TheFinish's page

However, they then went and added specific Magical Siege Ammunition, which clarifies that yes, magical shots require the special magical ammunition.

I don't think they did. Nothing in the Siege Ammunition section of Battlecry says other magical ammunition doesn't work, they just printed ammo that specifically works for some Siege weapons.

Or to put it another way, just because Gruesome Bolt must be put on a ballista bolt doesn't mean you can't make a preserving shot (Ammunition: any) into a ballista bolt.

The same would apply to alchemical ammunition. I think the bigger problem you'll run into is that a lot of ammunition has effects on hit/critical hit/etc which is not something that happens with the Inventor's mortar, or with a lot of siege weapons, which call for saves and not hit rolls. Which means you (or your GM) would need to rule how those interactions play out.

That said, at a minimum re-reading the magical siege ammo, I would absolutely allow all of them except the bolts to be used with the Inventor's Mortar Innovation, since they're made for weapons that target like the mortar and thus are very easy to adjudicate.

Yep, it works just like that. The ability specifies each target separately, so you can indeed choose to deal vitality damage to your allies to refrain from hurting them while dealing Void to everyone else.

Ah I see, my bad then.

TheFinish, good pushback — and you've put your finger on the real question, which is not range at all. It's whether these activities suspend the spell's targeting requirements. They don't, and Spellstrike is the proof.

Spellstrike is proof of nothing except Spellstrike itself, and nothing else. To attempt to use Spellstrike to limit these other abilities would be like me saying Flying Tackle is wrong when it says you can Trip someone at the end, because Running Tackle says you can Grapple or Shove at any point during a High Jump or Long Jump.

The abilities may work similarly but they're not the same, and therefore one of them doing X does not mean the other one also does X.

When you Cast a Spell using any of the three abilities being discussed here, you do not choose a Target at all. If you did, you could conceivably choose Target A for the spell, and then Target B for the Strike, since there's no stipulation against that. But they don't need to, because the abilties say (with small changes):

"The effects of the spell do not occur immediately but are imbued into the required weapon. Make a Strike with that weapon. Your spell flies with the ammunition, using your attack roll result to determine the effects of both the Strike and the spell."

This is important because per the Reading Spells subheader on Player Core, page 303, the "effects" of a spell are all placed after Defense and Duration, in the block of text. And if you go look at spells, you will find that the wording that asks you to make a spell attack roll against your target is found in that block. You do not choose a target (and therefore, check for Range) until you resolve the spell's effect.

But the abilities say the effect depend on our Strike, so we don't need anything but the Degrees of Success provided by the spell, and nothing else matters.

And because the ability places no restrictions on the Strike, it works like any other Strike. The range of the spell doesn't matter because making a spell attack roll against the target is part of the effect, which is ignored and instead determined by the Strike.

They don't need to include sure strike in the immunity because it's baked into the spell now thanks to the Fall 2024 errata. true strike never got the errata, so PFS has to clarify.

When the rules say something "costs" movement they're explicitly talking about voluntary movement, as per the rule SuperParkourio posted, which reads in full:

"When the rules refer to a “movement cost” or “spending movement,” they are describing how many feet of your Speed you must use to move from one point to another. Normally, movement costs the number of feet you're moving. However, sometimes it's harder to move a certain distance due to difficult terrain or other factors. In such a case, you might have to spend a different amount of movement to move from one place to another."

Forced Movement further reinforces this by saying:

"When an effect forces you to move, or if you start falling, the distance you move is defined by the effect that moved you, not by your Speed. Forced movement doesn't trigger reactions that are triggered by movement. Some common causes of forced movement include the Reposition and Shove actions of Athletics. In the rare cases where it's unclear whether your movement is voluntary or forced, the GM makes the determination."

Getting Shoved into Difficult Terrain doesn't "cost" extra because you're not "spending" any movement, you're just getting Shoved into it. It is not an effect defined by your Speed, and so cannot incur costs.

Now, there are some instances of Forced Movement that would be ambiguous here (the most common one being Leading Dance, from Swashbuckler), but instances such as Shove, Reposition, hydraulic push and begone (among others) very clearly fall under forced movement and should not be shortened by terrain, IMO.

