The Raven Black's page

I would definitely not give away for free an armor or weapon that costs more than the rune itself.

It isn't really a subordinate action. It is using the maneuver actions as part of the spell effect. You (the caster) isn't the one doing the maneuver. The spell is.

Which is also why it is done at the 60 foot range of the spell instead of the reach of the caster that is normal for a combat maneuver action.

I wouldn't have the spell checking for the size of the target creature. It is already costing a spell slot to make one attempt. It should be more powerful than a generally available action that can be repeated with no resource cost.

The spell is very clear that the caster is doing the maneuver:

"you move a foe or something they carry. You can attempt to Disarm, Reposition, Shove, or Trip the target using a spell attack roll instead of an Athletics check."

RAW, except for the range and the spell attack where specific trumps general, all usual rules of the actions apply.

We're homebrewing here because we don't like the idea that these usual rules apply.

As long as the quantity of souls cycling stays the same, the whole of reality stays stable. The outer walls stay strong. Which is all that Pharasma cares about.

If a vast amount of souls go to the Good planes, it will make those stronger in the internal conflict between Holy and Unholy. Which will undoubtedly have an impact on existence within reality, being more aligned to Good.

Same if many souls went to the Evil planes.

It would be like blue vs orange. More blue lights and blue rooms and blue walls inside the house. Or more orange.

But the house will stay the same when viewed from outside, with strong walls and good maintenance.

What could be a problem is the trend of Evil to create undead. Which weakens the walls.

Conversely, a more Good reality might end up in less undead and thus a strengthening of the outer walls.

I am extremely happy that JJ makes any and all modifications he feels are required to tell the best story.

Loremaster archetype too.

TheFinish wrote:

Someone taking 3 dedications in a non-FA game sounds bonkers.

It’s quite doable to have 3 archetypes in a non FA game by level 14 or so. One is from multitalented, the other from normal class feats. Doesn’t even consume all your class feats and lots of archetypes provide better value than many class feats. And for some archetypes with some characters all you want are the higher level archetype feats ( eg, going skill monkey via rogue archetype feats)

It’s even easier if one of your archetypes is something like medic where actually good features are available as skill feats.

Obviously it’s only a good idea for some characters and some classes. Some classes are absolutely spending every feat available on in class feats and wishing for even more of them. But some characters really don’t care much at all about their crappy class feats

Very good point. You do not need to take an archetype early on if you only want its high level feats.

I think Tridus has it right here. RAW persistent damage does not have an area of effect.

From a narrative standpoint, area weakness makes sense right? You hit with a weapon, it hits the specific individual members of the swarm, but there are hundreds if not thousands of individuals in the 10 ft square. But an area of effect, like a burst or splash, hits the entire area thus hitting a much larger percentage of the individual members of the swarm.

Persistent damage, on the other hand, is usually something that effects an individual target, not an area. I think it is fair to argue either way for persistent damage from a narrative sense.

BUT!! A narrative argument is not RAW. It is RAI.

I do not get how a burst that hits "a much larger percentage of the individual members of the swarm" and that deals persistent damage is not dealing it to the same much larger percentage of the individual members of the swarm that makes it qualify as "area of effect".

We have nothing in the RAW saying this persistent damage is not area damage too.

And it is not persistent damage that has an area of effect. It is the source of the effect. Same as for the initial damage.

If the source makes the initial damage "area", then it should do so for the persistent damage too.

For the example given, I'd say no. Only the initial damage procs the weakness.

I saw neither area nor persistent damage in the example they gave for the clarification.

Would persistent damage from a holy source not trigger weakness to holy each time the target takes damage ?

There's also a not often touched upon question of whether or not the petioner created from your soul is really even _you_ or not. It's well known that souls are stripped of their memories before being sent to their afterlives, so it would be quite easy for people to believe the thing that gets punished is not really _them_ in any meaningful way. Evil religions might de-emphasise your soul as you, insisting that your soul is just some _thing_ that the gods will take and use, but the you that exists now will be long erased before then. Might as well party/lord over your lessers etc. in this life then.

Very true.

While the Good religions will explain how your soul will go on strengthening the Good planes (rather than the Neutral or Evil ones) thereby giving Good more power to do more good in the future.

By doing good, you're helping the world now AND in the future.

Pathfinderwiki has creepy info about Bastardhall and there is a pretty horrifying Tale of Lost Omens blogpost from one of the coach's prey. Even death is no escape.

Note that all prey of the coach are descendants of the Arudora family. Hence the name of what was once Castle Arudora.

For Multitalented without stat requirements, any Ancestry with Aiuvarin heritage and Adopted Ancestry (Human) can do it.

