem? Or is it just a matter of those actions being stronger on their own which balances things?
Coming Through (2 actions) Feat 2 Skill, General Prerequisites: Expert in Athletics
You have learned techniques for breaking through enemy lines. You Stride. At any point during your Stride, you may Shove an opponent and continue moving. You do not need a free hand for this Shove. If you succeed or critically succeed on your Shove, you must move the opponent to the side so they no longer block your intended path, and you must move into the space your opponent vacated. You do not get an extra Stride from your successful Shove. If your Shove fails, your move ends.
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So basically, the intent of this feat is to combine a Stride with a Shove at any point (so you can move two squares, Shove, and then move another three), as well as allow you to perform a "shoulder tackle" which doesn't need a free hand. Does this seem reasonable for an Expert skill feat?
So, I and my group have been playing PF2 online at Roll20 for a few months now, and been very frustrated with the lack of a good set of token markers that are meant for use with Pathfinder 2nd edition. Most either focus on D&D5 (because that's the 800 lb gorilla in the room) or consist of an absolutely enormous list of markers where you have to search through a thousand icons to find the ones that fit the best.
But after looking for a long while, I actually did manage to find a great set of tokens, published by Onyx Path Publishing of all companies. They're not actually on Roll20, but are released as Pay-what-you-want on DrivethruRPG. So you have to add them to your own library on Roll20. I'm guessing they would work well on other VTTs as well, but I am not familiar with how those work.
Most of these tokens are based on images from GameIcons.net, but they've been modified to have a really thick black border and then being filled with either red or green (for bad and good things). This makes it much easier than most other token markers I've seen to identify the marker even when it's really small.
I don't have any commercial interest in this product, I just wanted to share a great thing I found.
Over in one of the other threads, some people expressed a dislike for the "tanky" Champion, and expressed a preference for a Champion that's more about going into places of evil and delivering divine justice than about protecting things - more of a sword than a shield, as it were. It occurred to me that looking past the superficial bits and the name, that actually sounds more like a Barbarian than a Champion, what with "holy fury" and all. So I made up a barbarian instinct for those who like that sort of thing:
Zealot Instinct
Proficiencies
Instead of being trained in Athletics plus 3 + Int skills of your choice, you are trained in Religion, your deity's skill, and 2 + Int skills of your choice.
Anathema
Your anathema depend on the deity you worship. Your alignment must also be one that's appropriate to the deity.
Zealous Rage (Instinct ability)
When you are raging, you can increase your damage from Rage from 2 to 4 and deal damage of an alignment type associated with your deity (so a zealot of Sarenrae could deal good damage, and a zealot or Rovagug could deal chaotic or evil damage). If you do, your Rage action gains the divine and evocation traits as well as the appropriate alignment trait.
You may cast focus spells gained from barbarian feats and abilities while raging.
Specialization Ability
When you use zealous rage, you increase the additional damage from Rage from 4 to 8. If you have greater weapon specialization, instead increase the damage from Rage when using zealous rage from 8 to 16.
Raging Resistance
You resist slashing damage, as well as damage of an alignment type opposed to your deity (chosen when you gain raging resistance).
Healing touch (Feat 6)
Prerequisite: Zealot instinct, good alignment
You learn the lay on hands focus spell. If you don't already have a Focus pool, you gain one.
Deity's Domain (Feat 1) and Advanced Deity's Domain (Feat 8)
As the Champion feats.
* You can Long Jump three times as long.
* You can High Jump as if you were making a (non-tripled) Long Jump.
* You can spend extra actions while jumping to increase your maximum distance by your Speed.
The question is about the third item. Let's say I'm 15th level and Legendary in Athletics, with Str 20, so my Athletics bonus is +28. I also have Speed 35 because of some kind of shenanigans, and I have Quick Jumper so my Long Jump just takes an action.