Scare to Death (Player Core pg 261)

Is the Incapacitation trait meant to apply to the initial Intimidation check, or the later critical success Fortitude save?

It can't apply to both, since if it applies to the Intimidation check then the nested Fortitude save is unobtainable.

Incapacitation means Scare to Death's Critical Success is unobtainable against creatures of a higher level than the Player Character, that is correct and most likely completely intended. It still works as Demoralize against those creatures, and has further effects on creatures of equal or lower level than the PC.

For as much as I dislike the literal reading - and I'm not saying I agree with it - how can "You Cast a Spell", required by the activity, if the target of said spell is out of the spell's range? Can you Cast a Spell without a valid target? I think this is the crux of the question, at least for my understanding of it.

The general rules for spells and ranges state a spell can affect targets only within their range.

The abilities, which are more specific, simply say you cast a spell and the effects are imbued in the weapon, fly with the ammunition, and the effects are tied to the Strike.

They place no limitations whatsoever on the Strike, and so the Strike follows normal rules, which means for a Ranged weapon you can target anything up to 6 range increments away.

Note that you do not target anything with the spell during Cast a Spell, because it's effects don't happen until the Strike hits or misses. You target with the Strike.

I disagree with rayne. None of the activities restrict your range in any way, unlike Spellstrike, and all of them instruct you to make a Strike, and Strike says:

"You attack with a weapon you're wielding or with an unarmed attack, targeting one creature within your reach (for a melee attack) or within range (for a ranged attack)."

Therefore, you may use them on any target within Range, even beyond your first range increment, and it will deliver the spell. Spell range doesn't matter one bit.

These abilities are not Spellstrike, they work as written.

As for the Ignition question, because the spell requires a target be within your Reach for you to be able to make the choice, it gets dicey. You definitely can't do so if an enemy is far away, but I'd rule you can definitely shoot someone with d6 die if they're also within melee Reach.

EDIT: I forgot, to add

They have also been reprinted since Starlit Span existed (Eldritch Archer in Player Core 2, Spellshot and Beast Gunner in the remastered Guns & Gears) and the clause was not added.

This is immaterial. Eldritch Archer predates Magus (it came out in the Advanced Player's Guide) and the wording has not changed since it's Legacy inception except to allow you to use crossbows.

You should not be looking to any of these abilities as variations of Spellstrike. If anything Spellstrike is a variation of all of these, because Spell-Woven Shot and Spellsling are based on Eldritch Shot, which came first.

Yeah, granting spells that way is not technically wrong, it's just strange and can cause some confusion. Rank 2 illusory disguise exists, it just doesn't provide any benefits over Rank 1. At least the Animal Form examples are at a level where the spell does get an effect from heightening.

And thanks, I've always thought it's one of the best pieces Paizo made, Johan Grenier's one heck of an artist (and Mummy's Mask also had Ekaterina Burmak, also a tremendous artist, one of the best illustrated APs out there.)

Since you're making a full spreadsheet, did you ever run into this issue (a god granting a lower ranked spell at a higher rank)? If you did, it might be intentional, or it might not, I guess it would depend on how many examples you find. But if you didn't, then it's definitely a mistake.

he house rule I keep finding is to then allow players to Recall Knowledge to get more information. Paizo has given no rules on this whatsoever so purely by RAW there is no way to actually get more information about a haunt without simply guessing by the players.

This isn't a House Rule, this is just how Recall Knowledge works. A haunt would be a subject like any other, so they would first ask "What is it?" -> "A complex haunt" and then "How do we disable it?". Though in normal play where the Haunt probably acted first, they might just jump to "Can we disable it? How?" since it doesn't matter what it is so much as how they can stop it.

The Hazard Rules even state:

"Determining a magical hazard’s properties thoroughly enough to disable it requires either the use of more powerful magic or a successful skill check, likely using Identify Magic or Recall Knowledge. Magical hazards with a minimum proficiency rank cannot be found with detect magic at all."

Although haunts don't have the magical trait, we can extrapolate they would work the same way. This does mean if they lack the skills or have plain bad luck they might not realise how to disable it, but that's true of all hazards, not just haunts.

Also it very much is an illusion. The ability has the Illusion trait, and the very first line is:

"You reflect an illusory image of yourself into another unoccupied space within 15 feet that you can see."