With this, you can take a 3rd dedication by level 14.

Without it, it is level 16.

Quite feasible.

RAW no. Persistent damage is a condition and it lacks the area trait.

Narratively? It absolutely makes sense that if you set them on fire with an area/splash effect, that trait should carry over to the persistent damage.

GMs should feel encouraged to say "that makes narrative sense so I'm going to give it to you."

There is no area trait.

I see zero reason why the initial damage and the damage inflicted by the persistent damage condition, both coming from the same source, should be treated differently.

For example, the Archons mode of the Holy host spell inflicts slashing damage and persistent fire damage.
The spell has the Holy trait. I believe it applies to both the immediate slashing damage and the persistent fire damage.

If you already have Slam Down, Crashing Slam means you automatically trip the enemy and inflict another weapon die.

Great value for a Fighter IMO.

The persistent damage comes from an area effect. I would say the weakness applies.

When assessing Spellstrike, always consider a Fighter with Magus MC using Sure Strike.

I kind of hope they stack, if your facing a swarm of straw man with heavy area and fire vunerability it makes sense for a fire cone to be more effective than an ice one.

Indeed.

And the Holy, in the description of the holy rune, indeed applies to the whole Strike (so not a separate instance of damage but something that is checked once for the whole Strike) with the spirit damage coming in addition.

The slashing + cold iron weaknesses in the example do not stack because it is the same instance of damage (the weapon itself) that causes both. It makes sense IMO that being cut with a given metal will not stack the cut weakness and the metal weakness because it is a single wound.

What about Spellstrike giving Incapacitation to save spells in exchange for a better result if crit? With spells that already have Incapacitation not working with Spellstrike.

Archetype as a whole, including the dedication. Obviously there's no dispute exemplar dedication is better than champion, the only dedication alone that could compete is alchemist and I think exemplar beats that, though not by *that* much.

But the whole archetype is the proper point of comparison because that's what you have available to take, and the issue with exemplar there is that you create dedication lockout with pretty limited options on what you take to get out of it.

And it's not just FA games where you want to be taking dedications, that's every game. Typically I have 2-3, and I've seen great builds with 4. Not so many with zero/wouldn't take an archetype if not for exemplar. I think the only class where that might make some sense is kineticist since it has so little out of class synergy (but why not at least multitalented alchemist?) I'd go as far as to say that archetype sequencing is a core optimization skill in pf2e.

PFS though... PFS is pretty close to the ideal conditions for exemplar archetype since there's no way to predict party synergy (more damage doesn't need synergy!) and you get paired with a lot of players who frankly aren't great at making builds. If you're putting exemplar dedication as a single feat on a build that didn't have any archetypes to begin with it's a large improvement, and if that's what a lot of other martials are it's not hard to mog them even if you are literally just slapping exemplar on an otherwise mediocre build. PFS is also pulling from a restricted feat and item pool so it's a bigger fish in a smaller pond.

PFS restricts taking Exemplar archetype to a single one of your PFS characters, so better choose wisely.

And I feel Champion has a broader appeal because of Retributive Strike.

Me, I took the best of both worlds with my Champion MC Exemplar (Gleaming Blade Nodachi FTW).

I think I would allow it as it is not clearly forbidden by RAW. For Gleaming Blade, it is basically a Double Slice though with no two weapons restriction.

But you lose on the versatility provided by having 2 different Ikons.

Seems like a fair trade to me.

Specially because there are other ways to do ranged maneuvers just changing your weapon.

From 60ft away ? Without needing to invest in STR or Athletics ?

But I agree with ignoring the requirements, if only because Titan wrestler should not be involved.

True, but if we consider that worn items still provide their constant abilities, even though they are absorbed into you (ie, not worn anymore), then the same should be true of held or wielded items.

After all, the only prohibition stated in the Polymorph description is that you cannot Activate items.

What I am left wondering, since Holy and the spirit damage come from the same holy rune, is what if the monster had weakness to both holy and spirit?

TBH I think the devs know the game and have internal consistency, at least as far as something as central as instance of damage is concerned.

So we should consider the example as right and retro-engineer from it how instances of damage actually work.

-8 HPs on Rysky Surgery and Nat 1 on Medicine check followed by -8 HPs is the pinnacle of fun.

16 damage at level 1 from, say, a Wizard is nothing to scoff at.

Now you just need to convince your enemies to let you heal them to death.

Theaitetos wrote:

I think Trip.H is right.

Currently every instance of area damage type should trigger the area weakness, e.g. if your AoE spell does bludgeoning damage, fire damage, and spirit damage, then you'd trigger area weakness 3 times.