My understanding of the feat is that if I want to jump, say, 90 feet, that would be a DC 30 check (because Long Jump normally has DC = jump length, and Cloud Jump lets me jump three times as long). But because 90 ft is more than my speed, I need to spend an additional two actions in order to increase my max jump distance to 105 ft (which would be DC 35 to jump).
The other interpretation, which I think is incorrect, would be that I would make a Long Jump with DC 7 (which would give me 21 ft), and spend two actions to increase that by 35 ft each for a total of 91 ft. But that doesn't seem right.
So, last week our intrepid heroes found a suit of splint mail +1, with its former Small-sized owner still within. We looked around a bit in the rules and could not find anything about magic armor adjusting its size and fit to the wearer.
So, the way I figure it is that if you find a wrong-sized suit of magic armor, the thing to do with it is basically to transfer the rune(s) over to an appropriately-sized one, rather than have the original one refit. Am I missing something here?
So, there was a discussion in one of the other threads about the issues with Angelic, Demonic, and Diabolic sorcerers. The problem is that these bloodlines have a number of granted spells that have effects based on their deity or deity's alignment, and a sorcerer shouldn't need any external patron to provide juice for their spells. So, there are four possible options here:
1 - Rules as written: If you don't follow a deity, you can't cast these spells.
2 - The easy way: Sorcerers essentially act as their own deity, so the alignment-based effects of these spells use their own alignment. For Spiritual Weapon, just choose one weapon when you learn the spell, and that's the one you use.
3. The flavorful way: Angelics get the Good version of these spells, Demonics get the Chaotic or Evil version, and Diabolics get the Lawful or Evil version. This is more flavorful - you call upon your demonic blood to inflict divine wrath, that's going to carry the power of evil. Mechanically, there are issues however: if you're playing against type (and it's not like "fiendspawn done good" is an uncommon trope) your party will probably not appreciate being hit with a bunch of Evil damage from a demonic Divine Wrath while their foes are unscathed.
4. The complicated way: replace the spells with others. Since this is the Homebrew forum, that's what this post is about. So my suggested replacements are:
Another bloodline that's a bit boring is the Elemental one. Having all of them cast Produce Flame, Burning Hands, and Fireball but with different FX (and dealing bludgeoning damage) is a perfectly cromulent way of dealing with different elements while shackled by page/word count, but it's a bit dull (and at least in the case of Produce Flame, causes some weird stuff on a crit, since it's easy to imagine a crit with actual fire dealing persistent damage, but less so with a rock dealing bludgeoning damage). So these are my suggestions for alternate spells:
Cantrip:
Water - Ray of Frost
Air - Electric Arc
Earth - Telekinetic Projectile
1st:
Water - Hydrualic Push
Air - Gust of Wind
Earth - Grease (this is the one I had the most problem with)
3rd:
Water - Slow
Air - Lightning Bolt
Earth - Meld into Stone
So, does anyone have any other suggestions on what spells would work with these bloodlines?
So, I had a feeling that the typical level-based DCs listed on page 503 are a bit too high, so I did some math to them. You can see the results here.
The sheet above is made assuming a skill that uses a stat that's important but not your character's main focus. You'll start at 14 and boost it at later levels, increasing it to 16 at level 5, 18 at level 10, 19 at level 15, and 20 at level 20. You will see that the needed roll to succeed on a Trained skill is 10-11 at levels 1-8, 11-12 at levels 6-14, and 13-14 at levels 15+. I don't know about what others think, but to me those chances are too darn low.
But, you say, at those levels you have higher proficiency ranks! To which I say, no, you don't. Not really. Most characters start with 5+Int modifier skills (plus a Lore): 1 from your background, and either 1 fixed from your class/subclass plus 3+Int of your choice, or 2 fixed + 2+Int of your choice. Bards and rangers have a few more, and rogues are playing in a league of their own regarding skills (so I'm ignoring them here). Assuming an average Int of 12, that's 6 skills. Over the course of your career, you'll probably boost two to Expert at levels 3 and 5 and then to Master at levels 7 and 9, then boost a third to Expert and then Master at level 11 and 13, and then boost those three to Legendary at levels 15, 17, and 19. So half of your skills or more will stay at Trained.
