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Right, except the initial Mythic Calling options are Callings. The Dedication trait makes sense since not all feats are dedication feats. So maybe some Calling-traited things are not Callings?
The Primary Target change is interesting: the "uses the same multiple attack penalty as your Area Fire or Auto-Fire action" bit was dropped, which helps make less pressing the question of what a saving throw ability with the Attack trait is supposed to mean. That could still use some clarification, though, since in Pathfinder the Attack trait is, without exception, used with abilities that require a check from the attacker. Is the save DC of Area Fire impacted by MAP, or does it only cause the turn's MAP to increase? Primary Target could also stand to be given more structure, either by making it a free action with a trigger of "You use an Area Fire or Auto-Fire action" or by explicitly saying you can do it as part of the other attack (i.e., a subordinate action). Currently it is in a nebulous state of a thing you can do, somehow, that may or may not cost another action of some type.
For what it's worth, I hope at least some gods stay incompatible with adventuring. Rovagug's followers may generally be babbling lunatics unable to coordinate anything together--and that's just fine. Perhaps they should be highlighted with a warning, but a GM still has a responsibility to review and vet their players' character choices.
The remaster greatly simplifies refocusing by removing the requirement that one must have spent a focus point since last regaining any focus point. This doesn't quite hit the spot for at least a couple reasons: - Classes that mitigate or remove the refocusing barrier have lost their edge and are now less-desirable choices until they get "remastered" themselves. Oracle isn't scheduled for that until next year, and psychic isn't scheduled at all (though I assume it will get treatment of some kind eventually). - The replacement 12-level focus-point recovery feat is basically a never-take: the difference between recovering three focus points in 10 minutes and recovering them in 30 minutes is immaterial in most situations. Instead of removing the focus point recovery barrier entirely, why not turn it into a "refocus max" and preserve the recovery feats/class features, rewriting them to instead raise that max? E.g., a wizard with a focus pool of 2 can only refocus to 1/2 points until it acquires its 12th-level refocus feat, at which point it can recover to full. If the wizard is already at 1/2 points, refocusing does nothing until they acquire that feat. This would still simplify the existing rule by removing the need to track whether one spent a point the last time they refocused. It would also preserve (or arguably even increase) the value of the refocus feats and class features.
The changes announced so far hit the right notes for me personally. Good riddance to ability scores, two-dimensional alignment, and the eight spell schools. So far the only thing leaving me uneasy is how much of the 2nd-edition corpus is going to be fractured. There's going to be scattered content everyone, including PC options, getting left in a perpetual state of usability limbo, with the rules on which they depended having been replaced.
After Paizo and much of the rest of the TTRPG industry made strides in getting away from racial stereotyping, linking edicts and anathemas to ancestry of all things feels like a major step backwards. What are the edicts of humanity, and who issued them? It's difficult to even make sense of those questions without turning each ancestry into a monoculture.
since, unlike bows and crossbows, each type of firearm has its own bespoke type of firearm roundHave they, though? Why? The game doesn't have such thing as caliber (and if it had, some guns would probably still remain compatible). All bows uses arrows, and all crossbows use bolts. Firearms, on the other hand, have a bespoke type of ammunition for each type of firearm (for the most part: one exception is a big boom gun, which is a hand cannon and uses hand cannon rounds). You can see this in G&G in the equipment tables: there is an ammunition type listed for each firearm type. Additionally, character inventory listings in the one-shot, Head-Shot the Rot, show examples of it in the Pregenerated Characters booklet (pg. 8): "dragon mouth rounds (20), dueling pistol rounds (20), bull’s eye lantern, firearm cleaning kit, flint and steel, healer’s tools, minor healing potions (2), leather armor, rope, 13 gp, 5 sp, 5 cp" Finally, Sayre's own post additionally confirms this: "They go together so you're not burning entire formula books just on different types of firearm ammo." All these (and doses) can be crafted with a single formula for a "black powder (dose or round)," but you have to pick exactly what you're crafting when you craft it.