I think not because of this (bolded mine) :

"Weakness
Source Player Core pg. 408 2.0
If you have a weakness to a certain type of damage or damage from a certain source, that type of damage is extra effective against you."

Area is not a type of damage, so it is a source. And IIRC a single source cannot trigger the same weakness several times. Same for Holy.

Found the last bit, it's about Duplicate effects.

"Duplicate Effects
When you're affected by the same thing multiple times, only one instance applies, using the higher level or rank of the effects, or the newer effect if the two are equal. For example, if you were using mystic armor and then cast it again, you'd still benefit from only one casting of that spell. Casting a spell again on the same target might get you a better duration or effect if it were cast at a higher rank the second time, but otherwise doing so gives you no advantage."

Annotate Composition does not create a usual scroll that you activate with the Cast a Spell activity.

"Any creature that can read the language you used when annotating your composition can Activate the Item by spending a single action, which has the concentrate trait. This produces the effects of the composition as though the activating creature had Cast the Spell."

No real Cast the Spell here. So no spellshape and no stupefied effect, as opposed to a usual scroll.

Most likely a typo.

The Raven Black wrote:

YuriP wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Knowing your enemy beforehand and RK become much more valuable. I like it.

Or playing as Thaumaturge.

I feel it's covered by RK.

Not exactly.

RK if it fails can no longer be used by the same character against the same target (until you get new sources of information about it).

Exploit Vulnerability in turn can be attempted repeatedly until successful or critical success.

Excellent point.

I hate that rule in RK.

Suffer 1d8 damage to heal an additional 2d8 damage.

Do you feel lucky ?

I think Trip.H is right.

Currently every instance of area damage type should trigger the area weakness, e.g. if your AoE spell does bludgeoning damage, fire damage, and spirit damage, then you'd trigger area weakness 3 times.

I think not because of this (bolded mine) :

"Weakness
Source Player Core pg. 408 2.0
If you have a weakness to a certain type of damage or damage from a certain source, that type of damage is extra effective against you."

Area is not a type of damage, so it is a source. And IIRC a single source cannot trigger the same weakness several times. Same for Holy.

Another way to the same kind of result : Camp Shroud

Or instead trying to finagle the slightly borked RK mechanic, you can just impose a weakness and prep for that.

A surprising number of *items* can do that, so no need to even invest class feats for something like daily Inflammation Flasks.

From the ways I read about imposing a weakness, I feel the most likely for my PFS PCs would be the Witch's Elemental Betrayal.

Inflammation Flask, an Uncommon item from an AP, is restricted in PFS.

The Greater Shining Symbol item, ie the one that imposes a weakness, is level 9, very late in a PFS PC's career.

The Marked for Rebuke feat which gives a temporary weakness to all once a day is lvl 18.

The Raven Black wrote:

Knowing your enemy beforehand and RK become much more valuable. I like it.

Or playing as Thaumaturge.

I feel it's covered by RK.

Knowing your enemy beforehand and RK become much more valuable. I like it.

Assurance with Athletics for that 3rd attack is quite good IME.

For battle forms, a clarification that additional damage such as Rage or Sneak Attack is adjusting a stat (ie damage) and thus cannot adjust the special stats.

Also a clarification that special stats are those listed in the spell.

I wonder how many monsters have multiple weaknesses. And if their defenses and HP total take the official definition of damage instance into account.

And now we can better understand why many people felt being able to target a weakness was not that much of a big deal.

And why RK can really be worth the cost.

Thank you for your answers. It will make less items to consider for my Monk MC Untamed Druid.

Now let us look a Fighter with a two-handed d12 weapon or a d10 reach weapon. It's master in their Strike proficiency since the level 5, so the Crashing Slam is rolled with the proficiency that you will do Trip anyway, it will do a d12 damage dice + str if you hit this roll too, you also will do 1d6 more damage due to the critical effect of Trip (Wolf Drag is an auto Trip but not a critical Trip so it doesn't make Trip extra damage) that also can be improved by 4d6 with Bracers of Hammers. Also fighters starts with Reaction Strike what means that they take on extra MAPless Strike if the enemy tries to Stand (monks can do too but requires to take Stand Still...

The critical effect of Trip is much higher with Crashing Slam : "If you used a two-handed melee weapon for the Strike, you can use the weapon’s damage die size instead of the regular die size for the damage from a critical Trip."

What Finoan said.

That it took more than 7 years (I include the playtest) to get this key clarification is the root cause of the problem.

Because every person had to independently make up their own mind about it and these opinions then had years to become entrenched as a key part of each person and table's gamestyle.