IMO, someone Trained in a skill should have at least a 60% chance of success at level-appropriate tasks. If that means that a high-level specialist will auto-succeed on some level-appropriate tasks, I'm OK with that. I put in a revised list of DCs in the spreadsheet that reflects that.
OK, so to save on space/design resources, Elemental Sorcerers have a bunch of fire spells on their list of granted spells, but those with non-fire origins get versions dealing bludgeoning damage and having the appropriate elemental trait. So an earth elemental sorcerer would have a version of burning hands that deals 2d6 bludgeoning damage in a 15-foot cone instead of fire damage. Fair enough.
But then you can check their granted cantrip: produce flame. So, 30 foot range, check. Spell attack roll, check. Deal 1d4+Cha bludgeoning damage, check.
Double damage on a crit, check. Also deal 1d4 persistent damage on a crit... wait what?
I mean, it makes sense for produce flame - the poor sod catches fire. But I get this weird image in my head of a sorcerer creating a rock that flies off and hits a foe squarely in the forehead... and then goes into orbit around them, giving them a new knock on the noggin every few seconds.
I mean, had it been slashing or piercing damage, I could have envisioned the persistent damage as the rock keeping burrowing or sawing into the opponent's flesh. But persistent bludgeoning?
So, I made a fey sorcerer last night because we're trying the new game out, and that seemed like a cool thing. But I'm wondering if I haven't made a mistake, or if there's something I'm missing.
First, their initial Bloodline spell is faerie dust, which has a Will save and gives targets in a small area a penalty on Perception checks and Will saves for one round. That is admittedly thematic, but the question I ask myself is "Why am I casting a spell that lets my target roll a save to avoid a short-term debuff to the next spell I'm going to cast, when I could instead just cast the spell I really want to hit them with?" Sure, negating reactions can be nice as well, but it still seems redundant. And giving them a penalty to Perception seems redundant on a short-range, short-duration spell with verbal components.
Second, their Blood Magic ability is to put on a small lightshow that provides concealment whenever they cast one of their granted spells or bloodline spells using a Focus point or a spell slot. Again, that's fairly thematic, except a large portion of their spells are ones that benefit from subtlety: charm, enthrall, mislead, and the like. This seems counter-productive, particularly since Blood Magic doesn't seem to be optional.
Edit: I'll note that Blood Magic (in that form) wasn't a thing in the playtest version, and the playtest version of [i]faerie dust[i] didn't affect Will saves, and put the targets to sleep on a critical failure.
The rules for determining what spells a sorcerer knows are... confusing, and possibly contradictory.
First, on page 193, the rules basically say that your spell repertoire is equal in size to your spell slots unless you have special stuff that increases one of them, and that one of the spells at each level is always your "bloodline spell".
Then, on page 195, the trouble starts. Under Granted Spells, it says "You automatically add the spells listed here to your spell repertoire, in addition to those you gain through sorcerer spellcasting." Sorcerer spellcasting doesn't give you any spells, that's the sorcerer repertoire feature. And the repertoire feature calls out the "bloodline spells" as something you gain as part of your repertoire, not in addition to it.
Later, you have Bloodline spells, which are focus spells of which you get one automatically and possibly two more via class feats.
I think it's fairly clear that the "bloodline spells" referred to in the Sorcerer Repertoire class feature are the "Granted spells" in each bloodline. It is somewhat less clear how many you get - would a 2nd level Fey-blooded sorcerer know charm plus four spells (as suggested by the Granted Spells entry) or charm plus three spells (as suggested by the Spell Repertoire feature)? I'm guessing the latter.