The logic of "Well, it doesn't cause any problems at my table, so I am going to ignore any and all counter arguments as irrelevant and repeatedly state my table's ruling as the objective truth." ... isn't very helpful.

There are no actual counter arguments to be had in this thread at all though. Bardic Lore, Gossip Lore, Esoteric Lore, and so on are Skills. The Eidolon shares all the Summoner's skill proficiencies. So the Eidolon can use those Lores, the same it can use Athletics, or Stealth, or any other skill the Summoner has.

You mention Dual Skills and Skilled Partner earlier in this thread, but Skilled Partner is wholly irrelevant to this discussion (it deals with Skill Feats, not Proficiency), and Dual Studies specifically calls out the proficiencies gained in the feat are not shared, unlike other skill proficiencies, which further reinforces the point that the Eidolon shares all proficiencies unless otherwise noted.

So yeah, Eidolons get those skills and can use them, like any other skill.

The rule you quoted says the GM "should" adjust the difficulty, not that they "must" adjust it. Hence why I say the benefit is heavily GM dependent. A GM that increases the difficulty to "incredibly hard" on the 2nd attempt and one who doesn't increase it at all are both perfectly in the "RAW".

The rest of my points are from my own playing time as GM and Player and will obviously differ from everyone else, so we can agree to disagree on the usefulness of RK in combat.

Raven Black's question is clear cut at any rate. An Eidolon shares all your skill proficiencies, period. It doesn't matter how you acquired the skill, if the Summoner has it, the Eidolon also has it.

Even without action compression, having an eidolon still offers the advantage of bypassing the restriction against retrying after a failure—or avoiding the penalty for attempting a new Recall Knowledge check—by using the eidolon instead to make another Recall Knowledge check.

This benefit depends heavily on GM playstyle, since there isn't a hard and fast rule that makes it so repeated attempts must be impossible/harder/what have you. So it might be useful, or it might be useless. I personally don't use either, because Recall Knowledge is already borderline useless and there's no point in making it harder to use.

Bardic Lore/Gossip Lore et-al are of dubious use regardless because they never scale past Expert and they are INT based, and as I pointed out Eidolons don't have the best INT and increasing it comes at disadvantages elsewhere (namely, in stats that are actually useful). It isn't a powerful option at all, no matter how you slice it.

True. But consider that the example is not the only scenario we are ruling on.

A better choice would be Thaumaturge's Esoteric Lore class feature, which not only creates the Lore skill, but also overrides the attribute used to use CHA. A Fey Eidolon has a +3 CHA at base. (Yes, likely so does the base class Thaumaturge if they don't instead have a +4 at level 1. But the point is that this ruling is applied to more than just Bardic Lore.)

I considered this example and dismissed it out of hand, because the only way for this to happen is for a Thaumaturge to take the Summoner Archetype, but the Archetype gets none of the action compression advantages of a Summoner, which makes it even less of an issue (and I'd argue the Thaumaturge is gimping themselves, Summoner Archetype is horrendous).

I don't see how this is a problem at all when you consider how Summoner actions work and the fact that all the printed Eidolons have unremarkable INT (the highest is +1).

If someone wants to waste actions and attribute boosts to have their Eidolon Recall Knowledge with a mediocre chance of success using skills that scale terribly, let them.

What is a bit frustrating to me is that one could theoretically get Practiced Brawn with Adopted Ancestry, but Centaur is not allowed for Adopted Ancestry in PFS.

It'll be interesting to see if PFS ever allows crossover with Starfinder, because Starfinder dwarves have Stocky Frame as a level 1 Ancestry Feat that does almost the exact same thing as Practiced Brawn. Both give you Critical Successes when Shoving, they just change what the circumstance bonus applies to.

I can't find it, but I believe somewhere there is a rule that implies that an outside force trying to forcible move the grabbed creature would need to overcome the grabbers athletics DC to move the creature.

It's in the rules for the Immobilized condition.

As for the topic at hand: it's clear that when one of the two Thaums is grabbed, both are grabbed. Same way if you Trip one, both end up Prone, if you Shove one, both are shoved, etc.