They're craftable from the same formula, but the end product isn't the same. You have to decide what to make, and G&G is clear enough that a dose isn't ammunition: a round is. Sayre is merely clarifying that a formula for black powder doses/rounds allows one to craft (A) a black powder dose or (B-Z) a firearm round for a particular type of firearm (since, unlike bows and crossbows, each type of firearm has its own bespoke type of firearm round). I do think the RAI is clear with Munitions Crafter: you can use infused reagents to make 10 black powder rounds of some kind for free as part of daily preparation. G&G has an unusually high rate of ambiguities and outright errors among 2e publications, so hopefully we'll see errata for it this year.
The only official clarifications are at the Official FAQ and Errata page, and there is currently no section for Guns & Gears. I believe Michael Sayre (design manager and one of the book's authors) has made some informal clarifications of certain passages' intended meanings but am not sure if he's made mention of the sections you call out. For what it's worth, the smallest unit of black powder is classified as being either a "dose or round." A dose is specifically not ammunition, so the obvious correction in Munitions Crafter would be to change "black powder cartridges or black powder doses" to "black powder cartridges or black powder rounds." As for what a black powder cartridge is, I have no idea.
The same way as PCs. Splash damage equal to the number of weapon damage dice, including striking runes but not other sources. In 2nd edition, NPC attacks are at most loosely related to their inventory weapons. The damage dice for their attacks aren't usable for determining effects that depend on them. This is why this sort of thing normally appears directly in the stat block.
Maybe? Effects based on a weapon’s number of damage dice include only the weapon’s damage die plus any extra dice from a striking rune. They don’t count extra dice from abilities, critical specialization effects, property runes, weapon traits, or the like. It's easy enough to include some quantity (or not) when running the AP, but I'd also like to know how the scatter trait is supposed to be handled in general for NPCs.
A handful of NPCs in recent AP books have firearm attacks with the Scatter trait. Breaking with convention, there's no listed splash damage on any of them, and one even just has a straight d8 with no flat modifier added. This is not the case with NPCs that throw alchemical bombs, in contrast, which will have creature-level-appropriate splash damage explicitly included in the stat block. Unfortunately there are only ~3 examples to reference, so I'm left wondering if the splash damage was unintentionally omitted, or we're expected to actually add splash damage of some amount to their attacks.
There are still some gray areas involved. For example Spiritual Weapon . But it is a spell that makes a Strike. So simply saying that any Strike action is a physical attack has some loopholes. The clarification does not say that.
We actually got indirect clarification on this:
So a "physical attack" is simply physical damage from any attack action.
and use your Crafting modifier in place of your Medicine modifier for all Medicine checks. The fact that we have to bring in GM rulings just reinforces the lack of RAW or even RAI clarity. With PCs, there is no concept of a "base modifier" vs "total modifier" anywhere in any rule book.
New Chirurgeon:
You can use your proficiency rank in Crafting for anything that requires a proficiency rank in Medicine (such as prerequisites), and use your Crafting modifier in place of your Medicine modifier for all Medicine checks. I'm interested in the latter half: usually an ability like this will have you make a different type of check (e.g., make a Crafting check instead of a Medicine check). The Chirurgeon class feature is new and unique in that you're still making a Medicine check but using your Crafting modifier. But what does that mean? From the CRB, we know: The sum of all the modifiers, bonuses, and penalties you apply to the d20 roll is called your total modifier for that statistic. But then bonuses are typically granted for a type of check. E.g., Risky Surgery: If you do, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to your Medicine check to Treat Wounds, and if you roll a success, you get a critical success instead. So my confusion is: 1. A character's Crafting modifier is the modifier used to make Crafting checks, and their Medicine modifier is the modifier used to make Medicine checks.2. Chirurgeon allows one's Crafting modifier to be used for Medicine checks, but they're still making Medicine checks. 3. Risky Surgery and other items & abilities grant bonuses to Medicine checks, while the Crafter's Eyepiece and other items & abilities grant bonuses to Crafting checks. 4. A Crafting modifier used for Medicine checks is then ... what, exactly? I'm confident enough to say that it includes one's intelligence modifier and Crafting proficiency bonus, but what else applies?