So, I have the PDFs now, and while I'm nowhere near through them one of the guys I play with was a bit disappointed when we ran the playtest that his goblin alchemist couldn't stand in for a rogue when it came to trap-finding. So I'm considering the following skill feat:
Hazardous Explorer - Feat 1
General, Skill
Prerequisites: Trained in Thievery
You have trained in spotting the subtle signs of traps and other hazards. You can use your Thievery skill (modified by Wisdom instead of Dexterity) instead of Perception to detect a hazard, and you use your proficiency rank in Thievery instead of Perception to determine whether you are able to detect a hazard.
There are pre-existing examples of a skill feat allowing one skill to be used instead of Perception for a specific purpose (e.g. Lie to Me letting you use Deception to spot lies), and I don't think this feat would allow rogues to break any limits on their trap detection (their Perception will always be better than or equal to their maximum skill rank), so I don't see any balance problems with it. I added in the Wisdom clause to avoid the obvious way for rogues to break the feat.
Also it does not compete with the Trap Finder rogue class feat, as it does not give any free checks for detecting traps or enhance your ability to disarm them.
Obviously I haven't done any actual playtesting of the class yet, so I can't comment on how well it plays. However, I don't need to play the class to comment on the nomenclature.
To me, a "restorative" is something that restores capability, not something that augments it. For example, the spell restoration removes ability damage, ability drain, and fatigue.
A better name would be, for example, "performance enhancer" - which also calls back to steroids and the like which seems appropriate for a biohacker class.
* High-intensity healing - this is what you need when the boss just hit you for half your hit points in one attack.
* Low-intensity healing - this is what you do between fights to get up to full strength for the next battle. In PF1, this was usually left for wands of cure light wounds, and in PF2 it's part of the Treat Wounds mechanic.
* Condition relief - removing all sorts of nasty consequences that aren't hit point loss. Poison, paralysis, fear, disease, whatever.
What I want to see is that everyone gets to do their own low-intensity healing, preferably tied to some form of secondary resource. This could be a stamina/resolve system like in Starfinder, or healing surges/hit dice like in 4e/5e, or some other method. I don't particularly like the current implementation of Treat Wounds, because it is very slow at the table, and highly random in its daily output since it stops when the healer crit fails, not when some resource runs out.
Actual healers would then focus on high-intensity healing and condition relief. High-intensity heals need to be big (so they're useful in a fight), but you don't need many of them. The same for condition relief - usually you'd only need a few of them per day. This means that these could be handled via regular spells instead of needing to give clerics half a dozen extras each day, which would also balance out healers a bit more.
A bunch of friends will be over for a Session Zero on Saturday. We're all fairly experienced gamers, but none of us have played Starfinder before, and it's a fairly complex system with lots of moving parts.
So, is there a site somewhere with very general character building advice? I don't mean on the level of some of the class building guides where they go through each and every option and spell and rank them on some arbitrary color scale, but more along the lines of "You might find yourself in zero-G, and if you do you probably want the Acrobatics skill", "There will be long-range combat in the game, so you should either prepare for that or figure out a good way to close rapidly", or "If your group will have a spaceship, plan out in advance who will take what role and make sure you're competent at your assigned role. It doesn't hurt to have a backup either."
The most important bit would be to point out traps ("_______ looks powerful, but it only applies in rare situations, and at level 4 you can take ________ which makes the whole thing obsolete"), rather than power-gaming advice.
The adventure states that when the PCs get to the actual dungeon, you should inform them how much time they have left before the bad guys get there. But I can't find anything in the adventure that says that this should be PC knowledge from the start. The questgiver essentially tells the PCs "The bad guys are already on their way, but we found a shortcut/back door so you might beat them to it. But you need to hurry." - but she doesn't have any hard data. And I can't see how she could have, given that she doesn't know how long it would take the bad guys to get there and get through the dungeon the hard way.
OK, here's how I think it works if you want to sneak up on someone or a group.
As soon as you or your party comes into contact with the enemy, you enter Encounter mode. If you were using the Sneak tactic, you get to roll initiative using Stealth.