I wouldn't rule getting grabbed ends the mirror effect, since I always read the final sentence as saying the things that force you to choose are:

- Your turn starting
- Choosing to move out of a space
- Making it explode when damaged by an adjacent enemy (Adept benefit)
- Falling Unconscious

But I'd say if you're Grabbed, your turn starts, and you make it so the illusion was the one grabbed, you're no longer grabbed. Same as if your image was flanked, both of you are Off-guard. Turn start, the flanked image disappears, you're no longer off-guard.

Yes because the "triggering action" is not the original one, but the subordinate ones

Predator's Pounce itself is never reacted to. It is currently impossible to react to it, because the action itself can't trigger anything.

But the subordinate Stride can be reacted to, as can the Strike, since the Subordinate action rules are clear on that.

Voluntary Flaw wasn't quite like that. You had to take two flaws to raise another stat, hence gesalt's comment of humans with 3 boost/2 flaws.

As for the topic at hand, allowing free Double Boost or free Triple Boost/1 flaw is mechanically fine. The idea that it will lead to problematic roleplaying, as presented by Unicorn, baffles me, because quite frankly nobody in the groups I play with actually represents those -1s 90% of the time.

TheFinish wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

TheFinish wrote:

The Dedication specifies Learn a Spell can only be used to add cantrips to the keepsake, preventing the use of Learn a Spell to add any other Rank.

Actually, the dedication says "You can only add cantrips to your keepsake with the Learn a Spell activity or by other similar means."

First, I don't see the need for this even for Cantrips.

Second, it does not speak about adding other spells and thus does not prevent what already exists, ie with Learn a Spell.

Why do people keep repeating this about "not speaking about adding other spells"?

"You can only add cantrips to your keepsake with the Learn a Spell activity or by other similar means." is not placing a limitation on how to add cantrips to your keepsake, it is telling you straight up that cantrips are the only type of spell that can be added to your keepsake.

And we know that because interpreting it the other way is nonsensical. What point would there be in stating we can add cantrips to the keepsake via Learn a Spell or other means when that is just...how things work?

The "only" is the limitation. Your reading boils down to "The only way you can add cantrips to the keepsake is with Learn a Spell or by other similar means"...as opposed to what? What other ways would there be to add cantrips? Or spells at all?

Considering the FAQ speaks of limiting the hedge mage, the only interpretation that makes sense is that Learn a Spell (and other means) can only add cantrips to your keepsake and nothing else. Otherwise the errata makes no sense, because it's not limiting anything.

You read it as "You can only add cantrips to your keepsake." ? As in excluding any leveled/slotted spells ?

TBT reading it this way had not even crossed my mind.

Yes, as in excluding those spells until you take Basic/Expert/Master spellcasting.

You can't add slotted spells to your keepsake with the dedication anyway because the keepsake can't hold them.

Persistent damage does seem like it'd still tick, but Dying/Wounded/Dead should clear when they're cleared by the Summoner, no? After all they share the HP pool, so barring [Death] effects that kill the Eidolon outright (which is still unclear in the rules) you shouldn't have a situation where your Eidolon is Dying but your Summoner is not.

TheFinish wrote:

The Dedication specifies Learn a Spell can only be used to add cantrips to the keepsake, preventing the use of Learn a Spell to add any other Rank.

Actually, the dedication says "You can only add cantrips to your keepsake with the Learn a Spell activity or by other similar means."

First, I don't see the need for this even for Cantrips.

Second, it does not speak about adding other spells and thus does not prevent what already exists, ie with Learn a Spell.

Why do people keep repeating this about "not speaking about adding other spells"?

"You can only add cantrips to your keepsake with the Learn a Spell activity or by other similar means." is not placing a limitation on how to add cantrips to your keepsake, it is telling you straight up that cantrips are the only type of spell that can be added to your keepsake.

And we know that because interpreting it the other way is nonsensical. What point would there be in stating we can add cantrips to the keepsake via Learn a Spell or other means when that is just...how things work?

The "only" is the limitation. Your reading boils down to "The only way you can add cantrips to the keepsake is with Learn a Spell or by other similar means"...as opposed to what? What other ways would there be to add cantrips? Or spells at all?