Impressive work there. Kudos.

The Raven Black wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

All my time I've never ran into that one. Can you please put a spoilered title of what book that's from? I'm curious to check it out.

My apologies. It was a joke. This is not from Paizo. It comes from the Dragonlance setting where the mere mention of the name sent people in frothing fits.

The classic Assurance in Medicine for Treat Wounds (where you critical hit at level 9 (10 +9(lvl) +6(master)) vs DC 15, lvl 14 (10 +14(lvl) +6(master)) vs DC 20 and for Stabilize at level 10, 11, 12, 13 (depending from Dying DC).

True, but hitting DC 20 (2d8+10) is already better than criting DC 15 (4d8) and hitting DC 30 (2d8+30) is much better than criting DC 20 (4d8+10).

When almost all people in a discussion are in agreement, and the ones who aren't tread extremely carefully or do not care about wasting energy and being bashed in the first place, arguing indeed is very rare.

Does not mean everyone out there agree. Just the people who keep on posting the same opinion.

Dissent was not welcome in that other thread so it does not happen here.

Me, I am just happy people on this thread took the time and energy to explain rationally their point of view with examples rather than jumping angrily on the "opposition".

Just sad it could not happen on that other thread.

moosher12 wrote:

Kholo wasn't actually an ogl change. Kholo has been the cultural name since at least before ogl with the Mwangi Expanse, the way ysoki is used for ratfolk, amurrun is used for catfolk, and Iruxi for lizardfolk. Though I haven't read much 1E books on gnolls to know if kholo was used back then.

Unrelated: I always liked how Starfinder favored the cultural name ysoki instead of ratfolk. I hope PF3 embraces the cultural names, as it's always a shame to see so many players overlooking those names in practice.

I do too. We're seeing it a bit more with PF2 ancestries, Azerketi are called, well, Azerketi now, instead of Gillmen, but it's still not applied equally across all ancestries.

And far as I know Halflings still have no name for themselves, unless it's slipped in somewhere that I'm not aware of?

Ravingdork wrote:

So does the new "instance of damage" help clarify whether or not barbarian rage can be applied during a polymorph effect such as untamed form?

Their new instance of damage doesn't even quite clarify whether a rune is an instance of damage since they had it resisted rather than proc weakness.

In the example they give, I believe they state xx damage for each instance of damage.

So:
1 instance for Holy
1 instance for Flaming
1 instance for Spirit
1 instance for Cold Iron Slashing weapon, which is the only one where 2 weaknesses can happen, and they do in the example.
1 instance for Cold spell 1
1 instance for Cold spell 2

The Raven Black wrote:

Claxon wrote:

I only say it's unclear because I have no idea what "special statistics" are.

Way I read it, special statistics are those explicitly mentioned by the form you polymorph into.

For example : "You gain the following statistics and abilities regardless of which battle form you choose:
AC = 18 + your level. Ignore your armor's check penalty and Speed reduction.
15 temporary Hit Points.
Low-light vision and imprecise scent 30 feet.
One or more unarmed melee attacks specific to the battle form you choose, which are the only attacks you can Strike with. You're trained with them. Your attack modifier is +16, and your damage bonus is +9. These attacks are Strength based (for the purpose of the enfeebled condition, for example). If your unarmed attack modifier is higher, you can use it instead.
Athletics modifier of +18, unless your own is higher.
You also gain specific abilities based on the form you choose:..."

then that could imply that the next block of text that only say "You also gain specific abilities based on the type of animal you choose:" ...

they removed/did not use the word statistics, are this not special statistics then and could then be modified?

This would be the sections where Battle forms gains their speed, attack type and damage btw

and the first section talking about statistics is AC, HP, Attack and Skill bonuses

It could be the intent and would remove alot of questions regarding battle forms and would make them more viable, but they refuse to say anything to clarify.

---------

But to throw a wrench in and muddy the water even more. in the remaster some Battle forms got remastered and they removed the Statistic Wording in the first sentence.
Namely Aerial and Animal form lost the word Statistics

but, Avatar, Dinosaur, Dragon, Elemental, Insect, Monstrosity, Nature incarnate, Pest and Plant form did not lose the usage of Statistic in the first section.

I think the next block of specific abilities is also part of the "special statistics" that are explicitly mentioned.

I did not paste the whole text because it was so big. That's all.

I once shared my understanding that the "entire round" started at your initiative order and ended in the same moment of the next round, so basically after all other participants had reached their initiative order. And that it was not round 1, round 2 ...

I got pretty bashed then so I am not eager to intervene on this topic again.