Undead being unaffected by negative damage isn't an immunity, exactly, but for the most part it works out like one. And the point isn't the I-W-R order of application, it's that treating the area damage like water or salt means it doesn't have a corresponding damage type: If you have a weakness to something that doesn't normally deal damage, such as water, you take damage equal to the weakness value when touched or affected by it. Hence you could resist away the remaining cold damage, but due to the weakness application beforehand you're now taking "area damage" of no particular type despite not actually being damaged. Linking the area damage to each damage instance (read: damage type) may occasionally yield large numbers, but it doesn't generate absurdities like the aforementioned one.
If you want to treat area damage like water and just add the weakness to the final damage dealt, what if they're undead and resistant to cold damage? The negative damage wouldn't apply, and they could possibly resist away all the cold damage. You're now deducting unspecified "area damage" from their hit points, which seems more absurd than treating each damage instance (viz. damage type) individually as area damage.
There's actually an argument to be made that ABP only alters MAGIC items. You can get a small taste of the problem with that reading right now when looking at Mage Armor, which isn't item-based but provides an item bonus. Stack that with the potency bonus to AC and saves, and suddenly the champion running around in a tin can is very jealous.
Don't forget that bombs both lose their item bonuses and get a massive damage boost.Can you explain how bombs get a damage boost? What am I not seeing. Most weapons gain additional damage dice via Striking runes, which ABP removes. Bombs don't: their dice are an innate part of the item. Lesser alchemist's fire deals 1d8 damage (plus persistent and splash), and with Devastating Attacks it increases over a character's lifetime to 4d8. Starting at level 7, Perpetual Infusions means a bomber can now make unlimited level-1 bombs via Quick Alchemy, and non-bombers can just buy a ton when at a character level where the price is pocket change. No reagents spent, and with Calculated Splash even the splash damage will be on par or better than higher-level bombs.
CRB 4th-printing FAQ:
Page 370: The soothe spell can now target “1 willing creature” instead of “1 willing living creature”. It can be used to heal undead, constructs, and so on. (This change matches the rules noted in Book of the Dead and Blood Lords Player’s Guide.) Note that it has the mental trait, so it still doesn’t heal or otherwise benefit mindless creatures like zombies or animated objects. CRB 4th-printing Soothe spell traits: [EMOTION] [ENCHANTMENT] [HEALING] [MENTAL] CRB 4th-printing Undead trait: Once living, these creatures were infused after death with negative energy and soul-corrupting evil magic. When reduced to 0 Hit Points, an undead creature is destroyed. Undead creatures are damaged by positive energy, are healed by negative energy, and don't benefit from healing effects. Even setting aside the whole debate on whether undead PCs benefit from healing effects, I don't quite get what the Paizo writers are up to here. Should we just toss the Healing trait out the window entirely? "Specific beats general," but also "it has the mental trait, so it still doesn’t heal or otherwise benefit mindless creatures like zombies or animated objects."
It's notable that the Heal spell was introduced in the CRB, which doesn't even have the concept of "negative healing." That was first introduced in Bestiary 1 but left entirely undefined until Bestiary 2. Thus CRB positive effects specify properly-undead targets rather than ones with negative healing (which includes all undead). We're on the third printing now, though, and Paizo still hasn't updated them. Such CRB abilities are either in a state of neglect, or the rules team really does have some mysterious motivation to keep it the way they are.
Were this the case, then there would be no point to the Aura trait at all. All emanations either resolve immediately or have a duration (some an indefinite duration).
The point I was pedantically making was that if the definition of an emanation is that it issues forth from your space, a non-instantaneous emanation must, by definition, move with you in order to continue to issue forth from your space. Once it issues forth, it's issued. Now it's just there. Some spells have increasing the radius of the area as a sustain effect.
This rules it out: Make two Strikes against your hunted prey, one with each of the required weapons. If you make a thrown strike, the weapon doesn't meet the requirement. And in general, it's playing dubious games with RAI to say that any ability that goes out of its way to require that it be used with a melee weapon also allows throwing.