Considering the FAQ speaks of limiting the hedge mage, the only interpretation that makes sense is that Learn a Spell (and other means) can only add cantrips to your keepsake and nothing else. Otherwise the errata makes no sense, because it's not limiting anything.

Explain to us how can your keepsake hold spells at 1st, 2nd or 3rd rank... without being able to learn them in the first place.

Because they're granted to you directly by the Spellcasting Feats of the Hedge Mage Archetype, bypassing the need to use Learn a Spell.

As I said I disagree with this interpretation but it's easy to see how one would come to this conclusion:

The Dedication specifies Learn a Spell can only be used to add cantrips to the keepsake, preventing the use of Learn a Spell to add any other Rank.

Basic Spellcasting says now, when you get a new Rank of spells from Hedge Mage (which means level 4th, 6th and 8th) you can add three 1st Rank spells to the Keepsake, and the Keepsake can hold 1st Rank Spells (which is assumed, tbh, otherwise you can't add them)

Expert/Master Spellcasting simply says the three spells you get when you get a slot of a new Rank can be 2nd and 3rd (respectively) and your Keepsake can now hold those ranks.

At no point do these feats say the limitation imposed by the dedication regarding Learn a Spell is lifted, and so you can only use Learn a Spell to add cantrips to the keepsake.

Which means your keepsake could hold a maximum of nine 1st Rank spells, nine 2nd rank spells and six 3rd rank spells, and any number of cantrips.*

I think that's a bit too bad and honestly the limitation of keeping you to 3rd rank spells is enough, but I can see the other side of the argument.

*Though you could also use up any/all of your 2nd Rank picks on 1st Rank spells, and any/all of your 3rd Rank picks on 1st or 2nd Rank.

Theaitetos wrote:

But you can't add spells via Learn a Spell, only the ONE spell you get to choose with the Basic Spellcasting benefits.

Why? “You can only add cantrips to your keepsake with the Learn a Spell activity or by other similar means" only limits learning cantrips. It never mentions higher spells and the default is that a prepared spellcaster can use Learn a Spell to add spells to their repository of spells.

It limits higher rank spells right there? You can only add cantrips. You can't add any other rank of spell.

I disagree with Theaitetos on the fact that I think the Simple/Expert/Master Spellcasting feats extend the benefit of using Learn a Spell to 1st/2nd/3rd Rank spells due to stating the keepsake can now "hold" spells of those ranks, although I understand how one could read the errata and still beleive that sentence is there so you can add spells to the keepsake as you level up, without allowing additions with Learn a Spell.

But the dedication is clear in that you can't add any kind of spell to the keepsake except cantrips, whether with Learn a Spell or "other means" (which, in this case, means the Cantrip Supremacy feat).

Finoan wrote:

Final Sacrifice available for a resourceless summon that you can get at least two of each round is way too much.

And while Necromancer's Generosity sounds cool, it wouldn't be a good idea. You can't regain HP that you don't have in the first place and basic Thralls only have 1 HP. And the HP of focus point Thralls are meant to be a balance consideration. You can still heal those ones through other means though, so maybe that one is fine to houserule allow.

As to the former, it uses a spell slot, which *is* limited, and affects only one minion.

As to the latter, i understand this. its not a good option for them, although perhaps it might be good on conjured undead or an undead familiar.

final sacrifice has extremely good damage for it's rank. It is, quite literally, fireball but one rank lower. This is supposed to be balanced out by the fact you're losing something that cost you a lot of actions to get (summon spells) or is an integral part of your kit (a familiar or animal companion).

If you could use it on Thralls it would be pretty broken by the standards of the system.

[Manipulate] on Warp Step isn't bad just because of Reactive Strike, it's because if you're Grabbed you lose any [Manipulate] action unless you pass a DC 5 flat check. Or to put it another way, Warp Step has a 20% chance to fail ourtight even without Reactive Strike.

Also why do you say Unfettered Movement/Living Thunderbolt are 3 actions? Both of them are just 2 actions.

TheFinish wrote:

foes adjacent to the monster will always be within its Reach if it's using a Glaive.

Foes adjacent to the monster will always be within its reach even if it is not using its Glaive or other reach weapon too.

Not if the Monster in question is Tiny, in which case without a Reach weapon you can have creatures adjacent to you but out of Reach.