Any creature who beats you on initiative and can reasonably detect you will perceive you. If you're sneaking a bit ahead of the rest of the group, them rolling poorly on their initiative checks won't make them detected, since they're out of the way (but will need to spend actions/rounds to get anywhere.
If you're still unseen when your turn comes up, you need to use Sneak actions to remain that way and move around until you get into a position where you can perform whatever dastardly deeds you came here to do.
Seriously, why are these two different traits? I mean, I get that Fatal is more powerful, but is that enough reason to have two traits that both say "This weapon deals extra damage on a crit"? Why not just have a bigger Deadly?
I was going over the update today in order to prep for making characters, and putting the errata into my book as best I could. But I think the update needs errata itself, because it is inconsistent on how many skills the alchemist gets.
On page 1, it says alchemists get Crafting plus 4+Int skills. But on page 4 it says "change the 2 to a 3" which would mean no free Crafting plus 3+Int skills.
I'm assuming page 1 is correct as that is part of the larger skill overhaul, and that the reference on page 4 is just something from 1.1 they forgot removing.
So, one of my players were toying with the idea of making a necromancer for the playtest, and kidding around with one of the other players that their character will be a useful ally in life and a great tool in death.
Except I then looked over the spell list, and it doesn't seem like there's any animate dead there. I don't think there's anything else either that makes permanent minions outside of class features (e.g. animal companions). Am I missing something?
We've been told that the economy in PF2 will be silver-based rather than gold-based, so a sword that previously cost 15 gp will now cost 15 sp.
I'm hoping that while they're doing that, they'll also changing the size of the coins. A gold coin in Pathfinder weighs 0.02 lbs, and (at least in 3e - I'm not sure if Pathfinder specifies it) has a diameter of 1 inch (which gives it a thickness of about 1 mm or 1/25 inch). That's a really big coin.
I know historical accuracy isn't a big thing given that Golarion is not our world, but the common silver coins of the European medieval world were based on the denier or penny, which was minted out of 1/240th of a pound of silver. It would be cool if Paizo took this opportunity to fix that as well.
In the AD&D 1e DMG, there's a paragraph or two that discuss the different ways "level" is used in the game - at the time, you had character level, dungeon level, spell level, and monster level. It basically said "We could have used different terms for these, such as character rank, spell power, dungeon level, and monster tier. But we didn't, so learn to live with it."
I think "feat" is running a very real risk of becoming the new "level" - a term used for numerous things that are sort of related but not interchangeable. In PF2, it seems we will have general feats, ancestry feats, skill feats, class feats, and possibly something I'm missing. It is my understanding that these are all siloed from one another - you get X general feats, Y ancestry feats, Z class feats, and so on, with no interchangeability between them (though I would not be surprised to see a general feat letting you take a feat of another kind, similar to the way PF1 has a bunch of feats like Extra Talent, Extra Revelation, and so on).
While the ship has already sailed regarding the playtest version, I think it would be nice if the different types of feats used different nomenclature - e.g. general feats, ancestral traditions, class talents, and skill tricks. I think this would reduce the confusion that currently seems to surround the concept, plus it would reduce the sense that many seem to have that "everything nifty is a feat now." That may be technically true (well, either a feat or a spell), but using different nomenclature makes them feel different.
There was one thing I learned when trying to play an oracle as a healer in a Pathfinder campaign: condition relief sucks when you have limited spells known. While the PF2 core rules won't have oracles, and I reckon clerics/druids will still have access to their whole spell list with a night's rest, I'd still like to strike a blow for reducing the number of spells needed to remove various conditions. Currently, you need:
One of the things I like most about 5e is the simplification of most of these into Lesser restoration (disease, blindness, deafness, paralyzed, poisoned), Remove curse, Greater restoration (incorporating remove curse, and moved to 5th level), and Regenerate. I'd love to see something like this done with PF2 as well. Perhaps just import the Remove Condition spells from Starfinder?