There is another usage of "attack" that goes unmentioned in the attack/attack-roll errata entry: an unarmed quasi-weapon. These are your "unarmed attack," claws, battle form attacks--the things that are like weapons but aren't actually weapons: You can Strike with your fist or another body part, calculating your attack and damage rolls in the same way you would with a weapon. Unarmed attacks can belong to a weapon group (page 280), and they might have weapon traits (page 282). However, unarmed attacks aren’t weapons, and effects and abilities that work with weapons never work with unarmed attacks unless they specifically say so. Arguably, the latest errata for battle forms wasn't needed when you take this into account: The only attacks (unarmed quasi-weapons) you can use are the ones from the battle form. You can still escape or use any attack action (action with the Attack trait).
I recently watched the GenCon 2020 panel discussing Rage of Elements, and it made me wonder what the angle was with the ushering in of the new elements. Metal and wood are obviously borrowed from Chinese wuxing philosophy, so one would think that in a Pathfinder book they would be a fantasy adaptation of it, somehow tying it in with Tian Xia. But in the video, there is talk of "getting [the new planes] as close to on par with the ones we've developed," as though they'll be rolled into the fantasy classical Greek elements. When looking at second edition, I see, for example, that great care was taken with fulus in Secrets of Magic, including a sidebar detailing their real-world inspiration. And of course there's LO: Mwangi Expanse, which is in its own league of quality and attention to detail, with genuine and deep Africana research evident throughout. Wuxing deserves a comparable level of attention, and I hope we will find it in this new book.
The initial rules for the Flurry edge seem to not require weapons except for offhand mention in parentheticals:
You have trained to unleash a devastating flurry of attacks upon your prey. Your multiple attack penalty for attacks against your hunted prey is –3 (–2 with an agile weapon) on your second attack of the turn instead of –5, and –6 (–4 with an agile weapon) on your third or subsequent attack of the turn, instead of –10. But the level-17 Masterful Hunter Upgrade for Flurry is far more explicit about it: You can blend your weapon mastery with skillful targeting to make a series of precise attacks. If you have master proficiency with your weapon, your multiple attack penalty for attacks against your hunted prey is –2 (–1 with an agile weapon) on your second attack of the turn, and –4 (–2 with an agile weapon) on your third and subsequent attacks of the turn. A strict reading of the first passage would limit the MAP reduction for unarmed attacks to -3 and -6, with weapon attacks exclusively receiving -2 and -4. But that sure is an awkward way to express a rule. Then, at level 17, unarmed attacks receive no additional benefit. All that doesn't seem intended, but I'm not sure what the underlying intent would have been. Is it weapons-only for all of it, weapons for most of it as in the strict reading, or something else entirely?
Its a monster ability, or rather was, not a player ability it didn't need to be nerfed/balanced to the same extent. There are plently of hints that that was how it should be played. Ghostly weapons are now fairly pointless unless you are a specialist ghost hunter. My initial question (sorry about citing the wrong rulebook) concerned something that affects players. The restriction on making strength-based checks works both ways. I wouldn't say a lower standard of editing and QA applies.
An incorporeal creature can’t attempt Strength-based checks against physical creatures or objects—only against incorporeal ones—unless those objects have the ghost touch property rune. Likewise, a corporeal creature can’t attempt Strength-based checks against incorporeal creatures or objects. Does this mean a Strike attack roll can't be attempted against an incorporeal creature unless the weapon/unarmed attack is ranged or has the finesse trait?
Description of Bless: Blessings from beyond help your companions strike true. You and your allies gain a +1 status bonus to attack rolls while within the emanation. Once per turn, starting the turn after you cast bless, you can use a single action, which has the concentrate trait, to increase the emanation's radius by 5 feet. Bless can counteract bane. The spell lacks the Aura trait (unlike, say, Protective Ward), and the description above states nothing to indicate that casting the spell creates an aura. So it would seem that it's just a standard emanation, staying put when the caster moves. However, the spell list on page 310 of the CRB calls it and Bane auras ("Bless (enc): Strengthen allies’ attacks in an aura around you."), and there is apparently at least one AP in which an NPC stat block directs the GM to have an enemy cast Bane and then move forward to affect as many of the party members as they can--as though the emanation will move with them. |