Of course a quick look in Nethys shows all monsters with Broad Swipe are Large or bigger, so it's a moot point, but you never know what Paizo might cook up in the future.

The wording is indeed quite ambiguous, since "two adjacent foes" could very well mean "two foes adjacent to each other" as easily as it could mean "two foes adjacent to the monster".

However, the fact that it then says "both of whom are within its Reach" leads more credence to the first interpretation, since it would be strange to state that if the ability meant the foes to be adjacent to the monster. After all, foes adjacent to the monster will always be within its Reach if it's using a Glaive.

This allows you to finally reach 2 focus points by level 4—or 3, if you took the dedication via Ancient Elf

I just want to point out, Ancient Elf saves you a feat, but doesn't let you access Domain Initiate any earlier. Basic Dogma is a level 4 feat no matter what.

But it does mean an Ancient Elf can have 3 Focus Points by level 4. Your starting one, another one from Force Fang at level 2, and the final one through Basic Dogma at Level 4.

Though this actually got a lot harder now that Running Recharge got printed as a 4th level feat. I personally would much rather get that than Fire Ray, and then at 6th you have Reactive Strike, and then at 8th Fuse Staff, which is also a great pick...

Honestly the Magus got buffed enough that without Free Archetype, gunning for Multiclass focus spells is actually quite the opportunity cost now.

Sertum + Skeletal Extension sound like I can do a 15 feet Step 6 times on my turn. Seems nice.

+5 feet with a Mobile Rune I guess.

The big problem with this is that Skeletal Extension is a Spellshape that gives you the bonus if your next action is a Grave Spell that consumes a Thrall until the end of your turn.

So because most of those spells use 2 Actions (except sanguine transference and temporary posession, which are 1A), you're left with just 1A with which to benefit from those 15 foot steps, making it...extremely lackluster. But it does also increase your Reach by 10 feet, so that's something.

I saw the "bag of rats" problem both of these had on release and I simply changed the wording slightly in my games:

For the Harvest Blood requirement I just changed "a creature" to "an enemy", so that it reads:

Your last action was a successful piercing or slashing melee Strike against an enemy that is not immune to bleed.

For Warrior of Legend I changed the 5th paragraph of "Warrior of Legend Adjustments" to:

"You gain Diehard (Player Core 254) as a bonus feat, but you become doomed 2 whenever an enemy or hazard triggers your cursed weakness (unless your doomed value is already higher)."

I did this mostly because the mechanics bothered me personally, none of my players are actually interested enough in the Archetypes to take them.

So, answering in order:

1- No, you can't replace the Steps granted by Sertum with Elf Step or Wing Step, those are their own actions. You could Invoke Sertum (1 action) and then use Elf/Wing step (1 action) to step 5 times for 2 actions though.

2 - No, for two reasons:
a)Skeletal extension doesn't increase the distance you Step by 15 feet, it makes it 15 feet.
b)Both Elf Step and Wing Step specifically say you Step 5 feet, not just that you Step. So no matter what enhancements you have, the Steps granted by the feat are limited to 5 feet. Which means with a Mobile rune you can move 10 feet with one step (5+5) and then 5 with the second, for a total of 15 feet.

3 and 4 - Like in 1, no, if something grants you a Step, you can't replace that Step with Elf/Wing Step, because those are their own action, different from Step.

At my tables I actually go the other way: everyone starts with 3 Focus Points by default, and you get them back after 10 minutes regardless of what you're doing.

I've never actually ran into the problem Unicore describes of people using their Focus Spells and not slot spells during fights, particularly because at higher levels your top ranks start doing stuff your Focus Spells could only dream of being able to achieve. And as enemy capabilities rise, you want to get those off ASAP.

What I did run into a lot was people taking feats to get focus spells they never used, just because the feat gave them another focus point. The most famous example in my group being Force Fang for Magus. Force Fang isn't even that bad, but players were taking it just to bump up their pool, I never saw it cast even once.

And I never understood the old Refocus throttling prior to the Remaster, either. I mean what is it that makes it ok to cast 3 Focus Spells every fight at 18th level, but not 1st, or 5th, or w/e? As the power of your slots increases you're actually less likely (in my experience) to cast Focus Spells, whereas in the lower levels they're actually very useful for extending a Caster's adventuring day.