So, in PF1 a lot of the high-level damage from the fighting-classes comes from iterative attacks (which is also why it sucks when you don't get to make a full attack). Sure, you also get some extra damage from magic weapons, power attack, some class abilities/feats (e.g. Weapon specialization), and so on, but the big thing is getting to attack twice (or, to a degree, thrice).
But as I understand it, PF2 removes iterative attacks as a level-based thing - anyone can make a second attack at -5, and a third at -10. That means that the extra damage from multiple attacks can't be a reward for mid- to high-level fighting-types anymore.
To some degree, I'm guessing this will be partially compensated for by any attack hitting by 10+ being a crit, so high level -> high attack bonus -> more crits. But that assumes that AC isn't roughly keeping pace with attack bonus, which seems unlikely.
Starfinder also doesn't have extra attacks as a high-level thing - anyone can either make one regular attack as a standard action, or two attacks at -4 as a full-round action. It deals with this by making more damaging weapons available at higher levels - the azimuth laser pistol you're wielding at 1st level only deals 1d4 damage, but at 9th level you can get an aphelion laser pistol dealing 3d4 (or 4d4 if Boosted by using a move action).
Anyhow, I'm hoping to see how Paizo intends to handle this aspect of the game in a blog post some time soon.
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Hello,
The druid ability Wild Shape references a series of spells, which in turn reference the general rules of the Polymorph subschool. These state "The DC for any of these abilities equals your DC for the polymorph spell used to change you into that form."
However, the druid doesn't use a spell (or spell-like ability) - she uses a supernatural ability. So what save DC should she use for any abilities that require it? I see these options:
As if the druid had actually cast the appropriate spell, using Wisdom as the casting stat. This has the disadvantage though of stalling DCs after level 12 (and after level 8 for actual animals), although up to that point she is generally at a slight advantage because Wild Shape is available at a lower level than the corresponding spells.
Use the standard formula of 10+half level+an ability bonus (probably Constitution). This has the advantage of scaling through a druid's entire career, even after the Wild Shape itself starts petering out. On the other hand, it has the disadvantage of not likely being Wisdom-based (unless, of course, one decides by fiat that it should be) - and Wisdom is generally, by far, the highest stat for druids.
Use the standard formula, but with whatever stat ought to affect the DC based on the ability (Con for poison, Str for trample, etc.). This has the advantage of feeling more "real," but the disadvantage of being more complex as well as some level of MAD.
Use whatever the normal DC is for the form. This has the advantage of simplicity, but the disadvantage that it's very different from the other ways polymorphing/wild shape works (in that it's usually based on the character's own stats).
The settlement rules in the GMG say "There's a 75% chance of anything below X gp being available in any given week, and above that there is a list of random minor, medium, and major magic items available for purchase." That works well with the core rules, which indeed splits magic items into minor (up to 7,999 gp), medium (8,000-27,999 gp), and major items (28,000 and up). The gp values change a little for consumables like potions, but still.
However, Ultimate Equipment expands on item generation in two ways: it provides pre-made "treasure packets" (e.g. for 5000 gp, roll up "2d4 × 10 gp, 4d6 pp, masterwork weapon, lesser minor ring, greater medium potion, lesser medium scroll, greater minor wand", and it also splits the minor/medium/major items further into lesser and greater (so you get six "power levels" of items).
These two things, while making treasure generation more fun, don't mesh well with generating settlements. There's no way of generating item type based on power level, though you could still use the core book table for that. More annoyingly, there's no way of determining whether those 1d6 medium items that are supposed to be present in a small town are meant to be lesser or greater medium items. So, what I'm wondering is if anyone has adapted the settlement generation rules to work with the Ultimate Equipment categories?
I realize I could do the work myself, but if someone already did it I might as well help avail myself of their efforts rather than my own. Plus, if I'm going to have to do it myself, I'm more likely to go with the higher-resolution item levels from 3.5's Magic Item Compendium.