The Psychic absolutely needs a rework in light of both the Remaster focus changes and the new Magus and Summoner reworks, but we shouldn't be bringing other classes down, we'd be much better off buffing the poor Psychic.

My question is, if that's the case, doesn't the first clause of Smithing Weapons become redundant? I guess it saves you from having to buy a toolkit at character creation -- they, like, count as tools enough that you don't need an actual tattoo machine or whatever in your pocket to channel into your weapon -- but the phrasing does make it feel like tracing with your weapon is something you can't normally do at all.

I doesn't become redundant for a couple of reasons:

- It saves you the 2 bulk of wearing an Artisan's toolkit, which isn't a small thing, particularly if you're going for a DEX based Runesmith.
- It means you can actually wear other Toolkits now. Remember you're limited to 2 bulk's worth of worn Toolkits, and an Artisan's toolkit is 2 bulk. Meaning, without Smithing Weapons, you can't wear a Healer's Toolkit (so no Battle Medicine) or Alchemist's Toolkit (so no Quick Alchemy if you get Alchemist as an Archetype) or anything else you might need.

So the benefits are certainly reduced, but there's still a good case for Smithing Weapons even if Tracing doesn't require a free hand.

not to mention that the story tells us of one prototype while only kinda worked several years after its construction with a single person deciphering the process and then being subject to experiments for decades without anyone finding out the process before he fled and the only test subject the nexian mages had went missing

I think it is safe to assume that automatons stay rare

Not really, the new lore actually says Nex (the country, not the mage) is creating dozens of new automatons, with the output increasing monthly. In fact they're making so many of them that neighboring countries grow nervous as this automaton army grows.

I'd expect Automaton to become Uncommon or even Common as the timeline advances, barring something catastrophic happening.

As I expressed my displeasure before it is only fair I pop in to say I'm glad the two parties could reach an agreement, even if it's not what we had before.

Impossible Magic adds new Heritages to the Automaton Ancestry but doesn't do anything to change the Rarity of the Ancestry itself, so it's still Rare.

Thank you both! I'm so behind on all the Necromancer early info.

Follow-up question. Are Thrall Strikes magical by default then or no?

As far as I can tell, the main ways you can command a Thrall to Strike is with Create Thrall, Thrall Charge and Command a Thrall. Create Thrall and Thrall Charge are spells so I think the Strikes from these woud be magical either way, but Command a Thrall is not.

Thrall strikes are not magical, as they lack the [Magic] trait and don't otherwise say they count as magical in any way, nor can they gain this through feats or features.

There are none, and it's one of the things that has bugged me more than it should since PF2Es inception.

Your only non-GM fiat option is to pick Rough Rider to give Wolves the mount trait, purposefully choose a Small Wolf (rather than using the Cavalier caveat to a get a Medium one) and begin riding it at 4th level when it becomes Mature and grows to Medium.

I've no clue why the size increases are not optional.

One Thrall question. When you command a Thrall to Strike, does it get the attack roll bonuses you have as the Necromancer or only the bonuses that itself has? Like to get the bonus from Bless, do I need to be its emanation or does the Thrall?

The wording is "makes a melee unarmed atttack using your spell attack modifier", and in Checks (Step 1, Roll d20, right before "Fortune and Misfortune") the rules say:

"The sum of all the modifiers, bonuses, and penalties you apply to the d20 roll is called your total modifier for that statistic."

So I'd say the Necromancer has to be benefitting from the effects, not the Thrall.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Unicore wrote:

I don’t have the book yet, but I hope the book provides some guidance for how to square having this feat and using grave spells that pull corpses and tombstones out of the ground to make a massive living graveyard thrall. Like, for me, there is something very intentionally disrespectful to the dead about the aesthetic of many necromancer class feats that doesn’t get squared by saying “oh it’s only temporary,” and a player going around and creating gruesome thralls in cities to do relatively meaningless tasks is not going to go over well.

I think the way you thread this needle is by picking one of the grim fascinations (subclasses) that focus on something that isn't going to draw as much attention. Like sure, if you're making bone constructs to open doors, that's going to get weird looks but you can choose to make your thralls spiritual in nature (think Aragorn's Ghost Army in RotK) which probably shouldn't upset people more than if a Summoner has a spooky-looking Eidolon.

This was my thinking as well. Does anyone know if the special thralls you create from feats still possess the qualities bestowed by your Grim Fascination? Thralls like the Living Graveyard do get a fair bit less icky if you're conjuring them up as a mass of helpful ghosts that peal away from the main mass. You could flavor them as a troop of ghostly soldiers or a village's worth of people you are helping put to rest, for example.

You could probably do something similar with blood, too. I haven't got the book yet, but it does sound like there isn't any mechanical requirement that your thralls be made out of literal blood or anything. You could instead flavor them as constructs made of life force or something like that.

You could probably(?) do a similar aesthetic shift for bone. Flesh is the one that's stumping me; not really sure how to de-ickify that one.

To answer this question: yes, your Grim Fascination effect applies to all thralls you create, not just the base ones from create thrall.

As for thralls, they can look like whatever you want, regardless of Grim Fascination. Though the descriptions give you ideas of what your thralls might "often" look like, there's nothing that says a Bone Necromancer can't have blood construct thralls, or that a Flesh necromancer can't make their thralls look like protoplasmic blobs. That's up to the player, and is essentially meaningless from a rules perspective.

As for the [Holy] feat (it's 1st level and is called The Hallowed Dead), it should be noted it does have one important follow up: the Necromancer has a 2nd level feat to learn the create undead ritual and you can't take that feat if your character is Holy. Nor can they take a different feat at 14th level that gives you the raise dead spell but makes it so that the creature you bring back is Undead.

To me this pretty much clarifies that thralls, as disposable Undead, are not inherently Unholy, while permanent Undead is not something Holy people would ever engage with.

So, to the first question (the second one isn't really for the Rules forum, I'd recommend asking in Advice or Homebrew and House Rules):

The important bit is they count as Qi spells for prerequisites and abilities that care about how many Qi spells you have.

So, a Monk with Cultivator dedication could take feats that have a Prerequisite of Qi Spells (like Realign Qi, Qi Center, Advanced Qi Spells, etc) even if they don't have the 1st level feat "Qi Spells", because Cultivator gives them Qi spells for that purpose.

A different class that takes Cultivator and then takes Monk Dedication could also acquire those feats just through their Cultivator Qi Spells.

It's a rather narrow use-case for now but if later options get printed with that prerequisite Cultivators would be able to take those too.

Leaving behind a standard Small/Medium Thrall also saves us the headache of having to figure out what happens if someone (for whatever reason) decides to use sanguine transference targeting something like a Conglomerate of Limbs (Huge) or Living Graveyard (Gargantuan) if the space we're leaving couldn't accommodate them.

Same if a thrall from bloody tendrils ?

Yes, but here we run into a bit of an issue in that sanguine transference is a bit unclear on what exactly you leave behind:

"You use the target thrall to reform your body in its space, and you leave a thrall where your body once was."

When it says you leave "a thrall" where your body once was...is it the kind you make with create thrall? Or is it the same type of thrall that you used for the spell (in your example, a tentacle thrall)?

I would personally rule it as your bog standard thrall, but it's something you (or your GM) will need to rule on. Regardless, you can target any thrall with sanguine transference, even special ones.

Impossible Magic, page 159:

The spell restraining chains does not list which saving throw is required by the target to determine the effects of the spell.

shroudb wrote:

rakem wrote:

I’m curious if I’m missing something, and I haven’t seen it mentioned in this thread so far. I’m super interested in Restraining Chains as a spell. Seems like a super handy debuff spell. But it lists a save success table without listing the type of save you need to make? I feel like fortitude and reflex both make sense (break the bonds or dodge them) so I don’t even know what to rule as a GM.

Yeah, certainly a mistake.

For all that's worth, for me it reads as a classic Fort save spell.

I'm hoping for a Reflex save.

FWIW it's very similar conceptually to magical fetters and that one is Reflex, but yeah this is definitely a big Errata candidate.

If a thrall can't move.

Is it possible to use sanguine transference on it ?

Yes, because the Thrall never moves. The spell effect is basically you reform at the Thrall's space (destroying it) and leave a new, different Thrall in the space you left.